Can you name another pandemic where the origin point had a BSL 4 lab actively studying that exact type of virus while the likely zoonotic reservoir was 1000 miles away?
In a vacuum a zoonotic explanation is always far more likely but this isn’t a vacuum.
Can you name a single previous pandemic caused by zoonotic transmission from a lab?
The standard here isn’t ‘might have’. The question is what is most probable.
So that’s a no then, great. Coronavirus outbreaks aren’t novel. This is the third major one. Sane people should be able to agree that your theory isn’t more probable.
I was pointing out that your framing is simplistic and ridiculous.
It’s not. We’ve had two other major coronavirus outbreaks (SARS and MERS) in the past 20 years. The presence of a lab studying these viruses, in a country that already had one major outbreak, does not mean it’s more likely that the lab was a source.
How likely do you think it is that the outbreak originated at a lab?
1977 H1N1, a few small pox escapes, an equine virus in Colombia, a SARS escape, foot and mouth disease.
Likely some escape, not terribly unlikely pandemic:
With this higher number, which we take as a worst-case scenario, the likelihood of at least one escape from 10 labs in 10 years becomes 91%, almost a certainty. It follows that, if the likelihood of one LAI leading to a pandemic is 30% in the worst-case scenario, the likelihood of an LAI-caused pandemic resulting from this whole research enterprise could be as high as 30 × 91% = 27%, a likelihood that is too dangerous to live with, as we noted. While this represents a worst-case scenario, it is not improbable.
One thing I discovered earlier today reading about this stuff is
That NIH paper pretty much destroys the arguments about lab origin being unlikely btw.
Check, don’t research anything that has any potency of danger in any way.
Strong debate and a stiff upper lip?
Keed’s proposal is So Keed™️
But there are climate change denying scientists who are funded by the petrochemical industry.
Claiming that all scientists are committed only to seeking objective truths is silly.
Yeah, exactly.
It’s not as if the scientific community isn’t just as protective of itself and its reputation as any other where large amounts of money are at stake.
This dishonest nonsense makes discussion bad and clearly is not in good faith.
So much this.
The difference between open air fish markets in the states and China is night and day. I came across the wet market while waiting for a train to take me from Hankou (one of the three smaller cities merged into the current Wuhan) to Beijing. I had to power through it as partway through the place the overpowering scent caused me to get nauseous. I smelled like the market as I got on the train too. Felt bad for the people sitting around me because my excessive body spray use wasn’t able to completely conceal the scent from the market. So I ended up smelling gross in two different ways.
Keeed raised perfectly valid and uncontroversial questions about how the effect of money on science could distort scientific opinions, and your response is to try to shut down debate. Why?
WHO Report as per CNN:
Covid-19 probably came to people through an animal, and likely started spreading no more than a month or two before it was noticed in December of 2019, a World Health Organization draft report finds.
The least likely source: a laboratory leak, the WHO’s joint international team concluded.
This discussion should be over.
I confess to not being a biologist and to also thinking that the lab theory is certainly possible.
However, if we’re ruling out (or at least making very very very unlikely) that it was engineered to be human infecting in the lab, then what happened is that, in a chance encounter between a human and a non-human infecting coronavirus, the virus mutated and was then able to infect a human.
Given that there have to be some safety protocols in the lab and not that many people there, whereas outside there are lots of animals, people and not many safety protocols, isn’t it a pretty conservative conclusion that there are indeed hundreds of times (at least) more interactions between humans and non-human coronaviruses outside the lab than in?
“Likely” = discussion still relevant.
According to experts in the field it’s “likely” that Torn And Frayed will win the 14:15 this afternoon, but the book is still very much open.