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

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

#201

Post by kelnos »

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/

In my experience, blameless postmortems can be really useful for the process of getting to the bottom of things and creating a plan of action, but can also enable people who are reckless or incompetent, and make it difficult to ensure that the people who really need to learn something from their failures have actually learned something.

As applied to this situation, it doesn't really matter. The Chinese government has a vested interest in any investigation being labeled inconclusive. Whether it was a lab leak or a result of unhealthy agricultural practices, China doesn't want egg on its face. They'll do everything in their power (which is a lot) to avoid having the finger definitively pointed at them.

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

#202

Post by kelnos »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12
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/

Well I mean never letting Covid out (if that is the source) would have prevented 7-13 million extra deaths this year so it is worth thinking about how we don’t let another one out if it is possible. I disagree that it is less actionable. I am a former scientist. Proper handling of lab waste etc. is infinitely easier than having the whole world lock down, wear masks, and rapidly develop mRNA vaccines to try and put th…

> Proper handling of lab waste etc. is infinitely easier...

Sure, but safety requires everyone be perfect about their handling 100% of the time. If a mistake happens, just once, with the wrong lab materials, that's it. And humans will always make mistakes, no matter how bulletproof we think the process is.

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

#203

Post by kelnos »

cudgy wrote: post #170
swader999 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's the way the game seems to be going. Have a huge interest in statistics and want to comment against the election results - better be very careful if you make unpopular assertions and need funding. Same thing appears here.It would be a very career limiting to make claims that are similar to the orange man's claims around the origin, the ability of otc medications like HCL or invermecithin to help e…

Thanks for mentioning the election example. The word “lies” is a proxy for lack of rigorous journalism as well. When journalists claim that opinions / criticism about something as complicated as an election are “lies”, their bias is quite obvious. It’s as if there is no nuance allowed.

In the case of the election, "lies" is a perfectly appropriate word, since the people claiming voter fraud were lying about the possibility of fraud. No fraud was actually found, and everyone investigating found nothing to suggest any fraud was happening or likely.

So yes, if you stand up and claim that there was rampant voter fraud that changed the outcome of the election, you are at best misinformed, and at worst lying.

I wouldn't even call this voter fraud stuff "conspiracy theories". It's gaslighting and destabilizing propaganda by an administration that failed to get reelected.

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

#204

Post by tripletao »

skwb wrote: post #177

FWIW I'm going to defer to the virology experts on this one. I know when I am out of my depth, and when to seek expert advise. https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13942570285586391...

Angela Rasmussen is indeed a virologist and is heavily quoted in the media, but this appears to be more because she specifically seeks that (she has a publicist!) than due to any prior distinction.

Ralph Baric invented modern coronavirology. He was Zhengli Shi's mentor, and published frequently with her in the past. He signed Jesse Bloom's and Alina Chan's letter in Science calling for further investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

As to the specific tweet that you've linked, David Baltimore seems to disagree:

> “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus,” said David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of CalTech.

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

My own impression is that the FCS points only weakly towards lab origin (and other evidence, like the origin city, lack of intermediate host, and pre-adaptation to humans is much more significant), but I'm not the one with the Nobel prize. But my point is that if you choose experts by almost any metric other than Twitter follower count, you'll see a very different picture.

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

#205

Post by tripletao »

kelnos wrote: post #196
tripletao wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, and I agree that possibility is underplayed. But if that's what happened, isn't the correct policy action the same as what those concerned about lab origin are advocating (i.e., to push for an investigation of the origins that's not fully dependent on the CCP's honesty)? The danger to humanity exists regardless of whether they're concealing reckless science that causes pandemics or reckless agricult…

I think the reason is that the Chinese government doesn't care as much about the danger to humanity as they do about saving face and maintaining their power. They may even know definitively where it came from, whether it was a lab with lax safety practices or from reckless agriculture. And they can fix either or both of those things, quietly, while still pushing the narrative internally that the virus didn't come fro…

I agree, and I'm interested to watch e.g. whether the WIV continues to publish risky research. My private guess is a paper or two for the sake of appearances, but a much lower volume of sampling and lab manipulation of novel pathogens than before--the CCP doesn't want to lose face, but it doesn't want another pandemic either.

It sure would be nice to know what happened, though, both for the sake of human knowledge and to inform similar research (or agriculture, or whatever else might have caused this) outside China. I don't what it's possible to learn given the delay and CCP's obstruction, but it seems defeatist not to try.

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

#206

Post by me_me_me »

Suppose there was a leak, or an employee sold a test animal to the wet market make extra cash.

Seems that cov2 was going to jump to humans eventually, given the state of the wet markets.

My question is, so what? China is not going to ever agree nor allow an investigation. They will deny any allegations.

So it there is no evidence for human tinkering with the virus what can be done?

I mean, we have account of alive human organs harvest, slave labour, forced assimilation of minorities... nothing was done

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

#207

Post by stareatgoats »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #65

IMHO, this is a great likelihood-based analysis of various origin theories: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...

whoa - that looks like an interesting project! Thanks for the link. Slightly OT but I tentatively agree with the premise: this kind of service seems far better at trying to assess credibility of an unproven claim than general chatter to and fro. Looks like their track record backs it up too.

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

#208

Post by thu2111 »

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…

There's basically no evidence either way

The article this article is about (Nick Wade's article) is built around the opposite claim, that there actually is by now quite a lot of evidence and it supports the lab leak theory. And in particular, there is no evidence of natural animal-to-human transmission that could balance out the preponderance of evidence on the other side.

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

#209

Post by thu2111 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #186

The problem I have with the lab leak theory is that if it was a lab leak, what do we make of SARS? Was SARS a lab leak, too? If it was reasonable for SARS to naturally jump from bats to humans, why couldn’t COVID, too?

Wade's article explains that. With SARS-1 they did find the animal transmission path very quickly (within months). Part of the argument here is that despite an overwhelmingly large and well incentivised search, no such path has been found for SARS-2. Meanwhile there is microbiological evidence that is suggestive of lab work.

Unfortunately due to China's stonewalling there is no way to prove anything beyond doubt. However, the balance of probabilities at this point says that the WIV was doing GOF research on these sorts of viruses and one escaped. One reason to believe this is likely is that they apparently were not working at especially high biosafety levels. Just ordinary lab coats and gloves.

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

#210

Post by thu2111 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #141
jb775 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes. What people are thinking of here is Galileo and the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Nobody has ever thought the Earth was flat in any great numbers because it's obvious to anyone living in a society that has boats that it can't be true. It's some sort of garbling of what was really being debated in those times.
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