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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

#681

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

lmm wrote: post #614
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.

Maybe we should stop supporting the study of dangerous viruses in facilities that don't maintain adequate levels of transparency. Regardless of what actually happened in this case (FWIW I still believe a natural origin was most likely), the Chinese authorities covered up everything to do with the lab and destroyed potential evidence before a proper investigation could take place. In court cases we have a norm that ev…

I'm not making an argument regarding this instance, but to have a theory that you can't disprove really makes it not a theory and impossible to engage with.

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

#682

Post by kristopolous »

dangwhy wrote: post #544
axxto wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "sightly-less-shitty-than-other-theories" theory is still a shitty theory. Low-confidence means exactly what it sounds like.

then why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery.

People want a blunt weapon to promote their politics with.

All of the theories had the properties of being convenient darlings of some pre-existing political faction.

The most responsible thing is to claim ignorance on the origin story unless you have genuine, credentialed, expertise and analytical training for it and even then, those people choose their audiences and presentation carefully because of the unintended consequences.

Those who refuse to fuel speculation on topics they are unqualified to comment on is by definition, absent and invisible.

It's also a distraction. The real problem is the chain of decisions and coordinating made by hundreds of groups around the planet between say November and April that catalyzed this from a problem to a global catastrophe. That's really the focus here because an H5N1 mutation is potentially around the corner and that could be much much worse.

It's dramatically affected egg supplies as you've probably seen at your local supermarket. A human uncontrolled outbreak would be a disaster. It's far more dangerous than covid.

For instance, that's today's date: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

The first part (origin) has already happened, the second part about the management, that's the actual important stuff.

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

#683

Post by brigandish »

lamontcg wrote: post #518
smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you think keeping something secret needs a reason. That's not how totalitarian state works. In such state, not keeping something secret needs a reason. Everything else is secret by default. And the standard mode of action on any disaster is to deny it, lie and hide the evidence. It's not special for pandemic, it happens every time. Yes they absolutely have tighter controls than Apple, and the reason is they li…

We know they constructed Chimeras of the WIV1 SARS-1-like virus because they published it: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517719113 Pretty bad secrecy. We knew WIV1 existed as well because they published it 3 years earlier: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389864/

How long had they been working on either of those before publishing? You're giving the end points of the research, the person you're replying to is saying the end point wasn't reached, hence it was still secret.

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

#684

Post by wizofaus »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #620
anothernewdude wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a thing can be most likely, and not likely. It is talking about the relative likelihood of the possible origins.

> It is talking about the relative likelihood of the possible origins. That's how you read it. GP is reading "most likely" as statement of absolute likelihood, making it false here, because the most likely thing is "any of the possibilities not under consideration", which takes most of the probability mass. IMO, GP's interpretation is the one that most people take for "most likely" statements, which in our opinion ma…

If you told most people you had 10 rolls of a dice to land a 6 and then suggested the most likely number of rolls you'll get it on is 1 I wonder whether they'd believe you...

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

#685

Post by MichaelZuo »

goolulusaurs wrote: post #502
crazygringo wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? Because if people avoid contact with the animals and it's a rare type of human-animal interaction to begin with, then it doesn't spread. And if you catch it again, you lock down instantly locally again. I'm not taking any side on the source of the virus, but I don't think the Chinese gove…

Sure, but don't they have a vast network of contact tracing? Presumably if a bunch of cases showed up that weren't connected to any other cases because of the lockdowns then that would be a really good indication of where the animal reservoir was located. But they haven't found the animal reservoir yet either, even with all of the lockdowns.

If by 'animal reservoir' you mean the intermediary pangolin, or something similar, this 'reservoir' could be as small as 1 animal if it was a spontaneous mutation. Where do you get the idea that there must be a large population of such animals roaming around?

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

#686

Post by weaksauce »

yibg wrote: post #647
goolulusaurs wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well its been years, why haven't they found the reservoir yet then? They would obviously want to since it would prove that it wasn't a lab leak, yet as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it yet.

Maybe because they are not easy to find? How long did it take to find SARS reservoir?

looked it up and it seems they found the source of SARS from 2002-2004 in 2017 so a bit over a decade.

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

#687

Post by IAmGraydon »

wnevets wrote: post #471

Why does the HN title say "US agency" but the NY Times headline says "Energy Department"? Did the NY Times change their title or was the OP trying to obscure the Energy Department part?

The WSJ changed the headline:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230226121213/https://www.wsj.c...

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

#688

Post by [deleted] »

bmikaili wrote: post #331
credit_guy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to not say it was a lab leak is to avoid embarrassing those responsible, China first and America second. But little by little people will start accepting that. What should the consequences be? At the very least a tightening of the controls around labs doing bio research. Of course, this amounts to nothing if someone is allowed to outsource research to labs in countries that don't follow the stringent…

AND america? nah man China should pay reparations or face heavy sanctions and geopolitical isolation.

[deleted]

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

#689

Post by MichaelZuo »

yibg wrote: post #591
ikrenji wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a hell of coincidence that out of all chinese cities the outbreak started in the one city housing the premiere institute dedicated to researching coronaviruses... so there is no smoking gun evidence, but it's a reasonable hypothesis... anyway, no one apart from the chinese ministry of state security will ever know for sure one way or another

Isn’t that mixing causation with correlation. The lab is there because there are lots of virus sources there.

This is definitely the most sensible explanation, since it's quite well known that Wuhan is the most important transportation hub in China since even before the lab was a distant dream in some postdoc's imagination.

And China does have the world's largest annual human migration, in the Spring Festival.

If I was in the planning department at whichever ministry that made the final decision on placement, putting the most prestigious and well funded lab studying dangerous human transmissible viruses at the world's most likely place to originate such a virus is an obvious choice.

i.e. during a few weeks every year Wuhan could easily be 10x more likely to be ground zero then any other city ever.

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

#690

Post by fwungy »

weaksauce wrote: post #546
fwungy wrote: post #539

On the upside, we advanced mRNA vaccine technology faster than it ever could have been done under the normal overly cautious test protocols. This technology is going to save countless lives and healtcare dollars in the future, so it was for the best, even if it was an accident.

> On the upside, we advanced mRNA vaccine technology faster than it ever could have been done under the normal overly cautious test protocols. that's not quite true. they didn't change anything fundamental in the test protocols they just compressed them a bit and cut out some red tape by submitting some things early instead of at the end of the trials like it would normally be done. it also reached the endpoints fast…

The FDA is filled with antivaxxer sympathizers who throw lots of blocks and hurdles into vaccine testing. Many of the procedures can be shortened with absolutely no loss of safety. A lot of amazing vaccines have been killed under these protocols.
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