zlacker

I tend to flag most of the COVID lab leak stories. They’re perfect fodder for pointless flame wars: no one here is in a position to confirm or disprove the theory, and there are no consequences for being wrong. So everyone can just argue their point of view vociferously, while no one learns anything.

If the lab leak theory was easy to confirm, it would have been done already. Maybe someday it will be confirmed or ruled out and I’ll happily upvote that story. This isn’t it, though, even if it is the WSJ.

>>snowwr+(OP)
yes, especially these stories have been nearly entirely poo-flinging, but most covid stories largely exhibit the same tribalist impulses rather than critical examination of not only mechanisms, risks, and likelihoods, but also sociologies and real-world empirical evidence. ideally, commenters would present evidence without adding any ‘us vs. them’ color, but those underlying emotional impulses are hard to ignore, especially with various media relentlessly prodding it on for their own benefit.

>>snowwr+(OP)
> If the lab leak theory was easy to confirm, it would have been done already.

If a zoonotic event in the wild with SARS-COV2 was easy to confirm, it would have been done already.

Either hypothesis has circunstancial evidence. But there isn't an equal effort of investigate both candidate theories.

>>snowwr+(OP)
snowrestler says>"If the lab leak theory was easy to confirm, it would have been done already. Maybe someday it will be confirmed or ruled out and I’ll happily up-vote that story. "

Yes. These medical researchers are very good and very persistent so I trust them to do their detective work. They have always been my heroes.

For example, a recent claim is that they have found the earliest case of AIDS/HIV in humans. An excerpt:

"^By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor, CHICAGO (AP)

Scientists have pinpointed what is believed to be the earliest known case of AIDS an African man who died in 1959 and say the discovery suggests the virus first infected people in the 1940s or early '50s...

The virus in the sample had degraded, but the scientists were able to isolate four small fragments of two viral genes. One gene holds instructions for assembling the outer coat of the virus, while the other is code for one of the proteins the virus needs to reproduce...

HIV mutates quickly. About 1 percent of its genetic material changes each year. So the scientists compared the genes from the 39-year-old sample of HIV with those carried by current versions of HIV."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-earliest-aids-case/

Take time to read the (short) article. It is a credit to our medical/biomedical scientific researchers and explorers and a glowing tribute to what good science can do.

>>DoingI+5q
Natural emergence of a disease obviously has far stronger priors. Two possibilities are not equally likely just because there are two of them.