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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market.

He can’t even into Bayes. There are many thousands of raccoon-dog stalls in China. There was exactly one BSL-3 lab in China. There was exactly one lab studying GoF on human coronaviruses.

I think this point makes it hard to lean definitively on the other side of this debate, but do I think there is a reasonable Bayesian counter to the lab leak:

  • SARS likely originated from a market
  • While wet markets do exist all over China, Wuhan is a massive transportation and population hub.
  • Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.
  • Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples

This doesn't prove zoonosis, but the presence of illegal wildlife trade, specific species susceptibility to Covid, the crazy density of these environments, as well as the historical precedent all provide for a decent argument in favor of zoonotic spillover.

There are 45 thousand wet markets in China according to my google search. How likely it is, that novel coronavirus comes from the market literally only a few miles away from a lab studying novel coronaviruses? At least 1:10,000 let's say. Let's even say that Wuhan is a huge hub, not unlike another 113 large cities with population over 1 million in China. Again, how likely it is that a new virus appears in Wuhan and not in any other large city? And I am not even talking about other facts such as that China is notoriously opaque communist dictatorship falsifying uncomfortable data.

Nevertheless even if you are convinced that the virus is of zoonotic origin, the lab-leak could never have been anywhere close to conspiracy theory realm. In fact it would require some conspiracy to explain this away - such as bat > pangolin > human transmission in Wuhan chain of events to explain zoonotic origin. That one is more complex. Additionally even if we accept wet market theory, that one is is still compatible with lab leak - such as let's say infected bat carcass being sold on wet market for profit by some careless employee in charge of incineration inside famously corrupt Chinese environment.

The fact that even reasonable rationalists mocked and suppressed this theory is wild to me.

I'm not convinced of either, which is why I think it is so interesting. There was clearly a political angle that tried to suppress lab leak.

Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.

Last I heard, the closest relative of COVID was found in a bat cave in Laos. Unless new info came out since, I find it hard to believe that the bats made it all the way to Wuhan without sparking the pandemic anywhere else prior. Coincidentally, I believe I heard that bats from that area were studied in the laboratory, so one plausible way that could salvage the wet market theory, is that a lab assistant was making some extra money on the side, and sold the bats at the market. But that is still a lab leak.

Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples

Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.

The same geographical gap existed for SARS which originated in Guangdong, but whose origins were in Yunnan too.

Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.

The 2022 study Worobey study was an international collab that involved western scientists and that was also peer-reviewed. I'm not oblivious to the fact that people have political leanings, but this isn't just about China. If it is a lab leak, America has a hand in it too. Bottom line is that Bayesian analysis works for both sides.

Raccoon-dogs aren't even that special when it comes to being covid-susceptible. For a while blaming pangolins was all the rage!

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