Gain of function research did not cause Covid-19(bigthink.com)
bigthink.com
Gain of function research did not cause Covid-19
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/gain-of-function-research-covid-19/
28 comments
That IMHO is a likely scenario, not that the outbreak was intentional (reptiles!) or engineered (secret technology!), but escaped from a lab that had been previously criticized for lax security.
One has to take into account that a global pandemic started just 800 meters away in a wet market in the heart of an 11-million metropolis. It could've been anywhere but it happened right next to the facility that was set up to collect and study viruses that could be dangerous to people.
One strange coincidence that is hard to assess is that the physician who first reported unusual cases of pneumonia-like infections, Li Wenliang, was an ophthalmologist; it just so happens that in the 2nd story of the Wuhan Huanan wet market (武汉华南海鲜批发市场) is a wholesale opticians' market (Huanan Glasses Wholesale City, 华南眼镜批发城).
[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang) [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Marke...)
One has to take into account that a global pandemic started just 800 meters away in a wet market in the heart of an 11-million metropolis. It could've been anywhere but it happened right next to the facility that was set up to collect and study viruses that could be dangerous to people.
One strange coincidence that is hard to assess is that the physician who first reported unusual cases of pneumonia-like infections, Li Wenliang, was an ophthalmologist; it just so happens that in the 2nd story of the Wuhan Huanan wet market (武汉华南海鲜批发市场) is a wholesale opticians' market (Huanan Glasses Wholesale City, 华南眼镜批发城).
[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang) [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Marke...)
Trapped prior?
Sure, collected in the wild. Probably from a bat in some remote part of the world.
Thank you for disproving your own point.
What am I disproving? A Covid virus could have been in the wild, not yet transmitted to humans, and was then collected and brought to the lab. Only once it was accidentally released from the lab, (possibly having infected one of the workers), was it transmitted to the larger human population.
A trapped prior is a term for a stance that when adopted precludes someone from accepting contrary evidence. It's a belief blackhole.
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What are the most likely scenarios?
1) The Covid virus ended up in the Wuhan wet market from an animal for sale there, brought with the virus from the wild and got introduced into a human. Sure, that’s possible, but why there, and why at that time?
2) A worker from the Wuhan Covid Lab got infected with a sample that had been collected in the wild previously, and transmitted it to people or animals in the Wuhan wet market which then set off the pandemic.
3) The virus was engineered in the lab for gain of function, making it more likely to be transmitted between people, and then accidentally infected a worker in the lab who went to the wet market, infected people or animals there, which set off the pandemic.
I believe these are the three hypothesis which we are discussing.
1) possible, but seems unlikely.
2) seemed extremely possible. The lab is known to contain samples of Covid. It’s right next door to the wet market.
3) Gain of function happened to introduce exactly the capability this virus needed to infect others.
Hanlon’s Razor - never attribute to Malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Suggests that #2 is more likely than #3.
As for the wet market, I’d assume there are 10,000 similar wet markets in China. Only 1 is next door to a lab which studies covid. Why would this one wet market be the source, instead of the other 9,999?
If you have other hypothesis, happy to consider other ways this virus was introduced.
But, suggesting that it didn’t come from the Wuhan lab, feels like Chinese propaganda trying to gaslight.
1) The Covid virus ended up in the Wuhan wet market from an animal for sale there, brought with the virus from the wild and got introduced into a human. Sure, that’s possible, but why there, and why at that time?
2) A worker from the Wuhan Covid Lab got infected with a sample that had been collected in the wild previously, and transmitted it to people or animals in the Wuhan wet market which then set off the pandemic.
3) The virus was engineered in the lab for gain of function, making it more likely to be transmitted between people, and then accidentally infected a worker in the lab who went to the wet market, infected people or animals there, which set off the pandemic.
I believe these are the three hypothesis which we are discussing.
1) possible, but seems unlikely.
2) seemed extremely possible. The lab is known to contain samples of Covid. It’s right next door to the wet market.
3) Gain of function happened to introduce exactly the capability this virus needed to infect others.
Hanlon’s Razor - never attribute to Malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Suggests that #2 is more likely than #3.
As for the wet market, I’d assume there are 10,000 similar wet markets in China. Only 1 is next door to a lab which studies covid. Why would this one wet market be the source, instead of the other 9,999?
If you have other hypothesis, happy to consider other ways this virus was introduced.
But, suggesting that it didn’t come from the Wuhan lab, feels like Chinese propaganda trying to gaslight.
All of these are addressed by Peter Miller in his debate with Saar Wilf[1].
What you're proposing isn't probabilistically sound. I'd really encourage you to watch the whole thing. They dive into likelihoods in much greater depth.
1. https://www.youtube.com/@tgof137/videos
What you're proposing isn't probabilistically sound. I'd really encourage you to watch the whole thing. They dive into likelihoods in much greater depth.
1. https://www.youtube.com/@tgof137/videos
Just watched. My proposals are probabilistically sound.
https://youtu.be/6sOcdexHKnk?si=6qlqOHf9Dwe_j3vc 3min 10 seconds
“The only lab leak scenario that fits is just someone going straight from the lab to the market”
So, let’s just assume there was an infected scientist from the Wuhan lab, but instead of him/her going to the Wuhan wet market, they went to another market 800 meters from the lab, and that was the source of the outbreak. These talking heads would then be telling me the same infinitesimal probability of it coming from the Covid lab.
The people with access to a known Covid source are literally 800 meters from the Wuhan wet market.
An asymptomatic scientist walked to the Wuhan market, spent some time at one stall, and then went home. I find no improbable scenarios there.
https://youtu.be/6sOcdexHKnk?si=6qlqOHf9Dwe_j3vc 3min 10 seconds
“The only lab leak scenario that fits is just someone going straight from the lab to the market”
So, let’s just assume there was an infected scientist from the Wuhan lab, but instead of him/her going to the Wuhan wet market, they went to another market 800 meters from the lab, and that was the source of the outbreak. These talking heads would then be telling me the same infinitesimal probability of it coming from the Covid lab.
The people with access to a known Covid source are literally 800 meters from the Wuhan wet market.
An asymptomatic scientist walked to the Wuhan market, spent some time at one stall, and then went home. I find no improbable scenarios there.
> literally 800 meters
FALSE -- That was an urban legend.
> "The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not 400 meters away from the Huanan seafood market. It is roughly 26,912 meters (or about 17 miles) away." ... "there are at least eight "Wuhan Disease Prevention and Control Center" locations in the Jianghan district of Wuhan (where the market is located) alone."
SNOPES: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruz-wuhan-tweet/
The Chinese public health department has many medical clinics in cities. They do not do virus research and do not handle virus samples.
FALSE -- That was an urban legend.
> "The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not 400 meters away from the Huanan seafood market. It is roughly 26,912 meters (or about 17 miles) away." ... "there are at least eight "Wuhan Disease Prevention and Control Center" locations in the Jianghan district of Wuhan (where the market is located) alone."
SNOPES: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruz-wuhan-tweet/
The Chinese public health department has many medical clinics in cities. They do not do virus research and do not handle virus samples.
If "why there, and why at that time?" is a valid scissor, then it can't just apply to some scenarios and not others. It must be a universal scissor.
> An asymptomatic scientist walked to the Wuhan market, spent some time at one stall, and then went home. I find no improbable scenarios there.
Why there, and why at that time?
To me at least the probability of a virologist traveling to the wet market and then spreading the virus as if it were originated by zoonosis is strictly less probable than the scenario where it's simply zoonosis.
> An asymptomatic scientist walked to the Wuhan market, spent some time at one stall, and then went home. I find no improbable scenarios there.
Why there, and why at that time?
To me at least the probability of a virologist traveling to the wet market and then spreading the virus as if it were originated by zoonosis is strictly less probable than the scenario where it's simply zoonosis.
Then why was this virus only found at this wet market. I’m assuming there are 10k other wet markets in China. How many others found different strains of Covid?
How many different locations would you like it to spread from? Wuhan is actually a large transit hub for bringing in wet-market animals from all over southern China and many foreign sources, including Laos where the BANAL covid virus was found.
When SARS broke out in 2002 the first case was an animal handler in a town 50 miles from Hong Kong. The initial spread of the SARS virus infected farm workers, butcher shop workers, grocery store workers, and people at farmers markets, just like the wet market in Wuhan 17 years later. There were no virus labs anywhere near Foshan (upriver of Hong Kong). The 2002 SARS epidemic started from natural animal-to-human transmission, in an animal-handling complex, with a naturally occurring coronavirus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Outbreak_in_South_China
When SARS broke out in 2002 the first case was an animal handler in a town 50 miles from Hong Kong. The initial spread of the SARS virus infected farm workers, butcher shop workers, grocery store workers, and people at farmers markets, just like the wet market in Wuhan 17 years later. There were no virus labs anywhere near Foshan (upriver of Hong Kong). The 2002 SARS epidemic started from natural animal-to-human transmission, in an animal-handling complex, with a naturally occurring coronavirus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Outbreak_in_South_China
This question could be applied to every other case of zoonosis and reach the conclusion that zoonosis does not exist.
The expectation that explanations be satisfying is not an unbiased razor.
An infected animal had a chance encounter with a person that resulted in a transmissible infection. The desire to uncover who this is and when is admirable, but again. I suggest we apply the same standard to the lab leak hypothesis, there are plenty of labs why this one and why covid? Again, it's a satisfying explanation, but satisfiability and reality are orthogonal. Shall we need to track the lab leak down to a specific lab employee and ask them why it was leaked by them even if inadvertently?
The expectation that explanations be satisfying is not an unbiased razor.
An infected animal had a chance encounter with a person that resulted in a transmissible infection. The desire to uncover who this is and when is admirable, but again. I suggest we apply the same standard to the lab leak hypothesis, there are plenty of labs why this one and why covid? Again, it's a satisfying explanation, but satisfiability and reality are orthogonal. Shall we need to track the lab leak down to a specific lab employee and ask them why it was leaked by them even if inadvertently?
Oh, but they do state that the infection cluster would have started in the lab.
I disagree with this premise, as the lab workers are likely all wearing PPE. Just one had a protocol lapse and got infected. The rest were protected by their masks.
Infected lab worker gets sick, but nobody else in the lab.
I disagree with this premise, as the lab workers are likely all wearing PPE. Just one had a protocol lapse and got infected. The rest were protected by their masks.
Infected lab worker gets sick, but nobody else in the lab.
As the NY times notes in the URL its under /opinion/
The author of an NY times article is on record thusly:
In 2021, the same Alina Chan who penned the NYT op-ed said the following:
“I have days where I think this could be natural. And if it’s natural, then I’ve done a terrible thing because I’ve put a lot of scientists in a very dangerous spot by saying that they could be the source of an accident that resulted in millions of people dying. I would feel terrible if it’s natural and I did all this.”
The author of an NY times article is on record thusly:
In 2021, the same Alina Chan who penned the NYT op-ed said the following:
“I have days where I think this could be natural. And if it’s natural, then I’ve done a terrible thing because I’ve put a lot of scientists in a very dangerous spot by saying that they could be the source of an accident that resulted in millions of people dying. I would feel terrible if it’s natural and I did all this.”
She also wrote a book with a famous climate change denier, which is a bad move if you're trying to convince scientists, but a great move if you want to reach an audience of conspiracy theorists.
This article does not cast itself in a strong light by immediately calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory. The lab leak hypothesis is another valid and plausible theory that could explain the origins of the pandemic. One must question the motives and obvious bias of anyone who feels compelled to call a scientific theory or hypothesis a conspiracy theory.
Well that settles it, doesn't it?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-wuhan-lab-leak-h...
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-wuhan-lab-leak-h...
The natural origin is a dangerous conspiracy theory.
This in a sidebar in the article:
The central idea of the lab leak hypothesis, that the virus spilled over from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is only possible if the virus from which SARS-CoV-2 originated was actually ever inside the institute itself. If the virus originated naturally, with parts of it found in animals that were located in a wild population in Laos, which genetic sequencing uncovered in 2021 indicates, the lab leak hypothesis is ruled out as a possibility. You cannot create something through gain-of-function research that will have an identical genetic code to something that came about in the wild through natural processes such as recombination.
The central idea of the lab leak hypothesis, that the virus spilled over from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is only possible if the virus from which SARS-CoV-2 originated was actually ever inside the institute itself. If the virus originated naturally, with parts of it found in animals that were located in a wild population in Laos, which genetic sequencing uncovered in 2021 indicates, the lab leak hypothesis is ruled out as a possibility. You cannot create something through gain-of-function research that will have an identical genetic code to something that came about in the wild through natural processes such as recombination.
Why can’t they simply have that virus in the lab, collected from that wild population in Laos, and it was accidentally released? Still a lab leak. Just an accident.
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3lit3krew(1)
Every article countering that angle just feels light gaslighting.