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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#131

Post by throwawaymaths »

dekhn wrote: post #86
NationalPark wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link some sources here? Call me skeptical, but if the evidence is as convincing as you make it sound, then it implies a pretty widespread conspiracy among experts (of many countries and affiliations) who would understand the implications yet are deliberately mis-communicating via their podcasts, news appearances, papers in famous journals, etc. Are there any papers published on this or is it just in the book…

A loose conspiracy of a bunch of social media scientists/journalists? Wouldn't the overall size and diversity of the field mean that there would be at least a few dissenters presenting more factual alternatives? You should just read the book. It's not very convincing. The most likely explanation for the lack of interest in identifying the origins is primarly a lack of data. Speculating about conspiracies does not hel…

That's, like, just your opinion, man.

Meanwhile the natural sources hypothesis has made one prediction not found yet (animal zero) and the lab leak has made two. Unfortunately, judgements about this are made difficult because "relative believability" is inherently subjective, so we can endlessly argue about the relative merits of competing hypotheses it is while the biggest suspect is under suspicion of having destroyed key data -- because they did suppress information in the early stages (and are refusing credible audits now). Meanwhile, entropy is happening making further revelations from bioinformatics progressively unlikely. Shrug.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#132

Post by bragh »

ikiris wrote: post #115
ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

I'm going to be blunt here. No one with medical training thought this wasn't airborne.

Funny then how for the first few months of the pandemic the emphasis and public guidance was on desinfecting hands and surfaces and endless debates about how if masks actually help.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#133

Post by thenayr »

ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91
stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

What...literally everyone knew there was AT LEAST airbone risk of infection. Not sure where you got your pandemic information?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#134

Post by jahewson »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #39
spamizbad wrote: post #29

I will just say this: Interest in developing and deploying nuclear power dramatically declined after Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl incidents. This lead to an increased reliance on carbon-based energy sources like Coal and Natural Gas, likely killing hundreds of thousands over the years. I think skittish virologists rightly concluded that a lab-leak mea culpa would have a similar effect on virology and perhaps b…

Excuse me, but scientists are not public policy makers. Their job is to follow the evidence, not publish based on what they think will happen if they do.

If they follow this particular line of evidence (which requires them excepting their own gross negligence) then not only would they be out of a job but may find themselves in jail.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#135

Post by johndfsgdgdfg »

mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

Thank you for posting this. WHO-China report found that COVID almost certainly came out of China and the market is just the amplifying venue. It's the racist and xenophobic groups that are trying to incite hatred against China by spreading propaganda.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#136

Post by [deleted] »

andai wrote: post #61
theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

Fun fact, Covid did leak from a Chinese lab, but it was in December 2021: >A lab worker was bitten and infected by a mouse infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant at a high-biosecurity facility in Taipei. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#137

Post by throwawaymaths »

ttpphd wrote: post #113
throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

Sorry but the post above is unscientific sophistry. Science is about weighing competing theories by examining the relative strength of evidence. The evidence is strongly in favor of zoonotic origin. What's posted here is an exercise in confirmation bias, not rigorous scientific thinking.

Given that I used to believe the zoonotic hypothesis the assertion of confirmation bias is a bit surprising to me.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#138

Post by throwawaymaths »

bandyaboot wrote: post #57
throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

I haven’t been fixated on this by any means but I remember reading an article months back that looked at the timeline and locations of the early cases and compared them against the locations of the market and the research facility. I came away thinking that the animal market hypothesis seemed much more likely than the lab leak.

There is also allegedly a Wuhan CDC facility meters away from the market where disposal of lab animals happened (I cannot confirm this myself), so if that's true, that's certainly another possibility.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#139

Post by affgrff »

mathieubordere wrote: post #116

A lab specialized in investigating Coronaviruses in the city where the first outbreak was, is at least suspicious imo. The fact that the Chinese authorities weren't exactly helpful (to my knowledge) in debunking the lab-leak hypothesis is extra suspicious. But then again, if they really would have wanted to cover it up, they might have looked for another city to point to as the source of the outbreak, I don't know ho…

It is a little suspicious, but also not too far fetched: Where would you put a lab researching Coronaviruses? Somewhere near where it exists in the wild.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#140

Post by SilverBirch »

I think this article is a very good example of the sort of pseudo-compelling argument. It's like one step along the road between 4chan conspiracy to Tucker Carlson. It's lots of stuff that sound like reasonable arguments, but are actually not. It starts by couching itself in the actual concensus - other people concluding that's a possibility! - Yes, that's true, but what they're concluding as a possibility out of a cautious appraoch, you're pushing as actually being true. Then they start marking their own homework - we published our book and everyone reasonable and smart said it was great, and everyone who disagreed clearly didn't read it. Now we go to the greatest hits - the big bad mainstream media.

Now we start mis-representing our opponents. All we want is an open scientific debate! But it's too controversial! That might not at all be true, but we're going to say it anyway. It might be that the actual scientists decided that there weren't merits to your argument to justify inviting you to debate it, but who cares - let's just say they're afraid of controversy.

People are threatened by our work. We're not extremists! We're moderates! We're perfectly reasonable people who are just going to slip in this laundered conspiracy theory that Fauci funded the Wuhan lab. But don't worry, let me quote this anonymous scientist to back up every worst accusation you could make of scientists.

Everyone is covering this up because of vested interests you see! If you look up the author you'll see that he comes from this as a complete neutral outsider making cold-eyed judgements of the evidence. He's definitely not from the exact far right nutter idealogue ecosystem that you'd expect him to be from.

There's a nugget of truth in the article - the lab leak is possible as an explanation, and that China isn't to be trusted to investigate. There's nothing in this article that actually advances any evidence beyond that. The rest of it though is just the same thinly veiled conspiracy theories that have been going around since Trump going on about "The Chinese Virus".

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