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First, I think you meant evolution. Natural selection is regularly, directly witnessed in all levels of life. Towards the more general argument -- in the absen

First, I think you meant evolution. Natural selection is regularly, directly witnessed in all levels of life. Towards the more general argument -- in the absence of formal proof, we are left with selecting the most likely scenario. In this case, what is the reason to believe it was created in a lab as opposed through natural mechanisms? The latter is more likely unless some evidence suggests otherwise. If the only evidence thus far is from a non-reviewed journal w/ very obvious political motivations, then it likely continues to be the less likely scenario.

gridlockd 6y ago
Why is the latter more likely? Gain of function experiments are performed regularly in labs, also on coronaviruses. Lab escapes have occured numerous times. Shi Zhengli herself suspected at first that it came from one of their labs, because Wuhan is so far from the bats that are the suspected original host.
jerome-jh 6y ago
What makes you think the natural selection/evolution is more likely? Of course at the scale of China, having a virus outbreak due to a natural virus mutation is not a rare event. According to Wikipedia, there have been 3 virus outbreaks in "wet markets" in the last 20 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market). That makes about 1 outbreak in 7 years. Now China is big! There are 108 towns with more than 1m population (https://all-populations.com/en/cn/list-of-cities-in-china-by-population.html https://all-populations.com/en/cn/list-of-cities-in-china-by...). What is the probability for an outbreak to occur in a given city? Again that is going to be a very rough estimate. Let's say there are 100 "wet markets", about one per city >1m. That make the probability for a natural virus outbreak in a given "wet market" to be 1 in 700 years. Now if you want to argue what is the most likely event: - a natural outbreak in Wuhan: probability is about 1 in 700 years - a virus leak from the Wuhan BSL4 lab. Note the Wuhan's lab is the ONLY BSL4 lab in China. Have you any kind of information that makes you believe the probability for a virus leak to be significantly LESS than 1 in 700 years?

gridlockd 6y ago

Why is the latter more likely? Gain of function experiments are performed regularly in labs, also on coronaviruses. Lab escapes have occured numerous times. Shi Zhengli herself suspected at first that it came from one of their labs, because Wuhan is so far from the bats that are the suspected original host.

jerome-jh 6y ago

What makes you think the natural selection/evolution is more likely? Of course at the scale of China, having a virus outbreak due to a natural virus mutation is not a rare event. According to Wikipedia, there have been 3 virus outbreaks in "wet markets" in the last 20 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market). That makes about 1 outbreak in 7 years. Now China is big! There are 108 towns with more than 1m population (https://all-populations.com/en/cn/list-of-cities-in-china-by-population.html https://all-populations.com/en/cn/list-of-cities-in-china-by...). What is the probability for an outbreak to occur in a given city? Again that is going to be a very rough estimate. Let's say there are 100 "wet markets", about one per city >1m. That make the probability for a natural virus outbreak in a given "wet market" to be 1 in 700 years. Now if you want to argue what is the most likely event: - a natural outbreak in Wuhan: probability is about 1 in 700 years - a virus leak from the Wuhan BSL4 lab. Note the Wuhan's lab is the ONLY BSL4 lab in China. Have you any kind of information that makes you believe the probability for a virus leak to be significantly LESS than 1 in 700 years?