4 ms·

Two years and I have yet to read an explanation of what this hypothesis is. Were they careless with a natural virus? Did they modify viruses? Did they release a

Two years and I have yet to read an explanation of what this hypothesis is. Were they careless with a natural virus? Did they modify viruses? Did they release a nature virus on purpose? Did they accidentally release a modified virus? What's modified even mean here, studying random mutation? Engineering things? It's Schrodinger's Argument. It's all of them and none of them and it always shifts depending on who you're talking to. So I've concluded it's the largest, dumbest motte-and-bailey argument there is. But at least we can all agree, whatever it is, there's no practical lessons to be taken from it.

UIUC_06 4y ago
> at least we can all agree... No, we can't all agree. On anything. Given that the Chinese have shut down investigation, how would you expect anyone to tell you exactly how it happened?
bell-cot 4y ago
The article tries to define it: > an accident in a laboratory or during a research field trip Which, yes, is incredibly vague. I give them credit for at least ruling out the "Evil Chinese Scientists intentionally create and release deadly virus!" bullsh*t. One plausible "lab" scenario: A baggage-hauling laborer caught the proto-COVID-19 virus in a bat-filled cave during a routine "collect samples of germs from bats" expedition, then unknowingly spread it back in Wuhan. My opinion: For useful-fact-oriented folks, the Lab Hypothesis is mostly a tedious waste of time. For those motivated by hot-button emotions, attention-seeking, etc., the most lurid and cartoonish versions of the Lab Hypothesis are by far the best. If they can conjure such images in the minds of their audience - withOUT having to spell them out, for reality-checkers to attack - then all the better. Hence the remarkable scarcity of Lab Hypothesis explanations.
- martythemaniak 4y ago
  Thing is, isn't "during a field trip" actually the zoonotic theory? Ie, if there's a super contagious virus circulating around in bats, and a researcher was in a cave, then went to the market... that's the same as a tourist visiting a cave (as I have done) or a worker harvesting Bird's Next from cave, then selling at the market.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Objectively? Yes. But the moment you involve the lab - even if the only "lab involvement" was some grunt laborer, who harvests guano for fertilizer from the exact same cave on the other 29 days of the month, to feed his family - a whole lot of people's emotions and imaginations go "BOOM!".
    - tripletao 4y ago
      The WIV sent workers into remote caves that no other humans routinely entered; you can find many pictures and videos from their expeditions on the Internet. I think their baggage-hauling laborers were mostly grad students, but I agree that an infection of such a laborer is a quite plausible origin for this pandemic--a visit to a remote cave specifically chosen for its diversity of novel viruses is obviously a much higher risk than a cave chosen at random, though it's hard to quantify by how much. In this scenario, if the WIV's worker had never entered the cave, then the virus would quite possibly never have left the cave. Even if it would have been released later by an infected non-scientist, I'd always rather die later than sooner. (I've seen people arguing sooner is better, because it encourages pandemic preparedness; I guess that's true, in the same sense that reckless drivers encouraged development of automotive airbags. I've never seen a driver make that argument to the judge, though.) So given the above, do you still think the WIV should have sent the worker into the cave? We're not talking about the whole of virology here, just a tiny subset of high-risk research that so far has provided no significant public benefit.

UIUC_06 4y ago

> at least we can all agree... No, we can't all agree. On anything. Given that the Chinese have shut down investigation, how would you expect anyone to tell you exactly how it happened?

bell-cot 4y ago

The article tries to define it: > an accident in a laboratory or during a research field trip Which, yes, is incredibly vague. I give them credit for at least ruling out the "Evil Chinese Scientists intentionally create and release deadly virus!" bullsh*t. One plausible "lab" scenario: A baggage-hauling laborer caught the proto-COVID-19 virus in a bat-filled cave during a routine "collect samples of germs from bats" expedition, then unknowingly spread it back in Wuhan. My opinion: For useful-fact-oriented folks, the Lab Hypothesis is mostly a tedious waste of time. For those motivated by hot-button emotions, attention-seeking, etc., the most lurid and cartoonish versions of the Lab Hypothesis are by far the best. If they can conjure such images in the minds of their audience - withOUT having to spell them out, for reality-checkers to attack - then all the better. Hence the remarkable scarcity of Lab Hypothesis explanations.

martythemaniak 4y ago
Thing is, isn't "during a field trip" actually the zoonotic theory? Ie, if there's a super contagious virus circulating around in bats, and a researcher was in a cave, then went to the market... that's the same as a tourist visiting a cave (as I have done) or a worker harvesting Bird's Next from cave, then selling at the market.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Objectively? Yes. But the moment you involve the lab - even if the only "lab involvement" was some grunt laborer, who harvests guano for fertilizer from the exact same cave on the other 29 days of the month, to feed his family - a whole lot of people's emotions and imaginations go "BOOM!".
  - tripletao 4y ago
    The WIV sent workers into remote caves that no other humans routinely entered; you can find many pictures and videos from their expeditions on the Internet. I think their baggage-hauling laborers were mostly grad students, but I agree that an infection of such a laborer is a quite plausible origin for this pandemic--a visit to a remote cave specifically chosen for its diversity of novel viruses is obviously a much higher risk than a cave chosen at random, though it's hard to quantify by how much. In this scenario, if the WIV's worker had never entered the cave, then the virus would quite possibly never have left the cave. Even if it would have been released later by an infected non-scientist, I'd always rather die later than sooner. (I've seen people arguing sooner is better, because it encourages pandemic preparedness; I guess that's true, in the same sense that reckless drivers encouraged development of automotive airbags. I've never seen a driver make that argument to the judge, though.) So given the above, do you still think the WIV should have sent the worker into the cave? We're not talking about the whole of virology here, just a tiny subset of high-risk research that so far has provided no significant public benefit.