If experts say that deadlifts are more likely to cause backpain than bad Ill fitting shoes you should still bame your shoes if your pain started the day after you bought shoes and months after you started deadlifting. This aspect of turning evidence, including stuff unrelated to their expertise, into probabilities, is often missed or underestimated by people who are expert in the subject in question but not gambling theory. The Challenger disaster being caused by the cold is an example. “Experts” ignorantly didn’t realize that was the most likely explanation given the rarity of sub freezing weather in south florida. Whether the syndrome is applicable to this issue I don’t know.
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It’s too bad the entire scientific community is totally unaware of basic probability. Imagine how much stuff they must be getting wrong!
Lol what’d I miss?
Looks like Fauci is flirting with race-hatred now too:
And like you said, there’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still. So I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?
Fauci : No, actually, that’s the point that I said. [Long digression about Rand Paul] But no, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened. Certainly the people who’ve investigated say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else. And we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.
Sounds about right and echoes the consensus ITT: the available science is fairly certain it came from animals, but absolutely investigate the origin so we can maybe not have another globe-crippling murder pandemic.
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No one has suggested otherwise, but the guys peddling bunk need to feel like victims here.
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I don’t think this is an accurate summary of Fauci’s remarks. Fauci actually says he’s not “confident” or “convinced” that COVID had a natural origin. He says that other people say it was “likely” from an animal reservoir but maybe not. “Fairly certain” is not a good summary of that.
It’s also worth noting that the idea that the lab leak hypothesis should be seriously investigated is not exactly orthodoxy. The WHO report actually says we should not investigate the lab leak further, there’s nothing to see there, move on, etc.
Of course the WHO report doesn’t actually say this at all, and their report did investigate the theory.
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Is it really that huge? It actually seems totally expected that people would come to different conclusions about the quantitative likelihood of competing explanations in the absence of solid proof of one or the other. I think an actually huge difference is between people who think the question should be fully investigated (the purported consensus ITT) vs people who think that the lab leak theory is already disproven and should not be investigated (the WHO report).
I also want to say again that the theory that’s actually super-duper racist is the “COVID was caused by the uniquely filthy conditions of wet markets and the weird animals these people eat” theory that you’re pushing. And that’s also the one that’s fared worst empirically. There’s no evidence supporting the idea that, as you put so lushly (almost sensuously):
These wet markets are unique though in that they have horrible sanitation, and species from all over in close quarters mixing with blood and feces. It’s like the perfect breeding ground for mutant virus strains. American slaughterhouses are disgusting too, don’t get me wrong, but they’re missing that element of wildlife from every corner of a giant country stacked in cages on top of each other.
The WHO investigators did a ton of testing in and around the market and didn’t find any evidence of animal infections there, which strongly suggests that the virus was introduced to the market by a human, and that the uniquely cosmopolitan blend of blood and feces (probably also urine and bird droppings) that is allegedly so characteristic of Chinese markets is irrelevant. When I was thinking about this before, I recall that it still seemed possible that a farmer was infected by an animal and brought it to the market, but that’s speculative, and there’s obviously no evidence that it was an exotic animal like a civet cat rather than a boring chicken or pig. And of course, no Petri dish effect from the way some people in China buy food.
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No. Here’s the report.
The various pathways are discussed starting on page 111 through 120. Each pathway has a section called “what would be needed to increase knowledge?”. The non-lab theories have recommendations to study the supply chains, animals, vendors, etc at the Wuhan markets. The lab theory’s recommendations are:
“Regular administrative and internal review of high-level bio safety laboratories worldwide. Follow up of new evidence supplied of possible laboratory leaks.”
They explicitly do not recommend any follow up investigation of the Wuhan lab, and did not do any independent investigation of the lab themselves.
sigh I guess Churchill is out so the other contrarian bros feel the need to fill in. Here’s what the director of the WHO has to say:
The team also visited several laboratories in Wuhan and considered the possibility that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory incident.
However, I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough. Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions.
Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.
We will keep you informed as plans progress, and as always, we very much welcome your input.
Let me say clearly that as far as WHO is concerned all hypotheses remain on the table.
This report is a very important beginning, but it is not the end. We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do.
Finding the origin of a virus takes time and we owe it to the world to find the source so we can collectively take steps to reduce the risk of this happening again. No single research trip can provide all the answers.
It is clear that we need more research across a range of areas, which will entail further field visits.
Of course the theory still a live possibility, as explained in the WHO’s report and no one is suggesting we shouldn’t investigate further.
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The WHO’s most likely theory is that it came from a farm outside Wuhan and the food market may be spurious.
And of course no one at the WHO is suggesting there’s something uniquely unhygienic about Chinese food/agriculture. Zoonotic diseases coming from domestic livestock is a well-known thing that happens all over the world. Just pure bad-faith sophistry.
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I mean you’re quoting Tedros criticizing and directly contradicting the report. The report does not call for additional investigation into the Wuhan lab, and the authors did not independently investigate the lab in any way.
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The WHO Director is explicitly saying the matter isn’t settled and needs to be investigated, but okay I guess he isn’t explicitly phrasing in the way you want. WHAT IS HE HIDING??!?
PS: even if there is another investigation into the lab Bobo will still be in here saying it wasn’t enough and the evil racist WHO is covering things up for reasons.
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Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I literally quoted the post that I was criticizing for playing up the “unique” grossness of wet markets. I specifically noted in my post that it still seemed possible for the disease to have been passed from livestock to at another location and introduced to the market that way. I don’t know who you think you’re arguing with.
At this point, I’m confused about whether the contrariant viewpoint is: a) that the lab-leak theory is a serious hypothesis demanding further investigation or b) that anyone ever said that it wasn’t or c) both, somehow.
Of course it’s a serious theory that should be looked into. The conspiracy herpaderp is you falsely accusing the WHO of trying to cover it up and dropping all kinds of insinuations that you’ll be quick to walk away from just like you’ve walked away from pushing Emily Oster’s buffoonery.
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The original claim was that the report didn’t recommend studying the lab hypothesis further. That is true, the report does not suggest investigating it further. You said this:
Both false.
You then posted something that Tedros said after the report’s release, criticizing the report for not investigating the lab hypothesis extensively enough, and saying they DO need to investigate it further. Which, yeah he’s correct.
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Horseshit
Is wildly inaccurate. You can play with semantics all you want, but the WHO Director is not ruling out the lab leak theory and is calling for further investigation of it.
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Do you not understand the difference between the words “report” and “director”?