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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

#831

Post by reuben_scratton »

woodruffw wrote: post #190
medymed wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other viruses do escape the lab sometimes. The first SARS virus escaped the lab more than once. https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-...

I'm not claiming that they don't! The article has multiple examples of viruses escaping either individual containment or the lab outright. What I'm claiming is that the volume of attributed escapes indicates that the average escape has relatively local consequences. In other words: historically, when everything goes wrong, it hasn't resulted in a global pandemic. What, then, made or makes COVID special? Maybe the ans…

SARS-CoV-2 is spectacularly well-adapted for infecting humans, the original SARS and other animal-origin viruses are not.

The idea that this thing sprang out of the wild, in Wuhan of all places, perfectly adapted to infect human beings, is fucking laughable.

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

#832

Post by YaSamPoSebe »

You americans are a bunch of nutters. You would believe russiagate, and any slander regarding people your "intelligence agencies" and your "military complex" has decided to label as enemies. Bunch of ignorant criminals whose mentality is formed by the idiotic holywood industry, accusing others of sins of which you are far more guilty than the ones you accuse, starting from the real genocide you perpetrated in the Middle East.

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

#833

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

acdha wrote: post #698
kennywinker wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't go defcon 1 over the sniffles but you do go defcon 1 over an unknown virus that closely matches a highly lethal virus we encountered about ten years earlier (SARS classic). There is nothing in china's outbreak response that suggests guilt.

I think a lot of westerners want to believe the conspiracy theories in part because it’s hard to admit how much more we could have learned from SARS. Ignoring China, the Taiwanese government doesn’t take orders from them and certainly wouldn’t help with a cover up but because of SARS all it took was Li Wenliang‘s post leaking for them to activate a comprehensive response. The key part was recent memory overriding the…

It wasn't Li Wenliang's post that activated the Taiwanese response. It was the Chinese government's public alert on 30 December 2019 about a cluster of patients with "pneumonia of unknown etiology" that triggered the response.

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

#834

Post by hef19898 »

Raaasmus wrote: post #804
handmodel wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it Occam's razor? The Bayesian probability suggests the odds that it would evolve by chance AND first become an issue right next to one of the top three bat virus research centers in the world are pretty slim. It would be like a new mosquito disease first being an issue in human population next the CDC headquarters in Atlanta instead of somewhere in Africa of South America. Sure - there are mosquitos everywhere -…

To me another simple explanation is that the disease was first identified near the labs because it is a lab that deals with viruses. I may be mistaken, but I recall it as one of the top ones in the world that virologists from around the world go to. Also waste water samples from Spain and Italy show COVID-19 much earlier than reported in Wuhan. Spain, March 2019, 1 sample https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-cor…

Plus COVID-19 positie blood samples in France from Nov/Dec 2019. That alone is reason for me to believe that the Wuhan lab has nothing to do with it. It just so happened that Wuhan was the first major outbreak.

That being said, I don't know how the origin would help us right now. We have working vaccines. So the solution is to push vaccinations as fast as possible. The origin of the virus isn't that important right now.

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

#835

Post by hef19898 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #695
throwawaygimp wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to build a bat virus research center... i'd put it close to where bats are. So these aren't independent. But your point is still a good one

Bats are everywhere. The specific bats that host the ancestor of COVID-19 are quite a bit far away from those labs. The disease was first noticed near the labs. Looking at the mechanics of the thing¹, I'd put a lab leak on similar odds of some village near the bats being infected and spreading it from there. 1 - I know nothing of their policy and competence to judge those.

There are Covid cases in Europe from November and December 2019. Just saying.

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

#836

Post by zo1 »

bitreality wrote: post #766
ethbr0 wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask a liar a question, and they lie, then the strongest conclusion isn't that you asked the right question -- it's that they're a liar. China stonewalls pretty much every attempt by the international community to interfere with their internal control. So this is more "business as usual" than "Clouseau found the smoking gun."

The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged. One of those labs was right near the seafood market which had one of the first documented outbreaks. It's all circumstantial evidence of course, but that's really all you're going to get with a country like China. We can be damn well sure that they would never admit to the virus originating from a lab le…

Also, it's not like they can actually find out what happened now, a year later. Not without a time-machine or perfect recordings showing some sort of ridiculously straightforward sequence of events. E.g. They find a recording showing a bat biting someone in a lab and that person hiding it and then later showing him touching fish at the market. Come on, who thinks it'd be that easy?

What they'd most likely output is a "report" with "findings" that "point to" or "suggest" certain things like bad protocols or insecure procedures or disconnected safety sensors etc. Hardly evidence, and not really actionable even if they were allowed to get there and eventually publish it.

This is the same kind of crap as with the "election" report in the US. They couldn't find hard-evidence because despite this being 2020, camera's aren't everywhere, evidence isn't readily available, and not everyone is keep ridiculous-level audit logs and collating as much info as we want. All they eventually put in their report were discrepancies, not-installed windows updates, internet-connected machines, etc. No smoking gun, and understandably so because even if it did happen, there is no easy and straightforward way to prove it.

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

#838

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

geoduck14 wrote: post #456
musicale wrote: post #445

Most of the media coverage and consensus, from the Washington Post to Nature, seems to be that: - the lab escape theory has been thoroughly debunked by science - the WHO investigation put the final nails in the coffin of this theory - therefore, lab escape continues to be a fringe conspiracy theory at best - coverage of the lab escape theory is politically motivated rather than scientifically motivated - continued co…

The WHO investigation DID NOT eliminate this theory. From what I remember, while the WHO was investigating, one member said "it didn't come from a lab". Then when everyone returned to their home country, some members suggested that it was possible - and I don't think their official report opined on it coming from a lab.

The official report isn't complete yet, but at the press conference, it was clearly stated that the team as a whole viewed a lab leak as extremely unlikely. More recent statements from team members have elaborated that that was a unanimous judgment of the scientists on the team.

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

#840

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

saas_sam wrote: post #209
tehjoker wrote: post #161

Pretty incredible how far the US media will go to deflect attention from how bad the US response to the pandemic was to China. "Let me be clear: Labs in Wuhan might not have played any role in the origin of the pandemic. But a year later, no source has been found, and the world deserves a thorough, unbiased investigation of all plausible theories that is conducted without fear or favor." Okay. So basically this autho…

Did you know officials sent a warning in 2018 about the Wuhan Institute of Virology warning that their experiments were dangerous and the facility was run poorly, risking a new Sars-like pandemic? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539 Did you know the CCP arrested the first doctor sounding the alarm about COVID? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382 Did you know viruses have escaped from…

They did not warn that the lab was dangerous or in any way poorly run. That's the spin that Josh Rogin has repeatedly tried to put on the diplomatic cables. The actual cables (written by diplomats, not experts) merely stated that a lab which had not yet opened did not yet have enough trained staff to operate at full capacity. The cables said that in order to ask the US government to continue its training program for staff at the lab. The cables actually complain that the Chinese government's safety regulations are too strict - not allowing the lab to work with Ebola.
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