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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#351

Post by dekhn »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #334
dekhn wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "date divergence of genomes using a genetic clock"? I am curious to learn about such a tecnology. If you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_clock that is highly non-quantitative.

It is quite quantitative, just not very precise. Good enough to tell you if a Virus emerged more than a couple of years ago or not.

Can you give me a link to a good example of that (ideally, non-covid)? my understanding is that it's only good for relative rates over evolutionary time so I'd like to see a counterexample.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#352

Post by adamrezich »

giantrobot wrote: post #336
adamrezich wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's inflammatory, outright disinformation, outright mis information, or just something the service owner doesn't want to carry. Discussion a lab leak hypothesis is not the same as claiming COVID leaked from a bioweapon laboratory or was intentionally leaked for . That being said, social media sites flagging posts is very different from outright censorship. It's not uncommon for someone to actually get censored/remov…

> It's inflammatory, outright disinformation, outright misinformation

so, the vast majority of social media then? what makes this issue so special? why did all of the major social media networks censor/"flag" anyone publicly speculating only certain speculations about this issue?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#353

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

> covered up. This has occurred before in authoritarian regimes before.

To be fair, cover ups aren't exclusive to authoritarian regimes.

Futhermore, in this case, The West seems to be willingly and shamelessly towing the Communist Party line. Can we add conspiracy to the smell being given off?

Science should be obcessed with truth. Geez. Looks like science isn't immune to cover ups and conspiracy either.

"What is the source?" will take a place next to "Who killed JFK?".

p.s. Slightly off topic, but off the media sources mentioned (e.g., CNN) how much of their revenue comes from Big Pharma or Big X that wouldn't fare well if lab leak could be supported?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#354

Post by ChemSpider »

mikeyouse wrote: post #247
kneel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 No it's pretty easy to see that they're pointing towards GoF research performed at Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab very proximal to the origin of the outbreak. The intercept has done a great job FOIA'ing chains of emails showing real concerns with the veracity o…

You do realize that in opposition to my point about it being weird insinuation, you posted a bunch of weird insinuation promoted by some of the dimmest people in congress? There was a legitimate debate in 2020 about the origin of the virus, which the emails "released" by the House adequately demonstrate. Now nearly all of the people in those emails have updated their priors to favor zoonosis, which is given as eviden…

> all of the people in those emails have updated their priors to favor zoonosis,

According the to released FOIA'ed emails, these scientists changed their mind within 1-2 days from "wow, could really be a lab leak" to "lab leak is a conspiracy theory" - why that?

None of them can explain what made them change their mind on this short time frame in spring 2020. Was there new knowledge? A break thru experiment? They refuse to say.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#355

Post by byecomputer »

mikeyouse wrote: post #292
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.

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

I sort of lost faith in the article's willingness to take lab leak seriously when they threw this map up[0] and inexplicably did not label where the Wuhan Institute of Virology is on it. For reference[1].

[0] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Huanan+Seafood+Market,+Fazha...

It's not at all far-fetched to think the virus piggybacked 10 miles before finding a nice home for itself at a wet market, after which it went gangbusters and infected lots of people. Obviously the virus proliferated in the market, but that doesn't necessarily make the market the origin. The two bottom 'Weibo data' maps from the first link show clusters on both sides of the rivers and also very close to the lab.

That's just the most obvious bit of bias, but I'm confident that article isn't being as fair-handed as it's pretending to be.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#356

Post by mikeyouse »

dekhn wrote: post #351
bayesian_horse wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite quantitative, just not very precise. Good enough to tell you if a Virus emerged more than a couple of years ago or not.

Can you give me a link to a good example of that (ideally, non-covid)? my understanding is that it's only good for relative rates over evolutionary time so I'd like to see a counterexample.

It's a completely common technique - the same way we're tracing the current Monkeypox outbreak.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/epidemiological-up...

And is useful from an anthropological perspective on older outbreaks, also for Monkeypox;

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92315-8

The rate of mutations, especially for a virus as transmissible as Covid is a very strong signal.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#357

Post by LordDragonfang »

yonaguska wrote: post #255
giantrobot wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

...Except, Alex Jones is pretty much the opposite of a false flag - if anything, he's one of the duly appointed flag-bearers of that political slant. If you're bringing him up in a discussion about "false flags", it goes to show just how little relation the term has with reality.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#358

Post by chiefalchemist »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #340
uoaei wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "pandemicable" zoonotic virus (a VERY rare thing) has to somehow make it into a lab undetected. This is the opposite of what I understood the lab-leak theory to be: that an initially-zoonotic virus was identified and bred in a lab until someone working at that lab with lax security standards accidentally brought it out of the quarantine. This is plausible at face value. I think a lot of the really extreme vitriolic…

There's a spectrum... The zoonotic virus would need to have some rare "talent" to start with. Then there is the ominous "breeding" part, which many people describe as reckless or evil. In any case this isn't done in Humans but rather some kind of humanized model (and it's not clear that could work at all). Which is why it is quite a coincidence or accident that this process would end with a virus so well adapted to H…

> It's only plausible if you know very little about biology.

Not trolling, series question: what would these same ppl say about the monkey pox outbreaks? Why now? Why so random?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#359

Post by dang »

trhway wrote: post #344
mikeyouse wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes? It's against the site guidelines. It's also not in your interest, since it weakens your case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#360

Post by peteradio »

harshreality wrote: post #213
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…

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…

Don't fall into the trap of taking the opposite stance of bad arguments.
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