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The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

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Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#111

Post by smcl »

FpUser wrote: post #84
Barrin92 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I only care about one thing whether that virus came out as the result of aforementioned research Then you should read what scientists write, not science journalists. If you can't actually understand the science, which is perfectly reasonable given that most of us are laymen, you can read scientific journalists, but then you need to acknowledge that you operate on trust, which would mean you need to take the authors…

>"and don't pretend you 'only care about the science'." I don't. The question was did the virus come out as the result of that research or not. The answer is simple yes or no. No need to dance around.

The point is that you seem to be arriving at that yes/no answer as a result of reading the words of someone whose credibility and impartiality is in question.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#112

Post by torgian »

novaRom wrote: post #66

There is an interesting peer reviewed paper published last month with analysis of existing facts about the origin of covid-19. A part from their conclusion: More than a year after the initial documented cases in Wuhan, the source of SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be identified, and the search for a direct or intermediate host in nature has been so far unsuccessful. The low binding affinity of SARS-CoV-2 to bat ACE2 studied to…

I don’t pretend to understand everything here, but it sounds like the paper is saying it is very unlikely to have originated from animals?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#115

Post by koonsolo »

anoncake wrote: post #88
tgv wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has spoken of malice. It could have been a simple case of one lab worker getting infected. That would count towards stupidity. Rhetorically speaking, Hanlon's razor doesn't quite have the same weight as Occam's, if only because people tend to view behavior they don't understand as stupid. But I'll add another "razor": don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to self-interested.

Malice is a form of self-interest.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted, because your statement is 100% correct.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#116

Post by Clewza313 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #102

For an alternative perspective on this - the official WHO report covers the lab hypothesis: https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the... Origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus And unlike the arrticle here, this report is based upon interviews with employees at the lab and various form of documentation provided by the lab. Including health records of the employees. For more from one of the WHO people: http…

So I've been pretty skeptical of the lab theory to date, but:

> We visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is an impressive research facility, and looks to be run well, with due regard to staff health. We spoke to the scientists there. We heard that scientists’ blood samples, which are routinely taken and stored, were tested for signs they had been infected. No evidence of antibodies to the coronavirus was found. We looked at their biosecurity audits. No evidence.

So this is what they were told, but did they actually test the samples, and confirm that they belonged to the right people and originated from the given date? Apparently no.

> We looked at the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 they were working on — the virus RaTG13 — which had been detected in caves in southern China where some miners had died seven years previously. But all the scientists had was a genetic sequence for this virus. They hadn’t managed to grow it in culture.

This is probably the most convincing argument: if they actually had worked on viruses similar enough to plausible be modified into SARS-CoV-2, this would have left evidence in scientific papers etc.

> While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare. So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.

This is incredibly weak: "lab escapes are rare, so it's extremely unlikely" is not much of an argument.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#117

Post by Clewza313 »

dehrmann wrote: post #80
seymore_12 wrote: post #61

If we apply Occam's razor [1] decision between "Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses" and "Wuhan, there is a wet market where under certain conditions virus can jump from bat to monkey to person" is relatively straightforward But then, we should probably also apply Hanlon's razor [2] "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explain…

I assume practically every city in China has wet markets. I wonder how many cities have facilities that do virus research. It might actually be more than you'd assume; I have no idea what sort of research might happen at universities, You also have to weigh this with SARS Classic originating in China.

The entirety of China has two BSL-4 facilities, and Wuhan's is the older and larger of the two. (The other is in Harbin, northern China.)

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#118

Post by guesst »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #69

Note that there was an interview with a virologist last October that raised most of the same points as this article : https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/an-inter... is also an interesting and relevant interview.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#119

Post by Laforet »

roca wrote: post #64
zuminator wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2003 it was merely suspected that covers were the intermediate. It wasn't confirmed until 2006. Read further down: "In late 2006, scientists from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of Hong Kong University and the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus appearing in civets and humans, bearing out claims that the disease had jumpe…

It's pretty unclear exactly what was proved in 2003 and in 2006. But the point remains: for COVID19, after a year of searching we don't even have a suspect animal host.

Sars reemerged twice between 2003 and 2006, once in 2004 from civets and once in 2005 from an accidental lab release. Another potential outbreak in 2005 was prevented by preemptively culling civets when a high titre of SARS coronavirus was discovered. And civets eventually lead to the actual source on bats.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB107456233748805972

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#120

Post by KirillPanov »

seymore_12 wrote: post #61

If we apply Occam's razor [1] decision between "Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses" and "Wuhan, there is a wet market where under certain conditions virus can jump from bat to monkey to person" is relatively straightforward But then, we should probably also apply Hanlon's razor [2] "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explain…

> But then, we should probably also apply Hanlon's razor [2] "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Escape from an incompetently-secured and reckless lab definitely falls under "stupidity". There is nothing malicious about it.

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