> this whole China Lab theory is literally just tinfoil hat speculation
I feel like that's a bit cold. This is a virus whose closest relatives are known to exist in animals that are the specific animals that they specialise in, in that lab where they also do science around viruses like this one.
Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there? Enough at least to take it beyond the realm of tin foil.
> And at the end you seem to be proposing the fact that they haven't faked a zoonotic origin is evidence that it was lab-created? That sounds backwards.
You actually sort of can make that argument, yeah.
At this point, with the lab leak theory having become a lot more popular over the past year or so, the Chinese government would kill to be able to point to an animal reservoir. If they can't find it, the incentive for them to try to fake it is huge. My initial assumption is that if they haven't faked a zoonotic origin, it's probably because they can't, not because they don't want to. By assuming this, I'm assuming that they have basically looked in all the places possible by now, which seems reasonable because they have a lot of manpower and we're 2+ years into the pandemic. If they can't get the virus to infect bats/pangolins/etc, that indicates that the virus didn't originate in the wild and hence supports the lab leak theory
> they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally.
The person you're responding to didn't say anything different to what you've said.
> Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.
Why did you say that? It certainly isn't stated or even implied by the person you're replying to.
> This, is damning evidence regardless of any of that. Nothing remotely like this was being presented by mainstream newsmedia, perhaps because nothing remotely like it was being presented to them by the scientists they talked to. There was no version of a lab origin theory that was being presented as worthy of consideration.
You have to acknowledge this is incredibly weak logic. “A thing is possible, therefore it happened.” Is this molecular evidence the Furin Cleavage Site? Cause that was peddled basically as a lie - they occur in nature just fine, it’s also used in research.
I’m unaware of any compelling evidence for the lab leak theory, but I will acknowledge it’s basically impossible to disprove. We don’t know where most diseases arose (or where they came from) - it’s just we mostly don’t care, unlike with COVID.
> 1) there's literally no evidence that it happened that way
There's no smoking gun evidence that is accessible, and there likely never will be. There is some circumstantial evidence that seems compelling. We know that scientists in Wuhan were working on this exact type of virus and were also working to make it transmissible in humans. We also know that there were issues reported in safety protocols at this/these labs. Finally, we know that the virus outbreak happened in the same city (and possibly within a very short distance) of these labs.
Presumably (I have no data on this and would love some from anyone who knows more), there are not many labs doing this sort of research, so the fact that the virus appeared in the immediate vicinity of one of the few labs where they were doing this research seems like a heck of a coincidence. It's not a smoking gun, but I'm a little concerned to see people in the scientific community writing it off as a near-impossibility. What's wrong with saying, "We think that this is unlikely given xyz, but the circumstantial evidence is concerning and we should reevaluate all research of this type."
>If 90% of people agree to a position to appease a few people in power, then it's not really consensus, it's coercion.
It's a pretty big assumption to assume that's the reason why scientists outside of China believe in a zoonotic origin, rather than it simply being the case that the weight of available evidence leans in favor of a zoonotic origin. That evidence includes the fact that the earliest confirmed cases clustered around the seafood market, and that there were two separate lineages of the virus found in humans, suggesting multiple zoonotic spillover events. We will never know with 100% certainty what really happened. The scientists working on this have always acknowledged that uncertainty and have never said the probability of a lab leak was zero. I just think the reality is a lot more boring than you're making it out to be.
>He is not saying it came out of a US lab. He is saying it came from US lab biotechnology. I.e. from US tech and funding for gain-of-function research; The suspected culprit was banned in the US in 2014:
Ah, thanks for the correction.
>It seems absurd to say it came from a US lab when the original outbreak was in Wuhan. The virology lab there was supported with US funding and research.
I accepted that this is conspiracy theory level stuff... but... if one were to make a covert biological weapons attack on another country, what better place is there to plant it but right next to their own biotech labs? This doesn't survive contact with Occam's Razor at all, but I don't know, might be a plot point in a mediocre thriller.
> Serious people all agree about this, only cranks disagree with us
Mostly joking but if the shoe fits... As one example, one of the authors of the famous 'Viral' book pointing to a Lab Leak is a coal baron GW denier who chaired a bank that failed due to subprime loans and who previously claimed that HIV was a man-made virus derived from failed polio vaccination experiments[1]. How much credence should we give someone like that? How many hours of time should be spent debunking every new theory he promotes rather than just casting him aside and looking for non-morons to engage with?
It's just a smattering of grievances and debunked conspiracy theories. How would virologists begin to respond to that?
I mean I said it above, and I'll just copy/paste it here;
> Admitting that Covid19 was very likely a spillover of a natural virus doesn't mean that you trust China, that you think their labs are run well or are incapable of accidents, that they've been transparent or helpful with the investigations, or that the possibility of new evidence pointing to a lab origin is foreclosed -- just that the actual physical evidence we have today about this virus and this pandemic overwhelmingly points to a natural origin.
There are well-intentioned scientists testing theories that could point to a lab origin of Covid, it would be extremely interesting and important if they find something to indicate that's the case. Unfortunately to the casual observer of the actual state of science here, they'd be led to believe that there's consensus about a lab leak or at least a strong likelihood backed by evidence when that's not remotely true.
> The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged.
As far as I know, those labs always study coronaviruses in bats -- it's a large part of what they do. That makes it less of a suspicious coincidence than your way of putting it implies.
By which I don't mean it didn't happen. There's just not enough information one way or the other.
>Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.
Yes, and this is important, but this is also already publicly known. It's not providing any new or interesting information. There're still a lot of other variables and factors to take into account here. Statistics aren't so simple.
For example, Wuhan is a huge city, larger than NYC, and an important economic hub. The area has a very high number of people and is population-dense. Tons of scientific institutions are there, as one would generally expect of such a city. So by that alone, the prior for the lab being there could be pretty high.
Also, maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats? Perhaps even created there because they considered it very likely the particular bats in that particular area could potentially carry human-transferable viruses? And perhaps also because they knew lots of animals in the area, including bats, were regularly hunted and sold for food, further increasing the likelihood that human-infecting viruses may be found in that area?
If that's true, one would expect outbreaks to be more likely to occur in that area whether or not the lab was involved. It'd be reversing cause and effect - maybe a lab is there because the area is a virus hotzone, rather than the area being a virus hotzone because a lab is there. I saw some other evidence saying coronavirus-carrying bats studied at the lab were taken from elsewhere in China, which could alter this assessment, so one would need to look at all of that more thoroughly, but the point is this isn't such a simple association to make.
A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence.
> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days.
Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses.
> fucking insane
I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics.
> a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic
Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of function research could potentially predict or help mitigate.
> Three studies suggest it originated from the Wuhan markets: 28 points.
That’s not what the studies suggest. They suggest that it was an important amplification point. Whether or not it originated there is an additional inference. It’s certainly possible, but alternative hypotheses are not dismissed by the market being an amplification point. A busy market is a likely amplification point, regardless of what is being sold.
I think that failure to find the virus in any wet market animal or in the wild (from the studies) starts to become its own kind of weak evidence as well. So two things are true: wet market was a likely amplification point and the lack of corroborating evidence for zoonotic origin is troubling. (Though I think its probably the most likely explanation, I don’t think studies like this actually add any new level of certainty and the same reasons to be suspicious remain.)
> I think you are being incredibly naive to accept a single scientific paper on face value.
No one accepted that one paper at face value, it's just one of several examples of papers and research where actual evidence was presented and explored.
The fact that biolabs exist and leaks have happened in the past are not actual evidence. That lab still exists today and leaks have still happened in the past, does that mean a virus is leaking right now? It's just wild speculation. Wet markets also exist and have been linked to outbreaks of disease in the past. These are reasons for investigations, not for accusations and conspiracy theories.
Gradually, real evidence for the lab leak theory started to emerge. Your parking lot picture and the sick lab researchers are good examples of evidence, even though they're only circumstantial, but none of that evidence existed when people started spreading lab leak conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories had no evidence at all.
Even still, investigations were carried out to see if the the virus really was a bioweapon, to determine if it came from the lab, and to see if it came from the market. As evidence that it came from the market grew, the people spouting lab leak conspiracy theories ignored all the evidence for everything else and continued to spread their conspiracies even though the evidence for a natural origin was much stronger.
Any time actual evidence that supported the lab leak theory emerged the media reported on it, and when enough evidence existed to justify the lab leak theory the media took it seriously.
> When you include that necessary fact, it becomes the most parsimonious.
That's just wishful thinking on your part. That's still not enough evidence in that direction at all. You have large, dense cities in China and people trading wildlife food. There's millions of them in a cramped space. That's a breeding ground for infection, with millions of opportunities for mutations.
> It’s not necessarily lab created but it could have been leaked from a lab (which studies coronaviruses and bats) even if it wasn’t artificial.
I've heard this multiple times as a reasonable possibility, and yet it seems absurd if you think about it: are you trying to accuse someone of leaking into the environment a virus that actually comes from the environment? And how do you even prove something like that?
Yea I guess I don’t get where anyone would get all that nonsense from.
It’s nothing more than a coincidence that the first people that got sick worked in and around China’s only level4 bio lab, that the NIH was confirmed to 1-degree indirectly funding gain of function research on sars coronaviruses… then after the virus was out the Chinese government came in to prevent access to that facility and it’s data. I mean… how racist do you have to be to give any credit to the conspiracy theory that it didn’t come from a wet market near that lab?
Did you consider that maybe the reason this proposal was written was because this mutation was the most likely way this kind of virus could mutate to infect humans?
I don’t understand why people keep throwing around all kind of unsubstantiated facts like if they suddenly made things clearer.
The facts are not that complicated. Could the pandemic be linked to an accidental leak from a gain-of-function study at the Wuhan lab? Most certainly. Do we have evidence that it did? No, we don’t. Could it come from somewhere else? Sure, it can. Was there a properly done inquiry with full collaboration from the lab and the host country? Absolutely not, China was extremely uncooperative and did all it could to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic.
From that, I conclude that it’s highly unlikely we will ever learn anything definitive. Therefor, discussing this is pretty much pointless.
> Almost all the references from point to articles written by Chinese scientists in the last year. Color me skeptical.
Except the first reference, which is the entire point of the article: French scientists found bat coronaviruses very similar to SARS-CoV-2 in Laos.
No more partisan posturing please. You are straining to defend preconceived notions by ignoring new information, rather than paying curious attention to the world around you.
> I love how everyone involved always jumps on the most extreme version of the lab leak hypothesis "Chinese government made COVID super weapon" and then use that to discount everything else instead of admitting the much more nuanced reality of the situation.
I think a decent argument could be made that this phenomenon (in its abstract form, not specifically this variation of it) is more dangerous than covid, or even a virus much more dealy. Who knows how much damage this does to the world considering how widely it exists?
I feel like that's a bit cold. This is a virus whose closest relatives are known to exist in animals that are the specific animals that they specialise in, in that lab where they also do science around viruses like this one.
Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there? Enough at least to take it beyond the realm of tin foil.
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