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Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

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Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#621

Post by stjohnswarts »

lamontcg wrote: post #321
cicero wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative hypothesis does not rule out the other possibilities, even if it provides a better explanation. What matters is what actually happened, not what provides the neatest explanation.

The claim is being made that no other alternative hypothesis exists which can explain the features of the virus, so it must have come from a BSL lab. This is an alternative hypothesis which is simpler and less convoluted and does, in fact, completely undermine the "it can't be anything other than bioweapons research" argument. You're aiming your criticism at the wrong end of the argument.

Most people are going with "bioweapons" research but with "accidentally leaked variant followed up by a coverup to save face"

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#622

Post by stjohnswarts »

engineer_22 wrote: post #50

In light of the disruption COVID-19 has caused, it's necessary to understand how it got started. If we are going to keep our intellectual honesty, nothing should be dismissed from consideration, including the lab hypothesis. In the middle of all that, geopolitics is getting in the way, and rightly so. China increasingly considers itself a peer nation to USA - so an unfettered foreign-led investigation is unlikely.

I'm starting to say look at the silver lining and see how incredibly unprepared we are for a biological attack/pandemic that has a much higher kill rate. Maybe there can be some policy changes made now given the experience.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#623

Post by stjohnswarts »

rossdavidh wrote: post #275

So, I agree, but I find myself thinking it doesn't matter now. What matters is: 1) could an accident at a lab lead to another pandemic in the future? yes, certainly 2) ok then, how are we going to prevent that? This seems much like what the world had to figure out after nuclear power became widespread; how do we keep this new technology from leading to catastrophic problems? It required international inspection, sanc…

Obviously it should a learning experience but if we can possibly figure out where and when it started we can obviously put in measures for the future to stop it so I don't see how you can say it doesn't matter what the origin was.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#624

Post by stjohnswarts »

moosey wrote: post #113

The most likely candidate for this virus, and most future viruses that produce pandemics, will be environmental destruction and animal agriculture. We know there are novel viruses out there, too many to count. Even if this started in a lab the most likely reason is that scientists need to study the viruses that we will be coming into contact with as we commit, as a species, to more environmental destruction. I'm real…

Considering how much of the biosphere humans have destroyed I have my doubts about this theory I bet there are fewer novel viruses out there than any time in human history. I have a lot more fear of a crackpot despotic country like NK getting it's hands on something like a version of anthrax that is as virulent/transmissible as covid.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#625

Post by stjohnswarts »

gfodor wrote: post #7
newacct583 wrote: post #2

Almost no theories can be "ruled out" in this space. Viruses evolve in crazy and essentially unobservable ways. Nonetheless, we know there was a close relative documented in bats on the same continent within a comparable timeframe. The clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission was the vector, for the simple reason that this is the way every single other pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened. There i…

Occam's Razor doesn't really apply to this one, because each side has different priors on which theory is actually the "simplest." Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan - something which a) should have been likely and b) China would be highly incentivized to root out since it would disprove the lab hypothesis, it implies patient zero was probably in Wuhan. If…

b) but not highly incentivized to let anyone else know wha they found out unless it rules them out as the source.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#626

Post by R0b0t1 »

jeduehr wrote: post #432
R0b0t1 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without explicitly supporting the theory it is a loosed weapon, I think your estimation of technology is off. Typically military technology will lead by about a decade, maybe more. So all of the rest could be explained, a little paranoically, as intentional action.

In virology and other related biological sciences, the opposite is usually the case. All the most cutting edge stuff either happens in university labs or in the private sector. The military (in the US at least) has too much red tape and bureaucracy that gets in the way of that kind of fast-paced experimentation. Source: I was about an inch away from working at the Defense Intelligence Agency after grad school, but th…

> The military (in the US at least) has too much red tape and bureaucracy that gets in the way of that kind of fast-paced experimentation.

The DoD and specific branches of the armed forces just hand out money. It is those labs and the companies that staff them that are ahead of the current state of the art, but they're unable to commercialize them until after other applications are evaluated.

There is an increasing trend for the military to rely on CoTS hardware, but I know with some certainty there are still fields, like metallurgy (for jet engines), that are still leading anything else by a wide margin.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#627

Post by lostlogin »

nyokodo wrote: post #610
lostlogin wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. And those figures are for the country, not a city. The point made that Auckland has a lot of travellers. It is true that in absolute terms NZ has small trade and travel relative to the UK and US, but those factors are far from being the only reasons that NZ has suffered less death and destruction. It’s more that the UK an…

> Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. Yes, hence my "per capita" comment. The risk of infection getting into a country is more of a function of how much total traffic it gets rather than the per-capita traffic. > And those figures are for the country, not a city. Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, an…

> Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, and not just flights.

Yes - and that is a hell of a lot for a small place. It’s comparable to something like SFO, but at the far end of the planet. But yes, the scale is small by international standards.

> the difficulty of NZ's response was enormously easier both absolutely and relatively given the nature of NZ's geography

This helped, but there are a lot more islands that have done poorly. I’m not sure that it was enormously easier, but the few week we got were key. In terms of getting governments to move fast, NZs government moved far faster than one would have expected, and the advantage gained by the short delay due to geography undoubtedly saved us a lot of deaths. We were on a vicious exponential growth.

> NZ has a lot to be proud of in its response, but no reason to be smug.

Absolutely. My view is more one of horror at the considerable reliance placed on gut feeling, belief systems and hope rather than science and cooperation.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#628

Post by tripletao »

katbyte wrote: post #476
eightysixfour wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists are human, and they will make mistakes, the benefit is that there are many of them with different incentives. The "Blocked Virology" twitter account references a lot of previous lab escapes to say that lab escapes are possible, this is good evidence against your point - how do you think we know about the previous escapes? It wasn't a random group of technically-minded individuals, it was experts that track…

There has never been a lab leak leading to a global pandemic and mass deaths, I don’t think you can compare now to anything other then maybe the Spanish flu

The 1977 flu pandemic was very likely a lab escape. From the NEJM:

> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322

About 700k people died worldwide. That's more than a typical flu season but not grossly so, and it's impossible to say with certainty what kind of flu season would have occurred naturally without the escape.

https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2018/01/19/you-re-...

SARS-CoV-2 is certainly worse. The 1977 flu pandemic is still a lot of deaths, though, and surprisingly little-known.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#629

Post by nyokodo »

jashmatthews wrote: post #615
nyokodo wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. Yes, hence my "per capita" comment. The risk of infection getting into a country is more of a function of how much total traffic it gets rather than the per-capita traffic. > And those figures are for the country, not a city. Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, an…

NZ had swine flu just 10 days after the USA. Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin. Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!

> NZ had swine flu just 10 days after the USA.

Correction, NZ had its first cases of swine flu connected directly with travel to Mexico, the epicenter of the pandemic, 10 days after the USA identified its first cases which were community spread. In other words the virus had been circulating for some time in the United States already and just happened to be observed then. Case in point. The US/Mexico border is the most crossed border in the world with 350 million documented crossings annually and undocumented crossings in the 6 figures annually. Each crossing is another chance that the virus gets in and starts spreading domestically which is why the first case was community spread and not associated with travel to Mexico.

> Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin.

Maybe the first detected case but considering that Germany had its first detected case in late January in Bavaria a full month before NZ's first case, again directly associated with international travel, the virus very well had opportunity to have already gotten to Berlin and elsewhere undetected.

> Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!

This was the massive demobilization from WWI with a rush of repatriation from the epicenter of the pandemic which had been active in Europe for some time, Spain was just the first country to admit it had an epidemic. Again, my case in point, NZ was infected long after most of the rest of world because NZ is out of the way. Thank goodness it is.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#630

Post by tripletao »

btilly wrote: post #312
lostinquebec wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this works, so forgive my ignorance. Wouldn't the Wuhan lab be able to disprove this really easily? How often do they sequence viruses? Couldn't they show categorically that COVID-19 is not a descendant of a virus they were working with/on?

As long as they don't have an audited central database of all viruses that they sequenced, they have no way to demonstrate that they showed you all of their virus lines. And if they had such a central database, we'd have probably heard about it by now.

I'm not sure about the "audited" part, but the WIV did have such a central database. It went offline in September 2019, they say due to repeated hacking attempts. It hasn't been back since, and access to that database has been a major point of contention between those who believe a forensic investigation (i.e., one that doesn't simply trust the WIV to report whether they were working with related viruses) is necessary, and those who do not.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_invest...

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