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Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

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Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#111

Post by coliveira »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #17
daly wrote: post #15

For expert opinion on this subject listen to actual virologists. They do a podcast about 2-3 times a week. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

Their main argument in the podcast is that the scientist in the lab says that they were not working on this virus and "even with the central control of china there is no way they could keep that secret". That argument is not going to hold a lot of water with people

> That argument is not going to hold a lot of water with people

Yeah, because people prefer to hold their pet conspiracy theories.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#112

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

0-_-0 wrote: post #4

For anyone who wants to set their Bayesian priors to estimate the probability of a lab leak I recommend this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... For example, the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) escaped from the lab twice, both in 2003 and 2004.

Lab 257 is an amazing book about germ research labs. It fascinated me both with how hard it is to contain diseases under ideal conditions (lab 257 was on an island miles from anything inhabited) and how poor of a job people who should have known better, the actual virologists and people with MDs, did at containing diseases they were researching.

https://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments-Labora...

Warning: this book is non-fiction and is scary.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#113

Post by ekianjo »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #17
daly wrote: post #15

For expert opinion on this subject listen to actual virologists. They do a podcast about 2-3 times a week. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

Their main argument in the podcast is that the scientist in the lab says that they were not working on this virus and "even with the central control of china there is no way they could keep that secret". That argument is not going to hold a lot of water with people

> "even with the central control of china there is no way they could keep that secret"

Funny, we have thousands of people in certain countries in three letters organizations who can keep secrets just fine.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#114

Post by lixtra »

Aunche wrote: post #73
crx07 wrote: post #21

This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…

> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus Why not? Wuhan is the 43rd largest city in the world. Meanwhile, the earliest cases of CoVid were all connected to the same wet market. Doesn't that have a higher probability being the origin?

> the earliest cases of Covid were all connected to the same wet market.

This claim has less weight if China does not share the raw data.

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/who-experts-want-more-data-f...

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#115

Post by asdff »

crx07 wrote: post #21

This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…

I'm not sure that this virus even behaves in this way where a BSL-4 worker could become infected. What we know now is that you need a concentration of virus particles over time in order to come down with the disease (in other words, you are most likely to catch it drinking in your friends living room for 4 hours with an infected person, than in a grocery store where an infected person might cough on you in line but there is no long term exposure). I can't imagine where there is a situation in a lab environment where you would have the equivalent of an infected person drinking beer with you for hours in terms of exposure. Even a rip in your PPE wouldn't expose you to very much particulate compared with an infected person spitting in your face conversationally for hours.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#116

Post by echelon »

tossaway12321 wrote: post #93
crx07 wrote: post #21

This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…

This is as well my strongly held belief, and the most likely cause. And people making the really odd responses below. They're, not saying it, but insinuating that the lab would be where there is lots of bat coronavirus? The lab is in the city of Wuhan. A city with a population of 11 million people. This isn't some rural town. There was a lab that studied this type of coronavirus, had published papers on it. And in a…

> My hopeful opinion is that this leads to more stringent worldwide rules for reporting leaks, and checking of safety practices to avoid this happening again

A leak that results in 2.7 million worldwide deaths will not result in "more stringent worldwide rules for reporting leaks". It would result in economic reparations and possibly war.

Leak or not, it's in China's interest to prevent the blame from falling on them. The narrative here is an incredibly powerful geopolitical tool.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#117

Post by [deleted] »

vergessenmir wrote: post #79
bpodgursky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The lab is in a major city, and imported samples from all over China (and the rest of the world). The hypothesized bat in question, if it was really a wet-market outbreak, was imported from hundreds of miles away.

It's also been reported that it wasn't the season for the bat species. Those in favour of the lab leak hypothesis point out that the virus showed up on the scene with all the evolutionary capability to spread amongst humans i.e with batteries included. With previous Sars viruses my understanding is that each zoonotic jump was traceable with examples of previous forms in prior animal hosts to corroborate the lineage.…

[deleted]

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#118

Post by ceejayoz »

goatinaboat wrote: post #78
Ancapistani wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. I think that it is at least somewhat likely that it was the result of the lab's activities, but your assertion here has a huge dose of selection bias. If the virology labs studying coronaviruses were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but t…

were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations The world’s foremost institute for tropical medicine is in London, England. So that debunks that idea.

I mean, that's a practical side effect of the fact that England owned much of the tropics for a few centuries.

It's further evidence that these things get sited sensibly, not randomly.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#119

Post by roywiggins »

ekianjo wrote: post #99
roywiggins wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because winter is flu season, and most of the time the symptoms are impossible to distinguish, even when you're looking? Sure, China has way more public health capacity than it used to, but we know that COVID can spread silently in a community for a month without anyone noticing, even when we are looking. It happened in California and Seattle in January 2020. Why wouldn't that have happened in, say, rural China in Oc…

There were apparently already people with COVID symptoms in Italy back in December 2019. That said, China was already aware of the virus in late 2019. It's all well known.

Well, that's what I mean. Nobody knew COVID was circulating in Italy at the time either. It's easy to miss a new respiratory virus. For it to originate one place and by chance end up exploding in a different metropolitan area doesn't seem unlikely at all.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#120

Post by Aunche »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #92
Aunche wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus Why not? Wuhan is the 43rd largest city in the world. Meanwhile, the earliest cases of CoVid were all connected to the same wet market. Doesn't that have a higher probability being the origin?

Evidence points to it _not_ being from the wet markets in China: https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...

Your source cites the WSJ, which itself cites the Wuhan Virology Institute, which is trying to imply that China may not be the origin of CoVid at all, so I don't believe it.
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