6 ms·

More evidence that Covid-19 started in a market, not a laboratory

helsinkiandrew 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220305123858/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/more-evidence-that-covid-19-started-in-a-market-not-a-laboratory/21807945 https://web.archive.org/web/20220305123858/https://www.econo...
jonathanstrange 5y ago
The lab theory was always considered possible but less likely. It's just thanks to the insane politicization of the issue in the US that some internet "experts" think otherwise and obtain "evidence" from various blogs and fringe scientists.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  This is definitely revisionist history. At the height of the pandemic this would absolutely get you accused of misinformation. Then two very different possibilities were conflated - that it was leaked from a lab or that it was engineered in a lab - and the much lower likelihood of the latter was used to dismiss the former.
  - jonathanstrange 5y ago
    Absolutely not. You're mixing up social media with reality. I can say with great confidence that I was at all times in this pandemic very accurately and well-informed. The lab theory has been openly discussed since May 2020, even earlier if you were caring about getting informed. Both lab theories were common and discussed everywhere. On social media and blogs the discussion is always distorted. Just don't use them as a source of information - although, to be fair, there were many good pointers to information on HN. Thanks to some hypochondriacs at HN, I was able to predict the development of the pandemic pretty precisely since January 2020. My work colleagues were impressed.
    - bigDinosaur 5y ago
      While you're technically right that the criteria of 'some number of people where that number is > 1 considered it a possibility' was met I don't think you can so quickly dismiss how quickly the narrative changed once Biden actually announced the fact that the intelligence community was split 70-30 on this. If I had brought up the lab leak theory in my social groups I would have been labelled as QAnon (or charitably adjacent), so there was also definitely a real-world impact of social media, they're not nearly as separate as to say that mixing them up is actually a straight up error. In addition, there was a lot of initial pushback against any lab leak theory from virologists involved in gain of function research (regardless of whether gain of function engineering itself was the least plausible of the two leak theories). Part of the issue here is definitely what we mean when we say something was 'considered possible' - here I'm thinking quite explicitly of mainstream and majoritarian perspectives since that's what impacts most people who aren't able (or allowed) to meaningfully contribute to a debate on its technical merits.
      - jonathanstrange 5y ago
        I don't deny that social media have a huge influence nowadays on public opinion. I totally agree with you about that. As for the initial pushback of the lab theory by virologists, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue for, though. Yes, most virologists rightly considered the lab theories way less likely from the start, and I also remember distinctly that some international scientists who had been to the Wuhan lab (or collaborated with researchers from the lab) defended their Chinese colleagues against unfounded allegations in early 2020. This assessment is confirmed by the recent studies mentioned in the above linked article. Even if you think they got it wrong and these studies are not as conclusive as they claim, I don't think you can fault virologists for voicing their informed opinions about what they overall consider most likely. It is in the nature of scientific work that you consider some hypotheses more likely to be true than others.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      No, this is nonsense. Openly discussed where? In May 2020 virologists had written an open letter that stated in no uncertain terms that anyone claiming it could have come from a lab was spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. This in turn caused Facebook to simply ban any discussion of the possibility entirely. No journal or newspaper would publish anything about this at all. Discussion was driven underground, which is why D.R.A.S.T.I.C. (who found most of the evidence for it) was made up of anonymous people. Chasing this story resulted in a New York Times reporter being fired; his investigation eventually had to be published on his own Medium blog and in some physics journal. The lab leak theory was utterly and completely squashed in the public realm by nothing more substantial than a bunch of virologists saying "it wasn't us". Trying to claim it was never suppressed is an Orwellian attempt to rewrite of history.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > and the much lower likelihood of the latter was used to dismiss the former. Actually more often it was the opposite—the open possibility that it leaked from a lab, was used to prop up assertions that it was engineered in a lab.
    - bigDinosaur 5y ago
      'Open possibility' as you stated implied there was open and honest debate about any of this. The absolute shift in what was acceptable to say in the media after Biden's announcement of the intelligence community not being totally decided on whether it had leaked showed how much of a lie that was. Now it's fine to talk about, but I don't really appreciate the revisionist history that it was actually an area of open and honest debate in 2020 and the first half of 2021.
      - mcphage 5y ago
        > actually an area of open and honest debate in 2020 and the first half of 2021. Of course it wasn’t. On one hand, there was no evidence of anything either way—partially due to the situation, and partially due to China not wanting to answer any questions. And on the other hand, half the country was trying to use any possibility as a wedge to say “look China causes this on purpose as a deliberate attack!” At no point was there a possibility of open debate. Honestly, there still isn’t—there’s no good evidence in either direction, so it’s just people shouting their side’s talking points at each other.
- blululu 5y ago
  No it wasn’t. It was categorically dismissed as racist.
  - bloopernova 5y ago
    I disagree. It appeared to me that a lot of the people promoting that theory were using it for bigoted purposes. Such that dismissal of the theory became highly coupled with dismissal of the bigotry of those who were promoting it. My recollection is that one "side" was arguing a very different thing than the other, and never the twain shall meet.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
      So argument must be dismissed/accepted not based on its merit but based on who is making it?
      - jonathanstrange 5y ago
        From the start, the problem with these lab arguments was that they were made by people who had zero evidence. Making up a plausible story and speculations are not evidence. The bottom line is we will never know, since China is not exactly a free country were potential eye witnesses can be interviewed freely. The market theory was always more likely and more dooming for China, though. It's easy to beef up the control of bio labs, it's way harder to close down all animal wet markets. Officially, China claims they have done the latter but I've heard that they continue to exist all over China.
        mohanmcgeek 5y ago
        Nobody asked people to take the lab leak theory at face value. If it's on shaky foundations, it could have been easily refuted. But the way in which it was supressed only added credence to the view.
        jonathanstrange 5y ago
ChildOfChaos 5y ago
I mean the way China handles this is still a problem, even if it was a market and not a laboratory, there cover ups are costly to society as a whole and there actions are a grave disservice for humanity and ultimately extremely selfish. This is a great opportunity for the world to learn and help eliminate possible future outbreaks that could hurt China and the rest of the world hard, but they would rather fight a propaganda battle and try to save face, which is silly because it’s a lose-lose situation, it just makes them look worse and fuels conspiracy theories and we have no chance to gain valuable data.
jessaustin 5y ago
Two instances of species jump would certainly make an accidental lab leak seem less likely.
- bloopernova 5y ago
  Are there degrees of species jump? i.e. Humans to primates is a "low" degree, humans to reptiles much higher. There's been a lot of accounts of COVID-19 jumping to species like Deer, or captive animals in Zoos. To my very layman eyes that says that inter-species jumping is very common. (I think?)
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    That seems like a good question? If there were two jumps, maybe there were twenty. At that point we've eliminated the possibility of accidental lab leaks, but not the possibility of lab leaks altogether.
LeifCarrotson 5y ago
The source preprint, for anyone else who doesn't have an Economist subscription or who wants to read the original: https://zenodo.org/record/6299116/files/2020.02.26_worobey_preprint.pdf https://zenodo.org/record/6299116/files/2020.02.26_worobey_p...
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Thank you
greatgib 5y ago
I would not say that I think that the virus came out of the laboratory but I don't see how the published research here proves that. It only shows that things started to spread from the market. And as there are animals susceptible to host mutation of the virus that 'could' come from there. But this analysis does not rules out the fact that the virus leaked of the lab with someone that went first to the market once contagious to spread it accidentally.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  I know right! I can't believe the headlines being spun off from this. Case closed! We have pictures of animals in cages. No further investigation required.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    Follow the money, these markets dont benefit big business or govt who use the food supply chain to keep us docile.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
"Second, they employed photographic evidence posted on Weibo, a Chinese social-media website, as well as contemporary accounts, to show that the market, which vends other goods besides seafood, was selling animals susceptible to the virus."
nyc_pizzadev 5y ago
Not sure I understand why they so definitively state that 2 extremely similar variants are proof of animal to human jumps and not just a simple human to human mutation. Are there more details to support this conclusion in the paper?
blagie 5y ago
My problem, at this point, is that we've had two years to point fingers and to fabricate evidence. If it were a lab leak, that's a lot of time to bake evidence redirecting people away. All I know is that the powers that be in China wants us to believe that it originated at this market. That's as consistent with it originating at the market, as a lab leak, as something else (including China having no idea where it came from). Science and politics don't mix, and if there's anything COVID19 has shown us, it's that science takes a back seat to politics. I have no idea where COVID19 came from. I don't know that I'll ever know. I've been in middling high positions before. There are a lot of conspiracies. I'd never trust a "reanalysis of samples" years after the fact, unless I had a clear, verifiable audit trail on how those samples were handled. However, conspiracy theories rarely line up with actual conspiracies. What I wrote isn't supporting evidence for a lab leak or anything else specific. Just that this isn't the smoking gun evidence it's presented to be. I mostly only care if it tells us something about the virus. If it were a bioweapon designed to cripple, for example, it would paint long COVID in a very different light. If it were a trial of a bioweapon to see if China can contain it, it would paint zero COVID in China in a different light. If it's just a blame game, I don't really care at this point.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Agreed. So much of this looks suspicious. The fact it's already being sold as a smoking gun is incredibly suspect. Several unproven assumptions. The report exists in vaccum where it neatly ignores new data that's come out since February 2020. I also share your sentiment of truth seeking in modern times. It's exhausting. Maybe better to just put head in sand?
  - blagie 5y ago
    In terms of being sold as smoking gun, every !@#$% academic publication these days seems to make grandiose claims. "We found an effect size of 0.00001 with p=4.98%. Therefore, we conclude [something which wouldn't be a conclusion even if the data had an effect size of 5 and p=0.00001]"
jacknews 5y ago
AKA, if China support the west against Russia, the covid origin history will be re-written to exonerate China. It's strange (not) how the the press zeitgeist moves with western (US) political desires.
dekhn 5y ago
This should not be flagged; it's based on a major publication by well-respected scientists working with physical evidence.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220305123858/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/more-evidence-that-covid-19-started-in-a-market-not-a-laboratory/21807945 https://web.archive.org/web/20220305123858/https://www.econo...

jonathanstrange 5y ago

The lab theory was always considered possible but less likely. It's just thanks to the insane politicization of the issue in the US that some internet "experts" think otherwise and obtain "evidence" from various blogs and fringe scientists.

bigDinosaur 5y ago
This is definitely revisionist history. At the height of the pandemic this would absolutely get you accused of misinformation. Then two very different possibilities were conflated - that it was leaked from a lab or that it was engineered in a lab - and the much lower likelihood of the latter was used to dismiss the former.
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  Absolutely not. You're mixing up social media with reality. I can say with great confidence that I was at all times in this pandemic very accurately and well-informed. The lab theory has been openly discussed since May 2020, even earlier if you were caring about getting informed. Both lab theories were common and discussed everywhere. On social media and blogs the discussion is always distorted. Just don't use them as a source of information - although, to be fair, there were many good pointers to information on HN. Thanks to some hypochondriacs at HN, I was able to predict the development of the pandemic pretty precisely since January 2020. My work colleagues were impressed.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    While you're technically right that the criteria of 'some number of people where that number is > 1 considered it a possibility' was met I don't think you can so quickly dismiss how quickly the narrative changed once Biden actually announced the fact that the intelligence community was split 70-30 on this. If I had brought up the lab leak theory in my social groups I would have been labelled as QAnon (or charitably adjacent), so there was also definitely a real-world impact of social media, they're not nearly as separate as to say that mixing them up is actually a straight up error. In addition, there was a lot of initial pushback against any lab leak theory from virologists involved in gain of function research (regardless of whether gain of function engineering itself was the least plausible of the two leak theories). Part of the issue here is definitely what we mean when we say something was 'considered possible' - here I'm thinking quite explicitly of mainstream and majoritarian perspectives since that's what impacts most people who aren't able (or allowed) to meaningfully contribute to a debate on its technical merits.
    - jonathanstrange 5y ago
      I don't deny that social media have a huge influence nowadays on public opinion. I totally agree with you about that. As for the initial pushback of the lab theory by virologists, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue for, though. Yes, most virologists rightly considered the lab theories way less likely from the start, and I also remember distinctly that some international scientists who had been to the Wuhan lab (or collaborated with researchers from the lab) defended their Chinese colleagues against unfounded allegations in early 2020. This assessment is confirmed by the recent studies mentioned in the above linked article. Even if you think they got it wrong and these studies are not as conclusive as they claim, I don't think you can fault virologists for voicing their informed opinions about what they overall consider most likely. It is in the nature of scientific work that you consider some hypotheses more likely to be true than others.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    No, this is nonsense. Openly discussed where? In May 2020 virologists had written an open letter that stated in no uncertain terms that anyone claiming it could have come from a lab was spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. This in turn caused Facebook to simply ban any discussion of the possibility entirely. No journal or newspaper would publish anything about this at all. Discussion was driven underground, which is why D.R.A.S.T.I.C. (who found most of the evidence for it) was made up of anonymous people. Chasing this story resulted in a New York Times reporter being fired; his investigation eventually had to be published on his own Medium blog and in some physics journal. The lab leak theory was utterly and completely squashed in the public realm by nothing more substantial than a bunch of virologists saying "it wasn't us". Trying to claim it was never suppressed is an Orwellian attempt to rewrite of history.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > and the much lower likelihood of the latter was used to dismiss the former. Actually more often it was the opposite—the open possibility that it leaked from a lab, was used to prop up assertions that it was engineered in a lab.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    'Open possibility' as you stated implied there was open and honest debate about any of this. The absolute shift in what was acceptable to say in the media after Biden's announcement of the intelligence community not being totally decided on whether it had leaked showed how much of a lie that was. Now it's fine to talk about, but I don't really appreciate the revisionist history that it was actually an area of open and honest debate in 2020 and the first half of 2021.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > actually an area of open and honest debate in 2020 and the first half of 2021. Of course it wasn’t. On one hand, there was no evidence of anything either way—partially due to the situation, and partially due to China not wanting to answer any questions. And on the other hand, half the country was trying to use any possibility as a wedge to say “look China causes this on purpose as a deliberate attack!” At no point was there a possibility of open debate. Honestly, there still isn’t—there’s no good evidence in either direction, so it’s just people shouting their side’s talking points at each other.
blululu 5y ago
No it wasn’t. It was categorically dismissed as racist.
- bloopernova 5y ago
  I disagree. It appeared to me that a lot of the people promoting that theory were using it for bigoted purposes. Such that dismissal of the theory became highly coupled with dismissal of the bigotry of those who were promoting it. My recollection is that one "side" was arguing a very different thing than the other, and never the twain shall meet.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    So argument must be dismissed/accepted not based on its merit but based on who is making it?
    - jonathanstrange 5y ago
      From the start, the problem with these lab arguments was that they were made by people who had zero evidence. Making up a plausible story and speculations are not evidence. The bottom line is we will never know, since China is not exactly a free country were potential eye witnesses can be interviewed freely. The market theory was always more likely and more dooming for China, though. It's easy to beef up the control of bio labs, it's way harder to close down all animal wet markets. Officially, China claims they have done the latter but I've heard that they continue to exist all over China.
      - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
        Nobody asked people to take the lab leak theory at face value. If it's on shaky foundations, it could have been easily refuted. But the way in which it was supressed only added credence to the view.
        jonathanstrange 5y ago

ChildOfChaos 5y ago

I mean the way China handles this is still a problem, even if it was a market and not a laboratory, there cover ups are costly to society as a whole and there actions are a grave disservice for humanity and ultimately extremely selfish. This is a great opportunity for the world to learn and help eliminate possible future outbreaks that could hurt China and the rest of the world hard, but they would rather fight a propaganda battle and try to save face, which is silly because it’s a lose-lose situation, it just makes them look worse and fuels conspiracy theories and we have no chance to gain valuable data.

jessaustin 5y ago

Two instances of species jump would certainly make an accidental lab leak seem less likely.

bloopernova 5y ago
Are there degrees of species jump? i.e. Humans to primates is a "low" degree, humans to reptiles much higher. There's been a lot of accounts of COVID-19 jumping to species like Deer, or captive animals in Zoos. To my very layman eyes that says that inter-species jumping is very common. (I think?)
- jessaustin 5y ago
  That seems like a good question? If there were two jumps, maybe there were twenty. At that point we've eliminated the possibility of accidental lab leaks, but not the possibility of lab leaks altogether.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago

The source preprint, for anyone else who doesn't have an Economist subscription or who wants to read the original: https://zenodo.org/record/6299116/files/2020.02.26_worobey_preprint.pdf https://zenodo.org/record/6299116/files/2020.02.26_worobey_p...

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Thank you

greatgib 5y ago

I would not say that I think that the virus came out of the laboratory but I don't see how the published research here proves that. It only shows that things started to spread from the market. And as there are animals susceptible to host mutation of the virus that 'could' come from there. But this analysis does not rules out the fact that the virus leaked of the lab with someone that went first to the market once contagious to spread it accidentally.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I know right! I can't believe the headlines being spun off from this. Case closed! We have pictures of animals in cages. No further investigation required.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  Follow the money, these markets dont benefit big business or govt who use the food supply chain to keep us docile.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

"Second, they employed photographic evidence posted on Weibo, a Chinese social-media website, as well as contemporary accounts, to show that the market, which vends other goods besides seafood, was selling animals susceptible to the virus."

nyc_pizzadev 5y ago

Not sure I understand why they so definitively state that 2 extremely similar variants are proof of animal to human jumps and not just a simple human to human mutation. Are there more details to support this conclusion in the paper?

blagie 5y ago

My problem, at this point, is that we've had two years to point fingers and to fabricate evidence. If it were a lab leak, that's a lot of time to bake evidence redirecting people away. All I know is that the powers that be in China wants us to believe that it originated at this market. That's as consistent with it originating at the market, as a lab leak, as something else (including China having no idea where it came from). Science and politics don't mix, and if there's anything COVID19 has shown us, it's that science takes a back seat to politics. I have no idea where COVID19 came from. I don't know that I'll ever know. I've been in middling high positions before. There are a lot of conspiracies. I'd never trust a "reanalysis of samples" years after the fact, unless I had a clear, verifiable audit trail on how those samples were handled. However, conspiracy theories rarely line up with actual conspiracies. What I wrote isn't supporting evidence for a lab leak or anything else specific. Just that this isn't the smoking gun evidence it's presented to be. I mostly only care if it tells us something about the virus. If it were a bioweapon designed to cripple, for example, it would paint long COVID in a very different light. If it were a trial of a bioweapon to see if China can contain it, it would paint zero COVID in China in a different light. If it's just a blame game, I don't really care at this point.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Agreed. So much of this looks suspicious. The fact it's already being sold as a smoking gun is incredibly suspect. Several unproven assumptions. The report exists in vaccum where it neatly ignores new data that's come out since February 2020. I also share your sentiment of truth seeking in modern times. It's exhausting. Maybe better to just put head in sand?
- blagie 5y ago
  In terms of being sold as smoking gun, every !@#$% academic publication these days seems to make grandiose claims. "We found an effect size of 0.00001 with p=4.98%. Therefore, we conclude [something which wouldn't be a conclusion even if the data had an effect size of 5 and p=0.00001]"

jacknews 5y ago

AKA, if China support the west against Russia, the covid origin history will be re-written to exonerate China. It's strange (not) how the the press zeitgeist moves with western (US) political desires.

dekhn 5y ago

This should not be flagged; it's based on a major publication by well-respected scientists working with physical evidence.