[HN Gopher] Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
___________________________________________________________________
Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
Author : alsodumb
Score : 367 points
Date : 2022-09-05 18:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| nullc wrote:
| Their project docs are informative:
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...
|
| In addition to having research the nearest known ancestor to
| sars-cov2, and proposing inserting the FCS that distinguishes
| sars-cov2 from it's ancestors, the project proposed treating bats
| in the wild with the humanized virus to make the bats immune to
| it.
|
| It's about as close to mad science as you get outside of the
| movies.
|
| I don't really know how much it matters if covid was directly
| caused by the lab leak when you can look at their actions and say
| that they would reasonably been expected to cause this outcome.
|
| "Mom, I swear, I didn't cause the explosion! yes, I was maxing
| random chemicals I found in the garage, in violation against the
| established prohibitions, and the chemicals I was mixing happened
| to be the exact sort that caused the explosion. But it wasn't
| me!"
|
| The fact that there was a moratorium on gain of function research
| means that even more of the culpable parties all the way up the
| funding chain are incentivized to lie about the whole thing.
| steve76 wrote:
| sneak wrote:
| The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of
| how it started.
|
| The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this
| often does more harm than good.
|
| No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted
| out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be
| learned now regardless.
| treeman79 wrote:
| If people are creating super viruses. It kind of matters a lot.
| sneak wrote:
| People are creating super viruses, regardless of the origin
| of this one.
|
| Act accordingly.
| rakejake wrote:
| What exactly are you supposed to do? Move to the middle of
| the Amazon away from civilization?
|
| Knowing the exact sequence of events that led to the
| pandemic is extremely important, and not only as research
| for future pandemics. There is reasonable doubt that the
| Wuhan lab had something to do with the virus. I'm measuring
| my words carefully here because we don't have incriminating
| evidence. But there has been enough material published over
| the last 2 years to warrant suspicion.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| The origin being a lab leak would likely lead to more stringent
| controls around researchers.
| sneak wrote:
| Would it? If such is possible, leak or no, more stringent
| controls should be implemented regardless.
|
| In any case, you will get no such evidence, so society should
| proceed as if evidence is in hand, if such is even
| theoretically possible.
| pelorat wrote:
| Yes, but this is China that you're talking about where
| EVERYTHING is connected to a lying government. Nothing would
| happen except for a coverup as the Chinese government will
| never ever come clean.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| In a sense, I don't really mind, because we're clearly not
| treating research into viruses (particularly gain of
| function) as the truly existential threat that it is. We
| should be, regardless of whether covid-19 was natural or a
| lab leak, and it's annoying that it might require a real
| lab leak at some point for us to take controlling such
| research seriously.
| jtc331 wrote:
| No it matters a lot: which originally is correct is the primary
| determinant for which of opposite lessons to learn.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32735333
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yeah the lab leak hypothesis is fascinating because it actually
| refers to two things that sound similar but would imply almost
| entirely different reactions.
|
| Deliberate LLH: China (or, if you're _in_ China, the US)
| developed a weapon and essentially released it on the world.
| This hypothesis basically tells us nothing because we'll never
| actually validate or invalidate it. There's also no mitigation
| for future leaks because if it were deliberate you can always
| deliberately do it again. Also, it probably _does_ have racist
| /xenophobic/propagandist motive pushing it along at various
| levels. Even if this were true it doesn't matter because we're
| obviously not going to nuke cities or cut off trade or roll
| tanks or hang leaders in response.
|
| Accidental LLH: Hypothesis goes that there was gain of function
| research and a sample accidentally escaped the lab. This is
| actually pretty likely, but has the interesting feature of it
| _not mattering whether it's true in this particular instance._
| Regardless of whether COVID-19 itself fits this, COVID-19
| indicates that GOF research should be banned! There is no need
| for collaboration-harming "repercussions" (or cries for
| repercussions, since they'll never happen anyway).
|
| Deliberate LLH: Doesn't matter if it's true because 1) we'll
| never know and 2) even if it we're _true_ , no one could do
| anything about it.
|
| Accidental LLH: Doesn't matter if it's true because 1) we'll
| never know and 2) even if it were _false_ , the correct course
| of action is to ban/mitigate GOF research.
|
| It's a complete shame that these have not been better
| distinguished from one another.
| peyton wrote:
| The lab leak hypothesis refers to one thing. It is on page
| 118 of this WHO report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-
| source/coronaviruse/final-j...
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yes, if we are to ignore all the people who refer to their
| bioweapon theory as "lab leak hypothesis."
|
| Or maybe to put it another way: it's evident that at least
| when people _think_ they're responding to the lab leak
| hypothesis, they're responding to a deliberate release
| scenario. IMO people have deliberately muddied the
| conversation because if you muddy it one direction you get
| to imply malice on China's part, and if you muddy it in the
| other direction you get to clear China of incompetence.
|
| But in any case, not only are we not going to prove or fix
| malice or incompetence, it doesn't actually require
| _either_ to yield COVID-19 or COVID-19-like pandemics
| anyway. That's where the conversation should be.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| It's extremely important if safety measures were breached and
| later facts were manipulated. It's crazy to say that in a
| nuclear war for example who fired the first missile is not
| important.
| sneak wrote:
| In a scenario of MAD, it actually would not be important, as
| all human civilization would be destroyed and it would thus
| be completely irrelevant.
|
| This is precisely what I am talking about.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| we did not have a total destruction and this is an amazing
| way to figure out how to prevent one. Isn't it very obvious
| that you need to study what went wrong in civilization
| changing events to prevent the next one? Like isn't it
| science 101?
| BrainVirus wrote:
| Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter Daszak
| and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were involved in
| nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the lab leak
| hypothesis when it first popped up?
|
| And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing lab
| leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance?
|
| And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team?
|
| And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired for
| this?
|
| If you don't admit these (now-obvious) facts, you are not
| discussing the lab leak hypothesis in good faith.
| initplus wrote:
| This is only evidence of Daszak/EcoHealth being unethical. I
| doubt he has access to a secret "smoking gun" conclusively
| proving lab leak vs zoonotic.
|
| If there is a chance you are responsible, why not cover it up
| and muddy the waters, just in case?
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter
| Daszak and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were
| involved in nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the
| lab leak hypothesis when it first popped up?
|
| No idea.
|
| > And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing
| lab leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance?
|
| No idea.
|
| > And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team?
|
| No idea.
|
| > And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired
| for this?
|
| No idea.
|
| I am not better informed as a result of your comment.
|
| Asking questions is not a proper way to educate or inform
| people. That I don't have answers to your questions doesn't
| lead to any conclusion, nor does it make me doubt anything.
|
| As a general rule: If you want to know if X is true, look for
| "positive" evidence. Not absence of evidence. Asking questions
| almost always is merely saying "Hey, I don't have all the
| answers" - not "Hey, there's no good answer so the answer must
| be Y".
| jokowueu wrote:
| This explains the entire issue well
|
| https://youtu.be/8cBNyyAGETU
| [deleted]
| albertop wrote:
| Also it is good to keep in mind the following [0] from Matt
| Ridley.
|
| 0- https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1565242836710309891
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not saying I disagree with any of these, to be honest I
| don't know enough to say one way or the other, but there is
| some irony in posing an argument for good faith discussion by
| posting a list of questions you've already determined only have
| one true answer.
| peteradio wrote:
| That's not fair, these questions have existed in the public
| sphere for years now with no official explanation. This is
| one more "talk to the hand" played by the authorities. I
| suppose when authorities behave this way, they shouldn't
| expect themselves to have grassroots support.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| The problem is that the way the questions are posed comes
| across as "what are they hiding?!?"
|
| You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a
| discussion of the subject in earnest.
| peteradio wrote:
| Here's what I'll admit, its shady as hell for a group of
| scientists (some with especially confounding conflicts)
| to come out and dismiss something as so unlikely as to be
| impossible when it was obviously still a plausible
| explanation. That was not a scientific position to take,
| but a political one. Lab leaks are not new or especially
| rare. There is a now public paper trail indicating they
| were trying to build the damn thing! You have to admit
| that it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the
| subject in earnest. Imagine after the bombings of
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if the scientists working on the
| Manhattan Project came out claiming that natural
| instances of fission accounted for all known instances of
| fission in the wild. It's a purely fallacious argument
| coming from the highest authority on the subject and that
| doesn't have you worried? But the tone of OPs question is
| worth worrying about?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Let's stipulate that everything you say is true. It still
| doesn't address the content of the comment you are
| responding to:
|
| "it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the
| subject in earnest. "
|
| And as someone who has no opinion on the issue at all,
| and hasn't researched it, and can easily believe it
| is/isn't of lab origin, I can say that the top level OP
| comment was a very quick "I don't want to spend a minute
| of my time engaging with this guy."
|
| Do I have a flaw when I behave that way? Perhaps. Does
| he/she have a flaw in writing comments in ways that turn
| most people off? Definitely.
| peteradio wrote:
| Another comment addressing pure tone, while never
| addressing content, unbelievable! People conducting
| science need to behave ethically, those are reasonable
| probing ethical questions. If the initial discussion
| related to origins of a bad pandemic can be quelled by a
| handful of science bureaucrats with conflicted interests
| then I think an interested journalist would ask the
| grand-OPs questions. The fact we don't have answers is
| because either the journalists aren't asking the
| questions (except the intercept) or the questions aren't
| getting answered. The normal format of journalistic
| curiosity is getting short circuited and so all you get
| to see is dickheads asking quesitons to the void on the
| internet. Perhaps you entirely disagree because you don't
| think those questions need to be answered. But we are
| stuck on tone of grand-OPs argument because why? Are you
| interested in the questions, I kind of think not.
| BeetleB wrote:
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Your speculation of the poster's positions on said questions
| is not in good faith either. Even if your assumptions were
| correct, they're entirely irrelevant as the questions stand
| on their own.
| vidro3 wrote:
| these questions are basically copy pasta amongst the lab-
| leak crowd. that doesn't mean they aren't valid but I think
| it make sense to question the motivation in this instance.
| gfodor wrote:
| What's the best way to raise these facts - are you
| supposed to just list them out since writing them in the
| form of a question is misleading or something?
| slg wrote:
| Just my personal opinion here, I think this is an
| acceptable rhetorical device normally, but specifically
| in covid discussions this is an off-putting approach.
| "Just asking questions" is a common strategy among covid
| deniers and anti-vax folks who are also often pro-lab
| leak hypothesis.
|
| When I see a comment like the top most one in this
| thread, I can't tell if the author is actually coming to
| this discussion in good faith with a fact based approach
| or they are a nut job "just asking questions". Is the
| author meaning for the audience to infer actual confirmed
| facts or are they trying to imply guilt without any
| actual evidence? In this situation it is better to
| actually write out the facts with sources verifying them.
| Without that, the author risks being lumped in with the
| crazies.
| logic_beats_pro wrote:
| Yes, asking questions is now enough to get you labeled a
| conspiracy nut job.
|
| That toddler who continuously asks "why?" ten times in a
| row - conspiracy crank!!!
| slg wrote:
| >That toddler who continuously asks "why?" ten times in a
| row - conspiracy crank!!!
|
| Well if the toddler is asking questions about the lab
| leak hypothesis...
|
| I explicitly said it is a generally acceptable approach
| that doesn't work on this specific topic because of the
| reasons listed.
| nradov wrote:
| Please give us a complete list of the topics about which
| we are no longer allowed to ask questions.
| slg wrote:
| Where did I say you can't ask questions? I said asking
| questions is a bad rhetorical device to use on this
| topic. OP isn't an inquisitive mind looking for answers
| to those questions. They are trying to convince us of a
| particular viewpoint due to the implied answers to those
| questions.
| nradov wrote:
| Please give us a comprehensive list of topics for which
| asking questions is a bad rhetorical device. I'd like to
| understand the basis for your claim, and how you presume
| to know what's in OP's mind?
| slg wrote:
| >Please give us a comprehensive list of topics for which
| asking questions is a bad rhetorical device.
|
| There is no complete list. Topics exist on a spectrum and
| some are completely poisoned by conspiracy thinking. If
| some anonymous person on the internet asks "how many
| people really died during the Holocaust?" I am going to
| assume bad faith before I assume honest knowledge
| seeking. Covid deniers aren't that extreme, but they have
| certainly gotten to a point in which I view rhetorical
| questions with skepticism.
|
| >I'd like to understand the basis for your claim, and how
| you presume to know what's in OP's mind?
|
| I don't have to "presume to know what's in OP's mind" in
| terms of those questions. They told us. They said "If you
| don't admit these (now-obvious) facts". They are
| obviously using the questions rhetorically.
|
| My underlying point is in fact that I can't read OP's
| mind in regard to their motivation. That is what makes
| this a bad rhetorical device. It is guilty of bad faith
| through association. If OP's intent is for a good faith
| discussion, they should have used a different rhetorical
| style to avoid that association.
|
| And once again, this is not an argument about whether
| OP's original point was correct or not. That isn't what
| the comments I was replying to were discussing and it
| isn't what I said in any of my comments.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| "Just asking questions" is also a common strategy among
| people who would like answers to their questions. I spent
| a long time in 2006 asking questions online about USA's
| actions in the Middle East, and what I found was that
| there was indeed an incredible amount of coverup and
| half-truths from both sides of the political aisle.
| Despite this, I was naturally called a "9/11 truther" or
| whatever insult could be applied to someone who wanted
| honesty from the world's most powerful government.
|
| It's not in bad-faith or manipulative; there are people
| on this site who have a full and total belief that the
| Wuhan lab leak is entirely a conspiracy, so earnestly
| asking for clarification on how they came to that
| decision seems perfectly reasonable to me.
|
| In 2003 if someone was "just asking questions" about
| climate change and its future effects, I don't doubt
| skeptics online would try to unfairly lump them in with
| conspiracy theorists claiming the world would be on fire
| by 2010. It seems to me that the best way to convince
| people that the lab leak is not a reality would just be
| to answer their earnest questions, rather than lumping
| them in with anti-vaxers.
| slg wrote:
| >"Just asking questions" is also a common strategy among
| people who would like answers to their questions.
|
| OP specifically said "If you don't admit these (now-
| obvious) facts". They aren't looking for answers. They
| believe the answers are obvious facts. They are using the
| questions as a rhetorical device. I pointed out this is a
| bad rhetorical device to use in this instance. It was not
| a dismissal of their underlying point. It was saying
| their argument about their underlying point was
| unconvincing.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > are you supposed to just list them out since writing
| them in the form of a question is misleading or
| something?
|
| Yes.
|
| Yes!
|
| Several years ago I dived into books and seminars on
| effective communication. If I had to reduce it down to a
| few sentences, they would be:
|
| "Don't ask questions to express concerns. Learn how to
| express concerns directly in a non-threatening manner
| without asking questions. Ask questions only when
| genuinely trying to get information. Never ask leading
| questions. Don't ask questions to inform or educate."
|
| The Socratic approach is rarely an effective one.
| Proponents of the Socratic approach almost always blame
| the other party when it doesn't work (and it typically
| doesn't work).
|
| It applies to most forms of conversation, including code
| reviews.
| cloverich wrote:
| It is considered a more genuine take, yes. When posed as
| a series of questions as such, it is meant in a sense to
| lead while initially posing as genuine curiosity. To
| level set, genuine and very general curiosity is maybe
| the most typical feature that holds this community
| together.
|
| IMHO A more genuine approach would be to list the key
| points and why they are compelling to one of that
| persuasion. Or alternatively, to more directly take a
| position: "I find the lab leak hypothesis compelling, and
| TFA/primary objection's don't explain <fact 1> or
| <observation 2>" etc.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| > but I think it make sense to question the motivation in
| this instance.
|
| By this logic it's equally valid to question the
| motivation of someone hand waving the questions away as
| "copy pasta" rather than just answering them. The
| Socratic method is a perfectly valid way to further an
| argument.
| yonaguska wrote:
| OP isn't asserting an answer to any of those questions, OP is
| asking for an answer at all. All of those associations and
| events are tied into the lab leak hypothesis. So, if you are
| going to make any hypothesis on the lab leak, those are
| events that need to be addressed. OP is asking that you look
| at all the evidence, or you are not arguing in good faith. I
| don't see how it's ironic.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| The problem is that they're not evidence for a lab leak.
| They're evidence for Peter Daszak being a shady person who
| was scared of the thought of a lab leak being linked to him
| regardless of whether or not it's true, and handled it in
| the worst way possible.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Lets have the data and facts speak for what Peter Daszaks
| motivase are.
| yonaguska wrote:
| If that's true, it needs to be addressed. If it's true,
| then Peter Daszak, surely would have evidence that would
| exonerate him, along with corroborating witnesses.
| Instead, he hides and deflects. Unfortunately, it's
| become a right vs left issue, so he has an entire
| political establishment deflecting for him on his behalf.
|
| It's human nature, if you are already predisposed to a
| suspicion, then the subject of that suspicion does
| something shady, this only confirms your suspicion.
| slg wrote:
| >It's human nature, if you are already predisposed to a
| suspicion, then the subject of that suspicion does
| something shady, this only confirms your suspicion.
|
| Which is why the presumption of innocence is central to
| most modern judicial systems and is widely recognized as
| a human right. Why should we throw out that principal in
| this specific instance?
| thedorkknight wrote:
| Also, Hanson's Razor:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
|
| Basically, its entirely possible that Daszak is covering
| up a lab leak. Its also entirely possible he's an
| arrogant asshole who got scared of the implication that
| there was a lab leak.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| >If it's true, then Peter Daszak, surely would have
| evidence that would exonerate him, along with
| corroborating witnesses
|
| Disagree, since you can't really prove a negative. I'm
| not sure what evidence could "exonerate" him in a way
| that would remove everyone's suspicion.
|
| Besides, I listened to the podcast "This Week in
| Virology" A lot during covid, and they talked about
| Daszak multiple times, especially since some of the hosts
| have professional connections with him. Prof. Racaniello,
| the main host, has even interviewed him, pre-pandemic.
| Unfortunately, all of their discussion around the lab
| leak hypothesis would just get disregarded by people
| since it didn't fit the conspiracy narrative, and they
| just got written off as "anti-Trump" as a result.
| Literally, one of their march 2020 episodes where they'd
| usually answer listener questions, as they'd been doing
| for nearly a decade, was just them being baffled by
| suddenly getting hate mail accusing them of being
| "political" and "anti-Trump". That's also when I realized
| personally that we were screwed but I digress.
|
| >It's human nature, if you are already predisposed to a
| suspicion, then the subject of that suspicion does
| something shady, this only confirms your suspicion.
|
| Totally agreed, and I get it. This is why learning about
| cognitive biases and structured critical thinking was so
| eye-opening to me and why I think we should be teaching
| these things in school as early as possible.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Fauci was all over this. This is his program.
| tadfisher wrote:
| So was the first outbreak at the lab or at the wet market? I feel
| like everything else is circumstantial and conspiracy-laden.
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| As I imagine it can hardly be in the lab because the lab itself
| is not a good environment for the virus to spread.
|
| However if only one sick transfers it somewhere it spreads in
| the environment where it is easy to spread - smaller (semi)
| enclosed space, a lot of people in that space, particular
| humidity and etc.
|
| E.g. if I got a virus in laboratory and then spread it on the
| plane carrying 200 passengers, the first outbreak would be on
| the plane. However we can't say it "originated" on the plane.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| The two are not necessarily opposed. It can very well be a lab
| leak that infected the wet market: a scientist visiting the
| market, a supplier for lab animals getting the virus out to the
| market, etc, and the market starting the widespread
| transmission to the general population.
|
| Whatever the case is, no, this is not circumstantial. If this
| is indeed a lab break, then action must be taken immediately
| for anything like it not to happen again. I don't mean
| "pointing fingers", but triggering a thorough review of all
| such labs worldwide and up security measures. This must not
| happen again.
|
| TL;DR if it's a lab leak, it's actionable to us as humans to
| prevent further occurrences.
| amelius wrote:
| Do we have something like the International Atomic Energy
| Agency, but for biological labs?
| daneel_w wrote:
| Author suggests that _the origin of the virus_ is the
| laboratory. Nothing said about the first site of outbreak, but
| every investigation seems to agree that it 's the wet market.
| pragmar wrote:
| There's evidence that it was neither. Blood tests of athletes
| that competed in the Wuhan Military games in October 2019 point
| to the virus circulating earlier. The timeline that much of the
| conversation rests on feels kind of weak.
| wsc981 wrote:
| The furin cleavage site itself pretty much points to a lab
| leak.
| stonogo wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
| rhodorhoades wrote:
| I don't know if it was initial propaganda or what, but literally
| right before COVID became a thing, there's was a couple news
| articles that popped up on HN saying there has been a lab leak
| from wuhan and the government is locking down the area.
|
| Three weeks later there's this giant pandemic. I remember telling
| my wife about it in December before Christmas but now I can't
| find any articles dating back to that time.
|
| My point is not that the lab leak is true, but in this modern
| world is it literally impossible to know what's true and what's
| propaganda.
| pwinnski wrote:
| According to hn.algolia.com, the first mention of anything like
| you describe is from Jan 8, 2020[0], which isn't before
| Christmas 2019. The first US case was announced two weeks
| later, and "this giant pandemic" came a bit after that.
|
| I _think_ your memory might be slightly off, although in
| completely understandable ways. Placing events on a personal
| timeline can be difficult.
|
| 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989913
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I found one story posted on Jan 1, 2020
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926713
|
| FWIW, I've not found Algoila to be a reliable search engine
| for HN. In fact, when I narrowed my search down further to
| link it here, as below - that article disappeared from the
| results. (Also doesn't help that keyboard input to the date
| picker is totally broken)
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578182400&dateRange=custom&.
| ..
| barnacled wrote:
| The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense
| that Ebright knows full well has been addressed.
|
| It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times
| virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled
| out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just
| repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are
| going to see a rebuttal like the excellent one from Dr Rasmussen
| here -
| https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15669764417361715...
|
| The recent science papers which have been closely peer reviewed
| and none of these guys have been able to rebut (but oh have they
| tried, since they are VERY inconvenient for lab leak), instead
| it's the same tired nit-picking and misunderstanding.
|
| For a break down of the science papers read
| https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240...
| which goes into painful levels of detail to explain what the
| paper discovered and why it's so compelling and why it all but
| rules out lab leak.
|
| It's sad to me that somebody with a name and position and blue
| tick abuses that position to spread what amounts to
| misinformation, but that's where we are in society I guess.
|
| If you want a test, see how these lab leak advocates have reacted
| to any paper or data that pushes back against their claim. It has
| been a mad scramble to attack, nit-pick, dismiss and smear
| (Ebright especially likes confict-of-interest implications).
| These are not honest people.
|
| [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| gausswho wrote:
| To skip the Twitter noise and get straight to the paper:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
| rvanlaar wrote:
| I've read the paper. What got my senses tingling, is that: -
| there has been no investigation on which strains were in the
| lab - if the data is to be trusted, given it's in China.
|
| Till those questions have been answered I remain skeptical
| about the origin.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Actually all of his claims are facts unless proven otherwise.
| Do you have proof that these facts (Wuhan playing with these
| viruses, funding etc) are not true or you would like them to
| not be true?
| ubertaco wrote:
| I wonder if you take an "all claims are facts until proven
| otherwise" approach to religion as well, and if so, how do
| you reconcile the mutually-exclusive (but non-falsifiable)
| claims that various religions make counter to one another?
| BryantD wrote:
| It's a fact that I had coffee with someone who grew up a
| thousand miles away from me yesterday. If I were to infer
| from that fact that there was something unusual about that, I
| would be wrong.
| barnacled wrote:
| 'Claims are facts until proven otherwise' is quite the take,
| I think Karl Popper would take issue with that.
|
| I linked a thorough thread from a domain expert explaining in
| detail why the claims are false. These things have been
| addressed/debunked many, many times but still get repeated
| because the untruths get amplified and the rebuttals not.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| This is sophistry. The OP is stating facts. You are being
| "vague" by saying that these have been "debunked" relying
| on the long term "no conspiracy" theory which does really
| not apply in this case. This is a very clear Bayesian
| probability problem.
| barnacled wrote:
| No, you literally said 'all his claims are facts until
| proven otherwise'.
|
| I am not being vague, I literally posted a link to a
| rebuttal thread.
|
| This is why I don't post on hacker news any more.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| You guys are missing the point. Either you believe some
| unknown variable has zero probability or even if it is
| small you think ifs not worth discovering, for an event
| that is the most important since ww2. Is there proof of
| zero probability? No.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| The "all claims are facts unless proven otherwise" is a wrong
| way to think about. You must prove a claim, not the other way
| around. What is perhaps better to say is that he makes no
| arguments but just lists observations (nitpick: therefore can
| be no such thing as rebuttal). As the commentary tweets don't
| call them wrong, we can assume they're indeed correct (thus
| nothing was debunked). That said, I'ld have preferred if he
| had correct citations such as the link to the Nature article.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thanks, that's an excellent thread. Sorry you're getting piled
| on buy idiots...
| kick_in_the_dor wrote:
| Care to give us the spark notes of the paper?
| projektfu wrote:
| The Twitter thread is the SparkNotes on the paper.
| kick_in_the_dor wrote:
| Ah I didn't notice that.
| phartenfeller wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. For no expert in this field like me,
| peer-reviewed articles in a highly regarded publication like
| Science Magazine eliminated the lab theory. But I guess trust
| in science is unfortunately not as big as it was. And some
| people are biased as they want some theory to be true.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Here're some interesting parts from paper's concluding
| section.
|
| >These findings suggest that infected animals were present at
| the Huanan market at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic;
| however, we do not have access to any live animal samples
| from relevant species. Additional information, including
| sequencing data and detailed sampling strategy, would be
| invaluable to test this hypothesis comprehensively.
|
| >The sustained presence of a potential source of virus
| transmission into the human population in late 2019,
| plausibly from infected live mammals sold at the Huanan
| market, offers an explanation of our findings and the origins
| of SARS-CoV-2.
|
| It doesn't eliminate or prove anything. Only makes a case
| that zoosis is a good hypothesis.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >It's about a separate personal desire to regulate supposedly
| risky research.
|
| Referring to: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787
|
| So a paper on a lab-made coronavirus related to SARS that can
| infect human cells from Wuhan on topic about the origins of a
| coronavirus related to SARS that can infect human cells that
| caused the pandemic from Wuhan, is a separate personal desire?
|
| >It's about a completely different study that didn't result in
| any pandemic.
|
| Because after the article was published, Wuhan stopped working
| on this, right? Or is expected China (or any other country)
| publishes everything related to something delicate as this?
|
| Seriously this "rebuttal" is anything but excellent. The ironic
| answers to good remarks makes it even worse. Sounds more like
| trying to evade the ~~points made~~ info given rather answering
| them.
|
| As for the papers, origins of pandemic and origins of virus are
| distinct things. So, yes, we can all agree that evidence shows
| that pandemic started in the market, and as virus can infect
| animals sold there, this points towards that virus came from
| animals. But genetically is there anything that can distinguish
| a natural from a lab-made virus?
| seydor wrote:
| Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert
| some beneficial mutations to humanity.
|
| In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means
| that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such
| a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life,
| record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-
| made, then nature may do this again soon with another virus.
| PointlessLogin wrote:
| > lab-made pandemic
|
| Lab-leak != Lab-made
| goatcode wrote:
| In nature, it makes no sense for a virus to be both highly
| transmissible and highly deadly. Any such virus would cease to
| exist after having run amok in such a way in its hosts.
| Therefore, any extremely deadly virus should be looked at with
| similarly extreme criticism, especially if / when it adapts and
| becomes a better behaving parasite.
| tedivm wrote:
| Nature, and evolution, don't follow motive based logic.
| Random mutations that are temporarily beneficial but are
| detrimental to the long term do happen.
|
| To put it another way, a cell mutates based off of random
| chance. It doesn't have desires. We only have to go back as
| far as 1918 to see an example of a virus that could not have
| been engineered and was highly transmissible and highly
| deadly. As you say, in the long term that doesn't work out-
| the virus in that case mutated to be much more mild- which is
| why you won't see viruses like that surviving for long. But
| it still doesn't make sense to assume viruses evolve
| according to a motivation based logic.
| Moodles wrote:
| Obviously the person you're responding to doesn't think
| covid is conscious and has motivations...
| anon291 wrote:
| Nature does not 'manage to manufacture'. Genomic changes occur
| by random chance.
|
| For example, nature did not intend to manufacture smallpox,
| when that became a thing 4-5000 years ago. Instead, some random
| pox virus (like monkey pox) infected some people and random
| changes happened to produce smallpox, which became endemic in
| the human population. Then, another mutation happened that
| caused hemmorhagic smallpox to become a thing and to start
| killing people (the vast majority of smallpox strains do not
| have high death rates, although they can cause bad disability,
| although no one knows if they would with modern medicine).
|
| So nature can produce anything a human can. But certainly,
| human intervention to make a disease worse can also make
| terrible diseases.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| or... if it's a lab-leak then evil governments know they can
| create world-wide devastating pandemics.
| pvaldes wrote:
| They were most probably aware of that yet
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| I'm pretty sure evil governments already know this. If
| nothing else, it's been the plot of many popular stories for
| decades.
| tmaly wrote:
| I think we are going to find out soon:
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/china-locks-down-65-million-095328796...
| dmix wrote:
| > 33 cities including seven provincial capitals are under
| full or partial lockdown covering more than 65 million people
|
| > It said that outbreaks have been reported in 103 cities,
| the highest since the early days of the pandemic in early
| 2020.
|
| Crazy, it's like the rest of the world moved on but China is
| still in 2020.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Their vaccine being worthless didn't help
| eloff wrote:
| It is not very effective from what I've seen. They would
| have been better off contracting with Pfizer or other
| Western companies that had effective vaccines.
|
| Cheap made in China crap that doesn't work. I kid, sort
| of.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that
| nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a
| highly-transmissive disease
|
| We are _well_ past the point where nature is our greatest
| enemy.
|
| A lab leak of such consequences has the attention of every
| hostile organization out there. Imagine the scale of hurt you
| could achieve, yourself remaining pretty much immune to
| detection and prosecution, by doing the same thing but
| _intentionally_. Bye-bye unrestricted travel.
| jcims wrote:
| Eh, a rogue planet could convert the earth into a small
| asteroid belt.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| You'd need more than a few postgrads over the course of
| several weeks to synthesize a rogue planet, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Luckily, before that happens, humans will have killed
| themselves off and turned the planet into Venus 2.0. That
| way, the rogue planet doesn't have to feel guilty of wiping
| out an advanced species.
| [deleted]
| thegabriele wrote:
| Nature did in the past many times, didn't it?
| chasil wrote:
| Not really that many times.
|
| I understand that most of the major viral pathogens have
| emerged in the last 10,000 years, since urban society
| replaced hunter-gatherer culture.
|
| It has not been difficult to bring what naturally evolved
| under control in developed countries.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| No, it was the neolithic, and in particular animal
| husbandry that was the culprit rather than _simply_
| urbanization which was a later emergence. And when you
| contrast new world peoples who had very few animals to
| domesticate, there 's only one disease thought to have
| originated there: _syphilis_. This is despite the records
| of highly concentrated populations in various regions in
| the New World.
| chasil wrote:
| "In the world our human immune system evolved in hundreds
| of thousands of years ago, infectious diseases could not
| become a major problem because, with a few exceptions,
| when you survive an infectious disease, you usually don't
| get it again. Either it kills you or it leaves you
| completely immune to it for the rest of your life. For
| the vast majority of human history our species lived in
| small tribes that were spread thin and, for all intents
| and purposes, pretty isolated from each other. An
| infectious disease simply could not become a dangerous
| threat and establish itself in our ancestors effectively.
| Because if it infected a tribe, it would infect every
| available person in no time and then die off because
| there would be no one left to jump over. So our evolution
| did not really have to consider these sorts of pathogens
| that much.
|
| "As we became farmers and city dwellers our lifestyle
| changed forever--and so did the diseases that targeted
| us. Living close together created a perfect breeding
| ground for infectious diseases. Suddenly, in evolutionary
| terms, there were hundreds or even thousands of victims
| to infect. As our ancestors were not aware of the nature
| of microorganisms or even basic hygiene and they did not
| yet possess tools like soap and indoor plumbing, there
| was not much they could do--on the contrary, their lack
| of understanding made things worse.
|
| "And when they began domesticating and living together
| with animals in close quarters, often even sleeping in
| the same rooms, some pathogens jumped over. Our new
| lifestyle turned out to be the perfect environment for
| the pathogens of our new animal friends, to adapt to
| humans and vice versa. As a consequence, virtually every
| infectious disease we know today arose in the last ten
| thousand years. From cholera, smallpox, measles,
| influenza, and the common cold to chicken pox."
|
| _Immune_ by Philipp Dettmer
| elcomet wrote:
| Lab-leak doesn't mean lab-made. Those labs study natural
| viruses.
| dijit wrote:
| > Well I hope that at least the next [..] pandemic will insert
| some beneficial mutations to humanity.
|
| Sometimes this is indirect; there is some debate on why some
| Europeans have immunity to HIV, the current hypothesis is that
| it's a result of us surviving the Black Plague.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.h...
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Also why Africans did not suffer such large number of
| fatalities per population. A younger population but we are
| one of the few regions in the world still giving the TB/Polio
| vaccine at birth.
|
| "epigenetic modifications, activate cells of the innate
| immune system, such as monocytes, macrophages and natural
| killer cells"
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34983348/
| bigodbiel wrote:
| I disagree, I hope that lableak confirmation will push for a
| reassessment on the risk reward ratios for research. It may
| slow down scientific process, but we can now see that the
| dangers, if catastrophic enough, even if minimal, may not
| warrant it.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| I can't believe anyone would seriously say 'it doesn't matter
| how it happened.' That's like the NTSB holding a press
| conference and saying it doesn't matter why the 747 crashed
| and killed 500 people.
|
| They have to determine what happened so they can do root
| cause analysis and institute procedures to make this less
| likely to occur again.
| fullshark wrote:
| People will rationalize any argument as long as their
| sacred cows are protected (we must defend SCIENCE it's
| under attack from the ignorant!) or enemies eviscerated.
| pstuart wrote:
| Easy now -- this is how we get zombies.
| stefanpie wrote:
| Antihypoxiant by Andy Weir:
| http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html
| pstuart wrote:
| My fave of his of all time is The Egg:
| http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
| effingwewt wrote:
| Just saw the Kurzgesagt video about this the other say
| and it was truly amazing!
|
| For me it was up there with 'I don't know, Timmy, being
| God is a big responsibility'[1] by qntm.
|
| I had meant to read up some more of Andy Weir but had
| spaced it.
|
| Thanks for the links y'all!
| rajin444 wrote:
| Isn't the lab leak hypothesis saying nature did this make this,
| but scientists who were studying (and allowing) the natural
| processes accidentally leaked it?
|
| Which is the main argument against this kind of function
| research - there's little gain compared to the risk.
| roamerz wrote:
| In the end are we not all a product of nature including the
| scientists?
| ix101 wrote:
| The question is whether in the process of studying it they
| intentionally created modified viruses, and that was what
| leaked.
| oofbey wrote:
| The term "lab leak" is ambiguous (deliberately I guess) as to
| whether the virus was modified in the lab before it leaked,
| or if the lab leaked an unmodified virus.
|
| But the preponderance of evidence is that the leaked virus
| was modified before it was leaked. The critical spike protein
| in SARS_CoV2 is coded uses a sequence of amino acids that has
| never been seen before in any other coronavirus. I forget the
| names, but there are certain common amino acids that can be
| coded using several different functionally-identical DNA
| (RNA) sequences, and the SARS-CoV2 one looks like the
| sequences used in labs and humans, and never seen before in
| natural viruses. One nobel laureate in biology described this
| as a "smoking gun" that this was a lab leak when they first
| heard about it.
| bialpio wrote:
| > (...) it means that nature with its own means did not manage
| to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease (...)
|
| I think I'm less optimistic than you in this matter. There's at
| least one counter-example to that statement:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu that has the same
| order of magnitude of deaths as COVID-19, but in a world where
| population was ~4x smaller and I'd expect less mobile /
| interconnected.
| throwawaycgfd wrote:
| sinecure wrote:
| I think covid's lasting impact will be one of vastly growing
| mistrust in the political and scientific organizations that
| society looks to for guidance.
|
| From the CDC's ever changing guidelines, the liability-free, fast
| tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission, the
| labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and any
| debate as heresy, the effortless militarization of common
| citizens to socially pressure and attack their neighbors into
| compliance, and the coordinated "fact checking" campaigns of
| powerful organizations that have turned out to be complete lies.
| It's all done lasting damage to societal trust... from our own
| families and neighbors, to the heights of academic and
| governmental leadership.
|
| People are rightfully asking many questions. Are the FDA, CDC,
| and the WHO corrupted by big Pharma companies and political
| groups that care more about saving face and profit than the
| truth? Is academia similarly corrupted to create research that
| supports the chosen narrative? Is "trusting the experts" really
| the embodiment of science... or one of religious zealotry?
| dmix wrote:
| Another big one is how they purposefully lied about masks not
| working at first to protect supplies (or at least didn't bother
| recommending them), then turned to everyone should use cloth
| masks, then cloth masks don't work, and then masking kids all
| day long at school was pointless, etc.
|
| The whole back and forth, unquestioning compliance at all costs
| strategy, and purposeful deception just makes everyone
| exhausted, skeptical, and builds resentment.
|
| The worst part is that there isn't any big plans in place to
| get supplies for better-than-N95 respirators for hospital
| workers. I have doubts even N95s will be widely available to
| the public by the next pandemic.
| endgame wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20200301001854/https://twitter.co.
| ..
|
| U.S. Surgeon-General on Twitter, 2022-02-29:
|
| > Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
|
| > They are NOT effective in preventing general public from
| catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get
| them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our
| communities at risk!
| ausbah wrote:
| >CDC's ever changing guidelines
|
| this was much more of a presentation problem then anything. of
| course the science will change in the middle of new viral
| outbreak, people's perception of science just isn't that.
|
| >liability-free, fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually
| mitigate transmission
|
| of course you'll fast track a solution when you have a global
| pandemic? seems like a no brainer? and I don't recall
| transmission ever being promised, only a substantial lower
| chance of severe infection and death - which was a main goal to
| help reduce loads on hospitals?
|
| >labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and
| any debate as heresy
|
| medical hypothesis are a part of science? and I think there's
| definitely room for debate on how vaccines, closures, masks,
| etc. could have been done - but when the debate is just over if
| masks or vaccines even work it's kinda silly to be wasting time
| talking with the "opposition"
|
| >the effortless militarization of common citizens to socially
| pressure and attack their neighbors into compliance
|
| I don't see the problem with this sort of social pressure in
| regards to a pandemic. it's not like being reported to the
| "covid gestapo" for not social distancing for something
| ralph84 wrote:
| > I don't recall transmission ever being promised, only a
| substantial lower chance of severe infection and death
|
| No, that was the spin after it became clear they didn't
| prevent infection or transmission. When they were given EUA
| they were sold as 95% effective at preventing covid[0], and
| there are plenty of clips of officials including the
| president of the US saying if you get vaccinated you won't
| get or spread covid. Nothing about reducing symptoms. Heck,
| read the prescribing info[1]. It still says the indication is
| to prevent covid, not reduce symptoms.
|
| [0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-
| deta...
|
| [1] https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=15623&fo
| rma...
| Izkata wrote:
| No, "prevent covid" means people didn't get sick, which is
| defined by symptoms. That press release isn't conflating
| SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) with COVID-19 (the disease); it says
| nothing about stopping infection/transmission.
|
| That outcome could have been reached by either preventing
| infection or just reducing symptoms, and they made no
| attempt to claim which it was because they didn't test for
| it.
| nomel wrote:
| > of course the science will change in the middle of new
| viral outbreak
|
| No. Science very very rarely changes. The confidence in the
| possible explanations is what changes. They communicated low
| confidence information with high confidence. The trust was
| destroyed with, what appeared to be, a concerted effort to
| silence those that accurately communicated the low
| confidence, or presented other equally possible, and far too
| often eventually-correct, understandings. I think this covers
| all the other points, above.
| mikkergp wrote:
| "We're sorry millions of you are dying, but we got nothing
| for ya'" may be good science but horrific politics.
| nomel wrote:
| That's, obviously, nonsense/hyperbole. I would suggest
| looking at the communication in Germany for a good
| example of science communication.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Science is a deeply personal philosophy that guides how an
| individual interacts with the rest of society. Skepticism,
| reproducibility, and verification. It is fundamentally _not_
| trust based. The body of scientific knowledge is distinct
| from other forms of knowledge in that it is documented in
| such a way that you are able to independently validate it to
| reach the same conclusions yourself. Anything short of that
| is not science. If you are not able to review the methodology
| and data yourself - it is not science from where you are
| standing. If you are not able to reproduce the results - it
| is not scientifically true from where you are standing.
|
| What I perceived during the pandemic was a conflation of
| _trust_ with science. When a high ranking public official
| went on television and said "trust the science" - what they
| meant was "trust me when I say some people are following the
| philosophy of science, and that everyone along the chain of
| trust between me and those people have assured me that the
| conclusions they've reached are sound enough to base policy
| on. You should trust me, and by proxy everyone between me and
| those people practicing science."
|
| What they were _not_ saying was "you should follow the
| philosophy of science yourself."
|
| Science would require the data and methodology be published
| and readily available at the time of a press release
| encouraging independent verification from anyone and
| everyone. Folks who fail to generate the same results should
| be allowed to share those negative results for others to vet.
| Science would dictate that each individual person who
| receives the information start from a position of skepticism
| until the information has been vetted and validated on a
| personal level.
|
| Some people - likely most people - will choose to substitute
| trust for science on a personal level; but anyone who
| dictates that decision for others is not practicing science.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Man that pissed me off. You'd get people you know in real
| life yelling at you for showing public data that went
| against the narrative. Society did anything but "follow the
| science". In fact, it was completely the opposite. It was
| appeals to authority all the way down.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I think you're leaving out the part where, for political or
| other reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell
| distrust in American institutions as well as their political
| rivals.
|
| You cannot seriously have a debate about this mistrust without
| acknowledging the role of misinformation and motivated actors
| looking to sew mistrust.
|
| Remember when 5G causing Covid was trending? Or memes about how
| hot water in a netipot would kill it? Or that if you had a
| strange cold anytime in 2019 you probably already had it?
|
| Theories about microchips in the vaccine started spreading
| before the vaccine was announced. People becoming magnetic
| after the vaccine was trending.
| chopin wrote:
| Many institutions are handling Covid in the worst possible
| way. The clinic of the University of Heidelberg (a scientific
| institution tasked with educating physicians) for instance
| insists on the 3G rule for admittance (either vaccinated,
| recovered or tested for COVID). Either COVID is dangerous,
| then only testing helps, or it is not dangerous, than testing
| only a subgroup is irrational.
|
| The entire health policy in Germany is in denial of the fact
| that the vaccination doesn't help against transmission.
| Refreshers are sold as helping against post- and long-COVID
| where there is only little scientific evidence for it.
|
| I don't think that it is necessary for anybody to sow
| mistrust in institutions. Those handle that on their own
| pretty well.
|
| The Rubikon was crossed with telling that masks don't help -
| against better knowledge. Only to avoid a run on masks and to
| reserve them for health workers. After that, I took
| everything being told with good chunk of salt.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| > Either COVID is dangerous, then only testing helps, or it
| is not dangerous, than testing only a subgroup is
| irrational.
|
| You'd like it to be such a binary choice, but like most
| everything else in the world it's not.
|
| Regardless of the faults or mistakes I think it's incumbent
| on our leaders to try to improve the situation not make it
| worse for political gain.
| slg wrote:
| >I think you're leaving out the part where, for political
| reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell distrust
| in American institutions as well as their political rivals.
|
| The conversations on HN about the lab leak hypothesis always
| leave this out. They often imply the politicization of covid
| came from scientists trying to protect themselves rather than
| from politicians. Maybe the lab leak theory is true, but you
| can't dismiss the fact that it first rose to public
| prominence because politicians pushed it as a way to shift
| the blame for the pandemic. Therefore the anti-lab leak
| argument was heavily political specifically because it was
| responding to an already politicized argument that had little
| evidence to support it.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Not true.
|
| Lab leak hypothesis came up early from NIH's own people. We
| have the emails. Government officials had these emails
| before "We the people" did so would have been first to
| sound the alarm publicly.
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/emails-reveal-suspected-
| covid-...
|
| https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114270/documents
| /...
| slg wrote:
| I'm unclear what specifically in those links do you think
| contradicts what I said. The lab theory being discussed
| in scientific circles does not change the fact that
| politicians are the ones who pushed it into public
| discourse for their own gain and not because of any
| scientific pursuit of truth.
|
| Also side note, an opinion piece from the New York Post
| isn't exactly the most trustworthy source.
| 015a wrote:
| With the latest being: EUA approval, and the preemptive
| purchase of over 100M doses, of the new Pfizer/Moderna omicron
| vaccine after only being tested in mice.
|
| Sure, its similar to previous iterations which have undergone
| human testing. Sure, we have a good understanding of how they
| work, theoretically. The FDA isn't an _entirely_ corrupt and
| incompetent organization. But without human efficacy and safety
| data, it feels beyond likely to me that acceptance rates among
| even the "silent majority" of people will be low.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorize-
| new...
|
| [2] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/06/29/biden-harris-
| admin...
| rtikulit wrote:
| Are you claiming that all authorities, organizations,
| businesses and experts acted (and are continuing to act)
| largely in bad faith?
| namose wrote:
| It seems pretty clear to me that regarding the origin of the
| virus specifically, there has been bad-faith dismissal of the
| lab leak theory due to the politicization of GoF research.
| robomartin wrote:
| nomel wrote:
| And, it has reached the top, with the most disturbing phrase
| I've seen come out of the White House [1]:
|
| "When you are not with where the majority of Americans are,
| then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of
| thinking."
|
| 1.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dButKWnTmG8&feature=emb_title
| robomartin wrote:
| The majority of any population (not just USA) are ignorant
| about most topics. Masses are not intelligent. This is
| particularly true of a range of topics, from economics and
| financial domains to anything in the sciences and
| engineering. The masses are also really bad at being
| intelligent about anything that requires a long term view
| or planning.
|
| Given that, it is probably fair to say that the intelligent
| people are likely _not_ where the majority opinion lies.
| Not always, of course, there are no absolutes. Being
| outside the majority generally requires applying critical
| thinking and sometimes a lot of work to truly understand
| something. My mother used to vote based on who she liked. I
| mean, quite literally, not much different from a beauty
| contest. If she liked the person --for whatever reason--
| she voted for them. I loved my mom, but her voting was
| ignorant and likely damaging to society. I hypothesize,
| based on conversations, that most people vote this way (or
| straight-up party affiliation, which is equally stupid).
|
| As an example I use the work I had to undertake in order to
| understand something seemingly simple: The reality vs. the
| fantasy of photovoltaic solar energy. I was 100% on the
| fantasy camp when I built my 13 kW array. It didn't take
| long for me to, as an engineer, start asking questions
| based on what I was seeing. The full understanding took an
| honest evaluation based on actually having skin in the
| game, experience, math and more. It probably took me a
| couple of years to go from being a solar energy cult member
| to being a solar energy realist. I venture to guess that
| 99.9% of people will never take that journey.
|
| If understanding that the masses are wrong makes one
| "extreme", so be it. These days we find all kinds of ways
| to denigrate and stomp on people who don't push accepted
| narratives. The masses don't realize that politicians
| create divisive narratives with the sole purpose of
| capturing votes and retaining or growing power. They do not
| --regardless of party-- work for us. They work for
| themselves. They work to stay in power. That is, in CS
| terminology, their fitness function --what drives their
| evolution and actions. Their power is evidence of just how
| stupid populations have been over the years.
|
| On a much darker side, this statement out of government
| --any government-- is scary in ways history has shown us
| time and time again. Genocides have been perpetrated
| because the masses --ignorant and stupid as they are-- are
| easily manipulated to fall in line with the politics of the
| those in power. The Armenian, Jewish and Darfour genocides
| are just a few examples of this. Mobs are not intelligent.
| We should actually embrace those who do not agree with the
| majority, not expunge them.
| garren wrote:
| I'd be curious to get a better understanding of the
| "solar energy reali[sm]" that you mentioned. It sounds
| like you're suggesting that solar is less practical or
| efficient than we've been led to believe.
|
| I've got at least 3 neighbors by me with arrays that
| effectively eliminate their monthly home energy costs,
| that seems pretty great. Is that not a realistic
| expectation for most people with the time/money to invest
| in such a setup?
| nomel wrote:
| > that effectively eliminate their monthly home energy
| costs
|
| The average payback, in the US, is 12 years. Until that
| time, the energy cost isn't eliminated, it has shifted to
| the payment of those panels, along with interest,
| connection fees, maintenance, and added taxes and
| insurance. For some, the numbers might not make sense.
| robomartin wrote:
| A few things.
|
| At the home level, I would ask if you have actually
| spoken to these neighbors and learned if they have
| significant monthly costs electricity costs. Most of my
| neighbors still spend in the order of $200 to $300 per
| month after solar installation. There are many reasons
| for this. I bought my system and did all the work myself.
| Not only is my system about twice the size of anything
| around me (Google satellite view is great for this), it
| doesn't cost me a dime once installed. Most of my
| neighbors got scammed into various forms of leasing. They
| have a lease payment in the $150/month+ range for half
| the system (typically 4 to 6 kilowatt vs. my 13 kW. The
| combination of an undersized system and living in an area
| where constant air conditioning is a must, means most of
| them are paying for electricity every month despite
| having solar. I don't. In fact, the power company usually
| owes me money.
|
| The first reality is that none of them would be able to
| use their solar panels to charge electric cars. They
| can't. They can barely run their homes with them. And,
| frankly, I can't. Even with a 13 kW system, I can't use
| it to charge electric cars. It simply isn't enough. Or
| more importantly, it is unreliable and highly variable in
| performance.
|
| This is where we start getting into the technical
| realities of solar, with the analysis starting at the
| most basic small system "home" level and then expanding
| out into large-scale installations.
|
| Here's a picture of my system generating power on a good
| day:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Fl8ARJd.png
|
| Notice the peak isn't 13 kW, but rather about 10 kW. I
| have reached 11 kW and never more than that. There are
| many reasons for this. One of them is that solar panels
| have a negative temperature coefficient, which means they
| generate less power as they get hot. They always get hot.
| Their advertised rating is for what I would call ideal
| conditions. Most people think of solar panels as these
| magical things that make power. Well, they are not.
|
| As the evaluation expands into utility-scale solar it is
| crucially important to understand what this curve means.
| It is an inverted parabola. Which means the area under
| the curve, the integral of that function, is 2/3 the area
| under the enclosing constant power rectangle. If we draw
| a rectangle with the top line at 10 kW, the area under
| that rectangle is the energy produced. The area for a
| solar system with the same peak power is 2/3 that of the
| rectangle. In other words, it can only generate --on a
| good day-- 67% of the total energy. Another way to put is
| is: In order to generate the same energy you need a
| system that is 1.5 times larger (1 / 0.67). I would have
| to expand my system to 20 kW in order to have the
| equivalent of the constant power 10 kW output one would
| get from a conventional power plan (a fraction of the
| total output, of course).
|
| I said "on a good day". That is the other reality-vs-
| fantasy aspect of solar and one of the reasons for which
| your neighbors might be paying a lot more for electricity
| than they thought they would when they got their systems.
| Here's another picture from my system:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/SOr30bX.png
|
| What are those horrendous dips that reduce power by as
| much as 50%?
|
| Clouds.
|
| Yup. Clouds, and, in general, the weather and atmospheric
| dirt and dust affect solar in dramatic ways. My system is
| oversized enough that I come out OK at the end of the
| month. Not so for my neighbors. These dips absolutely
| kill your ability to make power reliably and reduce your
| average energy output.
|
| This is what a typical month could look like:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/bGuCH2F.png
|
| Here you can see daily performance that results on peaks
| of about 50 kWh (energy generation, the integral of power
| over time) down to about 10 kWh.
|
| This is brutal. What it means, in no uncertain terms, is,
| if we were talking about utility scale solar, having to
| build an array that is five times larger than needed just
| to compensate for this issue. I stress: Just this one
| issue.
|
| Remember the 2/3 of the area under the constant power
| curve? That meant you need a system that is 1.5 times
| larger. Now you have to take that and multiply it by
| five. That means 7.5 times larger to account for both the
| parabolic power curve and fluctuations in power output.
|
| And yet, we are not done. Photovoltaic systems only
| generate power for roughly 12 hours per day. Once could
| argue it's less than that because the early and late
| hours make very little power. Keeping the assumption at
| twelve hours, well, we want power for 24 hours, not 12.
| Which means we need a large number of batteries to store
| power for use at night.
|
| That's great. However, the energy to charge the batteries
| has to come from somewhere. If that somewhere is the same
| solar array, we have to build an even larger version of
| what we have. Super simple numbers: We need to double it!
| If we want the same average energy output 24/7 we need to
| store what we can make during the day on a massive set of
| batteries. These batteries require their own separate
| array. The existing array is delivering power you will
| use for other applications.
|
| This is how we reach a multiplier somewhere in the order
| of 15. You need a system that is 15 times the required
| peak constant power output and enough batteries to
| maintain that as the sun comes down. The real number is
| likely much larger than that due to system and
| transmission efficiency realities.
|
| I'll stop here and just mention that the issues go far
| beyond that. For example, you can't cover 100% of a
| utility-scale land area with panels because of practical
| shading and construction/maintenance access requirements.
| Panels have a lifespan of about 15 years. It is probably
| the same for electronics. An installation with a million
| panels is going to be a maintenance nightmare at some
| point, with the potential of having to replace a million
| panels every fifteen years or so. And the batteries? I
| don't even want to think about that.
|
| A million panels sounds like a lot? Assuming a nominal
| label (not real output) power rating of 400 W per panel
| that is only 400 MW theoretical output. Given the
| analysis above, this size power plan isn't likely to be
| able to produce much more than, say, 20 MW to 40 MW
| equivalent constant power 24/7. For a sense of
| proportion, a typical nuclear power plant produced 1000
| MW 24/7/365. In other words, you might need somewhere in
| the range of 25 million to 50 million panels (and
| zillions of batteries) to build the equivalent of a 1 GW
| nuclear power plant.
|
| That, in a nutshell, is what I am talking about when I
| speak of the reality vs. fantasy of solar. It isn't
| magical. It isn't reliable. It might not even be very
| green at all once we really look at not only the scale,
| but the life cycle when compared to other technologies
| (that is to say, mainly nuclear).
|
| It is a fantasy to believe that the electric vehicle
| revolution will be powered by solar on roofs. Nobody is
| going to install the size systems required to power their
| homes and, at the same time, charge multiple vehicles per
| household. In order to charge a couple of vehicles you
| probably need at least three times the system size I have
| as well as a mass of batteries to allow access to energy
| when needed. That probably means somewhere in the 30 kW
| to 50 kW range per household. That isn't going to happen.
|
| My take away after really looking at this is that we
| better get behind nuclear in a massive way. If we throw
| money at solar all we would accomplish is to engage in
| the largest every transfer of wealth and economic power
| from the West to China. All photovoltaic solar pretty
| much comes form China. Build ridiculous scales of solar
| and we will give China economic supremacy over the rest
| of the world for, well, probably a century or more.
| Imagine a business where billions of solar panels and
| electronic components have to be replaced every 15 to 20
| years and all of that hardware comes from China. In one
| word: That would be beyond stupid. It would be like
| becoming drug addicts, with China as our drug dealer.
|
| We have to go nuclear. It's the only way.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Isn't this just the definition of the word extreme? I mean,
| I get that maybe they're using the word extreme to equal
| bad (maybe not), but I think this is just the definition of
| the word.
|
| Why do you think it's bad to have an extreme opinion? I
| probably have quite a few of extreme opinions. Some wrong,
| some right, some I cherish, some I dismiss.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Isn 't this just the definition of the word extreme?_
|
| Nope.
|
| Consider, say, this chart of adult male height (no idea
| if it's actually accurate, that's not really the point):
| https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ip4sMYv438c/TRjMhUlQczI/AAAAAA
| AAA...
|
| The majority are around 5'7" - 5'10".
|
| "Extreme" would be the tail ends, say <5'1" or >6'3".
|
| There's a fair bit between those, that is neither part of
| the majority nor extreme.
| nomel wrote:
| > Isn't this just the definition of the word extreme?
|
| Absolutely not. From the dictionary:
| extreme Most remote in any direction; outermost
| or farthest. Being in or attaining the greatest
| or highest degree; very intense. Being far
| beyond the norm: synonym: excessive
| mikkergp wrote:
| The question I want to know is how much of this is "bad"
| corruption (worse than you would find in a 350 million
| population relatively free democracy/republic) and how much of
| this is sausage making. Was there any reasonable way for this
| to go well, given the realities of living in a complex
| democracy where we don't agree on how it should have gone? Is
| it inevitable that societal trust breaks down just because
| societies are complex things? So far, I've been losing more
| sleep over the people losing trust than the people breaking
| trust.
| tinco wrote:
| The liability-free fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually
| mitigate transmission greatly restored my belief that we might
| survive the next large event. It was rolled out quickly, and it
| actually greatly reduced mortality. Reducing transmission
| would've been epic, but we can't win them all.
|
| The CDC's ever changing guidelines were good, but their not
| admitting that at some point the had been wrong or worse were
| flat out lying did hurt societal trust a lot. The fact that
| social pressure on our neighbours and government
| recommendations failed to such an extent that we needed extra
| policing just to get people to keep to reasonable curfews
| sucked.
|
| I don't know where you pull the "effortless militarization of
| common citizens .. who attack" from, but a. that didn't happen,
| and b. it was the people who did not follow government
| recommendations and social pressure that were out there
| militarizing and attacking their neighbours.
|
| People are asking questions, that's how science works. But
| basing laws and regulations on established science and expert
| advice, that's how society is _supposed_ to work. You can be
| angry about the state of science, or about the corrupting
| influence of pharmaceutical companies, but don 't throw out the
| baby with the bath water. The fact that we've been able to
| respond swiftly based on expert advice and on established
| science is a good thing. Maybe next time we'll make sure those
| experts and scientists have more competence and better
| alignment to our ethical values.
| nradov wrote:
| Imposing mandatory curfews was never reasonable. That was
| never justified on an evidence-based medicine basis, and it
| violated the fundamental human right of free assembly. Those
| involved in policing such policies should be ashamed of
| themselves.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Shame this gets downvotes. If we are following the science
| there should be ample reproducible research out there
| (conduced before the pandemic) showing that curfews had
| enough benefits to justify their extreme costs.
|
| But there is nothing. There is no research that lockdowns
| would be worth their cost either but here we are...
| [deleted]
| M0r13n wrote:
| I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the
| risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it
| can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked
| and the chemists know something about the long term effects that
| they do not publicly disclose.
| vibrio wrote:
| Chemists rarely work directly with viruses.
| [deleted]
| narwal46 wrote:
| Gareth321 wrote:
| > People infected with SARS-COV-2 had more than three times the
| risk of dying over the following year compared with those who
| remained uninfected
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...
| nxpnsv wrote:
| A study on motivated reasoning, don't trust anyone that sure of
| something this controversial.
| apeace wrote:
| I'm wondering: what exactly is this virus research _for_ anyways?
|
| Whether or not this lab leaked the virus and caused the pandemic,
| I'm wondering why they are interested in engineering new variants
| of SARS-like viruses in the first place?
|
| Are the detractors of the lab-leak theory saying "Yes, they
| engineered plenty of coronaviruses in the lab, there's just no
| evidence that any of them leaked out" or are they saying "No,
| this lab was never trying to engineer new coronaviruses"?
| kennywinker wrote:
| Answer is not complicated - the goal is to understand and
| prevent / treat future outbreaks of emergent diseases like this
| (and maybe even the common-cold coronaviruses). Just like how
| security researchers hack things to improve security
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >why they are interested in engineering new variants of SARS-
| like viruses in the first place?
|
| A reason may be so they can know how a similar naturally
| occurring virus may work.
| exitb wrote:
| What is the motivation behind research that makes viruses more
| suitable for humans anyway? I assume it's not strictly a military
| project, since there was international cooperation between
| countries that aren't allies. What is it we're tying to achieve?
| masklinn wrote:
| Better understand the mechanisms involved in order to have
| better tools to fight against it, or better surveillance tools
| when sampling? (e.g. have a better idea of whether a wildlife
| pathogen is approaching zoonoticity)
| jcims wrote:
| Probably has no relevance for the research in question but
| viruses are a very effective way to deliver CRISPR-based
| therapies.
|
| It's conceivable to implant the mRNA of a vaccine similar to
| what was used for COVID-19 into a transmissible virus and
| inoculate (or kill) large segments of the population.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| They will do it themselves naturally so studying such a change
| means you are already prepared when they do.
| npteljes wrote:
| The military application is the easiest to imagine, but viruses
| have been made useful in medicine too:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_thera...
| notananthem wrote:
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the Huanan
| wet market, but not around the lab, which is on the other side of
| the Wuhan, a pretty massive city.[0]
|
| If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases
| to cluster around the lab. Instead, they were centered around a
| wet market, just like the early cases of the original SARS were
| back in 2002.
|
| This is completely aside from the other reasons that make a lab
| leak extremely unlikely. It's public knowledge which viruses the
| lab in Wuhan works with. The lab regularly publishes its work,
| lab members go to conferences to present their work, there are
| international researchers at the institute in Wuhan. There would
| have been no reason at all for them to hide SARS-CoV-2 prior to
| the pandemic, and there is simply no shred of evidence that they
| had SARS-CoV-2.
|
| Finally, I would just encourage anyone who's wondering how much
| stock to put in Ebright's claims to scroll through his Twitter
| account. The online persona he cultivates is, to put it very
| politely, that of a troll.
|
| 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715
| carrolldunham wrote:
| _> If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early
| cases to cluster around the lab. _
|
| No, because it's not proposed that the virus leaked out of the
| lab building into the nearby air. I presume it's more like a
| person who worked at the lab getting infected, and then moving
| around the city as normal, needing only to infect one other
| person, anywhere in the city.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| And that person just happened to go all the way across the
| city to a wet market that sells the same sorts of animals
| that caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002?
|
| The earliest known cases are people who worked at the market
| or lived right next to it. That's exactly what you'd expect
| for an outbreak caused by animals at the market.
| tristor wrote:
| " The closest known CoV RaTG13 strain (96.2%) to SARS-CoV-2
| detected in bat anal swabs have been sequenced at the Wuhan
| Institute of Virology. The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2nd
| December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market. Such
| moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory."
| [0] (page 119)
|
| [0] https://www.who.int/docs/default-
| source/coronaviruse/final-j...
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Wasn't the first case in November though?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studied RaTG13, is not
| the same thing as the Wuhan CDC.
|
| Two points about RaTG13:
|
| 1. RaTG13 is not the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. It's not even
| the closest known relative any more. A closer relative has
| since been found in the wild, in bats in Laos.
|
| 2. RaTG13 doesn't even exist in live form in the Wuhan
| Institute of Virology. It only exists there as data on a hard
| drive, obtained by sequencing traces of RNA in a swab taken
| from a bat in the wild. A replicating form of the virus has
| never actually obtained. It's much more difficult to isolate
| a replicating virus than it is to sequence RNA in a sample.
| In fact, the WIV has only ever isolated three SARS-like
| viruses, all of which are publicly known and have been
| heavily publicized by the WIV (because it's a big deal,
| scientifically, and reflects well on them).
| eternalban wrote:
| As someone else has already pointed out, the provenance of the
| virus, and its emergence/release location are two distinct
| matters.
|
| There appears to be consensus on the latter: the wet market
| (although some do wonder about the mystery illness in Summer of
| 2019, in US).
|
| https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/11/2-dead-unknown-respirat...
|
| "A news report from Virginia says that two people are dead and
| 18 have been hospitalized following an outbreak of an unknown
| respiratory infection at a retirement community. What could it
| possibly be?"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_...
|
| So, were these "mystery illnesses" caused by _vaccinated_ US
| military personnel who work in F.D. cranking around Washington
| DC metro area?
| hugoromano wrote:
| "science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan
| Institute of Virology" is precisely my concern. It is always a
| "wait and see", instead of planning in case something goes wrong.
| Public health is consistently the speciality among medicine
| students they don't want.
| scotchmi_st wrote:
| If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note
| clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims,
| for which there's no evidence.
|
| The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I
| haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor
| applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily
| dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with
| the idea of this escaping from a lab (a friend who used to work
| at the CDC told me some rather scary stories about working
| there), but there's no serious evidence it was the case here.
|
| On the other hand, many people would like it to be true, because
| it feeds into a conspiracy narrative. People can't believe things
| like global, deadly viral pandemics can occur naturally, even
| though they do.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >but there's no serious evidence it was the case here
|
| I mean, the furan cleavage site certainly counts as evidence of
| a potential modification if it hasn't been observed in any of
| the natural coronaviruses and inserting it in the position it
| is was the subject of a grant proposal just a couple of years
| prior, at the institute in close proximity to the outbreak.
|
| There's also the fact that US intelligence leaked that a couple
| of workers at WIV were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in
| November, before the outbreak was otherwise detected which is
| an unusual event for working-aged people. That is an extremely
| suspicious timing and location of an unusual event in more than
| one person, though we don't have confirmation of the causative
| agent.
|
| Also, while we're back into speculative evidence, I found the
| behavior of the Chinese government was very suspicious
| throughout.
|
| I found it very interesting that there was a nation-wide
| initiative in China toward enhancing lab safety at BSL labs
| which was rolled out relatively quietly a few months into the
| pandemic. They also pulled their viral genetic database offline
| after the outbreak. Non-transparency is expected, but a couple
| of those actions seem more damning.
| Closi wrote:
| > Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence
| can be as easily dismissed without evidence.
|
| I think the problem is that there is very little evidence
| exists for the other explanations - and an absence of evidence
| isn't evidence of absence.
|
| The lack of non-circumstantial evidence for the "Lab Leak"
| theory can be partially explained by the fact that China
| blocked investigations within the lab until 2021, and there are
| obvious and strong geopolitical reasons why they would want to
| destroy evidence if the 'lab leak' theory WAS true. This is
| from a country already known to perform cover-ups.
|
| So this is the problem - if the hypothesis was true, any
| biological evidence would have most likely been intentionally
| destroyed, which means we can't really apply 'Hitchens Razor'.
| jiscariot wrote:
| US officials also have the strong incentives to muddy the
| waters for lab-leak. I mean, if true, we likely funded it
| since Fauci's NIH was giving millions in grant money to
| Daszak/EcoHealth Alliance, which was studying bat corona
| viruses and arguing with the government over their gain of
| function research.
|
| Oddly Vanity Fair has done the best deep-dive I've seen on
| this. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-
| hunting-no...
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Not only that but tensions are already high with China; you
| really want to collapse that wave function? I'm pretty OK
| with that not being public knowledge.
| lmm wrote:
| Is it getting better or worse if we wait? Right now China
| _probably_ wouldn 't dare invade Taiwan, whereas in ten
| years they probably will. So yes, now is the right time
| to find out whether they're willing to cooperate with the
| rule-based international community or not.
| abigail95 wrote:
| If you say there's no evidence for something, what does that
| mean? Are we talking about something without positive
| verification, or that there is evidence the opposite is true.
|
| If you are witness to a cover-up, that's not a signal that "no
| evidence" is a good position to take.
|
| There is evidence they lied about what they were doing. What
| does that say about the probability of the existence of
| positive evidence?
|
| They aren't covering up something that would make them look
| innocent I'll tell you that.
|
| WRT policy, it doesn't matter where the leak actually occured.
| We should treat both scenarios are likely and plan accordingly.
| If the next leak does come from a lab, it's obvious the Chinese
| will cover it up anyway.
| mellavora wrote:
| > If you say there's no evidence for something, what does
| that mean?
|
| Back in the 70's, when the Pentagon was concerned that the
| Soviets were up to something, they would sometimes say in
| response to a world event that "And we have no evidence that
| the Soviets are behind this"-- as tongue in cheek "proof" of
| how clever the Soviets were about hiding their tracks.
|
| <edit> to expand-- this was a standing joke which was useful
| for reducing workplace stress, not often a serious claim
| </edit>
| tomp wrote:
| The fact that there is no evidence, is evidence. (China
| suppressing all information about what was going on in the
| lab.)
| desindol wrote:
| It's more akin to you being paranoid than anything else. It's
| like myths, dragons and sea monsters came about. No, it was
| our flagship it's unsinkable it must be the kraken!
| roenxi wrote:
| > On the other hand, many people would like it to be true,
| because it feeds into a conspiracy narrative.
|
| I think this is missing Occam's razor - many people believe it
| because they've seen more evidence that it is true than the
| reverse, but they aren't necessarily good at judging evidence.
|
| It doesn't make much difference either way. Given the number of
| people in the world, it seems likely we're going to see similar
| waves of disease in the future. The Asia-Pacific region has
| been on high alert for exactly this happening for 20 years,
| this could easily be a 1 in 40 years pandemic or worse as the
| world keeps getting smaller. And if it is even half plausibly a
| lab leak then given where tech is up to it takes one lab
| anywhere with bad safety standards - this is almost a level of
| risk that is hitherto outside the human experience.
| Loveaway wrote:
| > People can't believe things like global, deadly viral
| pandemics can occur naturally
|
| Isn't that what most people believe? To me it seems people
| can't just believe all of this was not a coincidence at all,
| artificial hyped through oligopoly media, not even as deadly as
| advertised, and just another bamboozle to keep everyone in
| their hamster wheels.
| narwal46 wrote:
| 6510 wrote:
| > The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I
| haven't seen much evidence one way or another.
|
| MY main issue is that we even have to consider it. We have
| plenty of horrific diseases studied in labs that could (and do)
| escape at times but are very much worth studying. Designing new
| ones should not be a thing.
| null_object wrote:
| > If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's
| note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy
| claims, for which there's no evidence.
|
| Note that the addendum to the paper was added in March 2020,
| when Peter Daszak and many others directly associated with the
| Wuhan Institute were working covertly[0] to destroy any
| rational or scientific debate about the origins of covid. The
| Lancet letter was published on 7 March 2020.
|
| [0] Daszak and many of the other co-signers to the Lancet
| letter which "strongly condemned conspiracy theories" declared
| no conflicts of interest.
| initplus wrote:
| Daszak acted unethically regardless of the actual truth of
| the lab leak hypothesis.
|
| His actions were a self serving attempt to muddy the waters
| on investigation of the virus origin, and may have prevented
| conclusive proof one way or the other from ever emerging. I
| doubt Daszak himself knows for sure. But if there is a risk
| that you are responsible, why not try cover it up anyway.
| Just in case?
|
| Same reasoning goes for the Chinese government.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Co-signing a letter is hardly _covertly_ doing something, isn
| 't it?
| null_object wrote:
| > Co-signing a letter is hardly covertly doing something,
| isn't it?
|
| Daszak made strenuous efforts to hide:
|
| * that he was the organizer and writer of the letter
|
| * that he had direct and invidious connections to the Wuhan
| Institute
|
| * that the signatories to the letter had any connection to
| EcoHealth Alliance or the Wuhan Institute
|
| All of the above were later confirmed by emails obtained
| via public record requests under the Freedom of Information
| Act.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > Daszak made strenuous efforts to hide [...] that the
| signatories to the letter had any connection to EcoHealth
| Alliance or the Wuhan Institute
|
| That's a strange thing to argue given that Peter Daszak's
| position within EcoHealth Alliance is public and well-
| known, and he signed the letter publicly.
|
| His extended conflict statement isn't exactly a smoking
| gun either:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS014
| 0-6...
| phkahler wrote:
| I think it's important to set aside the question of weather
| Covid was made in a lab. For the sake of argument let's say it
| was not. There were proposals to do the kind of experimental
| work that would have created a virus very much like Covid-19.
| Those who wrote the proposal and shopped it around for funding
| probably considered it relatively harmless to do, both in a
| lab, and should it accidentally get out (it's just a corona
| virus after all).
|
| The fact remains that there are people out there who _want_ to
| make stuff like that in a lab. That kind of "work" needs to
| stop.
|
| Thats what I take away from Covid whether it came from a lab or
| not, it very well _could have given what goes on in labs_. The
| fact that a lab leak is highly plausible is the problem, not
| the truth of it happening in this case.
| niemandhier wrote:
| > The fact remains that there are people out there who want
| to make stuff like that in a lab. That kind of "work" needs
| to stop.
|
| No we need much more of such work. Why do you think we had a
| vaccine so fast? We were able to create an Ebola vaccine
| before?
| isthisthingon99 wrote:
| The reason was because the virus was sequenced and we have
| technology that can supposedly create safe and effective
| vaccines based on this.
| isthisthingon99 wrote:
| I like this idea.
| nullc wrote:
| Yeah! exactly.
|
| If by some weird accident of history the research wasn't the
| actual cause of the virus-- it's just an accident. The
| problem was that we setup a situation where if it wasn't
| human originated, it's only a fluke.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Couldn't a contributor to the lack of evidence be that the CCP
| blocked a lot of discovery from being conducted, and didn't
| release enough information? We're never going to know due to
| that alone. Obviously the optics would be really bad if they
| showed evidence that they leaked it accidentally.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-china-blocked...
| [deleted]
| quadcore wrote:
| _deleted_
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Please provide an example of such a case.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Actually many people would like it to be false for personal
| profit or just human mentality. It's another ballpark of
| seriousness if that wasn't brought up by mother nature.
|
| What kind of evidence do you need? This paper is full of
| evidence that if you combine the probability of each event
| happening, the probability that it was accidental is really
| small. So the burden of probability should be to prove that it
| wasn't leaked which isn't proven after 3 years.
| dathinab wrote:
| > for personal profit
|
| it's not just personal profit, I mean if it's true how would
| you react to it? Putting aside how it would affect research,
| it also would make many people including such in power blame
| China for it. Which would be a political nightmare not just
| for China but also US, EU, etc.
|
| So if any secret service has proof it was a leak you can be
| sue they wait until there is a major conflict with China.
| Like e.g. because China attacking Taiwan before the US/EU
| become more independent of TSMC. Through at that point of
| time there is also a lot of insensitive to just make up a
| "proof". So the public probably will never know for sure.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| At what probability does the burden of proof shift?
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Although you can find a Bayesian answer for this which I am
| not qualified to calculate, it's irrelevant. The most
| pressing issue is not to dismiss it as _zero_ probability
| as has been until know because it is viewed as a
| conspiracy. Even if the probability is very small we _have
| to_ dig in deeper to prevent the next catastrophe.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Even if the probability is very small we have to dig
| in deeper to prevent the next catastrophe._
|
| There are very small chances of many catastrophes that we
| happily ignore.
|
| Among the less small ones, off the top of my head: a
| large earthquake on the San Andreas fault and the
| Yellowstone supervolcano erupting.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Can we prevent a volcano erupting? No. Can we prevent a
| lab leak? Yes. I wonder why people are soooo resistant to
| this idea and make up a myriad bad arguments.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because we get annoyed when people insinuate that
| pointing out features of reality are evidence of a
| conspiratorial cabal.
|
| Can we prevent a lab leak? Not really insofar as humans
| are less than perfect individuals.
|
| Pretending we hadn't discovered atomic fission would have
| been just as dangerous as ignoring biological threats.
| WithinReason wrote:
| An important question. For the sake of adjusting priors
| here is a list of biosecurity incidents:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurit
| y...
|
| SARS itself leaked from the lab 4 times, once from a BSL-4
| lab.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| * SARS*, including the original SARS virus (3 times, per
| page) and SARS-CoV-2 (1 time, post-pandemic)
| WithinReason wrote:
| Actually I meant SARS-CoV-1 leaked 4 times, one of the
| events listed was actually 2 separate ones 2 weeks apart
| if you read the description.
| [deleted]
| barnacled wrote:
| There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in
| favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert
| here -
| https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240...
|
| I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are
| louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more
| than natural origins and they are not being honest in their
| attempts to dismiss these papers.
| null_object wrote:
| > There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in
| favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain
| expert here...
|
| A counter:
|
| https://ayjchan.medium.com/evidence-for-a-natural-origin-
| of-...
|
| As for Angie Rasmussen - she is hardly the dispassionate
| scientist that you seem to want to portray her as, in your
| post[0]
|
| [0] https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/a-toxic-
| milie...
| barnacled wrote:
| The 'counter' is incredibly weak sauce and she's been
| rebutted several times. Again, as I said, if you just
| ignore rebuttals you can keep acting like you have a point.
|
| The second post is a scurrilous and nasty smear job from a
| thoroughly unpleasant individual and I'm quite appalled you
| posted it. Shameful.
| kgarten wrote:
| Did you read the thread? The counter just takes the first
| paper she cites into account ... Not the second:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337
|
| Both of them are interesting reads. I find a natural cause
| now more plausible after reading them.
|
| Yet, of course nobody knows and we might not for a long
| time (or never).
| kgarten wrote:
| why is this downvoted? this is an excellent thread with links
| to a paper that seems to show strong evidence against the lab
| leak ...
| peyton wrote:
| > there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events,
| and exact circumstances remain obscure
|
| From the paper.
| kgarten wrote:
| I was talking about the second paper she mentions in the
| twitter thread:
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337
| ripper1138 wrote:
| They aren't mutually exclusive though right? We can say the
| initial outbreak was from the wet market. Does that mean the
| virus itself is of 100% natural origin?
| syndic8_xyz wrote:
| What I saw is that it started in SW Indonesia, in a jungle
| near the coast, in 2008. That was its first appearance:
| covid-19 origin's
|
| i see this coronavirus first originated in South West India
|
| And first jumped to human in coastal Bengkulu/West Sumatra in
| Indonesia
|
| I'll try to get time on these events
|
| end of 2008: origination in SW india near Mangalore
|
| 1Q2013: first jumps to humans in BGK/WSU indonesia after an
| animal outbreak on the coast in late 2012
|
| first substantial human outbreak: Mid 2013 slightly inland
| from outbreak location.
|
| but of course there's no political capital to be made by
| blaming these poor places ....
|
| feel kind of sad to consider how much of the crazy blame game
| is actually driven by knowledge, desire for truth and
| competence, and how much of it is just driven by political
| competition....i guess the motivation doesn't matter...the
| result matters. the output is not about truth it's about
| politics and narrative ... so sad....
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| chrisan wrote:
| Hope this gets more upvotes. Kind of dismaying the number of
| people relying on tweets with no source(s).
|
| Haven't we learned enough over these years of misinformation
| and "fake news"?
|
| TLDR the tweet string from the actual Dr of Virology:
| evidence so far points to natural but more info is needed
| barnacled wrote:
| Ah I expected to get downvoted into oblivion, I know it's a
| cliche to say it but HN isn't what it once was.
|
| A key point to take away is that the fact there are 2
| lineages means that lab leak is super unlikely. It would
| require somebody from the lab to come to the same
| relatively small market to give lineage A, then somebody
| else who got infected through a totally different
| evolutionary route at the lab to happen to come to the
| market just after and both to not spread it anywhere else.
|
| Of course lab leakers are working hard to try to deny this
| or claim the data is wrong or yada yada. It's an ongoing
| battle and they have several highly dedicated 'independent
| scientists' (lol) working on it seemingly 24/7.
|
| It's quite dispiriting to see.
| null_object wrote:
| > Of course lab leakers are working hard to try to deny
| this or claim the data is wrong or yada yada. It's an
| ongoing battle and they have several highly dedicated
| 'independent scientists' (lol) working on it seemingly
| 24/7.
|
| I think the downvotes are because of this type of
| statement, which suggests that people who have read the
| papers, and thought about the conflicting evidence, and
| finally come to a conclusion that differs from your
| viewpoint, dislike the implication that they are simply
| nutty conspiracy-theorists tirelessly and obsessively
| working to undermine rational science.
| barnacled wrote:
| You do realise there are countless people who have 'read
| the papers and thought about the conflicting evidence'
| about climate change right?
|
| The reality is unfortunately that these people ARE nutty
| conspiracy theorists. They are not 'thinking about the
| papers' and providing a reasonable push back, they're
| reiterating long debunked points (did you read the thread
| I posted?).
|
| Ebright already claimed the papers were scientific fraud
| until he thought better and deleted the tweet. This is
| the kind of person you're dealing with.
|
| I'm not going to both-sides something which now has very
| clear evidence in one direction and not a shred of
| evidence in the other, I'm sorry I'm just not.
|
| Hacker news of old would be more open to that. Again,this
| is why I no longer post here.
| tripletao wrote:
| The two lineages are literally just two SNPs apart. SARS-
| CoV-2 averages ~1/3 of an SNP per human-to-human
| transition, so ~1/9 of such transmissions generate "two
| lineages" at least that different. So intuitively, it
| seems easy to believe those lineages could have evolved
| in just a few weeks of early cryptic (unsampled) human
| spread.
|
| Pekar et al. did some complicated modeling that purports
| to establish that the MRCA in humans is so recent that
| the two lineages must have arisen in animals, implying
| two introductions into humans. I believe that's highly
| suspect though, per my explanation and links at
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32740568
| chmod600 wrote:
| There is also no evidence that it came from animals directly.
|
| Given that there are really only two plausible hypotheses, and
| nondirect evidence of either, we have to speculate based on
| circumstantial evidence.
|
| And if one hypothesis is floated around the media, we need to
| raise the other one as well.
|
| I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that
| there can be global media conspiracies, even though there are
| (cf. "masks don't work unless you're a trained medical
| professional" propaganda at the beginning).
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe
| that there can be global media conspiracies, even though
| there are (cf. "masks don't work unless you're a trained
| medical professional" propaganda at the beginning).
|
| That's not a conspiracy, that's just common shared knowledge.
| mejutoco wrote:
| > "masks don't work unless you're a trained medical
| professional"
|
| Putting aside the phrasing, which I take to be something
| like "unless you follow procedures and have new masks often
| etc".
|
| In the beginning this was the narrative because there was a
| shortage of masks, or because of plain ignorance.
|
| Masks are not perfect, but they were effective, which is
| why they are still mandatory in some contexts.
|
| If one can ignore the bizarre political associations that
| formed in the US regarding masks, it is difficult to argue
| that the effort of wearing a mask is not worth it. Even if,
| as I said before, they are far from perfect.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| To my knowledge, to this day, there are still exactly
| zero RCTs showing that masks were ever effective against
| COVID, and at least two major RCTs whose results indicate
| they are not very effective (there was no statistically
| significant benefit to masking). If, after two years of a
| world-wide pandemic, the best evidence we can put forth
| are low-quality observational studies which explicitly
| state they _cannot_ show causation, then maybe it 's time
| to stop blindly repeating the mantra that masks are
| effective.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2729
| aljungberg wrote:
| The fact that we were strongly told no and then yes with
| equal conviction is sufficient to demonstrate the point,
| regardless of whether masks work. Whether intentionally
| or not, media and governments can mislead in an in effect
| coordinated fashion.
|
| (Note there is a straw-man counterargument where one
| might say "so they changed their mind as evidence
| evolved, that's allowed". But the information was
| presented as established and factual in both cases. We
| have always been at war with Eastasia.)
| ubertaco wrote:
| >(Note there is a straw-man counterargument where one
| might say "so they changed their mind as evidence
| evolved, that's allowed". But the information was
| presented as established and factual in both cases. We
| have always been at war with Eastasia.)
|
| My friend, if you expect immediate inerrancy from
| everyone dealing with global-scale novel viruses, then I
| think you'll find that you'll _always_ be disappointed
| (or, more likely given your 1984 reference, you'll
| _always_ be the "victim" of another imagined conspiracy).
|
| I do hope your friends, family, and coworkers afford you
| more space to learn, grow, and change (and that you
| practice doing so!) than you afford to others.
| aljungberg wrote:
| It's fine to make mistakes, especially in a fluid,
| developing situation. And it is precisely therefore we
| shouldn't dress up our hypothesises as fact.
|
| The actors here presented mask dictates as gospel. They
| were either wrong when anti-mask or wrong when pro-mask,
| but somehow conveyed absolute confidence in both cases.
| This is very harmful for the public discourse and for the
| reputation of the authorities during a time when
| reputation was paramount.
|
| It's okay not to know everything, just be honest about
| it.
| lmm wrote:
| > My friend, if you expect immediate inerrancy from
| everyone dealing with global-scale novel viruses
|
| The point is that if they are not certain then _they
| should make it clear they are not certain_. We were told
| very confidently that masks didn 't work, that using them
| was nothing more than superstition. We are now told
| equally confidently that they do work. The establishment,
| taken as a whole, is extremely, dangerously
| overconfident.
| kbelder wrote:
| I don't think they were confident, but they thought they
| needed to _pretend_ to be confident. Consider it the side
| effect of presumably competent scientists spending too
| much time with politicians and PR departments.
|
| And that's why they ended up seeming like liars, and
| can't be trusted.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Well it's not just seeming - they actually were liars,
| about the degree of confidence. As you said, too much
| time with politicians and PR professional liars!
| claytongulick wrote:
| > My friend, if you expect immediate inerrancy from
| everyone dealing with global-scale novel viruses, then I
| think you'll find that you'll _always_ be disappointed
| (or, more likely given your 1984 reference, you'll
| _always_ be the "victim" of another imagined conspiracy).
|
| When public policy is based on it, people are threatened
| with jail, forceably removed from outdoor open-air
| sporting events and denied basic services, yeah - you
| sure as hell better not be wrong about it.
|
| When people in the street yell at you and call you a
| murderer for not wearing a mask outside in the sunshine
| (this happened to me) - yeah, you don't get to go back
| later and say "oops, my bad".
|
| When the government exercises extraordinary emergency
| powers by executive fiat without legislative support to
| impose masking rules - they had better have damned good
| science to back it up.
|
| In this case, the science simply didn't exist.
|
| It's a strawman argument to claim "numerous studies show
| effectiveness of masking" as I've seen several people
| argue in this discussion.
|
| The only relevant studies are those that evaluate the
| effectiveness of _universal masking_ , since that's what
| the public policy dictated.
|
| Universal masking policy was a knee-jerk response to some
| early studies and models that over estimated the risk of
| asymptomatic transmission. However, regardless of the new
| science that demonstrated that asymptomatic transmission
| was incredibly rare, the authorities refused to change
| the guidance.
|
| Where was the science that justified the arbitrary and
| utterly performative rules put in place for restaurants?
| (wear a mask to walk three meters from the front door to
| the table, but it's ok to take it off when you're at the
| table)
|
| Or the painfully performative masking of news people, in
| a studio by themselves, wearing a mask. Or wearing a mask
| alone in a car. Or on a walk outside. Or on a video
| conference for work.
|
| Masks quickly stopped being about science very early on
| and quickly became nothing more than a flag for showing
| political alliance with the utter nonscientific nonsense
| of cloth masks and the overnight development of "fashion
| masks".
|
| Forcing this on children was especially painful to watch.
| Children, who will never follow proper masking protocols
| and who are happy to trade their batman mask for their
| friend's spiderman mask...
|
| > do hope your friends, family, and coworkers afford you
| more space to learn, grow, and change (and that you
| practice doing so!) than you afford to others.
|
| I do hope that this entire episode and the bumbling,
| unscientific, incoherent and political face-saving
| response from the government makes you take a second look
| at blanket, authoritarian policy in the future.
|
| Universal masking was the public health equivalent of the
| TSA. Illusory safety at best, with very little
| demonstrable effectiveness to justify the intrusion and
| restrictions put in place.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Are you willfully trying to propagate this idea? It seems
| like you must be, because there is a deluge of studies
| showing the effectiveness of masks - and the nuance and
| complexity of that statement. Throwing on a thin cloth
| mask that doesn't seal well doesn't do much of anything.
| Putting on an N95, well-fitted mask definitely helps
| tremendously. That you think there are "exactly zero"
| studies indicates you aren't even looking. Please look
| and stop trying to sit in your echo chamber.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Your response should be a comedic parody, yet, sadly, you
| are actually being serious. It's a depressing reflection
| on the state of the world.
|
| I said there are zero RCTs, a type of study that can
| establish causation, and you respond, "there are lots of
| mask studies! You just aren't looking!" Your response
| literally contradicts nothing that I said. I even linked
| a BMJ-published opinion lamenting the fact that there are
| a lot of mask studies, but they are mostly low-quality.
| I'm going to guess you didn't bother reading it.
|
| Not to mention that you tell me there is a deluge of
| studies showing the effectiveness of masks, but you can't
| even be bothered to cite one yourself. Lastly, you accuse
| me of sitting in an echo chamber, an accusation that is
| beyond baseless. What else would you be willing to accuse
| me of without a shred of evidence?
|
| Your response is just another example that people don't
| follow the scientific method; they are driven by ideology
| and tribalism.
| gilbetron wrote:
| First google hit, not difficult:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
|
| Again, you have an agenda that is at odds with reality,
| please stop, it is literally hurting people.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| I guess it's possible you don't actually know the
| difference, but what you linked isn't a research paper or
| study; it's a news article! And it's factually incorrect.
| It cites the Bangladesh RCT, which I am well aware of
| already. The trial results showed little to no
| statistically significant benefit to masking: https://www
| .researchgate.net/publication/360320982_The_Bangl...
|
| "A very large trial, whose results were published in
| Science, carried out in Bangladesh between 2020 and 2021
| has been widely acclaimed as providing the most
| convincing evidence yet that masks work in reducing
| Covid-19 transmission and infections. However, the media
| grossly exaggerated the authors' own conclusions, and
| sceptical researchers have identified weaknesses in
| various aspects of the trial and statistical analysis
| which cast doubts on the significance of the results."
|
| Also: https://www.justfactsdaily.com/famed-bangladesh-
| mask-study-e...
|
| "However, their pre-analysis plan to measure results for
| "each decade" of age ranges shows no statistically
| significant effects among people aged 18-29, 30-39,
| 40-49, and 70+. Furthermore, they excluded this breakdown
| from their paper and relegated it to a supplement."
|
| Also: https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/bangladesh-
| study-proves-m...
|
| Also: https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/09/02/clinical-
| trial-banglade...
|
| Also: https://anthonycolpo.com/the-bangladesh-mask-study-
| is-back-a...
|
| "One especially illuminating finding, which would be
| funny were it not a reflection of just how far science
| has fallen, is that purple cloth masks showed no
| advantage over going maskless, but red cloth masks did.
| Red cloth masks, in fact, showed higher 'efficacy' than
| surgical masks."
|
| One of us two is at odds with reality. That may be true.
| But here's a hint. It's not me. When you're done with
| your baseless and tribalistic accusations of my "agenda",
| maybe you can humble yourself enough to learn something
| today.
| nostrebored wrote:
| Right, and fitted N95s are not safe for prolonged wear.
|
| There are exactly zero RCTs that suggest that masks are
| effective, the parent comment is correct. The single RCT
| that claims effectiveness was on hamsters.
|
| Completely missing from pro-mask discourse is potential
| impact of large-scale masking on children. Developmental
| delays are starting to pop up, and previous public health
| advocates for masking are starting to turn course.
| gilbetron wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
|
| Your first two statements are just wrong, shockingly so
| after over 2 years where you could have educated yourself
| and decided not to.
|
| Your last statement is definitely something we need to
| look into, but I think the development delays are
| probably minimal (speaking as a parent of a kid that wore
| masks at a critical age), but I think the social
| isolation was far more significant.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| "The study linked surgical masks with an 11% drop in
| risk, compared with a 5% drop for cloth."
|
| The cloth results were statistically insignificant,
| meaning indistinguishable from noise. The surgical mask
| results _barely_ passed the statistical significance
| test, but lose that significance as soon as the data are
| stratified by age.
|
| On top of that, there have been numerous problems with
| the study that call into questions even the incredibly
| meager positive results it managed to show:
| https://www.justfactsdaily.com/famed-bangladesh-mask-
| study-e...
|
| You are the one who needs to educate yourself.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I think it is difficult to do a RCT of Covid (many
| different variants, vaccines, variability in symptoms),
| but it is a very fair point. Thank you.
|
| There are RCT for influenza and other diseases Sars (1):
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22280120/
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118
|
| While maybe we do not have the gold standard study, I
| think it was the right decision, given how little
| inconvenience masks have, for the much bigger benefit of
| reducing Covid risks.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| You do you, but I've enjoyed not even getting the
| slightest cold for the last couple years that I might
| just keep masking in a lot of public spaces for the
| foreseeable future. It's anecdata for sure, but my
| experience seems to suggest that masks can help protect
| against airborne transmissible viral infections.
|
| For more anecdata, pretty much everyone in my extended
| contacts that has chosen to relax their masking posture
| has gotten covid at some point since. Those that continue
| stricter protocols get sick less, bet it colds covid or
| flu.
|
| I haven't heard about any surgeons giving up wearing
| masks in the operating room. Wonder why...
| Izkata wrote:
| > I haven't heard about any surgeons giving up wearing
| masks in the operating room. Wonder why...
|
| Those masks are as much about blocking blood spurts from
| the patient as they are about blocking spit from the
| doctor. They're not meant for blocking airborne viruses
| either way.
| californical wrote:
| I do wonder if there are long-term affects from
| sheltering our immune systems for extended periods.
|
| Now, I'm still in favor of wearing masks in some
| particularly high-risk places. And absolutely supported
| masks in the earlier days (until vaccines were readily
| available & common).
|
| But by not getting exposure to the regular tiny amounts
| of bacteria and viruses that float around from other
| people (our body deals with quickly and we never feel
| sick), do we know anything about the long term affects of
| that on the immune system? Genuinely curious because I
| couldn't find anything.
|
| We know it causes an increase in blood-CO2 concentration:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/
|
| And possibly a decrease in white blood cell count:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34585544/
|
| But I don't think we know yet if there are long-term
| immune system complications
| ubertaco wrote:
| > In the beginning this was the narrative because there
| was a shortage of masks, or because of plain ignorance.
|
| Maybe I missed something, but I don't remember ever
| hearing "masks don't work unless you're a medical
| professional" (outside of later revisionist accounts by
| the right-wing "COVID isn't real and this is all a vast
| conspiracy" crowd); I mostly remember hearing "initial
| findings show that masks seem to be effective, but
| supplies are so short that we should ensure that our
| medical responders have access to them, so please don't
| go out and panic-buy them like you've been doing with
| toilet paper."
| BWStearns wrote:
| The more conspiracy minded started parsing "please don't
| go out and panic-buy them like you've been doing with
| toilet paper" as "you don't need masks" almost
| immediately. It was dumb when it happened, it's still
| dumb today. I'm sure at least one talking head said
| something to that effect but that was not actually the
| consensus message.
|
| "Don't buy these masks unless you're a medical
| professional" [?] "Masks don't work unless you're a
| medical professional."
| namose wrote:
| Stop doing revisionist history. Fauci said directly that
| masks don't work.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-
| outdated-...
|
| It's fine to be wrong, that's what science is all about,
| but at least admit it and explain the reasoning behind
| the change.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Yes, you missed a lot then.
| namose wrote:
| Fauci directly said masks don't work at the start of
| covid
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-
| outdated-...
| hackerlight wrote:
| It isn't a conspiracy. Conspiracy implies planning and
| plotting. That was just decentralized media figures
| deciding to copy each other's opinions, because there's
| safety in numbers and group think, and because dissent
| sticks out and gets attacked.
| heartbreak wrote:
| You just described the early-Covid shutdown policy-making
| too.
| chaosite wrote:
| Shutdowns weren't done by media figures, they were done
| by policy-makers inside governments.
| heartbreak wrote:
| > That was just decentralized [governments] deciding to
| copy each other's opinions, because there's safety in
| numbers and group think, and because dissent sticks out
| and gets attacked.
|
| Sorry, I thought that substitution was implied.
| yonaguska wrote:
| And "consent" to shutdowns were manufactured by policy
| makers inside governments paying media companies to
| promote their policies. It was a concerted effort.
| yonaguska wrote:
| If you still think we have decentralized media figures
| simply copying each other...when all your media companies
| air the same advertisements from the same pharmaceutical
| companies, it's no surprise that they would all take the
| same opinions. Speaking for American media only. They
| might not be conspiring with each other, but they are
| certainly are taking orders from the same places.
|
| This doesn't cover the other news epidemic we have of
| state intel actors propping up media conglomerates as a
| matter of foreign policy. Specifically in Ukraine, and
| I'm only referencing this as it's probably the most
| recent example- the US is currently offering grants to
| organizations in Ukraine right now [0], this actually
| doesn't seem very nefarious. It's been going on for quite
| some time however. This article [1] goes into details
| about various factchecking organizations that worked in
| Ukraine to promote and minimalize the extreme sides of
| far right orgs in Ukraine since before the Russian
| invasion. StopFake is specifically called out, an
| organization that was previously hosted by our very own
| spokeswoman for the now defunct Ministry of Truth, Nina
| Jankowicz. And we know Taiwan does it, via Epoch Times,
| Russia does it with Russia Times, and various other state
| actors use more sophisticated methods. Before I dropped
| off most social media, it was obvious seeing Chinese
| propaganda being pushed, oftentimes through New York
| Times opinion pieces. Israel and China are probably two
| of the more sophisticated state actors, up there with the
| US intel agencies.
|
| tldr: nothing is real, most media is carefully curated to
| shape your opinions and culture, not to inform you.
|
| [0] https://ua.usembassy.gov/education-culture/media-
| development... [1] https://mronline.org/2022/08/08/most-
| of-the-fact-checking-or...
| hackerlight wrote:
| > They might not be conspiring with each other, but they
| are certainly are taking orders from the same places.
|
| I don't see enough evidence for this claim.
|
| The simpler explanation is that they're lazy (as most
| humans are) and scared to dissent (as most humans are),
| therefore they don't bother doing original work that
| challenges the accepted wisdom and they copy each other.
|
| I do have some evidence for this. Within hours of the
| Amber Heard judgement came down, identical false claims
| about the judgement were blasted across all major news
| sites. I am rather confident that there was no nefarious
| plot here, because the stakes were so low and didn't
| involve powerful actors, and because non-US news outlets
| parroted the same fake news. Is there some secret
| clandestine organization doing this, coordinating with US
| and non-US news sources, on a story of no political
| significance? I saw the fake news get manufactured in
| front of my eyes. What happened was there was a viral
| tweet that created the fake claim, then one journalist
| picked up on it, and then all the other journalists
| copied that one journalist, because that's lower effort
| and safer than doing a thorough job.
|
| Occam's razor + hanlon's razor.
|
| > This article [1] goes into details about various
| factchecking organizations that worked in Ukraine to
| promote and minimalize the extreme sides of far right
| orgs in Ukraine since before the Russian invasion.
|
| Lol, very few people are minimizing Azov or other far-
| right groups in Ukraine. Everyone knows they're a huge
| problem (albeit they are a problem that is caused by
| Russia's invasion in 2014 - Ukraine, being much smaller,
| doesn't have the luxury of picking and choosing who is
| allowed to fight, given the imminent threat of further
| invasion from a larger neighbor). They are mostly just
| countering the Kremlin's propaganda that Ukraine is run
| by drug-addicted banderites and that Azov, a fairly small
| unit, is representative of the entire military and
| political leadership. The Russian propaganda around this
| was insane, helped along by treacherous US crypto
| fascists, and so hypocritical given that neo-Nazi views
| are more widely subscribed inside Russia than in Ukraine
| according to Pew polling, and given that the head of
| Wagner (whom Putin has shaken hands with) is an open neo-
| nazi with SS tattoos on his neck, and given that Pushilin
| has been seen awarding a medal to an open neo-nazi, and
| given that Putin himself is a literal fascist compared to
| the democratically elected Zelenskyy.
| yonaguska wrote:
| > Lol, very few people are minimizing Azov or other far-
| right groups in Ukraine. Everyone knows they're a huge
| problem
|
| Your response to the USA spearheading propaganda efforts
| to support far right neo-nazi's is- 1) they failed and 2)
| russian nazi's are worse.
|
| My problem is with the fact that the US did it at all,
| whether we agree or disagree on the success of that
| operation isn't part of my point.
|
| As for media being driven by conspiring forces, I agree
| that they are lazy and scared to dissent, but this
| doesn't account for everything. I'm not going to take the
| time to prove that right now. If you truly believe the
| media organizations are benign, just lazy and
| conformists, then I doubt I can change your mind anyways.
|
| > albeit they are a problem that is caused by Russia's
| invasion in 2014
|
| Unrelated, they were an organization that existed long
| before Russia's invasion, and they arguably played a
| crucial role in ensuring that the peaceful Euromaiden
| protests turned bloody. This goes back to CIA Operation
| ANYFACE, and subsequent Western intervention during the
| Cold War and after the fall of the USSR to combat Russian
| influence.
|
| https://www.voltairenet.org/article216406.html
| https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-anyface-
| how...
| layer8 wrote:
| Why do we have to speculate? If both hypotheses are
| plausible, should it make a significant difference for the
| measures we take which one is actually true? If evidence
| comes out showing which hypothesis is true, does it suddenly
| make the other one retroactively less plausible? I mean, it
| would be interesting to know what really happened, but it
| doesn't change all that much.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It does. Knowing what caused this should be important, so
| it doesn't happen again.
|
| If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we
| can do. If it was a lab leak, maybe some special
| precautions should be taken, or such things should not be
| done in labs with iffy security practices... or maybe even
| not done at all.
|
| Many workplace (and general) safety rules were written
| because someone has died doing something (now considered)
| against the rules. Killing a few millions of people and
| stoping the planets economy for almost two years seems like
| a terrible cost of some research gone bad.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Knowing what caused this should be important, so it
| doesn't happen again
|
| I really don't see that. If it is really true that both
| options are indistinguishably plausible, then what do you
| in response to this one event is absolutely meaningless.
| The next event could as likely come from "the other
| source", or from a new entirely one you don't even know
| about.
|
| Your only reasonable option _in any case_ is to just
| strengthen your protection from both potential sources.
|
| Suppose you are investigating a plane crash, and the
| evidence points to a possible uncontained engine failure,
| which apparently was caused by previously-undetected
| metal fatigue. The evidence, however, also almost
| entirely fits a bird strike. It doesn't really matter if
| you eventually find it was a bird strike, or not. Your
| engineers really think the metal fatigue could have
| brought down the plane? You are going to increase metal
| fatigue inspections, birds or not. And viceversa.
| namose wrote:
| Gain of function research can either be outlawed or not
| outlawed. We don't get to try both because viruses are
| global issues.
| mellavora wrote:
| > If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing
| we can do.
|
| Some people say the main progress of civilization is the
| ability to do things about forces which were previously
| seen as natural and random.
|
| > If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions
| should be taken,
|
| Do you mean like making sure the labs follow certain
| biohazard handling standards and procedures? Which they
| currently have to do to maintain their
| certifications/ratings?
|
| We don't have to prove that covid was a lab leak to
| review the procedures. Likewise, we don't have to prove
| that covid was natural and random (I am glad you
| separated those two, by the way) before reviewing how we
| handle food safety and animal transportation measures.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Do you mean like making sure the labs follow certain
| biohazard handling standards and procedures? Which they
| currently have to do to maintain their
| certifications/ratings?
|
| Part of the lab leak claim is that the 2018 experiments
| mentioned in the tweet were done in a BSL2 lab even
| though they required BSL3 or 4.
| Closi wrote:
| Nontheless, noting and acknowledging that a worldwide
| pandemic was _actually_ caused from a lab leak would
| certinaly drive stricter regulation and higher adherence
| to procedures.
|
| Conversely, a strong belief that it wasn't a lab leak
| would, of course, reduce the pressure to implement
| changes to safety protocols.
|
| In theory everyone would react in a way which optimally
| reduces risk, but in practice acknowledgement of an
| incident drives significantly different behaviour.
| layer8 wrote:
| Right, but I believe that this bias created by knowing
| the actual outcome for a single instance is much too
| strong, and we should rather strive to reduce that bias.
| In that light, the effort expended in continued
| _speculation_ about the actual truth seems mostly wasted
| and misdirected energy to me.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Here's some evidence: if you fart in an elevator, it stinks,
| but if you fart outdoors, not so much.
|
| Viruses, as opposed to farts, don't smell, but otherwise they
| are similar. If someone coughs outdoors, the aerosols
| containing the viral particles just spread around and soon
| their concentration becomes negligible. If someone coughs, or
| just breathes indoors, the aerosols spread, but if the space is
| not very large, their concentration will stay elevated, enough
| to infect other people.
|
| With this preamble out of the way, what is the hypothetical
| scenario where the pandemic starts in the market? Covid does
| not spread from dead meat, it's an airborne disease. Was there
| some live bat (or pangolin) that was sneezing in some enclosed
| space, and some people acquired the virus there? A google
| search shows links with evidence to the contrary ([1], [2]).
|
| Here's and NY Times article [3] that's arguing for the non-lab-
| leak origin, but you'll notice they are using misdirection
| (e.g. "dozens of species that can carry pathogens that infect
| humans" -> ok, this says nothing specific about Covid, but is
| written to prime the reader to think Covid was among those
| pathogens).
|
| Overall, the simplest explanation is that one lab worker
| acquired the disease from aerosols in the lab produced by the
| lab mice infected with the virus. The worker then left the lab
| and stopped here and there (home too) and left aerosols that
| some other people inhaled. Whenever it was outdoors, the
| aerosols did not cause infections, but sometimes when it was
| indoors, they did. Is it possible that that person went to the
| market nearby to have lunch or dinner and coughed or sneezed
| while indoors, and some of the market workers, or co-diners got
| infected? It does not sound outrageous.
|
| You can envision tons of plausible scenarios with an initial
| lab worker getting infected, but you need to get into contorted
| scenarios to cook up a theory where some bats from a few
| thousand kilometers away get transported to Wuhan and fail to
| infect anyone on their way, then the disease explodes like a
| bomb in Wohan, and then nobody is able to find evidence of
| those live bats being sold in that market.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2
|
| [2] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-
| co...
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-
| market...
|
| [4]
| igouy wrote:
| > Overall, the simplest explanation...
|
| "New studies say Wuhan market is the only 'plausible' source
| of COVID-19 pandemic"
|
| https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2022-07-26/new-
| studies...
|
| "I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove
| into this very carefully and looked at it much closer,"
| Andersen said. "Actually, the data points to this particular
| market."
| anonu wrote:
| > conspiracy narrative
|
| implies people conspired to create a pandemic. Which detracts
| from the first point of it being a lab-leak.
|
| > what can be stated without evidence can be as easily
| dismissed without evidence
|
| So we should never develop a hypothesis? Given the lack of any
| indicators lending support to any of the plausible hypotheses
| put forward, I think its fair game to discuss the lab leak
| version.
|
| If you recall in the early days of the pandemic, the lab-leak
| theory become a politically divisive one in the US, pitting
| right against left for no good reason other than the fact that
| the "other side" held an undesirable view. It was labeled as a
| conspiracy theory, incorrectly. It is very simply, a theory,
| and it should be discussed on par with any other theory.
| parkingrift wrote:
| There isn't enough evidence to convict, so to speak, but the
| one place that could easily disprove the lab leak claim is the
| same place desperately stonewalling and destroying evidence.
| Acting guilty doesn't mean your guilty, but something nefarious
| went on in that lab. To the point where they would rather fire
| bomb the entire lab than answer questions or provide documents.
|
| >On the other hand, many people would like it to be true,
| because it feeds into a conspiracy narrative.
|
| I wonder how many such people would exist if there wasn't such
| a massive media and big tech push to silence anyone discussing
| lab leak. At peak manipulation you were labeled a racist for
| discussing lab leak and permanently banned from most (all?) big
| tech platforms.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I can't agree with this anymore. For some reason, this lab
| isn't allowed to be inspected and investigated thoroughly. So
| there is something wrong, likely, it's where COVID19 came
| from or else, why not just allow an investigation team in to
| remove all doubts.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Why would they? Would you allow your neighbours to search
| your home and inspect your computer as soon as they claim
| that you are a pedophile?
| endominus wrote:
| Probably not the comparison you want to make. If your
| door blew open in a strong wind one day and a bunch of CP
| flew out of it and around town, you probably wouldn't
| have a choice, no matter how convincing your story of the
| previous tenant being a sicko was.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| If CP were to be compared to virus, then all households
| would have some.
|
| New virus emerge naturally all the time, the same cannot
| be said for CP.
|
| Also things can go wrong just due to bad luck. Someone's
| home caught fire doesn't necessary mean they are
| committing insurance fraud; majority of them will be
| genuine accidents.
| swalsh wrote:
| Not allowing investigation is not necessary conspiracy to
| cover up known evidence. It might just be an admission that
| there is a nonzero chance there is evidence there... and if
| the world finds that, there could be dire consequences if
| people decide China should be held liable.
| parkingrift wrote:
| It's not just stonewalling an investigation. It's
| outright destruction of files and documents so that an
| investigation literally cannot happen. Wiping servers,
| destroying emails, shredding files, burning samples.
| These are things that don't necessarily implicate you in
| guilt, but make you look guilty.
|
| It's just kind of rich for people to grandstand and say
| "there's no evidence to support this theory" when the
| evidence that may support it has been systematically
| destroyed. There is enough circumstantial evidence to
| warrant a search, and if this lab situation had unfolded
| in the US the lab would have been searched.
| notahacker wrote:
| Doesn't even need to be that.
|
| _Glasnost_ is not standard policy in China and they have
| very strong reasons not to change that for reasons which
| have nothing to do with what did or didn 't happen in the
| Wuhan lab. In the unlikely event the CCCP has complete
| certainty about what happened which completely exonerates
| the lab, they still wouldn't want to release anything
| other than controlled media briefings. If you start
| allowing international observers in every time you say
| something wasn't your fault, people can draw some much
| stronger inferences when you don't...
|
| (Not to mention that there's little reason to believe the
| higher reaches of the CCCP know the answer to the
| question of whether there's any evidence any better than
| the average person. They're not virologists, and if
| evidence of lab malpractice exists the virologists aren't
| exactly incentivised to incriminate themselves by sharing
| it with them)
| jmyeet wrote:
| The problem is there are really only two contenders for Covid
| origins: lab origin (I much prefer this label than "lab leak")
| and zoonotic origin.
|
| Zoonotic origin is the obvious choice. As a general rule,
| nature is way better at evolving pathogens than humans are. The
| problem with this theory is we haven't _yet_ found the wild
| population from which Covid originated. Now this can take time,
| sometimes years. But for SARS /MERS this was established
| relatively quickly. The other problem is the bats widely
| thought responsible were hundreds of miles away from Wuhan.
|
| Since Covid has entered certain wild animal populations it's
| possible we'll never know.
|
| That leaves us with lab origin. Lack of evidence for anything
| else is not positive proof for lab origin of course. But lab
| origin hasn't been ruled out either.
|
| There are lots of variations on lab origin theories. Deliberate
| release, accidental release, naturally-occuring pathogen, gain-
| of-function reserach, the authorities knew, the authorities
| didn't know, etc. Given the asymptomatic nature of Covid I
| personally think that if this is the origin, accidental release
| is the most likely cause.
|
| So what evidence supports this? The CCP's failure to cooperate
| with WHO investigations is a big one. Right at the beginning,
| WHO fell in too quickly with China's narrative too. Plus China
| did punish the doctor who originally raised the alarm about a
| novel coronavirus (who later died from Covid).
|
| I personally think it's way more likely that China doesn't want
| to know if it was lab origin rather than they're covering it
| up. Like there's literally no upside to finding out. Every
| level of the government doesn't want to know or be the one
| responsible for screwing something up. It's a bit like the
| Columbia space Shuttle disaster where it was suspected a foam
| tile damaged the shuttle but using satellites to image the
| shuttle met with internal NASA resistance. Part of that was
| there was nothing they could do but also people just don't want
| to know sometimes.
|
| Another issue: the missing coronavirus database that China had
| that was taken offline in late 2019. Weird timing. Again, no
| proof of anything. Perhaps it's changed now but as of last year
| this hasn't been examined by anyone in the West (like the WHO).
| notahacker wrote:
| > But for SARS/MERS this was established relatively quickly
|
| It wasn't for SARS though. It took 14 years to identify the
| theoretical native reservoir in bats (ironically the result
| of the bat coronavirus study programmes the lab-leak
| hypothesis centres on) in a different province from the SARS
| outbreak. Civets were identified early on as the probable
| intermediate animal although the links with the Tanuki are
| arguably stronger, and we don't know how, why or where the
| interspecies crossover happened. So basically the same origin
| debate, without any of the political intrigue.
|
| If there was a popular theory that the SARS epidemic had
| started as a result of a lab had collected bat coronaviruses,
| manipulated them and leaked them, there would arguably be
| less evidence against it
| skipkey wrote:
| For me, the primary evidence of lab origin has always been
| statistical in nature. I have read that there are thousands
| of wet markets across Asia. So when Covid shows up at one
| near an institute studying similar viruses instead of one of
| the thousands of other wet markets, Occam's razor says it
| came from there. When we can't find source animals nearby
| zoonotic origin requires a much more complex chain of events.
|
| My assumption from close to the beginning has been that most
| likely, some low-level employee at the institute considered
| it a job perk to take animals he was supposed to have
| euthanized and cremated and sell them to a vendor at a market
| he had connections to for a few yuan.
|
| Does this prove lab origin? No. But barring compelling
| evidence otherwise it makes lab origin the most likely cause.
| shusaku wrote:
| The danger here is the birthday paradox. If it emerged at
| some other wet market, we would be attaching significance
| to some other city landmark to drive our alternate
| hypothesis.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > many people would like it to be true, because it feeds into a
| conspiracy narrative
|
| And many people would like it to be false, because they don't
| want a) public uproar about what sort of activites go on in
| these labs, b) fear of losing money, c) embarrassment
|
| We'll never truly know where it all came from.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| >Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence
| can be as easily dismissed without evidence
|
| Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the
| victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the
| victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a
| bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month
| after the crime worth 18k$.
|
| There is no evidence mr X killed the victim, but he probably
| did it.
|
| Your argument removes probability, we have many coincidences
| linked to the lab leak theory, we don't have a 100% evidence
| that supports it, so we can assume it probably leaked from the
| lab, maybe it didn't, and since we can't quantify it with
| precision and a certain negligible error margin, we can use a
| language where probably happened means >50% and maybe happened
| means <50%.
|
| A woman can safely assume her husband is cheating if she
| catches him flirting with girls online, find a different long
| hair on his coat everytime he travels for work, etc.
| mortehu wrote:
| I think you are using a definition of evidence normally
| associated with criminal trials here, and not scientific
| evidence.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Touche - and that m'lud is why even the best barristers
| seldom get awarded the Nobel prize in any of the sciences.
| hcrean wrote:
| Are you saying that our justice system is un-scientific?
| lol
| Beltiras wrote:
| Most journals require more evidence than what passes as
| such in a court of law. On the say-so of a dog can amount
| to evidence in some courts. Specifically talking about K9s
| granting reasonable cause to search a vehicle or premises,
| even if the science behind it is not supportive.
| hackerNoose wrote:
| This is more akin to a criminal case where science can be
| used as evidence.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Yeah sure I need to bring you mathematical irrefutable
| proof that some event happened, but you can just call me a
| conspiracy theorist or whatever new words go with it today:
| racist, sexist, religious, bigot, homophobe, transphobe,
| etc. with 0 evidence.
| scotchmi_st wrote:
| I don't know how the law works where you live, but in my
| country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction.
| Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial, and
| the probabilities you're working with are easily inflated to
| suit the narrative you want.
|
| Conspiracy theorists will always say they have enough
| evidence for their theory, of course.
| lr1970 wrote:
| > I don't know how the law works where you live, but in my
| country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction.
| Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial,
| and the probabilities you're working with are easily
| inflated to suit the narrative you want.
|
| One should not apply standards of a criminal trial to
| verification of a scientific hypothesis. The results can be
| quite disastrous as the case of Giordano Bruno can attest
| [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| There's a difference between "not enough for conviction"
| (meaning, more investigation needed) and the whole system
| (from authorities, mainsteam media to social network bans)
| turning against anyone who even dares mention the lab leak
| hypothesis.
| zibby8 wrote:
| Concepts like "innocent until proven guilty beyond a
| reasonable doubt" are more about protecting people's
| individual liberties than establishing a baseline about
| whether or not to believe something.
| jolux wrote:
| That's not quite right -- they're establishing a baseline
| to believe something worthy of depriving someone's
| liberties over.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Individual liberty equalling counting for criminal law,
| not civil law nor morals in effect in a society or
| community. E.g. in a club in San Francisco you might be
| checked before entry to prove you do not possess a knife
| or gun. Whereas in a club on the beach near Rotterdam
| anything goes. In the case someone gets stabbed or shot
| in the club in San Francisco its unlikely they passed
| security. Whereas in the Rotterdam example such boundary
| does not exist.
| Method-X wrote:
| Ah yes, the weaponization of stigma. Want to shut down
| critical thinking? Use words like kook, nut, conspiracy
| theorist, racist, etc. You're basically gaslighting people.
| cycomanic wrote:
| But in science at least you always should test against the
| null hypothesis, and that is purposefully not done here like
| in many other "conspiracy theories". Note I'm not saying that
| the lab leak is necessarily a conspiracy theory or that it
| can not be true, I'm simply talking about the way of arguing.
| The way a lot of conspiracy arguments are being constructed
| is that they take a number of events which seem relatively
| improbable if regarded from general experience and then use
| that as proof because "it's impossible for these events to
| happen at the same time". However, looking in detail at the
| number of events occurring events actually become very
| probable (I mean there have been several instances of people
| winning the lottery twice).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Replying to myself, seems like I went to the
| 1password.community page, which somehow is the 1st search
| result for me.
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| > Say mr X was
|
| The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a
| lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical.
|
| And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and
| note how many times the author throws out terms like "much
| more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't
| know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild
| pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1000 miles from
| bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We
| just know what we measured, not what we didn't.
|
| And you can spin it the other way, anyway: we know that the
| presumptive covid ancestor was _at least as close_ as 1000
| miles, on the same continent and within easy travel distance
| of a migratory flying species. It 's true, that if the
| closest relative was in Argentina, that getting it to Wuhan
| would require a lot of weird argument. But from Yunnan? Seems
| not unreasonable.
|
| People continue to bang this hypothesis, and... it's not a
| bad hypothesis really. But the reason consensus among experts
| is behind natural evolution is that natural evolution remains
| a _clearly better hypothesis_. I know that 's upsetting to
| people who want to believe the lab theory for whatever
| reason, but it is and remains the truth. Until someone finds
| better evidence, the lab leak is going to remain a popular
| conspiracy theory only.
| wk_end wrote:
| > Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun.
| We don't know that either! We just know what we measured,
| not what we didn't.
|
| That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID
| teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific
| context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all
| available empirical evidence" after every assertion.
| ajross wrote:
| > In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating
| "based on all available empirical evidence" after every
| assertion.
|
| No, that's a fallacy. If I find an apple on the ground at
| the supermarket, it is evidence that there are apples at
| the supermarket. It is _not_ evidence that there are no
| apples at my friend 's home where I found no apples. I
| just didn't check the refrigerator.
|
| The linked thread says, precisely, "Wuhan--a city 1,000
| miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like
| coronaviruses". And that is not correct.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Sorry, where are the unsampled bats within 1000km of
| Wuhan?
|
| This stuff has been sampled extensively.
|
| Or are you merely stating it's _possible_ there 's a bat
| cave no one's heard of that hasn't been sampled?
| ajross wrote:
| > This stuff has been sampled extensively.
|
| I don't think that's correct, for the simple reason that
| if those papers existed the (sigh) pro-leak folks would
| be linking them everywhere. Virology isn't exactly a
| trillion dollar field, we're not going out and sequencing
| every virus in every species. The Yunnan cave made news
| and was well-studied because someone stumbled on a SARS-
| related virus there, that says nothing about where that
| virus went later.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| > if those papers existed
|
| Those papers don't exist for the simple reason that
| "interesting" bats don't live there.
|
| You might want to consider that while R H Ebright can be
| offensive and distateful, he has been banging this drum
| for 20 years and is generally very careful when he makes
| a factual statement.
| wk_end wrote:
| If I were saying "bats in southern China with SARS-like
| viruses are evidence that there are no bats closer to
| Wuhan with SARS-like coronaviruses", I would be
| committing the fallacy that you're accusing me of. But
| that's not what I'm saying.
|
| I'm saying that there's no evidence of any bats closer to
| Wuhan with SARS-like coronaviruses. And I'm saying that,
| while it's indeed possible that these hypothetical bats
| exist - just as it's "possible" that COVID was
| transmitted to Wuhan via a teapot halfway between here
| and Mars; that COVID unicorns exist on an undiscovered
| island somewhere and one sneezed particularly hard and
| its germs ended up in Wuhan; or that COVID spontaneously
| formed one day on the apples in your friend's
| refrigerator in Wuhan - it's, again, not spin for a
| scientist to refrain from couching everything in
| uncertainty because of the infinite evidenceless
| hypotheticals that might disprove it; this is how every
| single positive statement in science functions. It is
| indeed correct, scientifically speaking, that there are
| no apples at your friend's home where you found no apples
| [based on all available empirical evidence]. And it is
| indeed correct, scientifically speaking, that Wuhan is
| 1,000 miles away from the nearest wild bats with SARS-
| like coronaviruses [based on all available empirical
| evidence].
| ajross wrote:
| > I'm saying that there's no evidence of any bats closer
| to Wuhan with SARS-like coronaviruses
|
| That's not all you're saying, though. You're
| extrapolating from that fact to argue that bats closer to
| Wuhan with SARS-like coronaviruses _are therefore
| unlikely to be present_.[1] And no, that 's not correct.
| Viruses span continent-wide gaps all the time, we don't
| need any special evidence to cite that as a possibility.
|
| [1] Or more specifically, that they're less likely to be
| present than a man-made descendent. This is how you can
| spot a poorly justified argument. You're skipping a step
| and inserting an assumption in exactly the way you need
| to address a hole in your argument. Again, I pointed out
| upthread how I can spin exactly the same facts in the
| opposite direction (IMHO more convincingly, though
| logically no more sound).
| wk_end wrote:
| No, I'm not saying that. Please don't put words in my
| mouth. I haven't said a single thing here about "a man-
| made descendent", or whether those bats are "likely" to
| be present or not. I haven't even said that I agree with
| Ebright or believe in any kind of lab-leak scenario. All
| I've said is that your accusation of "spin" - because
| Ebright simply stated what all existing evidence points
| to, that the closest candidate bats are 1000 miles away,
| is the case without qualification - is based on a
| misunderstanding of how science works. Until there is
| evidence to the contrary - and there currently is not -
| it is entirely normal, conventional, and scientific - and
| not spin! - to state the facts as demonstrated by all the
| available evidence as facts. In particular, when you say,
| "we just know what we measured, not what we didn't" -
| yes, that is science, not intellectual dishonesty.
|
| That said, I'll bite: if there are bats with SARS-like
| coronaviruses closer to Wuhan, I suspect that the folks
| in Wuhan who've spent the past 15-20 years studying SARS-
| like bat coronaviruses, "sampling thousands of horseshoe
| bats in locations across China" [0], probably would have
| discovered the ones right on their doorstep, more
| probably than ones further afield. So sure, yes, I'd
| wager they're not all that likely (though not
| impossible)! But, again, that's neither here nor there to
| my overall point, which is that your accusation of spin
| on Ebright's part is unfounded and scientifically
| illiterate.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Viro
| logy#SA...
| ajross wrote:
| > Ebright simply stated what all existing evidence points
| to, that the closest candidate bats are 1000 miles away
|
| You added the word "candidate". I agree with what you
| wrote. Your framing doesn't imply an incorrect
| conclusion, though it also lacks any rhetorical punch
| (probably the reason Ebright skipped it) since we don't
| have any "candidate" leak evidence either. Good job.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| You are confusing or conflating the lab-leak and lab-made
| theories.
| ajross wrote:
| Then you'll need to educate me on the what you think
| distinction is. The linked tweet thread asserts both:
| that the virus was manufactured in the WIV and that it
| leaked by accident. There are stronger (and even less
| well grounded) ideas in the broader conspiracist
| community asserting that it was the result of bioweapons
| research, and sometimes even that it was deliberately
| released. Ebright himself doesn't truck with any of that
| nonsense.
| pizza234 wrote:
| Distinction:
|
| - lab leak: researchers catch infected bat; at the
| laboratory, bat bites researcher; researcher gets COVID
|
| - lab made: researchers modify a virus, and produce SARS-
| CoV-2; the latter escapes the laborary (in one way or
| another)
|
| The importance of the lab leak hypothesis is that it
| doesn't need any conspiracy (a researcher being bitten is
| nothing strange in itself), but still implies unsafe
| practices and bad faith by the institutions involved.
| CPLX wrote:
| The things you describe are literally evidence.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| If a real conflict starts over Taiwan those who oppose the lab-
| leak theory will become the new 'deniers'; after all we've always
| been at war with East Asia.
|
| I get whiplash from watching how rapidly the public gets
| jawboned. I've seen many people, even those close to me,
| completely switch positions on 'strongly' held beliefs. Not only
| do they not acknowledge the inherent contradictions but they seem
| to have forgotten holding the original positions in the first
| place. Those without memory are living in an ever changing
| present, and those of us with memory are stuck with a past that
| no longer exists.
| samwillis wrote:
| Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is
| questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does
| anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining
| eight tweets?
|
| It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an
| understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether
| this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark"
| academic.
|
| Edit:
|
| This is the Nature editors note on the only sources provided:
|
| "Editors' note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being
| used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel
| coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence
| that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most
| likely source of the coronavirus."
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 'Lab-origin' and 'engineered' are not necessarily mutually
| exclusive.
| masklinn wrote:
| Did you mean "inclusive"? I'd assume the average covid
| truther would think of lab-origin and engineered as causal if
| not identical.
| kazinator wrote:
| A lab can accidentally leak a virus that was gathered from
| the wild, such that all of that virus' attributes, like how
| infectious it is and all that, are of natural origin.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I find a note added by Nature's editors in _March 2020_ to be
| the least trustworthy part.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Why?
| WithinReason wrote:
| You mean it makes the lab leak hypothesis less trustworthy
| through appeal to authority, or it makes Nature less
| trustworthy because they made the comment instead of letting
| the reader make up their own minds based on the paper only?
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| I think it is most likely because the note is almost 3
| years old. A lot has changed in our understanding of the
| virus. But much like most opinions regarding COVID, new
| data can't seem to dislodge our first takes.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| WithinReason wrote:
| >There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe
| that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
|
| Well, 2 things:
|
| 1. An animal could be the source of the virus which could be
| leaked from a lab. Even with the lab leak hypothesis an animal
| is part of the chain, just not the last step.
|
| 2. There is also no evidence that the epidemic had no lab
| involvement. COVID was never found in any animal from the
| Huanan market.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > 2. There is also no evidence that the epidemic had no lab
| involvement
|
| The timing of the A and B lineages spreading at the same time
| strongly indicates multiple spillover events.
| igouy wrote:
| > ... no evidence that the epidemic had no lab involvement...
|
| "So you simply cannot prove general claims that are negative
| claims -- one cannot prove that ghosts do not exist; one
| cannot prove that leprechauns too do not exist. One simply
| cannot prove a negative and general claim."
|
| https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_re.
| ...
|
| What would you accept as evidence of "no lab involvement"?
| WithinReason wrote:
| > What would you accept as evidence of "no lab
| involvement"?
|
| Read the last sentence.
| nradov wrote:
| I recommend reading the Office of the Director of National
| Intelligence unclassified summary of the assessment on COVID-19
| origins. It's over a year old but the analysis hasn't changed
| much and they do explain how they reached their conclusions.
| Some sort of lab origin is possible but unproven (and I doubt
| we'll ever know for sure).
|
| https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
| tehjoker wrote:
| If you ever take something intelligence says seriously that
| isn't independently verifiable, you're getting your crank
| yanked. They are professional liars and manipulators.
| dathinab wrote:
| I which they didn't start with 1).
|
| Because there is "a" wild life market in Wuhan which does sell
| wild bats from far away (and many other animals which can
| get/transmit covid).
| thehappypm wrote:
| Favorite theory links the two. Animals infected in lab were
| supposed to be disposed of, but instead sold at the market. It
| isn't necessarily that far-fetched: if you are tasked with
| incinerating a rare animal that you know is going for cash in
| the nearby market, there is temptation to sell it instead of
| destroying.
| michelledepeil wrote:
| A lot of the tweet mirrors what is described in more detail, and
| better sources, by Alina Chan in Viral, Search for the Origin of
| Covid-19. In my opinion a book worth reading, as it doesn't try
| too hard to point a finger but raises enough circumstantial
| arguments to support _anything other than a natural origin_ for
| Covid-19. Either way, CCP has caused enough damage (in my
| opinion, again) to never be trustworthy again.
|
| Somewhere else in this thread, her medium is linked, and indeed
| she also writes clear and rational reviews of more recent
| literature.
|
| https://ayjchan.medium.com/
| goblin89 wrote:
| It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a
| higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many
| institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or
| indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP),
| and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Along the same line of thinking, the fact that although the lab
| leak hypothesis is very reasonable, it was branded as a
| conspiracy theory and a big effort was made to suppress it,
| makes it seem more likely.
|
| Also the principle of adverse interference. China
| destroyed/made unavailable a lot of documents. It is reasonable
| to infer that the destroyed documents had evidence of a lab
| leak.
| [deleted]
| jtc331 wrote:
| I think the better argument isn't so much about status: it
| should have a higher prior because the institutions denying it
| as a possibility were the very ones funding the _category_ of
| research that could plausibly result in such an incident.
|
| This is the same kind of issue as why it's important to
| separate the regulator from the regulated.
| FullStackAda wrote:
| I am not sure this is a reasonable assignment of priors. The
| existence of people who could be blamed is not an argument
| towards the crime happened.
| goblin89 wrote:
| > The existence of people who could be blamed is not an
| argument towards the crime happened
|
| I support neither treating an accidental leak (if it
| occurred) as a crime, nor blaming any individual for it.
|
| That aside, the key is not quite "existence of people who
| could be blamed" but "existence of people who stand to (or
| think they stand to) lose a lot in terms of
| image/power/funding and have a certain degree of influence
| over the outcome".
|
| (Before you ask why am I not blaming Bill Gates for this
| pandemic then, there are of course other considerations that
| go into weighing priors. Using only this factor alone makes
| it indistinguishable from conspiracy theorising.)
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| That is not a valid reason for a higher Bayesian prior of the
| lab leak hypothesis. A prior is that, a prior: the fact that
| many institutions would see their reputation damaged in the
| event of a known lab leak has no effect on making a lab leak
| event more likely to happen _a priori_.
|
| In fact, it would make much more sense to argue the opposite
| (not that I would necessarily agree with this reasoning
| either). The fact that so many institutions would see their
| reputation damaged if a lab leak was known to have happened
| makes it _less likely_ for the virus having originated from a
| lab leak _a priori_ , as said institutions would put in place
| strong measures to avoid it.
|
| On the Bayesian level though, what _can_ make sense would be to
| argue that the fact that so many institutions would be damaged
| _post hoc_ if a lab leak were to be known, then the weight of
| evidence against the event which has been provided by such
| institutions should be lower.
| goblin89 wrote:
| > On the Bayesian level though, what can make sense would be
| to argue that the fact that so many institutions would be
| damaged post hoc if a lab leak were to be known, then the
| weight of evidence against the event which has been provided
| by such institutions should be lower.
|
| Wouldn't weighing evidence play a key role in assessing
| relative likelihoods of two possible causes of an event that
| had already occurred?
|
| Especially since any remaining evidence is not conclusive.
| (As it happens, there appears to be evidence of some of the
| parties involved acting in ways that prevent further evidence
| gathering, too.)
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Wouldn't weighing evidence play a key role in assessing
| relative likelihoods of two possible causes of an event
| that had already occurred?
|
| Absolutely, yes. However, it would _not_ affect the priors.
| mring33621 wrote:
| "as said institutions would put in place strong measures to
| avoid it"
|
| I was going to joke, but this is NOT TRUE AT ALL
|
| Based on my life experience, a more correct idea is, "as said
| institutions would put in place strong measures to avoid
| appearing to have caused it"
|
| This tilts the argument back the other way.
|
| Look, I don't know about lab vs natural origins of COVID-19,
| but I do know that big, human orgs tend to have more CYA
| theater than actual preventative measures in place.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Hence why I explicitly clarified _" not that I would
| necessarily agree with this reasoning either"_. Whether the
| premise is correct or not, the argument that it would
| reduce the prior _were the premise to be true_ is correct.
| That would not be the case in the initial suggestion, i.e.
| that the fact that these institutions would lose prestige
| would somehow increase the base chances of the event
| happening.
|
| Regarding your own interpretation of the argument, i.e.
| that large human organisations are more likely to have
| ineffectual preventative measures, therefore increasing the
| prior probability of a lab leak, that would technically be
| a valid argument. However, in this case in particular,
| assuming that premise raises the question _" Compared to
| what?"_. It's not like there is a cottage industry of
| artisanal HS4 laboratories that we can say are better at
| following safety requirements than large ones.
|
| I myself have no strong opinion either way regarding the
| lab-leak vs. natural origin hypotheses. In fact, a while
| ago I thought of a "consensus" hypothesis, which is that
| the origin was accidental human infection during sample
| collection in caves. However, this possibility would fit
| better with a purely wild-type virus, and thus would not be
| consistent with the sequence oddities explained in the
| linked Twitter thread.
| gausswho wrote:
| Conversely, when I read advocacy that speculates motive in this
| way, I note the absence of deductive reason.
| jongjong wrote:
| The evidence certainly seems to point in that direction and the
| absence of an official conclusion seems to support this... It
| should be easy to rule out the leak hypothesis. The fact that
| those who are implicated appear to be unable to clear their
| names by providing counter-evidence suggests foul play.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Changing a _prior_ after the fact is the opposite of
| reasonable.
|
| It's called a _prior_ for a reason.
| goblin89 wrote:
| Is it a misapplication of the term "prior likelihood" if it's
| used to mean "prior likelihood of a given explanation for a
| _past_ event turning out to be accurate _later_ "?
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Yes, that is still a misapplication.
|
| A perfect coin has a 50/50 chance for heads. That is a
| prior. Getting 10 heads in a row does not change that
| prior. Getting 1 billion heads in a row does not change
| that prior.
|
| Unlikely outcomes don't change the prior. The prior is the
| probability distribution of beliefs before evidence is
| taken into account.
| goblin89 wrote:
| I agree if we're considering the prior probability of lab
| leak vs. spillover, where priors can be informed by e.g.
| laboratory biosecurity track record and such.
|
| However, what about the prior probability of a good-faith
| statement in presence of a strong conflict of interest?
| Having no ability to directly verify the truth, wouldn't
| you require stronger evidence if you were to rely on that
| statement in your decision-making?
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >what about the prior probability of a good-faith
| statement in presence of a strong conflict of interest?
|
| The definition of your prior would incorporate that.
|
| >Having no ability to directly verify the truth, wouldn't
| you require stronger evidence if you were to rely on that
| statement in your decision-making?
|
| That is exactly the purpose of priors and Bayesian belief
| systems. If you could verify any truth, you'd not need a
| prior or Bayesian probability concepts for that.
|
| In none of these cases do you change the prior after some
| evidence is obtained, You'd use the prior and Bayesian
| update to make a new belief, which is then the prior for
| making decisions as future evidence is obtained.
|
| Retroactively changing the prior is demonstrably bad at
| reaching the proper conclusions over time. E.T. Jaynes
| "Probability Theory" [1] has detailed proofs of all of
| this, covered in the first few chapters.
|
| [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/probability-
| theory/9CA0...
| goblin89 wrote:
| Say we are weighing the probability of the lab leak
| hypothesis being correct. Incoming evidence suggests a
| lab leak is hurtful to a wider array of institutions and
| individuals than assumed originally. We use this new
| evidence, along with previous beliefs on how likely lab
| leak would be in the first place based on priors like
| biosafety violation and spillover history and statements
| made by the above-mentioned individuals and institutions
| (considered authoritative, but now found possibly in
| conflict of interest), to form a new belief which we then
| use as a new prior when assessing how likely it is that
| the lab leak hypothesis is correct. End result: lab leak
| hypothesis being correct is assigned a lower prior
| likelihood and will require stronger evidence. Do we
| disagree on substance?
| Garlef wrote:
| This seems to be a fallacy as it can be applied to anything.
|
| Here's an example illustrating how bad of an argument that is:
|
| It appears to be reasonable to assign the "your mother is a
| [insert derogatory term]" hypothesis a higher prior, in
| Bayesian terms, just based on the many familiy members whose
| image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found
| true (your dad, your uncle, your sister, your grandparents),
| and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
| dxuh wrote:
| I fully agree with your point, but I think the example is a
| bit aggressive towards OP. I'm sure you got a good chuckle of
| out of this, but I think it would have been better to give an
| example that did not seem like an attack. For example the
| earth being flat, the moon landing being fake or something
| like that.
| Garlef wrote:
| Agreed. Also, I'm not happy that I used and reproduced
| negative connotations about prostitution (that are deeply
| rooted in patriarchical control of female sexuality and
| reproduction).
|
| But I choose to keep this non-insult since it has a very
| strong impact in just a few words due to the high cognitive
| dissonance it causes. (Partly responsible for the chuckle
| you mentioned).
|
| The earth being flat is not a good substitute btw since
| it's also in the topos of conspiracy theories thus reducing
| the cognitive dissonance.
|
| But I'd be happy for other suggestions.
| swores wrote:
| "a mass murderer" would work well
| goblin89 wrote:
| Your analogy is harmful to the topic under discussion: its
| key assumptions (such as comparing the governments of US and
| China to my family in terms of power and influence) render it
| inapplicable.
|
| > It appears to be reasonable to assign the "your mother is a
| [insert derogatory term]" hypothesis a higher prior, in
| Bayesian terms, just based on the many familiy members whose
| image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found
| true (your dad, your uncle, your sister, your grandparents),
| and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as
| unlikely.
|
| If something major happened that made it a difficult binary
| choice between either that and <insert an alternative>, then
| certainly it would be reasonable to assign appropriate priors
| if you were forming your opinion exclusively by interviewing
| my relatives. (On the other hand, if my family members or
| relatives were in positions of significant
| power/esteem/status that they stood to lose if what you say
| were true, had significant social influence and a degree of
| control over mass media, then reweighing priors in such
| fashion would be advisable regardless of your source.)
| Garlef wrote:
| > comparing the governments of US and China to my family
|
| Hi there. My intention was not to make this about your
| literal family. The "your" was intended to refer to a
| general addressee. Sry for that.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't go looking for covid discussions but they arrive in my
| feeds so i'm conscious i'm seeing a feed that someone(s) else
| curated for me and wanted me to view. That said...
|
| Is there any popular discussion or action regarding mitigation of
| both lab and natural origins for future?
|
| It seems that both avenues are possible. If we know both are
| possible, that seems like enough knowledge to move forward with
| exploring possible mitigations for future.
|
| I realise there may be hard reasons why no mitigation is
| possible, but i just never encounter popular discussion of what
| to do next.
| chasil wrote:
| The first obvious corrective action would be to prohibit gain
| of function research in level-2 labs.
|
| The second would be to prohibit gain of function research in
| general, especially with funds emerging from a country that has
| implemented such restrictions as the United States did.
| jtc331 wrote:
| There's a natural fork in the road here which is why this is so
| contentious. The best argument gain of function proponents have
| for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to
| create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure
| out how to neutralize it. The argument the anti-GoF advocates
| have is that creating the next big thing in a lab leads
| eventually/inevitably to at least one of them getting out.
|
| The responses are effectively inherently opposite hence strong
| disagreement.
| defen wrote:
| > The best argument gain of function proponents have for
| their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create
| the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out
| how to neutralize it
|
| Did that actually help in this case? Or are gain-of-function
| advocates the science equivalent of employees who want to
| rewrite your webapp in the language _du jour_? They say it 's
| for the benefit of the company (humanity) but really what
| they want is to play with cool toys and get promotions.
| creato wrote:
| I don't understand how this argument has any traction at
| all. My understanding is we had the COVID vaccines
| formulated within weeks of the initial outbreak. The
| problem is, it then took many months of large scale
| testing, and then scaling production to make the vaccine
| readily available. In the meantime, the virus spread across
| the globe and mutated into forms that the vaccine isn't
| very effective against. Treatments seem to be in a similar
| position as well. How are you going to test a treatment for
| a virus that only exists in a lab, and is safely contained?
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Nuke Game Theory all over again, with AGI to add too!
| dathinab wrote:
| IMHO it's not the same, very different nonce and factors of
| control leading to quite different dynamics
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The fundamental difference with nuclear theory is that
| nukes don't self-assemble more nukes.
|
| The exponential replication of biological pandemics means
| there are very different optima.
|
| Whether that's in favor of GoF or anti-GoF, I can't say.
| It's a tradeoff between {increased risk of pandemic & more
| prepared for pandemic} vs {decreased risk of pandemic &
| less prepared for pandemic}.
|
| A sane response probably means we should build two neutral,
| BSL-4 (+) labs and require by UN treaty that all GoF
| research take place there, outlawed in the rest of the
| world, with verification inspection of labs.
|
| Of course, you'd be prying power out of the hands of the
| US/Russia/China, so there'd have to be a pretty big bone to
| get them to bite.
|
| Which would probably look like complete autonomy and
| confidentiality within the lab, in their respective areas.
| With strict perimeter and time-quarantine -based controls.
| jtc331 wrote:
| > The fundamental difference with nuclear theory is that
| nukes don't self-assemble more nukes.
|
| It's worse than that: nukes don't learn to become even
| more powerful nukes while being used.
|
| > BSL-4 (+) labs
|
| One of the issues is that effective safety in labs is
| virtually impossible in reality (lab leaks that are
| effectively non-material events are relatively high
| frequency even from the best labs).
| danenania wrote:
| Is there any concrete evidence that gain-of-function
| research actually increases preparedness for pandemics?
| It seems like the benefits are all still very
| hypothetical? Considering it would need to _prevent_ a
| massive pandemic just to break even at this point,
| perhaps it 's time to throw in the towel.
| telchar wrote:
| That's the fundamental difference from the anti-GOF side.
| The fundamental difference from the pro-GOF side is that
| understanding exactly how a nuke works gets you no closer
| to being able to protect a population from nukes because
| there is no such thing as a nuke vaccine.
|
| Your suggestion seems like a likely workable compromise
| if one of those labs is primarily in the US/Euro sphere
| and the other is primarily in the Russia/China sphere,
| with enforced transparency.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Yeah, I pontificated about physical location for a while
| and... wow, that'd be a difficult set of negotiations.
|
| Probably Switzerland, because, hey, Swiss and history.
|
| Other than that, it's almost have to be as neutral /
| third-party of a state as you could find.
|
| Maybe New Zealand or one of the small island nations
| that's willing to declare neutrality in exchange for
| hosting?
|
| Islands and caves are hard to argue against.
| troon-lover wrote:
| zibby8 wrote:
| For those looking for more information / sources for these
| tweets, this Vanity Fair article provides a lot of background
| information on the circumstantial evidence implicating the WIV
| and EcoHealth Alliance as the source of the lab leak:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-no...
| oxff wrote:
| I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the
| virus and they've yet to find the original bat population
| spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to
| suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It started at a wet market on the other side of the city.
| That's been very solidly established now.
|
| The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the wet
| market, but not around the lab, which is more than 10 km
| away.[0]
|
| > a lab that studies the virus
|
| The lab did not study SARS-CoV-2. It studied viruses that are
| about 20% different from SARS-CoV-2. We know what viruses they
| were working with, because they publish papers, go to
| scientific conferences, etc.
|
| > they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it
|
| It took about 10 years to find the bat population that the
| original SARS came from. In the last two years, researchers
| have gotten closer to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which appears
| to be somewhere in southwest China or northern Laos.
|
| 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| > It started at a wet market on the other side of the city.
| That's been very solidly established now.
|
| That's simply not true at all, whatsoever. See for example
| this paper sequencing early samples of the virus: https://aca
| demic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?logi...
|
| The "wet market" samples are _less similar_ to closely
| related bat strains than other early samples which are
| unrelated to the market.
|
| The market is close to a major hospital. If the virus was
| circulating, it is unsurprising that a super spreader event
| would occur there. But saying that the market is the point of
| origin, and this this is "very solidly established" simply
| flies in the face of known facts.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Your information is out of date. The paper I linked to
| shows that both early strains of the virus were present at
| the Huanan market. That is already very strong evidence
| that the market was the origin point of the original
| outbreak in Wuhan, and not merely a superspreader event.
|
| We now know that early cases were centered on the market,
| that both strains were present in the market, and that the
| types of wild animals that caused the original SARS
| outbreak in 2002 were being sold at the market.
| initplus wrote:
| The market is still involved lab leak hypothesis or not.
| The market may still be the place where the earliest
| animal-human crossover occurred, even if the lab leak
| hypothesis is correct.
|
| Say a group of animals intended to be euthanized were
| actually clandestinely sold at the market, it's
| completely reasonable that the virus could have mutated
| at the lab in the animal population before being
| transmitted to humans. In fact, this is literally exactly
| what occurs during gain of function research, when
| scientists are explicitly trying to get a virus to mutate
| in live animals.
|
| There is simply not any hard evidence to concretely prove
| either hypothesis. Any evidence that points to the market
| can just as easily be involved in a lab leak scenario.
|
| When you have no comprehensive data on transmission, and
| no audit trail of how the animals arrived at the market,
| it's not possible to determine origin from super
| spreader. The evidence for both would look identical!
| undecisive wrote:
| I'd recommend being a little more strict with your language
| if you want to convince anyone here.
|
| "It started"..."solidly established" - that's enough
| inaccuracy for most HN people to ignore the whole of your
| post.
|
| Compare that with the context and abstract of the paper
| you've cited: "the earliest human cases", "circumstantial
| evidence", "earliest known COVID-19 cases", "spatially
| associated with vendors", "insufficient evidence to define
| upstream events"
|
| At this point, it is all opinion vs opinion based on
| circumstantial evidence or the lack thereof - and claiming
| anything else is either a) Faith or b) Misrepresentation.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more
| definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title:
| "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early
| epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic."
|
| Many people have only vaguely followed this issue. Those
| who have been following it closely know that a lot of basic
| facts have actually been settled over the last year. The
| location of the initial outbreak in Wuhan (namely, in a
| market that sold wild animals similar to the animals that
| caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002) is one of those
| settled facts now.
| peyton wrote:
| The lab is not 10 km away. It is next door to the market.
| From the WHO report [0]:
|
| > The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2nd December 2019 to a
| new location near the Huanan market.
|
| [0]: page 119, https://www.who.int/docs/default-
| source/coronaviruse/final-j...
| vidro3 wrote:
| i thought cases were already cropping up prior to that move
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| You're confusing the Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The first cases of Covid were in November 2019.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic#2019
|
| Also, the new location is over 5km from the market.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+Centres+for+Disease+P
| r...
| nostrebored wrote:
| The cases were very heavily investigated around the wet
| market -- particularly looking at adjacent hospitals. This is
| an obvious example of a biased sample.
|
| If you were doing controversial research using controversial
| methods how transparent would you be?
| tzs wrote:
| > I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies
| the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population
| spreading it.
|
| It often takes years or even decades to find the original
| animal source of viruses. Sometimes it is never found, such as
| with ebola.
| npteljes wrote:
| This argument is partly _argumentum ad populum_ , appealing to
| the supposed normalcy of the argument, to validate the argument
| itself. The virus started there, so is it normal to think it
| might be correlated? Sure. Is it _evidence_? It 's not.
|
| The second argument is backwards. Reality is more wild,
| chaotic, unpredictable than the baseline set by entertainment,
| and that's because it's easiest to reach people when you build
| upon what they already expect. As TVtropes would put this:
| "Reality is unrealistic". If you put too much unexpected things
| in a medium, as you say people won't buy it. But while
| storytelling is often bound by this constraint, reality isn't.
|
| Please note that I don't take a side with this comment. I want
| to know the truth, as I imagine many do, and I want to get
| there with a story that really makes sense, and doesn't just
| appeal to my nonrational parts.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnreali...
| contravariant wrote:
| While true, the same can be said for any gun that _doesn 't_ go
| off somewhere in the near future. Which isn't a terribly
| realistic expectation for most guns in the real world,
| thankfully.
| duttonw wrote:
| It is all allege and from a nation that sees saving face above
| all things. It is not all that surprising.
|
| Someone was playing/checkin out a virus, its in a place which
| exotic animals are sort after to be consumed. It would not
| surprise me if someone 'pinched' a couple of bat's from the lab
| to make some $$$ on the side at the markets and then the rest is
| how its been portrayed (except for the constant finger pointing
| its from other countries, china knew about it, they blocked local
| flights but continued to let international flights out, if you
| put 1 and 1 together, it does make 2. No way around that.
| breck wrote:
| This is a very simple question. You just need 1 CSV file. A CSV
| file with a list of all BioWeaponsLabs and their coordinates.
| Then for every point on earth compute distance from nearest
| BioWeaponsLabs. This will give you a heatmap for
| pr(labLeak|pandemic). Few hrs work.
|
| Right? Has anyone done this yet?
| empathy_m wrote:
| Are you looking for a diagram like this one?
| https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4454/asset/75...
|
| ( https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 )
| tristor wrote:
| Very interesting, but unfortunately misleading because it
| doesn't show the updated location for the city campus for the
| WIV.
|
| " The closest known CoV RaTG13 strain (96.2%) to SARS-CoV-2
| detected in bat anal swabs have been sequenced at the Wuhan
| Institute of Virology. The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2nd
| December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market. Such
| moves can be disruptive for the operations of any
| laboratory." [0] (page 119)
|
| [0] https://www.who.int/docs/default-
| source/coronaviruse/final-j...
| widerporst wrote:
| This ignores the fact that these labs are often built closely
| to where the viruses in question naturally occur.
| breck wrote:
| Ah that's a good point.
|
| So your CSV file would need 1 more column: `type`,
| `bioWeaponsLab|naturalVirusHotspot`, and then you could have
| a toggle to see one at a time (or both, overlaid).
|
| If anyone makes this CSV with data vis and published to
| GitHub and it's good I'll send you $500USD worth of NEAR coin
| or my eternal gratitude and respect (whichever you value
| more).
| adamaries21 wrote:
| kurupt213 wrote:
| One of those points could be dismissed as a coincidence... the
| whole set is what you call a preponderance of evidence.
| pelasaco wrote:
| The only thing that it proves is that regardless of how the
| outbreak happened, if it was a killer virus we would be f*ck. 2
| years later, we know few about its origin and we still fight with
| basic stuff like vaccine, treatment and lockdown.. One could say
| "well, we learned a lot during this two years", but I doubt that
| if same happens again, we are able to respond it as we should.
| Damn, even the question about masks (yes/no/depends) still not
| sorted out. It is a shame.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > we still fight with basic stuff like vaccine, treatment
|
| What exactly are you hoping for?
| pelasaco wrote:
| less media, better organization, clear strategy, more
| transparency and honesty. We saw what we cannot do well. We
| suffered with many gaps and did so many mistakes that
| shouldn't be repeated.
| rhodorhoades wrote:
| What was showed by the government is that we don't have
| transparency and honesty. The head of the CDC essentially
| said "masks don't work", then came out and said " just
| kidding, they work but we needed to lie to you so you
| wouldn't panic buy all the masks. Go ahead and go panic buy
| all the masks now"
|
| Americans don't like to be talked at, they like to be
| talked to. As a country, we want all the information but we
| want the ability to choose what to do with that
| information.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I think it's ok to change an opinion, that's what science
| is about. However the tone was really dishonest, right?
| When it was brought up first time[1][2], it was more
| important to wall-up then truly communicate... on another
| hand, maybe it was just too many media coverage, everyone
| wanting to deliver the last news, demanding answers that
| weren't available.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/0...
|
| [2] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-
| stance-...
| 96llort wrote:
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Unrolled:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1566826229931524096.html
| tehjoker wrote:
| I'm on a mobile device and feel terrible right now do I'm not
| going to find the sources, but aren't there several papers out
| there right now from Brazil, Italy, and perhaps Spain showing
| detection of SARS2 in samples from Nov. 2019? That would wildly
| change our interpretation of at least COVID's geographic origin.
| shusaku wrote:
| A lot of that discussion seems to have vanished from the
| internet. Maybe it's because people are less interested in
| talking about their strange cold back in the fall of '19, but
| it could also be that the evidence remains slim enough that
| contaminated samples is parsimonious.
| ok_computer wrote:
| Hi, content aside, tweet chains posts are terrible to read on any
| device. And twitter bugs me to log in to track me through the
| browser.
|
| To all the people who think this is the best way to deliver
| information to their audience please stop. 1/1
| honkdaddy wrote:
| What medium would you recommend Mr. Ebright use to deliver his
| message to his 50,000 followers, plus the other several hundred
| thousand who would have seen it given its popularity?
|
| He didn't write this for HN users to read, it's pretty
| unrealistic for us to expect people format their publishing to
| fit the preferences of nerdy HN readers.
| xtracto wrote:
| A Substack/Medium/Wordpress-online-blog URL is less than 280
| chars twitter limit.
| ok_computer wrote:
| I agree any of those blogging sites would be a better
| format, even though I'm not a Medium fan. He's also listed
| Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical
| Biology at Rutgers and I understand this isn't their
| official position but there could be a faculty page or some
| other publication or editorial site.
|
| And he could link to the blog article from his tweet. The
| downside is it wouldn't have as great viral potential but I
| don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Any page with
| all the bullet points in one place would serve better than
| an ephemeral twitter thread. If his followers regard him
| they may follow the link.
| svnpenn wrote:
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--things
| like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-
| button breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's really worry watching people start with conclusions and work
| backwards, doubly so here on HN.
|
| There is zero evidence for a lab leak, there is plenty of
| evidence against it (the randomness of the genetic changes
| between naturally occurring Covid 19 predecessors being the big
| piece). Yet people are (with flowery language) pretending that
| lack of evidence makes the "hypothesis" more likely.
| mandmandam wrote:
| You'll find some evidence pointing at a high possibility for a
| lab leak at this link:
| https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 ;)
|
| Side note: Not looking at evidence doesn't make it not exist,
| nor does declaring that there is "zero evidence".
| barnacled wrote:
| This is not evidence. It's hand waving 'how do you explain'
| stuff that has been addressed many times by experts in the
| field. No credible evidence whatsoever has been presented. If
| you ignore experts and just keep repeating the same old
| nonsense of course you claim to have evidence in the same way
| 9/11 truthers do.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| There is no evidence there at all though is there?
|
| First, it's all just Twitter comments. So it's only evidence
| that someone typed it into Twitter.
|
| And second, what happens to overlap with reality isn't
| evidence of a lab leak. The fact there is a virus lab in
| Wuhan doesn't mean there was a lab leak, any more than the
| fact there are labs in Africa proves aids was man made.
|
| That's the problem here, people don't understand what
| evidence is, and they don't understand because making up
| bullshit is much more fun.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Curious how we'll go about preventing the NYT from shaming the
| population with racism next time something starts to not add up:
| https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-covid-lab-leak-apoorv... .
| I really doubt we've learned anything at all, even with flaccid
| left-leaning icon Jon Stewart pointing out the absurdity of the
| situation.
| Annatar wrote:
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| While I have no basis, this is what I feel happened:
|
| WIV Worker - WIVW Janitor/intern/low paid employee - J
|
| WIVW to J: Dispose of these bats J: Ok _J takes bats to wet
| market_ _J sells bats for 50 bucks_ J to WIVW: Got rid of the
| bats for you. WIVW to J: Thanks.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| This github page is the most interesting (fairly apolitical) read
| on the lab leak hypothesis that I've seen to date:
|
| https://project-evidence.github.io/
|
| After reading it, it seems most likely to me that patient 0 was a
| person who collected bats for the lab with insufficient safety
| equipment, but the article itself doesn't really present a strong
| conclusion.
| est wrote:
| A picture is worth a thousand words, here is an aerial shot of
| Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/v4xg9u1.jpg
|
| source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-
| covid...
| [deleted]
| tmoravec wrote:
| Maybe I'm daft but might I ask you to elaborate what you wanted
| to say with the picture?
| 4pkjai wrote:
| I don't understand it either
| secretsatan wrote:
| Is it because they think we think it doesn't exist?
| highwaylights wrote:
| The parent is saying that the lab is close to trees, and
| birds live in trees, and birds have wings, and bats have
| wings which makes them a bit like birds that way, and bats
| can harbour coronaviruses.
|
| The parent is telling us we need to cut down all the trees
| before there's another pandemic, clearly.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The article talks about how WIV lab is secure and most
| probably _not_ a source of COVID. The poster probably
| meant to say "look at all those fences and CCTV, no way
| anything would escape that", but did so in a very qanon-
| ish fashion.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Ah, yes, clear as day. I'm convinced now.
| FortashForhash wrote:
| thats a lovely campus. very impressed
| birracerveza wrote:
| And those thousand words are "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."
|
| That is to say, I have no idea what you're implying here.
| foreigner wrote:
| What I don't understand about this argument is why does it
| matter? Even if COVID was created in a lab in Wuhan they
| obviously didn't release it on purpose as a weapon (if they had
| they wouldn't have released it in Wuhan). There are any number of
| other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous
| research that could get released on accident.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| The point is maybe we shouldn't be doing similarly dangerous
| research in the first place. The point is maybe banning in the
| US and funding it overseas is just idiotic.
| nuncanada wrote:
| It does matter a lot. Knowing the origin makes us able to try
| to prepare for it in the future. Specifically if it was a lab
| leak, we should put highly stringent procedures for conducting
| such research. Theses labs should be isolated far away from
| major urban areas, and have mandatory quarantine while leaving
| it... For example...
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It matters if the truth matters to you and it matters because
| of the highly public discrediting of the lab-leak hypothesis
| both early in the pandemic and more recently should update your
| beliefs about a great many institutions.
| eruleman wrote:
| You answered your own question.
| shusaku wrote:
| It matters because if geopolitics. Any other reason given is
| laughably naive.
|
| For sure we should use this as a lesson to increase safe guards
| regardless. But discussing those measures would require actual
| domain specific knowledge, so you'll never see it on HackerNews
| (to speak nothing of Twitter!)
| blast wrote:
| It has enormous implications for future research and
| regulation, as well as the reform of scientific and public
| health institutions.
|
| If a plane crash killed a few hundred people, no one would
| question the need for a thorough investigation, root cause
| analysis, and preventative measures for the future. Or consider
| the security reforms put in place after 9/11, which killed
| thousands. This pandemic killed millions.
| kgermino wrote:
| Because we want to learn from our mistakes. Whether it came
| from a wild animal, a lab, or something else there are lessons
| we should learn to help prevent it from happening again.
|
| It's an overused example, but it's a good one. Flying is
| extremely safe. Not because it's an inherently safe activity,
| but because every time something happens we stop and ask why.
| We don't accept simple answers like "the pilot screwed up" we
| try to find all of the root causes and contributing factors.
| Then for each of those we try to find a mitigation to avoid the
| problem in the future.
|
| It's not unreasonable to want to know what caused this pandemic
| so we can try to avoid the next one.
| virusduck wrote:
| Whether or not this _happened_ in reality, it is still a good
| learning experience.
| 96llort wrote:
| [deleted]
| glofish wrote:
| The main point that no scientists seems to want to mention is the
| clear cut and well defined conflict of interest in determining
| the origins.
|
| How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it
| turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a
| black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-
| science" crowd.
|
| In contrast scientists are in the drivers position if the cause
| was all natural. Then they can propose to be the "defendenders"
| of the humanity against the next danger.
|
| No wonder that there is strong headwind against any other
| narrative. Remember all it takes a single dissenter to bury a
| paper.
|
| It is the in the vital (short term) interest of every scientist
| to say that the origin is all natural!
|
| If you read the papers that claim natural origin, these turn out
| to be extremely weakly argued. A heat-map plot here and there,
| some evasive language when it comes to evidence. But the quotable
| conclusion is always formulated much more strongly.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Scientists are not a monolith. I highly doubt any of them are
| concerned about the macro level feasibility of science funding.
| It's fine.
| jcims wrote:
| They aren't a monolith but there is a pretty large overlap
| between the set of scientists that would be negatively
| impacted by major policy changes in virus research and those
| who's opinion is considered useful in the discussion of
| possible origins of SARS-CoV-2.
| notahacker wrote:
| There is also a pretty large overlap between the set of
| scientists who would be _positively_ impacted by major
| policy changes in virus research. "We need more money to
| research coronaviruses because we can't trust our
| counterparts in China" and "Funding should be restricted to
| labs in $homecountry with better biosecurity controls" are
| fairly natural conclusions to draw from discovering it was
| Chinese error, and "this is an arms race we have to fund to
| win" from discovering it was Chinese malfeasance.
| shmel wrote:
| Yeah, right, but it may also backfire if all gain-of-
| function research is banned. Imagine if we accidentally
| invented a rogue AI that caused as much disruption
| worldwide as covid did? Would you trust the general
| public and policymakers to come up with conclusions "it
| is fine, we continue AI research only in big corps based
| in SF, we can trust those" rather than "AI bad, ban AI
| research!"?
|
| I remember when this controversy about NIH grants just
| started, Fauci said: "if you want to ban gain-of-function
| research, you may just as well ban the virology
| entirely". And honestly, I am fine with that. I advocate
| for banning all gain-of-function research. If virologists
| can't do anything else except engineering deadly viruses
| on purpose, it is their problem.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| This kind of research was already banned in America,
| which is why American money was funelled towards WIV
| research grants to continue the research with less
| oversight and off American soil [1].
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699
|
| >This body did give money to an organisation that
| collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
|
| >That organisation - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance -
| was awarded a grant in 2014 to look into possible
| coronaviruses from bats.
|
| >EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which
| was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
|
| >In 2019, its project was renewed for another five years,
| but then pulled by the Trump administration in April 2020
| following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
|
| >Senator Paul believes the research did qualify as "gain-
| of-function" research, and referred to two academic
| papers by the Chinese institute, one from 2015 (written
| together with the University of North Carolina), and
| another from 2017.
| b4je7d7wb wrote:
| They could be subconciously following the herd
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| A scientist could be following a herd, but that is
| irrelevant to the point.
| programmarchy wrote:
| It's not irrelevant because a herd behaves in a
| monolithic way.
| programmarchy wrote:
| > not a monolith > I highly doubt any of them
|
| Do you see the problem with your reasoning here?
|
| If you say scientists are not a monolith, then you don't get
| to make sweeping generalizations about them.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > If you say scientists are not a monolith, then you don't
| get to make sweeping generalizations about them.
|
| Sure you can. Humans are not a monolith but humans don't
| worship the Dark God-Eater Yglocth-Tyr. Both statements are
| accurate.
|
| Largely because he doesn't exist, in much the same way as
| there's no such thing as a macro level threat to scientists
| ability to ask for funding. It's not a real concept.
|
| If you feel compelled to argue that there may be some
| people who do act this way despite it being irrelevant,
| great, you win points on pedantry and nothing changes.
|
| This line: > Remember all it takes a single dissenter to
| bury a paper.
|
| Is not accurate
| programmarchy wrote:
| The discussion of how Big Science presents a macro level
| threat has been ongoing since at least WWII. It's no
| secret that the way things are funded have introduced
| bias or in some cases completely undermined the
| scientific method. There's the opportunity cost of Big
| Science displacing smaller, more independent researchers,
| the replication crisis, the publish or perish culture
| that has developed, etc. It's because of the concerns
| raised by the scientific community that the paltry checks
| and balances we do have even exist. So it's totally off
| base to write off this history of concern as non-
| existent, or pedantry.
|
| It's also wrong to say a single dissenter can't bury a
| paper. It depends on the field, but in some fields there
| will only be one referee, and even when there are
| multiple referees, if the dissenter is a "leading
| authority" then they can absolutely bury the paper
| single-handedly.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > It's also wrong to say a single dissenter can't bury a
| paper. It depends on the field, but in some fields there
| will only be one referee, and even when there are
| multiple referees, if the dissenter is a "leading
| authority" then they can absolutely bury the paper
| single-handedly.
|
| The implication of the phrasing "It only takes one" tends
| to imply that anyone can do something. Not that there
| exists a single entity that can do it. You wouldn't say
| "remember, it only takes one person to pass an executive
| order". I also just don't agree with the claim that one
| person can bury a paper across an entire field. Otherwise
| we wouldn't have seen so many idiot papers being
| published about covid from quacks.
|
| > So it's totally off base to write off this history of
| concern as non-existent, or pedantry.
|
| There is no big science. There's DARPA, sure. But it's
| hardly "big science"
| mannykannot wrote:
| I suspect you are mostly right in that many are more
| concerned about funding - and publication - at the micro
| (personal) level, and this might discourage many from going
| against the establishment armed only with speculation.
|
| As for the scientific establishment (eg the NIH in the USA),
| it is very politically aware and was apparently determined to
| speak with a single voice. Somewhat ironically, this may have
| made it impossible for them to put an end to lab-origin
| hypotheses, even if they are false.
| pydry wrote:
| What you're describing is more how a politician would think if
| "science" were a country.
|
| But science isnt a country, most scientists arent politicians
| and most would prefer the truth to out.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| _most scientists_
|
| But scientists aren't in a single domain, they're cut up into
| biology and physics and etc... And they're further divided
| into specializations, and then specialties...
|
| And if we don't discount that they're human, they have
| families, careers, friends, and nations. And at this point
| we're talking about a pretty narrow cross section of the
| population, even narrower when you take into account the few
| that publish, and minute when you finally arrive at who among
| them can be counted as prime drivers.
|
| And what would the geopolitical consequences be _if_ an
| objective finger driven by unanimous assent pointed itself at
| some culprits? All the deaths implicated in the disease, all
| the destruction, the damage wrought economically - they 're
| culpable for it all. Would it be war or sanctions? Could it
| be handwaved away?
|
| There's a lot of reasons, at scale, that such data is better
| kept quiet, and long lists of lots of individuals in many
| high places which immediately evince one of conflicts of
| interest _if_ we do take it for granted that it was a fuckup.
| BryantD wrote:
| This doesn't convince me because we have a recent covid-related
| example of scientists making a significant mistake and
| admitting it: namely, the primary means of transmission. At the
| beginning of the pandemic, the scientific community argued that
| transmission was surface-based. As more data came in, it became
| evident that transmission was aerosol-related. This was a huge
| mistake with significant implications, but nobody tried to
| cover it up.
|
| I conclude that scientists are more truth-motivated than you
| assert.
| effie wrote:
| Admitting scientists were wrong in their claims on science
| does not hurt societal standing of science or funding. The
| cost is very low, everybody expects scientists to be wrong on
| science from time to time.
|
| Admitting scientists may have caused the pandemic is on a
| whole another level. Societal status and funding may be
| pulled. The cost is so huge it makes relevant scientists
| unlikely to admit any of the sort.
| BryantD wrote:
| I don't have a great way to prove this, because we're
| arguing about a hypothetical, but I think you're wrong.
|
| Let me try one similar but non-medical counter-example.
| People are still willing to get on planes, even though
| Boeing 737 MAX engineering flaws caused 346 deaths.
| effie wrote:
| Some, not all, people are willing to get on Boeing 737
| MAX. Certainly not people who know about the fiasco and
| avoid increased risk.
|
| Your counter-example does not work at all, instead it is
| an example of my point. Boeing managers were driven
| solely by profitability of the company, mismanaged safety
| concerns, did not tell the customer about problems and
| MCAS fearing lost or less profitable contracts, and
| that's why we got crashed planes and hundreds dead.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| They were lying. They knew how corona viruses spread. This is
| just like sars, but less lethal.
| ploika wrote:
| Scientists aren't a monolith though. There few better career
| boosts than proving everyone else wrong, and the satisfaction
| of poaching work off a competitor who messed up isn't
| restricted to any one industry. Research into dangerous viruses
| isn't going to stop, no matter what happened in Wuhan, and it's
| far from the only risky work going on in labs around the world
| anyway.
|
| Whatever about the strength of the natural origin theory, the
| idea that there's a conspiracy of silence from all the
| scientists in the world (including ones who would love to give
| the Chinese authorities a black eye) just doesn't seem
| plausible. You said it yourself - all it takes is a single
| dissenter to bury a paper.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Scientists who aren't part of the monolith find themselves
| pushed out as wacko conspiracy theorists. This happened over
| and over and over and over and over and over and over again
| in the past thirty or so months. Even HN took part in this,
| supporting the depersoning of anyone who dared question the
| natural origin narrative. Scientists aren't a monolith as
| long as you include those who have been threatened with dire
| consequences for not toeing the line. Even now there are
| still some who want anyone who suggests the possibility of a
| lab leak origin to be silenced.
| Retric wrote:
| HN isn't part of the scientific community. You can find
| peer reviewed research published on the lab leak idea shows
| it was considered orthodox enough to be worth looking at.
| As recently as June of this year, WHO still wants to look
| more deeply at it.
|
| That said, it's considered fringe because there isn't
| enough evidence supporting the idea and the meat market
| theory showed up first.
| [deleted]
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| > it's far from the only risky work going on in labs around
| the world
|
| what else could you bring up?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Tesla style wireless electricity delivery. If "don't cross
| the streams" was ever applicable...
| pnf wrote:
| Science funding is dominated by industry and academic
| sources. Academic research departments are funded by industry
| or by NGOs funded by industry and government. As with any
| culture, successful people generally know where the third
| rails are, and where to focus their energies if they just
| want to have a career. Controversial science is relegated to
| the fringe by the internal logic of the system. It doesn't
| require a conspiracy, just an Overton window. Within any
| large organization there may be malfeasance, corruption, etc,
| that is widely known or suspected. Yet there are few
| "whistleblowers". Who wants that fight? Who wants their
| reputation blemished? Very few.
|
| Even so, if the system isn't hiring people who don't need to
| be told what to investigate and what to leave alone then the
| system is doing it wrong. Ideological guardrails and
| discourse policing take care of the bulk of compliance. The
| few kooks who insist on honest debate, well, people like
| Fauci and Francis know what do do about them. The sociopaths
| at the top have no compunction about ruining careers and make
| sure that is widely understood. Occasionally they'll kill a
| chicken while the monkeys watch to remind everyone.
|
| If someone doesn't know this about Science and Scientists
| now, after cigarettes and cancer, the replication crisis, and
| now 2+ years of pandemic evidence smacking us in the face,
| then they don't want to know.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| The problem with your argument and anyone else's argument
| that alleges grand conspiracy among scientists is that you
| always take a US centric view and pretend the US is the
| only place in the world with scientists.
|
| Scientists like many other individuals are divided by
| country. There are many countries out there that would love
| to do nothing but prove that this was a lab leak so that
| they could take a swing at China. All of that information
| is accessible and public.
|
| In order for grand corruption theory to make sense you
| would need to posit some way not only for the US to
| suppress this information perfectly but also control every
| single other countries scientific research.
| pnf wrote:
| I specifically said that no conspiracy is required, that
| the mechanism is baked into the system.
|
| As for the rest of the world, all the information is NOT
| accessible and public. Far from it. China is notoriously
| secretive and the US bio-security industry certainly
| isn't more forthcoming. Second, who says there isn't a
| control mechanism for non-US research science? Where does
| funding come from outside the US and how is it any
| different from the situation inside the US? The
| Atlanticist alliance is one center of knowledge-power.
| The BRICS may be another. But the idea of sovereignty
| operating at the country level is absurd on its face.
| Tell that to th EU member states. Most countries are
| effectively vassal states for the major powers. You can
| easily see what happens when they act independently.
| That's geopolitics 101.
|
| Like the US, China is a major source of funding for
| developing countries in what it considers to be its
| sphere of influence. So, pick your poison. Either the US
| hegemonic science industrial complex or the Chinese
| version. Either way, savvy people don't shit where they
| eat. Who do you think wants to take a swing at China? A
| full investigation of Wuhan (and Ukraine) would likely
| reveal the hand of the biodefense industry evading local
| laws by laundering illegal weapons research through
| fronts like EcoHealth Alliance. Would you like to go up
| against that? I sure wouldn't.
|
| For your version of things to make sense, you would also
| need to explain the embargo on the publication of
| dissenting research across the major US and European
| journals. Did you propose that just happened organically?
| Reality is catching up to politics and the consensus is
| shifting of necessity or the system will lose all
| remaining credibility.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Everything you're doing and alleging is conspiracy. That
| there is some greater will censoring anything that would
| reveal it was a lab leak.
|
| There's no point in arguing with you because anything can
| be contorted to fit this narrative you've crafted to fit
| everything neatly into this conspiracy. In reality hiding
| something like this on a global scale is quite literally
| impossible. That's simply a fact of how information
| travels and works.
|
| It's especially funny because the lab leak hypothesis
| literally originated from the government agencies and
| such you seem keen to deride. It was pushed by the most
| powerful position in America. I don't understand how
| people pushing this conspiracy can square the fact that
| it came from the groups they claim to conspire against it
| pnf wrote:
| I could say there's no point in arguing with you for the
| exact same reasons. I see you really don't want to
| understand my argument and would rather blithely dismiss
| strawmen. That's your prerogative. For anyone else who
| reads this, I'll continue clarifying why I think you're
| argument is naive and, frankly, simplistic. You seem not
| to have a clear understanding of American politics. Maybe
| you don't live here or, if you do you don't pay much
| attention to deep politics. That's forgivable. Most
| people don't have the time, heart, or stomach for it. I
| assume you're talking about the former President pushing
| the claim? That is hardly the most powerful position in
| America. Do you think Joe Biden is the most powerful
| person in America? LoL. Read Glennon's book National
| Security and Double Government, or Sheldon Wolin's
| Democracy Incorporated for a primer.
|
| You clearly don't grok ruling class ideology and
| discourse policing. Please don't mislead other people
| with these tired arguments about conspiracy theories.
| Although, there is plenty of evidence of actual
| conspiracy at the top of the FDA and NIH if you want to
| nitpick. You might also want to investigate the modus
| operandi and principle funding structures of the WTO and
| WHO. But you would probably argue there were no
| conspiracies in Imperial Britain because they're just not
| possible. Your lack of historical knowledge blinds you to
| possibility.
|
| But I'm not even talking about technical "conspiracy" so
| called. I'm talking about ideological control structures
| for the ruling class and those within it. Your statements
| are a prime example of someone who cannot see outside
| your ideology. You don't even know that you don't know.
| That's the essential feature of ideological compliance.
| There absolutely are conspiracies to suppress
| information, that's called censorship. Wait, don't tell
| me. You're a fan of that, too. But only to suppress
| disinformation and protect the feebleminded masses from
| their own stupidity, right? But not you! You've got
| enough grey matter to handle it and come to the "right"
| conclusions. We all know the "right" opinions and we all
| want to be on the "right side of history", don't we?
| That's right. We don't need to be told that certain ideas
| are junk disinformation while other, approved ideas, are
| justified true belief. There's a good lad, off you go.
|
| Btw, the lab leak hypothesis was originally making a
| splash in the blogosphere in January 2020 before the
| narrative could get ahead of it. Then the political arms
| of the government science institutions and the
| pathetically complicit media leaped to the rescue by
| savaging the people who would dare suggest such a thing.
| Google "lab leak Wuhan" with a date filter if you want to
| relive those heady days. It's especially funny that you
| would make such a claim since that's exactly the sort of
| thing members in good standing of the establishment are
| expected to believe. There's really no point in arguing
| with someone who's mind has been broken by propaganda.
| I'm sorry for your loss.
| glofish wrote:
| That is not at all what the reply stated. In fact they
| explicitly stated that "the mechanism is baked into the
| system". Then go on to methodically explain what they
| mean.
|
| It exceedingly well argued and articulated point of view
| - and that goes to pnf's all other replies.
|
| I salute the author pnf for being able to put into words
| what I would not be able to.
| [deleted]
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it
| turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a
| black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-
| science" crowd._
|
| The real black eye for science is the refusal to consider a
| line of inquiry because the answer might be unacceptable.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Even if the lab leak theory was true and some irresponsible
| handlers were responsible for it, so what? Science moves and
| lives on. If we had to throw out every concept that committed
| some catastrophic failure we'd have nothing - no governments,
| no religions, etc.
|
| This is only an attack on science if you are already anti-
| science.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| There is no chance, that this is just a call for reform, for
| working oversight, for not outsourcing to the cheapest
| bidder, for a outside inquisition to have visits and quality
| control. For reproduceability? For a limiting of potentially
| exponetially dangerous research, like we are perfectly
| willing to push it with nuclear weapons? No, every one
| opposing my oppinion is a absolute enemy, there is only black
| and white and the institutions we have are perfect, right
| now, at this very moment.
|
| All those yells, just from touching the pots.
|
| Sorry, but this absolutist, finalist stating of facts, is
| verz unscientific in itself. Were does that sentiment, that
| yelling the loudest and ascribing every oppossition evil
| motives come from?
|
| Its not very democratic. Not very scientific either.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the lab leak community are looking
| for someone to blame, purely out of retribution, which is
| ultimately pointless.
|
| Ignoring that contingent, it's still important to do a full
| postmortem after a catastrophe. If a bridge collapses, people
| don't say "oh well, life moves on". They figured out why it
| collapsed, and then design the next generation of bridges to
| not fail in that way. If you don't do the analysis, you can't
| do the mitigation.
| nomel wrote:
| > purely out of retribution, which is ultimately pointless.
|
| If a mad scientist was making a better bomb design, and
| accidentally blew up a million people through negligence,
| would your perspective be different? What about a bridge
| that collapses and kills people? Engineers go to prison for
| that. There needs to be accountability for, demonstrably,
| one of the most dangerous acts that can be done.
|
| I would be perfectly ok with the the lab being shut
| down/redesigned, if a flaw in its design were found, and
| any negligent scientists and safety officers being
| removed/prosecuted.
| jrockway wrote:
| Blaming process failures on individuals rarely yields any
| results. Can you give me one example of a time it worked;
| where merely punishing an individual without making any
| process changes has prevented a class of accidents since
| that incident to now?
|
| My take is that any process relying on a single
| individual is ultimately a failure. All sorts of things
| happen to individuals, including losing the ability to
| fear the consequences (think degenerative brain disease;
| cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.) With the fear of consequences
| eliminated, your process fails open and retribution
| accomplishes nothing. If some scientist at a bomb lab
| wants to kill 1 billion people, including themselves, no
| punishment is going to deter them. "An eye for an eye",
| while appealing to our reptile brains, can't scale beyond
| a single murder. So your process for preventing mass
| murder can't include it if it's to be effective.
|
| Punishment doesn't bring your loved ones back from the
| dead. All we can hope for is a system that doesn't fail
| so easily next time.
| nomel wrote:
| I actually assume the policy is fine. Part of policy is,
| necessarily, enforcement. In any safety critical policy,
| there is someone that holds final accountability. That
| accountability is the pressure, the policy, that
| guarantees the policy is followed. This is why we have
| the enforcement of laws, and not just the laws
| themselves. Criminal negligence is a possibility, happens
| frequently, and is enforced often, around safety critical
| systems. If there's no enforcement, then the policy is
| fiction.
|
| I _highly_ recommend you look into accountability, in
| safety critical systems. There are many many decades of
| policy /data that show accountability is a necessary
| component. Is what keeps them honest/careful.
|
| (I'll try to be back with references and a good example)
| nomel wrote:
| > Is what keeps them honest/careful.
|
| A better way to phrase it would be, it's what ensures
| that the words of the policy become actions.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > If you read the papers that claim natural origin, these turn
| out to be extremely weakly argued.
|
| What didn't you like about Pekar 2022?
| tripletao wrote:
| You mean the polytomy argument? As I said earlier, it's
| incredibly weak. They're assuming they can capture the spread
| of the first human cases in an SIR-type model well enough to
| recreate the shape of that early phylogenetic tree. During
| this pandemic, such models haven't shown particularly good
| accuracy in forecasting case count at a country level,
| certainly no better than less physical curve-fitting
| approaches like Youyang Gu's. I see no reason to believe such
| a model would be accurate on the more difficult problem of
| SARS-CoV-2's early spread, in an unknown group of people with
| unknown behaviors, and perhaps different biology for those
| earliest variants too.
|
| Essentially Pekar's argument is a "two introductions of the
| gaps"--that if their model of a single introduction doesn't
| conform to reality, then it must have been two introductions.
| But the other possibility is simply that their model is
| wrong. I see no reason to exclude that. Here are some Twitter
| threads expressing the same concerns in more detail:
|
| https://twitter.com/NimwegenLab/status/1563490916006264833
|
| https://twitter.com/nizzaneela/status/1509431997713764352
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