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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#401

Post by pbreit »

mikeyouse wrote: post #375
byecomputer wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find…

You do realize that your two points are in direct contradiction? You're mad at the author for not pointing out the WIV (Which had 0 confirmed cases anywhere near it until much later in the pandemic which is what the two bottom charts are referring to) but then you also grant that it looks like the market was the center of spread? In any case, they directly address this; > Importantly, even pneumonia cases that had no…

Two lineages does not preclude a lab leak. And only B was centered at the market. The market hypothesis is lacking.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#402

Post by pb9494 »

themitigating wrote: post #330
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.

Is each theory equal in terms of probability based on the evidence? That's much more important than stating that both could be true

No post body was provided.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#404

Post by byecomputer »

mikeyouse wrote: post #375
byecomputer wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find…

You do realize that your two points are in direct contradiction? You're mad at the author for not pointing out the WIV (Which had 0 confirmed cases anywhere near it until much later in the pandemic which is what the two bottom charts are referring to) but then you also grant that it looks like the market was the center of spread? In any case, they directly address this; > Importantly, even pneumonia cases that had no…

> You're mad at the author for not pointing out the WIV

Yes, an article comparing two possible originating locations should obviously show both on that graphic (especially when both places are well-within the frame of the image); I can't see any good reason for the author to have omitted that.

> but then you also grant that it looks like the market was the center of spread

Yes. And that's not contradictory to the lab leak idea, because people aren't trees and they go places after work. I think it's entirely reasonable to hypothesize that the virus escaped from the lab on a person and ended up successfully taking root in a less-than-sanitary wet market just across the river. If two-headed turtles started showing up at a Popeye's 20 minutes away from the Turtle Experiment Laboratory, would you say that Popeye's was the source of the two-headed turtles?

> You still need to explain how there are two distinct lineages at the market among the first cases!

Again, there's no reason both theories can't be true here. The caged, dirty animals definitely seemed to be the virus' first stronghold, but that doesn't mean that the new bat virus couldn't have come from the New Bat Virus Laboratory 20 minutes away from the wet market.

> Picking and choosing one data point to be skeptical of is useless, the totality of the evidence needs to be weighed.

My point is that it made the bias of the author nakedly apparent. It's an pro-wet-market argument piece, not an objective look.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#405

Post by SiempreViernes »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #158
zo1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your claims are true, then the fact that I (and others) didn't know this is seriously disturbing. I think a lot of people would have doubled down and pushed for alot more pressure and investigation into all of China's dealings across the board, if they had known. At the very least it's an indictment on our media which should be pointing out these curious coincidences. Instead I think they have other motives.

I don't know about the other two but Australian coal was put under sanction by china in the wake of their call for an investigation. This, ironically, was quite bad for china since it indirectly led to power cuts in some provinces because they couldn't use the lower grade of coal otherwise available. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/03/australia-finds-new-markets-... Power cuts later that fall: https://www.bbc.com/news/b…

Doubly ironically is that this was probably the single most effective action Morrison took to limit climate change emissions!

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#406

Post by initplus »

fortuna86 wrote: post #253
affgrff wrote: post #64

There is an episode of Lex Fridman's Podcast with Jamie Metzl on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I Metzl is highly confident of a lab-leak. However, lab-leak doesn't require that the virus has been tampered with and I somewhat agree that is important to know if the virus escaped due to inadequate lab safety.

Exactly. People yelling "censorship" forget that the lab leak theory was mostly about how COVID was engineered as a bioweapon, which still remains a conspiracy.

On the other hand, existence of this conspiracy has been used to shut down perfectly reasonable discussion around a less outlandish lab leak for months.

Even in this post opponents of the lab leak theory are still bringing up this bioweapons conspiracy - but I can't see a single lab leak proponent suggesting it's an engineered bioweapon.

The issue is the existence of this outlandish fringe theory was used to censor all reasonable discussion on the lab leak.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#407

Post by themitigating »

peteradio wrote: post #378
chiefalchemist wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

JFK was an obvious government coverup not sure why you would choose to group the two.

Obvious?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#408

Post by [deleted] »

mikeyouse wrote: post #350
thereddaikon wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#409

Post by remram »

robonerd wrote: post #318
walrus01 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is a bad actor and definitely contributed to the conspiracy madness around the virus by being so shut-down and performing such a half-assed investigation It definitely seems that the default reaction of any authoritaian/police-state environment like mainland China is to clamp down on things and restrict information whether or not it's necessary . One needs to only look at the many examples of various scandals…

> It definitely seems that the default reaction of any authoritaian/police-state environment like mainland China is to clamp down on things and restrict information whether or not it's necessary. That tactic loses them the benefit of the doubt across the board. As long as their default reaction is to suppress everything, my default assumption is that they're guilty of every accusation they suppress.

That's fair but doesn't help us find out what happened though.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#410

Post by ethbr0 »

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.

> and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth

Not to be glib, but what would be a legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth?

That this plausibly could have been of natural origin would seem to override any value in discerning where it actually came from.

If it was a lab leak, "Oops." We hastened it occuring naturally by some amount of time. Lots of people died, but that would have happened in an inevitable spillover event anyway, albeit farther in the future.

If it wasn't a lab leak, well there we are.

Or, in other words, what would we do differently if it were a lab leak? Increase biocontainment protocols? Okay, so we've made human-origin less likely. We still have to deal with naturally-occurring in the future.

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