The Coronavirus Thread

[JimC]

The fact that there is still a rational debate in the media and between a variety of scientists about the origins of covid-19 proves the point that there is no conspiracy theory about the origins, and that knowledgeable people are working in good faith to try to assemble the data that will throw light on the issue.

The reporting here is pretty much the same way, but the opinion writers are a hot mess. A lot of them conflate Trump's bioweapon hypothesis with the lab leak hypothesis, with results that would be comical except that so many Americans don't differentiate between the news section and the editorial section.

Yes. It seems that some progressives/media outlets were so automatically against Trump and conspiracy theories (in itself a generally good thing) that they tended to view the lab leak idea as an absurd impossibility, rather than a possibility, even if with a low level of probability. It would be a good idea for everybody to butt out, and leave it to a dispassionate analysis by qualified scientists...

[NineBerry]

[Sean Hayden]

f'n Josh.

[Cunt]

Yes. It seems that some progressives/media outlets were so automatically against Trump and conspiracy theories (in itself a generally good thing) that they tended to view the lab leak idea as an absurd impossibility, rather than a possibility, even if with a low level of probability. It would be a good idea for everybody to butt out, and leave it to a dispassionate analysis by qualified scientists...

I think I didn't express the simplicity of my point.

What part of 'zoonotic origin theory' is incompatible with a 'lab leak hypothesis'?

[pErvinalia]

Well apparently the dna isn't consistent with modification (as you'd probably expect in a lab setting).

[Cunt]

In a lab setting, don't they start with a sample of naturally occurring viruses?

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, but then they modify it.

[NineBerry]

Riddle me this, science folk - how could a zoonotic-origin virus ALSO be a lab leak?

Scientists go to the country side to catch some animals and take them back to the lab. Animal carries virus that has the potential to also infect humans. Virus jumps from animal to scientist in the lab. Some days later scientist goes to a bar to have a beer with his friend who works as a seller on a wet market.

Very improbable. Another one that is discussed (although not by the real experts) and would count in that category:

Workers work in a place with animals. Virus jumps from the animals onto some of the workers. Some workers get seriously ill. Scientists hear about the case, travel there, take some samples and bring them back into the lab in the big city. Because this is a remote area and the workers are quarantined, the virus cannot spread and there is no big news. But the samples taken into the lab are handled wrongly and escape.

Also very improbable. But heavily discussed with regard to the "Mojiang Miners" incident.

People who talk about a lab leak usually mean that the virus was created during experiments and then leaked. Christian Drosten explained in a podcast this week why that's impossible.

1. There's genome databases. Before you do experiments on viruses, you sequence them and then upload them to these databases. Because you want it to be known you were the first to have seen this virus.

The closest relatives of Sars-Cov-2 known before the epidemic in these databases were not uploaded by the Wuhan lab but by other laboratories and they were not marked as being used in experiments but specimen found in bats and other animals.


2. Specifically gain-of-function research is not done on viruses randomly picked from some samples. To do that kind of research you need the ability to artificially replicate huge amounts of template viruses. Preparing these templates is a lot of work. Because it's a lot of work, people who develop new templates write papers on that and publish them. And also because it's a lot of work you usually don't create your own template if you want to do gain-of-function research but use an established template. Since there's no established template that looks anything like Sars-Cov-2 and no one from the Wuhan lab published any papers on creating a template from a bat Corona virus, this kind of research wasn't happening there at least on these types of viruses.

[Tero]

No scientists were tricked into anything. The WHO team took their own samples and studied them at home.

Conspiracy theorists are often tricked. But only if "the government" or "China" is the claim of the conspiracy.

[Joe]

The fact that there is still a rational debate in the media and between a variety of scientists about the origins of covid-19 proves the point that there is no conspiracy theory about the origins, and that knowledgeable people are working in good faith to try to assemble the data that will throw light on the issue.

The reporting here is pretty much the same way, but the opinion writers are a hot mess. A lot of them conflate Trump's bioweapon hypothesis with the lab leak hypothesis, with results that would be comical except that so many Americans don't differentiate between the news section and the editorial section. :fp:1 fact

Yes. It seems that some progressives/media outlets were so automatically against Trump and conspiracy theories (in itself a generally good thing) that they tended to view the lab leak idea as an absurd impossibility, rather than a possibility, even if with a low level of probability. It would be a good idea for everybody to butt out, and leave it to a dispassionate analysis by qualified scientists...

It would indeed, but those sensational stories get more clicks than the slow and unspectacular progress of scientific understanding.

I would argue that the early reaction was focused more on the bioweapon conspiracy theories being pushed by political actors than the possibility of a laboratory escape. In fact, the February Lancet letter that has been presented as rejecting the lab leak hypothesis didn't mention lab leak at all, but cited an unpublished paper that recognized and discussed the possibility, and didn't rule it out.

Also, such early rejection can't be attributed to Trump. In February, 2020, he was still making happy talk about how China was doing a great job and all would be well. It wasn't until late April that he started repeating the conspiracy theory of an engineered virus.

But that isn't nearly as attractive a narrative, is it?

[Tero]

County is still reporting daily cases, 6-8 in May, now down to 3. It does not make the news anymore.

[Sean Hayden]

200--300 daily reported here, but life is back to normal.

[JimC]

...or as normal as it gets in Texas...

[Sean Hayden]

[rainbow]

Yes. It seems that some progressives/media outlets were so automatically against Trump and conspiracy theories (in itself a generally good thing) that they tended to view the lab leak idea as an absurd impossibility, rather than a possibility, even if with a low level of probability. It would be a good idea for everybody to butt out, and leave it to a dispassionate analysis by qualified scientists...

I think I didn't express the simplicity of my point.

What part of 'zoonotic origin theory' is incompatible with a 'lab leak hypothesis'?

One is a theory based on known facts, the other baseless speculation based on zero evidence.
Do you need someone to draw you a picture?