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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#311

Post by tzs »

khazhoux wrote: post #234

Time once again to post Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 I still don't understand how in 2020 people were branded as racist sinophobes for saying that the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, probably originated from the coronavirus research lab in Wuhan . I know suspicion isn't fact, but that should have always been the leading theory to be disproved. Instead, IIRC Twitter and FB were flaggi…

> I know suspicion isn't fact, but that should have always been the leading theory to be disproved

The leading theory should be the thing that has never happened before (lab leak causes epidemic or pandemic) instead of the thing that has happened dozens of times before (animal virus jumps to humans and causes epidemic or pandemic)?

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#312

Post by psychlops »

unicornmama wrote: post #215
goolulusaurs wrote: post #192

IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…

Lockdowns serve a purpose: to slow the spread of the virus.

Lockdowns serve many purposes, not simply the stated one. They also have many side effects.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#313

Post by yourapostasy »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #269
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

Good luck getting 95% of the American populace to understand any of that nuance. After seeing lots of Twitter threads about Nate Silver, condemning his lack of "certainty" in his predictions ("It's such a cop out! Since he never says yes or no one way or the other he always has an out when he's wrong!"), I'm even more convinced not just that people don't understand statistics, but they willfully don't want to.

It isn’t always a lack of will. Sometimes it is lacking a worldview that continually perceives through the lenses of statistical probabilities because most of the time, heuristics are Good Enough. Constantly evaluating upon an ever-shifting, -updating net of probabilities is relatively more cognitively demanding.

Those who do reflexively apply probability assessments however, would do well to also perceive when to accept heuristic Good Enough solutions.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#314

Post by aquarium87 »

ethanbond wrote: post #68
aquarium87 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

1) That’s a big assumption you’re making, even if it was a lab leak (which is itself a big leap from what’s known today) 2) It also wouldn’t be “weird” at all. That’s like saying you find it weird that a firefighter got burned or a nuclear safety researcher caused a nuclear safety incident.

No it's not. Not at all. Everything risk is increasing exponentially. BSL-4 labs are expanding 1 per year, or around 2% extra risk. CRISPr and CRISPr cas9 are only 10 and 20 years old. How much added risk is that per year? 10,000%?

Then to send money to actively seek out bat viruses in the place thought to harbor the worse or most diverse viruses?

And to do all that in partnership with a hostile enemy who most certainly isn't going to tell you all the extras they have planned above and beyond the controllable.

No, I think you are dead wrong. The default assumption from now on is lab leak unless proven otherwise, because that's the risky world we live in. Period. No getting around it. And the risk gets higher every year.

There are literally tens of thousands of BSL-3 labs in the world. They aren't sitting empty doing nothing. They are busy trying to "save us".

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#315

Post by peoplefromibiza »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

I wonder if the timing of these "bad headlines" is connected to this

https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-ne...

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#318

Post by nradov »

belorn wrote: post #292
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

If all the other origin theories has "very low" as confidence score, then a lab leak is still the most likely origin with a "low" confidence score. It would be nice to see the confidence score as a numerical number in order to understand how much lead this theory has to the second most likely origin theory.

There is way to actually quantify such estimates. Any numbers would just be made up. A qualitative confidence rating like "low" really is the best way to convey intelligence information to policy makers.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#319

Post by Natsu »

kranke155 wrote: post #172
lamontcg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…

What about the request to use gain of function research to add furin sites to coronaviruses? That seems to me the smoking gun, since this lab asked for funding to do exactly that. It’s a bit like Jaime Meitzl (sp?) said - for the first time in history you find a unicorn (furin binding site in a coronavirus) next to a lab that asked for funding to make regular horses into unicorns. But the lab says it’s “natural origi…

See also:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.8348...

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#320

Post by smsm42 »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #224
smsm42 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Everybody remembers it. Some try to crimestop it, but everybody knows it happened. The right thing would be to admit the screw up, apologize to people who were unjustifiably accused and suppressed, and try to do better next time. But I don't see much readiness to do this, unfortunately.
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