My exact words were “let’s see the evidence”. This couldn’t be further from claiming no evidence exists.
Yes, perhaps you were not accusing me of such, just clarifying the situation. So let me clarify too: I don’t think anyone has claimed the CT is impossible. The point is, it’s baseless at this time, meanwhile alternative hypotheses actually have supporting evidence.
Be suspicious by all means, I am too. But also be skeptical towards claims with no evidence.
Yes the Chinese government tried to suppress news of this virus in the early days.
But it’s also true that a hell of lot of CTs have been thrown around regarding this virus, many of which are now thoroughly debunked.
But it’s not like an article stating “You know what? People were not just suddenly dropping dead in the streets” is going to get many clicks, so such articles don’t get written.
If you go to any of the JAQ articles about the coronavirus, and look in the chat, you’ll see countless responses of “The Chinese government engineered this virus, no doubt in my mind”.
And the thing is, there never will be doubt in the mind of those people. Since they drew a conclusion without any evidence (and are even prepared to handwave contradictory evidence), what’s ever going to introduce doubt?
Virus conspiracy is indicate to china and all countries have blamed to china. It may be questioning on all countries because they have not done full proof of their country’people and not developed health infrastructure.
Media reports say the Trump administration is pressuring the intelligence agencies to find evidence that the virus came from the lab. This is unfortunate (beyond the general inappropriateness of pressuring intelligence agencies for political reasons) because it will make it difficult to trust the assessment of the agencies should they give credence to the theory.
Yeah, any news item that uses this administration as the source is immediately suspect. This administration lies about absolutely everything. So, I guess I’d want to see other governments come to the same conclusion from their own independent investigation.
This is still not a conspiracy theory – if the allegations are true, it’s a screw-up followed by a cover-up. A conspiracy theory implies that the original action was malicious or meant to deceive, in my view.
As I see it, a conspiracy theory implies that there’s a vast amount of evidence in favor of one hypothesis, and the theory is that all this evidence is bogus and was concocted by correspondingly vast network of conspirators. If there’s not much evidence on either side and the theory is that this is because one specific entity covered it up, then that’s not a CT, as I see it.
I think you’re agreeing with me? In this case, there’s not much evidence on either side (it could have started in the wet market, it could have started in that lab), and only the Chinese government (one specific entity) is being accused of covering something up.
I think that’s a weird definition of a CT, but fine.
I’m trying to think of other CTs that weren’t supposedly deliberate misinformation from the start (moon landing hoax, maybe the round earth hoax?, big pharma hiding evidence of damage caused by vaccines) or some bad intent (CIA killed Kennedy, US caused 9/11, and so on). In this case, the accusation is that someone in China screwed up or was incompetent and then the government covered it up to save face or something.
Well it depends on the specific theory being posited.
Bear in mind, the majority of early cases had a direct link to the wet market. Versus none with an association to the virus lab. The virology lab is 16km* from the wet market.
So, even if we go with the theory that it was just a cover-up of a virus lab leak and subsequent virus-lab associated cases, we’re still left with the question of why it happened to take hold in the only other place in the city that could plausibly be the origin of a zoonotic virus; not any of the hundreds of schools, factories, malls, offices, hospitals etc that are closer to the lab.
I previously posted “30km” just because that was the number I saw that was posted on a couple reputable sites, one even showing this number next to a map of the two locations. However, to be absolutely sure, I just checked on my chinese map app (AMap), using the actual chinese names of these facilities as reported on chinese news sites.
It says 中国科学院武汉病毒研究所 –> 华南海鲜批发市场 = 15.8km
But right now there is evidence favoring one explanation, and none for the other. So the point about “not much evidence on either side” does not seem to be relevant.
Agreeing that it’s not a CT, but offering a slightly different rationale.
“Is evidence” and “not much evidence” are not mutually inconsistent.
And you’re exaggerating the imbalance of the evidence. You could make the exact opposite argument in saying that the lab was known to contain coronaviruses and to have sloppy controls while it’s not definitively known that there were ever such viruses (or even bats or pangolins) at the market altogether.
All in all, if I had to bet one way or the other I would go with the market, but the lab seems like it’s also a possibility.
Sure but neither does the former imply the latter. I was disagreeing with your suggestion of “not much evidence”.
I would disagree. Two-thirds of the first hundred cases having a direct connection to the wet market is extremely significant for a virus that is person-to-person transmissible (so we wouldn’t expect 100% to have a connection to the wet market).
Versus zero from the lab.
Why do people keep wanting to handwave this, it’s the key data we have here. Also, the unlikelihood of the virus taking hold in the one other place that could have been the origin of the virus gives us extra reason to doubt the lab theory and/or require to pin some kind of CT to it. (e.g. the virus was planted in the market, because the government knew that if the virus took hold in a random, factory, say, fingers might have got pointed at the lab)
You said that one follows from the other (“So the point …”) which is incorrect.
It’s evidence but far from conclusive. And calling something handwaving doesn’t make it so.
Most of the early cases in South Korea were connected to an infected member of the Shincheonji Church, but that’s not evidence that the origins were there. Just that one early infected person was a member and this member infected the a bunch of other people at the church.
It’s similarly possible that an early person infected at the lab hung around at the market. From what I’ve seen of markets and my impression of labs, it would make sense if a market - with masses of people in close contact, and constant hustle and bustle - is much more conducive to spreading viruses than labs.
I think the anti-CT crowd would be agreeable to a couple of concepts:
It is possible that the virus was released to the public from the lab.
If evidence is found that it did come from the lab, that evidence should not be ignored.
However, since such evidence has NOT been found, and all available evidence points to a different source, suggesting that it came from the lab is irresponsible.
Your original statement was “If there’s not much evidence on either side and the theory is that this is because one specific entity covered it up, then that’s not a CT”.
Imagine if this was a thread about the moon landings, and I say “If there’s not much evidence either way, then it’s not a CT”. You would be quite right to point out to me that in fact, there is significant evidence for one interpretation, and none for the other, right?
Now of course one could argue that there’s obviously far more evidence that the moon landings happened. Sure. But the point is, I am objecting to your framing implying the two sides have equally little support because that’s not where we are: one has strong support the other has absolutely none.
A lot of places in Wuhan might be more conducive. So that still leaves it as a big coincidence that the virus crossed town and spread out of the only other possible origin point for the virus.
Coincidences happen of course. But one explanation has no need for such a coincidence.
Until any evidence whatsoever is presented that implicates the lab, I’m happy to throw it out as baseless for now.
I object to this, because I’ve not framed it this way. In fact, in the very post you quoted I ended by saying the market hypothesis was more likely.
This is ironic because the “that still leaves it as a big coincidence” argument is the basis for about 90% of all conspiracy theories.
In this case, the “that still leaves it as a big coincidence” argument cuts both ways, because the market hypothesis “still leaves it as a big coincidence” that a coronavirus derived from bats happened to arise about 10 miles from the only lab in the country which studies coronaviruses derived from bats.
I objected to the statement that I quoted. You don’t get to throw out something dubious and later it’s all good if you concede the overall point.
Sure but not all coincidences are created equal in terms of probability and occam’s vulnerability.
Right now we have reason to think that the coincidence of the virus starting in the same city as the virus lab happened – because most of the early cases had a direct connection to the wet market, and we know the addresses of the lab and the market.
Versus nothing implicating the virus lab yet, so nothing to suggest that the coincidence of it jumping from the lab to the wet market across town happened. Instead we must *propose *that such a coincidence happened to try to explain away why the data seem to implicate something else.
Hunting down the specific origin of a virus with absolute certainty is not easy. Just using SARS (the 2003 version) as an example, it was originally believed to come form civets, and that hypothesis persisted before shifting the focus to bats. They may never truly know where it originated, except for the general region.
It’s also possible that the virus was passed from animal to human in a less dangerous form and that it could have circulated for months before it evolved into what it is now. I don’t know how likely that it is, but it’s possible. Coronaviruses do mutate rather frequently, though.
Reopening this semi-zombie, since Pompeo claimed in an interview with ABC that there is “significant evidence” that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab.
…however, he does not state what such evidence actually is. He also completely contradicts himself when claiming the “best experts” say that the virus is man-made, and then when the interviewer corrects him that the opposite is actually the case, he says he has “no reason to doubt that”.
Also, no-one is commenting on this, but what on earth is he talking about when he says the administration took considerable flak for claiming that the virus originated in Wuhan?
So…do we think there’s actually something here, and the administration is just not stating what it is for security or strategic reasons?
I’m certainly not going to give him the benefit of the doubt, because of his history and how confused he seems to be about some of the basic facts about this crisis.
And if there’s secret intelligence here, it would seem Fauci is not in on it.
No, he is lying or bullshitting, depending on your term preference. I’d like to see a single cite (not from you) that this administration too flak for claiming it originated from Wuhan – that’s just outright lying.
If he’s right that it originated in a lab, he would just be accidentally right – he’s just saying it to deflect blame.
I think it’s a terrible situation when, during a time of crisis, you can’t trust anyone in the administration to ever tell the truth, not about the weather, not about this virus, not even about who called the president (“I had a beautiful call with the head of the Boy Scouts…” “I never called the president.”).
Nothing this administration says can be trusted, so I don’t know why anyone still uses them as a source. What they say is orthogonal to truth and falsehood – will the statement benefit Trump or this administration? If so, then say it. Nothing to do with veracity.
It’s hard to figure out what you think I’ve conceded.
My consistent position throughout this thread has been that the lab origin theory does not seem like a conspiracy theory because there’s not much evidence as to the origins of the virus, on either side. The fact that there’s stronger evidence for the market than for the lab makes the market theory more likely but doesn’t make the lab theory a CT, since the amount of evidence for the market, while not nothing at all, is also not much.
This seems like just framing things in a way so as to make your point seem valid, but there doesn’t seem to be any valid logic underlying it.
Either way, it’s a coincidence. In one case it’s a coincidence that the early cases should be traced to the type of market which also might plausibly be the origin (assuming there were actually bats or pangolins sold there); in the other it’s that out of the thousands of such markets throughout China that it should be connected to the one which happens to be near the only lab in the country which could plausibly be the origin.
Hard to know for sure, but I’m skeptical. Apparently Trump has decided for political purposes that he’s going to whip up opposition to China over this, and once Trump decides something of this sort, administration officials are forced to go along and make statements which support it.
This sentence illustrates the problem because it’s a complete non sequitur.
The only association between a CT and evidence is that if there is good evidence we normally drop the “theory” part. But if there’s no evidence either way, that doesn’t make something not a CT.
Again, you get the difference between an apparent coincidence that we’re presented with, and positing a coincidence that we have no reason for supposing happened?
The latter is ad hoc speculation to explain data that, on the face of it, would appear conflicting. An alternative ad hoc speculation for example would be that the virus was deliberately planted at the wet market.
Yes agreed, but also after watching a second time, I’m convinced that Pompeo has conflated “Wuhan” with “virus lab” and “man-made”. I mean, I think he believes conceding that the virus began in Wuhan, is the same as saying it came from the lab. That’s the only way I can make sense of his responses.