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The Lab Leak Hypothesis

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Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#201

Post by DonaldFisk »

collyw wrote: post #185
DonaldFisk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if this virus popped up in let's say Spain rather than China It may well have: Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-... Sentinel surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater anticipates the occurrence of COVID-19 cases: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v... (SARS-CoV-2 was also detected in blood s…

Given that it took a year for the virus to have any effect in Spain, then all of a sudden it was very intense, wouldn't it be more likely that the test was botched? There are a lot of false positives with PCR (0.8 - 4% according to this article https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2... ), so that makes a lot more sense than the virus being more or less dormant for a year then going wild.

> wouldn't it be more likely that the test was botched?

That's what I want to find out. From what you just wrote, the probability the test result is correct is at least 96%. But, as the result is so surprising and the tests aren't 100% reliable, it should still be checked.

You shouldn't assume it's a false positive simply because it doesn't fit in with our current understanding. Maybe our current understanding is wrong.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#202

Post by thu2111 »

inciampati wrote: post #195
RobertoG wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"It's very unlikely that you'd get a one step transfer from a bat that yielded a spike protein with the level of affinity it has for human ACE2. If you look at that protein alone, the most-likely proximal hosts are primates" I'm not qualified to have an opinion about that, but it seems to me that if we accept that premise, and the primate jump looks improbable, the conclusion is that the virus have to come from a l…

This is an anonymous appeal to authority, but FWIW I am a biologist and I am not convinced of any origin story. We lack evidence in every direction. Although our prior is that it's zoonotic, other experts I know acknowledge the possibility that we are looking at a lab leak. We simply don't have enough information to say. However, there is very strong pressure to reassure the public that it's not lab-based, which woul…

Yeah. Unfortunately public health researchers/biologists have very little credibility at this point so appeals to their authority won't work. In particular arguments of the form "we need more evidence" look weak given how many enormous leaps of faith the supposedly scientific establishment has been willing to make on the basis of no evidence at all for the past year, e.g. masks, lockdowns, asymptomatic infection (apparently now contradicted by a large study of >90% of the entire population of Wuhan!), now vaccines are being advertised as totally safe even though trial protocols are being abandoned left and right.

Public health research is really worrying, frankly. The quality gap between epidemiology papers I read in the last 12 months and computer science papers are shocking. Epidemiology routinely publishes papers that contain major errors that the authors clearly knew about and chose to ignore or cover up. The Flaxman paper is an example of how absurdly fraudulent it can get, yet we're told constantly that the "experts" have reached a "consensus" that isn't to be questioned.

At this point I'm pretty much ready to believe it came from a lab simply because scientists are claiming it didn't. My prior for public health researchers being honest has dropped through the floor.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#203

Post by thu2111 »

gdubs wrote: post #199

This article does a really good job, IMO, of addressing the controversy inherent in the title and the implications therein. But rather than just reading the headline, it’s a really well written article on “Gain of Function” research, and the history of contemporary bioweapons and infectious disease institutions. Particularly the funding, beginning in the 50’s, and exploding during the war on terror. It’s simply fasci…

Yes, it's a great article. Too bad many commenters won't have read it ;)

The most interesting part to me wasn't actually the lab leak part. That's been widely discussed for some time. The more interesting bit was how the anthrax scare turned out to be a lab worker who had a financial stake in vaccine research and apparently wanted funding to be increased ... and how that scare was used by the USG to justify drastic increases in funding towards bio-defence. If anyone has ever managed to more successfully or more cheaply achieve their goals through terrorism it's hard to think of an example!

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#204

Post by inciampati »

thu2111 wrote: post #202
inciampati wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anonymous appeal to authority, but FWIW I am a biologist and I am not convinced of any origin story. We lack evidence in every direction. Although our prior is that it's zoonotic, other experts I know acknowledge the possibility that we are looking at a lab leak. We simply don't have enough information to say. However, there is very strong pressure to reassure the public that it's not lab-based, which woul…

Yeah. Unfortunately public health researchers/biologists have very little credibility at this point so appeals to their authority won't work. In particular arguments of the form "we need more evidence" look weak given how many enormous leaps of faith the supposedly scientific establishment has been willing to make on the basis of no evidence at all for the past year, e.g. masks, lockdowns, asymptomatic infection (app…

I just indicated that I have spent much of my life thinking about these things. You don't have to believe that this gives me any insight, but like I said it might help you understand that I'm not just parroting some theory I've read, I'm working on it directly.

I understand your concerns about public health research. Have you thought about it could be done better? Curious what you think.

Computer science papers have their own quality problems. A shocking percentage of them don't include source code even when they describe experimental results. Here you have a field that could realize an ancient dream of perfectly describing their work, and yet they fail to do it. This is an obvious way that it could improve. What's the equivalent for epi?

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#205

Post by yorwba »

Retric wrote: post #165
yorwba wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Uyghurs living normal lives. Don't forget that even the highest estimates of a million targeted amount to maybe 10% of the total population. There are also plenty of ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims among the eyewitnesses interviewed in Western media, as well as restrictions on religious freedom all over the country: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-m... Of course having…

The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. That’s impacting people outside of internment camps. A policy which removes some pressure from the excess male births from the rest of the country and destroys an unwanted ethnic group. Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. https://en.wikipedia…

> The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages.

I assume you're referring to this part of your link:

> In March 2017, Salamet Memetimin, an ethnic Uyghur and the Communist Party Secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village in Qira County, Hotan Prefecture, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home. In interviews with Radio Free Asia in 2020, residents and officials of Shufu County (Kona Sheher), Kashgar Prefecture (Kashi) stated that it was no longer possible to perform traditional Uyghur nikah marriage rites in the county.

Such a policy against nikah marriages would also affect other Muslims, not just Uyghurs.

> Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves.

Similarly, forced sterilization has been part of government restrictions on reproduction for decades, and although the limit has been raised with the abandonment of the one-child policy, there's still a limit. So it doesn't just affect all non-Uyghur Muslims in China as well, but actually everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-chil...

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#206

Post by koheripbal »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #148
travisoneill1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few virus labs. Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one right next to the virus lab? That alone is enough evidence to make the lab escape theory the most likely origin. Though it's far from certain.

There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few provincial capital cities (Wuhan is one). Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one next to the provincial administrative office? That alone is enough evidence to make the provincial administrative office the most likely origin of the virus, right?

This isn't a logical comparison.

The lab specifically collected live bat coronaviruses for testing. The provincial administrative office did not.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#207

Post by api »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #196
jsz0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody really benefited from this Nobody benefits but who gets hurt the least? Totalitarian regimes are inherently more capable of dealing with the problem for obvious reasons.

In 2019, I would have guessed wrong about how a hypothetical COVID-19 would play out. I'd have pointed out that the US would unequivocally be one of the best nations at recovering from such a challenge: - Spent the prior 4 years warning the world that something like this could happen - Well prepared for this eventuality (stockpiles), have recently conducted dry run rehearsals for this exact eventuality, until recentl…

Everything you said is true but add a populist crackpot President, a huge alt-medicine quackery industry, and a significant fraction of the population that believes absolutely asinine things about vaccines and medicine. The USA would have had a great response to COVID if it weren't for American anti-intellectualism.

Not all totalitarian regimes have been handling COVID well. Russia hasn't done any better than most European countries and may have done worse if they're cooking their numbers (which is likely). Iran has done poorly. The thing that I think made China do well is a combination of an obedient authoritarian society and a large number of scientists and engineers in positions of authority. An authoritarian society is very good at problems of the form "have everyone do X," but that only works if X is the right thing.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#208

Post by koheripbal »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #19

Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance researching the origins of pandemics, pointed out in April that nearly 3% of the population in China's rural farming regions near wild animals already had antibodies to coronaviruses similar to SARS. "We're finding 1 to 7 million people exposed to these viruses every year in Southeast Asia; that's the pathway. It's just so obvious to all of us working in the field…

Being similar to SARS is not meaningful evidence to draw a conclusion about COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 virus). His data is from 2015 and cannot possibly indicate that anyone had been afflicted with COVID-19 at that time.

What he is saying is that animal-to-human coronavirus transmission is common - which most people agree upon. ...and possibly implying that there may be cross-immunity protection - also as many suspect.

...but for COVID-19 specifically, there is no evidence that it circulated in rural China prior to entering Wuhan.

...and sadly China is blocking the collection of samples for exactly that sort of serology/antibody analysis.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#209

Post by koheripbal »

OisinMoran wrote: post #141

To update your reference class of how likely this is and what kind of countries this can happen in— one or more of the outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in the UK were caused by lab leaks. 2007: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2007/08/report-l... 2011: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/countryside-i...

Also 2004: SARS in in China. - https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#210

Post by andromeduck »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #116
neonate wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many writers have done both journalism and fiction. There's a long tradition of it.

True. But not the author of this article. So by your logic, it seems like if you value journalism experience...then you should value this article less.

Would it have killed you to do a simple search on the matter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker#Non-fiction

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