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Will we ever get the truth about the origins of Covid?
Venture investor Bill Gurley recently appeared at the All-In Summit to give a talk about how journalists and investigators uncovered the truth about various disasters like the Challenger Space Shuttle and the Boeing 737 Max. He talks about searchers, who look for the truth, and blockers, who try to keep people from finding it.
Then he talks about the origins of Covid.
While admitting he does not personally have a definitive explanation for the origins of Covid, he talks about how people who questioned the zoonosis hypothesis were repeatedly sidelined and ridiculed.
He gives one intriguing example of something which is not exactly a smoking gun, but still a giant blinking arrow pointing at the problem.
In 2018, there was a proposal made to DARPA called DEFUSE, in which bat coronaviruses would be studied. Human-specific cleavage sites would be added. Transmissability would be increased via gain-of-function. And this would happen in the United States in collaboration with, you guessed it, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. DARPA ultimately rejected the $14 million proposal.
In the word of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, please explain this to Fat Tony and tell him that Covid-19 wasn't a lab leak. Tell him that a bat (living in Laos) spread it to an animal (possibly a Pangolin!) and then from there to a wet market in Wuhan, the exact city where they (definitely weren't) doing the exact research that would allow Covid-19 to be created.
"But Fat Tony, I only had the exact idea for how to create Covid-19 in a lab. I didn't actually do it. It was the pangolins. Tony, no, please, not the blowtorch.... "
I'm also aware of the Root Claim debate which I've encountered as a wall of text and like 30 hours of videos. I'd love an explanation of why this debate matters, but my tendency is to dismiss it as a gish gallop.
In any case, I recommend giving the Bill Gurley talk a listen. He's got a nice drawl.
I don't think there ever was a real disagreement of null hypothesis of the origin of COVID. The situation is as follows. We have the only biolab with Biosafety level 4 certification in China that studies bat coronaviruses related to SARS for decades, that biolab is Wuhan Institute of Virology. They produce papers where they admit that they engineer specific bat coronaviruses such as this one from 2016 named Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus ORF_X Modulates the Host Immune Response in Journal of Virology. And now mysteriously in a country of 1.4 billion people with 100 cities with population of over 1 million people and out of almost 40,000 wet markets in China we see a new strain of bat coronavirus turning into COVID-19. And this event happens a few miles from the institute. By this fact alone the likelihood is overwhelming on human origin of the virus.
Add to the opaque nature of Chinese communist institutions. We have precedents for this such as in Soviet Union, where they wanted to bury even catastrophes like Chernobyl, which only had to be confirmed by outside sources - two days later in Sweden where they detected increased radiation. This is nothing new. We have proof of Chinese scrubbing data from the lab - they literally deleted their database of tens of thousands of tested animals in September 2019 due to "hacking". They bleached everything in the market destroying biological data. We also have circulation of claims and counterclaims of Wuhan employees being hospitalized for alergies or cold. By the way, to this day we do not have any confirmed deaths from COVID of any of the hundreds of staff of the institute, including any old goats and administrators - despite the supposed zoonotic origin of the Virus and catastrophic situation in Wuhan. And now some people just say we lack evidence for lab leak hypothesis. No shit, but we also lack evidence for zoonotic origin, it is all just circumstantial.
Lab leak is the most parsimonious and likely explanation of the whole thing and any other explanation such as some mysterious transmission from bat to pangolin to thousand of miles travel to Wuhan is the real conspiracy theory. Also it is not without precedent, there were two documented leaks of SARS just in 2004 in Bejing biolevel 3 lab investigating SARS. Back then it was concluded that the lab was hugely negligent and did not apply the safety level to proper standards. By the way the ascendancy of Wuhan lab to study viruses was exactly in the aftermath of Beijng catastrophe and by 2010 the Wuhan became the crown jewel of Chinese research into SARS and other coronavirus infections. In fact this Beijing-Wuhan rivalry was fueled by different commie institutional players inside the Chinese power structures (Ministry of Health vs Army/Academy of Sciences) and could potentially be one of the reasons and motivations for cutting the corners when it comes to safety, including conducting part of the research in Biolevel 2 and 3 facilities.
Anyways, I do not care if it was some sort of breach of containment, a bioweapon research or even age old communist corruption where some janitor sold infected animals scheduled for incineration to the Wuhan wet market for $10 profit as it is usual in communist countries. Which by the way shows the false dialectic of "Market Origin" vs "Lab Leak" - these are not mutually exclusive, it is not impossible that an infected personnel or even infected animals leaked from the Lab into the market few miles from said lab. Both theories have plausible explanation of "infected animals at the market", just competing source of said animals. And even in this scenario - what is the most likely source of said infected animals. A bat cave thousand of miles away transmitting it to to pangolin or racoon or dog or civet that ended up in said market? Or that the source was literal hundreds of provably infected animals in cages a few miles down the road. That the virus leaked from the lab is still the most ready explanation of the situation especially by virtue of opaqueness of communist regime.
Imagine that you had the same standard for any other thing. Let's say that a local corrupt politician who had provable ties to local mafia suddenly won $1 million in a lottery. What would be the most plausible explanation:
And now it seems that all journalists and academia are for some reason going for "nothing to see here", or "lottery ticket is valid and not counterfeit" and any other number of explanations. And moreover they would claim that the mafia tie is a "conspiracy theory" and an offence, for which you will be depersoned and cancelled. In the past no respectable journalist would drop this story, and the corruption angle would never be declared as "conspiracy theory" using strawman story of how the lottery ticket is not fake etc.
I tend to agree with this. If someone gave me $100k and I was required to bet all the money one way or another, of course I would bet it was a lab leak.
The other thing is that this is a little bit a culture war issue. Evidently, a few years back one of the progressive system updates indicated that one shouldn't blame China for the Coronavirus. How does this affect my thinking? Well for starters I can't help but notice that progressives lie about everything and everything. My impression is not simply that they say whatever BS is convenient without regards to the truth. But rather, dishonesty with respect to certain things is a badge of honor for them. So the fact that the progressive party line is against the lab leak hypothesis makes me more likely to believe it's true.
On the other hand, I admit that I really hate progressives and possibly this is coloring my judgment. The fact that they are (somewhat) against the lab leak hypothesis makes me want to believe in it.
The other thing that I find interesting is that if the lab leak hypothesis is correct (and it does seem to be correct) it suggests that the CCP has a great deal of influence over western progressives. I'm not thrilled about going down the road of conspiracy theories, and undisclosed foreign agents, but on the other hand, is it really so outrageous to hypothesize that China is trying to covertly influence Western political discourse?
I get that you really, really really hate progressives, but I feel obligated to remind you.
Reversed stupidity is still not intelligence.
In general, I agree but I think there are exceptions to this principle.
For example, suppose you are taking a standardized college entrance exam like the SAT; you come to one of the last questions in a particular section; and you observe that a couple of the answer choices would be really appealing to a stupid person.
For example, the question is this:
In the figure below, what is the most number of non-overlapping unit squares which can be fit into triangle ABC?
(a) 3 (b) 4 (c) 5 (d) 6
Suppose that you see a really simple and obvious way to fit 4 squares into the triangle. In that case, you can safely eliminate choice (b), because stupid people are going to pick (b) and the test makers CAN'T have a test where stupid people get one of the hardest questions correct. Such a question would be thrown out. Similarly, you can eliminate choice (d) because a really stupid person will see the phrase "most" and just choose the highest answer. Choice (a) can be eliminated as well -- if choice (b) is incorrect, it follows that choice (a) must be incorrect as well.
So the net effect is that you can make a pretty good guess at the correct answer by reversing stupidity.
Ok, so what does this have to do with progressives? Well, progressives are constantly competing with each other for social status within the community. So arguably there is constant pressure to demonstrate one's belonging and allegiance to the progressive cause. Which is more effective at doing so? Making a true statement which anyone could honestly say or agree with? Or, to borrow from the Chinese fable, to pretend that a deer is actually a horse?
So arguably, progressives have incentive to twist, spin, fabricate, and outright lie, not only to advance their agenda but also just for the sake of lying.
Anyway, I can't prove that this actually happens, but it does make me think that factual claims made by progressives should be given negative weight.
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I haven't seen this myself as I don't use Tiktok, but afaik, Tiktok was early and intense in pushing the "Free Palestine/Israel are committing genocide" meme complex among Western teens.
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