It seems that proponents of the lab leak theory wants to turn the burden of proof upside down: I am claiming conspiracy starting with Anthony Fauci and ending up in a Chinese lab. It is up to you to provide hard evidence on why it is not so.
Sure you can do that as in freedom of thought and speech. But honestly; this is not really a constructive way to go about things.
> The prior probability of a lab escape is low
but the prior probability of "a pandemic from natural causes envelops the world" is also low, say below 1% a year. But now, given that "a pandemic does envelop the world", the posterior probability of lab escape and natural cause of course rises dramatically... and then saying "we didn't see much evidence for it" on a superficial tour organised by those responsible for the lab does not strike me as a very powerful rebuttal.
It's akin to "the prior probability of labour camps is low", and "on our tour of North Korea (accompanied by several North Korean tour guides showing us just those places they wanted to show us when they wanted to show us) we didn't see any labour camps, therefore we conclude that the probability of labour camps in North Korea is low".
While we're invoking statistics: Take the null H_0 = "the virus emerged naturally in any large Chinese city with > 1m inhabitants". In 2017, there were 102 of those. Thus, the probability under H_0 that the virus emerged in the one city in China with a level 4 biolab has p < 0.01.
There is an investegative group from the WHO interviewing the Wuhan lab people and looking at various form of documentation.
The lab leak proponents claim that they are all lying and all the documents are fraudulent.
The lab leak proponents have the burden of proof and IMHO kinda should shut up until they can carry that burden.
It is akin to saying "Pliny the Younger didn't die in Pompeii overtaken by a volcano because there is so many other cities he could have died in and other causes of death." Statistically, that would have been true, up until we learned that it happened. Then the low probability ceases to matter, since it becomes an observation.
Statistically, this is due to both priors rising, proportional to their original values, such that now the sum P(lab escape)+P(natural cause) == 1 and their average is a coin-toss (50-50). So without outside information, the prior statistical probability isn't low: it is exactly neutral between the options.
We've also seen viruses arise in small villages. This is even more unlikely to be predictable in advance which village with p << 0.0001.
Saying there is no benefit is like saying there is no benefit for people people who switch jobs just so they get paid more.
Exactly, that's what I was getting at - the prior for lab escape is low, but given that the pandemic happened, it the posterior for lab escape is 1 - posterior for natural.
And we had about as many examples for lab escapes as for natural epidemics in the last few decades, it seems to me.
It's the media's job to investigate conflicts of interest, so the fact that they didn't looked into that, and that they took Daszak's original so-called debunking at face value, is bad optics on another level. It has left a credibility vacuum, so it's unsurprising that articles like the current one are coming in from the margins.