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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#171

Post by jmyeet »

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…

The problem is there are really only two contenders for Covid origins: lab origin (I much prefer this label than "lab leak") and zoonotic origin.

Zoonotic origin is the obvious choice. As a general rule, nature is way better at evolving pathogens than humans are. The problem with this theory is we haven't yet found the wild population from which Covid originated. Now this can take time, sometimes years. But for SARS/MERS this was established relatively quickly. The other problem is the bats widely thought responsible were hundreds of miles away from Wuhan.

Since Covid has entered certain wild animal populations it's possible we'll never know.

That leaves us with lab origin. Lack of evidence for anything else is not positive proof for lab origin of course. But lab origin hasn't been ruled out either.

There are lots of variations on lab origin theories. Deliberate release, accidental release, naturally-occuring pathogen, gain-of-function reserach, the authorities knew, the authorities didn't know, etc. Given the asymptomatic nature of Covid I personally think that if this is the origin, accidental release is the most likely cause.

So what evidence supports this? The CCP's failure to cooperate with WHO investigations is a big one. Right at the beginning, WHO fell in too quickly with China's narrative too. Plus China did punish the doctor who originally raised the alarm about a novel coronavirus (who later died from Covid).

I personally think it's way more likely that China doesn't want to know if it was lab origin rather than they're covering it up. Like there's literally no upside to finding out. Every level of the government doesn't want to know or be the one responsible for screwing something up. It's a bit like the Columbia space Shuttle disaster where it was suspected a foam tile damaged the shuttle but using satellites to image the shuttle met with internal NASA resistance. Part of that was there was nothing they could do but also people just don't want to know sometimes.

Another issue: the missing coronavirus database that China had that was taken offline in late 2019. Weird timing. Again, no proof of anything. Perhaps it's changed now but as of last year this hasn't been examined by anyone in the West (like the WHO).

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#172

Post by npteljes »

exitb wrote: post #87

What is the motivation behind research that makes viruses more suitable for humans anyway? I assume it's not strictly a military project, since there was international cooperation between countries that aren't allies. What is it we're tying to achieve?

The military application is the easiest to imagine, but viruses have been made useful in medicine too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_thera...

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#173

Post by ethbr0 »

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #50
jtc331 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuke Game Theory all over again, with AGI to add too!

The fundamental difference with nuclear theory is that nukes don't self-assemble more nukes.

The exponential replication of biological pandemics means there are very different optima.

Whether that's in favor of GoF or anti-GoF, I can't say. It's a tradeoff between {increased risk of pandemic & more prepared for pandemic} vs {decreased risk of pandemic & less prepared for pandemic}.

A sane response probably means we should build two neutral, BSL-4 (+) labs and require by UN treaty that all GoF research take place there, outlawed in the rest of the world, with verification inspection of labs.

Of course, you'd be prying power out of the hands of the US/Russia/China, so there'd have to be a pretty big bone to get them to bite.

Which would probably look like complete autonomy and confidentiality within the lab, in their respective areas. With strict perimeter and time-quarantine -based controls.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#174

Post by xyzzy123 »

ajross wrote: post #161
xyzzy123 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, where are the unsampled bats within 1000km of Wuhan? This stuff has been sampled extensively. Or are you merely stating it's possible there's a bat cave no one's heard of that hasn't been sampled?

> This stuff has been sampled extensively. I don't think that's correct, for the simple reason that if those papers existed the (sigh) pro-leak folks would be linking them everywhere. Virology isn't exactly a trillion dollar field, we're not going out and sequencing every virus in every species. The Yunnan cave made news and was well-studied because someone stumbled on a SARS-related virus there, that says nothing ab…

> if those papers existed

Those papers don't exist for the simple reason that "interesting" bats don't live there.

You might want to consider that while R H Ebright can be offensive and distateful, he has been banging this drum for 20 years and is generally very careful when he makes a factual statement.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#175

Post by niemandhier »

phkahler wrote: post #150
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…

I think it's important to set aside the question of weather Covid was made in a lab. For the sake of argument let's say it was not. There were proposals to do the kind of experimental work that would have created a virus very much like Covid-19. Those who wrote the proposal and shopped it around for funding probably considered it relatively harmless to do, both in a lab, and should it accidentally get out (it's just…

> The fact remains that there are people out there who want to make stuff like that in a lab. That kind of "work" needs to stop.

No we need much more of such work. Why do you think we had a vaccine so fast? We were able to create an Ebola vaccine before?

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#176

Post by lr1970 »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #95
chaosbolt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 don't know how the law works where you live, but in my country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction. Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial, and the probabilities you're working with are easily inflated to suit the narrative you want. Conspiracy theorists will always say they have enough evidence for their theory, of course.

> I don't know how the law works where you live, but in my country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction. Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial, and the probabilities you're working with are easily inflated to suit the narrative you want.

One should not apply standards of a criminal trial to verification of a scientific hypothesis. The results can be quite disastrous as the case of Giordano Bruno can attest [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#177

Post by jolux »

zibby8 wrote: post #136
scotchmi_st wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how the law works where you live, but in my country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction. Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial, and the probabilities you're working with are easily inflated to suit the narrative you want. Conspiracy theorists will always say they have enough evidence for their theory, of course.

Concepts like “innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” are more about protecting people’s individual liberties than establishing a baseline about whether or not to believe something.

That’s not quite right — they’re establishing a baseline to believe something worthy of depriving someone’s liberties over.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#178

Post by AshamedCaptain »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #145
layer8 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to speculate? If both hypotheses are plausible, should it make a significant difference for the measures we take which one is actually true? If evidence comes out showing which hypothesis is true, does it suddenly make the other one retroactively less plausible? I mean, it would be interesting to know what really happened, but it doesn’t change all that much.

It does. Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again. If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do. If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken, or such things should not be done in labs with iffy security practices... or maybe even not done at all. Many workplace (and general) safety rules were written because someone has died doing something (…

> Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again

I really don't see that. If it is really true that both options are indistinguishably plausible, then what do you in response to this one event is absolutely meaningless. The next event could as likely come from "the other source", or from a new entirely one you don't even know about.

Your only reasonable option _in any case_ is to just strengthen your protection from both potential sources.

Suppose you are investigating a plane crash, and the evidence points to a possible uncontained engine failure, which apparently was caused by previously-undetected metal fatigue. The evidence, however, also almost entirely fits a bird strike. It doesn't really matter if you eventually find it was a bird strike, or not. Your engineers really think the metal fatigue could have brought down the plane? You are going to increase metal fatigue inspections, birds or not. And viceversa.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#179

Post by ethbr0 »

WithinReason wrote: post #97
ethbr0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what probability does the burden of proof shift?

An important question. For the sake of adjusting priors here is a list of biosecurity incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... SARS itself leaked from the lab 4 times, once from a BSL-4 lab.

* SARS*, including the original SARS virus (3 times, per page) and SARS-CoV-2 (1 time, post-pandemic)

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#180

Post by heartbreak »

hackerlight wrote: post #160
PurpleRamen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that there can be global media conspiracies, even though there are (cf. "masks don't work unless you're a trained medical professional" propaganda at the beginning). That's not a conspiracy, that's just common shared knowledge.

It isn't a conspiracy. Conspiracy implies planning and plotting. That was just decentralized media figures deciding to copy each other's opinions, because there's safety in numbers and group think, and because dissent sticks out and gets attacked.

You just described the early-Covid shutdown policy-making too.
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