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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

#731

Post by selimthegrim »

lovemenot wrote: post #717
jcranmer wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIDS is caused by HIV, which is believed to have evolved from a virus infecting primates in Africa (probably more specific details than that exist, but I don't know them offhand). Bubonic plague and polio both predate the existence of writing, and may well predate even agriculture.

HIV has at least one similarly plausible but unprovable origin story - concerning the unintended consequences of polio vaccination in the 1950s. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7935079/

This has been disproven pretty thoroughly IIRC

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

#732

Post by nradov »

hermiod wrote: post #362
afiori wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that the vast majority of the population do not take meaningful actions based on election prediction (other than "I might [not] need to actually vote"). There are good reasons to have polls and predictions but they are far from necessary.

Just because something isn't useful to everyone, doesn't mean it isn't useful to someone. The original claim was that election prediction is useless -- are you willing to concede that election prediction isn't useless?

I made no such claim. I merely stated that this particular election prediction was useless.

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

#733

Post by dmix »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #707
dmix wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only counterpoints are a) China is highly insular and rarely plays ball on even basic stuff and b) the whole Chinese idea of "saving face" where even when a person in power obviously messes up you still don't take the Western "brutally honest" approach, you do the opposite and pretend everything is still normal out of 'respect' (and in protection) of the person's social standing. The consequences happen quietly b…

> the Western "brutally honest" approach Yeah, not so much these days, and probably not ever to extent that you may have meant it. Western folks are learning pretty quickly how well total reality denial has been working for... other regimes. I am going to say Trump, but if I'm going to do that then I also need to mention an absolute procession of Western political and business leaders. Biden, Obama, Bush, Bush, Clint…

I was talking about the contrasts with western culture as a whole. Not petty national-level US political discourse via their pet D.C. reporters.

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

#734

Post by kube-system »

smsm42 wrote: post #580
autoexec wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lab leak and bio weapon are two completely different theories, and conflating them means you don't actually bother to learn the argument of the opposing side(s), before dismissing them as "crazies". I think if you attempt to have serious discussion the minimum you should do is to learn what the disagreement is about. If you don't bother to do even that, then what's the point in it? Just booing the outgroup one more t…

The rightmost political commentators in the US almost universally entertained the lab leak theory in the same breath as the bioweapon idea. The implicit or explicit accusation was that there was no other reason to be working with viruses. People love a good mad-scientist story and those without an understanding of public health research, or a xenophobic disbelief that science is even conducted in China, ate it right up.

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

#735

Post by tootie »

pessimizer wrote: post #511
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…

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…

I'm not entirely clear on why the Energy Department would even be investigating this let alone issuing a controversial finding with low confidence at all. They mention specific intelligence that flipped their conclusion but didn't even characterize what the nature of that intelligence is.

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

#736

Post by bradleyjg »

hotpotamus wrote: post #723
bradleyjg wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember articles and quotes firmly rejecting the lab leak hypothesis and darkly implying that those championing the theory had a hidden agenda. The considerations were: — there were random attacks on Asians - public health officials and scientists were worried about an anti science backlash - virologists were really worried about a backlash against virology — relations with China had not yet deteriorated to their…

There were and are problematic elements of the lab leak people as well - I still see people (on this site) who claim that some or all aspects of the virus were synthetically created at the behest of Anthony Fauci. You may say I'm nutpicking, but I truly have a hard time determining what the lab leak theory is sometimes. But my sense was that the agenda behind the lab leak family of theories was to lay blame at some h…

It’s one thing for nutjobs to push a bad theory for some whacky reason and another thing entirely for establishment figures to shade the truth in order to push a (positive!) agenda. We have so many nutjobs, in part, because of generations of establishment figures being dishonest for the greater good.

Lab leak was always a better theory. There were what hundreds? thousands? of wet markets across China and two bsl-4 labs. Given that the virus arose in a city with a wet market and a bsl-4 lab, the prior should be that it had to do with the lab and not the wet market. That could be overcome with evidence, of course, but it is not some out there idea.

What are you supposed to do about it? Maybe nothing. But if you are an establishment figure, certainly don’t lie about it and further destroy our society’s trust in experts.

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

#737

Post by tootie »

WaxProlix wrote: post #659
bradleyjg wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.

I saw a lot of folks saying that the theories all kinda stank at the time, and to wait and see. Interestingly, a lot of folks also kept quiet and didn't champion any theories. Maybe I can link you to a lack of comment two years ago to back up my bona fides?

It seems that lo these many years later all the theories are still full of holes. Lab leak is plausible but there's no public evidence to back it. Somehow the DOE thinks they have something but we haven't seen it. Just based on history, zoonotic remains most likely but no host has been found.

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

#738

Post by kristopolous »

jboy55 wrote: post #720
wonderwonder wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People want a blunt weapon to promote their politics with." You are right and thats the most fascinating / absurd part of this whole thing. Somehow wet market vs lab leak has political sides and people are emotionally invested in one over the other. Its crazy, lets just have the truth and move on, either way it came out of China and savaged the world. People don't want the lab leak theory to be true for the sole rea…

Do you need the truth though? In some ways the mere question on the origin of the virus is a political one. No one in the public has ever cared to have definitive proof where any virus came from before. The ability to point to a specific time and place is probably outside of our ability. A lab had it on Nov 1st, 2021. A lab worker brought it home, is that 100% proof that was the first infection? Or did the lab get it…

Moreover, disease stories has a very long history of being used to justify racism and genocide.

There's a specific American racist connection with blaming Chinese immigrants for disease that goes back to the era of the Chinese exclusion act of the 1880s. There were riots attacking chinatowns and doing ethnic cleansing with lynchings and mass destruction in Denver, Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Eureka, Seattle and others throughout the 1880s.

Eugenicist texts of the early 1900s claimed Asians were disease carriers as well.

The general public's relationship with this stuff has only really been ugly and I can't stand here in 2023 pontificating absolute free speech and pretend like these types of narratives won't become tools of violence and racism in the hands of scammers and hatemongers.

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

#739

Post by benlivengood »

Does it matter?

Is it possible that a worldwide pandemic was created in a laboratory and we were powerless to stop it? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes!

Is it possible that a novel animal virus became viable in humans and became a worldwide pandemic that we were powerless to stop? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes!

The best outcome is: figure out how to combat both the origin of novel viruses under any cases and how to eradicate them under any conditions. We can't prevent future pandemics by chasing after only a single root cause.

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

#740

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

benlivengood wrote: post #739

Does it matter? Is it possible that a worldwide pandemic was created in a laboratory and we were powerless to stop it? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! Is it possible that a novel animal virus became viable in humans and became a worldwide pandemic that we were powerless to stop? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! The best outcome is: figure out how to combat both the origin of novel viruses under any cases and how to eradicat…

The problem is China as a country caused irreparable harm. It needs to be punished.
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