Michael Hobbes: Yep. If COVID was so obviously engineered that laypeople could figure it out, trained virologists would be loudly ringing alarm bells. *Every* version of the lab leak theory requires a vast conspiracy to align with existing evidence.

Yep. If COVID was so obviously engineered that laypeople could figure it out, trained virologists would be loudly ringing alarm bells. *Every* version of the lab leak theory requires a vast conspiracy to align with existing evidence.

This is an excellent description of the editorial failure behind The NY Times' decision to run Alina Chan's lab leak article. What's the value proposition to the readership of presenting a one-sided argument that most scientists find lacking? Did no editor bother to ask that question?

The US IC was very motivated to find out. They have lots of money, lots of access to experts, and can process a lot of public and intentionally hidden information. That they were never able to show it should be a good indication to folks that it's not actually likely

And they would LOVE to blame it on China more than like anything else in the world but Russia!

This is for me the most persuasive non-technical argument. Those with the most obvious motivation to prove the theory have been unable to do so is a strong case that there are no readily identifiable hallmarks that could credibly make th ecase.

So you're left with Alina Chan, who co-authored her book on the subject with this guy:

Matt Ridleywww.desmog.com Matt Ridley Credentials Background Viscount Matthew White Ridley is a Conservative hereditary peer in the British House of Lords, a science writer, journalist, and popular author. Matt Ridley has writ...

Ridley also has endorsed a crackpot lab leak "theory" for HIV.

It was totally wicked and did a great deal of harm to the polio eradication campaign. The polio-vaccine-test-origin theory for HIV was absolutely eviscerated by none other than the estimable Michael Worobey, who proved HIV had entered the human species much earlier. Ridley has been vile on both.

Also, everyone forgets that it started with a withdrawn “paper” that was boosted by ZeroHedge and originally identified a totally different location and organization bsky.app/profile/mabe...

Just so everyone remembers how stupid the lab leak theory is, this is the “scientific paper” (since removed) that kicked this whole thing off. The original “lab” was an office of the Wuhan CDC, not the virology institute which is pretty far from the wet market. Note the date: Feb 2020

Originsof2019-NCoV XiaoB Reswww.scribd.com Originsof2019-NCoV XiaoB Res

The understatement of the year. There's not a shred of evidence that supports the lab-leak theory. Not one. Not a half a shred. Not a thread of a shred. Nothing.

The IC also has been motivated to find natural origins of the virus, which it also has not found.

If we can;t trust Karen, who did her research while enjoying her 4th glass of wine on the toilet, what is this world coming to. The big trend in all of the "popular" insane ideas is somehow these soccer moms became targets of the big bad evil b/c they matter.

You ever wonder if, like the anti-vax stuff in Central Asia and the Philippines, the lab leak stuff is at least in part propaganda?

tbh, part of the reason the Philippines is vulnerable to anti-vax messaging is a recent US company fumble on dengue vaccine rollout (increased adverse effects of dengue infection in some kids), and central Asia still remembers the US CIA’s HBV vax campaign mole - US missteps set the stage 1/

for mistrust. lab leak is def a sinophobic propaganda campaign run out of the right wing, but the remarkable thing about it is how little precedent there is for it being grounded in reality - they’re pushing so hard to sell it because you have to assume every fact & testimony is a lie to believe it

if this was a result of deliberate scientific malice, people who work in this field would be loudly and openly condemning it to avoid being tarred w the same brush; that’s why they took the possibility seriously (& investigated accordingly) to begin with, & publicly shared when it didn’t check out.

the right wing conspiracy machine can run itself without CIA help, though it probably doesn’t hurt their interests to entrench sinophobia - mostly wanted to say, these are fundamentally different disinformation processes that found purchase for very different reasons.

I think it's a sanitized version of the far right's 'COVID is a bioweapon' BS to meant to normalize their crackpottery and to encourage hostility towards China

This letter to the editor tracks with all their transphobic editorials as well.

My ex is a virologist and she was explaining to me that the anthrax attacks in 2001 (which were likely perpetrated by a microbiologist with access to anthrax) got less scrutiny and attention in their community by conspiracy theorists than the gen pop with the lab leak bullshit and covid.

The lab leak has been firmly in charlie brown had hoes territory for ages now. I'm so fucking tired of hearing about it and anyone talking about it needs to be treated with the same derision and flat earther or moon landing cranks. The editors at the times should be deeply ashamed.

Anyone who has ever met humans knows that if "oops" is a potential answer to why something happened, it is the correct answer.

what's a more likely "oops": "oops we released something from a lab, but don't worry we've covered it up perfectly" or "oops, this wet market where humans hang out around live exotic animals with live exotic viruses had one of the exotic viruses jump species"

Yeah, as much as handling BSL-3 viruses at BSL-2 is a Colossal Dumb Dumb, wet markets ain't exactly known for top-notch biosafety regulations and zoonoses gonna zoonose all the time

"life will find a way" etc etc

Generally speaking, as a species, we fall over at any bit that contains the requirement "perfectly". To be honest, I don't really care where or how it originated. I'm wayyy more invested in the fact that our governments are now pretending it doesn't exist & isn't a problem.

It’s definitely more likely it came from the wet market but why aren’t people like yourself more concerned with China’s lack of cooperation with the investigation into Covid’s origin?

The "lab leak" theory contains multitudes, though. There's a weak version, that could be described as "oops", in which an entirely natural version of the virus escaped from the virology lab, possibly without ever having been noticed. There's data against it, but mostly it isn't very interesting.

The reason "lab leak" gets talked about, insinuations are made, are the stronger versions. The ones where secret research was going on, to create a new virus that was more dangerous, that then escaped. This one isn't just an "oops" and feeds off a lot of people's fears and hatred. It's utter bilge.

The versions of the theory that can't really be contained within "oops" are the only reason people still talk about it. The level of conspiracy that would be required is just dumb, and there's a bunch of ways that they're wildly inconsistent with everything we know.

Yeah I've seen some of the "they inserted HIV sequences into the genome!!!" type nonsense. I do love conspiracy theories, the best ones are worthy of Le Carré. But the factors really screwing humanity over in 2024 mostly happen right out in the open, and come down to simple greed.

A conspiracy that doesn’t make any fucking sense, too. “At last! We have engineered a virus that behaves exactly like an existing natural virus. Time to unleash it… on ourselves!”

“But it’s a lab leak,”you say. They engineered and controlled literally every aspect of the pandemic, but they somehow accidentally leaked the virus? What?

I think, for some of these people, the lab leak theory is less frightening. It offers an enemy, and the possibility that enemy can be defeated, or punished. Vs. the reality, that we encountered a novel and deadly virus in nature. And we will again. And we limited control over this.

The NY Times continuing to publish unscientific propaganda to be “fair to both sides,” is their brand. It’s not even shocking anymore.

Perhaps more practically, *so what* if the root cause is one thing or another? What actual real-world action would anyone be taking differently?

In addition to being important historically to understand how the virus arose, in this particular case it's a policy debate over whether government resources should be directed to habitat preservation or virus lab safety. I think that matters!

I have long felt that people desperately want COVID to have people behind it because we could stop people from doing it again. They don't want to face that the universe is random, unpredictable, and uncaring, and that it can and will happen again.

A second reason is a lot of the lab leak proponents are hostile to China for various reasons. They want to make China be/look responsible. This feeds into the CCP's paranoia which makes them less forthcoming, which only increases the anti-China crowd's claims. Bit of a vicious circle.

I believe the opposite. Historically, when a disaster is viewed as natural, people typically band together to fight it, whereas when it's viewed as man-made, people resign themselves to it. They want it to be man-made so they have an excuse to do nothing.

Agree it's good to know historically how what happened happened. But on the policy, this feels very much like a false dichotomy, of course we should do both! In any case, the decisions shouldn't be much determined by a single historical outlier event in itself

exactly. and so what, because it supposedly came from a lab, would that suddenly make it "worth" putting a respirator back on? /rhetorical

this very long article strongly points to lab leak without any conspiracy, and to my knowledge nobody has refuted it: thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-...

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?thebulletin.org If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As is now obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it.

Actual virologists don’t see the need to refute these things because they knew from the beginning that “brew up an unprecedented SARS variant using cutting edge tech in an internationally funded lab with no papers published, no academic consults, and no external documentation” just isn’t possible.

Don’t get me wrong, there are places ad hoc, shady science happens. Bureaucracy mired public flagship institutions aren’t that place. Any researcher who’s dealt with the scale of administration at play understood instantly. This left two options for the conspiracy—

1. A secondary lab. There are a couple in Wuhan and ex. the military might not publish preliminary results, or might keep tighter records. But the early case pattern doesn’t support this the way it might seem (at first glance) to support a connection with major institutes. No grounding, that’s out.

2. COVID was one of dozens of samples picked up during routine wildlife sampling, one of the lab workers got sick somewhere between collection and ID and it spread fast. Someone eventually caught on and destroyed the initial sample/paperwork to try to cover up a minor workplace lapse.

This is actually moderately plausible, since it requires a minimum of conspiracy, no genetic engineering, just a few slips in safety and some panic. It’s also essentially the zoonotic hypothesis with an extra step added in. I’m not sure how this differs from a direct animal route.

you might be right, i don’t know anything about that. but i think the article i posted was a pretty good objective analysis of what we knew then. it doesn’t come to a definite conclusion, but the facts sure point to a lab leak

Wade’s article was pretty exhaustively refuted, esp. on twitter (Wade is also a racist crank and not an expert)

I worked bedside during the height of covid and often worked covid floors. All this covid conspiracy bullshit is insulting. My colleagues and I did the real work of caring for people with covid and many of my former colleagues still do. What the fuck was it all for?

Post