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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?

#251

Post by uvesten »

I think most people are confused because of CCP’s successful disinformation campaign, and also out of fear of being seen as prejudiced. The fact is that an epidemic with a corona virus (never before or since seen in the wild) with a peculiarly efficient ability to infect humans started in the _only city in the world with a lab where gain-of-function experiments on corona viruses_ is located. Just apply occam’s razor, and then you are done.

Every other theory requires involving many more unsupported hypotheses.

This would be obvious to the majority of the HN population in most cases, but the disinformation in this case is apparently quite effective.

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

#252

Post by twobitshifter »

trog wrote: post #90
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…

> 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 Heh, what is the Razor or other applicable language construct when someone gives two options and then suggests there…

If you knew that US state department had flagged safety concerns with Wuhan and claimed knowledge of infected lab workers, would that change your idea of the “leading world center”

https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan...

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

#253

Post by starfallg »

yread wrote: post #179
_trampeltier wrote: post #170

For me it felt allways a bit strange how fast china acted. The virus was very fresh, nothing was known, just a few cases and china totaly locked down millions if people. Two, three months later, when we already had high numbers if cases in the west, lockdowns started in the west also. But everybody said, "we know nothing about this new virus". For me it allways like, china knew much more about the virus early on.

They did have the experience with SARS1. And if you look at other countries that had experience with SARS1 they also acted very swiftly and did fairly well - Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam. What I found absolutely baffling is that we in west saw what China was doing and haven't got our shit together until months later (with exceptions). Instead the discourse was about how much the Chinese eat unsavory things an…

But none of those countries went to the extent the China did, and also taking into account that the Chinese did not have anybody to base their response on, whereas everybody else did. It is a extremely peculiar first response.

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

#254

Post by altacc »

darkerside wrote: post #240
altacc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debunking a theory doesn't make it disappear. Sometime it can do the opposite and reinforce the theory. In this case there is no smoking gun either way and a natural origin is much harder to trace than lab origin. That lack of absolute certainty, which science is often comfortable working with, leaves room for alternative theories to circulate and attach to those who like the sound of them for various reasons. It is…

It can be rational to behave as if the event did occur if you don't know that it didn't. Even if we're 50/50 on the source of the virus, maybe we should still ban or regulate GoF research, and consider banning or regulating some types of wet markets.

No, it's not rational as then you're relying on the other side to prove a negative, which is an unreasonable reversal of burden of proof (e.g. Russell's teapot).

As to 50/50 being reason to take large scale regulatory action, would you accept this level of proof to enact any law? That seems a low bar to me.

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

#256

Post by mensetmanusman »

“ It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.””

This is news to me. Wtf?

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

#257

Post by pclmulqdq »

ximeng wrote: post #172
trevelyan wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> generally it’s beyond current science to independently create mutations for a specific purpose. No it isn't. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/

Quite a long article, but skimming it it looks like that experiment involves applying naturally occurring mutations to an existing virus?

Yes. Gain of function research involves putting evolutionary pressure on an organism to give it certain traits that can be found in the wild, but the resulting virus is anything but natural.

I think a lot of people dismiss the lab leak hypothesis based on the idea that a lab-created virus must have an engineered genome rather than an evolved one.

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

#258

Post by _asummers »

mrkramer wrote: post #238
altacc wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, "conspiracy theory" these days has a wider meaning, in that it can be used to refer to pretty much any claim that goes against conventional explanations. I'm not a fan of the wide use of this term but it is what it is and it's now basically a useless term in any discussion except for manipulation. But let's flip this round as the author here is openly heavily weighing his dismissal of scientific support for na…

I agree with you conspiracy theory can mean pretty much anything for example during WW2 people couldn't grasp that Nazi regime had extermination camps until Allies entered East Europe and Germany and filmed the horrors of those camps. Some people could've called extermination camps conspiracy theory and regard it as propaganda against Hitler and Nazi Germany.

When entering the camps, they made sure to document well, because they knew no one could possibly believe the extent of the atrocities without seeing themselves.

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

#259

Post by walleeee »

uvesten wrote: post #251

I think most people are confused because of CCP’s successful disinformation campaign, and also out of fear of being seen as prejudiced. The fact is that an epidemic with a corona virus (never before or since seen in the wild) with a peculiarly efficient ability to infect humans started in the _only city in the world with a lab where gain-of-function experiments on corona viruses_ is located. Just apply occam’s razor,…

The Chinese state is by no means the only body pushing politicized information regarding covid origins

It doesn't make much sense to single it out here, the most plausible version of the lab leak hypothesis is that covid is the result of cooperative research undertaken by American and Chinese scientists and funded by both governments

Edit: I'd love to receive a substantive counterargument from the downvoters

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

#260

Post by throwaway8581 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #256

“ It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary,…

Trump said it was China’s fault, and orange man is bad, so any alternative discussion was basically prohibited until after Biden took office.
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