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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

#211

Post by thu2111 »

somethingor wrote: post #175
caspper69 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar. Surely you can't be serious. I mean, I think we would have noticed. In fact, it would have been on a lot of people's radar. They definitely would have noticed in India, Italy & Brazil. I mean, are comments like this hyperbolic, and I'm just not in on the joke?

Not intending to make the case that Covid-19 would barely be on anyone's radar, but here is a comparison with some past pandemics that went relatively unnoticed (afaik): 1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic[1] - 1.1 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 2.9 billion) - 116,000 deaths in the US (0.07% of US population of 174.9 million) 1968 H3N2 pandemic[2] - 1 million deaths worldwide (0.03% of world population of…

I suspect some readers are thinking ok, so it's ~6x worse, surely that's noticeable. But the COVID numbers are seriously inflated relative to past epidemics by the enormous testing programme, and the way mass PCR testing has cut doctors out of the loop. These numbers of deaths are deaths in which a positive PCR test was roughly temporally co-present, regardless of what an expert on the ground said the cause of death was, which is a much weaker standard than was previously used for ascribing a cause of death.

Another way to look at this is overall mortality levels. In the UK, which has a reasonably high death rate, COVID raised overall mortality (per million) to around the level it was in the year 2000. Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time, it was normal. Nor has anyone really noticed or commented on the general improvements in mortality since then. In Sweden age-adjusted mortality went back all the way to 2012 levels, and that with quite minor restrictions.

This is suggestive that we perceive the impact as large because it tends to be phrased in terms of deviation from a 5-year model baseline, and because of the general expectations created by enormous 'expert' predictions. Having sacrificed so much via such extreme measures, people need to view it as an extreme event to justify a worldview of 'experts are generally honest and correct' (which can be seen in this article as a very, very strong prevailing world view at the NYT!)

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

#212

Post by thu2111 »

newacct583 wrote: post #135
jb775 wrote: post #126

So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? And would it be worth questioning if any other recent topics labeled as "conspiracy theories" may in fact also be true?

> So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? If the lab leak theory turns out to be true, I'll admit I was wrong about my intuition. It's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. We've had literally thousands of new virus strains evolve in the past century of viral research and like three known "l…

Three leaks? Where did you get that number? Lab leaks are extremely common, far more common than 3 in the last century! Quoting the Wade article this article starts by referencing:

The smallpox virus escaped three times from labs in England in the 1960’s and 1970’s, causing 80 cases and 3 deaths. Dangerous viruses have leaked out of labs almost every year since. Coming to more recent times, the SARS1 virus has proved a true escape artist, leaking from laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and no less than four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing.

As another example, the most recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK was traced quickly to a lab that had kept samples of the first one.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12615-faulty-pipe-bla....

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

#213

Post by randomdude402 »

swader999 wrote: post #160
barry-cotter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I always ask these flat earthers to explain how we see the coriolis effect when firing long range rifles or artillery. Naw, I'm lying, I've never met a serious flat earther online or in person. I think it's a device used in lazy debate rather than a set of real breathing thinking people. Even the flat earth society appears to be just a fun group that meets socially more than scientifically.

I have also never met a flat earther, or seen any discourse online that seems like such.

I am not convinced that they exist in nearly the kinds of numbers that folks like to suggest.

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

#214

Post by dboreham »

thu2111 wrote: post #211
somethingor wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not intending to make the case that Covid-19 would barely be on anyone's radar, but here is a comparison with some past pandemics that went relatively unnoticed (afaik): 1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic[1] - 1.1 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 2.9 billion) - 116,000 deaths in the US (0.07% of US population of 174.9 million) 1968 H3N2 pandemic[2] - 1 million deaths worldwide (0.03% of world population of…

I suspect some readers are thinking ok, so it's ~6x worse, surely that's noticeable. But the COVID numbers are seriously inflated relative to past epidemics by the enormous testing programme, and the way mass PCR testing has cut doctors out of the loop. These numbers of deaths are deaths in which a positive PCR test was roughly temporally co-present, regardless of what an expert on the ground said the cause of death…

> Nobody was worried about that mortality level at the time

They were sufficiently worried to increase cigarette taxes, ban advertising, educate the population to stop smoking.

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

#215

Post by jMyles »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #51
jMyles wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories It needn't have been a conspiracy; it's plausible that it was accidental, or even if intentional, the work of a single disgruntled individual.

But that at the very least implies a conspiracy to conceal the virus's origin, and possibly even crucial details about its transmissibility or treatments.

Why?

If it was a lab escape, the most likely scenario is that the virus is from a bat sample. It's even possible that, if it's a lab leak, the person who leaked it doesn't even know that they leaked it, and is actively reassuringly themself with the wet market theory.

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

#216

Post by jMyles »

bigyikes wrote: post #60
AndrewBissell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that at the very least implies a conspiracy to conceal the virus's origin, and possibly even crucial details about its transmissibility or treatments.

While that is denotatively a conspiracy, most people think of conspiracies as something outlandish, not business as usual for the CCP. I think that’s what the parent comment was getting at, anyway.

No, that's not what I was saying. Instead, I was saying that it might have been leaked by a single person, and everyone else might not know (well, in their hearts, they probably do) whether the virus escaped from a lab or came from the same place from which they took their sample (presumably the "nearby" bat caves).

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

tootie wrote: post #24

This is a very lengthy and well-researched story that basically just says "we don't know but could be". Which I think is where we've been for the past few months. There was a lot of whiplash early on between conspiracy theorists trying to peg this as a biological weapon attack and scientists trying to stick to the evidence. McNeil does a really thorough job dissecting the mess of nonsense and looking at evidence. But…

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by geoduck14 »

kelnos wrote: post #198
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho calling the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory is a form of gas lighting. It is telling people that it isnt legitimate to use basic common sense to question why the bat coronavirus outbreak happened down the street from the lab studying bat coronaviruses. You must deny what is plainly in front of your eyes.

Nine miles away is "down the street" now?

Yes. It is.

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

#219

Post by titzer »

kelnos wrote: post #203
cudgy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> gaslighting and destabilizing propaganda by an administration that failed to get reelected.

That's it, right there. And then when cornered like the lying rats they are, they will claim "people are saying", "a lot of people feel", and "we're just asking questions." No, sorry. I thought the rightwing in the US was the ones don't care what people are saying, how they feel about things, because facts are facts? Oh, and I also thought it was part of the responsibility of being an elected political leader to tell the damn truth and not just "ask questions".

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

#220

Post by azjps »

kelnos wrote: post #198
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho calling the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory is a form of gas lighting. It is telling people that it isnt legitimate to use basic common sense to question why the bat coronavirus outbreak happened down the street from the lab studying bat coronaviruses. You must deny what is plainly in front of your eyes.

Nine miles away is "down the street" now?

I think its worth clarifying that there are multiple virology labs in Wuhan; the WIV BSL-4 lab is indeed ~12km away from the wet market, but the WHCDC BSL-2 lab in use since around 2018 is located a couple hundred meters away from the market. Ref the last page of https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

There are some claims (debatable?) that bat coronavirus studies were conducted at the WHCDC lab. There is more information about the laboratory locations and biosafety concerns in this report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350887648_3_WUHAN_L... (written by members of the drastic project; I'm not sure how much of this information is substantiated by other sources but at least the maps appear to be reasonably accurate).

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