8 ms·

The theory was not "crackpot", but it was asserted with 0 evidence back then. The evidence is judged, not the theory itself.

by axlee 5y ago

hartator 5y ago
> it was asserted with 0 evidence back then The bat theory was asserted with way more force at the time with even less evidence.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I think you mean wet market theory. This is true, but at least there was a "high bayesian prior" due to that being how it happened in the past. Nonetheless the wet market proponents were irresponsibly aggressive in their forcefulness.
  - snowgrove 5y ago
    As other commenters mentioned there was a “high Bayesian prior” for lab leaks, too.
    - matthewdgreen 5y ago
      All of the previous lab leaks were of known viruses that had previously spilled over into humans via natural processes, then were collected and later leaked out (again). I'm not aware of any truly novel viruses that spilled into humans through a lab leak. Are there any examples?
      - dnautics 5y ago
        What's your threshold for novelness? We can't truly know just how novel covid-19 is; we don't have sequences from the database of coronaviruses, and even if we did it might have leaked right after it was collected, without having been sequenced yet.
      - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
        Is "novel" the right criteria here? If Covid didn't have asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic infectiousness, it'd still be novel but may not have become a pandemic. Therefor may not have even been noticed, no tests developed for it, etc...
      - Ancapistani 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
        dnautics 5y ago
        funny story, my elementary school was across the playground from this place, but moved out of that location the summer before the virus leak.
  - timr 5y ago
    > This is true, but at least there was a "high bayesian prior" due to that being how it happened in the past. I'm not an expert in the history of viral origin stories, but I'm pretty informed, and I'm not aware of any documented examples of pathogens emerging from public markets. To be clear, I'm aware of lots of examples associated with pig and chicken farms, and several viruses that are presumed to have emerged from various kinds of "bush meat" (monkeys, guinea pigs, deer), but even these are pretty much correlative lines of evidence. A documented case of a virus emerging from a wet market? No. Moreover, if you've been to one of these things, it's pretty implausible as the source of a respiratory virus. They're usually outdoors, or in vast spaces. At least in farms you've usually got a farmer hanging around in a small building with hundreds or thousands of identical animals on a regular basis. The evidence for the wet-market theory has always felt like one of those things that "scientists just know"...until it turns out they were repeating apocryphal stories to each other. This happens far more often than scientists care to admit.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dnautics 5y ago
      H1N5, SARS
      - timr 5y ago
        Neither originated in wet markets that we know of. Both appear to have been circulating in the community before the first cases were reported: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/34/Supplement_2/S58/459477 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/34/Supplement_2/S58/459... > In summary, the present evidence indicates that the H5N1 strains that caused the Hong Kong 1997 outbreak were reassortants from multiple cocirculating avian influenza virus strains https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3323155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3323155/ > On January 2, 2003, two cases of atypical pneumonia in the city of Heyuan, Guangdong Province, were associated with transmission of infection to several healthcare workers at the hospital (5). Investigation by the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention led to the identification of clusters of cases in six other municipalities (Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing) from November 2002 to mid-January 2003.
api 5y ago
It was also damaged by the fact that a bunch of true crackpots asserted that COVID-19 was a bio-weapon released by either the Chinese or the US Military. There is zero evidence for that, and it makes no sense. I heard someone once describe that kind of germ warfare as "attempting to use a grenade as a handgun." Yes it hurts your opponent, but... Someone will bring up the fact that China seems (if you buy their numbers) to have had good success containing COVID, but the thing is: there's no way they could have known this would be the case. What if they released it on purpose and their containment efforts failed? What if it mutated into something 5X as deadly and 100X as contagious? Viruses don't take loyalty oaths. Also: the global recession it caused probably did not do China any good in terms of net economic growth. Also also: why would China release it inside their own country? Why not drop it in some random airport somewhere? If they really wanted to target the USA the thing to do would have been to drop it in Bethesda, Maryland and then spread a lot of anti-US conspiracy theories. Lots of reasons it would have been a stupid idea to release it on purpose. China's leadership might be evil in some ways but they're not stupid or careless.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Yep, one of the confounding factors of this whole conversation is that there have always been several theories under the heading “lab leak.” Some of which were completely plausible (though had little to no evidence) and some of which were 10 layers deep in actual conspiratorial lunacy (also with similar amounts of evidence).
- ksaj 5y ago
  There is precedence for this, too. Still is, although we currently don't use the same terminology as we did during the cold war. You could argue that terrorists who strap themselves into bomb jackets also demonstrate this, and I've heard the acceptance of "collateral damage" thrown around as yet another aspect of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage
- Ghanyk 5y ago
throwaway894345 5y ago
At t=0, none of the theories had any evidence. That's cause for investigation, not derision.
csdvrx 5y ago
In the news today: scientists say they are totally not at fault when a lab-grown virus escapes from a science lab! When asked for how it could happen then, they said "Oh no no no no, it must be some people, uh... COOKING AND EATING BATS! Yeah! It must be the cooks, or the patrons, or someone else, BUT TOTALLY NOT US, because, uh, there's a market right by our lab!" Just for the lolz I would have asked if they are frequent patrons :) IDK, but I tend to apply Occam's to the theory, and to me, the alternative theory looked a LOT more crackpot-ish...
orangecat 5y ago
The first outbreak being down the street from the Wuhan virology lab is in fact evidence. Not conclusive by any means, but it's an event that is more likely to occur if the lab leak theory is true than if it's false.
jessriedel 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30280803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30280803 > The Wuhan Institute of Virology is China's premier virology research lab, its first biosafety level 4 lab, and one of the very few (or only one?) that was doing gain-of-function research. Wuhan has a population of 12M, which is just under 1% of China's population. > The fact that the virus emerged there, of all places in China, is non-conclusive but highly suggestive circumstantial evidence.

The theory was not "crackpot", but it was asserted with 0 evidence back then. The evidence is judged, not the theory itself.

by axlee 5y ago

The theory was not "crackpot", but it was asserted with 0 evidence back then. The evidence is judged, not the theory itself.

hartator 5y ago

> it was asserted with 0 evidence back then The bat theory was asserted with way more force at the time with even less evidence.

dnautics 5y ago
I think you mean wet market theory. This is true, but at least there was a "high bayesian prior" due to that being how it happened in the past. Nonetheless the wet market proponents were irresponsibly aggressive in their forcefulness.
- snowgrove 5y ago
  As other commenters mentioned there was a “high Bayesian prior” for lab leaks, too.
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    All of the previous lab leaks were of known viruses that had previously spilled over into humans via natural processes, then were collected and later leaked out (again). I'm not aware of any truly novel viruses that spilled into humans through a lab leak. Are there any examples?
    - dnautics 5y ago
      What's your threshold for novelness? We can't truly know just how novel covid-19 is; we don't have sequences from the database of coronaviruses, and even if we did it might have leaked right after it was collected, without having been sequenced yet.
    - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
      Is "novel" the right criteria here? If Covid didn't have asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic infectiousness, it'd still be novel but may not have become a pandemic. Therefor may not have even been noticed, no tests developed for it, etc...
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
      - dnautics 5y ago
        funny story, my elementary school was across the playground from this place, but moved out of that location the summer before the virus leak.
- timr 5y ago
  > This is true, but at least there was a "high bayesian prior" due to that being how it happened in the past. I'm not an expert in the history of viral origin stories, but I'm pretty informed, and I'm not aware of any documented examples of pathogens emerging from public markets. To be clear, I'm aware of lots of examples associated with pig and chicken farms, and several viruses that are presumed to have emerged from various kinds of "bush meat" (monkeys, guinea pigs, deer), but even these are pretty much correlative lines of evidence. A documented case of a virus emerging from a wet market? No. Moreover, if you've been to one of these things, it's pretty implausible as the source of a respiratory virus. They're usually outdoors, or in vast spaces. At least in farms you've usually got a farmer hanging around in a small building with hundreds or thousands of identical animals on a regular basis. The evidence for the wet-market theory has always felt like one of those things that "scientists just know"...until it turns out they were repeating apocryphal stories to each other. This happens far more often than scientists care to admit.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dnautics 5y ago
    H1N5, SARS
    - timr 5y ago
      Neither originated in wet markets that we know of. Both appear to have been circulating in the community before the first cases were reported: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/34/Supplement_2/S58/459477 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/34/Supplement_2/S58/459... > In summary, the present evidence indicates that the H5N1 strains that caused the Hong Kong 1997 outbreak were reassortants from multiple cocirculating avian influenza virus strains https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3323155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3323155/ > On January 2, 2003, two cases of atypical pneumonia in the city of Heyuan, Guangdong Province, were associated with transmission of infection to several healthcare workers at the hospital (5). Investigation by the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention led to the identification of clusters of cases in six other municipalities (Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing) from November 2002 to mid-January 2003.

api 5y ago

It was also damaged by the fact that a bunch of true crackpots asserted that COVID-19 was a bio-weapon released by either the Chinese or the US Military. There is zero evidence for that, and it makes no sense. I heard someone once describe that kind of germ warfare as "attempting to use a grenade as a handgun." Yes it hurts your opponent, but... Someone will bring up the fact that China seems (if you buy their numbers) to have had good success containing COVID, but the thing is: there's no way they could have known this would be the case. What if they released it on purpose and their containment efforts failed? What if it mutated into something 5X as deadly and 100X as contagious? Viruses don't take loyalty oaths. Also: the global recession it caused probably did not do China any good in terms of net economic growth. Also also: why would China release it inside their own country? Why not drop it in some random airport somewhere? If they really wanted to target the USA the thing to do would have been to drop it in Bethesda, Maryland and then spread a lot of anti-US conspiracy theories. Lots of reasons it would have been a stupid idea to release it on purpose. China's leadership might be evil in some ways but they're not stupid or careless.

ethanbond 5y ago
Yep, one of the confounding factors of this whole conversation is that there have always been several theories under the heading “lab leak.” Some of which were completely plausible (though had little to no evidence) and some of which were 10 layers deep in actual conspiratorial lunacy (also with similar amounts of evidence).
ksaj 5y ago
There is precedence for this, too. Still is, although we currently don't use the same terminology as we did during the cold war. You could argue that terrorists who strap themselves into bomb jackets also demonstrate this, and I've heard the acceptance of "collateral damage" thrown around as yet another aspect of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage
Ghanyk 5y ago

throwaway894345 5y ago

At t=0, none of the theories had any evidence. That's cause for investigation, not derision.

csdvrx 5y ago

In the news today: scientists say they are totally not at fault when a lab-grown virus escapes from a science lab! When asked for how it could happen then, they said "Oh no no no no, it must be some people, uh... COOKING AND EATING BATS! Yeah! It must be the cooks, or the patrons, or someone else, BUT TOTALLY NOT US, because, uh, there's a market right by our lab!" Just for the lolz I would have asked if they are frequent patrons :) IDK, but I tend to apply Occam's to the theory, and to me, the alternative theory looked a LOT more crackpot-ish...

orangecat 5y ago

The first outbreak being down the street from the Wuhan virology lab is in fact evidence. Not conclusive by any means, but it's an event that is more likely to occur if the lab leak theory is true than if it's false.

jessriedel 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30280803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30280803 > The Wuhan Institute of Virology is China's premier virology research lab, its first biosafety level 4 lab, and one of the very few (or only one?) that was doing gain-of-function research. Wuhan has a population of 12M, which is just under 1% of China's population. > The fact that the virus emerged there, of all places in China, is non-conclusive but highly suggestive circumstantial evidence.