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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20029 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.

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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