Because the market could have been a very early superspreading site without being the origin of the virus.
Iâm sure it wasnât the origin, thatâs up country somewhere, in a bat colony. Nothing to do with the lab. You couldnât possibly be suggesting that.
Yes that is the idea but accidental release is also a possibility. My biggest gripe with deliberate release is that if it occurred, whoever was responsible for it presumably has family and friends as well so why risk them? We have to imagine all sorts of other things and compound our beliefs: They had their own vaccine all along. It was a terrorist group. They didnât know how bad it was going to be. This just reeks of bad apologetics and poor thinking. The same type I see on Christian websites everyday.
Iâm more interested in the thought process that created the title of this thread. It sensationalized the report and claimed âdefinitive proofâ which is a grotesque abuse of the evidence that several people just completely glossed over. We are pattern seekers that want neat stories but in life we often are not afforded the luxury of certainty. This makes some people uneasy so they like to over-connect dots they possibly shouldnât.
There is no solid evidence that Covid was deliberately released but there is enough circumstantial information to question it or at least seriously consider accidental release. People also make mistakes. People also would cover up mistakes like that so even if it was we will probably never know it.
One problem is we canât even seriously discuss the issue as any evidence is immediately dismissed as right-wing conspiracy nonsense so most people already approach the âevidenceâ knowing exactly what it should say. And I think a lot of that âevidenceâ should be dismissed as such but itâs hard to have an open discussion when everything is so polarized and politicized. With a background in science, confirmation bias is horrifying to me as is overstepping what the data actually says.
But people make mistakes and accidental spread is not implausible or impossible even though this looks to have zoonotic origins. The facts here is that the spread appears to have started at this market with the appropriate live animals. But thatâs it. Those are the facts and everything else is a narrative concocted by individual people.
Accidental release that had its first major spreading event at this market explains the pattern just as well as zoonotic transmission that started here. At least in terms of the facts presented thus far. In science, a theory needs to make predictions that are testable along with isolating variables and ruling out other possibilities. If it canât do that it is not science.
Just because itâs the only evidence we have doesnât mean we have to form a conclusive opinion based off of it or that it actually is good enough to do so. Sometimes agnosticism or a judgment of non liquet is appropriate.
This is just you believing what you want. Major paradigm shifts have happened in science. What matters is how much evidence there is pointing in one direction and how certain it is. Even then science never supplies âdefinitive proofâ of anything. Itâs trademark is its method and always being open to further refinement, even if bucking the established system is difficult. What matters is whether or not competing theories or better yet, a competing hypothesis can explain the data just as well. You are inventing certainty where there is none possible.
âStudy suggests zoonotic origin of Covidâ instead of âdefinitive proof . . .apologize to Fauciâ would be a better way to frame this.
Vinnie
In general I have a huge distrust for most documentaries now. Often times the background music, the way they present informationâŚits just all so much of a stretch and misleading. its meant to cast suspicion and doubt and rarely utilizes high forms of logical thinking. It sucks but Iâd rather just bury my head in mainline books and academic journals on the subjects I am interested in. We truly do live in the age of (mis)information. Honest thinkers are just overwhelmed by the sheer volume and competing ideas we come across.
Vinnie
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Unfortunately, I think you are right.
Iâm a librarian by profession, and I see what you are describing constantly.
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Reminds me of something that was drilled into me a couple years ago.
âIf there was evidence, it would be because there is a specific novel testable prediction. No specific novel testable prediction, no evidence.â
When we got to M-theory the conversation took a decided turn.
âSurely, you must understand that itâs uncaused, and the string is one likely explanation for why.â
My response: âIf itâs uncaused, it doesnât need an explanation.â
If youâre interested in my thought process, all you had to do was ask. Iâm right here. Against my better judgment, Iâll respond despite your condescending tone.
You seem unaware of the context. Hereâs a bit of background:
Right-wing media like The Daily Wire threw out a bunch of conspiracy theories related to a lab leak and spurious connections to Collins and Fauci. Basham and her cohorts have zero evidence, only theories. (A bit like Guiliani and his election conspiracies, but I digress.)
You say âdefinitive proofâ in the title of the thread is sensationalizing the report and a âgrotesque abuse of the evidence.â Really? First, look up the definition of âdefinitive.â It means âdecisive,â as I alluded earlier in the thread. Itâs not an exaggeration to say the paper(s) more than proved the point. The evidence supports the conclusion that the origin is zoonotic. @glipsnort characterized it as âstrongâ and pointed out another explanation. I donât dispute his critique. He knows way more than I ever will, but even he puts the odds at 20-1 against a lab leak. Saying thatâs beyond a reasonable doubt isnât hyperbole.
Second, did you read in the 2nd post how the principle author herself characterized it?
Where did the pandemic begin?
Was it from nature or a lab?
Since the start, this fundamental question has gone unanswered.
Until now.
That strikes me as a claim directly from the authorâs mouth that the question is now answered. The headline in Science uses the past tense: âThe Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.â It doesnât say âevidence suggestsâ or âmay have beenâ or âis the likely epicenter.â It says âwas,â as in the question is settled. Are all these experts also guilty of âgrotesque abuse of the evidenceâ?
The same applies to your allegations of âpattern-seekingâ and confirmation bias. I didnât identify the pattern. A team of actual scientists did, and they ran the gamut of 5 highly critical peer reviewers. I didnât see the preprint and said nothing until the article was published in a prestigious journal and I read the authorâs own explanation of it. I wasnât seeking certainty. I donât seek or expect certainty in anything. The subject wasnât even on my radar, but you go ahead and impute motives no matter how little you know me.
I didnât dismiss the possibility that more evidence may exist and force us to reconsider what we now know. Steve estimated the probability that it was zoonotic at 95%. To put that into perspective, I leave open the theoretical possibility that a literal Adam & Eve existed, but thereâs no evidence in favor of the idea, so Iâd put the odds of that at 5% or less. Good enough for me to say the evidence is definitive. If you think 20-1 is still an open question, thatâs fine. More power to ya.
No it doesnât. Maybe if you read the authorâs Twitter thread in the OP, you wouldnât make misstatements like this.
I was agnostic and suspended judgment until conclusive evidence came forward that passed peer-review in a major scientific journal.
How is it believing what I want? There is literally no evidence pointing to a lab leak, other than the fact that the first human transmission occurred in Wuhan. Logically possible scenarios can be offered, but if the odds of them being âtrueâ are miniscule, forgive me if I donât give them much weight. Also, friendly reminder that this is a discussion forum. Weâre not doing âscienceâ here.
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Iâm talking about the origin of the virus in humans â how the pandemic started, not where the virus originally came from.
The market being the largest super-spreader event to that date? Thatâs all we can say?
Yeah, that makes no sense to me either. Why even release it in the same country, much less a few miles away from a well known virus research center?
I think it is completely fair to consider accidental release when there is an outbreak of a novel virus in a city where there is an institution that studies that very same thing. There are known cases where lab workers have infected themselves, so it isnât unheard of.
Knowing what we do now about the virus, its genome sequence, and the history of the Wuhan lab I donât think there is much evidence to point in the direction of an accidental release. It is highly doubtful they would have been infected by the types of environmental samples they usually use for surveillance, so that can be thrown out. If, as many have claimed, it was a strain of coronavirus that was being actively grown and modified in the lab, then why that strain of virus? The lab regularly submits genome sequences of the strains they are working on to public databases, but we never saw this strain appear prior to the outbreak. The sequence itself is different from anything they were working on at that time. If you are going to grow up a strain of virus you donât randomly choose one. It is usually a virus you have published on already, or have done some work on in the past. Of course, this is what my experience has been working with viruses in the lab, so perhaps their approach was different.
If the only evidence is that there happened to be a lab in the same area, then thatâs not much evidence, IMHO.
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It is my understanding that the first human cases were clustered around the market, not the lab.
One scenario would be an infected lab worker that went to the market and infected others there. However, I would expect other primary hotspots, such as the lab workerâs apartment building, the restaurants where he/she eats, and so on. That being said, Iâm a molecular biologist, not an epidemiologist.
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Yes. Maybe it was like the first Passover.
That, and that it was quite probably the site at which the virus entered humans.
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And there were two strains in the market, A and B. What are the odds of an accidental leak of different strains within a week of one another?
Yep. Itâs a coincidence, not evidence.
As you said, straight to the market without infecting anyone else along the way. Then, that miracle reoccurs within a week, only this time with a different strain. What are the odds?
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Ah hah! From bush meat. Bats. Surprised my son didnât bring it back half a dozen years ago. He ate EVERYTHING!!! Brought me a bag of chicken feet.
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An overlooked point that deserves repeating. An infected lab worker wouldâve had to go straight to the market on the other side of the Yangtze without infecting anyone along the way, presumably including public transportation. Then thereâs the return trip home, and who knows how many days of incubation before symptoms appeared?
If a chain of logic rests upon a chain of coincidences, it becomes vanishingly less likely to be true. By my count, hereâs a list of hoops the accidental lab leak scenario would have to jump through (correct me where Iâve erred in my summation):
- The Wuhan lab was unlikely to have been actively growing and modifying the strain of virus found in the Huanan market.
- A lab leak is also an unlikely, though possible, event.
- Since the market is the epicenter of infections in Wuhan, a worker infected by a lab leak would have had to go straight from work to the market without infecting anyone. Possible but unlikely.
- The same worker wouldâve had to go home from the market and about his/her daily business without infecting anyone. Possible but unlikely.
- Since there were two strains (A & B) circulating in the market within a week, a different worker would have to have been infected by another accidental lab leak of a different strain.
In other words, go back to step 1, lather, rinse and repeat. The coincidences are piling up. I think the authors estimated the probability as somewhere around 1/100,000, or 0.0001%. Iâm sure the truth is somewhere between that and @glipsnortâs 5%, but with those odds Iâm comfortable saying the question of zoonotic origin is fairly well settled. YMMV.
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Many experts disagree with your conclusion, including the former director of the CDC.
And other experts, including Dr. Fauci and the official position of the WHO, recognize the accidental escape from the Wuhan Lab cannot be ruled out.
And the State Department has information:
- The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengliâs public claim that there was âzero infectionâ among the WIVâs staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
The records from the lab were deleted or hidden.
A lab where the âBat Womanâ is a key leader? Or was, but she has likely been fired now.