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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#541

Post by undecisive »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #371
undecisive wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend being a little more strict with your language if you want to convince anyone here. "It started"..."solidly established" - that's enough inaccuracy for most HN people to ignore the whole of your post. Compare that with the context and abstract of the paper you've cited: "the earliest human cases", "circumstantial evidence", "earliest known COVID-19 cases", "spatially associated with vendors", "insufficie…

I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic." Many people have only vaguely followed this issue. Those who have been following it closely know that a lot of basic facts have actually been settled over the last year. The location of the initial outbreak in…

> I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic."

You may have chose your language precisely, but you've read meaning into the text that wasn't there.

An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy theorists that the market was "the early epicenter". The fact that the initial major spread event happened there is pretty clear, the question is where did the virus originate - where exactly did it become the coronavirus we know and love? Did it mutate into that form by being passed between animals stored in the market? Was it brought to the market from bats caught in the wild? Did a lab employee doing highly sensitive transmissibility research pop to the market on their way home to give their spouse a hug?

The idea that these are "settled facts" flies in the face of papers like this that go to great lengths to hedge their language. There are things we know. There are things that are likely, or less likely, or unlikely. There are things we have been prevented from knowing.

There are lots of opinions. There are people with settled opinions. There are settled opinions that have come about with the best of intentions (worries about stoking sinophobia and anti-science thinking, worries about lack of accountability and governmental deceit). There are those shouting their "truths" with the best and worst of intentions, whether aiming to promote truth, or peace, or clickbait.

You may have chose your language precisely, but your language is shouting about your settled opinion, not settled facts.

(P.S: "The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming" - since the sentence I wrote was just a chain of quotes from the paper, without any real commentary, I'd be interested to know how you feel the paper was "much more definitive")

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#542

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

undecisive wrote: post #541
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic." Many people have only vaguely followed this issue. Those who have been following it closely know that a lot of basic facts have actually been settled over the last year. The location of the initial outbreak in…

> I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic." You may have chose your language precisely, but you've read meaning into the text that wasn't there. An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy t…

> The idea that these are "settled facts" flies in the face of papers like this that go to great lengths to hedge their language.

This paper does not go to great lengths to hedge its statements, and the authors have very explicitly stated on numerous occasions that their work rules out the lab leak idea.

> An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy theorists that the market was "the early epicenter".

The paper addresses this. First, the fact that multiple strains of the virus were found directly in the market is a very strong indication that there were multiple spillover events at the market. Second, it has now been established that wild animals that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were being sold at the market during the time period when the outbreak began. This is a big deal, because this is exactly how the original SARS spilled over in 2002. Third, the concentration of cases at and around the market, but not around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is also strong evidence that the spillover was associated with the market, not the lab. If it were in the lab, there would likely be a cluster of cases at the lab itself, and in the surrounding areas where people from the lab frequent, not on the other side of the city, where wild animals that have caused previous SARS coronavirus outbreaks happen to be sold.

People who have followed the scientific investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 over the past 2.5 years know that the lab leak theory was always highly unlikely, and that all the evidence that has come to light has made it ever more unlikely. At this point, lab leakers (or at least those who are trying to keep their theories halfway consistent) are trying to argue that the virus somehow got from the lab to the market, where it began spreading. Their theories are becoming more convoluted and contrived as the evidence rules out each version of the theory, and it's getting a bit absurd.

A lot of people want to believe the lab leak theory. Scrolling through the comments here, there is a substantial overlap between this group and anti-vaxxers, as well as other people who oppose any efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus. I don't think people are clinging to this theory for rational reasons.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#543

Post by sennight »

The most effective way to lie is to distract with an embarrassing admission. That is what grabbed my attention months before the US media started covering it, the official "bat soup" wet market narrative coming out of China. The CCP is very sensitive about international ridicule with regard to eating weird things, so it was obvious that something was up when that was the immediate go to. When Wuhan started entering the public consciousness, prior to the systemic censorship that washed over SV, the new position was effectively "Ok, it wasn't the bat soup... a lab employee just admitted to us that a bat peed in his mouth and he kept it a secret." Then the censorship went into effect, undoubtable much to the relief of Chinese officials.

That should be the real take away from all this (but it won't be, it'll be forgotten): stop censoring and editorializing platforms, you don't know any more than those you mean to control and the "experts" have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#544

Post by haihaibye »

thegabriele wrote: post #21
seydor wrote: post #6

Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert some beneficial mutations to humanity. In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life, record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-made, then nature may do this again soon with another vir…

Nature did in the past many times, didn't it?

Lab leaks happened in the past, too, including one that was covered up by a communist government for decades

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#545

Post by haihaibye »

masswerk wrote: post #540
Genbox wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laboratory leak could have happened anywhere between the first collection of a virus sample from bats in 2017 and up until the pandemic start in end of 2019. It is likely the virus was transmitted by personel from Wuhan Institute of Virology to Italy before the first doctors pushed the big panic button.

Hum, there are a few things promoters of the lab theory haven't accounted for: meanwhile, strains that are closer related to the wild type have been found in Laos and Vietnam and the Wuhan lab didn't sample there; the (in)famous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is actually quite a distance from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it's about half an hour by car and there's a river in between) and there have been no traces…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN312670.1

Bat sample from Laos submitted by Wuhan institute of virology in 2019

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#546

Post by goblin89 »

hackerlight wrote: post #505
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.

Obviously flawed logic. Switch COVID lab leak hypothesis to 9/11 inside job, JFK CIA hit, Hitler moon base, and you'll see why.

For the record, I have come to think I misused the term “prior”.

If you consider those as viable hypotheses in the first place then sure. In current context there is a binary choice between two already established and well-informed hypotheses of similarly high likelihoods, and if one of them is significantly more favorable to a party with control over evidence we might expect a stronger proof.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#547

Post by haihaibye »

igouy wrote: post #453
WithinReason wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus. Well, 2 things: 1. An animal could be the source of the virus which could be leaked from a lab. Even with the lab leak hypothesis an animal is part of the chain, just not the last step. 2. There is also no evidence that the epidemic had no lab involvement. COVID was never found in any animal from t…

> … no evidence that the epidemic had no lab involvement… "So you simply cannot prove general claims that are negative claims -- one cannot prove that ghosts do not exist; one cannot prove that leprechauns too do not exist. One simply cannot prove a negative and general claim." https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_re... . What would you accept as evidence of "no lab involvement"?

Confirming zooinosis outside of the lab (eg outside Wuhan) would disprove lab leak

Finding the animal reservoir, would disprove it was modified in the lab. I guess it would also lower the chance of a lab leak (though I could still be natural)

China allowing a proper investigation would reduce the odds (though how to prove they haven't tampered with evidence in the years since)

I think every day the natural source isn't found should increase the odds of an unnatural one

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#548

Post by chasil »

8note wrote: post #499
chasil wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the world our human immune system evolved in hundreds of thousands of years ago, infectious diseases could not become a major problem because, with a few exceptions, when you survive an infectious disease, you usually don’t get it again. Either it kills you or it leaves you completely immune to it for the rest of your life. For the vast majority of human history our species lived in small tribes that were spread…

This is not convincing. Our immune systems were evolving 100 thousand years ago, and they still are now. If we weren't able to handle new diseases, everyone would have died from covid, not some percent of a percent. Our immune systems are very very capable for handling pathogens

The book has extensive references.

I hope you've brought yours.

https://kurzgesagt.org/immune-book-sources/

https://www.philippdettmer.net/immune

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#549

Post by credit_guy »

igouy wrote: post #520
credit_guy wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your link, and except for words, I see not explanation why the market hypothesis is more likely. Just "I thought that, and now I think this". The rest of the article says that the reports were deemed by the WHO to be "inconclusive". And what else do you expect? Conclusive evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis should be hyper-ultra-uber strong, because its consequences could potentially be requests for trillions…

> because there were no documented cases of live bats or live pangolins being sold in that market. Was selling live bats or live pangolins legal?

I guess you are saying that because it was illegal, the Government couldn't find out if it happened. Something like Captain Renault in Casablanca being shocked that gambling was happening around there [1].

[1] https://noagenda.fandom.com/wiki/I%27m_shocked,_shocked_to_f...!

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#550

Post by Akronymus »

nradov wrote: post #405
tinco wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liability-free fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission greatly restored my belief that we might survive the next large event. It was rolled out quickly, and it actually greatly reduced mortality. Reducing transmission would've been epic, but we can't win them all. The CDC's ever changing guidelines were good, but their not admitting that at some point the had been wrong or worse were flat…

Imposing mandatory curfews was never reasonable. That was never justified on an evidence-based medicine basis, and it violated the fundamental human right of free assembly. Those involved in policing such policies should be ashamed of themselves.

two weeks to assess the danger seemed reasonable to me at the time. What it turned into, though...
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