7 ms·

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain sus

by avs733 7y ago

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.

papermachete 7y ago
It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.
- avs733 7y ago
  it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...
  - papermachete 7y ago
    They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only engage in political damage control.
- meowface 7y ago
  What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
  - papermachete 7y ago
    That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret military base got away with corona would make you more effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.
    - Klinky 7y ago
      You're using a "Nothing to hide" argument to counter this supposed "appeal to perfection". Lack of evidence is not evidence.
    - meowface 7y ago
      Asking for any evidence is appeal to perfection? Or saying that it's unreasonable to demand an extraordinary, serious, world-impacting claim be disproved, while simultaneously not supporting it with any evidence? Also, I'm just saying any evidence that anything may have escaped by mistake; not that it was intentionally spread. Sure, CIA and such can discover such evidence much more effectively than any commenter here, but in that case, shouldn't you let the CIA / US government make those accusations instead of a random commenter who has no knowledge of the situation or basis for their claim? >China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona. What documents, exactly? And how would that help disprove that the virus inadvertently escaped from the lab?
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.
    - YarickR2 7y ago
      Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that, asking for evidence and reminding the world about presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought
      - papermachete 7y ago
        I'd like to remind people it's not just the US - Chinese test (and inhaler) suppliers being sued for highly unreliable (and some even pre-infected) equipment.
      - rumanator 7y ago
        > trying to lay the blame onto China How exactly is the Chinese regime not to blame for this mess? Between the blatant cover-up and falsified reports and underreporting deaths by a couple of orders of magnitude and knowingly stating that the virus didn't spread when they knew full well it spread like wildfire and intentionally leaving out demostratedly infected but asymptomatic cases out of the statistics while simultaneously blaming new cases on infected foreigners, how is China's regime not to blame for this whole mess? And should we now just forget that the Chinese regime has been trying to pin the blame on their covid19 mess on Italy of all places?
      - andromeduck 7y ago
        Presumption of innocence is a legal matter and this is not a court of law. It might be hard for you to understand but freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting called out. Nay, it is the affirmative right to do so. It would also do you well to keep in mind that if we're using the criminal justice system as some standard obstruction of justice itself is a crime, as is destruction/tampering of evidence as well as witness tampering. Physical evidence is not required to convict; strong circumstantial evidence is often sufficent.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    I'm not sure the concept of "onus" is meaningful in this kind of public debate. It's not like everyone has agreed to only believe conclusions reached by particular forms of argument.
    - meowface 7y ago
      This isn't some kind of weird, esoteric form of argument. It's an underlying principle of empiricism that you should try to provide evidence for claims you make rather than making the accused prove something is false. Someone accuses you of murder and says "prove you didn't do it". You didn't do it, but can't satisfactorily prove such a negative. Maybe you were outside taking a walk and no one can provide an alibi. Does that mean you should be assumed guilty?
PeCaN 7y ago
I don't think "coronavirus escapes from a lab, in the exact area where the outbreak started, that was studying coronaviruses" is exactly an 'extraordinary claim'. If anything it's the elephant in the room. Are we just supposed to casually ignore that or what…. I think the problem is that when people think of "lab" they think of some sort of devious genetic engineering bioweapons program, and not something considerably more likely but much more mundane like some scientists studying what sort of potentially bad viruses the local bats have.
- legolas2412 7y ago
  Umm, they were also combining viruses to create "chimeras". Now, this combinational process could be genetic engineering (which has been ruled out I think) or just combining in a petri dish, which I find compelling.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    To create pseudoviruses which are able to infect under lab conditions, but not able to replicate, or to survive in a human or any other organism. If this were one of those, as has been claimed on the basis of the frequently mis-cited October 2019 WIV paper, anyone in the world would be able to see that by comparing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence accessioned in NCBI's database with one of the many HIV sequences also available there. I've done the alignment myself, against several HIV sequences. So can you; you don't even need a local toolchain, you can pick them and BLAST them right on NCBI's site. When you do, you'll find the same thing I did: there is no significant similarity between any HIV strain and SARS-CoV-2. So the "escaped chimera" theory is not only implausible on its face given the nature of pseudoviruses, but disproven by genomic evidence, besides. Please don't spread disinformation.
    - legolas2412 7y ago
      Thanks for the info. I'm clearly not an expert. But I do still have questions. 1) where did hiv sequences come from? Are they the human immuno deficiency virus sequences? 2) you are suggesting that chimeras are created impotent, and that hybrid viruses cannot be created to be effective otherwise. My question is that whatever combination of pangolin and bat viruses is said to have happened naturally in a host, could it happen in a petri dish too? Could WIV be conducting such research? Or are such petri dish chimeras always unable to jump from human to human. Is it a natural property or choice when creating chimeras? 3) it seems that the virus is like SARS but has receptor proteins similar to a known pangolin coronavirus. Is it also possible for two viruses to leak to a single lab employee, and then combine in the first human host right away. It still can be said to leak from the lab in this scenario. Thanks for having patience for my uninformed opinions. I'm sure I'm missing
ekianjo 7y ago
Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.
- markdown 7y ago
  Because people have to eat, and wild animals are only a tiny fraction of what's traded in wet markets. US supermarkets sold lettuce that killed people. Should those supermarkets be shut for good?
  - bb2018 7y ago
    If the lettuce killed people and then everyone who interacted with the people who at the lettuce also got sick and the economy had to be shut down the United States would strictly ban selling lettuce immediately. If China can enforce the largest lockdown ever and enforce a one-child policy for decades, they can easily ban live animals at markets.
    - katbyte 7y ago
      i believe they have now banned wildlife.
    - Klinky 7y ago
      A) COVID-19 doesn't kill everyone it comes in contact with. Depending on where you live, more people in the last 3 months may have become seriously ill from a food-borne illness than from COVID-19. B)Food-borne illness actually does kill around 150,000 per year worldwide. It is a serious concern, and difficult to track/contain. There are also concerns around regulations being too lax, not enough inspectors, and living conditions of those who harvest food. C)Maybe China should ban wet markets, but then maybe people should be home for Easter Sunday and not at a church. Now we start to ban "cultural norms" and "ways of life", which people get fussy about.
      - bb2018 7y ago
        A) Saying the "last three months" is intellectually disingenuous because the virus hadn't even been introduced to most states three months ago. I'm sure in some areas more people have died in the last three months from ski accidents but that is irrelevant. Name one state where you honestly believe the next three months will have comparable cases of food-borne deaths to Covid-19 deaths. B) I'm not disagreeing with you. C) People should not be at an in-person Easter Sunday. I realize a percentage of churches decided to not close. That being said, wanting to eat bats is not comparable to wanting to practice religion.
bstar77 7y ago
"So...evidence?" All people are saying is that there's a reasonable hypothesis that this thing came out of that laboratory. There's enough circumstantial evidence to support that theory even if it's not a leading theory.
FriendlyNormie 7y ago
You’re the one making extraordinary claims. The virus came from a bat sold at a wet market? Where is your evidence? What is the name of the merchant who sold the bat at the wet market? Where is the specific bat from that wet market which was recovered and tested positive for the coronavirus? What specific species of bat was it? Where is your proof that anyone ever sold bats at that wet market (many sources are saying they didn’t)? Why did the outbreak supposedly begin at a wet market 300 meters from a lab that specifically focused on studying coronaviruses? You’re implying that you have very convincing answers to all these questions. Do you?

by avs733 7y ago

papermachete 7y ago

It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.

avs733 7y ago
it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...
- papermachete 7y ago
  They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only engage in political damage control.
meowface 7y ago
What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
- papermachete 7y ago
  That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret military base got away with corona would make you more effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.
  - Klinky 7y ago
    You're using a "Nothing to hide" argument to counter this supposed "appeal to perfection". Lack of evidence is not evidence.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Asking for any evidence is appeal to perfection? Or saying that it's unreasonable to demand an extraordinary, serious, world-impacting claim be disproved, while simultaneously not supporting it with any evidence? Also, I'm just saying any evidence that anything may have escaped by mistake; not that it was intentionally spread. Sure, CIA and such can discover such evidence much more effectively than any commenter here, but in that case, shouldn't you let the CIA / US government make those accusations instead of a random commenter who has no knowledge of the situation or basis for their claim? >China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona. What documents, exactly? And how would that help disprove that the virus inadvertently escaped from the lab?
- rumanator 7y ago
  > What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.
  - YarickR2 7y ago
    Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that, asking for evidence and reminding the world about presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought
    - papermachete 7y ago
      I'd like to remind people it's not just the US - Chinese test (and inhaler) suppliers being sued for highly unreliable (and some even pre-infected) equipment.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > trying to lay the blame onto China How exactly is the Chinese regime not to blame for this mess? Between the blatant cover-up and falsified reports and underreporting deaths by a couple of orders of magnitude and knowingly stating that the virus didn't spread when they knew full well it spread like wildfire and intentionally leaving out demostratedly infected but asymptomatic cases out of the statistics while simultaneously blaming new cases on infected foreigners, how is China's regime not to blame for this whole mess? And should we now just forget that the Chinese regime has been trying to pin the blame on their covid19 mess on Italy of all places?
    - andromeduck 7y ago
      Presumption of innocence is a legal matter and this is not a court of law. It might be hard for you to understand but freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting called out. Nay, it is the affirmative right to do so. It would also do you well to keep in mind that if we're using the criminal justice system as some standard obstruction of justice itself is a crime, as is destruction/tampering of evidence as well as witness tampering. Physical evidence is not required to convict; strong circumstantial evidence is often sufficent.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I'm not sure the concept of "onus" is meaningful in this kind of public debate. It's not like everyone has agreed to only believe conclusions reached by particular forms of argument.
  - meowface 7y ago
    This isn't some kind of weird, esoteric form of argument. It's an underlying principle of empiricism that you should try to provide evidence for claims you make rather than making the accused prove something is false. Someone accuses you of murder and says "prove you didn't do it". You didn't do it, but can't satisfactorily prove such a negative. Maybe you were outside taking a walk and no one can provide an alibi. Does that mean you should be assumed guilty?

PeCaN 7y ago

I don't think "coronavirus escapes from a lab, in the exact area where the outbreak started, that was studying coronaviruses" is exactly an 'extraordinary claim'. If anything it's the elephant in the room. Are we just supposed to casually ignore that or what…. I think the problem is that when people think of "lab" they think of some sort of devious genetic engineering bioweapons program, and not something considerably more likely but much more mundane like some scientists studying what sort of potentially bad viruses the local bats have.

legolas2412 7y ago
Umm, they were also combining viruses to create "chimeras". Now, this combinational process could be genetic engineering (which has been ruled out I think) or just combining in a petri dish, which I find compelling.
- throwanem 7y ago
  To create pseudoviruses which are able to infect under lab conditions, but not able to replicate, or to survive in a human or any other organism. If this were one of those, as has been claimed on the basis of the frequently mis-cited October 2019 WIV paper, anyone in the world would be able to see that by comparing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence accessioned in NCBI's database with one of the many HIV sequences also available there. I've done the alignment myself, against several HIV sequences. So can you; you don't even need a local toolchain, you can pick them and BLAST them right on NCBI's site. When you do, you'll find the same thing I did: there is no significant similarity between any HIV strain and SARS-CoV-2. So the "escaped chimera" theory is not only implausible on its face given the nature of pseudoviruses, but disproven by genomic evidence, besides. Please don't spread disinformation.
  - legolas2412 7y ago
    Thanks for the info. I'm clearly not an expert. But I do still have questions. 1) where did hiv sequences come from? Are they the human immuno deficiency virus sequences? 2) you are suggesting that chimeras are created impotent, and that hybrid viruses cannot be created to be effective otherwise. My question is that whatever combination of pangolin and bat viruses is said to have happened naturally in a host, could it happen in a petri dish too? Could WIV be conducting such research? Or are such petri dish chimeras always unable to jump from human to human. Is it a natural property or choice when creating chimeras? 3) it seems that the virus is like SARS but has receptor proteins similar to a known pangolin coronavirus. Is it also possible for two viruses to leak to a single lab employee, and then combine in the first human host right away. It still can be said to leak from the lab in this scenario. Thanks for having patience for my uninformed opinions. I'm sure I'm missing

ekianjo 7y ago

Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.

markdown 7y ago
Because people have to eat, and wild animals are only a tiny fraction of what's traded in wet markets. US supermarkets sold lettuce that killed people. Should those supermarkets be shut for good?
- bb2018 7y ago
  If the lettuce killed people and then everyone who interacted with the people who at the lettuce also got sick and the economy had to be shut down the United States would strictly ban selling lettuce immediately. If China can enforce the largest lockdown ever and enforce a one-child policy for decades, they can easily ban live animals at markets.
  - katbyte 7y ago
    i believe they have now banned wildlife.
  - Klinky 7y ago
    A) COVID-19 doesn't kill everyone it comes in contact with. Depending on where you live, more people in the last 3 months may have become seriously ill from a food-borne illness than from COVID-19. B)Food-borne illness actually does kill around 150,000 per year worldwide. It is a serious concern, and difficult to track/contain. There are also concerns around regulations being too lax, not enough inspectors, and living conditions of those who harvest food. C)Maybe China should ban wet markets, but then maybe people should be home for Easter Sunday and not at a church. Now we start to ban "cultural norms" and "ways of life", which people get fussy about.
    - bb2018 7y ago
      A) Saying the "last three months" is intellectually disingenuous because the virus hadn't even been introduced to most states three months ago. I'm sure in some areas more people have died in the last three months from ski accidents but that is irrelevant. Name one state where you honestly believe the next three months will have comparable cases of food-borne deaths to Covid-19 deaths. B) I'm not disagreeing with you. C) People should not be at an in-person Easter Sunday. I realize a percentage of churches decided to not close. That being said, wanting to eat bats is not comparable to wanting to practice religion.

bstar77 7y ago

"So...evidence?" All people are saying is that there's a reasonable hypothesis that this thing came out of that laboratory. There's enough circumstantial evidence to support that theory even if it's not a leading theory.

FriendlyNormie 7y ago

You’re the one making extraordinary claims. The virus came from a bat sold at a wet market? Where is your evidence? What is the name of the merchant who sold the bat at the wet market? Where is the specific bat from that wet market which was recovered and tested positive for the coronavirus? What specific species of bat was it? Where is your proof that anyone ever sold bats at that wet market (many sources are saying they didn’t)? Why did the outbreak supposedly begin at a wet market 300 meters from a lab that specifically focused on studying coronaviruses? You’re implying that you have very convincing answers to all these questions. Do you?