8 ms·

If 90% of people agree to a position to appease a few people in power, then it's not really consensus, it's coercion. The topic of COVID's origin is so politica

If 90% of people agree to a position to appease a few people in power, then it's not really consensus, it's coercion. The topic of COVID's origin is so politically charged, that many people can't state their opinion (or even their facts!) without upsetting someone in charge. That someone may not even be in their own country. As a random example, Australia was hit with punitive tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of exports to China for merely suggesting that it might be an idea to investigate the origins of COVID. Similarly, there has been a whole lot of silence coming from the Chinese scientific community. The zoonitic origin theory is the position of the Chinese government, and hence, essentially by law, it is also the position of the scientific community. The Chinese government doesn't have to bother with such trifles as evidence, facts, or even putting on the pretence of an investigation. They ruled, the matter is closed, there is now consensus. If you want to know what real power looks like, look no further than this. We'll now never know where COVID came from definitively, and scientists in other countries are keeping their opinions to themselves, or risking their careers to speak up.

hotdogscout 3y ago
Please take a look at this analysis if you can. https://youtu.be/hhMAt3BluAU https://youtu.be/hhMAt3BluAU
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> The topic of COVID's origin is so politically charged, that many people can't state their opinion (or even their facts!) without upsetting someone in charge. Except that it is stated, it is discussed, and it has been all along. You want everyone who states any opinion to get a nice silk bag with some lovely gifts in it? Sorry, doesn't work that way. Nothing has stopped lab-leak theorists from publically stating their case, both in general media and in scientific contexts. Some people are upset about that, because they consider their case to be bullshit, or at best just very unlikely to be correct. It's not a 3 year old's birthday party. These are substantive questions, and the disagreements are going to hit hard. If you want kumbaya science, stay away from anything that involves (a) differences of interpretation and (b) real world implications.
- philwelch 3y ago
  > Nothing has stopped lab-leak theorists from publically stating their case, both in general media and in scientific contexts. The “misinformation” policies of major social media companies did exactly that.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    So how is that a majority of Americans believe the lab-leak theory?
fasterik 3y ago
>If 90% of people agree to a position to appease a few people in power, then it's not really consensus, it's coercion. It's a pretty big assumption to assume that's the reason why scientists outside of China believe in a zoonotic origin, rather than it simply being the case that the weight of available evidence leans in favor of a zoonotic origin. That evidence includes the fact that the earliest confirmed cases clustered around the seafood market, and that there were two separate lineages of the virus found in humans, suggesting multiple zoonotic spillover events. We will never know with 100% certainty what really happened. The scientists working on this have always acknowledged that uncertainty and have never said the probability of a lab leak was zero. I just think the reality is a lot more boring than you're making it out to be.
- tripletao 3y ago
  > and that there were two separate lineages of the virus found in humans The "two lineages" are two mutations (SNPs) apart, and SARS-CoV-2 averages something around a third of an SNP per human-to-human transmission. So intuitively, it would seem near-impossible to distinguish two spillovers from a mutation during early, unsampled human spread. Pekar et al. built a complicated numerical model that purports to; but it's filled with arbitrary parameter choices, and no model of that form has ever demonstrated significant predictive value. See the criticisms at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511625v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511625v1 https://nitter.net/nizzaneela/status/1677583662836056065#m https://nitter.net/nizzaneela/status/1677583662836056065#m > The scientists working on this have always acknowledged that uncertainty and have never said the probability of a lab leak was zero. I've linked here to a Lancet correspondence where top scientists "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin". I guess that's not quite the same thing as "probability zero"; but isn't it even worse?
  - fasterik 3y ago
    Sure, scientists can continue to debate the fine points of these issues. The evidence doesn't hinge on the two lineages argument. The following review paper lists a bunch of other reasons why a zoonotic spillover is more likely including genomic structure, similarity to other endemic coronaviruses which had zoonotic origins, epidemiological evidence surrounding the seafood market, etc. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf Notice that the review seriously considers the possibility of a lab leak, indicating that this wasn't some off-limits topic even back in 2021. The Lancet letter cites evidence of a natural origin and condemns conspiracy theories. I think that's still largely consistent with the current consensus. Since none of the known samples at the WIV were related to SARS-CoV-2, by definition the truth of the lab leak hypothesis would imply a conspiracy and coverup. I don't think "strongly condemning" something is the same as suppressing public debate about it.

hotdogscout 3y ago

Please take a look at this analysis if you can. https://youtu.be/hhMAt3BluAU https://youtu.be/hhMAt3BluAU

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> The topic of COVID's origin is so politically charged, that many people can't state their opinion (or even their facts!) without upsetting someone in charge. Except that it is stated, it is discussed, and it has been all along. You want everyone who states any opinion to get a nice silk bag with some lovely gifts in it? Sorry, doesn't work that way. Nothing has stopped lab-leak theorists from publically stating their case, both in general media and in scientific contexts. Some people are upset about that, because they consider their case to be bullshit, or at best just very unlikely to be correct. It's not a 3 year old's birthday party. These are substantive questions, and the disagreements are going to hit hard. If you want kumbaya science, stay away from anything that involves (a) differences of interpretation and (b) real world implications.

philwelch 3y ago
> Nothing has stopped lab-leak theorists from publically stating their case, both in general media and in scientific contexts. The “misinformation” policies of major social media companies did exactly that.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  So how is that a majority of Americans believe the lab-leak theory?

fasterik 3y ago

>If 90% of people agree to a position to appease a few people in power, then it's not really consensus, it's coercion. It's a pretty big assumption to assume that's the reason why scientists outside of China believe in a zoonotic origin, rather than it simply being the case that the weight of available evidence leans in favor of a zoonotic origin. That evidence includes the fact that the earliest confirmed cases clustered around the seafood market, and that there were two separate lineages of the virus found in humans, suggesting multiple zoonotic spillover events. We will never know with 100% certainty what really happened. The scientists working on this have always acknowledged that uncertainty and have never said the probability of a lab leak was zero. I just think the reality is a lot more boring than you're making it out to be.

tripletao 3y ago
> and that there were two separate lineages of the virus found in humans The "two lineages" are two mutations (SNPs) apart, and SARS-CoV-2 averages something around a third of an SNP per human-to-human transmission. So intuitively, it would seem near-impossible to distinguish two spillovers from a mutation during early, unsampled human spread. Pekar et al. built a complicated numerical model that purports to; but it's filled with arbitrary parameter choices, and no model of that form has ever demonstrated significant predictive value. See the criticisms at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511625v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511625v1 https://nitter.net/nizzaneela/status/1677583662836056065#m https://nitter.net/nizzaneela/status/1677583662836056065#m > The scientists working on this have always acknowledged that uncertainty and have never said the probability of a lab leak was zero. I've linked here to a Lancet correspondence where top scientists "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin". I guess that's not quite the same thing as "probability zero"; but isn't it even worse?
- fasterik 3y ago
  Sure, scientists can continue to debate the fine points of these issues. The evidence doesn't hinge on the two lineages argument. The following review paper lists a bunch of other reasons why a zoonotic spillover is more likely including genomic structure, similarity to other endemic coronaviruses which had zoonotic origins, epidemiological evidence surrounding the seafood market, etc. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf Notice that the review seriously considers the possibility of a lab leak, indicating that this wasn't some off-limits topic even back in 2021. The Lancet letter cites evidence of a natural origin and condemns conspiracy theories. I think that's still largely consistent with the current consensus. Since none of the known samples at the WIV were related to SARS-CoV-2, by definition the truth of the lab leak hypothesis would imply a conspiracy and coverup. I don't think "strongly condemning" something is the same as suppressing public debate about it.