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> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to

by ajross 4y ago

> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. And you can spin it the other way, anyway: we know that the presumptive covid ancestor was at least as close as 1000 miles, on the same continent and within easy travel distance of a migratory flying species. It's true, that if the closest relative was in Argentina, that getting it to Wuhan would require a lot of weird argument. But from Yunnan? Seems not unreasonable. People continue to bang this hypothesis, and... it's not a bad hypothesis really. But the reason consensus among experts is behind natural evolution is that natural evolution remains a clearly better hypothesis. I know that's upsetting to people who want to believe the lab theory for whatever reason, but it is and remains the truth. Until someone finds better evidence, the lab leak is going to remain a popular conspiracy theory only.

igouy 4y ago
> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. 1000 miles just doesn't take long by truck. "… Mengla county, Yunnan province…" "… identification of four SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in bats…" https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf Google says that 1400 miles to Wuhan is just 24 hours driving.
lock-the-spock 4y ago
You are confusing or conflating the lab-leak and lab-made theories.
- ajross 4y ago
  Then you'll need to educate me on the what you think distinction is. The linked tweet thread asserts both: that the virus was manufactured in the WIV and that it leaked by accident. There are stronger (and even less well grounded) ideas in the broader conspiracist community asserting that it was the result of bioweapons research, and sometimes even that it was deliberately released. Ebright himself doesn't truck with any of that nonsense.
  - pizza234 4y ago
    Distinction: - lab leak: researchers catch infected bat; at the laboratory, bat bites researcher; researcher gets COVID - lab made: researchers modify a virus, and produce SARS-CoV-2; the latter escapes the laborary (in one way or another) The importance of the lab leak hypothesis is that it doesn't need any conspiracy (a researcher being bitten is nothing strange in itself), but still implies unsafe practices and bad faith by the institutions involved.
wk_end 4y ago
> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.
- igouy 4y ago
  > That's not "spun", that's science As-if the only alternative to transported-to-labs was bat migration? 1,000 miles seems less ridiculous when it's animals in cages on trucks going to market — just a tiny part of the live animal trade. (How many thousands of miles did Burmese Pythons travel to reach the Florida Everglades.)
- ajross 4y ago
  > In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion. No, that's a fallacy. If I find an apple on the ground at the supermarket, it is evidence that there are apples at the supermarket. It is not evidence that there are no apples at my friend's home where I found no apples. I just didn't check the refrigerator. The linked thread says, precisely, "Wuhan--a city 1,000 miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like coronaviruses". And that is not correct.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Sorry, where are the unsampled bats within 1000km of Wuhan? This stuff has been sampled extensively. Or are you merely stating it's possible there's a bat cave no one's heard of that hasn't been sampled?
    - ajross 4y ago
      > This stuff has been sampled extensively. I don't think that's correct, for the simple reason that if those papers existed the (sigh) pro-leak folks would be linking them everywhere. Virology isn't exactly a trillion dollar field, we're not going out and sequencing every virus in every species. The Yunnan cave made news and was well-studied because someone stumbled on a SARS-related virus there, that says nothing about where that virus went later.

by ajross 4y ago

igouy 4y ago

> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. 1000 miles just doesn't take long by truck. "… Mengla county, Yunnan province…" "… identification of four SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in bats…" https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf Google says that 1400 miles to Wuhan is just 24 hours driving.

lock-the-spock 4y ago

You are confusing or conflating the lab-leak and lab-made theories.

ajross 4y ago
Then you'll need to educate me on the what you think distinction is. The linked tweet thread asserts both: that the virus was manufactured in the WIV and that it leaked by accident. There are stronger (and even less well grounded) ideas in the broader conspiracist community asserting that it was the result of bioweapons research, and sometimes even that it was deliberately released. Ebright himself doesn't truck with any of that nonsense.
- pizza234 4y ago
  Distinction: - lab leak: researchers catch infected bat; at the laboratory, bat bites researcher; researcher gets COVID - lab made: researchers modify a virus, and produce SARS-CoV-2; the latter escapes the laborary (in one way or another) The importance of the lab leak hypothesis is that it doesn't need any conspiracy (a researcher being bitten is nothing strange in itself), but still implies unsafe practices and bad faith by the institutions involved.

wk_end 4y ago

> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.

igouy 4y ago
> That's not "spun", that's science As-if the only alternative to transported-to-labs was bat migration? 1,000 miles seems less ridiculous when it's animals in cages on trucks going to market — just a tiny part of the live animal trade. (How many thousands of miles did Burmese Pythons travel to reach the Florida Everglades.)
ajross 4y ago
> In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion. No, that's a fallacy. If I find an apple on the ground at the supermarket, it is evidence that there are apples at the supermarket. It is not evidence that there are no apples at my friend's home where I found no apples. I just didn't check the refrigerator. The linked thread says, precisely, "Wuhan--a city 1,000 miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like coronaviruses". And that is not correct.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Sorry, where are the unsampled bats within 1000km of Wuhan? This stuff has been sampled extensively. Or are you merely stating it's possible there's a bat cave no one's heard of that hasn't been sampled?
  - ajross 4y ago
    > This stuff has been sampled extensively. I don't think that's correct, for the simple reason that if those papers existed the (sigh) pro-leak folks would be linking them everywhere. Virology isn't exactly a trillion dollar field, we're not going out and sequencing every virus in every species. The Yunnan cave made news and was well-studied because someone stumbled on a SARS-related virus there, that says nothing about where that virus went later.