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This is how conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable. You're now positing that a lab worker got infected with multiple variants (which wouldn't exist in the la

This is how conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable. You're now positing that a lab worker got infected with multiple variants (which wouldn't exist in the lab, by the way, since they would work with cloned virus), then traveled across town and spread the virus at the market. The evidence all points towards a spillover (two, actually) at the market, but you can always make the lab leak theory ever more convoluted to keep it alive.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Why do you believe that lab workers only work with cloned viruses? Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there? Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. There's a good chance that the lack of safety was in the culture and not just one careless person. In November and December, several Wuhan Institute personnel were reporting unknown illnesses and took standard precautions (weeks of isolation) over it. It sounds like they weren't equipped to deal with a class of pathogens that they were working with.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  > Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there? We actually have a very good idea of what research was going on there. The groups in question publish their research, give talks at international conferences, upload the viruses they discover to US databases, talk with colleagues abroad, etc. We have a very good picture of what they were working on, and every indication is that they didn't have any virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2. > Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    > If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way. There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. Many of them got sick with something that looks vaguely like COVID and quarantined over it - this is a standard precaution when you work around weird pathogens. Social media from these workers was suppressed when they talked about getting sick. Chinese whistleblowers discussed this at the time. I'm frankly surprised you haven't seen any of this evidence given your interest in the subject. And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. That includes various kinds of failed research, research that someone did for fun and wouldn't make it past ethics boards (a not-infrequent problem for this type of virus research), and research that was done under the table to nefarious ends.
    - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
      > There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. No, there wasn't. The 1st Trump administration leaked a rumor to the press that three workers got a respiratory virus sometime in the winter in 2019. Even if true, that's completely uninteresting. A large percentage of Earth's population gets any number of respiratory viruses every winter. I have no idea where you're getting the rest of the details that you're claiming ("looks vaguely like COVID," "quarantined over it," etc.). They're not even in the Trump administration's leaks, and I suspect you're getting them from the online rumor mill. > And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. We actually know much more than what gets published. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology regularly go and give talks at international conferences. There are visiting scientists at the WIV from other countries, including the United States. WIV scientists upload RNA sequences that they gather in the field to US-based gene-sequence databases. This wasn't secret research. It was out in the open. They would have had no reason at all to conceal the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 if they had had it. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that they had it. Everything we know indicates that they were just as clueless about the virus when the outbreak began as everyone else.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pja 2y ago
These labs were putting coronavirus samples into a forcing environment that drove evolutionary development towards the goal they wanted to study. Creating new lineages of the virus that differed from the original was the entire point! Given that, it’s plausible that sloppy lab handling procedures led to someone being infected with multiple different viruses that were present in the same part of the lab. None of this proves the lab leak hypothesis of course, but a lab worker being infected with multiple variants simultaneously (or separately) is a perfectly plausible outcome.
- Vecr 2y ago
  Doesn't have to be the same person either. A sloppy work safety culture is contagious.
shakow 2y ago
TBF, the idea of two zoonosis event, at the same, and virtually at the same time, do not rank very higher in the probability scale either.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  Multiple zoonosis events is actually exactly what you expect from natural spillover. If the virus is spreading in farmed animals, it will have many chances to spill over into humans. In fact, this is exactly what happened with the original SARS in 2002. It's striking how similar the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is to the original SARS outbreak. Almost every detail of the spillover is identical: unknown coronavirus emerges at market in major Chinese city selling wild animals.
  - shakow 2y ago
    But SARS outbreak was from a single strain, wasn't it? It's not the “two zoonosis” that I find to be low-probability, it's the “two zoonosis of two different strains at the same place & time”.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      The two Covid strains were closely related with only a few mutations difference between them. As you’d expect if eg two different raccoon dogs were infected with the same virus and one of the lineages was preferred.
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        You would expect, as was the case with SARS, that we would then find the population of infected animals. That did not happen with COVID, and in fact when we went looking, the closest virus in a wild population was a bat coronavirus located 1000 miles away.
        DiogenesKynikos 2y ago

pclmulqdq 2y ago

Why do you believe that lab workers only work with cloned viruses? Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there? Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. There's a good chance that the lack of safety was in the culture and not just one careless person. In November and December, several Wuhan Institute personnel were reporting unknown illnesses and took standard precautions (weeks of isolation) over it. It sounds like they weren't equipped to deal with a class of pathogens that they were working with.

DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
> Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there? We actually have a very good idea of what research was going on there. The groups in question publish their research, give talks at international conferences, upload the viruses they discover to US databases, talk with colleagues abroad, etc. We have a very good picture of what they were working on, and every indication is that they didn't have any virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2. > Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  > If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way. There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. Many of them got sick with something that looks vaguely like COVID and quarantined over it - this is a standard precaution when you work around weird pathogens. Social media from these workers was suppressed when they talked about getting sick. Chinese whistleblowers discussed this at the time. I'm frankly surprised you haven't seen any of this evidence given your interest in the subject. And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. That includes various kinds of failed research, research that someone did for fun and wouldn't make it past ethics boards (a not-infrequent problem for this type of virus research), and research that was done under the table to nefarious ends.
  - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
    > There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. No, there wasn't. The 1st Trump administration leaked a rumor to the press that three workers got a respiratory virus sometime in the winter in 2019. Even if true, that's completely uninteresting. A large percentage of Earth's population gets any number of respiratory viruses every winter. I have no idea where you're getting the rest of the details that you're claiming ("looks vaguely like COVID," "quarantined over it," etc.). They're not even in the Trump administration's leaks, and I suspect you're getting them from the online rumor mill. > And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. We actually know much more than what gets published. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology regularly go and give talks at international conferences. There are visiting scientists at the WIV from other countries, including the United States. WIV scientists upload RNA sequences that they gather in the field to US-based gene-sequence databases. This wasn't secret research. It was out in the open. They would have had no reason at all to conceal the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 if they had had it. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that they had it. Everything we know indicates that they were just as clueless about the virus when the outbreak began as everyone else.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pja 2y ago

These labs were putting coronavirus samples into a forcing environment that drove evolutionary development towards the goal they wanted to study. Creating new lineages of the virus that differed from the original was the entire point! Given that, it’s plausible that sloppy lab handling procedures led to someone being infected with multiple different viruses that were present in the same part of the lab. None of this proves the lab leak hypothesis of course, but a lab worker being infected with multiple variants simultaneously (or separately) is a perfectly plausible outcome.

Vecr 2y ago
Doesn't have to be the same person either. A sloppy work safety culture is contagious.

shakow 2y ago

TBF, the idea of two zoonosis event, at the same, and virtually at the same time, do not rank very higher in the probability scale either.

DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
Multiple zoonosis events is actually exactly what you expect from natural spillover. If the virus is spreading in farmed animals, it will have many chances to spill over into humans. In fact, this is exactly what happened with the original SARS in 2002. It's striking how similar the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is to the original SARS outbreak. Almost every detail of the spillover is identical: unknown coronavirus emerges at market in major Chinese city selling wild animals.
- shakow 2y ago
  But SARS outbreak was from a single strain, wasn't it? It's not the “two zoonosis” that I find to be low-probability, it's the “two zoonosis of two different strains at the same place & time”.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    The two Covid strains were closely related with only a few mutations difference between them. As you’d expect if eg two different raccoon dogs were infected with the same virus and one of the lineages was preferred.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      You would expect, as was the case with SARS, that we would then find the population of infected animals. That did not happen with COVID, and in fact when we went looking, the closest virus in a wild population was a bat coronavirus located 1000 miles away.
      - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago