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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#301

Post by MilnerRoute »

I'd like to point out that the lab-leak theory is still being dismissed by portions of the mainstream media. (I'm not taking a side here -- just pointing out that this hasn't been settled yet.)

Today the Los Angeles Times published an article headlined "The lab-leak origin claim for COVID-19 is in the news, but it's still fact-free."

What's missing from all this reexamination and soul-searching is a fundamental fact: There is no evidence — not a smidgen — for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory... No one disputes that a lab leak is possible. Viruses have escaped from laboratories in the past, on occasion leading to human infection. But "zoonotic" transfers — that is, from animals to humans — are a much more common and well-documented pathway. That's why the virological community believes that it's vastly more likely that COVID-19 spilled over from an animal host to humans...

"We cannot prove that SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID-19 virus] has a natural origin and we cannot prove that its emergence was not the result of a lab leak," the lead author of the Nature paper, Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, told me by email. "However, while both scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely," Andersen said. "Precedence, data, and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence." Co-author Robert F. Garry of Tulane Medical School told several colleagues during a recent webcast: "Our conclusion that it didn't leak from the lab is even stronger today than it was when we wrote the paper." As the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski sums up the contest between the lab-leak and zoonotic theories, "the likelihood of the two hypotheses is nowhere near close to equal."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/column-the-lab-lea...

And Wired also ran a piece last week with a similar skeptical headline. "The Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory Is a Tale of Weaponized Uncertainty." Its subheading? "Scientists almost never say they’re sure, and it could take years to pin down the pandemic's origins. Until then: People are trying to scare you."

https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-lab-leak-theory-weaponi...

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#302

Post by chickenmonkey »

Cyberthal wrote: post #265
raphlinus wrote: post #130

This is a good article. There's been so much junk over the past couple of weeks or so that it's been very frustrating. I've mostly been watching the debate unfold on Twitter, and it's confirmed for me that Twitter is a terrible place for real intellectually-curious discussion (probably social media in general). I've been wondering certain things, especially why Marc Lipsitch (one of the most consistently trustworthy…

[flagged]

The idea of a lab leak could either mean that legitimate research was happening on this virus and it got accidentally leaked, or that the virus was being prepared as a bio-weapon and was intentionally or unintentionally released. The reason I think those scientists disavowed the lab leak theory initially was to avoid confusion between whether COVID-19 was an intentional bio-attack by China as many believed then and was pushed by Trump.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#303

Post by lmm »

alexkcd wrote: post #248
analog31 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I remember from that time period. My recollection is that the wet market hypothesis fell out of favor rather quickly, but nothing else really emerged in its place. The lab leak theory was circulating, but amongst people such as rank-and-file scientists, the attitude was: We aren't going to get a straight answer about this, but we've got to defeat this virus. I don't remember dismissing the lab leak theory…

The article literally cites a statement put out by a respected medical journal on Feb. 29, 2020, and signed by 27 scientists, "roundly rejecting the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism." Whatever your recollection of "rank-and-file scientists" attitudes is, the narrative on record is to the contrary.

Rank-and-file scientists tend to stay out of that kind of political statement-making IME, just as when you see a statement from the student union of XZY university condemning whatever that tells you very little about what rank-and-file students of that university are thinking. So I don't see a contradiction here.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#304

Post by lmm »

TchoBeer wrote: post #253
kaesar14 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn’t have the same confluence of other circumstantial evidence we do in this case. There’s no good reason to think Ebola came from a lab.

The point isn't "Ebola came from a lab" but rather "the fact that we can't pin down a natural origin doesn't prove it's man-made."

It doesn't prove anything, but it shifts the balance of evidence.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#305

Post by henearkr »

themacguffinman wrote: post #273
henearkr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the situation was out they did everything properly to fix it at home, and then even contributed to the science work on the virus (just not on the lab origin hypothesis, but all other work on the virus structure, illness mechanisms, potential vaccines or medications, yes). All the geopolitical tensions around China, both Koreas, and Japan, are just about losing or not losing face. Most of the time they would larg…

I find this to be a shallow "just-so" take on geopolitics. Many of the disputed islands have strategic economic & military value in their territory. There's a lot of googlable analysis on how these islands are valued but it honestly seems a little laughable to suggest that China or the other Asian countries will just accept losing some "useless islands". Given the secretive nature of CCP behavior I don't think I can…

I mean, just compare the advantage of (I'm taking the point of vue of Japan here):

- being friend with all your neighbors and having a couple less islands, to which you could go in vacations just fine anyway, or

- having your islands but being enemy with everybody, spoiling your gross product on arms race and exercises, creating an atmosphere of hate for your resident foreigners, hindering international commerce, voting laws to reinforce government coertion...

They could negociate to buy the rare earth or any other useful resources around these islands, if they belonged to a foreign but friendly neighbor.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#306

Post by frickenhamster »

mc32 wrote: post #39
bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had to do was hire a few shitposters, feed a few media narratives and the US fights with itself over stuff like anti-china, racists etc, while the CCP takes over Hong Kong.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#307

Post by timelincoln »

I think the real point that no public figure is willing to say, is that if this virus did leak out of a CCP lab after being modified the entire world will to some degree or another demand consequences for the CCP.

While doubtful the consequences would lead to nuclear war that’s not outside the scope of possible outcomes. What’s more likely is the vast consumer public rejecting the relationship with the CCP, leading to a quicker downward spiral of relations leading to risky military situations and a lot of rich people with a stake in China trade becoming slightly less rich.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#308

Post by triceratops »

generalizations wrote: post #195
triceratops wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put time into your own research, and maybe you won't be caught off guard. Why? What guarantees are there that I'll do a better job of research than the experts?

It's not that you discover the One True Truth; it's that you know all the things that might be true. If you listen to the experts, all you hear is one possibility - hope they got it right.

> If you listen to the experts

The "experts" rarely have a unanimous consensus on anything. If you actually listen to all of the experts, you'll hear all of the possibilities. But that still won't tell you who's right and who isn't.

On a question like "lab leak or meat market?" the answer isn't of importance to me, or any other average person. It's important for the experts to know the truth, in order to be able to prevent it next time. But other than that, finding someone (or several someones) to pin it on isn't going to give everyone the past 15 months of their lives back.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#309

Post by triceratops »

timelincoln wrote: post #293
triceratops wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put time into your own research, and maybe you won't be caught off guard. Why? What guarantees are there that I'll do a better job of research than the experts?

I don’t think anyone is suggesting you learn about virology and fly to wuhan and start looking around. Maintaining multiple explanations as possibilities until one is proven, while resisting political tribalism shrouding your view of the truth, is I suppose hard for many people to pull off. But that is what we’re suggesting you try to do, maybe next time we have a global pandemic…

> Maintaining multiple explanations as possibilities until one is proven

Why are you assuming my beliefs on this topic were set in stone previously?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#310

Post by rayiner »

bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Scientists are human and have human motivations and flaws. They are political, they cover their ass, they suffer from results oriented thinking.

“Science” should be trusted within its domain, but it’s not a replacement for all of the processes western society has developed to address the reality that nobody can be trusted with power. Everyone needs to perform their roles. Reporters still need to be skeptical and question scientists’ motivations and investigate the story. And politicians still need to be in charge of translating scientists’ judgments as to various scenarios and probabilities into the political decisions of figuring out what to do accounting for the entire universe of economic and social considerations that are within their ambit.

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