zlacker

@jeduehr No one established there was a consensus, nor should a consensus necessarily be respected out of hand even if there was one. (Recall that it was not long ago that there was ‘consensus’ that sc2 couldn’t pass human-to-human, or that non-healthcare workers shouldn’t wear masks to name a few examples). A lot of lab leak researchers _are_ scientists (microbiologists, genomics researchers & bioinformaticians). The profile you describe of an anti-GOF scientist is met by Marc Lipsitch of The Cambridge Working Group, and he is far from taking any position that states a wholly zoonotic origin for sc2:

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1373978645560229890?s=2...

>>ricksu+(OP)
There was never a consensus that SARS-2 couldn't pass human-to-human. Just because WHO said it doesn't mean there was a consensus.

There was also never a consensus about masks, the US government and a few US virologists just felt that way. Asia and a lot of Europe definitely did not feel that way. I would urge you to be as non-America-centric as possible because the consensus that the virus is very likely not a lab leak is also global in character.

I actually know Dr. Lipsitch and have met him at a conference or two before, and he's not wrong in a lot of ways, it should be investigated to the fullest extent possible, I would absolutely agree with that and have never disagreed on that. China should allow in international investigators from unbiased third-party institutions with expertise in the relevant areas.

The problem, of course, is that it will likely be impossible to prove it either way. The closest we could get is identifying an extremely close relative of SARS-2 in nature, in bats or w/e, in an area where we also find Human seropositivity (antibodies in the blood).

On the other side, we could find a sample of SARS-2 frozen and old in a chinese lab that shows they had it before the outbreak.

I detail which things I would want to see to at least reassess my position in this part of my original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

>>jedueh+i1
Presumably finding unbiased people is impossible. Trump latched on to calling it the "China virus" because he knew it would feed into nationalism/separatism and harm Chinese imports. All countries are involved in global trade; at this level of importance most people could be influenced.

As far as finding frozen samples, you'd also need verifiable documentation, presumably, otherwise we wouldn't know if it were a zoonotic sample ... so we wouldn't know if it were a wild origin, or a lab-captured origin?

If it were a lab-release, was it accidental or the actions of some other nation wanting to harm China.

It seems to me that conclusion people want is quite possibly not out there.

>>pbhjpb+g11
Yep, all we can do is estimate probabilities with the extremely limited data on hand.