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The odd thing about opposition to lab-leak hypotheses is precisely that it defines itself by that opposition. If the wet markets were the source surely vigorous

The odd thing about opposition to lab-leak hypotheses is precisely that it defines itself by that opposition. If the wet markets were the source surely vigorous campaigning against wet markets would be of more utility that vigorously scouring the internet for alternative ideas to downvote. Given we know that lab leaks happen continually we should all perhaps be campaigning vigorously for an end to wet markets, protection for cave habitats, better controls in labs in general and a complete moratorium with gain of function research. We don’t know where this pandemic came from but we know enough to say that it’s likely all those things could be sources in the future. So perhaps leave the debate alone and focus on stopping the next pandemic.

forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
The term "wet market" just means a market that sells non-dry goods, like meat or vegetables. Most farmers markets are wet markets. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg for an example. Perhaps you mean campaigning against eating exotic animals?
- XorNot 5y ago
  Live animal markets have been a historically common origin for new diseases - cities were an absolute disaster disease-mortality wise until the hygiene initiatives started cleaning them up. Extended, concentrated exposure to animals has always been a breeding ground for new plagues.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    I think you are unnecessarily conflating hygiene with wild animal contact. Even a perfectly hygienic butcher shop and wet market can transmit a new disease. Keeping it clean is good to reduce the transmission of common illnesses - but the genesis of a new disease can easily be passed in a clean market.
- josefx 5y ago
  I think the issue would be less the "exotic" and more the wild animals sold in unhygienic conditions, which at least was the picture some media painted when describing Chinese wet markets.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    Hygiene isn't the issue. Butchering a wild animal and selling the meat for human consumption is inherently dangerous (at the societal scale) - even if you adhere to strict hygiene standards.
mike_d 5y ago
The problem with the lab-leak hypotheses is that is has no basis other than the correlation-causation fallacy. An advanced virology lab just happened to be in the place the pandemic originated because scientists identified it as a hotspot where a pandemic could start. Gain of function research is a vital tool in preventing pandemics. Moratoriums are pretty much universally opposed by virologists and are already regulated under DURC/DUCG (which both require unaffiliated oversight from the public). Influenza for example is able to be researched without having to infect human subjects because we used GoF to make lab strains infect rabbits.
- HumanReadable 5y ago
  oh come on, there's much more basis than that. For starters, the lab was specifically working on coronaviruses! I'm not saying it's definitely a lab-leak, but it strikes me as ridiculous to confidently claim it wasn't given the information currently available.
  - david_draco 5y ago
    Yes, as mike_d explained, those specific bat coronaviruses occur in Wuhan, of course it makes sense to build a lab there, and, just as portrayed in Contagion, that the virus would jump over there. Correlation-causation fallacy.
    - CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
      > Yes, as mike_d explained, those specific bat coronaviruses occur in Wuhan Source? AFAIK those bats coronaviruses were only found in caves in Yunnan, which is ~1300 km from Wuhan.
    - howLongHowLong 5y ago
      Is there stronger evidence than correlation==causation to point to the market instead? I think that's what sends most people down the conspiracy kick. You have two seemingly reasonable explanations for a thing, yet one is considered ridiculous.
    - 5y ago
kuhewa 5y ago
How could you spend the several minutes to type that comment when it could have been used to crusade against future lab leaks instead of preemptively denigrating hypothetical anti lab leak comments?
p_l 5y ago
The odd thing about support for the lab-leak hypothesis is that it defines itself by wilfull disregard for any evidence that doesn't match (including plausible identification of previous infections stretching across rural China, finally reaching a market that was too far from the lab for lab-leak hypothesis)
sumedh 5y ago
> So perhaps leave the debate alone So if nation develops biological weapons by creating viruses in a lab, we just ignore it?
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  Unless you have evidence for that intent specifically, yes. This sure seems like a fun spot for an Iraq WMD joke.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    How exactly are you going to collect the evidence if the host nation does not allow you to do any investigation?
    - sascha_sl 5y ago
      This is a terrible line of thinking, SARS-CoV-2 has some interesting properties, but none that would indicate deliberate weaponization. Useful bioweapons also usually are a little bit more surgical, China got hit pretty bad at the start of the pandemic.
      - sumedh 5y ago
        You need to look at all the possibilities, you cannot just put your head in the sand. Perhaps the virus was not a deliberate weaponization but some research for a weapon when things went wrong and it got out of the lab.
        sascha_sl 5y ago
        Looking at all the possibilities is just a stand-in for baseless speculation here. Even the worst judical systems still require at least a pretense of probable cause.
        sumedh 5y ago
kjaftaedi 5y ago
Lab-leak hypotheses have nothing to do with this conversation. Whether or not Sars-CoV2 came from animal transmission or a lab leak has zero bearing on where Omicron came from. Where are all of these talking points in the thread coming from? Did they change the source article?
m0llusk 5y ago
This is nothing but projection. One of the reasons to be cautious about viral origin theories is how badly wrong they often are. When AIDS first appeared everyone knew that rampant gay sex in coastal cities explained both cause and spread. Later previous infections in the Caribbean kept the basic theory and changed the geographic profile. Only much later were we able to make a solid connection between HIV and bushmeat. This framing of the lab leak theory is essentially the same as people in the early 1980s saying the only reason to question the gay sex in cities theory was because of sympathy toward gay people, but the truth turns out to be both something else and quite relevant. Right now we have the same option to get the origin of SARS-CoV2 completely wrong and waste a lot of money and effort while also hurting people. Wouldn't it make more sense to be cautious about the research based on previous experience instead of charging forward based on the idea that narrative fit is more important than science?
- merpnderp 5y ago
  You're ignoring the parent's point about lab leaks happening all the time. It was only like a decade ago that Congress ran out of carrots and sticks to use against the CDC and finally pulled their auth to do gain of function research in US labs because they could not get their act together. The US CDC's track record of leaks already was reason enough to do what the parent is asking for.
lamontcg 5y ago
It isn't just wet markets, it would be animal farming in general. We've seen that mink farms have the same problems. Pigs were the source of both the 2009 and 1918 H1N1 pandemics. Chickens and other birds farmed for food could be the source of a bird flu pandemic. The correct response would be to start shutting it all down. All farms with crowded animals are bioreactors which create "serial passage" experiments which can be utilized by viruses for natural gain of function. That will sure as hell not happen, not in my lifetime anyway. And we'd have to admit that the vegans were right all along for a start. I have this funny mental image in my head of all the people who like their BBQ and smoked meats an bacon one day waking up in the morning and realizing that the pandemic was due to meat farming and everyone shuffling off to apologize to the local vegan community one by one like they're repenting their sins. The way that feels so absurd and the contrast with all the common vegan jokes and acceptance that to be part of our culture that you have to eat meat shows how that just isn't going to happen. So we're probably going to be back here in another 5, 10, 20 years or so... (And I'm not vegan at all -- but the pandemic and things like the New Brunswick disease have me thinking of at least shooting more for a flexitarian diet) Oh although the original transmission from bats to humans may have been due to bat guano farming, which is used to fertilize crops, so not even the vegans may be untainted.

forgotmyoldacc 5y ago

The term "wet market" just means a market that sells non-dry goods, like meat or vegetables. Most farmers markets are wet markets. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg for an example. Perhaps you mean campaigning against eating exotic animals?

XorNot 5y ago
Live animal markets have been a historically common origin for new diseases - cities were an absolute disaster disease-mortality wise until the hygiene initiatives started cleaning them up. Extended, concentrated exposure to animals has always been a breeding ground for new plagues.
- q1w2 5y ago
  I think you are unnecessarily conflating hygiene with wild animal contact. Even a perfectly hygienic butcher shop and wet market can transmit a new disease. Keeping it clean is good to reduce the transmission of common illnesses - but the genesis of a new disease can easily be passed in a clean market.
josefx 5y ago
I think the issue would be less the "exotic" and more the wild animals sold in unhygienic conditions, which at least was the picture some media painted when describing Chinese wet markets.
- q1w2 5y ago
  Hygiene isn't the issue. Butchering a wild animal and selling the meat for human consumption is inherently dangerous (at the societal scale) - even if you adhere to strict hygiene standards.

mike_d 5y ago

The problem with the lab-leak hypotheses is that is has no basis other than the correlation-causation fallacy. An advanced virology lab just happened to be in the place the pandemic originated because scientists identified it as a hotspot where a pandemic could start. Gain of function research is a vital tool in preventing pandemics. Moratoriums are pretty much universally opposed by virologists and are already regulated under DURC/DUCG (which both require unaffiliated oversight from the public). Influenza for example is able to be researched without having to infect human subjects because we used GoF to make lab strains infect rabbits.

HumanReadable 5y ago
oh come on, there's much more basis than that. For starters, the lab was specifically working on coronaviruses! I'm not saying it's definitely a lab-leak, but it strikes me as ridiculous to confidently claim it wasn't given the information currently available.
- david_draco 5y ago
  Yes, as mike_d explained, those specific bat coronaviruses occur in Wuhan, of course it makes sense to build a lab there, and, just as portrayed in Contagion, that the virus would jump over there. Correlation-causation fallacy.
  - CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
    > Yes, as mike_d explained, those specific bat coronaviruses occur in Wuhan Source? AFAIK those bats coronaviruses were only found in caves in Yunnan, which is ~1300 km from Wuhan.
  - howLongHowLong 5y ago
    Is there stronger evidence than correlation==causation to point to the market instead? I think that's what sends most people down the conspiracy kick. You have two seemingly reasonable explanations for a thing, yet one is considered ridiculous.
  - 5y ago

kuhewa 5y ago

How could you spend the several minutes to type that comment when it could have been used to crusade against future lab leaks instead of preemptively denigrating hypothetical anti lab leak comments?

p_l 5y ago

The odd thing about support for the lab-leak hypothesis is that it defines itself by wilfull disregard for any evidence that doesn't match (including plausible identification of previous infections stretching across rural China, finally reaching a market that was too far from the lab for lab-leak hypothesis)

sumedh 5y ago

> So perhaps leave the debate alone So if nation develops biological weapons by creating viruses in a lab, we just ignore it?

sascha_sl 5y ago
Unless you have evidence for that intent specifically, yes. This sure seems like a fun spot for an Iraq WMD joke.
- sumedh 5y ago
  How exactly are you going to collect the evidence if the host nation does not allow you to do any investigation?
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    This is a terrible line of thinking, SARS-CoV-2 has some interesting properties, but none that would indicate deliberate weaponization. Useful bioweapons also usually are a little bit more surgical, China got hit pretty bad at the start of the pandemic.
    - sumedh 5y ago
      You need to look at all the possibilities, you cannot just put your head in the sand. Perhaps the virus was not a deliberate weaponization but some research for a weapon when things went wrong and it got out of the lab.
      - sascha_sl 5y ago
        Looking at all the possibilities is just a stand-in for baseless speculation here. Even the worst judical systems still require at least a pretense of probable cause.
        sumedh 5y ago

kjaftaedi 5y ago

Lab-leak hypotheses have nothing to do with this conversation. Whether or not Sars-CoV2 came from animal transmission or a lab leak has zero bearing on where Omicron came from. Where are all of these talking points in the thread coming from? Did they change the source article?

m0llusk 5y ago

This is nothing but projection. One of the reasons to be cautious about viral origin theories is how badly wrong they often are. When AIDS first appeared everyone knew that rampant gay sex in coastal cities explained both cause and spread. Later previous infections in the Caribbean kept the basic theory and changed the geographic profile. Only much later were we able to make a solid connection between HIV and bushmeat. This framing of the lab leak theory is essentially the same as people in the early 1980s saying the only reason to question the gay sex in cities theory was because of sympathy toward gay people, but the truth turns out to be both something else and quite relevant. Right now we have the same option to get the origin of SARS-CoV2 completely wrong and waste a lot of money and effort while also hurting people. Wouldn't it make more sense to be cautious about the research based on previous experience instead of charging forward based on the idea that narrative fit is more important than science?

merpnderp 5y ago
You're ignoring the parent's point about lab leaks happening all the time. It was only like a decade ago that Congress ran out of carrots and sticks to use against the CDC and finally pulled their auth to do gain of function research in US labs because they could not get their act together. The US CDC's track record of leaks already was reason enough to do what the parent is asking for.

lamontcg 5y ago

It isn't just wet markets, it would be animal farming in general. We've seen that mink farms have the same problems. Pigs were the source of both the 2009 and 1918 H1N1 pandemics. Chickens and other birds farmed for food could be the source of a bird flu pandemic. The correct response would be to start shutting it all down. All farms with crowded animals are bioreactors which create "serial passage" experiments which can be utilized by viruses for natural gain of function. That will sure as hell not happen, not in my lifetime anyway. And we'd have to admit that the vegans were right all along for a start. I have this funny mental image in my head of all the people who like their BBQ and smoked meats an bacon one day waking up in the morning and realizing that the pandemic was due to meat farming and everyone shuffling off to apologize to the local vegan community one by one like they're repenting their sins. The way that feels so absurd and the contrast with all the common vegan jokes and acceptance that to be part of our culture that you have to eat meat shows how that just isn't going to happen. So we're probably going to be back here in another 5, 10, 20 years or so... (And I'm not vegan at all -- but the pandemic and things like the New Brunswick disease have me thinking of at least shooting more for a flexitarian diet) Oh although the original transmission from bats to humans may have been due to bat guano farming, which is used to fertilize crops, so not even the vegans may be untainted.