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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#261

Post by th0ma5 »

himinlomax wrote: post #210
sgift wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they had nothing to hide, they wouldn't be hiding everything. If that was a criminal case, this kind of behavior would be taken as a evidence of guilt. No, it would not. First, dictatorships hide things all the time, whether there is something or nothing. It's just how they operate. (Many democratic governments do to btw. How often do we need freedom of information requests just to find out that it was totally b…

"Your honor, you can't blame my client for messing the victim's body, he's a known necrophiliac, and since the evidence is tainted you can't prove he was the murderer." Top notch defense right there.

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#262

Post by th0ma5 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #233
jmull wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you find any faults that can really change the results in the analysis Rootclaim made, I would be interested. This is an interesting way to analyze the problem but the set of criteria and weights applied at each step are made up. The flaw is that you can use this form of analysis to reach any conclusion you want. For example, the "Already well adapted" section -- a "2x" factor for lab escape. We wouldn't even be…

> it would be a very closely guarded secret and obviously they would never admit to a lab leak A complicating factor is that some (much?) of the funding came from the US. Which means admitting to a leak is against the interest of not only Chinese but also the US government which would have a hell of a time explaining to taxpayers how pandemic was engineered on their money doing research banned in the US. (Though I do…

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#263

Post by th0ma5 »

some_random wrote: post #169
Xen9 wrote: post #116

I personally believe in Rootlclaim's Bayesian analysis ( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ) which states that "the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident (89% probability)" This is consistent with David Martin's speech in Europe: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1661698114917646336 I haven't checked the "publicly available references" but m…

I remember when this was first released, everyone clowned on it (including me) for a few reasons the biggest one being the classic problem with these sorts of Bayesian analyses. That being, the individual weights per piece of evidence are pretty arbitrary. Meanwhile, it seems quite likely to have produced the correct results so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#265

Post by th0ma5 »

2devnull wrote: post #215
aaplok wrote: post #72

> The investigators believe the Chinese military had taken an interest in developing a vaccine for the viruses so they could be used as potential bioweapons. If a country could inoculate its population against its own secret virus, it might have a weapon to shift the balance of world power. This part doesn't make sense to me. Coronavirus is known to mutate constantly and rapidly. Having a vaccine against a strand mig…

Governments investigate imperfect weapons. Consider LSD.

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#266

Post by [deleted] »

ricksunny wrote: post #256
highfrequency wrote: post #240

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…

(That latter quote is Tulane virologist Robert Garry. Like his peers he would go on to downplay the LL hyp in the wake of the Feb 1st conference call organized by then-head of Wellcome Trust Jeremy Farrar.)

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#267

Post by lamontcg »

amoss wrote: post #145
pcrh wrote: post #55

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…

The map showing the clustering around the lab is not labelled in the article. It looks like the map from the senate report which used internet search history. I recall that their point in the original report was that there was a cluster of internet searches for flu-like symptoms clustered around the institute, rather than the market. There is no new direct evidence in the article, simply the weight of existing indire…

> It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing.

- We have a bunch of evidence of WIV engineering SARS-1-like viruses because they talked about it before the pandemic.

- We have zero evidence of them ever doing experiments on live SARS-2-like virus

- We have zero evidence of the existence of a SARS-2-like progenitor virus

- Before the pandemic they had no reason to be more secretive of any SARS-2-like work than their SARS-1-like work

- The spread of SARS-CoV-2 looks exactly like it originated in the Seafood market.

- If it was transported to the seafood market by someone who worked at the lab that is highly coincidental that the place they infected first just happened to be the most likely place for zoonotic spillover

- The hypothetical infected labworker didn't spread it all over their residence or create any other superspreading incidents clustered elsewhere around Wuhan

On the balance of probabilities I'm going with zoonotic spillover. The coincidence that the lab happened to be in the city is much less of a coincidence than the lab causing a leak of a virus that there's zero evidence the lab ever had, causing a pandemic that looks exactly like it came from zoonotic spillover.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#268

Post by lamontcg »

zosima wrote: post #135
pcrh wrote: post #55

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…

The Huanan Seafood market paper has been heavily critized. Especially the fact that covid was not found in a single animal sample does make the evidence rather weak. In addition it seems that the lack of sampling from outside the market and the fact that the market is a busy place in the center of the city where the virus would likely be once it's spreading from person to person , does not really lend support to the…

They found racoon dog DNA, along with other susceptible animals, comingled with SARS-CoV-2 in samples from the market:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/science/covid-raccoon-dog...

And the behavior of China behind that whole story looks very much like China tried to cover up the existence of susceptible animals at the market.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#269

Post by lamontcg »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #174
pcrh wrote: post #55

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…

I’m sure most of this is true or at least true-ish but to be appropriately skeptical, all evidence which has a Chinese source here should be considered as potentially made up. Regardless of whether or not there was a coverup, the Chinese government has certainly acted like it was covering something up. The circumstantial evidence is sort of ridiculous here though. An institute with weak safety controls experimenting…

> the Chinese government has certainly acted like it was covering something up.

Yes, they covered up the existence of racoon dogs and other susceptible animals at the market.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#270

Post by peteradio »

th0ma5 wrote: post #253
peteradio wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could! But hasn't... Otherwise yes good points. I don't see how they measure all the rest of the probabilities and the article seems to be designed to settle arguments among dumb people or something? It is not even remotely scientific.

> I think the whole premise that arbitrary priors and dreaming up probabilities and then washing them all together isn't applicable to a unicorn type event.

Now I believe you said it. Maybe not exactly "made up priors" so pardon me for the misquote. But I'd be interested to see if you can make a distinction.

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