4 ms·

> nearly impossible to disprove lab leak is dead simple to disprove. all you have to do is find an animal that you can infect with covid and will spread it and

> nearly impossible to disprove lab leak is dead simple to disprove. all you have to do is find an animal that you can infect with covid and will spread it and you have your proof. many people have been spending a lot of money for years trying to do this and the longer they continue to fail the higher the probability of lab leak becomes.

elicash 3y ago
I think you misunderstood my comment. In that scenario, it still wouldn't rule out the possibility of a lab leak, since like I said they still could have been studying that natural origin inside of a lab.
- metalspot 3y ago
  > still wouldn't rule out the possibility of a lab leak but finding an animal that can spread covid with a plausible story for how it cross over to humans in wuhan is a threshold that has not been crossed yet. if anyone could meet that threshold test it would be treated as proof of natural origin. but supposing that it was a natural virus that came from an animal in the lab at wuhan then it would be very easy for people with access to that information to identify the natural source, and since that has not happened, it means the virus is either from a natural source that was not in the lab, or it was created in the lab. the longer time that passes without finding a natural source outside the lab the more likely it is that it was created in the lab.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > the longer time that passes without finding a natural source outside the lab the more likely it is that it was created in the lab. This is not correct. It may well be that the evidence existed but was lost. The idea that biology will just sit around and wait until we catch up with it is fundamentally mistaken. Some things happen just once and that's that. Some things happen all the time and you can observe them as they happen. Some things leave ample evidence. Biology is not a static system, it isn't a computer program and it isn't a piece of hardware. Your 'bug' may simply not be reproducible even if it in fact did occur just once.
    - metalspot 3y ago
      > the evidence existed but was lost if the virus crossed over from animals to humans then it must be able to cross back over. viruses evolve quickly, but animals don't, and we have plenty of samples of the original virus. all you have to do is find the right species and infect them with a sample of the virus and show that they can spread it to prove natural origin. the only scenario where your theory could be true is if the origin species suddenly went extinct after starting the pandemic, which is very improbable.
ceejayoz 3y ago
> all you have to do is find an animal that you can infect with covid and will spread it https://news.osu.edu/covid-19-virus-is-evolving-rapidly-in-white-tailed-deer/ https://news.osu.edu/covid-19-virus-is-evolving-rapidly-in-w... "Scientists collected 1,522 nasal swabs from free-ranging deer in 83 of the state’s 88 counties between November 2021 and March 2022. More than 10% of the samples were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and at least one positive case was found in 59% of the counties in which testing took place. Genomic analysis showed that at least 30 infections in deer had been introduced by humans – a figure that surprised the research team." “And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn’t radically surprising. It’s probably not a one-way pipeline.” Still, this doesn't disprove a lab leak; it proves something other than a lab leak is plausible.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  But humans infected the white tailed deer, and guess what when humans passed on SARS2 to different species it did not suddenly stop circulating within humans which seems to have been the case with SARS2. For SARS2 we have a single spillover event hundreds of miles away from the nearest SARS reservoir and then some how the strain that was circulating in whatever intermediate host it may have come from simply vanished! Despite being so extremely infectious SARS2's spillover seems to be a case of an immaculate infection! But like virgin births, I find immaculate infections to be implausible.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > But humans infected the white tailed deer Thus providing clear evidence this virus jumps fairly readily between mammals. (Especially when you count that it has also been found to have jumped to quite a few other animals; cats, dogs, hippos, anteaters, manatees; it's clearly not picky. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...) > guess what when humans passed on SARS2 to different species it did not suddenly stop circulating within humans which seems to have been the case with SARS2 I assure you that SARS2 is still circulating within humans, lol. > For SARS2 we have a single spillover event hundreds of miles away from the nearest SARS reservoir Not being the same disease, this isn't all that surprising. > some how the strain that was circulating in whatever intermediate host it may have come from simply vanished "Hard to find" is not the same as "vanished". We've never conclusively found the reservoir for Ebola, either. Not for lack of trying.

elicash 3y ago

I think you misunderstood my comment. In that scenario, it still wouldn't rule out the possibility of a lab leak, since like I said they still could have been studying that natural origin inside of a lab.

metalspot 3y ago
> still wouldn't rule out the possibility of a lab leak but finding an animal that can spread covid with a plausible story for how it cross over to humans in wuhan is a threshold that has not been crossed yet. if anyone could meet that threshold test it would be treated as proof of natural origin. but supposing that it was a natural virus that came from an animal in the lab at wuhan then it would be very easy for people with access to that information to identify the natural source, and since that has not happened, it means the virus is either from a natural source that was not in the lab, or it was created in the lab. the longer time that passes without finding a natural source outside the lab the more likely it is that it was created in the lab.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > the longer time that passes without finding a natural source outside the lab the more likely it is that it was created in the lab. This is not correct. It may well be that the evidence existed but was lost. The idea that biology will just sit around and wait until we catch up with it is fundamentally mistaken. Some things happen just once and that's that. Some things happen all the time and you can observe them as they happen. Some things leave ample evidence. Biology is not a static system, it isn't a computer program and it isn't a piece of hardware. Your 'bug' may simply not be reproducible even if it in fact did occur just once.
  - metalspot 3y ago
    > the evidence existed but was lost if the virus crossed over from animals to humans then it must be able to cross back over. viruses evolve quickly, but animals don't, and we have plenty of samples of the original virus. all you have to do is find the right species and infect them with a sample of the virus and show that they can spread it to prove natural origin. the only scenario where your theory could be true is if the origin species suddenly went extinct after starting the pandemic, which is very improbable.

ceejayoz 3y ago

> all you have to do is find an animal that you can infect with covid and will spread it https://news.osu.edu/covid-19-virus-is-evolving-rapidly-in-white-tailed-deer/ https://news.osu.edu/covid-19-virus-is-evolving-rapidly-in-w... "Scientists collected 1,522 nasal swabs from free-ranging deer in 83 of the state’s 88 counties between November 2021 and March 2022. More than 10% of the samples were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and at least one positive case was found in 59% of the counties in which testing took place. Genomic analysis showed that at least 30 infections in deer had been introduced by humans – a figure that surprised the research team." “And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn’t radically surprising. It’s probably not a one-way pipeline.” Still, this doesn't disprove a lab leak; it proves something other than a lab leak is plausible.

baja_blast 3y ago
But humans infected the white tailed deer, and guess what when humans passed on SARS2 to different species it did not suddenly stop circulating within humans which seems to have been the case with SARS2. For SARS2 we have a single spillover event hundreds of miles away from the nearest SARS reservoir and then some how the strain that was circulating in whatever intermediate host it may have come from simply vanished! Despite being so extremely infectious SARS2's spillover seems to be a case of an immaculate infection! But like virgin births, I find immaculate infections to be implausible.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > But humans infected the white tailed deer Thus providing clear evidence this virus jumps fairly readily between mammals. (Especially when you count that it has also been found to have jumped to quite a few other animals; cats, dogs, hippos, anteaters, manatees; it's clearly not picky. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...) > guess what when humans passed on SARS2 to different species it did not suddenly stop circulating within humans which seems to have been the case with SARS2 I assure you that SARS2 is still circulating within humans, lol. > For SARS2 we have a single spillover event hundreds of miles away from the nearest SARS reservoir Not being the same disease, this isn't all that surprising. > some how the strain that was circulating in whatever intermediate host it may have come from simply vanished "Hard to find" is not the same as "vanished". We've never conclusively found the reservoir for Ebola, either. Not for lack of trying.