3 ms·

The Origins of the Pandemic – Under That Rug

10 points by ctoth 4y ago

origin_path 4y ago
The article makes it sound like the market animal hypothesis is basically proven, which is just nonsense. The article links to a paper that is lavishly funded by the NIH i.e. Fauci who is obviously going to be desperate to muddy this issue given that there's documentary evidence of his agency illegally funding GOF research on bat coronaviruses at the WIV. Those papers couldn't be more conflicted if the Chinese government itself had written them. The basic problem for all attempts to finger the market as the original source is that the chances of that coincidentally happening right next to one of the only labs doing research on that exact type of virus, t purely by chance, is astronomically low. A HN reader did the calculations in a comment on a previous article about this issue and you needed scientific notation to represent the probability. None of the attempts to show it came from the market take into account these probabilities and especially not the fact that we can actually read the grant proposal in which the EcoHealth Alliance request money to fund the WIV to study novel bat coronaviruses ... in 2019. Bayesian reasoning alone shows that the weight of evidence needed to overpower this prior probability of a leak is extraordinary and has never been reached. Especially given the obvious confounder that if it did escape from a lab you'd expect most of the people who get it first to have visited a large local gathering place!
ctoth 4y ago
I know we don't really accept the whole "If you don't have something to hide" bit around here, but there is something incredible about the intensity of the blame-shifting going on.
- netsharc 4y ago
  It probably has something to do with the Chinese government not wanting to "lose face": https://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/cult-of-face/ https://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/cult-of-face/ They want to maintain the illusion that China is as good as any modern country, so to have a dirty market cause a global pandemic is maybe just too embarrassing to bear..
effie 4y ago
Nobody wants to take the blame. But since we don't know for sure, everybody should, and we should regulate the sh*t out of special interests creating dangerous viruses, whether they do it on a wet market, or in laboratory.

10 points by ctoth 4y ago

The article makes it sound like the market animal hypothesis is basically proven, which is just nonsense. The article links to a paper that is lavishly funded by the NIH i.e. Fauci who is obviously going to be desperate to muddy this issue given that there's documentary evidence of his agency illegally funding GOF research on bat coronaviruses at the WIV. Those papers couldn't be more conflicted if the Chinese government itself had written them. The basic problem for all attempts to finger the market as the original source is that the chances of that coincidentally happening right next to one of the only labs doing research on that exact type of virus, t purely by chance, is astronomically low. A HN reader did the calculations in a comment on a previous article about this issue and you needed scientific notation to represent the probability. None of the attempts to show it came from the market take into account these probabilities and especially not the fact that we can actually read the grant proposal in which the EcoHealth Alliance request money to fund the WIV to study novel bat coronaviruses ... in 2019. Bayesian reasoning alone shows that the weight of evidence needed to overpower this prior probability of a leak is extraordinary and has never been reached. Especially given the obvious confounder that if it did escape from a lab you'd expect most of the people who get it first to have visited a large local gathering place!

ctoth 4y ago

I know we don't really accept the whole "If you don't have something to hide" bit around here, but there is something incredible about the intensity of the blame-shifting going on.

netsharc 4y ago
It probably has something to do with the Chinese government not wanting to "lose face": https://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/cult-of-face/ https://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/cult-of-face/ They want to maintain the illusion that China is as good as any modern country, so to have a dirty market cause a global pandemic is maybe just too embarrassing to bear..

effie 4y ago

Nobody wants to take the blame. But since we don't know for sure, everybody should, and we should regulate the sh*t out of special interests creating dangerous viruses, whether they do it on a wet market, or in laboratory.