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The Lab Leak Hypothesis

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Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#121

Post by ithkuil »

mmcgaha wrote: post #62
peteradio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with your Likelihoods but I'm not sure your evidence really makes sense. It does not really follow that a self-harm would always be avoided, the game of chess is all about sacrifice. Perhaps China thinks the West is short-sighted and would be politically bound to act against its long term interest, so why not? Maybe there are other reasons why you think the "CCP Virus" hypothesis is 360 stupid besides…

This is not my literal belief; it is only a logical extension of the discussion so . . . If covid mostly kills old or otherwise compromised individuals then a socialist country could see it in their interest to release a virus that eliminates the least productive part of the population. It would not be as much self harm as an exercise to increase the strength of the whole.

> then a socialist country [..] eliminates the least productive part of the population

I swear I heard some of my left leaning friends argue that a capitalist country would reason that way (and I'm pretty sure they would point historical anectodetes to prove their point)

Could it be, perhaps, that such conclusions about how appealing the opposite political belief is just the product of sectarian thinking and fear mongering? Humans are generally decent people who care about each other; and also often ruthless people who couldn't care less about the well-being of the fellow citizens. The only correlation I see between these two behavioral traits and the political doctrine, is the circumstance where a person is born and the environment where events unfold.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#122

Post by kunfuu »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #64
travisoneill1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few virus labs. Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one right next to the virus lab? That alone is enough evidence to make the lab escape theory the most likely origin. Though it's far from certain.

Snopes.com points out that the market wasn't "right next to the virus lab." It was in fact a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

Back in Feb 2020, a rumor circulating on Chinese social media said that there was another lab in the city near the market, which was a competitor to the lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology that is most widely mentioned, under the umbrella of a university of agriculture/forestry/geology (I don't remember the exact details).

I am not sure about the validity of the rumor, though.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#123

Post by [deleted] »

csense wrote: post #80

Back in March or so, I wrote a comment about this [1], citing some even earlier (January 2020-ish) HN commentary. My conclusion: Lab leak's not inconsistent with the evidence, but there's no smoking gun. China's behavior is highly suggestive of guilt -- the moving location on Google Maps, destroying records, and not permitting any outside investigation. However, China could actually be completely innocent and just do…

[deleted]

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#124

Post by ladon86 »

howlgarnish wrote: post #101
manicdee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?

How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Also, the first known confirmed case has no known connections to the Huanan market or the virology institute. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...

> How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people?

Presumably the same way it travels 25,000 miles across a planet of 7.5bn people - via the people.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#125

Post by arrrg »

baryphonic wrote: post #78
anon9001 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not going to read the article. This long-form stuff is particularly sticky. If the story is told well, you're likely going to remember it as true (or at least credible) even the story wasn't credible in the first place.

The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator. To assert otherwise is the definition of ad hominem . Claims asserted may nonetheless be untrue or may not be as strong as claimed. But that requires careful, critical examination. I'm perplexed by this reaction, as if reading something with a critical eye is impossible. Or, worse, that reading something by someone without a particular status or…

Abstractly speaking you are right, of course.

However, how could you even begin to fairly judge the author’s argument if you yourself aren’t knowledgeable about the topic at hand?

If you aren’t an expert looking at the author’s credentials and making an inference from there is totally fair since you will never be able to even begin to appreciate that argument.

Which to me means in this case: I want to hear from virologists or epidemiologists or similar people about this topic and no one else. Maybe an article that heavily relies on quotes and interviews with such people would be fine, too.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#126

Post by wokwokwok »

manicdee wrote: post #83
MilnerRoute wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab was not "across the street." It was a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?

No, sometimes you have to just admit you’re wrong.

There’s plenty of this which is entirely plausible without any “across the road” bullshit; that’s purely headline grabbing nonsense.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#127

Post by ginko »

bsder wrote: post #107
mensetmanusman wrote: post #61

Also an MIT alum, and in July I was considering the bayesian priors of the situation: Roll a dice representing all the possible bat-human interaction sites in the world. How often do you get a result so incredibly close to one of the few sites in the world that intentionally collects these things? I have worked in clean room environments for years. Everyone eventually has an off day (lack of sleep, usually) where you…

Well, is there anywhere else in China other than Wuhan that could/would identify a new virus like this before it goes mega-exponential? AIDS, for example, only got flagged because a normally extremely healthy group started appearing with diseases associated with the very old and failing immune systems. And, even then, it took quite a while to figure out that it was a virus. In the middle of flu season, COVID probably…

> Well, is there anywhere else in China other than Wuhan that could/would identify a new virus like this before it goes mega-exponential?

As far as I know, the WIV wasn't involved in identifying the virus. That happened in Beijing after weeks of doctors sounding alarm bells about a new disease in Wuhan.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#128

Post by andromeduck »

anon9001 wrote: post #94
baryphonic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator. To assert otherwise is the definition of ad hominem . Claims asserted may nonetheless be untrue or may not be as strong as claimed. But that requires careful, critical examination. I'm perplexed by this reaction, as if reading something with a critical eye is impossible. Or, worse, that reading something by someone without a particular status or…

> The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator. It actually does. I'm going to respect the opinions of serious scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, etc on topics of their expertise. > But that requires careful, critical examination. That was my whole point. By stating claims as an elaborate story that requires time investment as a reader, with a lot of flourish from a professional wri…

One who does not trust in public reason or accepts authority as a be-all end all as opposed to simply a fallible but time saving heuristic cannot claim to be a practitioner of science which is all about zero trust and verifiability, the two positions are fundamentally incompatible.

In science every individual has a personal and moral duty to derive, reproduce or otherwise inquire of the world so as too bootstrap themselves including sometimes theories to which they find too obvious or implausible, and from sources too and notm for without regularly doing so because that is the single thing fundamentally sperating us from antivaxers and flat eathers besides some luck in initial authority.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#129

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Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#130

Post by kunfuu »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #13

This is a good, balanced article. I've been of a similar mind for over a year now. The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm the US seems silly. But an accident involving a well-intentioned gain-of-function experiment seems quite possible and was something that the US was concerned about with its own gain-of-function research. In any case, this, like so much of this other nonsense aro…

Yet another hypothesis being pushed by the CCP party-state is the seafood imports hypothesis. Although the motivation behind CCP's push is questionable, this hypothesis shall be treated seriously, given that in the early investigation before the ban, signs of the virus were detected at stores selling seafood instead of stores selling illegal games.
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