Gregg Gonsalves: I am glad @gorskon.bsky.social takes the time to deconstruct the complete fiasco that was the NY Times op-ed on COVID origins this week. Kathleen Kingsbury, Patrick Healy & Times' columnists like Nick Kristof who amplified this nonsense should be ashamed. www.respectfulinsolence.com/2024/06/08/t...

I am glad @gorskon.bsky.social takes the time to deconstruct the complete fiasco that was the NY Times op-ed on COVID origins this week. Kathleen Kingsbury, Patrick Healy & Times' columnists like Nick Kristof who amplified this nonsense should be ashamed. www.respectfulinsolence.com/2024/06/08/t...

The New York Times goes all in on "lab leak"www.respectfulinsolence.com Earlier this week, the New York Times op-ed page ran an article by Alina Chan rehashing lab leak conspiracy theories. WTF happened?

This week's TWIV has great explanations, by virologists, of why the Chan "key points" are scientific bunk & why the evidence points strongly to a zoonotic origin. Plus, they link to 8 other TWIV episodes from the last three years that all come to the same conclusion. www.microbe.tv/twiv/

This Week in Virologywww.microbe.tv A podcast about viruses - the kind that make you sick

They weren't even science!! They were like the worst kind of circumstantial evidence meant to convince people who don't know how reasoning works!

They should be ashamed, yes. But they won’t be.

Nick Kristof, the guy who's so smart he tried to run for governor of a state he did not live in.

They won’t be embarrassed. They’re way too self-important to have any shame. That “news”paper has turned into a freaking joke.

Apropos, considering NYT got a leak of their own last week.

Patrick Healy is terrible in general.

I haven’t been following this closely but I read the “guest essay” by Alina Chan, the molecular biologist, this week and it seemed pretty credible. Obviously racists and anti-Chinese people love the lab leak theory, but leaving that aside, what did you think of Chan’s essay?

K I read some of the posted. Seems to be some good criticism here. However, it still seems reasonable to afford the lab leak theory some credibility. It seems like we’ll never really know, but I would certainly support more oversight of virology labs.

The lab leak theory isn't wildly unreasonable The problem is that with current evidence it's slightly less reasonable than the alternative, and to pretend otherwise is highly suspicious

There’s no reason to afford it any credibility when there’s no evidence to support it.

There are different forms of evidence. Especially with a specific historical event, we often allow for various types of evidence. Traditional scientific evidence requires repeatability, which is ever possible for an historical event. We could call the evidence for a lab leak "circumstantial," which

is not to say that it doesn't hold some credibility. It is a plausible cause of an observed event. If the pandemic started in a location without a virology lab studying this type of virus, it would be less plausible.

It might be plausible if we had reason to believe that the WIV had SARS-CoV-2, or a closely related virus, prior to the emergence of COVID. But we have no evidence to that effect.

You might look into the history of SARS-1. No lab, no conspiracy theory. Just a recognized market origin. Every shred of evidence-every shred-points to a market origin for SARS-2 as well.

*never possible

“We”? You just said you haven’t followed this story. There have been a dozen science articles, 2 WHO reports, reports from the intelligence community, dozens of Congressional hearings, 100s of articles… Maybe do some reading b4 weighing in.

I’m having this conversation literally to learn about the evidence. Not everything is point scoring

Highly suggest you watch this, because it's far from reasonable and they explain why in great detail TWiV Special: How the pandemic began in Nature, in 5 key points (microbe.tv)

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As a Taiwanese, I definitely prefer our country, the ROC, due to Democracy and National Health Insurance versus the PRC Dictatorship. But it is not wise to jump on the lab leak conspiracy theory. Unless there is concrete evidence, it's not something one can seriously stand behind.

The New York Times is subject to a sophisticated variant of Dunning-Kruger. Its editors took a couple of undergraduate science and law courses 30 years ago, enough to convince them that controversy *may* not be true but 'interesting enough' to sell newspapers. 'Lab leak' is the new 'yellow cake'.

For more evidence why the hypothesis that CoV2 emerged from the lab should be rejected comes from the latest "This Week in Virology" podcast www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-11...

i wonder if usa people find the lab leak story comforting as a way to put pandemic anxiety to bed, like "it's not an ongoing problem, it was a chemical spill" fitting with vax fatigue, aversion to masks & disinterest in fixing interior air quality

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