This is from a recent Harvard/Politico poll:
There's no longer any partisan difference at all. Across all parties, the lab leak theory is favored 2:1 over a natural origin for the COVID-19 virus. Here's how this has changed over time:
Since 2020, the virological community has discovered more and more evidence that COVID-19 evolved naturally. At a guess, fewer than 5% of the people who know what they're talking about still take the lab leak hypothesis seriously.
Why the enormous—and growing—distance between the public and the experts? My guess is that it's for two reasons. First, the lab leak zealots are simply louder and more persistent than the experts. Second, the lab leak theory makes all the front-pages whenever there's some fresh news about it. For example, when the Department of Energy decided a lab leak was likely, it got big play everywhere.¹ Ditto for the release of the names of the Wuhan researchers working on coronaviruses.² Conversely, science moves more gently. Evidence mounts over time and there are few decisive breakthroughs that make the news. And even when there are, they're barely comprehensible to the ordinary person.
So bad money drives out good. The lab leak theory is exciting and easy to understand—and implicates China, which everyone loves. Meanwhile, the natural origins story is boring and largely rests on a PhD-level knowledge of virology. What's more, experts are all careful to acknowledge that they can't prove the lab leak theory is wrong, which keeps the door permanently open for the crackpots.
By now, the lab leak theory is literally a one-in-a-million shot. The evidence is overwhelmingly against it. But no one cares.
¹And the news that literally every other intelligence agency thought the DOE case was weak? That didn't get so much play.
²The same dynamic played out here.
"By now, the lab leak theory is literally a one-in-a-million shot. The evidence is overwhelmingly against it. But no one cares."
Fox News. Trumpism. QAnon. Lazy bothsiderism. Social media.
We've become a stupid, know-nothing society.
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The mainstream media has done a terrible job of explaining this to the public. As Kevin pointed out the fact that the Department of Energy decided it was a lab leak got far more headline coverage than the fact that other agencies and most scientists disagree.
The mainstream media has done a terrible job of explaining this to the public. As Kevin pointed out the fact that the Department of Energy decided it was a lab leak got far more headline coverage than the fact that other agencies and most scientists disagree. When the public is so clearly misinformed on an important topic it’s the mainstream media’s job to work to correct that misimpression, not to bothsides the issue.
Perhaps it is as simple as preferring that it was a lab leak. When it is natural transmission, people feel more vulnerable. It could happen anytime, anywhere. The lab leak rests on nefarious humans, which can be more easily controlled.
When sometime big happens, people dont like to believe it was random chance. They want someone to blame.
It doesn't. It rests on sloppiness:
- creating chimeric Coronaviruses including serial passage experiments in BSL-2 labs
- self-reporting bites and skin contact with urine and guano of the very specimens you're collecting viral data from
- the lack of respiratory protection in the field
- the improper cleaning of facilities leading to disintegrating surfaces
- a failure to maintain negative pressure in BSL-4 facilities
- failing to update NIH on progress of your research.
Most of the examples you give are examples of people behaving badly: creating a contagious disease, refusing to report when things go wrong. Failure to clean properly can be a bit of a whoopsie sometimes, but not reporting a bite when working in an infectious disease lab seems more calculated.
You're right about people wanting someone to blame.
The problem with the lab leak theory is that it is broad enough to include almost anything. So a worker picking up the virus in the field or someone transporting an infected animal from the field for analysis gets conflated with a lab trying to weaponize the virus.
Here's the thing, most infections do/did not have severe symptoms, so the individual infected would just be spreading it for a few days and have no idea they were sick, let alone infectious. And the spread was air borne--so no need for anything like an animal bite.
OK... but we have definite evidence that people behaved badly.
The CCP hid information about the outbreak, deleted information from publicly available databases, refused to share data and samples with the WHO investigation, and ordered its scientists to run all COVID information releases by the CCP before releasing or publishing any information.
Given this, shouldn't we start with the a priori that the scientists under CCP control behaved badly (although this may not have been voluntary)?
Not necessarily. Most any bureaucracy will opt for plausible deniability over a thorough investigation that could turn out unfavorably, and authoritarian states like the PRC take this to the next level. There are no negative consequences for apparatchiks who suppress information, but releasing information that turns out to reflect badly on the Esteemed Leader ends careers, maybe lives.
OK. aren't you describing people behaving badly?
it seems you agree with me.
I disagree with your characterizations of bad and nefarious behavior.
What I described was people making mistakes and errors in judgement.
And as such experiments expand throughout the world, the risks increase of a lab leak resulting in a pandemic. As I said, even if this wasn't a case of a lab leak, eventually, we'll get there.
What I would consider bad behavior:
- removing the genomic library of all bat coronaviruses from public access
- putting someone with a conflict of interest in charge of investigating the work of his collaborating researchers
- blocking access to people and data
IDK if that's also nefarious, but it certainly breeds distrust.
^^What cephalopod said.
Trying to vindictively find someone to assign moral culpability to is a favorite social conservative hobby, of the left and right.
So comforting not to be responsible.
This is one of the fundamental features, it is categorically not a bug.
The problem with this poll is that the what they probably meant by "lab leak theory" was "engineered virus theory".
My understanding is that the evidence against the virus being man-made is very strong. But a "lab leak" could also very much refer to a naturally evolved virus that was discovered in a cave or wherever, brought to a lab to study, and then accidentally released.
So the fact that scientists are unanimous that the virus evolved naturally may not actually have any relevance to someone's belief in the "lab leak theory". You can believe both simultaneously.
Yes, and Kevin understands that. Pretty sure he just chose his words carelessly there.
Great, so what is the Harvard poll supposed to be measuring again? People who think the virus was engineered, or people who think the virus evolved naturally and then leaked out of the lab?
I always thought a natural origin was more likely, and I definitely think that it is much more likely than the lab leak given what we now know. But I haven't seen a good, convincing explanation disproving the lab leak or that it is a "one-in-a-million shot." Does anyone have a good source that actually explains this? I am genuinely looking for the best article on this, preferably not requiring a full PhD in virology.
I feel like a lot of critics of the lab leak theory, particularly political commenters but also some scientists, are inclined to overstate our certainty about this. I am not a PhD or a scientist, but I do have a degree in biochemistry, worked in biochemistry labs through college, and got high grades in several subjects relevant to this area. A lot of the natural origin articles seem to make a good case for the natural origin theory and then state a level of certainty that appears to exceed what the article showed. Also, as someone who practices law in an area with a lot of applied science, it's much more common for scientists to say things like: "this is more likely than not" or "this is very likely," but it's pretty uncommon for them to say: "we are certain X is true or untrue." But there is so much junk out there, I am not at all confident I've found the best articles on it.
I have a PhD in genetics and have been a practicing molecular biologist for over 40 years. I've been a professor at a research medical school for over 36 years.
Science doesn't deal in proof or certainty. Science deals in the weight of evidence. The fact the the Chinese have not been completely forthcoming about the circumstance of the virus appearance is not, ipso facto, a reason to adopt the null hypothesis that COVID-19 was the result of a lab release. Given the experience with pandemics and epidemics stretching back for centuries, I'd say the null hypothesis should be a natural origin. I've seen no evidence that that hypothesis has been falsified by any experiments.
"The fact the the Chinese have not been completely forthcoming about the circumstance of the virus appearance is not, ipso facto, a reason to adopt the null hypothesis that COVID-19 was the result of a lab release."
Completely agree. One thing that is often lost among those thinking the Chinese government's lack of cooperation is some type of smoking gun, is the fact that all governments tend to behave this way, more so those with authoritarian regimes, even when there truly is nothing wrong going on. No matter the issue, governments don't willingly share data, methods, or anything, unless forced to by some court, the problem here is that there is no court to force the Chinese to cooperate.
This is also the default position for most people even in democratic nations. People don't willingly open their bank accounts, emails, their homes, or anything else for scrutiny just because someone asks them to do so, and when there truly is nothing criminal to hide. Like nations, they only do so when mandated by some court.
Yes. There’s a reason that FOIA had to be legislated.
Why do you have such a closed mind? You're truly doing a disservice to your readers by projecting such confidence.
"Why do you have such a closed mind?"
1) Coronaviruses have made the jump from animals to humans a dozen times since the 1960's. A biochemist might look at the problem and think it's incredibly hard, but evolution just keeps doing it.
2) The earliest COVID cases were all clustered around that infamous wet market, a good 10 miles and across a river from WIV.
3) There's no hard evidence *for* the lab leak theory.
People tend to speak with confidence when their evidence is overwhelming.
1) Sarbeviruses require mutations to become highly infectious in humans; no one doubts that it's possible, even probable. The issue here is the remarkable coincidence that a lab that had previously successfully created chimeric Coronaviruses targeting the ACE2 in humans by using transgenic mice, is proximally located in the same city as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak that relies on the S-protein attaching to ACE2.
2) The earliest COVID cases weren't clustered around a wet market. The cases caught in late December 2019 were, but that's not when the virus first started circulating. The virus was circulating at least ~2 months before the outbreak in Hunan market. FWIW, the Worobey-coauthored paper also shows that there were 2 mutants circulating in Hunan in late Dec/ early Jan, which reflects a much longer circulation.
3) There is no "hard" evidence *for* natural spillover.
Let's keep this up.
1) You're talking about lab-created virus, and not just lab-leaked. Do you really want to go there?
2) So your theory is that COVID originated from that lab, but then rather than spreading out from there it apparently cooled its heels for a couple months in Wuhan before suddenly migrating to the wet market and *then* started spreading from there. Roger that.
3) No evidence except for the half-dozen other coronaviruses with greater than 90% genetic similarity to COVID, all known to be circulating among SE Asian bats.
1) Yes. As I said, WIV documented and published re their chimeric Coronaviruses. This is not rumor or speculation. Their own DARPA grant request cited the desire to create an infectious SARS by manipulating certain parts of the virus -- a grant that was rejected explicitly because DARPA did not trust Eco Alliance (per DARPA's own emails).
2) I'm not speculating anything. Worobey's co-authored paper identified two circulating mutants, which implies that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating for months. I'm also not claiming that "it cooled its heels".
3) That data comes from WIV in-field collections, and some live samples. This is not *hard* evidence for natural spillover. This is circumstantial evidence, and it also happens to point to the possibility of a lab leak from one of WIV' serial passage experiments using those ACE2 transgenic mice. Hard evidence would be a sample that was in the ballpark of 99.9% match to the earliest samples from humans, aka D614G.
What else would you like to discuss?
´The earliest COVID cases weren't clustered around a wet market. The cases caught in late December 2019 were, but that's not when the virus first started circulating. The virus was circulating at least ~2 months before the outbreak in Hunan market.´
What is the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating at least 2 months prior to the outbreak? The genetic evidence of all subsequent cases points strongly to an origin in early December.
"FWIW, the Worobey-coauthored paper also shows that there were 2 mutants circulating in Hunan in late Dec/ early Jan, which reflects a much longer circulation."
It's not worth very much. The two lineages differ by only two substitutions, which would occur on average in something under two weeks, and which could easily occur in immediate descendants of a single index case.
See: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337
Their dating suggested infections in humans began no sooner than late-October and no later than mid-November.
I'm skipping the explanation on why they stated lineage A was at least 2 mutations closer than lineage B to bat coronaviruses. You would inherently know this, right?
A single infected human is estimated to carry 1-100 billion virions. Genetic diversity of virions in an infected host covers all possible single nucleotide substitutions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237675/
Your quotation from the paper is correct but your dating is not. In every one of their models, the time to the most recent common ancestor for all SARS-CoV-2 is early to mid December; see Table S2. Which is as expected, given a difference of only two substitutions between the lineages. Roughly speaking, SARS-CoV-2 experienced one substitution every two transmission, which means more than one substitution every two weeks.
You skipped the money quote.
at least two separate zoonotic transmissions
In theory, one (or in this case two) substitutions in an ORF could be separated by a few days/week, but it is not necessarily a sign of a short period separating the two sub-lineages.
You want to weight both outcomes as equally likely. Since why you can't do this has been explained to you mulitple times, at this point, you're just being a dishonest little shit.
Why do _you_ have such a closed mind? Methinks thou doth protest too much.
+36 vs +18....is that really 'no partisan difference'?
That seems like a fairly large difference even if you might wish it was larger.
Where do you get those figures? The table suggests 59 and 52.
This is the difference in Lab Leak and Human Contact. This is what this poll was attempting to measure.
I suspect Kevin was referring to the top line as it were, Democrats vs Republicans.
Bbbut Kevin! It must have been a lab leak! And this proves “they” were preparing a leak on our precious soil! …
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officials-believe-fresno-warehouse-was-site-illegal-laboratory-rcna96756
I know that as of late Kevin has been on a roll when it comes to weird or not particularly informed hot takes, but this one takes the cake for its blatant dishonesty, or complete lack of awareness, and highlights how easy it is to dupe loyal readers for pundits with an audience.
The "recent" poll Kevin is alluding here is from fricking 2021.
Was going to comment on the 2021 thing as well. The Politico article that he links to at the top of the post is also from 2021.
On the other hand, the WP article that is the source of his second chart is from 2023 and does include data through 2023 (though from a variety of different pollsters). Those show the most recent percent as being 64 or 66%, depending on which pollster you look at. Which means he's actually underselling things.
Just a weird, weird post. And yet almost none of the commenters seem to have caught on to Kevin's errors even though the first chart clearly states that the data is from June 22 - 27, 2021.
"Those show the most recent percent as being 64 or 66%, depending on which pollster you look at. Which means he's actually underselling things."
I think the reason he used the more recent general numbers combined with a 2021 party breakdown is because he is flat out trying to gaslight people in an attempt at bothsiderism, and the actual numbers don't actually support what he is selling.
First the issue of difference between parties:
"There's no longer any partisan difference at all. Across all parties, the lab leak theory is favored 2:1 over a natural origin for the COVID-19 virus."
These are the 2023 polls he cites
Quinnipac Poll:
Lab leak
Rep 87%
Dem 42%
Natural transmission
Rep 6%
Dem 39%
Here is the YouGov poll:
Lab leak definitely true
Rep 54%
Dem 16%
Lab leak probably true
Rep 32%
Dem 38%
Total:
Rep 86%
Dem 54%
How on Earth is that "no partisan difference"?
Also, going by the YouGov poll he cites, the biggest change since 2020 and today is actually republicans.
May 2020
Lab leak definitely true
Rep 31%
Dem 13%
Republicans went from 31% to 54%, while Democrats went from 13% to 16%
There is nothing even remotely suggesting both parties see this issue the same way.
"By now, the lab leak theory is literally a one-in-a-million shot. The evidence is overwhelmingly against it. But no one cares."
Please explain how you arrived at a one in a million estimate. It seems rather low to me and perhaps just reflects that most people don't understand probability very well. As shown for example by all the grief Nate Silver got for saying Trump had a reasonable chance against Clinton in 2016.
I would explain it to you ... but you've already demonstrated that you don't know probability well enough to understand the answer.
If you're humble, or apolitical, or lack interest, or lack background in the matter, the most honest answer is, "I don't know".
And even then, that's still the best answer.
"If you're humble, or apolitical, or lack interest, or lack background in the matter.. "
.. or just honest.
100% 👍
Suppose everything you’ve in this discussion was the accepted wisdom. What do you think would be happening now that isn’t?
I've covered this previously, but to revisit:
In the case of a lab-source:
We can't be having unlicensed labs operating around the world. At the very least, there needs to be an ISO/ASTM-level specification for laboratories and the operation and experimentation of viruses. Such facilities and protocols would be auditable (every 3-5 years) otherwise considered unlicensed. Any unlicensed labs would then be blacklisted by countries like the US, preventing our tax dollars from supporting research at such facilities.
We could (and should) do this without proof of a lab-source pandemic. But unfortunately, without proof that such an event occurred this is not a lot of incentive to crack down on poorly run labs and experiments.
In the case of natural spillover:
The UN needs to require countries to closely license the trade of bush meat (so to speak) and require random testing of such live markets, both of animals and of surfaces around them, and create minimum sanitary safeguards at such markets.
But again the problem here is that without definitive proof that it came from a wet market, the issue is low priority. The Chinese believe SARS-CoV-2 didn't originate from China -- which makes it all the more difficult to pass international regulations covering wet markets and the wildlife trade.
It seems to me that the things you say should be done should be done whether you are right or not. All you seem to be saying is that if were shown that it was lab sourced those things would have a higher priority. But it seems to me that if “China” knows it is lab sourced it would be doing the things you say but, of course still never admit the reason.
In any event, to me, a person reading a political blog with little scientific background, this argument as to the origination of Covid is meaningless except as a political issue. If it was due to anything involving a lab leak, that would be used by the political Right Wing to blame China and (for reasons I can’t fathom) Dr. Fauci. And it would result in random physical attacks on any Asian looking person.
In a perfect world this would be an honest argument in the scientific community with no involvement with people like me. But, as I see it, in the current political environment the consequences of your side outweigh the benefits.
I absolutely agree. But, without concrete proof, there is wiggle room to ignore the issues.
This is like when everyone else was convinced that SARS-CoV-2 wasn't a serious threat until a basketball player and an actor came out and said they were infected.
Most of the time, people need something tangible to cause them to get off the couch.
The UN isn’t a world government.
Name a better proxy, then.
If you were honest, you'd say the null hypothesis has not been disproven. Unfortunately ...
"So bad money drives out good"
It doesn't have to be so; there's a history behind this, not a fact of nature.
Some of that history in the US happens on the "Left" side – lies about military security used to cover up incompetence, lies about Vietnam and the CIA, all that 60s and 70s stuff.
And some of that history happens on the "Right" – ever more insistence that words don't mean what they clearly mean, that we mustn't say things we all know to be true, that we have to pretend human nature is very different from what we know it to be.
Between the two of these we've managed to ensure than 90% of the US has no interest in what "experts" have to say, because they have good reason to believe (either based on recent experience, or based on the 60's/70's experience) that experts lie all the time about everything.
Unclear how we climb back from that...
=============
I see a lot of people are saying that "they" (ie those dumb people we're smart enough to despise) prefer the lab leak theory because it involves human agency.
I'd just point out that this is a classic "mote and beams" issue.
The exact same people doing this despising are generally the most enthusiastic about preferring agency-based theories (racism! homophobia! sexism! evil companies!) rather than simple incompetence or mistakes when it comes to the endless daily stream of complaints about America...
Wait!
You mean it’s not a hoax?
Still don't understand why you're tackling this subject. None of this is new; the opinion split hasn't changed much over the last 6 months. The Slack messages didn't reveal anything that the FOIA emails also reflected.
And what special insight grants you this 99.9999% confidence level?
Most scientists appear agnostic or at most 70-30 in favor of natural spillover. I'm still at 60-40 lab leak. But not you -- you have extreme confidence that very few people have, and you're trying to pull people into accepting natural spillover as settled fact.
What's it to you to avoid keeping an open mind?
🙉🙈
Kevin has more common sense and less racism than you. The Lab Leak theory is driven by painting the Chinese as both Evil (developing a bioweapon) and incompetent (not being able to contain that bioweapon). Meanwhile, common sense tells us that since we have seen multiple viral pathogens emerge as humans push into new viral pools, and since there are multiple transmission paths with essentially no barriers in Nature, and since there are few transmission paths with large barriers in the Lab, you need a large amount of evidence to make the Lab Leak theory plausible.
But racists like you will still prefer the Lab Leak theory over Common Sense.
I'm racist? How so? I'm Asian. Were you assuming that I was White, and therefore racist against Chinese?
"Developing a bioweapon" is not required.
Doing the basic passaging and recombination as part of gain of function is research is enough.
if you read the slack messages, the scientists are disappointed they keep hearing that the Chinese were doing this sort of research in experiments that weren't initially reported.
Well stated; this is what I argued less clearly about the statistical assumptions around the emergence of novel viruses.
I don’t assume D_Ohrk is racist, I think they may have been marinating in Covid-conspiracy corners of the interwebs …
I think they've painted themselves into a corner and just don't want to concede they were mistaken. Notice the blatantly dishonest rhetoric of late; this isn't the D_Ohrk_E1 of twelve months ago.
I don't dwell in any corners of the interwebs stuck in confirmation bias.
I read preprints from across the different science servers.
Very good article by David Quammen in the NY Times today about the evidence for lab leak vs. spillover (natural occurrence) of SARS-CoV2. He also notes the rise in people believing in lab leak theories (there are multiple theories, conflicting with one another). I agree with cephalopod's take above. There is a certain psychological comfort in believing that it's possible to have some control over frightening events like pandemics, rather than that there are random events.
But, in fact, they aren't random. As humans push into new viral pools, we see the viruses adapting and spreading among humans.
Jonathan Chait earlier this year:
If you're in the 99.9999% camp of either side, your objectivity may be severely clouded.
Show me the polls where a majority of scientists anonymously agree on the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Lol. Hard to find a more classic crank/conspiracy theorist case takes than the two above.
I have already dismissed evidence as unimportant and am willing to disparage any scientists who have an opinion I dont like......BUT SHOW ME A POLL OF SCIENTISTS (that i would only accept if it showed me what i want to believe)!!
Your certainty in a position that I dont want to be true is a sign of your CLOUDY OBJECTIVITY!!
I haven't dismissed any evidence. Let's talk about which evidence you think I've dismissed.
Please, go ahead.
Now you're just trolling. C'mon, say it: 'The null hypothesis has not been disproven.' You can't say that, why should anyone have the remotest scintilla of respect for you?
"Lol. Hard to find a more classic crank/conspiracy theorist case takes than the two above. "
That os out-of-touch. D_Ohrk_E1 presents pretty plausible arguments.
This exchange of disagreements continues to proliferate a fundamental semantic flaw--the conflation of the "lab leak" explanation of the *spread of the pandemic* with the *origin of the virus.* It appears that the origin of the virus was most likely a totally natural event; this in no way is contradicted by the hypothesis that the Wuhan laboratory, having gotten hold of early version(s) of the virus, was careless in letting some of it get out into the community. The result is that "origin of the virus" and "origin of the pandemic" become carelessly interchangeable in conversation, and the conversation wanders off into lalaland.
Ah, Gresham's Law (bad money drives out good)...funny, it applies in all human endeavors...along with Field's Dictum, "It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.', it ensures that we end up with crap.
Bottom line?
People WANT to believe a human did this. That simple.
Many folks early on also WANTED to believe it wasn't a lab leak because of potential anti-Asian backlash, etc, well before any data was available.
This issue has always been primarily driven by passion and partisanship. Yes, science can rule out the virus being genetically engineered. But come on. Given that the Chinese government is a closed book, and there was a frickin' virus lab near ground zero, how can anyone ever rule out the possibility that they were studying a natural virus and it got out? Unless you just really want it to not be true.
I haven't seen a poll of virologists, but I've been working in the field for years and know lots of people in it (including Andersen, Gerry, and Rambaut), and my impression is that a large majority think a natural spillover is the more likely explanation.
On the other hand, calling a lab leak a literal one in a million shot is wildly overstating the confidence we can have about the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Perhaps. But what about at the 95% level?
I don’t know what happened. If a pollster called me and gave me those options, I’d pick lab leak out of spite. China sucks.
See what I mean? Everyone loves racism.
Russians and republicans suck too. Lots of people suck.
The lab leak theory can never be disproven because it is entirely plausible that Pokey the Grad Student Patient Zero went to get dinner at the wet market, creating Patients One, Two, etc.
"Meanwhile, the natural origins story is boring and largely rests on a PhD-level knowledge of virology."
No PhD required. There are multiple possible transmission paths for the natural origin story with no real barriers in those transmission paths. For the lab leak story, there are few transmission paths, and each of those paths has large barriers.
The Lab Leak Theory is beloved because it's racist. What red-blooded American doesn't love a good racist conspiracy theory?
The lab leak theory is also beloved (by those with lack of training in the relevant disciplines) because it makes them in their own eyes better than the experts who foolishly went with natural origins. "Those scientist types think they're smarter than I am ... but they're not!" If you get my drift.
Scientists discover antibodies capable of stopping several coronaviruses, potentially preventing future outbreaks,
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/scientists-discover-antibodies-capable-of-stopping-several-coronaviruses-potentially-preventing-future-outbreaks-1.6499952
I don't like how everyone is just excusing the Chinese destroying all the evidence in the immediate 3 months after the outbreak.
Natural origin remains plausible and explicable.
However, all of the possible evidence of a leak from the lab in terms of disease clusters or records of safety breaches or records of the type of viruses being studied has been destroyed/hidden.
The scientists in February minimized that because they didn't want to feed the obviously false "Chinese manufactured bioweapon" narrative.
But that also excused the "Poor lab hygiene/containment and reflexive cover-up" narrative.
Now, a lot of people are mad because the Slack clearly shows the scientists expressing their own belief that it definitely could have been an accidental leak and lamenting that China destroyed/locked down all the evidence.
I don't like that Kevin Drum is still ignoring how the scientist's decided to never publicly voice their private feelings that China's cover-up made it impossible to rule out a lab leak.
OT: Since you brought up the topic of LLM (GPT) public scraping of data, I saw this:
robots.txt:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /
So the question is, do other LLMs abide by that user-agent or can it be set up generically to handle all scraping by LLMs?
I’m not saying the virus was a result of a lab leak because I don’t personally believe it is, but it’s pretty easy to see why a lot of the public regardless of party affiliation believes it is.
1. China has not been forthcoming with information and has actively interfered with investigations into the matter.
2. There is a lab in Wuhan which is the world’s premiere lab investigating… coronaviruses.
3. We know something happened at the lab late 2019, but #1 prevents us from knowing for certain what.
Number 2 is a huge coincidence, and number 1 gives credence to the lab leak theory. It’s really as simple as that. Number 3 combined with number 1 makes it a possible cover-up. Also, because someone believes the virus leaked from the lab doesn’t mean they believe it’s man made. The chart isn’t exactly clear what level of belief it is measuring ranging from belief its weaponized specially designed to kill white people in the US (lol) to a simple mistake that ended up being transmitted at the Wuhan wet market.
Also, I’d like to point out too that the 3 things listed above make it really hard for virologists to even agree amongst themselves exactly how the virus originated even though most agree the lab had nothing to do with it. Even then they can’t know for certain either because of number 1.
So, it’s a shit show all around with no clear answer.
So, help me here. I've read three books and a long essay that take the (probably accidental) lab leak theory seriously: Alina Chan and Matt Ridley, "Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19"; Carl Zimmer, "A Planet of Viruses"; Nicholas Wade, "Where COVID Came From"; and Sharri Markson, "What Really Happened in Wuhan." Markson interviewed Trump administration officials like Pompeo, so some BS detection is required for that book, but Wade and Zimmer are well-known science writers, as is Ridley, and Chan is an expert. Are they all stupid or invested in conspiracy thinking? How is a non-expert like me to know?
Zimmer is a very good science writer. Wade's credibility has pretty much been nil since his book on race and genetics. Does Chan have any background in viral evolution, prior to SARS-CoV-2?
Alina Chan is a Canadian molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is a postdoctoral fellow. During the COVID-19 pandemic she became known for questioning the prevailing consensus regarding the origins of the virus and publicly advocating a laboratory escape hypothesis. —Wikipedia
Thanks -- that was the background I'd gleaned from her publication record. (FYI, her job title is now listed as 'Scientific Advisor' -- dunno what that means exactly.) I don't see anything to do with virology, evolution, or epidemiology. One reason I ask is that I'm a senior staff scientist at the Broad in the infectious disease program, specifically in the viral sequencing group. We did a lot of work on SARS-CoV-2 and collaborated and talked with a bunch of people, and I can't see I ever ran into Chan in the process.
"A small group of scientists claims there is overwhelming evidence for a wildlife market #OriginOfCovid
Yet none of the intelligence agencies have assessed natural origin with more than low confidence. FBI and DoE, with the strongest scientific expertise, lean toward lab origin"
Posted by her this very day.
Seems like a crank that let's her politics override her scientific training , and thus someone who is not worth listening too.
I think you are underestimating the ability of people to fall down rabbit holes. Sometimes people who have been rational their entire lives simply decide that for a specific issue they are going to believe everything that points to the conspiracy theory. They may use the complete opposite reasoning than every other issue they’ve thought about. Why? I don’t know.
No different than Vaccine denial or supporting Russia’s invasion or Global Warming. I’ve seen plenty of scientists over the years say just stupid things about Global Warming. They work every day on difficult problems without any difficulties. Then they just insist that Global Warming is wrong because of some vague idea they heard years before like: I once heard some hippies say some goofy things about the environment so I know this isn’t real, or some environmental measurements are less accurate than particle physics or engineering so I declare everything they say is wrong, or some socialist said we should go back to a pre-industrial world therefore this is all a lie and every scientist who believes it is being taken in by socialist conspirators.
You may remember a while back when some reporters honestly believed they had uncovered evidence of the US using nerve gas in Vietnam. Basically they took some testimony that most people discounted and ran with it and dug up some evidence that could have indicated it was true. Even when basically everyone pointed out the flaws in their thinking they kept pushing it until they eventually lost their jobs..
Sociopathic grooming rampant in Florida schools,
https://www.rawstory.com/prageru-florida/
Does anybody disagree that the null hypothesis is one of natural origin? Does anyone disagree that the null hypothesis has not been falsified?
There's a reason why the tenants of hypothesis testing are as clunkily-worded as they are. But they do have the salutatory effect of exposing the tossers?
The answer is, no.
In a hypothetical scenario where there is dispositive evidence of a progenitor from the WIV lab, will you be willing to change your mind, though?
This is immensely depressing.
I blame the media 100%. Not based on specific reporting methods, but on an overarching defect in their view of their mission. My view is that if the public does not understand what's true and what's not, it signals that THEY have failed.
Yes, I know, they think their job is simply to report on what's happening. But at the same time, they flaunt their pride in being a critical component of a free society, taking their swords and mounting their steeds to defend the freedom of speech.
Sorry, but that pride is hollow if the public is oblivious to the difference between truth and bullshit. They are the information industry, and if the public is being misled, it's 100% their fault.