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It's the gift that keeps on giving. No, neither phonographs nor guilt nor syphilis. It's the COVID-19 zoonosis/lab-leak debate. When last we left it*, the rationalists and the establishment had concluded to their own satisfaction that the origin was zoonotic, happening at the Wuhan Seafood Market. The dissidents looked at their evidence and arguments and were convinced... that the other side was trying to pull a fast one. And there it stood, with both sides convinced of their own hypothesis but no smoking gun present.
Today... none of that changes. A paper published in 2022 argued that two successful introductions to humans was more likely than one, and this was evidence for the zoonosis hypothesis. Dissident Michael Weissman has now published a paper showing the earlier paper has a fundamental error, and in fact one successful introduction is more likely. Weissman had earlier responded to Scott Alexander's arguments with the same math error, before official publication.
*Citation not provided.
If it was zoonotic, why did the Wuhan laboratory take down their database of virus samples because of 'hacking' in late 2019 right when COVID emerged and then never bring it up again? How could they be so unlucky - this is key evidence that could've proven their innocence, if indeed they had no COVID precursor virus samples?
Who hacks databases of boring genetic information?
The whole epistemology of this is so bizarre. Biological researcher consensus concludes that biological researchers are not to blame for the biggest pandemic in living memory after all the evidence needed to confirm it either disappears or is solely under their control, is that really worthy of consideration? It was pretty straightforward in 2020 when we learnt about the biolab with its bat virus gain-of-function research program on humanized mice right next door... Nobody's going to do anything about this though. We live in a NGMI civilization.
The books on this in thirty years when we can’t bomb China for Covid are going to raise my 75 year old blood pressure to heights not seen since Golota low blowed again in the second fight.
It not being a lab leak is such a wild, world spanning conspiracy theory.
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Not just that but we know that researchers were more than willing to lie (see the infamous paper orchestrated by Fauci et al) when they internally came to different views (yes they make claims they internally changed their mind due to new evidence but that new evidence shouldn’t have changed the predictions materially nor did it justify the venom by which they attacked their critics).
So when the experts are both incentivized to be biased and have been caught lying, why would anyone trust the experts? Even when they produce evidence there is a real question of whether they doctored the evidence or that they would ignore evidence to the contrary.
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This assumes that the Wuhan lab knew The Truth about what was going on. Another possibility: no one in any position of authority had a clue about the reality of the situation (not at all unique to China), they panicked and freaked out, and then one way or another dropped or pulled the database. Could even be a low level employee just covering their ass. Likely good for your expected longevity to preemptively do that, even (or perhaps especially) if you're unsure what the database contains. Getting rid of all evidence aligns the interests of the Chinese state with your own: they're more content to run with it than any alternative, and the benefits of exculpatory evidence would pretty much only go to high level Chinese officials, while evidence of blame would be used to string you up, quite literally.
On balance, I think a lab leak is more likely than not. But many people err on the side of ascribing more competence to Chinese institutions (to e.g. execute on a conspiracy) than actually exists: in some ways, it's comforting to think that institutional competence exists somewhere, even in a mortal enemy, because it gives hope that someone, somewhere knows what they're doing.
But they were the ones doing it? They couldn't accidentally be collecting these coronaviruses, testing them on humanized mice, putting furin cleavage sites in them...
I blame the scientists who were actually doing this stuff, not Chinese politicians who probably didn't understand or care that much and delegated to the 'experts'.
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Sure. But generally speaking evidence ought to make you generally assume the evidence was adverse to the spoiler.
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How much transparency or access should we expect from an innocent China scenario? Innocent China can be measured granularly with degrees of incompetence, recklessness, or malevolence, just as guilty dumb China can. There is nothing good that comes from transparency to China if it allowed something like a real, independent audit of files and personnel. Hopefully we live in the world where majorly culpable China would take more risks to fabricate details, or pretends to care about transparency, or disappears vulnerabilities more aggressively.
More likely we live in the world that would be equally powerless to the following consensus: China didn't fuck up, China fucked up, but nothing major haha, China fucked up kind of bad, but it's ok it's fixed, and Unnamed China mad scientists messed around, but CCP got it on lock no worries they all look about the same.
I think a position that is basically the consensus is a fine place. 80%+ of my betters say boring explanation is most likely. The remaining 20% are a hodge podge. So a probably Zoonotic position of expert thinkers with imperfect doubt is fine by me. What're you gonna do about it, demand the world embargoes China when you find they've fucked up? Sorry, that is probably reserved for China tried to kill everyone but failed.
The Chinese govt wouldn't knowingly release a deadly virus on their own people. They made a costly display of how very 'anti-pandemic' they were, these are the people who invented lockdownism and stopping the spread.
The Chinese govt is naturally unwilling to admit any level of guilt or culpability for such a huge disaster, so they are covering it up and blaming the US. The US is behaving similarly.
My issue is with the researchers themselves, I want them punished severely to send a message and discourage others. Discouraging others is the whole point, we need to ensure this doesn't happen again. I don't care about the geopolitical level, all the blame should be dumped on Daszak, Bat Lady and the other gain of function researchers themselves.
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Yeah couldn’t agree more with this comment. The reasoning around it is all so flawed - to me it’s orders of magnitude more likely to be a lab leak just looking at the basic facts. Crazy how people wrap themselves into knots trying to prove it wasn’t.
People just kinda handwaving 'yes the wet market traders were sourcing live animals from 10-20 hours drive away' as opposed to 'maybe the huge research lab would be a natural collector of those animals'. I'm agnostic on whether or not COVID was actually manipulated/enhanced by the lab, but it feels far more likely that the huge research lab was at the very least aggregating the animals in question over random wet market traders.
Like in American terms it's as if the laboratory were located in Richmond, Virginia and the animals were located in South Dakota and the argument was that rednecks were independently shipping Live Pangolins and whatnot that kind of distance for a low margin wet market.
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