5 ms·
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
by 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 agoThis 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 agoNo. 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 agoEveryone 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 agoWe 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.
- biophysboy 3y agoTwo of the points are lack of evidence; these would be more compelling to me if I felt that our viral surveillance was robust. The first point is circumstantial like the wet market evidence. Good evidence would be covid positive samples. We cant go back in time and collect this.
- biophysboy 3y agoTheres definitely lots of evidence: COVID on surfaces, animals that can catch COVID photographed in the market, cases surrounding/emerging from this point. But the smoking gun would be a covid positive sample from one of the animals, which we can’t get. This is what I mean by the evidence always being a little cloudy.
- oneshtein 3y agoCOVID jumped from humans to animals lot of times already. Whole animal farms were cleaned out.
- biophysboy 3y agoI should have clarified - COVID positive samples collected at the time and place of origin