I admit that there could have been a spread from the lab. What I consider as being highly unlikely is that the virus was manipulated in th elab prior to release.
Not at all. Nobody is saying “if you were a lawyer, you would know X, and therefore you’re not a lawyer”. What I am saying, and I think that @dfbdfb is also saying something similar, is: “because you are a lawyer, and you know X, why aren’t you extrapolating from X to this case?”
I really can’t say it any better than @ColdWombat did, but I’ll add a little.
There are a lot of things that are possible, but science is about probable and using evidence to support that. There is a lot pointing towards evolution of a virus in an animal host to become infectious to humans, like MANY viruses have, and no compelling evidence supporting the lab leak theory. I do still believe a lab leak is a possibility, just not probable…based on the totality of the evidence.
Now I too will bow out of this discussion. The internet unfortunately gives us the illusion of knowledge. Although I have a biology background, it’s been a LONG time. My chops are admittedly weak.
Huh, funny how actual experts in one scientific subfield defer to experts in other scientific subfields. And don’t criticize non-experts for citing those authorities, but rather recognize their own limited knowledge and experience, even though the non-experts themselves know much more about the other subfields than the average person.
P.S. I’m joking. I’m not actually going to defer to you on anything eye-related. That would be an appeal to authority and unless you can explain every little nuance to people who know basically nothing about eyes, you don’t deserve to be called an expert. But I know an order of magnitude more about eyes than most people, and I’ll also disregard the fact that you know orders of magnitude more about eyes than I do. Scientific truth is determined by who has the best debating skills, after all.
Shouldn’t this entire thread be moved to the Politics section?
As in many politically charged situations, it’s usually the cover-up that gets you, not the crime.
It’s hard to believe the Chinese haven’t done a detailed enquiry into everything that happened in Wuhan. If that absolves the lab from responsibility, why would they choose to conceal that information?
Focusing on the viability or otherwise of virus manipulation or lab leaks in the absence of a full and open accounting from China just ensures there can be no definitive conclusion one way or the other.
It’s equally funny how they have hindered others from investigating it as well.
How did Arsenio Hall describe such things? “Things that make you go hmmmmm!”
Indeed. When will we turn our critical eye towards what is obvious? You clearly have a point of view.
This topic isn’t inherently political, though—it is, at core, a question of science.
They have no interest in anybody finding out just how many times they dropped the ball. Evidently, they are putting a good amount of effort in obscuring the connection between the outbreak and the wet market:
https://www.science.org/content/article/covid-19-origins-missing-sequences
From that article:
Something is very clearly being covered up, but it does not seem to be a “lab leak”.
“If you knew more about zoonosis, the question you’d actually be asking yourself is why doesn’t it happen more often?”
Thanks for telling us how to frame this…. and maybe it is just me, but this sentence comes across as extremely condescending
Delete
Delete
I think the term “lab leak” has been used imprecisely to mean either or both (a) an engineered virus or (b) an accidental break-out infection arising from inadequate safeguards during research on environmental samples possibly from the Wuhan market. The lack of precision creates a lot of speculative ambiguity in the public discourse. An engineered virus has more sinister implications, but an accident is also embarrassing to the authorities.
Have you read every reply in the thread? That’s what came across as condescending? This whole thread is infused with it. 
You are right
Either of which could be seen as embarrassing and worthy of a coverup. Neither of which is there any evidence thus far.
The jury is still out, but all of the evidence points to zoonotic spillover from bats through a yet to be found intermediary, probably a species sold at the market.
Remember, it took 10 years to find the SARS “missing link.”
Considering the issues that the Wuhan lab had, the idea that a lab leak could be the source of an outbreak is not at all far-fetched. The main issue is that the spread pattern and the first cluster of deadly cases was around people at the wet market, and the fact that the virus closely resembles once found in many of the animals sold at the wet market indicates that the source is related to the wet market.
Moreover, let’s look at this logically.
A. One one hand, you have the Wuhan lab, at which the staff were protected. There were safety issues, but that just means that the chances of an accidental infection have gone up to 1%-2%, versus 001%. Over time, a 2% chance often results in somebody being infected, but within a short time frame, it’s a low chance.
B. On the other hand, you have the wet market, and the farms and trappers who supplied it. These people are working with a very large number of animals, many which are sick and wounded, as well as all of those people who slaughter, butcher, and process these animal. They were almost not protected - looking at footage from the Wuhan market, few of the vendors and butchers were wearing are wearing masks, many were not wearing gloves, meats was sitting out in the open, animals were crowded together, different species were kept on top or next to each other, etc. .
Which of the two of these locations seems a more likely place for a virus to jump between species? In which of these two places is one of these species most likely to be a human.
Moreover, let’s look at the number of steps that are required in each case.
A. Lab:
Even in a lab which ahs multiple violations, steps 2, 3, and 4, are extremely rare. Considering th enumber of samples that a lab like Wuhan has, the chances that one of these samples is ready to make a jump is also very low. The chances of 5 and 6 are also pretty low, since a lab sample is pretty small, and the time of exposure is short, since people aren’t handling samples for very long
B. For the wet market:
The chances of an infected animals among the millions which went through the wet market is 100%. In fact, there were at least hundreds of thousands of animals that were infected with various viruses, including coronaviruses.
The chances that any particular on of these viruses was “ready” to make the jump is extremely low, but considering the sheer number of viruses the chances that one of those viruses was “ready” is increased by a few orders of magnitude
All animals in the wet market were handled by humans, so that is another 100% chance
Looking at footage of the wet market and similar wet markets, at least a half had no masks, and at least 1/5 had no protection at all. Furthermore, most animals were handled by multiple people. So the chance that an infected animals was handled by an unprotected person was extremely high.
The chances of infection are high, since people handle the animals for a few minutes, and an infected animals is generally teaming with viruses. Having a longer exposure to more viruses increases the chances of infection substantially.
To summarize, the chances of any individual in the Wuhan lab of handling a virus that can infect a person may be higher than a person in the wet market handling an animal which has such a virus.
However, the chance of person who is handling a virus in the Wuhan lab being infected by that virus is far lower than the chances of a person who raised these animals, or a trapper to have been infected by an animal that they either trapped, raised, held, transported, killed, butchered, processed, and/or took them home and cooked them. Considering the sheer numbers of people and animals that were involved in the wet market, the chances that there was at least one animals that was infected with a novel virus that could infect a human was likely far higher, probably by orders of magnitude higher, than there being such a virus in the lab and it infecting a lab worker.
A study of viruses in one species of flying fox in one area found that they were infected with 56 different types of virus, and that was from 1,897 individual samples. Only 5 were known before this. Dozens of species of mammals went through the Wuhan wet market, from dozens to hundreds of locations. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more virus types in the Wuhan wet market than in the Wuhan viral lab. The total number of viruses was at least 7 or 8 orders of magnitude higher, probably more.
An impressive number of viruses especially at the Wuhan market. You would think that there would have been major disease outbreaks before the recent pandemic. Why just in 2019? We don’t know the answer to that but it raises the question of why this time was different
Different from what? MERS? SARS? Ebola? Hanta? Zika? West Nile? Lyme? All are fairly recent zoonotic spillovers.
Zoonotic spillover happens frequently—very frequently.
What’s less frequent is that the novel (to humans) virus leads to symptoms in its human carriers, and in only a subset of those will the symptoms be severe enough to cause death.
So it’s not that this time was different in terms of zoonotic spillover, it’s that this time was different in terms of its effect on humans. And as for why this time was different, well, you roll 10 dice at a time often enough, they will occasionally come up all 6es.