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One thing that dulls my interest in this debate is my doubt that it will ever get “resolved”. We dont have sequence samples at the time of covids origin. China

One thing that dulls my interest in this debate is my doubt that it will ever get “resolved”. We dont have sequence samples at the time of covids origin. China is never going to cooperate on giving more circumstantial evidence. So we cant really do any phylogenetic or epidemiological analysis at the level of spatial precision that this would require. The data is extremely fuzzy where it needs to be sharp. In my opinion, this is the real thing stalling this debate, not politics.

mrguyorama 3y ago
There's really no reason to care about which of the two prevailing theories are right, because they have the exact same outcome: Whether it came from the chinese lab or the chinese wet market, china will not let anyone know, and they have no intention of letting anyone else tell them how to prevent it in the future. We cannot make them run their bio labs safer, and we cannot force them to prevent a natural source without something stupid like extreme sanctions or war. So instead, we could look at the ways we utterly fucked up when presented with a novel pathogen that we absolutely could have handled better. But oddly nobody who is so gung ho about punishing china for covid seems to want to look at that. Wonder why
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  A lab leak implies that we should cease funding work at WIV — and examine the officials responsible for doing so in the first place. Perhaps even reconsider our entire approach to pandemic research, if our decisions led to the worst pandemic in generations.
  - defen 3y ago
    > A lab leak implies that we should cease funding work at WIV WIV was defunded by the US 2 days ago https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-halts-funding-access-wuhan-lab-heart-covid/story?id=101499843 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-halts-funding-access-wuhan-...
krisoft 3y ago
> China is never going to cooperate on giving more circumstantial evidence > In my opinion, this is the real thing stalling this debate, not politics. But isn’t that politics? (International politics to be precise.)
- biophysboy 3y ago
  Yeah I guess I contradicted myself somewhat. Im specifically referring to the domestic politics that Nate Silver is talking about, not Chinese politics.
wredue 3y ago
I’m really not sure what you mean. There is literally zero evidence supporting a lab leak, while there’s multitudes of evidence of multiple contact leaps in the market. Was there a time when the lab leak theory had the same credibility as it being naturally occurring in poor unsanitary market conditions? I’d personally say no, but for the sake of argument, forgetting basic tenants like “the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one”, let’s say that early on, both had little measurable credibility. Now though, early contact tracing shows the earliest contractions are clustered to the market, and that the virus leaped across species multiple times during early phase. This is not a coincidence and it is also not what we’d expect from a lab leak. The lab leak theory is conspiracy theory. Full stop.
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  This sounds like "your theory is outside the Overton window, you are not allowed to think this". The simplest version of the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy, it is very literally the opposite: "never ascribe to conspiracy what is adequately explained by incompetence". We had warnings, in writing, about the very lab in question, from western scientists, that the safety standards there were insufficient.
  - wredue 3y ago
    No. There is evidence to support that it naturally occurred through contact tracing due to the large clustered concentration of outbreak within the confines of the market. There is no evidence to support a lab leak. This is not “your theory is outside the Overton window”. It is you attempting to shift the Overton window intentionally.
- TheBigSalad 3y ago
  Everyone is in agreement that the first known super spreader event was at that market. I don't really see how that's evidence one way or the other.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  We don’t have zero evidence: - we know of the US funding collection of coronaviruses at WIV; and research on them using humanized mice - we know that the closest genetic match is a thousand miles away - we’ve been unable to identify the precursor in an animal, unlike other pandemics That strongly implies that directed evolution on a collected sample via repeated infection of humanized mice is responsible for COVID. Contrary to your claims, there’s evidence against a zoonotic origin — no precursor, high human infectivity (of alpha) that rapidly decreased in the wild (in delta and omicron), unusual genetics around the furin cleavage, etc.
gunapologist99 3y ago
Then why didn't the scientists simply say 'we lack the data to conclusively resolve'? There was a specific reason why they didn't -- and in fact promoted a specific theory, and it had more to do with politics and funding than science.
- biophysboy 3y ago
  I mean the answer is obvious to me: reputational “skin in the game”. Lab leak is an extremely specific assertion that someone else could easily criticize.
  - gunapologist99 3y ago
    Out of an infinite number of possibilities that are encompassed by "we lack the data to answer the question", you picked lab leak as a strawman, which is very interesting.
    - biophysboy 3y ago
      Dont understand this

mrguyorama 3y ago

There's really no reason to care about which of the two prevailing theories are right, because they have the exact same outcome: Whether it came from the chinese lab or the chinese wet market, china will not let anyone know, and they have no intention of letting anyone else tell them how to prevent it in the future. We cannot make them run their bio labs safer, and we cannot force them to prevent a natural source without something stupid like extreme sanctions or war. So instead, we could look at the ways we utterly fucked up when presented with a novel pathogen that we absolutely could have handled better. But oddly nobody who is so gung ho about punishing china for covid seems to want to look at that. Wonder why

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zmgsabst 3y ago
A lab leak implies that we should cease funding work at WIV — and examine the officials responsible for doing so in the first place. Perhaps even reconsider our entire approach to pandemic research, if our decisions led to the worst pandemic in generations.
- defen 3y ago
  > A lab leak implies that we should cease funding work at WIV WIV was defunded by the US 2 days ago https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-halts-funding-access-wuhan-lab-heart-covid/story?id=101499843 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-halts-funding-access-wuhan-...

krisoft 3y ago

> China is never going to cooperate on giving more circumstantial evidence > In my opinion, this is the real thing stalling this debate, not politics. But isn’t that politics? (International politics to be precise.)

biophysboy 3y ago
Yeah I guess I contradicted myself somewhat. Im specifically referring to the domestic politics that Nate Silver is talking about, not Chinese politics.

wredue 3y ago

I’m really not sure what you mean. There is literally zero evidence supporting a lab leak, while there’s multitudes of evidence of multiple contact leaps in the market. Was there a time when the lab leak theory had the same credibility as it being naturally occurring in poor unsanitary market conditions? I’d personally say no, but for the sake of argument, forgetting basic tenants like “the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one”, let’s say that early on, both had little measurable credibility. Now though, early contact tracing shows the earliest contractions are clustered to the market, and that the virus leaped across species multiple times during early phase. This is not a coincidence and it is also not what we’d expect from a lab leak. The lab leak theory is conspiracy theory. Full stop.

rossdavidh 3y ago
This sounds like "your theory is outside the Overton window, you are not allowed to think this". The simplest version of the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy, it is very literally the opposite: "never ascribe to conspiracy what is adequately explained by incompetence". We had warnings, in writing, about the very lab in question, from western scientists, that the safety standards there were insufficient.
- wredue 3y ago
  No. There is evidence to support that it naturally occurred through contact tracing due to the large clustered concentration of outbreak within the confines of the market. There is no evidence to support a lab leak. This is not “your theory is outside the Overton window”. It is you attempting to shift the Overton window intentionally.
TheBigSalad 3y ago
Everyone is in agreement that the first known super spreader event was at that market. I don't really see how that's evidence one way or the other.
zmgsabst 3y ago
We don’t have zero evidence: - we know of the US funding collection of coronaviruses at WIV; and research on them using humanized mice - we know that the closest genetic match is a thousand miles away - we’ve been unable to identify the precursor in an animal, unlike other pandemics That strongly implies that directed evolution on a collected sample via repeated infection of humanized mice is responsible for COVID. Contrary to your claims, there’s evidence against a zoonotic origin — no precursor, high human infectivity (of alpha) that rapidly decreased in the wild (in delta and omicron), unusual genetics around the furin cleavage, etc.

gunapologist99 3y ago

Then why didn't the scientists simply say 'we lack the data to conclusively resolve'? There was a specific reason why they didn't -- and in fact promoted a specific theory, and it had more to do with politics and funding than science.

biophysboy 3y ago
I mean the answer is obvious to me: reputational “skin in the game”. Lab leak is an extremely specific assertion that someone else could easily criticize.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  Out of an infinite number of possibilities that are encompassed by "we lack the data to answer the question", you picked lab leak as a strawman, which is very interesting.
  - biophysboy 3y ago
    Dont understand this