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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#931

Post by ukoki »

wunderlust wrote: post #819
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

> So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a confidence score: 'low'. These qualifications seem to me to be in conflict. If there's low confidence about the most likely cause, then does that imply that there's low confidence about every possible cause? Could there be high confidence in the least likely cause? That, too, seems contradictory to me.

There are only two theories being seriously considered: lab leak, wet market. Therefore I think it is reasonable to expect a probability of at least 90% that it is one of these two theories and not a third theory that no one is discussing. So if we have over 90% confidence that _either_ "lab leak" or "wet market", and we believe that "lab leak" is the _most_ the likely cause, then it follows that we must estimate the lab leak theory to be true with at least 45% probability. Maybe you could say "low confidence" if you're 45-80% sure, and "high confidence" if you're more certain than that.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#932

Post by object-a »

pessimizer wrote: post #511
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

Low Confidence in intelligence assessments has a particular meaning, which is worth considering in this context:

> Low confidence generally means questionable or implausible information was used, the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or significant concerns or problems with sources existed [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#933

Post by NoGravitas »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #315
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

I wonder if the timing of these "bad headlines" is connected to this https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-ne...

Of course it is. It makes me sincerely hope J. Posadas was right.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#934

Post by freejazz »

bradleyjg wrote: post #576
axxto wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "sightly-less-shitty-than-other-theories" theory is still a shitty theory. Low-confidence means exactly what it sounds like.

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.

> Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty?

Ah, the ol' litigating my personal grievances with society at large, with a particular individual that has nothing to do with it at all...

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#935

Post by NicoJuicy »

unity1001 wrote: post #930
NicoJuicy wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there has been no threat to public health, no injuries to employees and no leaks of dangerous material outside the laboratory, Ms. Vander Linden said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

In the US common law, that is the thing that you need to say in case you face any court case whatsoever in the future. Any objective details that you give about the situation may be used as evidence against you in a court case by the prosecutors. Therefore you always need to start from 'nothing ever happened' and then negotiate down the responsibility as much as you can. Immediately in that period the retirement home…

> Immediately in that period the retirement homes in the area and later the state, started experiencing 'mystery pnemonia cases' in which a lot of elderly have died.

So...

No source?

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#936

Post by freejazz »

anon291 wrote: post #722
mliker wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the point is the headline is clickbaity, and for the uninformed masses, it sounds like it's highly likely it's from the lab, when that judgment was made with "low confidence"

A distinction without a difference. I've said it was a lab leak from about month two of the pandemic. Any sane person hearing me say this should assume I have low confidence as the sort of evidence necessary to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt is information a random hn commentor could not possibly have. Unfortunately, even expressing that you thought it likely it was a lab leak was enough to get my accounts bann…

It's not a meaningful distinction because of what you said years ago? Am I even reading this post right? It's so absurd.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#937

Post by freejazz »

anon291 wrote: post #925
kenmacd wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ask you what time it is and you're not really sure, do you say "It's 1:04:35.023"? So if you 'said it was a lab leak', but expected people to know you really mean "based on the extremely limited information I have on the situation, it don't feel the possibly of it being a lab leak can not be entirely discounted", then you've communicated poorly. You've said in this comment that "you thought it likely it was a la…

What is your motivation in making this post other than to protect the Chinese communist party from any and all criticism? Since we're questioning motivations and all. Exactly what do we get by leaving the origins of COVID a mystery, and uninvestigated. Why do you think it's not important to know exactly the source of the virus. Yes, if the virus were engineered or even just leaked from a wild source kept in the lab,…

>What is your motivation in making this post other than to protect the Chinese communist party from any and all criticism?

Sorry, but if this is your best effort at explaining that post, then there is something deeply wrong with you.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#938

Post by autoexec »

plutonorm wrote: post #909
autoexec wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. At the time it was a BS conspiracy theory. There was some evidence for it, and some evidence against it and it happened that the evidence we had at the time was stronger for the non-lab leak theories. That's what changed right now. We have new evidence that puts the lab leak theory above the others. Back when Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up r…

How on earth did you manage to bridge the gap from 'there was some evidence for it' to 'BS conspiracy theory'. If it has some evidence for it, it is not, by definition a BS conspiracy theory. You allowed others to do your thinking for you. You allowed your emotions to cloud your judgement, all while under the banner of the holy rationalists. Own it and do better next time. The media is used to manipulate opinion espe…

Because initially the "some evidence" amounted to little more than "A lab exists" and "leaks are a thing that has happened". Meanwhile the other theories were being supported by science like genome analysis. As time and investigations went on, more evidence came up, but when it started being spread around the evidence being presented was absolutely so weak that as a theory it was essentially speculation.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#939

Post by randm_sequence »

I love the quote in this discussions about finding unicorns next to the unicorn factory. In addition to that argument, I find the following points in support of the lab leak hard to refute.

Biologically -

(1) The earliest available copies of SARS-CoV2 from 2019/2020 are incredibly stable genetically. When a virus makes the jump from one species to the next it tends to undergo rapid evolution as it adapts to a new host. We have zero evidence that this happened as if it sprung forth already adapted to the supposed new host, humans.

(2) This "novel" virus infects an unbelievably large number of different cell types in the human body across *all* major organ systems.

Thus, this "novel" virus jumped to humans perfectly adapted to infect dozens of different cell types across every main organ systems via multiple receptor paths via random chance? Sure.

Couple those two facts with the following ...

(3) WIV has been studying coronaviruses for 20 years in case of a pandemic. When one such pandemic arises, do they rise to the occasion? Do they jump in with their research? Do they help develop new therapeutics? Nope, they go completely dark and destroy evidence. If China were trying to vie as a superpower on the world stage, this was the exact wrong step to take.

(4) The WIV lab in question had been part of a team that submitted a DARPA proposal in 2018. WIV's role in the proposal was to generate new chimeric Coronavirus backbones, insert different types of spikes, and trial furin cleavages in those spikes. They would then passage them through humanized mice, collect the ones that successfully reproduced, and sequence them. My jaw hit the floor when I read the proposal, which is floating around the Internet to be read by all. One might object and say that you can't trust everything on the Internet, which is very true. I came from this world. My friend is at DARPA and was on the team who reviewed (and rejected) the proposal. Please note that typically one proposes research that is not only possible but has already been successfully completed.

Note that there are dozens of other facts that also support this position that I won't regurgitate here.

Why does this matter? Beyond crimes against humanity and preventing this from happening again, you really need to consider how events unfolded to understand the impact this grand lie had. SARS and MERS were scary but not very good at spreading; therefore, past outbreaks were quickly extinguished. If the public had been told that this virus was likely engineered to infect people, one could imagine that the entire response to the pandemic would have been quite different.

ps longCOVID is simply a persistent coronavirus infection and most of the infections appear to be persistent (some are asymptomatic until they aren't).

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#940

Post by plutonorm »

autoexec wrote: post #938
plutonorm wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth did you manage to bridge the gap from 'there was some evidence for it' to 'BS conspiracy theory'. If it has some evidence for it, it is not, by definition a BS conspiracy theory. You allowed others to do your thinking for you. You allowed your emotions to cloud your judgement, all while under the banner of the holy rationalists. Own it and do better next time. The media is used to manipulate opinion espe…

Because initially the "some evidence" amounted to little more than "A lab exists" and "leaks are a thing that has happened". Meanwhile the other theories were being supported by science like genome analysis. As time and investigations went on, more evidence came up, but when it started being spread around the evidence being presented was absolutely so weak that as a theory it was essentially speculation.

You are reading you info second hand. If you had gone to the evidence yourself you would not be saying what you are now saying. Read the academic papers, look up the facts from sources as close to the truth as you can. You can't trust people to give you information untainted by their pov. It was obvious to me at the time just by doing a modicum of research.
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