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> But why do you think it is important to prove a lab leak? Perhaps because it is slightly interesting what caused the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu? Because millions of people died? Because knowing the cause could perhaps prevent something similar happen again? Perhaps prevent millions of deaths? I'm astonished by this question.
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You can't in one comment complain about investigations using "made up priors" and then in another complain that we are investigating something which could actually provide a measured prior.
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>The Origins of Covid-19 — Why It Matters (and Why It Doesn’t) >More than half of the earliest Covid-19 cases were connected to the Huanan market, and epidemiologic mapping revealed that the concentration of cases was centered there. In January 2020, Chinese officials cleared the market without testing live animals, but positive environmental samples, including those from an animal cage and a hair-and-feather–removal…
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After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…
It is excusable for a lab to accidentally leak a contaminant. It is not excusable to cover it up and prevent a full investigation, like China has done.
The idea that Covid19 was accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab has moved from conspiracy theory to mainstream view of many US gov't agencies with the most classified information available to them. John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence: “My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pan…
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What a terrible article. “Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.” The rate of hospitalization among 18-49 year olds with flu in the US was 54.1 per 100K in 2019-20. It’s rare, sure, but that kind of absolute statement from an anonymous researcher doesn’t instill confidence.
> What a terrible article. > “Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.” > It’s rare, sure Then what makes an article terrible when you agree with the statement?
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My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…
We still don't know what happened to JFK, 60 years later.
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Those viruses are slightly more related to SARSCoV2 than RaTG13, however note 1) that they were found even further away from Wuhan than was RaTG13 and 2) that they still remain too different from SARSCoV2 to be its direct ancestor. One of the things we know for sure is that that about 50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2, so they are not its direct ancestors.
The distance from Wuhan of the discovery site of RaTG13 is irrelevant, if (as the article implies) a senior team at the Wuhan lab were working on RaTG13. The article is not suggesting that Covid19 evolved from RaTG13; it is suggesting that Covid19 is a chimaera made with RaTG13.
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Those viruses are slightly more related to SARSCoV2 than RaTG13, however note 1) that they were found even further away from Wuhan than was RaTG13 and 2) that they still remain too different from SARSCoV2 to be its direct ancestor. One of the things we know for sure is that that about 50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2, so they are not its direct ancestors.
I don't understand this line of argument. The facts are that 1) the virus outbreak was in Wuhan, 2) that there ws a local lab working on virus samples that come from all over the world and 3) as far as we know, the particular strain that affected Wuhan is not local. Altogether, this should add confidence to the lab leak theory, not detract from it.