3 ms·

Where exactly says in the article that “most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible”?

gamblor956 5y ago
Exactly? Nowhere. The article itself is a summarized timeline of other articles in which a number of virologists with experience in SARS1, ebolavirus, etc., provide their experience-informed opinions. For example, in another article (summarized in the timeline article), the WaPo notes that the head of the WHO believes that the lab leak theory is currently the most plausible, given what is currently known (and not known) about the virus, and given his prior experience in tracking down ebola and marsburg virus outbreaks, I defer to him on this. Other virologists interviewed for other articles, including those who have worked directly with the lead researcher of the Wuhan virus lab, state that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, especially given the lead researcher's history of disregard for proper safety protocols. Indeed, what is most notable about the lab leak theory is that there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible, while there are a great many virologists willing to put their reputations on the line and say that the lab leak is the most plausible, and why they believe that to be the case.
- mikem170 5y ago
  Here's one virologist, Dr. Duehr, who is very confident that covid-19 doesn't have any connection to the Wuhan lab. He backed it up with a detailed reddit post [0], the most comprehensive collection of referenced information that I have seen on this topic. There's a 34 page pdf [1] version of this post that is easier to read. Specifically regarding the lab leak scenario he references genetic evidence from early cases elsewhere in Hubei province [2], cases hundreds of miles from Wuhan from before the Wuhan meat-market super spreader event. These earlier cases are genetic parents of the cases from the Wuhan market super-spread event. Not the other way around. EDIT: Here's another source [3] that gets into genetic detail, a microbiologist saying the same thing. I'm curious if you have something from a virologist saying the opposite, that it is more likely that the virus came form a lab than from nature. Most of what I see seems to be the opposite, that the lab is a possibility, but not the most likely. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9jI9WX7 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/fqpcfs2/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [3] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    You should probably read the citations more closely. The strain that went global was the Wuhan strain, which may have been genetically descended from the strain found elsewhere in China (including Guangdong) but the Wuhan strain demonstrates additional mutations. (See, e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7, and even the article cited by the reddit post https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...) IOW, his evidence doesn't disprove that the SARS2 outbreak is related to a lab leak from the Wuhan lab. At best, he shows that a related coronavirus also broke out in Hubei province some months earlier. But while genetically similar to COVID19, it wasn't COVID19. At best, it was a precursor strain, but lacking the mutations found in COVID19, the Hunan strain did not reach pandemic status and fizzled out. Also, the reddit post focuses heavily on debunking the meat-market theory, but meat-market super-spreader event has been debunked for over a year (and had been by the time of the post). The reddit post suggests that a Hunan seafood market was the actual source of the outbreak, despite the fact that the Hunan seafood market is not close to bat habitats nor does it have sellers selling bats. (Note that the Hunan market theory has been advanced by China because the market does sell frozen seafoods imported from other countries, and China currently claims that COVID19 was caused by imported frozen food.) Other reasons to treat the "debunking" in that reddit comment with a boulder-sized grain of salt: it mixes up the Wuhan and Hunan food markets; the timeline asserts that COVID19 could not be Wuhan-based because was found outside of China by the time of the alleged food market superspreader event, but this timeline actually fits with what we now know about COVID19: that it had already begun spreading in humans by the fall of 2019; one of the big revelations following the WHO report was that multiple Wuhan lab staff were infected with COVID19 in early fall 2019 with the strain that ultimately reached pandemic status. The lab-leak hypothesis does not assume that COVID19 was man-made. It assumes that it leaked from the lab due to negligence or failures in safety protocols.
    - mikem170 5y ago
      Wet market as opposed to meat market, I didn't mean to misquote Dr. Deuhr. Are you saying that there were people infected with covid-19 600 miles away from Wuhan, before cases originating in the Wuhan wet market, with covid-19 viruses that were genetic patents of those found in people infected in Wuhan, but that the virus still came from Wuhan? > Analysis of the first 41 Covid-19 patients in medical journal the Lancet found that 27 of them had direct exposure to the Wuhan market. But the same analysis found that the first known case of the illness did not. [0] > Lab Leak scenarios are inconsistent with several established facts regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The majority of early cases were linked to different markets that sold wildlife or wildlife products in Wuhan. [1] I don't buy your original assertion that "most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible". The articles you linked to do not support that. And your assertion about a lab leak that "there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible" is wrong, I just supplied two. Most of the news quotes from virologist I read say "nature probable, lab-leak possible, lab-made not feasible". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-co... [1] https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691 https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-g...

Exactly? Nowhere. The article itself is a summarized timeline of other articles in which a number of virologists with experience in SARS1, ebolavirus, etc., provide their experience-informed opinions. For example, in another article (summarized in the timeline article), the WaPo notes that the head of the WHO believes that the lab leak theory is currently the most plausible, given what is currently known (and not known) about the virus, and given his prior experience in tracking down ebola and marsburg virus outbreaks, I defer to him on this. Other virologists interviewed for other articles, including those who have worked directly with the lead researcher of the Wuhan virus lab, state that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, especially given the lead researcher's history of disregard for proper safety protocols. Indeed, what is most notable about the lab leak theory is that there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible, while there are a great many virologists willing to put their reputations on the line and say that the lab leak is the most plausible, and why they believe that to be the case.

mikem170 5y ago
Here's one virologist, Dr. Duehr, who is very confident that covid-19 doesn't have any connection to the Wuhan lab. He backed it up with a detailed reddit post [0], the most comprehensive collection of referenced information that I have seen on this topic. There's a 34 page pdf [1] version of this post that is easier to read. Specifically regarding the lab leak scenario he references genetic evidence from early cases elsewhere in Hubei province [2], cases hundreds of miles from Wuhan from before the Wuhan meat-market super spreader event. These earlier cases are genetic parents of the cases from the Wuhan market super-spread event. Not the other way around. EDIT: Here's another source [3] that gets into genetic detail, a microbiologist saying the same thing. I'm curious if you have something from a virologist saying the opposite, that it is more likely that the virus came form a lab than from nature. Most of what I see seems to be the opposite, that the lab is a possibility, but not the most likely. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9jI9WX7 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/fqpcfs2/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [3] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
- gamblor956 5y ago
  You should probably read the citations more closely. The strain that went global was the Wuhan strain, which may have been genetically descended from the strain found elsewhere in China (including Guangdong) but the Wuhan strain demonstrates additional mutations. (See, e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7, and even the article cited by the reddit post https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...) IOW, his evidence doesn't disprove that the SARS2 outbreak is related to a lab leak from the Wuhan lab. At best, he shows that a related coronavirus also broke out in Hubei province some months earlier. But while genetically similar to COVID19, it wasn't COVID19. At best, it was a precursor strain, but lacking the mutations found in COVID19, the Hunan strain did not reach pandemic status and fizzled out. Also, the reddit post focuses heavily on debunking the meat-market theory, but meat-market super-spreader event has been debunked for over a year (and had been by the time of the post). The reddit post suggests that a Hunan seafood market was the actual source of the outbreak, despite the fact that the Hunan seafood market is not close to bat habitats nor does it have sellers selling bats. (Note that the Hunan market theory has been advanced by China because the market does sell frozen seafoods imported from other countries, and China currently claims that COVID19 was caused by imported frozen food.) Other reasons to treat the "debunking" in that reddit comment with a boulder-sized grain of salt: it mixes up the Wuhan and Hunan food markets; the timeline asserts that COVID19 could not be Wuhan-based because was found outside of China by the time of the alleged food market superspreader event, but this timeline actually fits with what we now know about COVID19: that it had already begun spreading in humans by the fall of 2019; one of the big revelations following the WHO report was that multiple Wuhan lab staff were infected with COVID19 in early fall 2019 with the strain that ultimately reached pandemic status. The lab-leak hypothesis does not assume that COVID19 was man-made. It assumes that it leaked from the lab due to negligence or failures in safety protocols.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    Wet market as opposed to meat market, I didn't mean to misquote Dr. Deuhr. Are you saying that there were people infected with covid-19 600 miles away from Wuhan, before cases originating in the Wuhan wet market, with covid-19 viruses that were genetic patents of those found in people infected in Wuhan, but that the virus still came from Wuhan? > Analysis of the first 41 Covid-19 patients in medical journal the Lancet found that 27 of them had direct exposure to the Wuhan market. But the same analysis found that the first known case of the illness did not. [0] > Lab Leak scenarios are inconsistent with several established facts regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The majority of early cases were linked to different markets that sold wildlife or wildlife products in Wuhan. [1] I don't buy your original assertion that "most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible". The articles you linked to do not support that. And your assertion about a lab leak that "there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible" is wrong, I just supplied two. Most of the news quotes from virologist I read say "nature probable, lab-leak possible, lab-made not feasible". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-co... [1] https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691 https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-g...