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How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com

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Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#81

Post by weezin »

eloff wrote: post #42

There's basically no evidence either way, although the outbreak being in a city with a class 4 bio lab actively studying sars viruses does on the surface seem to make the lab leak more probable. Bit of a coincidence. What really makes me think though is the way China is being uncooperative. You'd think if they were innocent they wouldn't need to limit access to data and prevent investigation of the Wuhan lab. Maybe t…

People are absolutely shocked when I tell them what China reports as their numbers for testing and cases.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#82

Post by cbHXBY1D »

baggy_trough wrote: post #63
cletus wrote: post #39

So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories. That being said, I don't believe anyone can reasonably claim with any degree certainty that Covid was a lab-leak BUT the WHO investigation simply hasn't done their due diligence to a sufficient degree to eliminate this theory. Unfortunately the WHO's credibility is trained here. In the early days of the pandemic the WHO bent over backwards not to upset Chin…

Why do you call it a conspiracy theory? There's nothing conspiratorial about it. Any politically sensitive organization will inherently do whatever it can do avoid blame. That's as natural as the force of gravity. I also don't understand why you say so vehemently that you don't believe it was engineered. Gain of function experiments are something they do in these labs!

> There's nothing conspiratorial about it. Any politically sensitive organization will inherently do whatever it can do avoid blame.

This implies multiple high ranking officials and organizations conspired to hide information and cover up evidence. We have a word for this: conspiracy theory.

Americans tend to equate the word "conspiracy theory" with being crazy or ridiculous, but that is not always the case. Many conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Look at the recent Pentagon disclosures on UFOs for instance. Or look at any of the plans the CIA had in the 50s-60s which turned out to be true: MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, etc. These were "conspiracy" theories that turned out true.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#83

Post by fastball »

mhh__ wrote: post #71
rllearneratwork wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"Has anyone analyzed this with a Bayesian statistical approach?" - YES. And they give lab leak theory over 80% likelihood https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...

How can you assign a probability/likelihood to vague statements like "There is some weak evidence regarding lax security and procedures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology"

Probabilities determined from Bayesian analyses like this one aren't really intended to be perfect – it is more of an exercise to help you think through the various different possibilities in a more structured way. In other words, Bayesian estimates should always be taken as relative to all other related estimated outcomes rather than as absolutes in isolation (even thought you are arriving at a specific "probability").

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#84

Post by baggy_trough »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #82
baggy_trough wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you call it a conspiracy theory? There's nothing conspiratorial about it. Any politically sensitive organization will inherently do whatever it can do avoid blame. That's as natural as the force of gravity. I also don't understand why you say so vehemently that you don't believe it was engineered. Gain of function experiments are something they do in these labs!

> There's nothing conspiratorial about it. Any politically sensitive organization will inherently do whatever it can do avoid blame. This implies multiple high ranking officials and organizations conspired to hide information and cover up evidence. We have a word for this: conspiracy theory. Americans tend to equate the word "conspiracy theory" with being crazy or ridiculous, but that is not always the case. Many con…

I think of it more like the Illuminati myself. Normal bureaucratic blame shifting hardly merits the term.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#85

Post by fastball »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

Is it? If this virus came about via GoF research in a lab, the solution for "next time" is:

1. Stop doing GoF research

2. Better lab containment processes

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#86

Post by encryptluks2 »

ocschwar wrote: post #45
monkeycantype wrote: post #26

The accidental lab leak theory proven would actually be great news, as the alternative is that civilization has reached the threshold where we have a hyper connected population in contact with so many natural disease reservoirs that pandemics are emerging spontaneously. If it’s a lab leak we change pathogen containment practices, otherwise we curtain our freedom of movement and association

For persons of average intelligence or more, it is indeed good news. For persons of Asian appearance, living in physical proximity to persons of lower than average intelligence, it's dangerous news, unfortunately.

Can you provide recent statistical data during the pandemic about actual hate crimes to back that up, specifically about the race committing the crime?

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#88

Post by _y5hn »

tolbish wrote: post #36
lukeholder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do both. If a plane crashes, you find out the cause. During that evaluation, if you also find that the pilots response to the engine failure was also wrong, you fix that too.

There is a noticeable trend here of gatekeepers crying foul when others decide to talk about this. They try to shame you into silence, claiming that you are caring about the wrong thing , as if you cannot pay attention to more than one issue simultaneously. Whenever there is a trend of similar talking points on a hot topic it makes me wonder how much of that is influence from outside groups.

Speculation about it might be detrimental. So it seems like a bad tradeoff unless one can find evidence one way or the other, and what constructively to do about it first.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#90

Post by temp8964 »

> It spawned racist rumors like “Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.”

First, I don't see how is this racist. Second, this is not rumor, there are Chinese articles about how some lab members were punished.

The author lost credibility here.

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