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Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

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Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#261

Post by phkahler »

consumer451 wrote: post #154
purplecats wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why that date

Not gp, but to me it seems common and smart to put an expiration date on all financial offers. That's the simplest explanation at least. This rootclaim.com process is new to me, there could certainly be other explanations. Kudos to purplecats for making that offer as well, assuming this whole thing is on the up and up. edit: below was my post when it was first upvoted, prior to edit. > Not gp, but to me it seems smar…

>> it seems common and smart to put an expiration date on all financial offers.

And all contractual obligations including thing like NDAs. Maybe it's a number of years, but never enter one for a lifetime. Ever.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#262

Post by bobthepanda »

phkahler wrote: post #258
incrudible wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make a lot of sense that SARS-COV2 was spreading in Southern China for a while, but going unnoticed, due to immunity. Then, as soon as one of those rural workers visits another major city further up north, it gets a chance to spread in a more susceptible population.

I dont find that very plausible. There aren't really any places on earth with that many people AND that isolated from the rest of us. For it to be common among them for a long time without escape? I'm not buying it, at least at this level of discussion.

Also there is quite a lot of domestic travel within China, and it’s not that hard to connect via 1-2 people to a major Chinese city with international flights.

With how contagious we know COVID-19 to be, there is no way it started in Southern China and then infected a significant amount in Wuhan and only Wuhan first, of all places.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#263

Post by incrudible »

phkahler wrote: post #258
incrudible wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make a lot of sense that SARS-COV2 was spreading in Southern China for a while, but going unnoticed, due to immunity. Then, as soon as one of those rural workers visits another major city further up north, it gets a chance to spread in a more susceptible population.

I dont find that very plausible. There aren't really any places on earth with that many people AND that isolated from the rest of us. For it to be common among them for a long time without escape? I'm not buying it, at least at this level of discussion.

I'm not saying it could have spread "for a long time", I'm saying it spread undetected "for a while" in a region where significant immunity exists, thus causing no significant amounts of suspicious illness.

That is, the actual ground zero of the outbreak would be Southern China, where you would expect an outbreak of a novel coronavirus to occur, not Wuhan.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#264

Post by jimmydorry »

kossTKR wrote: post #204
DevKoala wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I don’t know about you, but now that link redirects to the FBI.GOV :/ This was the original link https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... If you Google “lancet ban on gain function” the first link is gone now.

what!? why does that link redirect to fbi.gov??

EDIT: The https://id.elsevier.com redirects to the FBI for me too (Australian ISP).

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#265

Post by 015UUZn8aEvW »

It's remarkable how little discussion there is about where SARS-CoV-2 actually came from. Yes, there is some. But it's a tiny fraction of the overall amount of digital ink that has been spilled over this during the past year.

The potential cost of a new virus is so enormous that measures reducing the probability of its occurrence, even marginally, are ridiculously cheap bargains even if they're expensive in absolute terms. But we need to know what really happened in order to take the right measures.

I admit that I do find the lab-escape hypothesis plausible. I'm not certain of it, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction. Perhaps one reason this hypothesis hasn't been publicized more is that those most qualified to assess it aren't eager to learn that some of the research they do is insanely dangerous, and that members of their profession may have committed a screwup of world-historical proportions.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#266

Post by sergiomattei »

SpaceRaccoon wrote: post #233
addicted wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wuhan lab being specialized in bat viruses means very little. For one thing, this is a classic example of correlation != causation. Let’s say you had a shark attack on some beach and there was a team researching shark attack located right in that area. Would you then conclude that the team engineered the shark attack? The simple reality is that the most likely reason the team studying shark attacks is located in…

Everything that I've read suggests the bats from which the virus likely originated can only be found hundreds of kilometers away, so it must have been brought into Wuhan somehow. Either for food, or for research, unless you can propose another explanation? > The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats w…

The first SARS started out with a traveler - what's to rule out that this time it wasn't spreading asymptomatically in other regions and brought into Wuhan by a traveler?

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#267

Post by incrudible »

bobthepanda wrote: post #262
phkahler wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont find that very plausible. There aren't really any places on earth with that many people AND that isolated from the rest of us. For it to be common among them for a long time without escape? I'm not buying it, at least at this level of discussion.

Also there is quite a lot of domestic travel within China, and it’s not that hard to connect via 1-2 people to a major Chinese city with international flights. With how contagious we know COVID-19 to be, there is no way it started in Southern China and then infected a significant amount in Wuhan and only Wuhan first, of all places.

We don't actually know that it was "only Wuhan first". SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have spread worldwide as early as November.

Wuhan is the 9th largest city in China and also more "blue collar" than cities like Beijing or Shanghai, so the odds that the most visible outbreak of all would occur in Wuhan by chance alone aren't as low as you think.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#268

Post by [deleted] »

bearbin wrote: post #36

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…

[deleted]

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#269

Post by wffurr »

kossTKR wrote: post #204
DevKoala wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I don’t know about you, but now that link redirects to the FBI.GOV :/ This was the original link https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... If you Google “lancet ban on gain function” the first link is gone now.

what!? why does that link redirect to fbi.gov??

Obviously because you "hacked" Elsevier by sharing direct links.
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