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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.
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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