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

wsj.com

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

#551

Post by gjsman-1000 »

kilgnad wrote: post #547
pessimizer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

No. Low confidence means they have a bunch of crap theories. The lab leak theory is simply the least crappy theory. That's the nuance.

It is an interesting admission though, because by definition that means that the "evolved in nature and came from wet markets" view is also a crappy theory.

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

#552

Post by acdha »

paganel wrote: post #147

This was considered "fake news" and heavily reprimanded all throughout the pandemic in the media attached to the Western consensus, hilarious how they're starting to do a 180 on it (next is doing a 360, I guess).

There were separate things going on which were flagged commonly: various conspiracy theories about bio-weapons or intentional leaks, Trumpian racism of the “king flu” persuasion, general evidence-free speculation that the Chinese government knew about it for a long period of time (claimed early cases as far back as the summer or fall of 2019), and discussing the possibility of a lab leak of a collected sample during analysis.

Sober discussions of the last case were fine: there was tons of that in the scientific literature and it was recognized as a likely scenario along with the wet markets since both are commonly discussed risks. If you came in hot, all hyped up on Fox News talking points, saying it was only as bad as the flu, or babbling about HCQ or Ivermectin, you’d get flagged since it was clearly not a scientific argument or contributing anything of value.

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

#553

Post by kilgnad »

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.

Good luck? The whole point of that headline is to get the American populace to completely miss all the nuance and hate china more then they already do.

Then when they are taken to court for outright bullshitting, that's when they point out the "nuance."

Hold on. I'm not saying the lab leak theory is completely left field. But definitely the intent of this announcement is more of a deliberate political attack then it is a declaration of actual scientific findings. The "least crappy theory" is essentially not news at all. A more accurate title is "inconclusive." But that sort of title doesn't get people all riled up against china.

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

#554

Post by PuppyTailWags »

dqpb wrote: post #512
CyanBird wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had actually read the article that you are supposed to be commenting on,you would realize that this statement of the title is done in "low confidence" No one is gonna apologize to you if you are unable to parse information

I can parse fine, can you? From the article: > The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak People used to be called racist for saying this!

I think it's different in that I think when the lab leak strategy was first introduced, it was introduced in an explicitly political manner, i.e. by a politician vs an (arguably) apolitical institution. There wasn't evidence presented to support this theory beyond the political pundits footballing the theory around, who were most certainly not medical research experts about this. At least this is how I saw it as a layperson who didn't do any serious research myself, so it all seemed like a load of political bs trying to score points instead of a seeking of actual truth.

So at first it did look like just plain ol' xenophobic politics to me. Only one party, the party that politically campaigned on xenophobia, was the one spreading the theory widely on their mainstream media.

I'm more than happy to accept lab leak theories from actual researchers who understand how to analyze outbreaks and not politicians trying to score points with voters. It just wasn't that at the beginning, probably because the researchers had to take the time to come to their conclusions.

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

#555

Post by dangwhy »

autoexec wrote: post #542
jonhohle wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the pejoratives really necessary? From the beginning the "lab leak" theory satisfied Occam's Razor more than the convoluted "wet market" theory or the "pangolin" theory. Meanwhile, a lot of departments at a lot of universities got a lot of funding to pursue their pet theories.

At the time trump and his people were first pushing lab leak/bio-weapon conspiracies it was without evidence (and Occam's Razor isn't evidence), and worse the actual evidence we did have at the time suggested it wasn't leaked from a lab. That didn't stop the "crazies" from insisting it was true though. Anyone can have their own theory of things, but what separates Trump and the "crazies" from the rest of us (includin…

how were the people pushing wet market theory not "crazies" also then.

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

#556

Post by fairity »

another_story wrote: post #465
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…

Feels like we should assume it's a lab leak and push for caution anyways. If it wasn't a lab leak then all we've done is help better prevent that from happening in the future.

Sadly, the objective here isn’t to prevent this from happening in the future.

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

#557

Post by autoexec »

frank_nitti wrote: post #500
boopmaster wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Low confidence still significant in that it could have been “low confidence transmission from wet market game”, but that’s not the direction this landed on. It’s likely a lab leak, says the report, but there’s too many gaps to support higher certainty.

Exactly - and how many were mocked, ridiculed, cancelled for even floating the idea of the lab leak; it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. Many, even some in this thread, are eager to minimize this story if they participated in ridiculing the fringe voices who kept questioning the official narrative. Better to have this quickly fade into oblivion lest they be outed as having placed their blind faith in false prop…

> it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory.

At the time it was a BS conspiracy theory. There was some evidence for it, and some evidence against it and it happened that the evidence we had at the time was stronger for the non-lab leak theories.

That's what changed right now. We have new evidence that puts the lab leak theory above the others. Back when Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up random Asians who were just walking down the street, that wasn't true. Just because we today have the evidence to support the lab leak theory, that doesn't justify Trump's claims or the "blind faith" of his followers who rejected the available evidence to support what they wanted to be true.

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

#558

Post by tim333 »

bushbaba wrote: post #405

Annoying that early on even suggesting this as a possibility labeled you as a crazy, racist, conspiracy freak. Hopefully in the years to come people are more open minded.

It may well turn out that the main promoters of that idea, Daszak, Fauci and associates may have been responsible for funding the research. When I first heard that idea I thought is was a conspiracy theory myself but then things like the Defuse proposal leaked out. (https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...)

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

#559

Post by Izkata »

cookiengineer wrote: post #231

No idea if it's possible to still find the source, but the doctor of patient zero also got infected (and died/"disappeared" afterwards like her boss at the wuhan hospital). Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links anymore :-/ In the beginning of sars-cov-2 breakout there was an article shared on wechat that later got censored in var…

> Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links anymore :-/

10-minute video that includes that plus a few other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

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

#560

Post by smsm42 »

brookst wrote: post #445
smsm42 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like any other options have high confidence. All theories are low confidence right now because there is no conclusive proof for either. But if you support some, you are the defender of science, and if you support another, you are a filthy conspirologist and get banned from social media. Try explaining that to 95% of the American populace.

I think it has more to do with the fact that one opinion is supported by more conspiracy nuts. Doesn’t mean it isn’t the right answer, but having lots of crazies insisting it is the only possible answer makes more grounded people less credible in the eyes of others.

Well, if you ban and ostracize people for supporting some idea, then a lot of supporters for this idea would be people who are not afraid of being banned and ostracized - and this category of people has a lot of conspiracy nuts, because they have nothing to lose anyway. You can not use the consequence of the suppression policy as a justification of the same suppression policy.
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