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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#251

Post by kgwgk »

Izkata wrote: post #122
letmevoteplease wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The figure is based on this study, which currently puts it at 241K cases per day: https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data

Their source links to https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/covid-incidence-uk Which says: > According to the latest COVID Symptom Study app figures, there are currently 1,472 daily new cases of COVID in the UK on average over the two weeks up to 04 July 2020 (excluding care homes) [*]. The data suggests no decline from last week (1,445 cases). The latest figures were based on the data from almost 3 million users, 11…

How is that link relevant? We're not in 2020.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#252

Post by qbasic_forever »

theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19.

Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab, we cooked them up by dropping all mitigations and pretending the pandemic was over instead of quashing this virus for good.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#253

Post by fortuna86 »

affgrff wrote: post #64

There is an episode of Lex Fridman's Podcast with Jamie Metzl on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I Metzl is highly confident of a lab-leak. However, lab-leak doesn't require that the virus has been tampered with and I somewhat agree that is important to know if the virus escaped due to inadequate lab safety.

Exactly. People yelling "censorship" forget that the lab leak theory was mostly about how COVID was engineered as a bioweapon, which still remains a conspiracy.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#254

Post by kernal »

>We co-authored a book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, on this topic in 2021 and it proved to be an odd experience. Eschewing speculation and sticking to what we could prove, we delved deep into the evidence and wove together the threads that linked bat viruses from southern China or Southeast Asia with an outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019. We concluded that it was impossible to be sure yet, but two theories were plausible: spillover from an animal to a person at a market, or an accident in a laboratory or during a research field trip.

> Our book received praise from readers: we received letters and emails from senior scientists, politicians, businessmen, journalists, and others commending it as a non-fiction whodunnit.

>All that was gratifying. But it stood in marked contrast to the reaction in much of the media. CNN invited us on to discuss the book then cancelled at the last minute — at the behest of their health editor. The BBC simply ignored the book altogether, as did the other mainstream US and UK networks.

The mainstream media is the enemy

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#255

Post by yonaguska »

giantrobot wrote: post #211
sixQuarks wrote: post #48

Let’s not forget that talking about the lab leak hypothesis last year resulted in censorship among social media platforms and YouTube This is why free speech is important, it is impossible to rely on “fact checkers”.

Quoted post unavailable.

Ever considered the possibility of discussion being stifled due to intentional "false flagged" information. We don't want an idea being talked about. Let's just create a socially unacceptable similar conspiracy theory, then censor everything related.

Think Alex Jones talking about nanobots in the vaccines, well now you can't be taken seriously with any vaccine related discourse or you get lumped in with the nanobots, 5g crowd.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#256

Post by dehrmann »

theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

As someone in tech, what bothers me is all the attention AI gets for possible ethical problems, while biologists are doing some pretty scary experiments with potentially large-scale negative consequences, and they've gotten relatively little attention.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#257

Post by mikeyouse »

trhway wrote: post #214
mikeyouse wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear - the NIH never financed any GoF experiments in Wuhan. There was a proposal that was never funded, and even in that proposal, the GoF work would happen in Baric's North Carolina lab.

To be clear - during 2014-2019 NIH actually paid $3.6M to EcoHealth Alliance under the grants clearly specifying the coronavirus GoF experiments in Wuhan with the "Human subjects included" checked. EcoHealth naturally kept about 75% of it as "commission/management fee/whatever" because conducting those experiments at BSL2 in Wuhan was much cheaper than the original experiments in US at BSL3+ (in those original experi…

Aside from he rest of the weird conspiracy insinuation I've come to expect - you should probably know that horseshoe bats are endemic to the caves around Wuhan and were studied by virologists in the hills above the biggest animal trade in Hubei.. So it's probably best if you stop making the silly claim about them being 1,000km away if you want to bolster your case.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824899/

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#258

Post by fortuna86 »

warning26 wrote: post #121
fortuna86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's not either/or. COVID could have come from nature, captured and studied in a lab, then escaped.

Considering this literally happened before at the Wuhan lab (among a group of sample collectors), this is, I think, the most likely scenario.

I agree. What is the previous case you mentioned, do you have a citation ?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#259

Post by dehrmann »

cbb330 wrote: post #118
andai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, Covid did leak from a Chinese lab, but it was in December 2021: >A lab worker was bitten and infected by a mouse infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant at a high-biosecurity facility in Taipei. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

Taipei, the capitol of Taiwan, is not a Chinese entity. This is a lab leak from a Taiwanese lab.

I know what you mean, but Taipei is the capital of the Republic of China.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#260

Post by fortuna86 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #117
fortuna86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's not either/or. COVID could have come from nature, captured and studied in a lab, then escaped.

Indeed. It could also have come from nature and while it was being studied in the lab, a similar strain made a jump to humans.

Yes but in that case, why would it emerge in Wuhan, hundreds of miles away from Southern China, where Coronaviruses actually exist in nature ?
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