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I am probably begging for downvotes, but here is a reasoning I came about recently. Virus mutations are not rare events. This is what supports the natural evol

I am probably begging for downvotes, but here is a reasoning I came about recently. Virus mutations are not rare events. This is what supports the natural evolution/selection/mutation of a wild virus into Sar-cov-2 hypothesis. People often say that the "natural hypothesis" is far more likely than a virus escaping a BSL4 lab. Let's look at that. According to Wikipedia, there have been 3 virus outbreaks in "wet markets" in the last 20 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#Health_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#Health_concerns). That makes about 1 outbreak in 7 years. That's for China as a whole. China is big. The probability of having a virus outbreak in a particular town is of course somewhat lower. The particular town we are looking at is Wuhan: this is the only city in China having a BSL4 lab, and it did gain of function experiments on Coronaviruses. 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...). We're going to make rough estimates: let's say there are 100 "wet markets" in China, about one per city >1m. That makes the probability for a natural virus outbreak in _a_given_ "wet market" to be 1 in 700 years. The question to be answered is this one: what is the most likely event between: 1/ a natural virus outbreak at Wuhan's "wet market" 2/ a modified virus "escaping" Wuhan's BSL4 lab Hypothesis 1 has been estimated at 1 in 700 years. Do you believe the probability of hypothesis 2/ to be much lower than 1/? Would the probability of hypothesis 1/ be 1 in 100 years, would you still thing it is much bigger than hypothesis 2/?

elp 6y ago
"Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest level of biosafety precautions" A real escape seems pretty unlikely. If it was deliberate why release it in China why not somewhere else? If it had to be in China for some magical reason then why not test on say the Uighurs? Also add in things like Ebola and Hiv probably being linked to bushmeat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat), Small pox, the bubonic plague plus a bunch of others from rodents. Outside of better evidence the "escape" theory belongs to B-Grade Netflix movies and conspiracy websites.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  Did time in federal prison. Some of the guys at one facility got the plague because they burned dirt from the yard to make tattoo ink.
Fjolsvith 6y ago
Hypothesis 3: Rogue actor, a la James Bond style.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  It happens (though without a motive, no real story here). After September 11, the next immediate terrorist attack on US soil was the anthrax scare. It was likely initiated by a specific researcher who had relevant access to the lab and had been lodging complaints for years that US authorities weren't taking anthrax threats seriously. (The scientist in question never faced justice because they committed suicide before the dragnet closed in on them --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks).
whycombagator 6y ago
> 2/ a modified virus "escaping" Wuhan's BSL4 lab Or just a natural one. The virus doesn't need to have been engineered/synthesized/mofidied for the Wuhan lab to accidentally/purposefully released it (for the record, if it did originate from the lab I would bet it was accidental). Don't forget that the Wuhan lab was also part of a US government funded program to help prevent future pandemics[0]. So the lab likely handled natural viruses. The program's funding was cut/stopped last year & an article about it was posted on HN (flagged & removed). I quoted + commented on the HN posting/article back then[1]. Here is the snippet I previously quoted: > Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat. > The project, launched ... in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. > Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September The Wuhan lab was also first to identify & sequence SARS-CoV-2[2]. Coincidence or not, that part makes sense either way because it's a BSL4 lab & it's located in the same city as the first cases. [0] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22766157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22766157 [2] https://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319 https://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319
shadowgovt 6y ago
Calculating the probabilities alone doesn't tell us much of interest when the resulting actual values are that low. Between "almost never happens" and "twice as likely to almost never happen," there's no real information on which source is more likely for the observed occurrence. Improbable things sometimes happen. Improbable things sometimes happen before a more probable thing happens.

elp 6y ago

"Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest level of biosafety precautions" A real escape seems pretty unlikely. If it was deliberate why release it in China why not somewhere else? If it had to be in China for some magical reason then why not test on say the Uighurs? Also add in things like Ebola and Hiv probably being linked to bushmeat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat), Small pox, the bubonic plague plus a bunch of others from rodents. Outside of better evidence the "escape" theory belongs to B-Grade Netflix movies and conspiracy websites.

Fjolsvith 6y ago
Did time in federal prison. Some of the guys at one facility got the plague because they burned dirt from the yard to make tattoo ink.

Fjolsvith 6y ago

Hypothesis 3: Rogue actor, a la James Bond style.

shadowgovt 6y ago
It happens (though without a motive, no real story here). After September 11, the next immediate terrorist attack on US soil was the anthrax scare. It was likely initiated by a specific researcher who had relevant access to the lab and had been lodging complaints for years that US authorities weren't taking anthrax threats seriously. (The scientist in question never faced justice because they committed suicide before the dragnet closed in on them --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks).

whycombagator 6y ago

> 2/ a modified virus "escaping" Wuhan's BSL4 lab Or just a natural one. The virus doesn't need to have been engineered/synthesized/mofidied for the Wuhan lab to accidentally/purposefully released it (for the record, if it did originate from the lab I would bet it was accidental). Don't forget that the Wuhan lab was also part of a US government funded program to help prevent future pandemics[0]. So the lab likely handled natural viruses. The program's funding was cut/stopped last year & an article about it was posted on HN (flagged & removed). I quoted + commented on the HN posting/article back then[1]. Here is the snippet I previously quoted: > Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat. > The project, launched ... in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. > Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September The Wuhan lab was also first to identify & sequence SARS-CoV-2[2]. Coincidence or not, that part makes sense either way because it's a BSL4 lab & it's located in the same city as the first cases. [0] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22766157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22766157 [2] https://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319 https://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319

shadowgovt 6y ago

Calculating the probabilities alone doesn't tell us much of interest when the resulting actual values are that low. Between "almost never happens" and "twice as likely to almost never happen," there's no real information on which source is more likely for the observed occurrence. Improbable things sometimes happen. Improbable things sometimes happen before a more probable thing happens.