421–430 of 868 posts
It was never an implausible theory so the censorship over it was foolish. Of course the immediate jump to conclusion in the first few months by some who found it politically expedient was no better either. People need to be more comfortable saying I don’t know but we are looking into it.
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Can someone help me understand why a lab leak looks worse for China than zoonotic spillover? Why would Senator Cotton need it to be a lab leak to give him more leverage? From what I understand, one theory is that China has for decades tolerated unsanitary wet markets that allowed dangerous diseases to evolve, get stronger, and eventually transmit to human hosts. They'd been warned about this over and over again and h…
*I think these were the levels, I'm going from memory.
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I can’t find the actual order but a search turns up many articles about it. Here’s one: https://www.nature.com/articles/514411a
> The US government surprised many researchers on 17 October when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible. So it's not clear what the actual order entails and how temporary it was. And the whole advisory language ("asked scientists") seems to be kinda distinct from "banned". > The grants are all public and document gain of function resear…
rootclaim gave the lab leak theory an 87% probability using Bayesian analysis back in 2020: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
Which means what? "Rootclaim" then bet $100,000 on being able to back that claim in a independant structured 18 hour long debate of their own devising .. and lost the $100,000. The Rootclaim assessment was worthless. See: https://protagonist-science.medium.com/lableak-truther-loses... Or watch the entire 18 hour debate in which that claim was shredded. Given your user profile about: it's easy to see why you might giv…
I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-...
I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.
If we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people…
Agree, that's the only sane way to approach things. I worry that it's already relatively rare for people to realize that problems in general can be multi-causal, let alone that we can approach problems as probabilistically multi-causal. Placing blame, on the other hand, is something everyone understands.
War happens to be my least favourite colour for a bikeshed...
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While I am very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis as an infectious disease epidemiologist, the DoE has a fair amount of expertise via the national labs.
Can you please share the reasons why you are skeptical?
1) People I trust are skeptical, including people who are opposed to gain of function research. I've found Angela Rasmussen to be one of the better voices in terms of discussing the evidence for a natural origin, but she's far from the only one.
2) We have had two naturally occurring coronavirus epidemics during my career. A third is all but inevitable -- I wrote a grant in October 2019 suggesting a novel coronavirus as an example case for a modeling exercise, for example (sadly, said grant didn't get funded). So for me, there's a very strong prior on coronaviruses emerging as significant public health threats.
3) At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
4) The lab leak hypothesis, in terms of evidence, relies on WIV, the Chinese Government, the WHO, etc. being broadly incompetent except when it comes to the characterization of the initial cases when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which is arguably the hardest part of any outbreak.
Fauci has been preemptively pardoned for gain of function research (lying or funding), so the bureaucrats can now pander to Trump. Anyway, we have always been at war with Oceania and China is now our enemy! Next week the NYT will use the term "Wuhan Virus". This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? I feel l…
FWIW, the pardon doesn't mention gain of function research. ( https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl ). This pardon applies every bit as much to him parallel parking while attending a Chief Medical Advisor meeting as it does to gain of function research. > This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now?…
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> The US government surprised many researchers on 17 October when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible. So it's not clear what the actual order entails and how temporary it was. And the whole advisory language ("asked scientists") seems to be kinda distinct from "banned". > The grants are all public and document gain of function resear…
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I looked at the first part of the whole narrative that seemed out-of-place and it turned out to be not quite as claimed.
> which Fauci helped EcoHealth avoid
But had he? What exactly the order entailed in the first place?
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The problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.
I think the parent is arguing that lab leak is plausible, even if it wasn’t certainly the cause. GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible. Most folks had no idea about the sort of GoF being done, and the attitude of many researchers (highly dismissive of risks) should worry us a lot. We should also be more worried about zoonotic transmission too, and press harder to ban wet markets. I don't thi…
Even if you don’t think the lab leak was the source of COVID-19 virus, we know for a fact that lab leaks occur even at the highest level security facilities.
I’m not sure about gain of function research one way or the other, I’m just commenting that leaks will happen.