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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

#221

Post by silicon2401 »

xmprt wrote: post #139
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…

I think people usually give zero weight to conspiracy theories not because they're never true but because it's much likelier that the experts know better than you do.

That's a logical fallacy: appeal to authority. Didn't the CDC claim that masks don't help against the virus just last year? Expertise didn't prevent them from (knowingly) making a false claim back then, and there's nothing wrong with healthy skepticism now.

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

#222

Post by joyeuse6701 »

kelnos wrote: post #197
tripletao wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the CCP's incentives are to oppose such an investigation regardless of the true origin, especially after they've spent months digging in to that position. But if our goal is to reduce the risk of future pandemics, then do you have a better idea for a policy action to achieve that?

I don't think there is one. Determining the source requires cooperation from the Chinese government, and there is no way that cooperation can be forced if they don't want to give it. And even if there was, there's no guarantee that enough evidence or information remains after a year and a half for us to prove anything.

There is. Assume it’s either zoonotic or lab, and then put in new protocols to address both. We aren’t resource constrained on this.

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

#224

Post by whipaway »

cudgy wrote: post #134
encryptluks2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the heresay comes from people like Donald Trump and the longer the Democrats ignore the theory the more credibility they lose and give to him, even if the way he said it was inflammatory. Seems like it would be far less destructive to bring it out into the open now than to just let people think that someone calling it the Kung Flu was more transparent than the political party that pretended like the lab leak is…

The Democrats (and the many “gullible” reporters like the one that wrote the referenced link) are simply waiting this out in hopes the average reader forgets that Trump and others including a few brave scientists pointed towards the obvious possibility of a lab leak early in the pandemic.

They've played an interesting game where they called Trump illegitimate from the beginning of his presidency, entertained the idea of flipping electors, entertained conspiracy theories about him being a Russian agent, and now he's the evil one for trying to "subvert democracy".

Likewise with the pandemic, essentially any observation was weaponized against him. My favorite is the ventilator crisis which has been essentially lost to history now. He was cast as a murderer, only for us to find out that ventilators were leading to more deaths.

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

#225

Post by School-Cotton »

caspper69 wrote: post #102
School-Cotton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that Covid is particularly severe relative to historical pandemics, or that Covid-level issues are a particularly modern phenomenon? In fact the opposite is true. If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar.

>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?

They would have noticed a few unusually bad “flu” seasons, but relative to smallpox, plague, measles, malaria, and even some historical outbreaks of the actual flu, it wouldn’t have registered as a particularly generation-defining event as it is now.

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

#226

Post by dariusj18 »

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 are plenty of reasons that any State wouldn't cooperate or seem to be with an external investigation. If I were China I would certainly worry about a frameup or selective leaking of things to sway the public. There is very little motive for China to do anything given the risks.

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

#227

Post by tripletao »

thurn wrote: post #142
danenania wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The closest animal virus to SARS-CoV-2 was found in nature about 900 miles from Wuhan (RaTG13, in Mojiang). Dr. Shi herself thinks spillover in Hubei is unlikely:

> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli...

The WIV's program to sample novel SARS-like viruses from nature and manipulate them in the lab was the biggest in the world. The only other group that comes close is Ralph Baric's, and Baric has joined the letter in Science calling for further investigation of the origin:

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

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

#228

Post by Paradigma11 »

jb775 wrote: post #178
newacct583 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why are people insisting this came from a guy eating a bat-burger and bat-fries meal with absolutely no evidence? My common sense info is that a super-virus popped up right down the street from a lab designed to create super-viruses(funding signed off by Fauci, and much historic public info/discussion exists about what type of work was being done at the Wuhan lab), China disappeared the lab people, and biggest red-fl…

So there is evidence that Fauci signed off on funding of gain of function research in the Wuhan lab?

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

#229

Post by baryphonic »

AstralStorm wrote: post #185
baryphonic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's okay, you're among open-minded people here! FWIW, I think we should stop couching any critical examination of the received th…

Does it matter which kind of regime it is? Should similar thing happen in the USA, let's say American flu of 2030, you'd see identical levels of lies and lack of cooperation and propaganda.

Yes, it does matter. In America, I can freely criticize my government, publish ideas they find horrific and suffer no consequences from them. I somehow doubt Winnie the Pooh would afford me such liberties, especially considering how his CCP thugs have clamped down on Hong Kong.

The American government would certainly "spin" and use propaganda, but at least in America people are free to discuss hypotheses without fear of being officially censored or sent to a penal camp and/or firing squad. There has been a worrying wave of private censorship in America over the past decade or so, but it is not (directly) enforced by the government.

Also, let's not act like there's moral equivalence between the CCP and the US government, as deeply flawed as the latter is (and I am a major critic of my government). Recently, the CCP regime launched its "Long March" rocket, and subsequently lost control of the booster. By dumb luck, the booster landed in the ocean and didn't harm anyone, but no one in the CCP regime bothered to make safety contingency plans. Few in the West realize this, but the CCP regime also launches rockets over populated areas, and its rockets or boosters have even destroyed Chinese villages before.

In America, these things would be unthinkable.

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

#230

Post by newacct583 »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #228
jb775 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people insisting this came from a guy eating a bat-burger and bat-fries meal with absolutely no evidence? My common sense info is that a super-virus popped up right down the street from a lab designed to create super-viruses(funding signed off by Fauci, and much historic public info/discussion exists about what type of work was being done at the Wuhan lab), China disappeared the lab people, and biggest red-fl…

So there is evidence that Fauci signed off on funding of gain of function research in the Wuhan lab?

There is not. People get so offended when accused of being conspiracists, but then they rattle off this kind of fever swamp nonsense. That there was a genuine debate within the research community on GoF work is true enough, but this bit is just a ridiculous smear by the right against someone who (amazingly, when you think about it) has become a "political enemy".
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