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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

#351

Post by mytailorisrich »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #350
mytailorisrich wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First positive tests in France are end of December [1] [2](meaning the people caught the virus days or a week before that). Strongly suspected cases based on thoracic scanners are up to mid November [3]. In Italy people were contaminated even earlier than that, apparently [4]. These are not wholly surprising because, again it is likely that the virus had been circulating for some time in humans before it exploded and…

> "I would be very cautious," about these findings, said Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, who was also not a part of the study. The results "have to be confirmed with different antibody tests," that look for the prevalence of antibodies that target other parts of the coronavirus. > His previous experience has shown that such antibody te…

I'll just repeat that I'm hoping that you are as cautious about pangolin and secret lab stories as you are with this...

I'm puzzled by your attitude and unclear about your aim but you do what you want.

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

#352

Post by TomSwirly »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #318
bamboleo wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is no direct air flight from Italy to Wuhan without going through Amsterdam Schipol or Beijing. There are no Shipping ports in inland Wuhan. Do you truly believe it is a realistic scenario that a virus this infectious could traverse from northern Italy to Wuhan, Hubei, without creating multiple infection hotspots along the way? If I am to put on my tinfoil ha…

> Do you truly believe it is a realistic scenario that a virus this infectious could traverse from northern Italy to Wuhan, Hubei, without creating multiple infection hotspots along the way?

Sure - I'm not quite sure what the issue is.

A single person X becomes infected mid-week in Europe. Monday they leave for China. The next Thursday, they have a business meeting in China where they are symptomatic but have suppressed obvious symptoms with OTC cold medication - who wouldn't if you flew thousands of miles for a meeting?

A dozen people sit in a room in Wuhan with some infected person for several hours.

---

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

An "extraordinary claim" is along the lines of UFOs, ghosts and goblins.

There are hundreds of millions of international passengers a year. That an unknown infectious disease could travel from Europe to Asia undetected is hardly an "extraordinary claim".

Pending any hard evidence at all, it can only be described as a hypothesis.

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

#353

Post by petre »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #160
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…

Its simple. Humans are addicted to blame thinking. People instinctively expect a just world, where bad things are a consequence of some form of sin from bad people and good things are a consequence of some virtue from good people and all problems are some sinners fault. A large fraction of people can't comprehend a world where bad things happen to them and nothing/no one is to blame. In the absence of reason they inv…

They covered it up just like the USSR covered up the Chernobyl nuclear accident, so China is at the very least liable for doing that, which led to a delayed response to the outbreak. Responsible parties were doctor Zhang Yongzhen who published the virus sequence, enabling research on vaccines, Li Wenliang and his colleagues who shared the news about the outbreak and were punished for doing so.

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

#354

Post by sudosysgen »

manigandham wrote: post #347
dash2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why it would be unknown origin , not zoonosis. They don't default to picking one over the other in the absence of evidence for either.

If you are trying to do a bayesian analysis, you need a prior probability. That is, what it would be expected to be, without your analysis. This would be zoonosis.

There is never absence of evidence for zoonosis, because by association all other viruses came to be via zoonosis. So, before you do any further investigation, it's the default. And then, when you do, zoonosis is already the null hypothesis as it was the most likely before you being your further investigation.

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

#356

Post by tiahura »

sradman wrote: post #248
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...

From How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus [1]: > Shi’s team used the antibody test to narrow down the list of locations and bat species to pursue in the quest for genomic clues. After roaming mountainous terrain in most of China’s dozens of provinces, the researchers turned their attention to one spot: Shitou Cave, on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, where they…

Is there a good reason to not nuke this cave?

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

#357

Post by jeffe »

geekraver wrote: post #355

Doesn’t the cumulative error from all of these adjustments just mean garbage comes out the other end? This whole thing seems more like clickbait to give the company publicity.

For approximations based on multiplying numerical estimates, the overall standard deviation (or error) of the final result is proportional to the square root of the number of estimates. So yes more adjustments will increase the error, but probably not as badly as one might think.

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

#358

Post by DoingIsLearning »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #351
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I would be very cautious," about these findings, said Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, who was also not a part of the study. The results "have to be confirmed with different antibody tests," that look for the prevalence of antibodies that target other parts of the coronavirus. > His previous experience has shown that such antibody te…

I'll just repeat that I'm hoping that you are as cautious about pangolin and secret lab stories as you are with this... I'm puzzled by your attitude and unclear about your aim but you do what you want.

> I'm hoping that you are as cautious about pangolin and secret lab stories

Seems like you are trying to ridicule me just because you disagree with me.

'Wuhan Institute of Virology' (China's only BSL4 lab) is less than 14km from 'Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market'.

The 'Wuhan Centre for Disease Prevention & Control' is 1.4 km from the 'Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market'.

Both are public institutions with published research on both virus classification and gain of function experiments.

This is circunstancial evidence. Unlike the previous origin investigation for SARS-Cov1, there has been little transparence or effort to investigate the origin of SARS-Cov2.

Let's agree to disagree. If indeed the origin is a Southern China zoonotic event, which then happened to have a superspreader event in Wuhan, then it is in the interest of the Chinese government to investigate this and disclose this evidence to dissolve international doubts and concerns.

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

#359

Post by tiahura »

bawolff wrote: post #237
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…

Because people want someone to blame, a villian to hold responsible, for whom they can call out for blood. Bats can't be morally culpable; other humans can be. If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.

That seems a bit unfair. I lean towards the “random technician was a little careless one day hypothesis.” I’m not looking to blame anybody. S* Happens as they say.

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

#360

Post by jeffe »

A more statistically rigorous assessment of the odds of a lab based origin places the likelihood at 6%-55% [1]. However it understandably does not account for circumstantially suspicious behavior from China, which I would argue provides a significant signal.

[1] https://zenodo.org/record/4057129

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