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

rootclaim.com

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

#301

Post by baskire »

SpaceRaccoon wrote: post #89
adamcstephens wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But liable to what end? What international jurisdiction will force China to “pay”? America destroyed Iraq on lies, but what has that liability cost them?

You don't need to force China to pay. Typically what is done is that foreign assets are legally seized, for example, Chinese state assets in the West, if China refuses to pay for damages.

The “west” could absolve all foreign debt to China both in 1st world and 3rd world countries as payment for covid liability.

The only action China could do would be to start a world war 3 in response.

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

#302

Post by takeda »

School-Cotton wrote: post #195
NationalPark wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you aren't even trying to discuss it honestly! The prior probability of voter fraud is so low that it demands really incredible evidence. When you frame it like "vote fraud or not voter fraud", you're implicitly lending a whole lot of credibility to something that is, well, not the least bit credible. Also, to borrow from a completely different polarizing thread, you're making a classic motte-and-bailey argument…

> The prior probability of voter fraud is so low Why?

I don't know what GP is trying to say, but the problem was that they never provided any actual evidence. Everything was presented on social media was made of videos that might have looked suspicious to someone not familiar with the process, but easily were debunked. For similar reason no viable evidence was provided to courts.

Frankly, I would be glad if we would actually ban electronic voting machines, and use paper ballots. There were some fishy things happening in states[1] that didn't get as much attention. It's much harder to commit fraud on larger scale with paper ballots, since everyone knows how they work and it is much harder to hide things.

[1] https://www.dcreport.org/2020/12/19/mitch-mcconnells-re-elec...

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

#303

Post by khyryk »

BEEdwards wrote: post #3
delbarital wrote: post #2

Rootclaim, an Israeli startup, claims Covid-19 SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a Chinese lab and was released was released by accident. They are offering to bet $100,000 on the accuracy of our analysis. Here you can find information about the challenge: https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge Personally, I think their logic is doesn't work and I would like to see someone credible challenges them.

You can't prove a negative though. The burden of proof is on them.

To be pedantic, you can't actually prove anything, positive or negative, outside of the realm of logic and mathematics.

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

#304

Post by dash2 »

nyolfen wrote: post #212
TurkishPoptart wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bret Weinstein, who has a Ph.D in biology, claims it's highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was man-made, rather than naturally occurring. So it's definitely possible it was a test that went wrong (and let's be honest, the Chinese government has a less than stellar safety record).

specifically he is a specialist in bat biology, but perhaps more relevantly he had a very interesting conversation with a russian virologist who also thinks this is the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug here is an essay written by his guest: https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I read three or four people on a thread all agreeing with each other, I become suspicious. It doesn’t seem how normal conversations go.

It probably just is my quirk, does anyone else share this gut feeling?

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

#305

Post by dash2 »

manigandham wrote: post #296
sudosysgen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s untrue. Null hypotheses are indeed typically “defaults” - for example, assuming, prior to any evidence, that X has no correlation with Y in the population. If you want to put it in a Bayesian framework, scientists cannot avoid priors any more than anybody else.

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

#306

Post by SlipperySlope »

bamboleo wrote: post #245
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Given that apparently the virus was outside China in early December already, is it possible that Wuhan was simply the first fast-spreading location rather than the place where the transmission happened? If the virus was in Milan’s sewers in December, it feels that it might as swell have started spreading there first. Likewise, Italy contained the virus from May to September, then it exploded again. Nothing particular…

China had direct flights between Wuhan and Italy with many Chinese working in Italy.

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

#307

Post by dash2 »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #119
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…

Entertaining the question is dangerous (I don’t believe it, but for the sake of argument)... My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus? Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable? Is it to prevent another MERS SARS? Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troubl…

> Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities?

The problem with this argument is that Covid is not tailored to avoid people of Chinese ethnicity. Indeed, in the UK, they have been especially vulnerable. Asian countries have done better because they have better policies in place.

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

#308

Post by Clubber »

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…

>It is "might makes right".

It is and always has, since the beginning of conflict. That's the only rule that can't be broken.

>Hiroshima of the bioweapon age.

It's not crazy, it's certainly plausible. I've heard theories that China would suffer the outbreak better because they would be better at locking down the population than the West and therefore suffer less economic damage. Such a thing could destroy the Western economy, particularly the US economy (no safety nets) so China could recover more ground or possibly take the economic lead.

It's the, "lets both take poison but I have built up an immunity," strategy as seen on The Princess Bride. Total lockdowns being the immunity.

Having said that, if it did come from a lab, I suspect the lab was designed to counter outbreaks (China has been wearing masks for several years now due to various outbreaks), and an accident happened. Due to the contagiousness during the incubation period and lack of serious symptoms in much of the infected, it had spread and already taken hold of the population before the government could effectively react.

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

#309

Post by dash2 »

bingojess wrote: post #279
Someone1234 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

In the article there isn't any discussion of cause and effect, it is a probabilistic model. Eg. being near a virus lab makes it more likely it's a lab escape, being 1000km away from the main zoonotic reservoirs (bat populations) in China make it less likely it's of zoonotic origin. This is not to say it's impossible as researchers do travel 1000km from Wuhan to get samples from bats. I'll not comment on the probabili…

The point is, the probabilistic model treats it as “very surprising” that the virus originated in a city where there is a virus lab. But that becomes less surprising if you consider that virus labs will often be located in cities at high risk from zoonotic outbreaks.

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

#310

Post by dash2 »

newdude116 wrote: post #108

Please don't take this as science. This is a marketing gag. I am not a virologist but not far away from it. It is well possible that the virus escaped from a lab. But never claim maliciousness for something that can be easily explained by stupidity. When working with Chinese in the lab I experienced them as never working very clean (e.g. with radioactive stuff). "There is some weak evidence regarding lax security and…

The article puts a high probability on an accidental escape, and a very low probability on a deliberate bioweapon. So you seem to agree.
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