It’s seems most of them are also on board with zoonotic origins but just don’t think the case was iron clad yet. Are they still thinking the same after this new research?
Strong evidence for some but not “definitive proof” for other practitioners. I’m not fully convinced by the “there were better spots for it to spread” thinking but I admit it sounds reasonable but my skepticism meter is triggered and I can’t fully put ky to get on why yet. I’ve seen too many oddities with how Covid spreads to believe this. I could be completely wrong and I am no expert in viral spread but it seems to me that Covid was clumpy in how it spread at times. Sometimes whole houses would get it and sometimes people in the same bed for a week wouldn’t. Certain life situations could have caused a clump here early on. Not to mention a lot of people had Covid and probably never knew it or went undiagnosed. Our record is not complete and of all the animals swabbed at the market, they were all negative per that article. So speculation that it originated in a Raccoon dog is not “definitive proof” even though multiple lines of evidence are all pointing towards zoonotic origins.
Munster says he is not completely convinced of two spillover events because the virus might have evolved from one lineage into the other in a person who was immunocompromised. He adds that more data collected from people and animals is needed to answer this question, and to show that the first spillover occurred at the Huanan market. David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University in California, agrees that the preprints are not definitive, and that they exclude the possibility that people were infected prior to the outbreak at the market, but went undiagnosed.
Munster does believe the number of positive cases does suggest origin from animals at the marketplace but as I mentioned above, none of this is “definitive proof.”
Being “open” to the lab leak theory doesn’t mean it should be given equal weight. As @glipsnort pointed out earlier, the article doesn’t rule out the possibility of a lab leak, but the best estimates put the odds between a 0.0001%-5% chance of being true. Pretty solid.
I became sick with a common seasonal illness, flu, in late Jan-early Feb 2020, weeks before Covid-19 reached my area. Honestly, Vance, you don’t have the best track record on Covid. I remember your insistence that Georgia was approaching herd immunity any day now. When was that? Please don’t make me look it up. Maybe you should try sitting this one out.
Please read the title of this thread: “Definitive proof”
If you mean definitive proof that it began in nature, was altered in a lab for gain of function, infected some researchers at the Wuhan Lab, jumped to the wet market after the researchers or people they infected went to the market, and spread from there — then maybe you are right.
Sensationalism. The author can claim the moon is made of cheese. The full peer-review process still has to take place and not all experts are convinced it’s closed though most seem to strongly lean towards zoonotic origins for sure. A peer-reviewed publication does not mean all peers fully agree with you. Actual scientists tend to understand the uncertainty of scientific research like this better than the public.
Can he explain his criteria in establishing 95% instead of 90 or 85 or 67.2%? Or was he just ballparking an opinionated number based on his expertise? He finds the evidence strongly compelling for zoonotic origins. The 95% is a judgment estimate, not an actual probability.
That doesn’t mean all experts agree with the conclusion or rather, at least your “definitive proof” interpretation.
Well, I play poker all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been rivered, sometimes by one-outers. I also don’t consider “definitive proof” to be 95%. I think of proof on the philosophical sense so it’s closer to 100 or at least 99%. Strong evidence and definitive proof are in two different ballparks.
The question under consideration is whether or not or how “minuscule” the odds are.
So you think a lab leak cover up is minuscule and definitively ruled out but think there is a 5% chance a mythological narrative, dependent on older mythological narratives, with talking snakes, a magical tree of life, a punishment that outweighs the crime a quadrillion-fold, with a couple who don’t know good and evil being given moral commands and a highly primitive conception of God (doesn’t know where Adam is much like he didn’t know earlier none of the animals would provide a suitable mate as he paraded them before him), has a 5% chance of being true? More like five-millionths of a percent. The lab-leak hypothesis is far more likely than a historical Adam and Eve. “Christian desire to believe fiction is historical” is not worth 5%.
I agree the odds lean towards zoonotic origins. The outbreak pattern alone doesn’t demonstrate it though. That could just be a super-spreader event. The duel lineages adds to it (but all don’t see it as conclusive) as does other circumstantial evidence (the presence of animals) . But it’s not definitive yet. You need the animal for that. Speculating what type of animal could have caused it means you don’t have that info and you don’t have “definitive proof.” Don’t add to media sensationalism and clickbait.
Again, the “balanced read” you point to is from long before the evidence was presented in Science just a few days ago.
You agree the interpretation of the evidence is reasonable and multiple lines of it point toward zoonotic origin. The record of course isn’t complete and never will be, and since it’s impossible to prove a negative, your standard of “definitive” and mine will never intersect. I interpret a probability of between 0.0001% and 5% as definitive.
Hubris. You claim to know better than the author, and the piece passed strict peer review in a major publication. Are they not “actual scientists” by your definition?
And your judgment is more valid because …?
Perhaps you missed the part where the list of coincidences reached a bunch of coin flips that needed to land “heads” for the lab leak to be true. The author estimated 1 out of 100,000. Steve guesstimated 5%. I think it’s much closer to the author’s estimate. Does 0.0001% meet your standard? Try to keep up.
Good gosh. You seem a master of missing the point. Sorry, but I have nothing more to say to you or Vance. Take care.
Ah, Jay, I know you don’t appreciate what I post, but I think you are unreasonably certain of a position that is far from certain.
Just because someone fabricates and publishes an unsupportable probability — that doesn’t make it so.
I think this is an admission that the 95% is a judgment, not a calculation. That does diminish its validity and invalidates the claim of “definitive proof.”
Neither of these are necessary. It would be quite possible for a worker to become infected, go about daily life, and happen to go to the market while infectious and infect someone else who became a superspreader. The same worker could easily have infected several other people not at the market and we would never know about it. Most people who became infected with SARS-CoV-2, at least with the original strain(s), did not transmit the virus to anyone else.
IIRC, the genomic study put the probability of a single origin for the two strains at something like 0.5%, which is low but not impossible. More importantly, that’s the probability estimated under a particular model and such inferences should be taken with a large grain of salt – especially when it comes to events in the far tails of distributions. Reality is much more complex than the model.
Just like we can’t entirely rule out police planting evidence in every single crime. That doesn’t mean we should refuse to convict every criminal.
Thus far, the only evidence I have seen anyone put forward for the lab leak theory is that there is a viral research center in Wuhan. That’s it. Have you seen any other evidence besides this?
In your first link of your prior post, we had former CDC director Robert Redfield, who just said it didn’t make sense to him. In your second link, there was no evidence cited in favor of a lab leak, just that the possibility is on the table. Your third link says nothing except that Fauci said he couldn’t rule it out personally. Only your fourth link provided any kind of evidence, consisting of two WIV workers who were sick with some upper respiratory illness in the fall of 2019, and it mentioned that lab leaks have occurred before. While these things are both true, zoonotic spillover directly from animal reservoirs has also occurred many more times. I think that if we had to choose between what you provided and all the evidence that @Jay313 cited, there is no comparison between the two. For now, the evidence strongly favors a natural origin, but one can always imagine scenarios in which a lab leak led to the emergence of the market as the epicenter.
I see you ignored the deficiencies with the air handling system.
There is more evidence too, but I suspect it would be ignored.
Perhaps you should ask yourself for evidence that it came from the wet market.
More people can deny or ignore:
One fact is clear: those people who approved funding for the lab and its gain of function research save face if the origin was natural, so motivation needs to be considered.
Another fact is clear: the lab continues to withhold records, or the lab has deleted the records. Evidence destroyed is more difficult to present.
That’s rich of you to accuse me of ignoring important evidence. Again, you’ve provided no evidence yourself, seemingly ignoring everything in the OP. I offered some critique of your first four links, which didn’t provide any positive evidence of a lab leak, accidental or intentional. Your fifth link I am just seeing now, but it also doesn’t provide positive evidence of a lab leak either if some components of their air circulation system were defective. Without knowing more specific information, it is all just conjecture and not positive evidence of a lab leak, especially given the emergence of two variants in a short timeframe with initial cases being centered around the market and not the virology lab.
I see you’ve now posted a sixth article, an opinion piece by:
Dr. Quay is founder of Atossa Therapeutics and author of “Stay Safe: A Physician’s Guide to Survive Coronavirus.” Mr. Muller is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California Berkeley and a former senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
I mean I can find plenty of articles discussing why that WSJ opinion piece is not good evidence for a lab leak, but you’ve already done that I’m sure since you boast of reading more widely than many others.
Oh my gosh, in me posting and reading your links you’ve posted two more articles. Since I didn’t respond to those I’m sure you’ll just accuse me of ignoring evidence. Just stop already Vance.
And you provided no evidence that it came from the wet market.
Was an infected animal ever found in the wet market? I have read no.
Ok, I will wait on you to post evidence that it originated in the wet market rather than the nearby lab where gain of function research was being done by someone called the bat woman.
This is the answer I usually get when I ask for evidence for the lab leak theory. People link to web articles they don’t understand and that don’t contain any evidence. Instead, it is filled with unfounded opinion, such as this article:
Ok, I will wait on you to post evidence that it originated in the wet market rather than the nearby lab where gain of function research was being done by someone called the bat woman.