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Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government

Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.

WaxProlix 4y ago
I saw a lot of folks saying that the theories all kinda stank at the time, and to wait and see. Interestingly, a lot of folks also kept quiet and didn't champion any theories. Maybe I can link you to a lack of comment two years ago to back up my bona fides?
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Normally when you try to solve a serious problem in a small company you might want to know who caused the problem, but most of the times you just need to know it wasn't intentional and you focus on addressing the outcome and making sure it never happens again. In big enterprises usually solving the problem is secondary to finding who the culprit is so that all future problems can be blamed on that department. China and the US are both like big enterprises. None of them is actually focused on making sure all the problems that happened will not happen again. People are just focused on blaming their domestic shit on the other. China releases a strategy paper on US hegemony, US brings the lab leak theory back into the spotlight. It doesn't really matter if there was valid research on that theory. The fact that the major newspapers come out with it 1 day after China releases their stuff, shows you it's political. It may be right, it may be wrong, an unintended leak has always been a very likely on the list for me. It's not like lack of security in labs hasn't been an issue in the US, in China and in a bunch of labs in Europe for that matter. Probably other countries are way worse. The point isn't whether it's right or wrong, the point is that the goal isn't to solve the problem, but exclusively to assert blame.
- tootie 4y ago
  It seems that lo these many years later all the theories are still full of holes. Lab leak is plausible but there's no public evidence to back it. Somehow the DOE thinks they have something but we haven't seen it. Just based on history, zoonotic remains most likely but no host has been found.
  - Retric 4y ago
    There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories, but there isn’t a smoking gun. That’s the kind of nuance that’s easy to ignore in favor of your preconceived notions because weak evidence is rarely worth changing your mind over. At a practical level I don’t think there’s much difference between the lab link being a 7% chance vs a 70% chance. What’s more concerning is the potential of future leaks and what responses they might result in. The possibility that local officials get in CYA mode over a possible lab leak of a more dangerous virus is seriously concerning.
    - tootie 4y ago
      "There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories," None that I've seen. And the possibility of a future leak is probably unrelated to the possibility of this one having been a leak.
      - Retric 4y ago
        “None that I’ve seen.” Which has little to do with the existence of said evidence. I’ve never seen direct evidence for the year Columbus sailed. Anyway, many things that would make future leaks less likely also make past leaks less likely. The types of experiments being conducted and the types of labs those experiments are conducted in. Oversight, funding, and systems for reporting safety issues etc etc.
        tootie 4y ago
        I'm responding to you saying there's evidence. To what were you referring?
        Retric 4y ago
        The evidence used by the Energy Department in their assessment.
        4y ago
- kordlessagain 4y ago
  When it hit, I took the first Wuhan sequence and ran it through some Python and pulled out string repeats in nucleotides. I then searched for those repeated sequences in Google and found the NIH lab in Maryland was doing research on how to better infect mice or rats with a substitution technique for twiddling into a cell's ports. So, it's entirely plausible, but without proof it isn't scientific.
hotpotamus 4y ago
What was the origin of Bubonic Plague, of AIDS, of Polio? Do we know in sufficient detail? I remember many saying that the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 may never be known. Say it did escape from a Chinese lab - is that all you need to know? Or would you want to know how it came to be in the lab in the first place?
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  I remember articles and quotes firmly rejecting the lab leak hypothesis and darkly implying that those championing the theory had a hidden agenda. The considerations were: — there were random attacks on Asians - public health officials and scientists were worried about an anti science backlash - virologists were really worried about a backlash against virology — relations with China had not yet deteriorated to their current levels and government leaders didn’t want to antagonize them So there was a semi-coordinated effort by government officials and the scientific establishment to put the lab leak theory beyond the pale. The middlebrow media either wittingly or unwittingly went along for the ride. Their readership ate it up.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    There were and are problematic elements of the lab leak people as well - I still see people (on this site) who claim that some or all aspects of the virus were synthetically created at the behest of Anthony Fauci. You may say I'm nutpicking, but I truly have a hard time determining what the lab leak theory is sometimes. But my sense was that the agenda behind the lab leak family of theories was to lay blame at some human or humans for the events of the pandemic, which to me seems like a fairly futile endeavor. One of my questions for these people has always been this: say their darkest theories are correct; what am I supposed to do about that? It seems that the best course of action was to wear masks, socially isolate as much as possible, and get vaccinated and keep getting vaccinations as new strains appear.
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      It’s one thing for nutjobs to push a bad theory for some whacky reason and another thing entirely for establishment figures to shade the truth in order to push a (positive!) agenda. We have so many nutjobs, in part, because of generations of establishment figures being dishonest for the greater good. Lab leak was always a better theory. There were what hundreds? thousands? of wet markets across China and two bsl-4 labs. Given that the virus arose in a city with a wet market and a bsl-4 lab, the prior should be that it had to do with the lab and not the wet market. That could be overcome with evidence, of course, but it is not some out there idea. What are you supposed to do about it? Maybe nothing. But if you are an establishment figure, certainly don’t lie about it and further destroy our society’s trust in experts.
baryphonic 4y ago
I know you're making a rhetorical point, but I found a thread I remembered from May 2020 where I both said that the wet market theory was shit[1] and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology/Wuhan CDC needed to be investigated without widespread censorship.[0] At the time, it was not exactly well-received. Someone accused me of throwing out so many lies that reasonable people couldn't even rebut it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038503 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041871
- hoseja 4y ago
  Hopefully that person is enjoying their 50 cents.
yellowapple 4y ago
Were any of these "theories" (they're hypotheses, at best) ever mutually exclusive? It seems entirely possible - and maybe even probable - that SARS-CoV-2: - Originally evolved in the wild to at least some extent - Was being studied in a lab and escaped - Found its way into a wet market near said lab
- roelschroeven 4y ago
  They were not really mutually exclusive, but were often portrayed as such. The lab leak theory got confused with the intentionally fabricated theory, probably as a strawman argument to discredit the lab leak theory. For what it's worth, your scenario seems to me the most probably by far. I don't think we'll ever know for sure, since China has done it's best to destroy all evidence (we should be careful not to take that fact as evidence for one theory or another though).
- areyousure 4y ago
  Your example chain of events would be called "lab leak".
  - woooooo 4y ago
    But the lab is completely superfluous to the chain of events. It's jammed in the middle so we can still say "lab leak".
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      How so? Suppose a lab worker went to a cave hundreds of miles away and collected a bunch of bats. Those bats were returned to the lab. At some point a different lab worker exposed himself to one of the bat carcasses and caught proto-Covid-19. Three days later he stopped at the wet market on the way home from work to pick up dinner and infected patients 1-5. In what way is the lab in this scenario superfluous? If it had better and enforced protocols for handling potentially infected specimens there would have been no pandemic.
      - 4y ago
georgeplusplus 4y ago
>>> This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences Aint this the dang truth.
- coding123 4y ago
  How big the sway ones political affiliation is drove all of that
- lazyeye 4y ago
  It's but just one example of the firehose of garbage aimed at us every waking moment.
plutonorm 4y ago
[flagged]
freejazz 4y ago
> Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? Ah, the ol' litigating my personal grievances with society at large, with a particular individual that has nothing to do with it at all...

WaxProlix 4y ago

I saw a lot of folks saying that the theories all kinda stank at the time, and to wait and see. Interestingly, a lot of folks also kept quiet and didn't champion any theories. Maybe I can link you to a lack of comment two years ago to back up my bona fides?

rjzzleep 4y ago
Normally when you try to solve a serious problem in a small company you might want to know who caused the problem, but most of the times you just need to know it wasn't intentional and you focus on addressing the outcome and making sure it never happens again. In big enterprises usually solving the problem is secondary to finding who the culprit is so that all future problems can be blamed on that department. China and the US are both like big enterprises. None of them is actually focused on making sure all the problems that happened will not happen again. People are just focused on blaming their domestic shit on the other. China releases a strategy paper on US hegemony, US brings the lab leak theory back into the spotlight. It doesn't really matter if there was valid research on that theory. The fact that the major newspapers come out with it 1 day after China releases their stuff, shows you it's political. It may be right, it may be wrong, an unintended leak has always been a very likely on the list for me. It's not like lack of security in labs hasn't been an issue in the US, in China and in a bunch of labs in Europe for that matter. Probably other countries are way worse. The point isn't whether it's right or wrong, the point is that the goal isn't to solve the problem, but exclusively to assert blame.
tootie 4y ago
It seems that lo these many years later all the theories are still full of holes. Lab leak is plausible but there's no public evidence to back it. Somehow the DOE thinks they have something but we haven't seen it. Just based on history, zoonotic remains most likely but no host has been found.
- Retric 4y ago
  There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories, but there isn’t a smoking gun. That’s the kind of nuance that’s easy to ignore in favor of your preconceived notions because weak evidence is rarely worth changing your mind over. At a practical level I don’t think there’s much difference between the lab link being a 7% chance vs a 70% chance. What’s more concerning is the potential of future leaks and what responses they might result in. The possibility that local officials get in CYA mode over a possible lab leak of a more dangerous virus is seriously concerning.
  - tootie 4y ago
    "There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories," None that I've seen. And the possibility of a future leak is probably unrelated to the possibility of this one having been a leak.
    - Retric 4y ago
      “None that I’ve seen.” Which has little to do with the existence of said evidence. I’ve never seen direct evidence for the year Columbus sailed. Anyway, many things that would make future leaks less likely also make past leaks less likely. The types of experiments being conducted and the types of labs those experiments are conducted in. Oversight, funding, and systems for reporting safety issues etc etc.
      - tootie 4y ago
        I'm responding to you saying there's evidence. To what were you referring?
        Retric 4y ago
        The evidence used by the Energy Department in their assessment.
        4y ago
kordlessagain 4y ago
When it hit, I took the first Wuhan sequence and ran it through some Python and pulled out string repeats in nucleotides. I then searched for those repeated sequences in Google and found the NIH lab in Maryland was doing research on how to better infect mice or rats with a substitution technique for twiddling into a cell's ports. So, it's entirely plausible, but without proof it isn't scientific.

hotpotamus 4y ago

What was the origin of Bubonic Plague, of AIDS, of Polio? Do we know in sufficient detail? I remember many saying that the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 may never be known. Say it did escape from a Chinese lab - is that all you need to know? Or would you want to know how it came to be in the lab in the first place?

bradleyjg 4y ago
I remember articles and quotes firmly rejecting the lab leak hypothesis and darkly implying that those championing the theory had a hidden agenda. The considerations were: — there were random attacks on Asians - public health officials and scientists were worried about an anti science backlash - virologists were really worried about a backlash against virology — relations with China had not yet deteriorated to their current levels and government leaders didn’t want to antagonize them So there was a semi-coordinated effort by government officials and the scientific establishment to put the lab leak theory beyond the pale. The middlebrow media either wittingly or unwittingly went along for the ride. Their readership ate it up.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  There were and are problematic elements of the lab leak people as well - I still see people (on this site) who claim that some or all aspects of the virus were synthetically created at the behest of Anthony Fauci. You may say I'm nutpicking, but I truly have a hard time determining what the lab leak theory is sometimes. But my sense was that the agenda behind the lab leak family of theories was to lay blame at some human or humans for the events of the pandemic, which to me seems like a fairly futile endeavor. One of my questions for these people has always been this: say their darkest theories are correct; what am I supposed to do about that? It seems that the best course of action was to wear masks, socially isolate as much as possible, and get vaccinated and keep getting vaccinations as new strains appear.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    It’s one thing for nutjobs to push a bad theory for some whacky reason and another thing entirely for establishment figures to shade the truth in order to push a (positive!) agenda. We have so many nutjobs, in part, because of generations of establishment figures being dishonest for the greater good. Lab leak was always a better theory. There were what hundreds? thousands? of wet markets across China and two bsl-4 labs. Given that the virus arose in a city with a wet market and a bsl-4 lab, the prior should be that it had to do with the lab and not the wet market. That could be overcome with evidence, of course, but it is not some out there idea. What are you supposed to do about it? Maybe nothing. But if you are an establishment figure, certainly don’t lie about it and further destroy our society’s trust in experts.

baryphonic 4y ago

I know you're making a rhetorical point, but I found a thread I remembered from May 2020 where I both said that the wet market theory was shit[1] and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology/Wuhan CDC needed to be investigated without widespread censorship.[0] At the time, it was not exactly well-received. Someone accused me of throwing out so many lies that reasonable people couldn't even rebut it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038503 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041871

hoseja 4y ago
Hopefully that person is enjoying their 50 cents.

yellowapple 4y ago

Were any of these "theories" (they're hypotheses, at best) ever mutually exclusive? It seems entirely possible - and maybe even probable - that SARS-CoV-2: - Originally evolved in the wild to at least some extent - Was being studied in a lab and escaped - Found its way into a wet market near said lab

roelschroeven 4y ago
They were not really mutually exclusive, but were often portrayed as such. The lab leak theory got confused with the intentionally fabricated theory, probably as a strawman argument to discredit the lab leak theory. For what it's worth, your scenario seems to me the most probably by far. I don't think we'll ever know for sure, since China has done it's best to destroy all evidence (we should be careful not to take that fact as evidence for one theory or another though).
areyousure 4y ago
Your example chain of events would be called "lab leak".
- woooooo 4y ago
  But the lab is completely superfluous to the chain of events. It's jammed in the middle so we can still say "lab leak".
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    How so? Suppose a lab worker went to a cave hundreds of miles away and collected a bunch of bats. Those bats were returned to the lab. At some point a different lab worker exposed himself to one of the bat carcasses and caught proto-Covid-19. Three days later he stopped at the wet market on the way home from work to pick up dinner and infected patients 1-5. In what way is the lab in this scenario superfluous? If it had better and enforced protocols for handling potentially infected specimens there would have been no pandemic.
    - 4y ago

georgeplusplus 4y ago

>>> This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences Aint this the dang truth.

coding123 4y ago
How big the sway ones political affiliation is drove all of that
lazyeye 4y ago
It's but just one example of the firehose of garbage aimed at us every waking moment.

plutonorm 4y ago

[flagged]

freejazz 4y ago

> Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? Ah, the ol' litigating my personal grievances with society at large, with a particular individual that has nothing to do with it at all...