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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#71

Post by chaosbolt »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence

Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$.

There is no evidence mr X killed the victim, but he probably did it.

Your argument removes probability, we have many coincidences linked to the lab leak theory, we don't have a 100% evidence that supports it, so we can assume it probably leaked from the lab, maybe it didn't, and since we can't quantify it with precision and a certain negligible error margin, we can use a language where probably happened means >50% and maybe happened means A woman can safely assume her husband is cheating if she catches him flirting with girls online, find a different long hair on his coat everytime he travels for work, etc.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#72

Post by [deleted] »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #31
goblin89 wrote: post #14

It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.

Along the same line of thinking, the fact that although the lab leak hypothesis is very reasonable, it was branded as a conspiracy theory and a big effort was made to suppress it, makes it seem more likely. Also the principle of adverse interference. China destroyed/made unavailable a lot of documents. It is reasonable to infer that the destroyed documents had evidence of a lab leak.

[deleted]

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#73

Post by null_object »

barnacled wrote: post #54
scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more than natural origins and they are not being honest in their attempts to dismiss these papers.

> There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here...

A counter:

https://ayjchan.medium.com/evidence-for-a-natural-origin-of-...

As for Angie Rasmussen - she is hardly the dispassionate scientist that you seem to want to portray her as, in your post[0]

[0] https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/a-toxic-milie...

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#74

Post by Closi »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

> Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence.

I think the problem is that there is very little evidence exists for the other explanations - and an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

The lack of non-circumstantial evidence for the "Lab Leak" theory can be partially explained by the fact that China blocked investigations within the lab until 2021, and there are obvious and strong geopolitical reasons why they would want to destroy evidence if the 'lab leak' theory WAS true. This is from a country already known to perform cover-ups.

So this is the problem - if the hypothesis was true, any biological evidence would have most likely been intentionally destroyed, which means we can't really apply 'Hitchens Razor'.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#75

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

oxff wrote: post #52

I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.

It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now.

The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the wet market, but not around the lab, which is more than 10 km away.[0]

> a lab that studies the virus

The lab did not study SARS-CoV-2. It studied viruses that are about 20% different from SARS-CoV-2. We know what viruses they were working with, because they publish papers, go to scientific conferences, etc.

> they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it

It took about 10 years to find the bat population that the original SARS came from. In the last two years, researchers have gotten closer to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which appears to be somewhere in southwest China or northern Laos.

0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#76

Post by mortehu »

chaosbolt wrote: post #71
scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…

I think you are using a definition of evidence normally associated with criminal trials here, and not scientific evidence.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#77

Post by kgarten »

barnacled wrote: post #54
scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more than natural origins and they are not being honest in their attempts to dismiss these papers.

why is this downvoted? this is an excellent thread with links to a paper that seems to show strong evidence against the lab leak ...

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#78

Post by abigail95 »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

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…

If you say there's no evidence for something, what does that mean? Are we talking about something without positive verification, or that there is evidence the opposite is true.

If you are witness to a cover-up, that's not a signal that "no evidence" is a good position to take.

There is evidence they lied about what they were doing. What does that say about the probability of the existence of positive evidence?

They aren't covering up something that would make them look innocent I'll tell you that.

WRT policy, it doesn't matter where the leak actually occured. We should treat both scenarios are likely and plan accordingly. If the next leak does come from a lab, it's obvious the Chinese will cover it up anyway.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#79

Post by gausswho »

barnacled wrote: post #30

The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense that Ebright knows full well has been addressed. It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are going to see a rebuttal like the excellent on…

To skip the Twitter noise and get straight to the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#80

Post by barnacled »

chrisan wrote: post #68
barnacled wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more than natural origins and they are not being honest in their attempts to dismiss these papers.

Hope this gets more upvotes. Kind of dismaying the number of people relying on tweets with no source(s). Haven't we learned enough over these years of misinformation and "fake news"? TLDR the tweet string from the actual Dr of Virology: evidence so far points to natural but more info is needed

Ah I expected to get downvoted into oblivion, I know it's a cliche to say it but HN isn't what it once was.

A key point to take away is that the fact there are 2 lineages means that lab leak is super unlikely. It would require somebody from the lab to come to the same relatively small market to give lineage A, then somebody else who got infected through a totally different evolutionary route at the lab to happen to come to the market just after and both to not spread it anywhere else.

Of course lab leakers are working hard to try to deny this or claim the data is wrong or yada yada. It's an ongoing battle and they have several highly dedicated 'independent scientists' (lol) working on it seemingly 24/7.

It's quite dispiriting to see.

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