zlacker

Is it Occam's razor?

The Bayesian probability suggests the odds that it would evolve by chance AND first become an issue right next to one of the top three bat virus research centers in the world are pretty slim.

It would be like a new mosquito disease first being an issue in human population next the CDC headquarters in Atlanta instead of somewhere in Africa of South America. Sure - there are mosquitos everywhere - but the chance that a new disease would start in Atlanta are very slim.

>>handmo+(OP)
If I were to build a bat virus research center... i'd put it close to where bats are. So these aren't independent.

But your point is still a good one

>>throwa+s2
Bats are everywhere.

The specific bats that host the ancestor of COVID-19 are quite a bit far away from those labs. The disease was first noticed near the labs.

Looking at the mechanics of the thing¹, I'd put a lab leak on similar odds of some village near the bats being infected and spreading it from there.

1 - I know nothing of their policy and competence to judge those.

>>marcos+G4
> The specific bats that host the ancestor of COVID-19 are quite a bit far away from those labs.

This is wildly misstating the science. That bat virus is a relative, not an "ancestor". And it's not known to be limited to those "specific, far away" bats, that's merely where it was documented. Believe it or not we don't routinely test every animal species for an exhaustive catalogue of virus variants. It's just shotgun science.

And as it happens there was a close relative to covid found on the same continent in a species group that exists in a broad continuum basically everywhere. A bat-to-bat transmission to Wuhan is a bleedingly obvious hypothesis.

And yet we have to talk about all this Andromeda Strain nonsense anyway, based largely on jingoist US politics.

>>handmo+(OP)
One should also note that being detected and actually starting somewhere are two different things.

"Has this been causing small, stochastically limited outbreaks for some time before we picked it up?" is a question that has dogged several recent outbreaks.

>>handmo+(OP)
> The Bayesian probability suggests the odds that it would evolve by chance

lol care to share those numbers

>>handmo+(OP)
To me another simple explanation is that the disease was first identified near the labs because it is a lab that deals with viruses. I may be mistaken, but I recall it as one of the top ones in the world that virologists from around the world go to.

Also waste water samples from Spain and Italy show COVID-19 much earlier than reported in Wuhan.

Spain, March 2019, 1 sample https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...

Italy, 18. December 2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N2DW1YK

>>Raaasm+tu
Plus COVID-19 positie blood samples in France from Nov/Dec 2019. That alone is reason for me to believe that the Wuhan lab has nothing to do with it. It just so happened that Wuhan was the first major outbreak.

That being said, I don't know how the origin would help us right now. We have working vaccines. So the solution is to push vaccinations as fast as possible. The origin of the virus isn't that important right now.

>>marcos+G4
There are Covid cases in Europe from November and December 2019. Just saying.

>>Raaasm+tu
1 sample isn't conclusive enough to form an opinion, lab contamination is more likely. It's embarrassing they even released that information without further analysis.

>>Raaasm+tu
Exactly - people may very well be mixing up cause and effect.

It could be that a precursor was already spreading prior to the major outbreak but only detected when it hit Wuhan because so many coronavirus experts were concentrated in that area.