3 ms·

If the author actually had some kind of evidence that there was a lab leak source of Omicron, don’t you think it would be mentioned in the opening paragraphs of

If the author actually had some kind of evidence that there was a lab leak source of Omicron, don’t you think it would be mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the blog? Instead we have a long list of connect-the-dots tweets, out of context quotes, and unsubstantiated speculation going on for 2/3s of the post before we even get to the Omicron stuff. The meat of the speculation is a scary looking graph plotting genetic delta from the origin. Here’s a more objective plot from the Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#/media/File%3AOmicron_SARS-CoV-2_radial_distance_tree_2021-Dec-01.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#/... Notice anything? Looks like Gamma and others have similar genetic distances without other mutations. Sensational blogging is pretty sensational. That’s about it.

MichaelDickens 5y ago
The plot on Wikipedia looks to me like it has lots of variants with frequent branches coming off of each variant, except for Omicron, which went a great distance with no branches and then started branching rapidly again. This seems most consistent with a lab leak.
- deleted 5y ago
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cassepipe 5y ago
Have you actually read it ? Can you give your opinion about the ratio between silent/non-silent mutations ? Because it is the main and most compelling argument.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Another commenter pointed out that the probability of this ratio is around 4% (haven't checked the math on that, though; statistics was never my strong suit). While that sounds like it's unlikely, this virus is bouncing around and mutating in hundreds of millions of people. When your absolute numbers are that large, unlikely events should be expected to happen, and happen fairly often.
- tim333 5y ago
  Not something I know much about but assuming there was a lot of selective pressure because the virus was in a new environment, likely a mouse, and one virus gets a silent mutation and another a non-silent, the non silent might zip ahead and take over?

MichaelDickens 5y ago

The plot on Wikipedia looks to me like it has lots of variants with frequent branches coming off of each variant, except for Omicron, which went a great distance with no branches and then started branching rapidly again. This seems most consistent with a lab leak.

deleted 5y ago
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cassepipe 5y ago

Have you actually read it ? Can you give your opinion about the ratio between silent/non-silent mutations ? Because it is the main and most compelling argument.

kelnos 5y ago
Another commenter pointed out that the probability of this ratio is around 4% (haven't checked the math on that, though; statistics was never my strong suit). While that sounds like it's unlikely, this virus is bouncing around and mutating in hundreds of millions of people. When your absolute numbers are that large, unlikely events should be expected to happen, and happen fairly often.
tim333 5y ago
Not something I know much about but assuming there was a lot of selective pressure because the virus was in a new environment, likely a mouse, and one virus gets a silent mutation and another a non-silent, the non silent might zip ahead and take over?