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Why would we trust data authored by the lab leader who would be severely punished by China if she were to release data implicating China and therefore contradic

Why would we trust data authored by the lab leader who would be severely punished by China if she were to release data implicating China and therefore contradicting the CCP? It’s as though we would trust [athlete accused of doping] of publishing results from a blood test they performed on themselves to confirm the accusations. 3rd party lab inspectors were restricted from the lab for a significant time.

Clubber 2y ago
"The police investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing."
mgraczyk 2y ago
You can read the actual scientific content of the article and decide for yourself EDIT: When it released, seems like they have not published yet
y-c-o-m-b 2y ago
This and the fact that the initial WHO research team was closely regulated in their activities by the Chinese government, with the WHO later being denied access to data and further analysis. China has delayed and denied independent analysis. They burned trust when it was most important to the investigation. They are not to be trusted. I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is, but it must be absolutely astronomical considering China has only 2 such labs in a country that spans 3.6 million square miles. EDIT: Correction, looks like there's 4 (now?) BSL-4 facilities: https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map My point still stands
- viraptor 2y ago
  > I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is Much higher than random. The location of the laboratory was close to the researched organisms, specifically bats. It also means that people had close contact with bats, on purpose, much more than in other areas. This does not make any source more likely by itself. But there's a decent correlation why we see research on X right next to where we find X.
  - tripletao 2y ago
    Do you know where you got this idea? I've seen it endlessly repeated, but I've been unable to trace it to any authoritative source. In any case, it's completely wrong. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect natural spillover anywhere near Wuhan: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q%26A.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien... She could be wrong, but the idea that she chose her work location based on the natural abundance of sarbecoviruses is unequivocally false. The BSL-4 also isn't very relevant. As described in the link above, the WIV worked at BSL-2, with correspondingly greater risk of an incident if one of their viruses turned out to infect humans. The point of extraordinary coincidence is their collection of novel sarbecoviruses, which was the biggest anywhere in the world.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Parent was asking about "catastrophic outbreak" not about COVID specifically. Other labs are not relevant in this calculation either. The question was about the likelihood of outbreak being colocated with a research facility and I stand by the answer - higher than random.
      - tripletao 2y ago
        We're talking about SARS-CoV-2. We know that's a sarbecovirus, and we know the WIV had the world's largest collection of sarbecoviruses. That's the extraordinary coincidence that has prompted all of this debate. Your comment clearly implied that wasn't actually so surprising, because the WIV was located in a place where natural zoonosis was also believed to be more likely. That's completely false though, per the comments I've quoted from Dr. Shi herself. It's certainly possible that other labs are deliberately located close to natural populations of the other organisms they're studying. That's not relevant in a discussion of the WIV and sarbecoviruses, though. There's no reason except obfuscation to shift focus to some broader question when we have facts specific to SARS-CoV-2. In case you wish to clarify: Do you agree that specifically as to SARS-CoV-2, the probability of natural zoonosis near Wuhan was no higher than (and actually lower than, per Dr. Shi) random?
- 0-_-0 2y ago
  > don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is This should give you an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
- fsh 2y ago
  Wuhan has a BSL-4 lab since 2018, but it wasn't used for coronavirus research. Most unversity cities have virology groups, and coronaviruses became a popular research subject after SARS, particularly in China. The probability of finding a coronavirus researcher group in any large Chinese city was probably fairly large in 2019.
  - tripletao 2y ago
    This greatly understates the WIV's uniqueness here. Lots of groups study coronaviruses, but the WIV had the biggest collection of novel SARS-related viruses in the world. The proximal host of SARS-1 was found soon after the first outbreaks, but its origin in bats wasn't known until Dr. Shi discovered it. The WIV had also proposed collaboration with UNC to engineer a virus structurally similar to SARS-CoV-2, a chimera of two novel sarbecoviruses with a human-designed FCS. This wasn't funded, but an unconfirmed leak claims the WIV continued this work alone: > The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-pandemic-china-america-qhjwwwvm0 https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-p...
- tim333 2y ago
  And beyond the location near the lab there are some other things that would be a bit of a coincidence.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Yeah I’m afraid we may never find out the whole truth unless some whistleblower sneaks out with a bunch of evidence or some new genetic techniques come about that let us know without a doubt it was man-made rather than various credible sources saying “most likely it was engineered”
edm0nd 2y ago
The fact is you simply cannot trust any data coming out from China. The Chinese government even routinely lies about their GDP.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
I think if you're at the point where the only thing you can say is "I don't believe you" or "you made up the data", you're at the point where you have nothing on which to base your suspicions. Just suspicions. And suspicions alone do not a good hypothesis make.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- patrickhogan1 2y ago
  Dismissing suspicions just because they are suspicions is itself irrational. When the circumstances are suspicious and the event is already highly probable, those suspicions hold weight.

Clubber 2y ago

"The police investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing."

mgraczyk 2y ago

You can read the actual scientific content of the article and decide for yourself EDIT: When it released, seems like they have not published yet

y-c-o-m-b 2y ago

This and the fact that the initial WHO research team was closely regulated in their activities by the Chinese government, with the WHO later being denied access to data and further analysis. China has delayed and denied independent analysis. They burned trust when it was most important to the investigation. They are not to be trusted. I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is, but it must be absolutely astronomical considering China has only 2 such labs in a country that spans 3.6 million square miles. EDIT: Correction, looks like there's 4 (now?) BSL-4 facilities: https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map My point still stands

viraptor 2y ago
> I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is Much higher than random. The location of the laboratory was close to the researched organisms, specifically bats. It also means that people had close contact with bats, on purpose, much more than in other areas. This does not make any source more likely by itself. But there's a decent correlation why we see research on X right next to where we find X.
- tripletao 2y ago
  Do you know where you got this idea? I've seen it endlessly repeated, but I've been unable to trace it to any authoritative source. In any case, it's completely wrong. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect natural spillover anywhere near Wuhan: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q%26A.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien... She could be wrong, but the idea that she chose her work location based on the natural abundance of sarbecoviruses is unequivocally false. The BSL-4 also isn't very relevant. As described in the link above, the WIV worked at BSL-2, with correspondingly greater risk of an incident if one of their viruses turned out to infect humans. The point of extraordinary coincidence is their collection of novel sarbecoviruses, which was the biggest anywhere in the world.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Parent was asking about "catastrophic outbreak" not about COVID specifically. Other labs are not relevant in this calculation either. The question was about the likelihood of outbreak being colocated with a research facility and I stand by the answer - higher than random.
    - tripletao 2y ago
      We're talking about SARS-CoV-2. We know that's a sarbecovirus, and we know the WIV had the world's largest collection of sarbecoviruses. That's the extraordinary coincidence that has prompted all of this debate. Your comment clearly implied that wasn't actually so surprising, because the WIV was located in a place where natural zoonosis was also believed to be more likely. That's completely false though, per the comments I've quoted from Dr. Shi herself. It's certainly possible that other labs are deliberately located close to natural populations of the other organisms they're studying. That's not relevant in a discussion of the WIV and sarbecoviruses, though. There's no reason except obfuscation to shift focus to some broader question when we have facts specific to SARS-CoV-2. In case you wish to clarify: Do you agree that specifically as to SARS-CoV-2, the probability of natural zoonosis near Wuhan was no higher than (and actually lower than, per Dr. Shi) random?
0-_-0 2y ago
> don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is This should give you an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
fsh 2y ago
Wuhan has a BSL-4 lab since 2018, but it wasn't used for coronavirus research. Most unversity cities have virology groups, and coronaviruses became a popular research subject after SARS, particularly in China. The probability of finding a coronavirus researcher group in any large Chinese city was probably fairly large in 2019.
- tripletao 2y ago
  This greatly understates the WIV's uniqueness here. Lots of groups study coronaviruses, but the WIV had the biggest collection of novel SARS-related viruses in the world. The proximal host of SARS-1 was found soon after the first outbreaks, but its origin in bats wasn't known until Dr. Shi discovered it. The WIV had also proposed collaboration with UNC to engineer a virus structurally similar to SARS-CoV-2, a chimera of two novel sarbecoviruses with a human-designed FCS. This wasn't funded, but an unconfirmed leak claims the WIV continued this work alone: > The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-pandemic-china-america-qhjwwwvm0 https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-p...
tim333 2y ago
And beyond the location near the lab there are some other things that would be a bit of a coincidence.
EasyMark 2y ago
Yeah I’m afraid we may never find out the whole truth unless some whistleblower sneaks out with a bunch of evidence or some new genetic techniques come about that let us know without a doubt it was man-made rather than various credible sources saying “most likely it was engineered”

edm0nd 2y ago

The fact is you simply cannot trust any data coming out from China. The Chinese government even routinely lies about their GDP.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago

I think if you're at the point where the only thing you can say is "I don't believe you" or "you made up the data", you're at the point where you have nothing on which to base your suspicions. Just suspicions. And suspicions alone do not a good hypothesis make.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
patrickhogan1 2y ago
Dismissing suspicions just because they are suspicions is itself irrational. When the circumstances are suspicious and the event is already highly probable, those suspicions hold weight.