Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 792 posts

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#161

Post by mikeyouse »

secondcoming wrote: post #148
mikeyouse wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - there are a ton of such points of evidence. The strict "lab leak" proponents have essentially made an unfalsifiable hypothesis akin to the intelligent design people's "God of the Gaps" where each time there's new research that disproves a core assumption, that just means the conspiracy goes deeper. I linked it above, but aside from the fact that every other pandemic we've seen came about the same way, there's a…

Brought what to the market? Themselves or animals from a lab?

> Infected worker

To be honest, I hadn't even encountered the idea that lab employees were what, selling infected animals at the market? Is this a real thing people are arguing? Who even comes up with this stuff.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#162

Post by jahewson »

peyton wrote: post #9

If I don’t see health authorities taking lab safety seriously by thoroughly and publicly investigating, why should I believe they take vaccine safety seriously? The framing damages credibility.

Because Western authorities have no power to investigate the Chinese?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#163

Post by [deleted] »

mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#164

Post by gmiller123456 »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

Rather than just saying "we found..." and expecting people to take it at that, provide sources. If I went and looked up everything anyone claimed, that's all I'd ever do.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#165

Post by throwawaymaths »

dekhn wrote: post #100
Izkata wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2: https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/how-to-blast-your-way-to-the... Search for "moderna" then scroll up a bit.

"Using BLAST is easy". Yes, it's very easy to use BLAST to convince yourself of something that is not correct. It's a power tool being used by idiots most of the time, no wonder fingers get cut off.

Before implying it's not correct, do the math yourself. Calculate the relative drift among natural sequences and see if the moderna sequence is an outlier. How many single point mutations would it take to get from a known sequence to the moderna one.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#166

Post by leppr »

bragh wrote: post #132
ikiris wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to be blunt here. No one with medical training thought this wasn't airborne.

Funny then how for the first few months of the pandemic the emphasis and public guidance was on desinfecting hands and surfaces and endless debates about how if masks actually help.

I distinctly recall a virologist on public television early in the pandemic saying the hands and surface disinfection rituals were for psychology. He was not recommending masks either because there weren't enough to go around for everyone.

The debates about masks in the west, even after production ramped up, were a consequence of the initial confusing messages from officials. I've never seen it debated in Asia where they had masks available from the start.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#167

Post by jiveturkey42 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

No post body was provided.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#170

Post by sto_hristo »

spamizbad wrote: post #29

I will just say this: Interest in developing and deploying nuclear power dramatically declined after Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl incidents. This lead to an increased reliance on carbon-based energy sources like Coal and Natural Gas, likely killing hundreds of thousands over the years. I think skittish virologists rightly concluded that a lab-leak mea culpa would have a similar effect on virology and perhaps b…

Total nonsense. Chernobyl was covered up by the most brutal and inhumane regime ever. It's this exact cover up and lack of responsibility that disgusted a lot people and lead to the hatred and fear nuclear energy is drowning in.

There will always be cavemen that will fear what's beyond the cave exit, but they are powerless, albeit vocal, and are not responsible for the stagnation of nuclear research.

Post reply on HN