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Earlier quoted context omitted.
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
So guilty unless proven innocent?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure what your point is. The source for SARS and MERS were found within months. We're over a year into this with no clue. Based on the current circumstances' inconsistencies with historical circumstances, this appears to be something different.
His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for this, did he commit the murder?
Not surprising at all considering Wuhan Lab scientists admitted on video they were bitten by bats and they had lax to no safety standards. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 > A video released two years before the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic shows Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists being cavalier toward protective equipment and being bitten by bats that carry deadly viruses such as SA…
> The recent announcement of nine cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome linked to China's National Institute of Virology brings to three the number of lab outbreaks of the disease in the past eight months.
It's also happened dozens of times in the US, UK, and former Soviet Union. Tuberculosis, Smallpox, various flu viruses have all escaped from "secure" labs. [2] [3]
Maybe studying viruses isn't as safe as we thought.
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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/s...
[2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center-hit...
[3] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/1978-accidenta...
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It stops being a fallacy and starts to become a valid consideration when the search for the thing not found has been thorough enough that it would have been very likely to be found if it had been there. Suppose that I remember leaving $5000 in plain sight on a table. My initial priors are a 90% chance that it is there, a 9% chance that I put it somewhere else by accident, and a 1% that my friend Bob took it. I conduc…
Logic does not cease to be fallacious merely because somebody works hard and becomes frustrated.
Many of them dissolve when treated correctly with something like a Bayesian analysis. [1] This is one of them. Absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence, contrary to the frequent assertions otherwise. It just isn't proof. The strength of the evidence is proportional to the amount of the possibility space searched and the quality of that search.
It is not fallacious to observe that our normally-successful efforts to find a natural cause failing raises the probabilities of the remaining explanations, and that of those possibilities, "lab origin" has a lot of the remaining probability. It doesn't mean that natural origin is disproved, nor did it mean any of the other possibilities are certain, but it is valid to adjust ones probability estimates.
(I've also learned from experience a lot of people will read this as being critical of the Aristotelian perspective or something. I am not. It is a valid logic. There are other valid logics. Many of them are more practically useful than rigid True and False, but Aristotelian logic, like Newtonian physics, is still a very important one to understand as it serves as an important limiting case for many other more complicated logics.)
[1]: This is not a position statement on Bayesian vs. frequentist.
How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is going to be difficult.
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
I don't think we will get the true answer or an answer that is going to satisfy everyone, just a lot of geopolitical posturing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hasn’t the exact same amount of time elapsed without finding any evidence of a lab leak?
You only need a handful of people working on this to have knowledge of it. The PRC is really good at locking up people to keep them quiet.
Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…
You seem to ignore the fact that there's exactly zero evidence either pro or contra. The fame of the "media person" is the kind of argument you typically see invoked in Facebook and Youtube comments.
What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.
Whomever leaked this murdered over 1/2 the holocaust, and the total death count is only going to keep going up. The leak is a crime against humanity and should be prosecuted as one.
Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…
Not surprising at all considering Wuhan Lab scientists admitted on video they were bitten by bats and they had lax to no safety standards. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 > A video released two years before the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic shows Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists being cavalier toward protective equipment and being bitten by bats that carry deadly viruses such as SA…
Given that the amount of evidence is exactly zero, anyone can spin their favorite "unsurprising" theories all day long.