zlacker

>>delbar+(OP)
Good lord is this startup trying to draw attention to themselves with this analysis by spinning up bogus stories?

Just look at this:

However, Wuhan stands out for housing the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of only a few labs engaged in gain-of-function research.

How does this imply causality? Why do they not consider the simple alternative, that a location that specialises in gain-of-function research of coronaviruses has the highest concentration of people who are able to DETECT novel coronaviruses with a much higher likelihood? If the virus originated in a city that has no lab specializing in these viruses, how would they ever have distinguished it from pneumonia?

The coexistence of the lab and the outbreak of the disease leads them to raise their estimate from 1.4% to 42%(!) lab made chance although it does not establish cause at all and does not even consider this inherent bias in sensitivity to detection.

>>Barrin+zz
> Why do they not consider the simple alternative, that a location that specialises in gain-of-function research of coronaviruses has the highest concentration of people who are able to DETECT novel coronaviruses with a much higher likelihood? If the virus originated in a city that has no lab specializing in these viruses, how would they ever have distinguished it from pneumonia?

SARS has a distinct clinical pathology different form ordinary pneumonia. Physician Ai Fen was the first to identify pneumonia cases in Wuhan as SARS, based on her clinical experience. This was then publicized by colleague Li Wenliang. Only later was the virus identified as distinct from previous SARS viruses by virologists.

>>incrud+0B
Okay, but the exact same logic applies? Doctors who are experts in disease detection likely reside close to clusters that study said diseases and have high populations and access to modern technology.

Put it very concretely, say patient 0 was infected in a village a hundred miles away, is asymptomatic like most patients, travels to Wuhan, infects someone, that person is the officially first detected case.

>>Barrin+RC
If you're generalizing it like that, your argument becomes weak. There's no connection with these physicians and the virologists required in order to detect a SARS outbreak, and (to my knowledge) no such connection existed.

Remember, you're using this argument to dismiss the fact that the outbreak happened in the one city where the world's top virologists on the topic of bat coronaviruses were performing gain-of-function experiments. The virus samples were obtained hundreds of miles away in Southern China, where these bats actually live and where the SARS1 outbreak originated. There are no bats in Wuhan, no bats were found in the food markets and no other intermediate host has been identified.

That's a lot of circumstance that isn't dismissed quite as easily.