Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty?
This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.
I know you're making a rhetorical point, but I found a thread I remembered from May 2020 where I both said that the wet market theory was shit[1] and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology/Wuhan CDC needed to be investigated without widespread censorship.[0] At the time, it was not exactly well-received. Someone accused me of throwing out so many lies that reasonable people couldn't even rebut it.
I saw a lot of folks saying that the theories all kinda stank at the time, and to wait and see. Interestingly, a lot of folks also kept quiet and didn't champion any theories. Maybe I can link you to a lack of comment two years ago to back up my bona fides?
Were any of these "theories" (they're hypotheses, at best) ever mutually exclusive? It seems entirely possible - and maybe even probable - that SARS-CoV-2:
- Originally evolved in the wild to at least some extent
What was the origin of Bubonic Plague, of AIDS, of Polio? Do we know in sufficient detail? I remember many saying that the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 may never be known. Say it did escape from a Chinese lab - is that all you need to know? Or would you want to know how it came to be in the lab in the first place?
>>> This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences
How many people in this world just put their blinders on and distort new information to fit their preconceptions and biases? What do you think "low confidence" means in the context of an intelligence report? I tried finding out myself, and I mostly just found people like yourself pretending it means whatever they want it to.
"A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion."
Yikes, what's your definition for "shitty theory" then? Something that's "not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion" sounds pretty shitty to me. Literal shit lets you draw more conclusions about the defecator than that!
Yes it's a completely ridiculous theory that the biolab that works on bat borne coronaviruses might have had something to do with the bad borne coronavirus that sprang up a mile away.
It's just a theory. Totally crackpot.
I mean come on they totally found the animal that came from to support the zoonotic origin theory.
Oh wait, they have yet to identify a spillover animal.
Anyone with common sense notice the lab leak is the most likely scenario here. But sure go ahead and continue to defend the honor of the CCP, an organization that is shortly going to be sending lethal weaponry including suicide drones to Vladimir Putin so he can murder Ukrainian civilians with impunity.
People want a blunt weapon to promote their politics with.
All of the theories had the properties of being convenient darlings of some pre-existing political faction.
The most responsible thing is to claim ignorance on the origin story unless you have genuine, credentialed, expertise and analytical training for it and even then, those people choose their audiences and presentation carefully because of the unintended consequences.
Those who refuse to fuel speculation on topics they are unqualified to comment on is by definition, absent and invisible.
It's also a distraction. The real problem is the chain of decisions and coordinating made by hundreds of groups around the planet between say November and April that catalyzed this from a problem to a global catastrophe. That's really the focus here because an H5N1 mutation is potentially around the corner and that could be much much worse.
It's dramatically affected egg supplies as you've probably seen at your local supermarket. A human uncontrolled outbreak would be a disaster. It's far more dangerous than covid.
But while this helps the CCP party save face, it doesn't help to move on with the investigation. It's not even about the blame. We investigate air crashes in such detail so we can prevent them from happening again. Of course with an even bigger event like this we should do the same.
The pandemic has happened and no kind of blame or money can revert it. But we can try to learn everything about it that we can to stop the next one. I'm sure it was an accident but we need to know what happened.
For this reason I really think China should cooperate with the investigators.
bradleyjg|3 years ago
This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.
baryphonic|3 years ago
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038503
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041871
WaxProlix|3 years ago
yellowapple|3 years ago
- Originally evolved in the wild to at least some extent
- Was being studied in a lab and escaped
- Found its way into a wet market near said lab
freejazz|3 years ago
Ah, the ol' litigating my personal grievances with society at large, with a particular individual that has nothing to do with it at all...
hotpotamus|3 years ago
georgeplusplus|3 years ago
Aint this the dang truth.
plutonorm|3 years ago
[deleted]
PathOfEclipse|3 years ago
I was surprised to find, at CNN, of all places, something that actually sounds credible: "https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan..."
"A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion."
That's a far cry from "shitty theory".
zamnos|3 years ago
JPKab|3 years ago
It's just a theory. Totally crackpot.
I mean come on they totally found the animal that came from to support the zoonotic origin theory.
Oh wait, they have yet to identify a spillover animal.
Anyone with common sense notice the lab leak is the most likely scenario here. But sure go ahead and continue to defend the honor of the CCP, an organization that is shortly going to be sending lethal weaponry including suicide drones to Vladimir Putin so he can murder Ukrainian civilians with impunity.
igouy|3 years ago
"Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on mink farms between humans and mink and back to humans"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe5901
Not what you meant?
How long did it take to definitively identify a natural reservoir for the 2002 SARS outbreak?
"Bats as Animal Reservoirs for the SARS Coronavirus: Hypothesis Proved After 10 Years of Virus Hunting"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258204548_Bats_as_a...
Mizoguchi|3 years ago
[deleted]
dangwhy|3 years ago
kristopolous|3 years ago
All of the theories had the properties of being convenient darlings of some pre-existing political faction.
The most responsible thing is to claim ignorance on the origin story unless you have genuine, credentialed, expertise and analytical training for it and even then, those people choose their audiences and presentation carefully because of the unintended consequences.
Those who refuse to fuel speculation on topics they are unqualified to comment on is by definition, absent and invisible.
It's also a distraction. The real problem is the chain of decisions and coordinating made by hundreds of groups around the planet between say November and April that catalyzed this from a problem to a global catastrophe. That's really the focus here because an H5N1 mutation is potentially around the corner and that could be much much worse.
It's dramatically affected egg supplies as you've probably seen at your local supermarket. A human uncontrolled outbreak would be a disaster. It's far more dangerous than covid.
For instance, that's today's date: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
The first part (origin) has already happened, the second part about the management, that's the actual important stuff.
wkat4242|3 years ago
But while this helps the CCP party save face, it doesn't help to move on with the investigation. It's not even about the blame. We investigate air crashes in such detail so we can prevent them from happening again. Of course with an even bigger event like this we should do the same.
The pandemic has happened and no kind of blame or money can revert it. But we can try to learn everything about it that we can to stop the next one. I'm sure it was an accident but we need to know what happened.
For this reason I really think China should cooperate with the investigators.
selcuka|3 years ago
Reductio ad absurdum won't work here. There are ways to test a "low confidence" theory, and re-evaluate its confidence level. This is called science.