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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#341

Post by mikeyouse »

trhway wrote: post #267
mikeyouse wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you didn't notice you're pushing the 2021 work by that same Wuhan institute. It is as trustworthy in that matter as that EcoHealth Aliance's owner/PI Daszak's conclusion that the coronavirus wasn't of their making.

Yes, the WIV does indeed study the bats that we're questioning. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan".

Do you think they just invented the bats? I mean... they're on video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#342

Post by thereddaikon »

acdha wrote: post #332
rzz3 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have. This has been extensively investigated by scientists - it’d be a career making move if you could prove something that juicy! - but the problem is that the conclusions aren’t completely certain but rather comparing probability & the limited evidence to concl…

Scientists aren't going to prove lab leak one way or the other because the evidence isn't going to be in the virus itself.

The for or against lies with the lab and the staff working there and the PRC is not going to allow an open and honest investigation to either prove or discount it.

So unless it can be proven to have come from somewhere else, you are likely never going to settle whether it was lab leak.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#343

Post by LordDragonfang »

daveevad wrote: post #266
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.

I'm not sure that is correct. In a subsequently FOIA'd email, Fauci told a colleague on February 5, 2020. > Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.

That's a well known fact about how masks work in general, yes. They have a large effect on transmission from the wearer and a comparatively small effect in preventing transmission to the wearer.

However, when you have a limited supply of masks, it's impossible to give them out to every potentially-infected person, so saving them for high-risk people (like healthcare professionals, who also have the highest risk of becoming infected themselves) is still rational.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#344

Post by trhway »

mikeyouse wrote: post #333
Nimitz14 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The rest of the comment is the same exact meritless insinuation I've replied to 100 other times in this thread. It's tiring replying to people who don't understand the first thing about biology or virology because you have to retrace so much ground just to get them to the point where they can comprehend why they're 'not even wrong'. But sure, I'll bite. Aside from the completely false claim there aren't horseshoe bat…

No post body was provided.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#345

Post by bayesian_horse »

dpbriggs wrote: post #339
bayesian_horse wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand biology. It is possible to date the divergence of genomes using a genetic clock. So they know if those spike proteins had been recombinated. Serial passage in mice can't be ruled out but is quite out there. Lots of theories can't be completely ruled out, but wild speculation like that is not very productive. For the lab-leak theory to be true, a "pandemicable" zoonotic virus (a VERY rare thing) h…

> For the lab-leak theory to be true, a "pandemicable" zoonotic virus (a VERY rare thing) has to somehow make it into a lab undetected. That's not a necessary condition and it's ridiculous to think that's the only hinge by which the hypothesis stands. Another far more plausible idea is that a mistake occurred somewhere and it was covered up. This has occurred before in authoritarian regimes before. An input to a mole…

Of course it is a necessary condition. In order to leak from the lab, the virus has to be collected and be propagated in the lab. And all the rest isn't plausible if they knew the bat virus they had in their vials had the potential to cause a pandemic. But it must have had some rare "talent" that was as yet undiscovered. Otherwise nothing of the "lab leak" hypothesis makes sense. You can't "gain-of-function" just any virus and end up with a killer pandemic.

You can interpret a molecular clock or a phylogenetic tree qualitatively, and you would expect to see multiple samples with the protein in question, but which have individually acquired so many mutations that they must have diverged before the dynamic. That would mean the protein sequence in question predates the pandemic by a long shot, unless you think the Wuhan lab tested the Virus in Laos...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#346

Post by mikeyouse »

gojomo wrote: post #329
mikeyouse wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of your points are directly and conclusively addressed in the post.. > First, because viruses travel easily – so even if 100% of early cases were around the market, it could have reached the market via a lab worker There were two distinct lineages at the market with a cluster of positive environmental samples in the wild animal section. I would love to hear a plausible theory on how two unrelated lineages came t…

The prior linked post is a gish-gallop of overconfident motivated reasoning. "Two lineages" in rapid-succession is weird - but no better explained by two zoonoses (that left no hints in any animal population) than two lab-leaks. Worobey et al's analysis is at the mercy of Chinese data sources, and even if all early cases were exclusively in the market, and even the live-animal section, that doesn't disprove lab origi…

> "Two lineages" in rapid-succession is weird - but no better explained by two zoonoses (that left no hints in any animal population) than two lab-leaks.

I mean, everyone can stop reading here... This is patently false. Multiple Spillover is a readily reproducible phenomenon that perfectly explains the dual lineages.

Again, spell out specifically the route how two distinct lineages would be present at the market under the lab leak scenario.

> It might slant things slightly against it - but when no other animals, anywhere from Laos to Wuhan, have revealed any of these supposed intermediate forms – that somehow zoonosed twice, only after reaching Wuhan

You literally only need one animal shedding virus - it's how literally every other pandemic started. The market was shut down weeks after it was clear that a pandemic was underway and only after that did the authorities start looking for infected animals. Absence of evidence here isn't remotely a substitution for evidence of the absence.

> with a dangerous new viral feature Wuhan researchers had proposed splicing into bat viruses?!? – the slant remains very much in the other direction.

This part is just false and belies your lack of understanding of the science and the direction of causality. The reason scientists proposed studying the FCS is because it was identified a decade+ ago as both dangerous for zoonosis and readily possible with natural mutation.

All of these virologists studying coronaviruses weren't doing it out of the blue, but because everyone knew that it was the single greatest zoonotic risk we faced.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#347

Post by Zeratoss »

Izkata wrote: post #95
edvards wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Please dont spread misinformation.

The HIV paper has been withdrawn and was total bunk.

See comments on the paper:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1?...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#348

Post by dpbriggs »

stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

We already had intense media speculation about the source of the virus at the start of the pandemic because _people wanted to know_. It would have been nice to have a proper investigation at the start of the pandemic as they may have caught evidence before it could have been destroyed.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#349

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #275
mikeyouse wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just think about what you're claiming here with this silly question. You honestly think Moderna patented a sequence multiple years ago, and then what, shared their research with the Chinese to unleash a virus and create demand for a vaccine they hadn't invented yet? Why in the world would they patent it before that? It's literally the dumbest nonsense. A more direct refutation though is that the authors were extremel…

> Did Moderna invent birds too? Maybe they did... https://birdsarentreal.com/

No. This is how you end up with flat earthers.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#350

Post by mikeyouse »

thereddaikon wrote: post #342
acdha wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have. This has been extensively investigated by scientists - it’d be a career making move if you could prove something that juicy! - but the problem is that the conclusions aren’t completely certain but rather comparing probability & the limited evidence to concl…

Scientists aren't going to prove lab leak one way or the other because the evidence isn't going to be in the virus itself. The for or against lies with the lab and the staff working there and the PRC is not going to allow an open and honest investigation to either prove or discount it. So unless it can be proven to have come from somewhere else, you are likely never going to settle whether it was lab leak.

But we've pretty much established that it was a virus of natural origin - all of our molecular techniques leave signs, so an honest discussion would foreclose that possibility. That doesn't eliminate the possibility that it was a natural virus which had been collected and subsequently escaped due to bad lab technique but the former is too attractive a conspiracy theory to let go..
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