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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#141

Post by wk_end »

ajross wrote: post #96
chaosbolt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…

> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1…

> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't.

That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#142

Post by bigDinosaur »

pelorat wrote: post #101
bigDinosaur wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The origin being a lab leak would likely lead to more stringent controls around researchers.

Yes, but this is China that you're talking about where EVERYTHING is connected to a lying government. Nothing would happen except for a coverup as the Chinese government will never ever come clean.

In a sense, I don't really mind, because we're clearly not treating research into viruses (particularly gain of function) as the truly existential threat that it is. We should be, regardless of whether covid-19 was natural or a lab leak, and it's annoying that it might require a real lab leak at some point for us to take controlling such research seriously.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#143

Post by CPLX »

chaosbolt wrote: post #71
scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…

>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…

The things you describe are literally evidence.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#144

Post by zeven7 »

samwillis wrote: post #47

Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature edit…

I find a note added by Nature's editors in March 2020 to be the least trustworthy part.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#145

Post by ajsnigrutin »

layer8 wrote: post #131
chmod600 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also no evidence that it came from animals directly. Given that there are really only two plausible hypotheses, and nondirect evidence of either, we have to speculate based on circumstantial evidence. And if one hypothesis is floated around the media, we need to raise the other one as well. I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that there can be global media conspiracies, even though the…

Why do we have to speculate? If both hypotheses are plausible, should it make a significant difference for the measures we take which one is actually true? If evidence comes out showing which hypothesis is true, does it suddenly make the other one retroactively less plausible? I mean, it would be interesting to know what really happened, but it doesn’t change all that much.

It does. Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again.

If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do. If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken, or such things should not be done in labs with iffy security practices... or maybe even not done at all.

Many workplace (and general) safety rules were written because someone has died doing something (now considered) against the rules. Killing a few millions of people and stoping the planets economy for almost two years seems like a terrible cost of some research gone bad.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#146

Post by kgarten »

null_object wrote: post #73
barnacled wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more than natural origins and they are not being honest in their attempts to dismiss these papers.

> There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here... A counter: https://ayjchan.medium.com/evidence-for-a-natural-origin-of-... As for Angie Rasmussen - she is hardly the dispassionate scientist that you seem to want to portray her as, in your post[0] [0] https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/a-toxic-milie...

Did you read the thread? The counter just takes the first paper she cites into account ... Not the second: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337

Both of them are interesting reads. I find a natural cause now more plausible after reading them.

Yet, of course nobody knows and we might not for a long time (or never).

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#147

Post by ajross »

wk_end wrote: post #141
ajross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1…

> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.

> In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.

No, that's a fallacy. If I find an apple on the ground at the supermarket, it is evidence that there are apples at the supermarket. It is not evidence that there are no apples at my friend's home where I found no apples. I just didn't check the refrigerator.

The linked thread says, precisely, "Wuhan--a city 1,000 miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like coronaviruses". And that is not correct.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#148

Post by M0r13n »

I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked and the chemists know something about the long term effects that they do not publicly disclose.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#149

Post by narwal46 »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…

No post body was provided.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#150

Post by phkahler »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #45

If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…

I think it's important to set aside the question of weather Covid was made in a lab. For the sake of argument let's say it was not. There were proposals to do the kind of experimental work that would have created a virus very much like Covid-19. Those who wrote the proposal and shopped it around for funding probably considered it relatively harmless to do, both in a lab, and should it accidentally get out (it's just a corona virus after all).

The fact remains that there are people out there who want to make stuff like that in a lab. That kind of "work" needs to stop.

Thats what I take away from Covid whether it came from a lab or not, it very well could have given what goes on in labs. The fact that a lab leak is highly plausible is the problem, not the truth of it happening in this case.

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