41–50 of 631 posts
The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of how it started. The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this often does more harm than good. No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be learned now regardless.
The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of how it started. The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this often does more harm than good. No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be learned now regardless.
It's really worry watching people start with conclusions and work backwards, doubly so here on HN. There is zero evidence for a lab leak, there is plenty of evidence against it (the randomness of the genetic changes between naturally occurring Covid 19 predecessors being the big piece). Yet people are (with flowery language) pretending that lack of evidence makes the "hypothesis" more likely.
You'll find some evidence pointing at a high possibility for a lab leak at this link: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 ;) Side note: Not looking at evidence doesn't make it not exist, nor does declaring that there is "zero evidence".
The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea of this escaping from a lab (a friend who used to work at the CDC told me some rather scary stories about working there), but there's no serious evidence it was the case here.
On the other hand, many people would like it to be true, because it feeds into a conspiracy narrative. People can't believe things like global, deadly viral pandemics can occur naturally, even though they do.
The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of how it started. The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this often does more harm than good. No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be learned now regardless.
Deliberate LLH: China (or, if you’re in China, the US) developed a weapon and essentially released it on the world. This hypothesis basically tells us nothing because we’ll never actually validate or invalidate it. There’s also no mitigation for future leaks because if it were deliberate you can always deliberately do it again. Also, it probably does have racist/xenophobic/propagandist motive pushing it along at various levels. Even if this were true it doesn’t matter because we’re obviously not going to nuke cities or cut off trade or roll tanks or hang leaders in response.
Accidental LLH: Hypothesis goes that there was gain of function research and a sample accidentally escaped the lab. This is actually pretty likely, but has the interesting feature of it not mattering whether it’s true in this particular instance. Regardless of whether COVID-19 itself fits this, COVID-19 indicates that GOF research should be banned! There is no need for collaboration-harming “repercussions” (or cries for repercussions, since they’ll never happen anyway).
Deliberate LLH: Doesn’t matter if it’s true because 1) we’ll never know and 2) even if it we’re true, no one could do anything about it.
Accidental LLH: Doesn’t matter if it’s true because 1) we’ll never know and 2) even if it were false, the correct course of action is to ban/mitigate GOF research.
It’s a complete shame that these have not been better distinguished from one another.
It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic.
Edit:
This is the Nature editors note on the only sources provided:
"Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus."
If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
What kind of evidence do you need? This paper is full of evidence that if you combine the probability of each event happening, the probability that it was accidental is really small. So the burden of probability should be to prove that it wasn't leaked which isn't proven after 3 years.
It's really worry watching people start with conclusions and work backwards, doubly so here on HN. There is zero evidence for a lab leak, there is plenty of evidence against it (the randomness of the genetic changes between naturally occurring Covid 19 predecessors being the big piece). Yet people are (with flowery language) pretending that lack of evidence makes the "hypothesis" more likely.
You'll find some evidence pointing at a high possibility for a lab leak at this link: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 ;) Side note: Not looking at evidence doesn't make it not exist, nor does declaring that there is "zero evidence".
First, it's all just Twitter comments. So it's only evidence that someone typed it into Twitter.
And second, what happens to overlap with reality isn't evidence of a lab leak. The fact there is a virus lab in Wuhan doesn't mean there was a lab leak, any more than the fact there are labs in Africa proves aids was man made.
That's the problem here, people don't understand what evidence is, and they don't understand because making up bullshit is much more fun.
I don’t go looking for covid discussions but they arrive in my feeds so i’m conscious i’m seeing a feed that someone(s) else curated for me and wanted me to view. That said… Is there any popular discussion or action regarding mitigation of both lab and natural origins for future? It seems that both avenues are possible. If we know both are possible, that seems like enough knowledge to move forward with exploring poss…
There’s a natural fork in the road here which is why this is so contentious. The best argument gain of function proponents have for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out how to neutralize it. The argument the anti-GoF advocates have is that creating the next big thing in a lab leads eventually/inevitably to at least one of them gettin…