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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

#141

Post by barry-cotter »

jb775 wrote: post #104
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…

> So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories You know it was once a conspiracy theory to say the Earth wasn't flat. And it was once considered blasphemy to say putting leeches on your body didn't help an illness. There's a reason why the term "conspiracy theory" is thrown around by the media so much...it's because they know a certain subset of people have been socially conditioned to bypass critical…

> You know it was once a conspiracy theory to say the Earth wasn't flat.

Archimedes knew the Earth was a sphere. You can tell the surface of the Earth is curved by the fact that the body of a ship disappears from view before its mast.

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

#142

Post by thurn »

danenania wrote: post #54
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…

Has anyone analyzed this with a Bayesian statistical approach? Considering that a zoonotic transfer could happen in a very large number of places on earth, I would imagine that the odds of an outbreak in any particular city would be quite small? With that in mind, how many virology labs are there doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses? How many have had safety issues in the past? How many times have pathoge…

I assume virology labs are not randomly distributed across the country, e.g. there could be many reasons why a lab studying coronaviruses might be located in close proximity to an area with a high risk of outbreak.

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

#143

Post by lamontcg »

ddingus wrote: post #133
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…

Another way to get at a similar disconcerting place: Where is the animal population that harbored the virus?

Same problem with SARS-CoV-1. The Bat SL-CoV-WIV1 virus that is closest related to that is also from Horseshoe bats in Yunnan. The SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in humans was >700 miles away in Guangdong. The virus may or may not have used an intermediate animal like civets to jump to humans.

We've seen this happen before and we know there was no lab leak involved.

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

#144

Post by cudgy »

snypher wrote: post #123
encryptluks2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/FACT%20SHEET-%20An... https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpuplo...

Increase from 49 to 122 is certainly a big increase, but these are extremely small numbers, considering they are derived from cities with combined populations of tens of millions of residents.

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

#146

Post by swader999 »

titzer wrote: post #132
swader999 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was banned in the USA around 2013, then Fauci and Straszak shifted funding to continue it in Wuhan to get around the USA bans. Virologists signed on to the article promoted by Straszak claiming the wet market fantasy as Fauci and Straszak control much of the funding in virology.

> then Fauci and Straszak shifted funding to continue it in Wuhan A nested conspiracy theory is just what we need for some more political polarization in the USA. Score!

This information is publicly available and was mentioned in Wade's article. It wasn't against the law to fund it, there were loop holes in the rules that allowed circumvention with sign off from Fauci and likely another guy Collins from the NIH. So no need to dismiss this with the tired conspiracy claims.

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

#147

Post by wutbrodo »

ekianjo wrote: post #64
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…

Having an open mind about alternative explanations than the official one from the WHO is not believing in conspiracy theories. Its just not believing in propaganda.

This term has always bugged me. It seems to me that thinking "conspiracy theory" is a meaningful concept is guaranteed to make you dumber. Truth is an incredibly complex concept, and while we need to use greatly-simplified models of it to function in everyday life, the notion that there's a useful _binary_ distinction between theories that should be taken seriously and those that shouldn't does has a way higher epistemic cost than it does a benefit.

It's particularly bad as a thought-terminating cliche because so much of what defines the label is aesthetic: when figures or institutions in the cultural mainstream speculate wildly, the term is never used (guess how many outlets covered Hillary Clinton's description of Tulsi Gabbard & Jill Stein as "Russian assets" as a "conspiracy theory").

Every theory can be considered with the same tools, parametrized by fundamental factors like how far it is from your current model of the world, what the implications are, etc etc. I freely admit that I've never looked into Flat Earth arguments enough to thoroughly debunk them, but a combination of 1) the amount of things I'd need to change in my model of the world for it to be true and 2) the minimal impact on my life if it were mean that I don't really care to look into it. I can apply the exact same process to every other bit of constructed knowledge, without needing to hand off my critical thinking ability to lizard-brain pattern-matching and mood affiliation like "conspiracy theory".

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

#148

Post by hungryforcodes »

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/

People died. ALOT of people. I think an FAA crash investigation where they try to pinpoint EXACTLY where the problem or chain of problems were is more relevant here. Or the Challenger investigation.

Don't miss that the entire gravity of this line of questioning is that if COVID19 did escape from the lab, our entire response to a lab leak would be different and save lives then a zoonotic emergence scenario.

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

#149

Post by Sophistifunk »

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…

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's a perfectly reasonable theory that will never be proved one way or another, because of an actual conspiracy of the CCP to prevent investigation. They've been openly waging a trade war and ever-increasing threats of kinetic war against Australia for a year now, simply because the PM publicly called for an enquiry to determine where it came from.

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

#150

Post by cudgy »

seryoiupfurds wrote: post #109
p1necone wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is what I meant by "not actionable".

It's not actionable for the US to force China to do something, sure. China doesn't want to suffer through another global pandemic either, so it would be useful to them to know if they need to improve lab safety standards. In fact, that information would be useful and actionable for all countries that have viral research labs.

There are plenty of actions beyond military options like economic, political, and legal. China could be isolated financially with trade embargos for example. US treasuries and other nations instruments that China owns could be seized and extinguished. Bank accounts can be seized. There are many actions that could be taken if countries really desired. However, the alluring call of cheap manufacturing and a large population to market goods toward clouds most countries from taking any actions.
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