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The Lab Leak Hypothesis

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Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#101

Post by howlgarnish »

manicdee wrote: post #83
MilnerRoute wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab was not "across the street." It was a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?

How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people?

Also, the first known confirmed case has no known connections to the Huanan market or the virology institute.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#102

Post by blackrock »

So.. let me try to understand this theory.

China was so smart, that their scientists were able to identify the virus from nature, and isolate it into a vial. Then, they let it leak out of the lab.

But yet, reports now indicate that the virus existed in Europe, before it was identified in Wuhan. [1]

Any one else scratching their head here about this logic?

Oh wait.. I got it. A Chinese spy carried the vial to Europe, and release it into the population of Italy and Spain, months before they “accidentally” released it in Wuhan.

This must be the most plausible explanation for how it leaked out of a Chinese lab, and infected people in Europe, before it infected people in Wuhan.

[1] https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1345438947137236993

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#103

Post by 8note »

csense wrote: post #80

Back in March or so, I wrote a comment about this [1], citing some even earlier (January 2020-ish) HN commentary. My conclusion: Lab leak's not inconsistent with the evidence, but there's no smoking gun. China's behavior is highly suggestive of guilt -- the moving location on Google Maps, destroying records, and not permitting any outside investigation. However, China could actually be completely innocent and just do…

I can't imagine the US government letting the Chinese government come in to investigate, so that's not the strongest argument

My view for China's actions is that they're likely by individual bureaucrats trying to hide their own incompetence from everyone

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#104

Post by flukus »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #61

Also an MIT alum, and in July I was considering the bayesian priors of the situation: Roll a dice representing all the possible bat-human interaction sites in the world. How often do you get a result so incredibly close to one of the few sites in the world that intentionally collects these things? I have worked in clean room environments for years. Everyone eventually has an off day (lack of sleep, usually) where you…

> How often do you get a result so incredibly close to one of the few sites in the world that intentionally collects these things?

Very often for organizations like that who have labs and offices over much of the country. Take a look at the CDC locations for instance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...) , if an outbreak were to start anywhere in the US there would be a "suspicious" CDC office nearby.

Even higher when you consider these things tend to be near major cities and that's where a new virus is most likely to be discovered and grow exponentially. It could have been spreading among rural areas for months with no one noticing, until one contagious person travels to a large city.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#105

Post by coolgod »

andromeduck wrote: post #97
coolgod wrote: post #87

While we're discussing racist coronavirus conspiracies which can't explain the positive COVID results of Italian and French patients in November 2019, why don't we go all the way instead and discuss the conspiracies used by Trump supporters? The virus was clearly manufactured by the deep state to steal the election from Trump, to take away person freedoms and to implement a global reset. I find that theory to be much…

If you think Trump supporters are bad you should take a look at some of the CCTV archives. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/world/asia/china-covid-or...

Wow! Another propaganda piece which repeat same falsehoods about COVID origins from China without providing meaningful substance. It's from the NYTimes too, a reputable fake news source which also slanders Trump. Could it be they are also in on the conspiracy to engineer this global reset by stealing the election from Trump using a lab engineered virus?

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#106

Post by 8note »

kbaker wrote: post #47
ineedasername wrote: post #6

I don't see any evidence for the speculation it was lab created (or modified into it's current form) except for an acknowledgement that the capability to do so exists. I don't doubt the possibility of such a thing occurring, but I just haven't seen any evidence to support this.

For any skeptics out there, take an open-minded look at this article: https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/blog/scientific-evidence-and... It goes quite deep into the genetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 relative to existing bat coronaviruses, laying out the case that it is definitely of a non-natural origin. I am not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to fully evaluate the claims, but I would really enjoy seeing a rebuttal tha…

My prior for this is that it's unlikely that we know all the bat viruses that exist.

If you find another virus that's closer, it no longer matters that the old ones were far away

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#107

Post by bsder »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #61

Also an MIT alum, and in July I was considering the bayesian priors of the situation: Roll a dice representing all the possible bat-human interaction sites in the world. How often do you get a result so incredibly close to one of the few sites in the world that intentionally collects these things? I have worked in clean room environments for years. Everyone eventually has an off day (lack of sleep, usually) where you…

Well, is there anywhere else in China other than Wuhan that could/would identify a new virus like this before it goes mega-exponential?

AIDS, for example, only got flagged because a normally extremely healthy group started appearing with diseases associated with the very old and failing immune systems. And, even then, it took quite a while to figure out that it was a virus.

In the middle of flu season, COVID probably wouldn't flag until your hospitals suddenly fill up for no reason. And even then most people would just write it off as a nasty flu. Otherwise, COVID is just a fairly invisible bump in your mortality rates for people with comorbidities and age. Do you really think China is gonna look too hard into a few extra old and/or sick people dying for some reason?

Given that a full hospital is likely to be the first point where someone will start looking for cause, that really has no relation to origin point.

And, I would argue, China is worse than that. A local party leader in China will absolutely not bump something like COVID up the chain until absolutely forced to. It is quite possible that there were other flare ups that were covered up and the Wuhan one was simply large enough to be uncontainable, close enough to a virology lab to get flagged, and occurred right before Chinese New Year which forced a government response.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#108

Post by 8note »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #63
onionisafruit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point out the author lacks credentials. That’s a fair point. What isn’t relevant is whether he’s written novels...erotic or otherwise. No need to being that up.

He's a fiction writer. I think that's relevant.

Mind you, you're reading comments by people who aren't even writers

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#109

Post by wbl »

manicdee wrote: post #86
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #13

This is a good, balanced article. I've been of a similar mind for over a year now. The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm the US seems silly. But an accident involving a well-intentioned gain-of-function experiment seems quite possible and was something that the US was concerned about with its own gain-of-function research. In any case, this, like so much of this other nonsense aro…

The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. This is where people have firearms, are trained in using them, but some circumstance led to the firearm being discharged without intent and injuring or killing someone. There’s every reason to believe that a country attempting to develop bio weapons may accidentally release that bio weapon against its own people for the same reason: mistake…

COVID is a terrible bioweapon. It's fragile, with an outer lipid membrane that has to be preserved. It's not very lethal to people of military age, and spreads readily between people making collateral damage inevitable.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#110

Post by Lammy »

wbl wrote: post #109
manicdee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. This is where people have firearms, are trained in using them, but some circumstance led to the firearm being discharged without intent and injuring or killing someone. There’s every reason to believe that a country attempting to develop bio weapons may accidentally release that bio weapon against its own people for the same reason: mistake…

COVID is a terrible bioweapon. It's fragile, with an outer lipid membrane that has to be preserved. It's not very lethal to people of military age, and spreads readily between people making collateral damage inevitable.

It was great at making everyone forget about Hong Kong though.
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