Covid Thread | Pandemic started Five Years Ago

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stankeylegjones said:
I'm familiar with contrapositives, but I think you mean A implies B then not B implies not A.

I still don't see how it is a logical fallacy to question if a lab leaked is what led to the virus getting in the population, or if it was just a coincidence that it started very close to a lab studying it.
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It was stupid on my part to attempt to use formal logic with my head full of congestion and decongestants. I don't mean that contrapositive, but forget the logic and go with a more prosaic approach.

Here's the point: suppose every city in China has a BSL-3 lab. In one city, there's a virus. Since the viruses usually circulate in cities, 'cause people are there, you can conclude nothing from the presence of the lab. The presence of a lab would be associated with the virus, and also with not a virus. If a football team has won every game in which it scores a FG, might you conclude that kicking a FG would lead to victory? Not if the football team also won every game in which it didn't score a FG.

It's not a logical fallacy to question anything. It's a logical fallacy to assign very much weight at all to the proximity, given that there's proximity in many other places where the virus didn't emerge.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Do you see the logical fallacy here? There are 50-100 BSL-3 labs in China. Coronovirus is researched in BSL-3 labs around the world. Therefore Coronavirus must be researched in 50-100 BSL-3 labs in China?

Do these 50-100 BSL-3 labs in China all study corona virus? I'm not seeing anything like that in your sources. The only thing I see is the paper that notes "In the near future, Wuhan BSL-4 Laboratory will serve as the national research and development center for the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases, the culture collection center of microorganism and viruses and a WHO reference Laboratory for Infectious Diseases [2]. Meanwhile, low-level pathogenic infectious agents are tested, identified, and isolated in a large number of BSL-2 laboratories all over the country."

To me its still possible that it leaked from one of the main corona virus research locations in China. Its also possible it didn't.
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I didn't say "must be." You were implying that it was just the BSL-4 lab that studied the virus, when that's unlikely to be true.

It's not impossible that it leaked from a lab. But it's also not impossible that it was carried on the wings of a bat, or that a kid stuffed some bat guano into a stuffed animal and sent it north 900 miles. Or that Jesus microwaved a burrito so hot that it produced a coronavirus (as opposed to confusing Flanders). If not impossible is our standard, then we'd never know anything because there would be more theories to rule out than we have time for.

Before we give any credence to a theory, there needs to at least be some evidence for it. There is no evidence for the lab leak theory. None. I challenged you to produce any, and of course you couldn't. Mere coincidence is not evidence or a basis for sound analysis.

I have nothing against the lab leak speculation except for the complete lack of evidence for it and the harm it can do from circulating. If someone produces actual evidence of a lab leak or some marker that might show such a thing, my view would change. Until that point, it's a conspiracy theory and nothing more.
 
superrific said:
It was stupid on my part to attempt to use formal logic with my head full of congestion and decongestants. I don't mean that contrapositive, but forget the logic and go with a more prosaic approach.

Here's the point: suppose every city in China has a BSL-3 lab. In one city, there's a virus. Since the viruses usually circulate in cities, 'cause people are there, you can conclude nothing from the presence of the lab. The presence of a lab would be associated with the virus, and also with not a virus. If a football team has won every game in which it scores a FG, might you conclude that kicking a FG would lead to victory? Not if the football team also won every game in which it didn't score a FG.

It's not a logical fallacy to question anything. It's a logical fallacy to assign very much weight at all to the proximity, given that there's proximity in many other places where the virus didn't emerge.
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I understood your point, just curious why you were asserting a logical fallacy. It seems that was the meds talking.

(Regarding the assigning of weight, I didn't assign any, intentionally. That is why I said it could just be a coincidence that a lab was nearby, or it could have actually originated from the lab - a statement that is not asserting anything, because I don't know enough of the investigations to say one way or the other.)

On another note, I hope you are feeling better soon.
 
superrific said:
Says who? Trump's CIA?
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www.theguardian.com

CIA now backs lab leak theory to explain origins of Covid-19

Finding suggests the agency believes totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely, but assigns a low degree of confidence to the conclusion
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

"The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA director William Burns. It was declassified and released on Saturday on the orders of president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in as director on Thursday."
 
superrific said:
I didn't say "must be." You were implying that it was just the BSL-4 lab that studied the virus, when that's unlikely to be true.

It's not impossible that it leaked from a lab. But it's also not impossible that it was carried on the wings of a bat, or that a kid stuffed some bat guano into a stuffed animal and sent it north 900 miles. Or that Jesus microwaved a burrito so hot that it produced a coronavirus (as opposed to confusing Flanders). If not impossible is our standard, then we'd never know anything because there would be more theories to rule out than we have time for.

Before we give any credence to a theory, there needs to at least be some evidence for it. There is no evidence for the lab leak theory. None. I challenged you to produce any, and of course you couldn't. Mere coincidence is not evidence or a basis for sound analysis.

I have nothing against the lab leak speculation except for the complete lack of evidence for it and the harm it can do from circulating. If someone produces actual evidence of a lab leak or some marker that might show such a thing, my view would change. Until that point, it's a conspiracy theory and nothing more.
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I don't think there is any direct evidence either way. There is circumstantial evidence of both theories which is what the reports from all these government agencies and scientists have concluded.
 
Unbelievable

The government lied to us for years. Millions died. They said forever that lab leak was unlikely despite common sense saying it was the source.
 
HintonJamesHeel said:
Unbelievable

The government lied to us for years. Millions died. They said forever that lab leak was unlikely despite common sense saying it was the source.
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And "the government" still hasn't said any differently. There isn't a lot of difference between unlikely and low confidence. They are both firmly in a Grey area of "not known".

What "the government" should be focused on is how badly our response to a pandemic was botched and fragmented leading to far more death than should have happened.
 
wmheel1287 said:
And "the government" still hasn't said any differently. There isn't a lot of difference between unlikely and low confidence. They are both firmly in a Grey area of "not known".

What "the government" should be focused on is how badly our response to a pandemic was botched and fragmented leading to far more death than should have happened.
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Agreed. A worldwide pandemic is not exactly unheard of but its pretty rare. Learn the lessons of what went right and what went wrong for the next time. Hopefully that is happening behind the scenes with professionals. Let the politicians and the partisan zealots fight over what the cause was and who to blame.
 
HeelYeah2012 said:
It’s always been the lab leak. The people who dismissed the lab leak theory really need to look in the mirror and consider what else their media of choice may be lying to them about.
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I have always thought the lab leak seemed like an obvious possibility but I have also always been highly critical of folks who conflate a lab leak with weaponization.
 
HintonJamesHeel said:
Unbelievable

The government lied to us for years. Millions died. They said forever that lab leak was unlikely despite common sense saying it was the source.
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Huh? That’s a strange conclusion to draw from all of this unless conspiracy theory is just your default.
 
This was a poster child moment for folks that prefer to fix the blame instead of the problem. It's the obsession with punishment as opposed to prevention but it's where we've been for a while.
 
superrific said:
"Not A implies Not B" follows from "A causes B" in a world of single causation
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A delightful illustration of this principle of logic is the negation of Pascal’s statement “the eternal silence of infinite space terrifies me” with “the daily sounds of my little neighborhood comforts me”..
 
From the moment the flimsy lab-leak etiology emerged, it was more about xenophobia than science, virology, and public health.

Since the theory emerged, the available evidence, from the most skilled opinion makers, has pointed towards zoonotic. Yet, the folks married to lab-leak have maintained their position, despite a preponderance of evidence suggesting something else. Then, a non-public health organization, which is typically heavily maligned by the lab-leakers, says “we think, with low confidence, this came from a lab”. All of a sudden, the lab-leakers want to use “evidence” as a cudgel. However, the evidence remains heavily tilted towards zoonotic, and thus, the reveal that this was never about the evidence, which is on par with most right wing grievances.

A reasonable position here is “the evidence continues to point towards zoonotic. Some evidence loosely suggests a lab leak. Investigating both has value for the application of future safe guards and public health responses.” Funny, though, rightwing pols and parishioners almost invariably talk about punishments, first.
 
I'm hopeful--though that gets tested--that we will eventually be able to look back and see what worked/what didn't and be able to document from a scientific perspective in preparation for the next pandemic. And I don't mean just on the US level but worldwide (well at least the countries that kept good data).

We got "lucky" this time, we might not be so lucky next time. Can you imagine a pandemic that is particularly virulent among children?
 
Healing said:
From the moment the flimsy lab-leak etiology emerged, it was more about xenophobia than science, virology, and public health.

Since the theory emerged, the available evidence, from the most skilled opinion makers, has pointed towards zoonotic. Yet, the folks married to lab-leak have maintained their position, despite a preponderance of evidence suggesting something else. Then, a non-public health organization, which is typically heavily maligned by the lab-leakers, says “we think, with low confidence, this came from a lab”. All of a sudden, the lab-leakers want to use “evidence” as a cudgel. However, the evidence remains heavily tilted towards zoonotic, and thus, the reveal that this was never about the evidence, which is on par with most right wing grievances.

A reasonable position here is “the evidence continues to point towards zoonotic. Some evidence loosely suggests a lab leak. Investigating both has value for the application of future safe guards and public health responses.” Funny, though, rightwing pols and parishioners almost invariably talk about punishments, first.
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The lab leak theory was never flimsy and now our government agrees.

It’s always more xenophobic to believe the virus came from how the Chinese clean animals, what they eat, etc. They have no control over that lab. Calling the lab leak xenophobic makes literally no sense.

Anyone with common sense knew it was always likely the answer. Clearly, Kamala knew the info as during the debate with Trump she said it was the lab.
 
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