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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#321

Post by dlubarov »

roenxi wrote: post #248
dlubarov wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite follow your point. My model assumed implicit knowledge that the virus originated somewhere in China, but not in Wuhan. Maybe I should have made that more explicit. We could change the model to not have any implicit assumption about location. Then instead of dividing by the population of China, we'd divide by the world population. The result should be the same, assuming we appropriately adjust our prior…

Well, I'm not qualified to explain this so I'm probably wrong in the detail, but a sketch of the thinking: P(Came from WIV|Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) ~= 97% However, P(Started Near a BSL Rated facility|Global Epidemic) is also high (not going to estimate it). But you have assumed that P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) = 1; which is not true. P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) is probably quite low and they got…

Hm, you're making sense otherwise but I just don't see where I assumed P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) = 1 -- could you elaborate on that?

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#322

Post by Klinky »

rpiguy wrote: post #307
Klinky wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of witch-hunt logic belongs in the dark ages. Persecuting potential experts on the situation based on vague assumptions and rumors. Awful.

No one is being persecuted. It is correct to suspect. In a murder investigation the police start with those closest related to the victim. If money is missing from a bank vault you start your investigation looking at all those who had access. When a pandemic starts outside of a lab studying the same kind of virus tearing through the world you start with the lab. We will likely never know for sure, but it is absolutel…

You're accusing a specific person of involvement in a major pandemic with evidence you admit is flimsy at best, with little to no hope of ever confirming.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#323

Post by JamesG124 »

dirtyid wrote: post #263
rumanator wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it is. Any argument akin to "I don't need to provide evidence of anything I accuse you of because you lie about things" Either you didn't understood the point or you don't want to address it. The point is that if China's regime tries to portray the fact that they operate a coronsvirus military research lab a few meters from the outbreak's alledged epicenter as nonsense while at the same time they try to pin th…

>I mean, if a work accident committed by China's military is ruled out as outlandish then why are they pushing conspiracy theories akin to area52 aliens as reasonable and plausible? Because the incident isn't about deflection to US. It was retaliating and warning US against pushing Wuhan conspiracy theory (Tom Cotton) and calling covid19 Wuhan virus (Pompeo) after WHO re-designation. Both these events proceeded the C…

It's bizarre to me that comments like this one are being downvoted instead of being engaged with

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#324

Post by roenxi »

dlubarov wrote: post #321
roenxi wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm not qualified to explain this so I'm probably wrong in the detail, but a sketch of the thinking: P(Came from WIV|Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) ~= 97% However, P(Started Near a BSL Rated facility|Global Epidemic) is also high (not going to estimate it). But you have assumed that P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) = 1; which is not true. P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) is probably quite low and they got…

Hm, you're making sense otherwise but I just don't see where I assumed P(Global Epidemic starts in Wuhan) = 1 -- could you elaborate on that?

Probably not; no.

The best I can come up with is that probability is very sensitive to what you assume is happening to generate results. In this case, you're assuming that the WIV in particular is important which I suspect links the pandemic implicitly to Wuhan. That isn't a math error, but it is not going to give you a useful result.

This isn't an error of logic so much as an error in scenario construction - it is ignoring possibility that the virus appeared near a random BSL rated facility, which is probably very high since a new virus would likely be detected first in dense urban centers where that sort of infrastructure tends to be. If the virus is likely to appear near a BSL facility, then the fact it appeared near a specific BSL facility shouldn't be leading you to the sort of answer you got.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#325

Post by rumanator »

JamesG124 wrote: post #323
dirtyid wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean, if a work accident committed by China's military is ruled out as outlandish then why are they pushing conspiracy theories akin to area52 aliens as reasonable and plausible? Because the incident isn't about deflection to US. It was retaliating and warning US against pushing Wuhan conspiracy theory (Tom Cotton) and calling covid19 Wuhan virus (Pompeo) after WHO re-designation. Both these events proceeded the C…

It's bizarre to me that comments like this one are being downvoted instead of being engaged with

A brand new account created specifically to complain about how shills trying desperately to deflect attention from China's regime to the US are being downvoted instead of upvoted ?

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#326

Post by jotakami »

throwanem wrote: post #199
jotakami wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to all my reasonable friends who think that the moment I say “it came from a lab” that means this is a bioweapon that was intentionally released. No, actually, there is a chain of evidence that makes an accidental lab leak more plausible than the theory that the virus jumped straight from an animal in a wet market hundreds of miles away from its normal habitat that just ha…

Please cite your evidence.

If you’re curious you can find it yourself. Half a dozen comments on this thread have links you can check out. This is an anonymous comment thread, not a tribunal. Do your own homework and make up your own mind.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#327

Post by highmastdon »

rumanator wrote: post #96
meowface wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.

> What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.

I haven’t read any of the documents put forward by the Chinese government, but what if that’s the proof of them not making it and providing the negative proof, by showing who _did_ release the Corona virus?

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#328

Post by onetimemanytime »

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #45
tanilama wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than presenting a story. There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus

That doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab though. "Coming from a lab" does not = man made. If they were doing research on the bats in this lab, looking to identify potential scary viruses to be ready, it is entirely possible the virus jumped from bat to researcher there and that was our patient 0.

Great point. It may have evolved once out of the lab

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#329

Post by pizza234 »

pizza234 wrote: post #54
tanilama wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than presenting a story. There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus

I agree that Daily Mail should not be used as source in informed contexts, however the thebulletin.org link has very well informed comments (at least).

Can anybody explain the downvotes? Daily Mail is a well-known unreliable source, pretty much a tabloid. The article mentioned it poor, as a matter of fact.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#330

Post by drevil-v2 »

leetcrew wrote: post #48
meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

> why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country?

Purely as a thought experiment, China's death rate and infection rate seems orders of magnitude less per capita compared to Western countries so maybe it is the perfect bioweapon for the task, minimal self casualties enough for deniability but the other side really takes a beating..

Again this is just a thought experiment and not a serious speculation :)

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