4 ms·

That is not an argument. It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw

That is not an argument. It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw a dart at it. Now consider the probability of it landing within 1 mm of Wuhan. Let's call this dart Occam's fléchette.

jhgb 5y ago
> It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw a dart at it. First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population. Your fléchette assumes a uniform distribution. Yes, China is large, but Wuhan has a population of...what, ten million people? It's China's ninth largest city as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop... . The last time something like this happened was in Foshan, thirteenth largest city as per the same page. This does not seem to be a coincidence according to https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china.aspx https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel... , where it is argued that in large cities, you have a much greater chance of getting a pandemics from a small number of cases. So if the possibility of emergence of a pandemics of SARS-CoV viruses is heavily weighed in favor of the largest Chinese cities, perhaps your "Occam's fléchette" has actually a ~5% chance of hitting Wuhan or something like that -- maybe more depending on geography and population movement patterns and wildlife trade patterns, who knows? I haven't seen any models of this yet that would predict the most likely locations for the next pandemics. Maybe someone will make those this time. I'm also not sure what you mean by "next to the lab". Like right outside of it? I doubt that. Furthermore, some people seem to be clinging for dear life to the first epidemic cluster described and completely ignoring the fact that in general, existence of such clusters means that the disease had already been circulating at that time, perhaps for months. You simply have no idea where the original Wuhan cluster caught the disease from. Hell, we had no idea where the first SARS came from until over a decade later. Then they found some bats in a cave over 1000 km from the first cluster in Foshan, bats with coronavirus strains the most similar to the original disease than anything else they'd found so far. Surely you're not arguing that those bats were released from a lab?
- himinlomax 5y ago
  Those are terrible, terrible arguments. I'm not making a rigorous demonstration, I'm putting forth a Feynman-style back of the envelope approximation. MY argument is about plausibility. You're attacking it for not being rigorous. That is pure strawmanning. But let's address it anyway: > First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population Half of China (the North Western part) is mostly a desert, almost all of its population is located in the South Western half. For my argument, that means you just need to cut my allegorical map in two before you throw my virtual dart. Big deal. > where it is argued that in large cities, you have a much greater chance of getting a pandemics from a small number of cases. Count the number of the large cities in China. There are a lot. See there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China From that same article: there are 102 cities governed by People's Republic of China with an "urban area" population of over 1 million. Change my hypothetical map to a square grid of 102 cells. Wuhan is rather large at 11 millions, so make it 10 times bigger than the other ones. Let's not touch Beijing's or Shanghai's square, even though they are bigger. Oh my, that changes everything! Not. Now there is a whopping 10% chance that this happened in Wuhan randomly. Or in other words 90% chance that this is linked to the virology lab. > I'm also not sure what you mean by "next to the lab". Like right outside of it? I doubt that. 12 km as the crow flies. You can check on Google maps. Now look at those two maps: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D961/production/_118694655_wuhan_map_640-2x-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D961/production/... https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/hubei/wuhan-subway.jpg https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/hubei/wuhan-subw... Line 7 of the Wuhan metro links the two sites directly. > Hell, we had no idea where the first SARS came from until over a decade later There is one way, one sure way, one easy way to disprove the lab leak hypothesis. The way that would have been walked months ago had this happened almost ANYWHERE else in the world rather than an authoritarian communist dictatorship: an independent investigation. But there is no independent investigation. The Chinese régime won't let it happen. Nobody's stopping them from disproving it. If this were a murder investigation, this would be held as evidence of guilt.

jhgb 5y ago

> It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw a dart at it. First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population. Your fléchette assumes a uniform distribution. Yes, China is large, but Wuhan has a population of...what, ten million people? It's China's ninth largest city as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop... . The last time something like this happened was in Foshan, thirteenth largest city as per the same page. This does not seem to be a coincidence according to https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china.aspx https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel... , where it is argued that in large cities, you have a much greater chance of getting a pandemics from a small number of cases. So if the possibility of emergence of a pandemics of SARS-CoV viruses is heavily weighed in favor of the largest Chinese cities, perhaps your "Occam's fléchette" has actually a ~5% chance of hitting Wuhan or something like that -- maybe more depending on geography and population movement patterns and wildlife trade patterns, who knows? I haven't seen any models of this yet that would predict the most likely locations for the next pandemics. Maybe someone will make those this time. I'm also not sure what you mean by "next to the lab". Like right outside of it? I doubt that. Furthermore, some people seem to be clinging for dear life to the first epidemic cluster described and completely ignoring the fact that in general, existence of such clusters means that the disease had already been circulating at that time, perhaps for months. You simply have no idea where the original Wuhan cluster caught the disease from. Hell, we had no idea where the first SARS came from until over a decade later. Then they found some bats in a cave over 1000 km from the first cluster in Foshan, bats with coronavirus strains the most similar to the original disease than anything else they'd found so far. Surely you're not arguing that those bats were released from a lab?

himinlomax 5y ago
Those are terrible, terrible arguments. I'm not making a rigorous demonstration, I'm putting forth a Feynman-style back of the envelope approximation. MY argument is about plausibility. You're attacking it for not being rigorous. That is pure strawmanning. But let's address it anyway: > First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population Half of China (the North Western part) is mostly a desert, almost all of its population is located in the South Western half. For my argument, that means you just need to cut my allegorical map in two before you throw my virtual dart. Big deal. > where it is argued that in large cities, you have a much greater chance of getting a pandemics from a small number of cases. Count the number of the large cities in China. There are a lot. See there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China From that same article: there are 102 cities governed by People's Republic of China with an "urban area" population of over 1 million. Change my hypothetical map to a square grid of 102 cells. Wuhan is rather large at 11 millions, so make it 10 times bigger than the other ones. Let's not touch Beijing's or Shanghai's square, even though they are bigger. Oh my, that changes everything! Not. Now there is a whopping 10% chance that this happened in Wuhan randomly. Or in other words 90% chance that this is linked to the virology lab. > I'm also not sure what you mean by "next to the lab". Like right outside of it? I doubt that. 12 km as the crow flies. You can check on Google maps. Now look at those two maps: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D961/production/_118694655_wuhan_map_640-2x-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D961/production/... https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/hubei/wuhan-subway.jpg https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/hubei/wuhan-subw... Line 7 of the Wuhan metro links the two sites directly. > Hell, we had no idea where the first SARS came from until over a decade later There is one way, one sure way, one easy way to disprove the lab leak hypothesis. The way that would have been walked months ago had this happened almost ANYWHERE else in the world rather than an authoritarian communist dictatorship: an independent investigation. But there is no independent investigation. The Chinese régime won't let it happen. Nobody's stopping them from disproving it. If this were a murder investigation, this would be held as evidence of guilt.