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> the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high This statement obscures and oversimplifies, which is unfortunately what sc

> the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high This statement obscures and oversimplifies, which is unfortunately what scientists sometimes do when speaking to the public because they assume people won't understand otherwise. When she says "like SARS-CoV-2" she is not speaking about the physical structure of the virus, she is really just referring to general qualities that a virus would need to display in order to reach pandemic level: high infectivity, unusual disease progression for which proper treatment is poorly understood, frequent and unpredictable mutation, etc. What the researchers in this paper have done is identify the unusual components of SARS-CoV-2, i.e. the proteins and their physical structure, which give it this pandemic potential. And then they describe a sequence of research papers, published by virologists from the WIV, which demonstrate awareness of the characteristics of these exact features as well as a laboratory capability to produce chimeric viruses with these exact features. And the epicenter of the pandemic is a stone's throw away from the laboratory where those virologists work. If you're going to make a hand-wavy argument about real-world events using Bayesian inference, you need to be prepared to explain why certain evidence is independent of your prior. Or drop the argument.

mjirv 6y ago
It is worth clarifying that she was not responding to this paper specifically, just to general arguments of the type “this must be man made because it has so many features that make it well-suited to spread in humans.” The fact that researchers in Wuhan were studying (some of?) these features is stronger evidence when combined with the location. However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers study because of their likelihood to increase human transmission would show up in a naturally occurring virus with a lot of human transmission.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers study because of their likelihood to increase human transmission would show up in a naturally occurring virus with a lot of human transmission. You are letting language get in the way here. Researchers at Wuhan weren't studying "features" of viruses, they were studying what happens exactly when you insert X amino acid at Y location and how that can affect the structure of Z protein. And that exact, one in a billion, never before seen mutation happens to occur randomly right next door to them?
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    The line of thinking is seductive, believe me, but that's the thing about circumstantial evidence - it is very likely that there is a coronavirus infectivity research station next to a massive source of bat coronaviruses, that was in fact why the lab was there!
    - jkhdigital 6y ago
      But do you see the qualitative difference between "pandemic virus appears in general region where these kinds of viruses are common" and "pandemic virus appears down the street from a viral research lab"? You're also just making a straight up false claim anyway, since most of the virus samples discussed in their research come from distant regions (500+ miles away).
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        Instead of "pandemic virus appears down the street from a viral research lab", it might be more accurate to say "pandemic virus has first documented human outbreak in a province whose capital city is a metropolitan area of over 19 million people and also has a viral research lab." Wuhan is bigger than two New York Cities put together -- and it's not at all impossible that the earliest cases actually came from outside the city but were treated in Wuhan. (A report from the South China Morning Post in March, based on unpublished government data, was that "a 55-year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to contract Covid-19," and the description of him as "from Hubei province" rather than "from Wuhan" is at least suggestive.) If China's BSL-4 virus laboratory was set off in the countryside in a "little" town of 50,000 and the outbreak started there, the paper's argument would be way more compelling. If we could even reliably trace a "patient zero" to a neighborhood near the WIV, then, again, maybe. But we can't. All we can say for sure is that a dangerous global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus started in a huge metro area (or its surrounding province) that's also the site of a BSL-4 lab specifically set up to study dangerous global pandemics caused by novel coronaviruses. The paper's conclusion is, well, pretty much the paper equivalent of archly intoning "that would sure be a weird, ironic coincidence" and staring meaningfully into the camera. I mean, yes, it would be, but that's a little short of a slam dunk.
feanaro 6y ago
> frequent and unpredictable mutation This isn't actually one of the qualities of SARS-CoV-2. Like other coronaviruses, it possesses a proofreading mechanism for its RNA code which drastically lowers its mutation rate compared to something like influenza.

mjirv 6y ago

It is worth clarifying that she was not responding to this paper specifically, just to general arguments of the type “this must be man made because it has so many features that make it well-suited to spread in humans.” The fact that researchers in Wuhan were studying (some of?) these features is stronger evidence when combined with the location. However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers study because of their likelihood to increase human transmission would show up in a naturally occurring virus with a lot of human transmission.

dahfizz 6y ago
> However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers study because of their likelihood to increase human transmission would show up in a naturally occurring virus with a lot of human transmission. You are letting language get in the way here. Researchers at Wuhan weren't studying "features" of viruses, they were studying what happens exactly when you insert X amino acid at Y location and how that can affect the structure of Z protein. And that exact, one in a billion, never before seen mutation happens to occur randomly right next door to them?
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  The line of thinking is seductive, believe me, but that's the thing about circumstantial evidence - it is very likely that there is a coronavirus infectivity research station next to a massive source of bat coronaviruses, that was in fact why the lab was there!
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    But do you see the qualitative difference between "pandemic virus appears in general region where these kinds of viruses are common" and "pandemic virus appears down the street from a viral research lab"? You're also just making a straight up false claim anyway, since most of the virus samples discussed in their research come from distant regions (500+ miles away).
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      Instead of "pandemic virus appears down the street from a viral research lab", it might be more accurate to say "pandemic virus has first documented human outbreak in a province whose capital city is a metropolitan area of over 19 million people and also has a viral research lab." Wuhan is bigger than two New York Cities put together -- and it's not at all impossible that the earliest cases actually came from outside the city but were treated in Wuhan. (A report from the South China Morning Post in March, based on unpublished government data, was that "a 55-year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to contract Covid-19," and the description of him as "from Hubei province" rather than "from Wuhan" is at least suggestive.) If China's BSL-4 virus laboratory was set off in the countryside in a "little" town of 50,000 and the outbreak started there, the paper's argument would be way more compelling. If we could even reliably trace a "patient zero" to a neighborhood near the WIV, then, again, maybe. But we can't. All we can say for sure is that a dangerous global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus started in a huge metro area (or its surrounding province) that's also the site of a BSL-4 lab specifically set up to study dangerous global pandemics caused by novel coronaviruses. The paper's conclusion is, well, pretty much the paper equivalent of archly intoning "that would sure be a weird, ironic coincidence" and staring meaningfully into the camera. I mean, yes, it would be, but that's a little short of a slam dunk.

feanaro 6y ago

> frequent and unpredictable mutation This isn't actually one of the qualities of SARS-CoV-2. Like other coronaviruses, it possesses a proofreading mechanism for its RNA code which drastically lowers its mutation rate compared to something like influenza.