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Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

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Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#431

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

chc wrote: post #224
temp8964 wrote: post #140

Wow. Why every comment questioned your argument is downvoted or even dead? > is-ought 34 minutes ago [dead] [–] > Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement? How is this even dead? It's only asking for a reference.

Can you link to something that proves this is only asking for a reference? That's what the comment sounded like to me, and why I downvoted it. It does not come across to me as a good-faith request for a reference, and more like an attempt to DOS the conversation, similar to a Gish gallop. For example, it's asking for a specific link that constitutes proof of a general observation of tendency. That doesn't scream "rea…

I don't see how any conversation could work under the standard you're proposing. The original comment was based on a wild assertion about the geographical placement of virology labs; no argument or evidence was offered, and it's not clear to me that there's any real trend it's referring to. If it's unreasonable to ask for a more detailed explanation of the assertion or specific evidence in favor of the assertion, how are people supposed to engage?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#432

Post by jounker »

gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

It’s quite possible that it’s a pangolin virus. Guess what trafficked in Chinese wet markets?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#433

Post by throwaway53453 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #427
lamontcg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference between all of those and this virus is that those were leaks of already-known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 wasn't known to exist before 2019 and there's no known precursor virus. There's a somewhat closely related virus that infected the miners in Yunnan but it was only 96% similar. There's nothing at all in this article on how SARS-CoV-2 was discovered or created. The problem I have is that China isn't…

>The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. Why should they be interested? We know how SARS type viruses can spread to humans, we know what other species are vulnerable, and we know what things make it more or less likely. A new outbreak was not a surprising result. What benefit is there to aggressively investigating the exact transmission method? If your mink idea w…

I'd argue China needs to engage in proper sanitation and stop treating citizens as disposable.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#434

Post by musicale »

I remember reading this article in the WP a year ago which seemed to conflate viral escape with bioengineering and imply that lack of the latter implies lack of the former:

"Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#435

Post by f430 »

I recall many people calling the Wuhan lab leak theory as conspiracy on HN. They were adamant that it came from bats. Interestingly enough, those accounts were all brand new accounts and some haven't been active on HN for several months all of sudden started coming out of the wood works.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#436

Post by [deleted] »

lamontcg wrote: post #289
woodruffw wrote: post #158

My understanding of the author's central thesis is this: the US, despite its world-class virology and disease study labs, regularly has lapses in procedure that regularly lead to situations in which the public might be exposed. Given that this is happening in our own backyard, we might reasonably expect countries of similar status (like China) to experience similar lapses. That reads as reasonable to me, but raises a…

The biggest difference between all of those and this virus is that those were leaks of already-known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 wasn't known to exist before 2019 and there's no known precursor virus. There's a somewhat closely related virus that infected the miners in Yunnan but it was only 96% similar. There's nothing at all in this article on how SARS-CoV-2 was discovered or created. The problem I have is that China isn't…

[deleted]

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#437

Post by enchiridion »

weaksauce wrote: post #378
enchiridion wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's infuriating. I'm not sure what the solution is though. We can just not talk about the very real lab leak hypothesis because some people are dangerously unstable.

you can just call it covid-19 instead of the insert racist nickname here for it and then discuss where the origin it may be from. those two things are not mutually exclusive. hell, the spanish flu is generally not thought to be originated in spain but they were the only ones talking about because the other countries had a gag on discussing it.

Maybe. Based on the circumstantial evidence and the lack of viable competing hypotheses, I firmly believe that it escaped from the Wuhan lab.

What does an unstable person do with that info? It seems like calling it the "Chinese virus" is relatively benign by comparison.

Does censoring do anything here?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#438

Post by ineptech »

SpaceRaccoon wrote: post #207
tbenst wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is irresponsibility propagating a conspiracy theory and elevating its status in the public’s mind. I’m a bioscientist. It’s frustrating to respond with evidence and in good faith, and be downvoted by those who simply disagree. But sadly it appears that the loudest voice prevails over reason. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00599-7

Could you explain why evidence that the virus evolved naturally contradicts the lab-leak theory? I'm all ears and waiting to hear the reasoning. As others have pointed out, lab-leak does not imply artificially developed. > I’m a bioscientist. And I'm a Bayesian analyst. Surely your position is that it is a coincidence that: - the virus appeared to originate in Wuhan - genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% id…

> And I'm a Bayesian analyst. Surely your position is that it is a coincidence that...

Then you ought to know that seeing more circumstantial evidence for A than B does not imply that A is more likely. What would imply that A is more likely is if you find more circumstantial evidence for A than whatever amount you would expect to find if A didn't happen.

That's why good Bayesians place so little weight on circumstantial evidence: because it's difficult or impossible to predict the expected amount of circumstantial evidence for something that didn't happen. It would involve answering questions like, "When a novel coronavirus moves from the animal population to humans without a lab accident, what are the odds that it will happen within X miles of a lab studying such viruses?" That's pretty difficult to answer, given that we don't know a lot about how or why that happens yet.

And it shouldn't even need to be said that this all goes double when the thing being argued over is political (because, even if you personally are unbiased, the people gathering and publishing the evidence you rely on may not be) and treble when the evidence is technical and outside your area of expertise.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#439

Post by esja »

musicale wrote: post #434

I remember reading this article in the WP a year ago which seemed to conflate viral escape with bioengineering and imply that lack of the latter implies lack of the former: "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...

The mainstream press were all conflating accidental leaks with bioweapons engineering. It went on for months.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#440

Post by kittiepryde »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #427
lamontcg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference between all of those and this virus is that those were leaks of already-known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 wasn't known to exist before 2019 and there's no known precursor virus. There's a somewhat closely related virus that infected the miners in Yunnan but it was only 96% similar. There's nothing at all in this article on how SARS-CoV-2 was discovered or created. The problem I have is that China isn't…

>The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. Why should they be interested? We know how SARS type viruses can spread to humans, we know what other species are vulnerable, and we know what things make it more or less likely. A new outbreak was not a surprising result. What benefit is there to aggressively investigating the exact transmission method? If your mink idea w…

Science is about collecting data, verifying, collecting more, in a repeating never ending cycle. Stopping science (especially in areas of active present day research) in the belief that we know and are done with it, just isn't sound logic. Viruses are not yet solved.
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