zlacker

>>todd8+(OP)
Almost no theories can be "ruled out" in this space. Viruses evolve in crazy and essentially unobservable ways.

Nonetheless, we know there was a close relative documented in bats on the same continent within a comparable timeframe. The clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission was the vector, for the simple reason that this is the way every single other pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened. There is nothing unique or notable about covid from the perspective of viral evolution. Period. So Occam says we go with the simplest theory.

Attempts to wave away that fact have nothing to do with science about what was happening in Wuhan and everything to do with modern political opinions about a government 1000km away in Beijing.

>>newacc+se
Occam's Razor doesn't really apply to this one, because each side has different priors on which theory is actually the "simplest."

Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan - something which a) should have been likely and b) China would be highly incentivized to root out since it would disprove the lab hypothesis, it implies patient zero was probably in Wuhan. If that's true, Occam could cut the other way, since the notion that case zero of a virus making a species transition would just so happen to occur in a city with a virology lab doing research on the same kind of viruses is a bit hard to believe.

>>gfodor+th
> we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan

The disease spread all over the world before people discovered the first cases, so it's not very surprising if previous cases on a less developed area than Wuhan were ignored.

>>marcos+Am
Well, sure, but my point is that now that people are suspecting it was the lab, we ought to expect China to be digging furiously for evidence of an earlier case. At least so far, I haven't heard of any such evidence.

>>gfodor+Fn
Willful ignorance is the first posture I would expect from the CCP - that would be the specific avoidance of gathering evidence that would be embarrassing if found to exist.

The second posture I would expect (if the first posture was not takwn) is that if they did seek and find evidence of particularly embarassing variety, they would actively stonewall access to awareness of that evidence and do everything they could to suppress that evidence. The statement,

>we ought to expect China to be digging furiously for evidence of an earlier case

is prima facie either incorrect or irrelevant to whether your ever becoming aware such evidence exists.

China does not possess Western democratic institutions, (however flawed as even those might be), to achieve accountability. To wit, over here on the Western side of things, it’s going to be hard enough getting NIH to examine whether NIH funded this work in contravention of US gov mandates not to (see HHS Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) Framework, 2017).