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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

#621

Post by harry8 »

tharne wrote: post #455
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. As someone who does understand statistics, it's made me dislike Nate Silver even more…

I enjoyed "The Signal and the Noise" I think its focus on the problems of fitting models to noise is something that should be more widely understood and he did that really quite well. It's a while ago but I think it was the massive failures of earthquake predictions was how he did it and it was convincing and readable.

I've never read his blog and care stuff all about his political polling predictions.

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

#622

Post by craigc »

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…

[deleted]

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

#623

Post by PuppyTailWags »

chasd00 wrote: post #595
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

Regular people here without a known political affiliation were ridiculed relentlessly for even mentioning the lableak hypothesis. Same goes for merely questioning lockdowns. I hope many of you are doing some serious reflection.

IDK what you mean by "here". I wasn't ridiculing anyone relentlessly and I didn't see relentless ridicule, mostly because dang generally bans people for bad faith/hostility/etc. So idk what you mean by "many of you", since you're clearly not talking to me.

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

#624

Post by hoffs »

craigc wrote: post #622
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…

[deleted]

Lol

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

#625

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#626

Post by walkhour »

ss108 wrote: post #451
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…

Because we had a racist president who said stuff like "China virus" in a stupid and demeaning way--i.e. what may have been a valid and reasonable argument or position had its credibility ruined by being taken up by Trump and his ilk for their own ends.

Naming something by its origin it's not racist. The tone you're talking about is a completely subjective statement, and it has no place in a serious discussion.

Using that name should've never been controversial and making it controversial was creating drama where there was none. The fact that people are still hurt about Trump saying that years ago shows how unprepared we are to have a discussion about anything.

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

#627

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#628

Post by landemva »

salawat wrote: post #574
t-3 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why would anyone be punished for an unintentional lab leak? Scientists are also humans that can make mistakes.

If a practicing engineer is ultimatrly responsible for a catastrophic outcome of a design they signed off on, I can see a case for shoddy virologists with bad lab practices being held ultimately responsible for what they ultimately leak. When what you make has the potential to impact billions; no offense, but I expect you to be a bit more hardcore about your adherence to safe practices of your trade. If this means th…

> practicing engineer

That sounds like a call for professional licensure and personal financial penalties for failures. Ensuring financial ruin for GoF cowgirls and cowboys and their families would be a good start.

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

#629

Post by tripletao »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #462
mwbajor wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but also disagree. There are too many conflicting interests and I don't think you will ever get a straight answer. People also can't look at the lab leak with a critical eye because they think it makes them look like trump lovers. I standby my original assertion that a country in grief will collectively go through the stages of grief of which denial is the first. Similar to 9/11 when we convinced ourselves th…

In 2008 we had to bail out the banks, otherwise everything would have gone under. Indeed, I believe that a defining moment of the GW Bush presidency was when he told the head of the Federal Reserve (I think?) to do whatever was necessary, with GWB providing political cover, and thus 'saved the world'. Where we screwed up was in not bringing to account (i.e. prison) many of the people responsible for letting things ge…

> My understanding is that it took a while before the (natural) emergence of SARS and MERS was understood, and so for COVID most probably.

The proximal host is the animal that transmitted the virus to humans. That host was identified for SARS-1 (civet cats) and MERS (camels) within about a year. For example, here's an article from 2003:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140695/

The reservoir host is the animal in which most of the virus's genome evolved. That host (bats for both) took much longer to identify, through Dr. Shi's work at the WIV.

Since SARS-CoV-2 is very similar to SARS-1, we knew its reservoir host (bats) as soon as it was sequenced. We still don't know its proximal host. The proximal host is the critical question in establishing natural zoonotic origin--no one disputes that SARS-CoV-2 evolved mostly in bats, just whether its path into humans involved a research accident.

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

#630

Post by mths »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #587
tim333 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other Chinese government behaviours also. If it wasn't a lab leak why not publish the Wuhan labs database which was public until the outbreak? I know they say hacking but they could just make a copy and upload it somewhere. Also after Xi's first speech on covid his civil servants put out instructions to improve biosecurity at the virus labs. And lots of little things that seem a bit odd.

Does no one else on earth remember the initial videos out of China of people laying dead on the streets? Does no one else remeber the WHO refusing to acknowledge Taiwan is its own state? I really struggle that anyone is seriously buying a single “truth” that is coming out of China. I don’t know it was a lab leak, but I agree, if you are at all reasonable you can just see that China thinks it was.

I remember viral videos of big halls and hallways full of spastic people strapped into their beds. I still wonder sometimes what that was all about. Who had an interest in spreading such videos? What outcome did they hope for / get?
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