3 ms·

So the crux of your argument is that it's more likely that a virus with that type of predisposition occured in nature in a specific area around the Wuhan market

by noptd 4y ago

So the crux of your argument is that it's more likely that a virus with that type of predisposition occured in nature in a specific area around the Wuhan market as opposed to being sampled from one of many areas, potentially modified, and then leaked into said area? Seems unlikely considering the rarity as you pointed out. >And the rest of your comment just tells me you know nothing about biology. No need to resort to ad-hominems ; all it achieves is tainting your future responses on the topic with a lingering question of whether they are being made in good faith.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
It's not ad-hominem if it's true. I really don't have the energy to debunk every "argument" that is borne out of misunderstandings about basic biology. The alternative hypothesis is not that a very dangerous zoonotic virus emerges in a specific area around Wuhan (which also isn't really the agreed upon origin anyway), but rather that it emerges anywhere and causes a pandemic. Your argument here is a basic misunderstanding about how random processes work. Our observation that Wuhan was the first epicenter of this pandemic already preconditions us to assume a pandemic-capable Virus emerged there in some form or another. Such viruses are indeed rarities. But they exist and every once in a while they come into contact with Humans and cause a pandemic. However this is not the same likelihood as with the lab leak hypothesis, because collecting viruses for labs is an event that happens multiple orders of magnitude less often than contacts between animals and Humans. So while it is a rare coincidence that a lab would collect a killer virus when randomly collecting bat viruses, it is not so strange that every once in a while a novel pandemic virus makes the jump from animals to Humans somewhere in the world.

3 ms·

So the crux of your argument is that it's more likely that a virus with that type of predisposition occured in nature in a specific area around the Wuhan market

by noptd 4y ago

bayesian_horse 4y ago
It's not ad-hominem if it's true. I really don't have the energy to debunk every "argument" that is borne out of misunderstandings about basic biology. The alternative hypothesis is not that a very dangerous zoonotic virus emerges in a specific area around Wuhan (which also isn't really the agreed upon origin anyway), but rather that it emerges anywhere and causes a pandemic. Your argument here is a basic misunderstanding about how random processes work. Our observation that Wuhan was the first epicenter of this pandemic already preconditions us to assume a pandemic-capable Virus emerged there in some form or another. Such viruses are indeed rarities. But they exist and every once in a while they come into contact with Humans and cause a pandemic. However this is not the same likelihood as with the lab leak hypothesis, because collecting viruses for labs is an event that happens multiple orders of magnitude less often than contacts between animals and Humans. So while it is a rare coincidence that a lab would collect a killer virus when randomly collecting bat viruses, it is not so strange that every once in a while a novel pandemic virus makes the jump from animals to Humans somewhere in the world.