251–260 of 281 posts
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No offence, but this is just pure racism.
He specifically mentioned the Chinese government; therefore, his comment was specifically not racist. The Chinese government is not a race. It's just a bad government. All races have them at times.
Or just because it's Chinese? Now back to square one?
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The details of that epidemiological model start around page 7 of https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.abp8337/su... I haven't fully studied all the layers yet, but as far as I can tell it's numerical sludge, in the same general direction as econometrics, with so many free parameters or arbitrary choices in the model that you could plausibly get almost any result you wanted. Similar models got their chanc…
Numerical sludge. Got it. Enjoy your criticism.
The output of their model is the structure of the resulting phylogenetic tree. I believe the primary determinant of that will be the extent of overdispersion of transmission, i.e. the shape of the pdf of how many people you expect each patient to infect. For example, let's say R0 = 2 and each patient always infects exactly two others. Then all lineages will survive (at least initially, until a significant fraction of the population is recovered and immune). The phylogenetic tree will be as perfect a binary tree as the mutation rate and our sampling permit. If we cut off the beginning, then we'll see many descendant lineages.
Instead, let's say the spread is absurdly overdetermined, so that each patient infects either zero others (with p = 0.99) or 200 (with p = 0.01). Then (after trying the simulation enough times for the pandemic to finally get started) our tree will just be a succession of super-spreading events, with far fewer lineages.
I believe that by manipulating that pdf, we can reshape that phylogenetic tree to almost anything we want. I see no description from the authors of why they believe the pdf resulting from their choice of a contact network is the right one, nor any study of robustness to changes in the shape of that pdf. Am I missing something?
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> A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. This sounds like pure speculation. How much actual data do we have on viruses that just made the jump from animals to humans? Probably nowhere near the amount needed to confidently say that the original Wuhan strain was somehow too infectious to realistically be of natural origin. As for getting better at infecting hu…
Before her book was released, when Dr. Birx was going along with the natural origin story that was being pushed by the government, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has recently been saying in interviews that the only masks that work are N95/KN95. When he was pushing cloth masks, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has said, under oath, that when he was saying the v…
We don't have testable theories here, we have Mad Libs. A virus of (human)/(animal) origin was (un)intentionally (released)/(spread)/(detected) in Wuhan, starting at a (lab)/(market). Narrative 1: Animal origin with extensive spread in a food market Narrative 2: Animal origin with accidental release from lab study Narrative 3: Intentional creation/modification of a virus for purposes of scientific study and subsequen…
What get's me is I'd support serious action against china because if its a lab leak they need to own that, and if it's from shitty food supply chain they need to own that too.
Also they're a shitty dictatorship, they're aggressive, they're genocidal etc.
People seem very enthusiastic to blame china for a lab leak, but have no enthusiasm to blame them for other mechanisms or to convert that blame into supporting action. It's a weird thing for my brain and I share this more as sharing my confusion to see if anyone else feels the same way.
I think you did a very nice job breaking down the many many uncertainties here btw.
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The top comment in this thread: >I wonder how many people who are seemingly willing to believe the self-serving CCP party-line on this, would be just as believing of the owners of a nuclear power plant in their town, once the drinking water became radioactive, claiming "it didn't come from the plant, someone else down the street must have done it" - that is just about as believable as this. Absolutely sure the CCP ar…
> Literally "I don't believe the facts". Where is the fact in there? "China investigated itself and found themselves not guilty" does not make a "fact".
>there is no reason to trust any media or NGO to be truthful in that regard.
So if there are facts, you cannot believe them and OP doesn't.
And Second:
For arguments stake, let's assume that is correct and there are zero facts. So what can you conclude?
Nothing! It's possible there was a lab leak, it's possible there wasn't, we just do not know. That would be a fine conclusion.
So why has Op decided one possible conclusions is "much higher (probability) than" the others?
We don't know if there is a god or not. So concluding one particular religion is correct is dumb. The same applies to people claiming one theory or another is right re Covid Origins.
That is where the disregard for (lack of) facts comes in. If you don't know, you don't know; you don't get to decide with certainty what reality is because looking is too hard.
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Ah yes, 'supported points of view' like half the comments in this thread talking about lab employees selling infected animals in the market? Or how we're "pretending" that Covid is a leading cause of death during a pandemic? Or how somehow Pfizer is implicated in the origin of Covid?
Another lazy rhetorical tactic, Association Fallacy. Not everyone is making all those claims, in fact I only made one: The lab leak is still a better explanation for the origin of COVID. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
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>Then why would block any investigation from outside the Chinese government? Now imagine it's US, not China. Would US let anyone from outside to investigate its labs?
That's a very interesting question. Let's assume the US is the epicenter of a global pandemic that killed 6 million people and $12 trillion in economic damage (and counting). And the US is refusing to cooperate with an investigation into its origins. What is an appropriate response from China, Russia, and the international community? Assume the US's military isn't the most powerful and technologically advanced in the…
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Fined for being inscrupulous but are not unscrupulous... Ok I think I understand the faith.
You very clearly don't understand. I said they aren't completely trustworthy and I never implied they are.
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> No source animal was found. Since this was a food market, it's possible and likely that all the source animals were eaten by the time the study was being done.
And this is more likely than a lab leak?