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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

#291

Post by MichaelZuo »

JoshTko wrote: post #170
glenstein wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to that, one of their other priors supporting lab escape appears to be plainly wrong: >Furin cleavage sites are not common in other related coronaviruses. However, this claim appears to have been investigated and debunked [1] >Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2. [1] https://www…

This is key since the entire analysis hinges really on 2 or 3 key assumptions and furin cleavage is one of them.

“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” - John von Neumann

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

#292

Post by casion »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #272
casion wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major issue here is that the sensitization of priors can be a marketing ploy. It's very easy to "make guesses" that present your conclusion, throw in a paltry amount of money, then make bank off the publicity. This possibility poisons the well for the entire process. If they can make money off this even if they are completely off-base, then it's not rational to build up the trust necessary in their process to eng…

It’s not clear to me how they make money other than by winning their bets. What am I missing?

This is a company that is selling a product, and they're receiving a GREAT deal of publicity about their utilization of a methodology core to their offerings.

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

#293

Post by vlovich123 »

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…

Having the origin be China is bad enough for the CCP but if it’s caused by some kind of accident sloppiness that can somehow be tied to lack of government regulations or something, they’re looking at serious domestic problems. Even if it did happen the CCP would never admit that and will seek to censor any claims to that effect.

That’s why both conspiracy theories about this being a man-made conspiracy of the USA/China stem from the populist camps (ie Trump and Xi).

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

#294

Post by sargun »

grzm wrote: post #275
sargun wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Although I don’t use ISO8601 for time stamps when communicating online (for 2021-03-01T00:00Z is more confusing to me than 2021-03-01 16:00 PST8PDT), it’s easier to use for dates when discussing in an online forum where people may be from outside of the US.

nit: ISO8601 permits offsets: you don't need to always use UTC/Z. 2021-03-01T16:00-0800 works just fine.

I can’t remember the time zone offset between PST and PDT, and when the switch happens.

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

#295

Post by sargun »

titzer wrote: post #229
avmich wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most often I see this as an example of ISO 8061 date, https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html . "Looking for an unambiguous calendar-and-clock format that is internationally understood? It’s time for ISO 8601." "ISO 8601 tackles this uncertainty by setting out an internationally agreed way to represent dates: YYYY-MM-DD For example, September 27, 2012 is represented as 2012-09-27."

Yes, yes, yes, please use ISO 8601! Big-endian is the only rational way to sort dates and it combines nicely with time-of-day as well.

Big endian is also much easier to read as someone who reads from left to right.

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

#296

Post by manigandham »

sudosysgen wrote: post #141
bearbin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this (escape from a vial in a lab) isn't a strong claim, or at least no stronger than the alternative (the virus escaped from bat in a a wet-market)- why is there no outcry against the wet market hypothesis?

Zoonosis is basically the null hypothesis, as this is the mechanism for essentially every single other virus. For this virus to be special and have a special and different origin requires evidence.

No, the null hypothesis is unknown origin. Science doesn't just default to either explanation without evidence.

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

#297

Post by grzm »

sargun wrote: post #294
grzm wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nit: ISO8601 permits offsets: you don't need to always use UTC/Z. 2021-03-01T16:00-0800 works just fine.

I can’t remember the time zone offset between PST and PDT, and when the switch happens.

Well, I'm with you there :) I'm all for getting rid of twice-yearly (biannual? semi-annual? perhaps hemi-annual?) offset changes!

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

#298

Post by edmundsauto »

ilaksh wrote: post #283
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…

I'm going to go ahead and be the "crazy" person in this thread. In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators. So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic…

I don't think it's particularly brave to admit there is a chance this came from a lab. I want to see evidence before I change my prior, and it's a very small chance, but I suspect if people framed it in terms of probabilities, we would find more agreement.

However, labeling the perspectives in heroic terms does a disservice to your ability to more accurately predict the future. Most people with crazy theories end up being crackpots.

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

#299

Post by firen777 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #250
eloff wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I initially thought having a big bio lab in the city where the pandemic started, in a country with a history of managing security in their bio labs poorly, in a lab known for studying sars like coronaviruses, including gain of function research to better bind to human ace2 receptors was just too many coincidences. You have to admit it's believable. But then when you realize how many people in rural China have b…

The whole lab thing is people getting cause and effect mixed up, the lab is there because novel coronaviruses keep happening in that region, but because all people know is that COVID-19 is new (and none of the history) they immediately jump to that the lab specializing in this type of disease at the epicenter is too big of a coincidence to ignore (rather than it being there exactly because it is a common epicenter).…

> It is like putting an earthquake lab in the middle of a seismically active area, then blaming the lab when an earthquake occurs.

This is a really bad analogy, though.

Seismic lab doesn't contain self propagating "seismic seed" that has the danger of being let loose and spread across the world, whilst virology lab _regularly_ handle dangerous pathogen.

The major reason people suspecting lab origin is not simply due to the existence of WIV next door. It is due to how the ccp purge information on WIV[1], have the lab taken over by the military[2], and the sentencing/disappearance of numerous civil journalists (陈秋实 Chen Qiushi, 李泽华 Li Zehua, 张展 Zhang Zhan are the ones that come to mind).

- [1](https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6181529370001)

- [2, Chinese](https://sa.sogou.com/sgsearch/sgs_tc_news.php?req=gNWjMh9kjp...)

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

#300

Post by lamontcg »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #231
sradman wrote: post #135

The Chimera section claims: > Pangolins and bats don't usually cohabitate, making this somewhat unlikely in nature. Horseshoe bats are nocturnal animals that roost in caves during the day but sometimes practice perch feeding at night [1]: > The other strategy is known as perch feeding: Individuals roost on feeding perches and wait for prey to fly past, then fly out to capture it. Pangolins [2] and palm civets [3] are…

The official position is that the start of this pandemic was in 'Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market' in Wuhan. [0] So are you proposing that a pangolin from Lancang was transported more than 2000km to a seafood wetmarket in Wuhan? At face value, this sounds like a very unlikely scenario for a zoonotic event/origin. [0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/04/coronavir...

Straight from the wikipedia entry on the Huanan market:

"In May 2020, George Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said animal samples collected from the seafood market had tested negative for the virus, indicating that the market was the site of an early superspreading event, but it was not the site of the initial outbreak.[43]"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-rules-out-animal-market-a...

I can't find references now but the idea that the virus started in Wuhan roughly early November and that the Huanan market was just a notable superspreading event which brought attention to the virus is pretty accepted in scientific circles. The virus was too well adpated to humans initially and has not evolved significantly since its first detection then (D614G and the new variants aside).

The animals that carried the virus in the Huanan market were probably just an infected human, and not particularly close to the origin case.

It was just detected there because it was a superspreading event that happened in the backyard of the nearby lab.

The most plausible explanation I've heard as an origin is that it jumped from bat to human in the process of bat guano farming. This would have obviously happened in the rural area outside of Wuhan, but the virus found its way through spreading events into the higher density city, where it was eventually detected. Cryptic spread would have been happening for at least a month or more as it adapted to humans.

The furin cleavage site may also be the result of a recombination event between two coronaviruses (coronaviruses don't just mutation and reassortment like influenza, they also recombine and dual infection with two coronaviruses in an animal or human can shuffle parts of genes):

https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134?ijkey=b8e66cb01995eeb4...

So if you just assume that trajectory from bat guano farming to city center, along with a missing link to provide the furin cleavage site, then the title articles analysis really falls apart. Not surprising that the bats are far away, the furin cleavage site may be not surprising if we manage to find a similar virus in nature, and mostly what is left is that it wasn't detected until it was right on the doorstep of the virology lab (where the virus found the people who were likely to set off the alarm about it) and the rest some mild cover-your-ass at the lab would be entirely expected.

But that means that there's some bats with answers somewhere outside of Wuhan but China has been stalling efforts to go find them.

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