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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#291

Post by qbasic_forever »

aftbit wrote: post #272
qbasic_forever wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Source please? Everything I've read about latest Omicrons suggests that they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity, and substantially _less_ severe in terms of hospitalization and deaths. By and large, this is what you'd expect to happen at the end of a pandemic, regardless of our response.

You admit it yourself, I will quote you:

"they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity"

Intrinsic severity of the virus doesn't change the fact it is the most transmissible virus we have ever seen in the world.

Even if it is intrinsically less severe than previous variants, because we are allowing it to spread to EVERYONE in the world we are seeing a much worse impact. Did you miss that in the US alone we've had over 160k deaths from COVID-19 just in the last 6 months of this year? No other virus has had this level of death in the same timeframe.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#292

Post by mikeyouse »

rzz3 wrote: post #278
harshreality wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the "evidence" against lab-leak is just weird insinuation. Speculation about how the virus wasn't created wholly synthetically: nobody is seriously arguing it was, or it wouldn't be SARS-family. Arguments that the spike protein binding domain wasn't synthetically engineered: it didn't have to be. It could have been serial passage in humanized mice, considering that's what Daszak and co had literally proposed…

Very well put. One thing I’d add, is that this entire debate regarding the lab leak hypothesis is entirely politicized, and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have.

That doesn't mean each are equally likely.. hence the huge section in the article I linked about bayesian priors.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#293

Post by jahewson »

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…

That's a very well researched article you link to, but assumptions are tricky things:

> The fact that there were two distinct lineages early on is of critical importance, as this could imply a hidden community transmission for months (lineage A could’ve evolved into lineage B) before the outbreak at the Huanan market. Alternatively, the two lineages could have evolved in an animal reservoir from a shared MRCA before separately jumping into humans at the market. Option one is compatible with a lab leak scenario, option two is not.

Option two assumes that the lab had only one lineage of the virus - but it collected samples out in the wild and could easily have collected both together, mixed and stored them, and leaked them together. So the wonderfully detailed analysis rests on this assumption.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#294

Post by eric_cc »

snowwrestler wrote: post #225
phatboyslim wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The origin story is paramount to preventing future outbreaks and to the loss of, and disruption to, our way of life. The US took the same position on combating terrorism when it rooted out Al-Qaeda. To stop future loss of life, the root cause needs to be identified and dealt with. I vehemently disagree with the assessment that the origin is not instrumental to the defense of future outbreaks.

No it is not, because it is undisputed that viruses can evolve to infect humans. If we had 100% solid proof SARS-COV-2 originated in a lab, it would not change our approach to detecting or mitigating future outbreaks. We always have to prepare for either. It’s not like it never occurred to anyone before that dangerous infectious agents could escape a lab. It was a well-known possibility and was incorporated into U.S.…

> The Trump administration

It was Trump’s fault!! /s

So what you’re saying is we should be more concerned with defense and accept that viruses will be engineered. I don’t disagree with this line of thinking but I also believe we must be on the offensive too. We can’t just accept that labs will build viruses.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#295

Post by adamrezich »

giantrobot wrote: post #228
enchiridion wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a justification. You’re just saying that some speech you approve of was tied to some speech you disapprove of, so both should be censored. No speech should be censored.

The owner of a service has no requirement or duty to carry anyone's speech. A person's freedom of speech doesn't override anyone else's freedom of association. So a private company can censor or reject any speech using their service unless otherwise mandated by law (common carrier etc).

ok, so what's the impetus for censoring it then

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#296

Post by mikeyouse »

elif wrote: post #243
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…

What makes you put on evidence in quotes? The deletion of the bat coronavirus database at Wuhan institute of virology prior to the pandemic is an undisputed and central fact. Your quotation marks do nothing to diminish this fact alone's inherent demand that Occam's razor be inverted.

This is exactly what I mean about insinuation.

Spell out specifically what you think a deleted database proves and the sequence of events that would lead to it being deleted.

The timeline of this stuff is extremely important to disproving some of the sillier claims. This database that's a "Central Fact" was deleted several months before the first case of a virus with an unmitigated R0 of >5.

They would have to know there was a novel coronavirus spreading for months before the rest of the world. Aside from the rest of the obvious ways everyone else would know, DNA phylogeny of all known cases disproves this.

The conceit falls apart immediately.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#297

Post by pseudo0 »

epgui wrote: post #222
propagandist wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was deliberate disinformation in order to save masks for the "frontline workers". Fauci has stated that in one of the hearings.

It wasn't disinformation. It was no secret that one of the reasons masks weren't recommended for general public use was that hospitals and clinics should be supplied as a priority. If you got a different impression than this message, blame wherever you get your news from.

What, the US Surgeon General? https://archive.ph/KgfXW

> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

> They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

It's hard to get more direct than that. It wasn't just about preserving supply for healthcare workers, high-level government officials were explicitly stating that masks were not effective for the general public.

Fortunately we have archives of all this stuff, as many statements (like this one) were later deleted.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#298

Post by saila »

dehrmann wrote: post #259
cbb330 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people are referring to PRC (AKA mainland China, nominally communist) not ROC (AKA Taiwan, a republic) when they say China (at least in the west), so your statement is true but not particularly helpful in this context.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#299

Post by SilverBirch »

choward wrote: post #221
SilverBirch wrote: post #140

I think this article is a very good example of the sort of pseudo-compelling argument. It's like one step along the road between 4chan conspiracy to Tucker Carlson. It's lots of stuff that sound like reasonable arguments, but are actually not. It starts by couching itself in the actual concensus - other people concluding that's a possibility! - Yes, that's true, but what they're concluding as a possibility out of a c…

Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds to someone who isn't partisan and doesn't watch mainstream media? Besides the blatant lies like saying Fauci didn't fund the wuhan lab you use political terms like labeling people right wingers because they don't agree with you. That's the same strategy as the mainstream media you are defending. Then you mock people for wanting an actual debate. You need to get out of your bu…

The guy writes an article accusing everyone who disagree with him of being corrupt and you take offence to me calling him right wing? Bizarre.

Here’s the problem- you accuse me of mindlessly believing CNN (no idea what that had to do with anything, both I and the author are British) but the truth is that I’m just applying the same level of scrutiny to the author as you would have me apply to CNN.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#300

Post by themgt »

ikiris wrote: post #115
ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

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

July 10, 2020:

The new coronavirus is likely spreading through the air to some degree, the top U.S. infectious disease official said on Friday, one day after the World Health Organization urged further studies on the ways the virus is transmitted.

“Still some question about aerosol but likely some degree of aerosol,” Anthony Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said by video during a panel session at a COVID-19 conference organized by the International AIDS Society.

Fauci on Thursday had said it was a “reasonable assumption” that airborne transmission was occurring even though there was not a lot of solid evidence behind it. The WHO urged more studies on the issue.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-meetin...

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