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Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

biorxiv.org

41–50 of 250 posts

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Occam's Razor is you can't prove the things the Razor leans you to. Not in a way sufficient to remove the need to invoke the Razor. But you can say that one explanation is simpler than another (such as a pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history than to a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before). I see a bright glow on the eastern horizon about 7…

I wasn't asking for a proof of the phenomenon, but a proof that the razor points to that phenomenon.

That's going to come down to an individual observer's priors on probabilities of "pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history" vs. "pandemic introduced via a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before."

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#42
post #29

Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…

I have the opposite Occam's razor thoughts. My opinion is we are not capable of developing in a lab a virus that is so transmissible and survivable in human species only. I think the complexity of the virus machinery and its interactions inside of our bodies and immune system is beyond astronomical in complexity. It's laughable to suggest that we are so intelligent as to invent a better version of the machinery that…

Speaking as an artist, many (most?) of my enduring works were the result of an accident of some kind. I call them "happy accidents" because I recognized that the mistake was better than whatever the vision was that I had at the time.

As a corollary, there are unhappy accidents, and with respect to life forms in a chaotic system, such accidents can perpetuate and endure without human recognition.

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#43

I Honestly thought it was common belief that corona come from that lab in china. But now after reading this, I searched a bit and read up on it and I guess it is still a somewhat honest debate on the topic. Even if it was lab made, it would be sort of stupid to dig in to it, due to the political nature of the matter. What happened happened, most likely the release would have been accidental, so why play blame games.

If it was released from a lab, no matter whether or not it was accidental, Covid would be the mother of all torts. The entire planet can show harm and will be very interested in recovering their losses from the entity that mis-handled a lethal virus.

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#44
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite Occam's razor thoughts. My opinion is we are not capable of developing in a lab a virus that is so transmissible and survivable in human species only. I think the complexity of the virus machinery and its interactions inside of our bodies and immune system is beyond astronomical in complexity. It's laughable to suggest that we are so intelligent as to invent a better version of the machinery that…

> My opinion is we are not capable of developing in a lab a virus that is so transmissible and survivable in human species only. I think the complexity of the virus machinery and its interactions inside of our bodies and immune system is beyond astronomical in complexity. It's laughable to suggest that we are so intelligent as to invent a better version of the machinery that is hypothesized as the very machinery resp…

Sorry it does not. Was that virus more deadly, effective, or in any other measure better than the original polio? Or was it "polio" with a spike protein glued to it's head?

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#45

Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…

Add to that that China forbade investigations and furthermore these regimes have a long history of obscurity

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#46
post #28

Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is why people are skeptical.

It depends on bayesian priors.how mahy coronaviruses were studied, how frequently a new virus is found next to a biolab of said virus by chance etc. The extraordinary claim could be that it is of natural origin actually.

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#47
post #6

So a likely extremely controversial paper being shared publicly to a non-expert audience prior to any peer-review. Is this going to be yet one more of those “will be withdrawn after peer scrutiny but by then it is too late because the false meme has been injected into the public consciousness” things?

> Is this going to be yet one more of those “will be withdrawn after peer scrutiny but by then it is too late because the false meme has been injected into the public consciousness” things?

They only get withdrawn if they go against the narrative. Any kind of paper that says masks work, lockdowns work, or any paper suggesting Covid is worse than any virus ever… it’s totally cool to share publicly. Doesn’t even matter if it is poorly constructed or turns out to be false.

Re: Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't asking for a proof of the phenomenon, but a proof that the razor points to that phenomenon.

That's going to come down to an individual observer's priors on probabilities of "pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history" vs. "pandemic introduced via a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before."

Wasn't the lab working with coronaviruses? So maybe some of it escaped. I really don't see how that's an unnecessary multiplication of entities. Is the objection simply that, pandemics have emerged from markets, but not labs? But we know that an escape of a coronavirus could lead to a pandemic.

I see nothing needlessly complex here, and certainly not extraordinary.

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