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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#601

Post by imiric »

hedora wrote: post #464
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…

Two things are clear: 1) If it was a lab leak, it was from a well-documented collaboration between American and Chinese biological weapons researchers. 2) It's extremely likely a leak like this will occur in the future, since these sorts of weapons programs are common. I don't see why most people should care if it was a leak or not. It doesn't have any impact on (2) moving forward.

> It doesn't have any impact on (2) moving forward.

Of course it does. If we know how the leak happened, we can increase safety measures to avoid it happening again in the same way. How is this not obvious?

A peculiar thing about humans is that we can learn from our mistakes. That doesn't happen if we try to pretend there was no mistake to begin with.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#602

Post by kaitaincps »

mikeyouse wrote: post #450
pbreit wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less probable than such a coronavirus originating in Wuhan of all places?

The WIV was in Wuhan due to the proximity of coronaviruses and other bat-borne diseases like rhabdovirusus.. this line of logic is akin to blaming shark research centers in South Africa for nearby attacks.

It was not. This is a widespread misconception. The local bat populations in Wuhan were negligible and their viruses were not being studied. Indeed, the local human population in Wuhan was used as a control in the WIV's studies because of their lack of any significant encounters with bats and their diseases.

Shi Zhengli, the "bat woman" who conducted most of her research 1000 miles south, in Yunnan province, had this immediate reaction to an epidemic of bat-borne sarbecoviruses starting in Wuhan: “I wondered if the municipal health authority got it wrong. I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.”

Her first panicked thought was that the outbreak might have started as a leak from her lab. Which is kind of curious, don't you think? She reported being relieved later when she found no evidence of this, but...why was that her initial thought?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#603

Post by ChrisKnott »

ChemSpider wrote: post #354
mikeyouse wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ref…

Can you link to the time these scientists "refuse to say"

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#604

Post by kaitaincps »

mikeyouse wrote: post #505
emmelaich wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so? The bats are generally from Southern China, Laos, Cambodia, .. Nowhere near Wuhan.

There are tons of horseshoe bats in Hubei, that particular misunderstanding needs to go away.

The WIV was not set up in Wuhan to study bats in Hubei. That is a total misconception. It was set up in 1956 with no connection whatsoever to bat-borne sarbecoviruses. That specialization arose later, but studies were made principally in Yunnan province. There is no connection between the bat specialization of the WIV and its location in Hubei.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#605

Post by imiric »

johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #547
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…

Thank you for posting this. We know that COVID couldn't have come from China. It came to China through frozen meat packages. WHO-China report already stated that fact. Dr. Fauci also believes that. The only reason we can't find evidence because other countries wouldn't collaborate, for obvious reasons. Racists are trying to blame China because of lack of competence of their leaders.

> WHO-China report already stated that fact.

"China said so, so it must be true."

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#606

Post by kaitaincps »

scotty79 wrote: post #559
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…

That's the problem with lab-leak theory that it's basically unfalsifiable. No matter how strong evidence you gather against it you can always dismiss it with ease.

Ditto for zoonosis. The problem is that people treat the zoonotic transfer hypothesis as some kind of default, the incumbent to which we must defer in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary. This is a mistake, given the proximity to the WIV and the nature of the work being done there. If the pandemic had started in some remote village nowhere near a lab this line of argument would be far more compelling.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#607

Post by kaitaincps »

lamontcg wrote: post #392
ChemSpider wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ref…

A lot of them thought that no sarbecoviruses had a furin cleavage site and when they were first exposed to the issue by the headlines they assigned an overly high estimate to the FCS as being evidence of human tampering. Then other experts pointed out that isn't uncommon at all, and they all adjusted their thinking. "Woah, that's a million to one odds, that can't be by chance!" "No, it's actually really common, here'…

There of no known lineage B sarbecoviruses that have a furin cleavage site, at least not prior to SARS-COV-2. This polybasic furin cleavage site is found in various proteins from many viruses, including Betacoronavirus Embecoviruses, and the Merbecovirus. However, within the betacoronaviruses of the sarbecovirus lineage B, this type of site is unique to SARS-CoV-2. It's never been seen before.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#608

Post by imiric »

mikeyouse wrote: post #584
WithinReason wrote: post #281

Just a reminder that the predecessor of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-1 leaked from the lab 4 (yes, four) times. The Wikipedia page lists 3 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... Biosecurity incidents are shockingly common.

Just a reminder that the predecessor of Covid-19 was a pandemic of zoonotic origin that had multiple spillovers from animal hosts into humans. That virus was eventually studied and some lab workers were indeed infected but the origin was unquestionably natural.

Just a reminder that the origin being zoonotic and lab leaks occurring are not mutually exclusive.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#609

Post by [deleted] »

mikeyouse wrote: post #307
gojomo wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overfocusing on the market cluster is an error. 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. And second, early overemphasis on the market cluster caused authorities to search for every case there, and ignore cases elsewhere – just as in the US, authorities missed early community spread because they didn't even consider…

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…

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#610

Post by kaitaincps »

mikeyouse wrote: post #315
jahewson wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very well researched article you link to, but assumptions are tricky things: > The fact that there were two distinct lineages early on is of critical importance, as this could imply a hidden community transmission for months (lineage A could’ve evolved into lineage B) before the outbreak at the Huanan market. Alternatively, the two lineages could have evolved in an animal reservoir from a shared MRCA before…

> Option two assumes that the lab had only one lineage of the virus - but it collected samples out in the wild and could easily have collected both together, mixed and stored them, and leaked them together. So the wonderfully detailed analysis rests on this assumption. They were two lineages of the same virus, commonly seen in repeated spillover transmission. Explain specifically how you think they would "leak" both…

No it doesn't. There is a single leak, which mutates into a second strain through community transmission over a period of a few months. That's it.
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