At face value, no one thought it strange that the Energy Department had any authoritative say in the matter? This is like sourcing your nuclear armaments statistics from a PubMed publication..
Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.
I know you're making a rhetorical point, but I found a thread I remembered from May 2020 where I both said that the wet market theory was shit[1] and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology/Wuhan CDC needed to be investigated without widespread censorship.[0] At the time, it was not exactly well-received. Someone accused me of throwing out so many lies that reasonable people couldn't even rebut it. [0] https://news.ycom…
Hopefully that person is enjoying their 50 cents.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#893Only those completely ignorant of modern biology labs - and particularly the capabilities of such labs with state scale funding - can be indignant or surprised at such an obvious finding.
Viruses are manipulated in countless labs around the world on a daily basis, and have been for years. Gain of Function research, as dangerous as it is, has been part of that. This isn't guessing or surmise, it's absolute fact that's trivial to check.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Not sure how you made this conclusion... But of course we need to look if there's new evidence - that's what I just said, that there could be new evidence, but if there won't be then we couldn't know for sure.
Because we can now say that there was any evidence we want but the totalitarian state destroyed it. We can now make any argument where the state destroying evidence fills in the gap of the theory.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#895Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.
It's not, because all it would take to falsify it would be to do an exhaustive search of the lab's documentation and a comprehensive interview of lab employees. We can't do it because of the CCP, not because of epistemological reasons.
How would that falsify the theory? If you find no evidence you can just claim that the state destroyed it.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#896Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your example chain of events would be called "lab leak".
But the lab is completely superfluous to the chain of events. It's jammed in the middle so we can still say "lab leak".
How so?
Suppose a lab worker went to a cave hundreds of miles away and collected a bunch of bats. Those bats were returned to the lab. At some point a different lab worker exposed himself to one of the bat carcasses and caught proto-Covid-19. Three days later he stopped at the wet market on the way home from work to pick up dinner and infected patients 1-5.
In what way is the lab in this scenario superfluous? If it had better and enforced protocols for handling potentially infected specimens there would have been no pandemic.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the lab is completely superfluous to the chain of events. It's jammed in the middle so we can still say "lab leak".
How so? Suppose a lab worker went to a cave hundreds of miles away and collected a bunch of bats. Those bats were returned to the lab. At some point a different lab worker exposed himself to one of the bat carcasses and caught proto-Covid-19. Three days later he stopped at the wet market on the way home from work to pick up dinner and infected patients 1-5. In what way is the lab in this scenario superfluous? If it h…
Because there's no reason it has to be a lab worker involved.
The ground zero wet market in Wuhan is several miles away from the virology lab, and across the river.
The simplest explanation is that one of the 11 million Wuhan residents who do not work at that particular lab brought it to the wet market. It was right before spring festival, lots of people traveling.
Inserting "possible" events that loop in the virology lab while all of the initial infections were nowhere close to it, with no evidence, is just trying to keep "lab leak" alive. Sure, it's possible! We could assume it was lab workers somewhere in the chain, or assume the CIA, we can assume whatever we want.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#898Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t that mixing causation with correlation. The lab is there because there are lots of virus sources there.
This is definitely the most sensible explanation, since it's quite well known that Wuhan is the most important transportation hub in China since even before the lab was a distant dream in some postdoc's imagination. And China does have the world's largest annual human migration, in the Spring Festival. If I was in the planning department at whichever ministry that made the final decision on placement, putting the mos…
Wow, you did quite the somersault there.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#899Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it has more to do with the fact that one opinion is supported by more conspiracy nuts. Doesn’t mean it isn’t the right answer, but having lots of crazies insisting it is the only possible answer makes more grounded people less credible in the eyes of others.
Are the pejoratives really necessary? From the beginning the "lab leak" theory satisfied Occam's Razor more than the convoluted "wet market" theory or the "pangolin" theory. Meanwhile, a lot of departments at a lot of universities got a lot of funding to pursue their pet theories.
What pejoratives? There are literally conspiracy nuts out there who strongly support the lab leak theory, mostly because China was the enemy du jour before drag queens. There is a lot of absolutely batshit stuff out there, including Trump himself accusing China of intentionally launching covid as a “bioweapon”.
As I said, that environment makes it hard to separate the legit, well-informed, grounded people who also advance real evidence of a lab leak.
My point was that they very loud, very nutty lab leak enthusiasts discredit legit discussion of the real possibility. I think you may have illustrated my point.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it has more to do with the fact that one opinion is supported by more conspiracy nuts. Doesn’t mean it isn’t the right answer, but having lots of crazies insisting it is the only possible answer makes more grounded people less credible in the eyes of others.
>I think it has more to do with the fact that one opinion is supported by more conspiracy nuts. Evaluating an empirical claim based on the aggregate character of those who are supporting it rather than actual steelmanned arguments is poor epistemic hygiene. It's a commonly-used justification for tribal epistemic closure - "the red tribe has lower IQ than average, therefore they are wrong in every disagreement with th…
I agree. And yet that is human nature and I hope it is not surprising and inexplicable.