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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

unherd.com

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#31

Post by fguerraz »

It's not that the origin story is not important, it's not that people don't care, it's that it is a distraction.

It doesn't help solve the crisis.

The article makes the comparison with a nuclear bomb. This is a bad comparison. If we were attacked by a sentient creature, we could reason with it and mitigate further damage or escalation.

In the case of a virus, it's good to know to prevent future pandemics maybe, and there is an academic interests, but it doesn't help with the current situation.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#32

Post by abainbridge »

malikNF wrote: post #13

Wait the article says there's 200k cases in the U.K everyday now? Why is google reporting way lower? [1] [1] https://i.imgur.com/u6KABa5.png

I guess it is because the UK stopped doing as much testing. Presumably Google is reporting the number of positive tests (or something) and many people with covid don't bother getting tested any more.

The ONS is still doing random sampling and extrapolating to say how many people in the country are infected. "Around 1.7m people in the UK had coronavirus in the week ending 18 June" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#33

Post by EA_itsinthegame »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #21
whatshisface wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should contact the patent holder and let them know they're being infringed upon. ;)

That would be, ironically, moderna. Will the patent court award them negative damages? On a more serious note, to stave off conspiratorial thinking, it should be "not crazy" that a moderna furin sequence appear. If I told a biochemist to go and insert a furin cleavage site into a virus, that grad student would do an NCBI blast search and get a list of all sequences. Maybe they are more knowledgeable than me and did k…

Is the founder of Moderna meta-scientific for claiming that COVID leaked from a laboratory? Or would that be too ironic?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#35

Post by edvards »

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…

Can you tell more about 1 and 2, maybe with some sources added? this is pretty big

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#36

Post by NationalPark »

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…

Can you link some sources here? Call me skeptical, but if the evidence is as convincing as you make it sound, then it implies a pretty widespread conspiracy among experts (of many countries and affiliations) who would understand the implications yet are deliberately mis-communicating via their podcasts, news appearances, papers in famous journals, etc. Are there any papers published on this or is it just in the book that the authors of this article are selling? I'm not sure if I'm confusing this author with a Matt Ridley who seems to be an eccentric but minor British noble who writes about fringe climate change ideas?

Edit: Ok I figured out the source of the claims, it's the Alina Chen (I didn't realize she was co author) stuff. And it is indeed the Viscount Matt Ridley himself!

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#37

Post by pphysch »

buttocks wrote: post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

Weird non-sequitor. Chinese people don't obsess over and celebrate those sad days just like American people don't obsess over and celebrate the innumerable crises and human rights abuses of their own, say, the MOVE bombing. A little empathy goes a long way.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#38

Post by kazz »

> As you may have guessed from our strange spelling, UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places.

Ahh yes, definitely the mission statement of a reputable source.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#39

Post by UIUC_06 »

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…

Excuse me, but scientists are not public policy makers. Their job is to follow the evidence, not publish based on what they think will happen if they do.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#40

Post by knorker »

What happened is that they are clearly lying to us, and they hold all the evidence. What do you want us to do?

Either they're lying to cover up a lab leak, or they're lying up to but not including about lab leak.

Multiple near-nuclear events happened during the cold war, averted several times only by a single Soviet soldier using his common sense. We didn't find out about that until much much later.

Give it a few decades, and we can hope to find out.

Gulf on Tonkin, anyone?

It's not that I don't care, it's that it's not a fight I believe can be won this decade.

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