3 ms·

> Per the CCDC 33 of 585 environmental samples taken early Jan. were positive, The first cases were at least in November, and quite probably earlier. The virus

• alevskaya 5y ago
  Are you seriously posting a link to a one-off phylogenetic molecular clock estimate as experimental evidence of italian priority? The other Italian claims of priority are highly disputed by basically everyone - but have I missed anything - are there any actual sequenced, dated samples from Italy in December? That's the standard of evidence here, not some crappy antigen test or unsequenced amplification hit. No one believes the Dec 11 case to be "the first", just the first well attested case.
  • timr 5y ago
    No. I'm seriously posting a paper by the director of the University College of London Genetics Institute. The same twitter thread (again, same person: director of UCL UGI) shows a Lancet article placing the first documented hospitalization on December 1, and a different source documenting a case in China in mid-November: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro... So yes, there are multiple lines of evidence. This isn't even remotely controversial. You're arguing that the sky is red, and your only counter-argument to the evidence otherwise is incredulity. > are there any actual sequenced, dated samples from Italy in December? That's the standard of evidence here, not some crappy antigen test or unsequenced amplification hit. I mean, you're inventing "standards of evidence" here, but as long as you're asking: yes. Dated, PCR-confirmed wastewater samples in Italy were purified by gel electrophoresis and sequenced. https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1328058402052968448 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/13280584020529684... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.25.20140061v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.25.20140061v...
    • jjeaff 5y ago
      I'm not a huge fan of "appeal to authority", but I'm curious what your credentials and experience in this area are? The person you are arguing with claims to have direct experience working with viruses in a lab setting. Is this another of HN's all too frequent, "computer science major arguing with expert in field completely unrelated to computer science"?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • pavas 5y ago
        Reasoning doesn't require credentials, please let's keep it that way.
        • SiempreViernes 5y ago
          One of the parties did an appeal to authority as a way to _prove_ they entered _relevant_ evidence. This is obviously entirely misguided, and if you start making such basic logical mistakes it is expedient to inquire about the posters background to know if they've reached the limit to their ability to create reasoned arguments.
          • pavas 5y ago
            There are nuances, but at it's core either it was valid for them to make that appeal and it is valid for us to request their credentials (which is essentially an appeal to authority--"who has the better credentials?"), or it was not valid for them to make that appeal and it is not valid for us to request their credentials. I lean towards the latter view. Logical mistakes don't weaken a person's entire argument (we don't want to just see who's "winning"), or even weaken the line of reasoning they were invoked to support -- they just fail to provide evidence. One of the parties called into question the validity of a paper the other party posted, and the other party rebutted by implying that as the director of an established institution, the paper's author has something to lose. I find that argument weak, but the initial questioning of validity also provided no evidence or made any strong arguments as to why the paper was not valid. Appeals to authority are useful not as logical arguments but as a way to avoid wasting time on drivel, and I don't believe that to be the case here.