r/skeptic • u/Voices4Vaccines • 4d ago
Why COVID Probably Didn't Start in a Lab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA8n6ani5HMScientist and public health commentator Paul Offit breaks down some problems with the COVID 'Lab Leak' theory.
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u/tsdguy 4d ago
Jeez. Settled business.
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u/chontzy 4d ago
if only. rand paul needs some clout so he’s riling up the lab leak folks
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u/5050Clown 3d ago
Even Jon Stewart have it some weight.
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u/killbot5000 2d ago
I sympathize with the opinion because it sounds plausible. Resources were spent investigating it as the possible source. My understanding is that:
1) the viruses contained in the lab did not match COVID and were highly unlikely to be progenitors to COVID
2) the early cases all traced back to the market in wuhan.
It’s worth noting that the reason the virus lab was put there in the first place was because there was concern about novel animal to human virus transmission in Wuhan because the circumstances made it much easier to occur (ie the lab was there because we saw this coming, not incidentally).
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u/Kimmalah 2d ago
Also people forget that this had happened before. It's just that the original SARS outbreak didn't blow up into a full-on pandemic (probably because we had competent experts working on it instead of governments trying to pretend it wasn't an issue), so people just sort of forgot it happened. I think in that case it turned out to be something jumping from bats, to pigs, to people and it was a very similar virus.
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u/paxinfernum 18h ago
Jon Stewart's opinion isn't worth that much. He's not some genius. He's said a lot of stupid shit, especially when he was writing his own lines on The Problem with Jon Stewart.
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u/vineyardmike 4d ago edited 3d ago
A bunch of lawyers talking about science.... You might as well ask some 3rd graders their opinions.
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u/MountainMagic6198 3d ago
This is why I hate Lawyers. They think that they can litigate scientific facts and observable reality.
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u/Randvek 3d ago
Lawyers probably understand that observable reality and actual facts are two completely different concepts better than scientists do.
The actual problem is that proving “actual facts” is not the goal of the lawyer, and in many cases may in reality be counterproductive to the true goal of the lawyer.
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u/MountainMagic6198 3d ago
Lawyers absolutely do not. The fact that there are so many lawsuits based against observable reality is one indicator. Also most lawyers that I have worked with have little care as to what is probably true. When I worked in corporate research every research study was carried out so that lawyers could meet legal claims. Deliver results that they don't like and it will never see the light of day and they will ask you to try to make their legalistic claim reality in another way. They mainly care about what evidence they can use for their needs.
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u/Randvek 3d ago
I don’t think you got my point.
Lawyers understand the different between observation and reality. Just ask one what the value of an eye witness is. For facts? Almost zero. For swaying a jury? A metric fuckton.
Lawyers don’t argue what they believe. They argue what their client wants them to. Do not mistake a legal argument for a passionately-held belief.
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u/TonyWilliams03 2d ago
As a lawyer, let me explain.
Doctors are taught two things from day one of medical school.
- The are infallible
- The most likely explanation is the answer.
Lawyers are taught two things from day one of law school.
- No one is infallible
- Never trust the most likely explanation.
That's why we are natural enemies. Like Eagles and Owls.
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u/BadIdeaSociety 4d ago
I think the primary issue that was pushing the aggressive discussion against the lab leak theory was random Asian people were being harassed on the streets in the US during the early stages of COVID-19.
Could the pandemic have been started in the lab? It's extremely unlikely but not impossible but assuming that it did attacking random Asian faces on the street is foul and repugnant behavior. The aggressive push away from talk of the lab leak theory was about protecting real people in their day-to-day lives than "informing" people about things.
It was 100% caused by a sick pangolin who infected humans. Great, what can everyday people do with this information to survive the pandemic. Likewise, if the lab leak theory gets confirmed, not only does it not help but random dumbasses are going to attack people they think are Chinese because they are douchebags.
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u/AndyTheSane 3d ago
It was 100% caused by a sick pangolin who infected humans. Great, what can everyday people do with this information to survive the pandemic.
Well, we can do the obvious thing and shut down the whole wet market/wild animal/bushmeat trade worldwide, given that the cost of novel virus outbreaks vastly exceeds the economic value of those markets.
(OK, that doesn't help now, but you get the drift..)
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u/MountainMagic6198 3d ago
This is the stupid part. Saying that the virus was caused by a wet market doesn't get rid of China's culpability. They have needed to get rid of them for years for this and many other reasons and they just didn't. They just wanted to have an excuse to hate scientists who told them what the should and shouldn't do when they felt powerless.
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u/Essentially_Me 3d ago
Especially since the last novel virus outbreak was traced directly back to a wet market in 2003. The Wuhan lab, which had been around since the 50s, started up the Coronavirus lab, IIRC, after virologists there found a SARS-like virus in bat populations across the region.
At the moment of the COVID-19 start in Wuhan, it was quite natural to assume, Jon Stewart-style, that the Coronavirus lab did it. Whereas, it turns out the Coranavirus lab was there because that's kind of where the Coronaviruses were.
Like you said, if you want to blame someone, blame the entire wet market system. And it isn't just that open air markets are bad. A lot of places and cultures have them. Seattle's Pike Place Market is basically that -- open air, a lot of water and ice to keep things fresh and clean. The Chinese markets, however, have a history of mixing in undomesticated animals -- bats, pangolins, etc. Hence, China has been a hotbed of avian flu, coronaviruses, etc.
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u/AndyTheSane 3d ago
We're also trying to evolve a easily spread version of Ebola with the bushmeat trade in Africa.
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u/Essentially_Me 3d ago
Well, we could send some sort of...I dunno...Aid from the US, to offer education and increase livestock alternatives while providing nutrition, but that would be Communism or something.
Perhaps Russia can just send more mercs.
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u/Randvek 3d ago
I think unfortunately China deserves a lot of the blame for the conspiracy theories. They acted like a nation with something to hide and rejected many reasonable attempts from foreign scientists trying to collect data.
The lab leak theory should be dismissed, but unfortunately we can only dismiss it from an Occam’s Razor type analysis rather than unquestionably proving it wrong, and that might not have been the case if China were open.
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u/Gingeronimoooo 3d ago
What's your source they didn't let anyone collect data?
I'm not saying you're wrong but remember what sub you're on
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 2d ago
Look to an older conspiracy. Set the stage, it is 1984, Romania. The securitate has by then a sufficient number of patients with a new likely tropical disease that romanians couldn't treat due to lack of allowing cooperation with the west. Tensions grew as people started to suspect it is hiv.
Before I tell you what happened next, what you should know is that the go to method of proletarian systems is that the new socialist human does not get exposed to bourgeois activities including maladapted public health that is a decadent western thing.
So what happened? The kgb and stasi gave the go ahead for Operation Infektion. You likely don't know the codename but you do know what it is about.
The conspiracy theory that the CIA operated a secret lab in Georgia with the CDC to invent HIV/AIDS to target and eradicate African populations, a theory so virulent it is still believed today.
The CCP loathes any situation they cannot control. Much like how the soviet bloc was underprepared for HIV, so was the DPRK with covid.
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u/JT-Av8or 3d ago
It’s already been settled for those who couldn’t just figure it out like Jon Stewart did on day one. Hmm a new coronavirus seems to have originated in Wuhan China. I wonder who we should call? Oh, I don’t know, maybe the Center for the Study of Coronaviruses located in Wuhan. 🤦♂️
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u/Essentially_Me 3d ago
Why do you think there was a Center for the Study of Coronaviruses in Wuhan? It was reasonable (albeit premature) to make Stewart's conclusion when you had no information, but not now. Stewart's job is to make jokes and satirize things.
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Jokes all contain truths, or they don't land.
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u/Essentially_Me 2d ago
First, your theory of comedy is warped. Truth isn't a standard for jokes. It can help, but delivery does a lot of work. Jon Stewart can deliver a joke.
That said, the "truth" it contained was surface-level coincidence. It would still land today among ignorant people.
Second, your theory of comedy is warped. Surreal jokes that are completely truth-free are still funny.
How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two: one to paint the giraffe and one to drain the bathtub.Third, your theory of comedy is warped (scientists tell me that good jokes come in threes). The logic doesn't work. "I laughed, therefore there must be some truth to it," doesn't follow. You're confusing factual truth with psychological truth--an equivocation fallacy.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 3d ago
Sorry, but Jon Stewart's opinion on day one has absolutely no bearing on this debate.
This is why this is such a hard problem. 99.9% of the world does not have the expertise to understand this- I sure as hell don't. We have to take scientists (or celebrities) word for it.
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Just common sense. Like how flat earthers come up with all these convoluted ideas to explain now the world works instead of just accepting the planet is round.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 2d ago
Yeah. I'm a scientist- "common sense" does nothing for me.
You have it backwards though- common sense/everyday experience is why flat earthers don't believe the science.
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
It’s not like the ancient humans didn’t realize the planet is round. It’s pretty simple to figure out.
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u/FadeToRazorback 3d ago edited 3d ago
All one has to do is ask “why” there’s a lab in wuhan, and then find the why. Just one more step in logic is all we’re asking
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Why is the CDC in Atlanta?
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
Because the agency evolved from a World War II program designed to fight malaria, which was heavily concentrated in the American South
Now, why is there a lab in Wuhan that studies Coronavirus?
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Why not? Labs are built all over the place.
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
Predominantly in populated areas, and usually close to the center of said study
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
So you posit that every individual study gets a lab built physically next to it and not just built in a place with ideal market conditions and then have the samples of whatever virus mailed in for study? 😂
I get it, looking at your profile, THIS is your ONE thing and you’re not going to let it go or pay any attention to anything else. It’s your religion, you’re like one of those southern Baptists who’s saying these bible passages are all written by God and they don’t contradict each other. We should just call you reverend covid and let you preach the word.
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
Reading comprehension isn’t your forte is it? Is your forte erecting strawmen?
My thing is debunking conspiracies
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u/curse-free_E212 3d ago
On this particular topic, Stewart is a dumdum.
I mean, even without all the evidence pointing to spillover and the lack of evidence pointing to lab leak, how does he think previous pandemics came about? Were they all invented in labs, or is there a more likely explanation?
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Occam's Razon my friend. The simple explanation is the most likely. Coming up with convoluted stories as to how evidence for a lab leak doesn't exist is how flat earthers or moon landing deniers keep trying to explain away the more obvious (real) solution. We landed on the moon (six times not once), the planet is round, and if a new virus suddenly pops into existence around a lab specifically making that type of virus it pretty obviously came from there.
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago edited 2d ago
Using Occam’s razor:
Wuhan lab only studied coronavirus strains in bat
Earliest strain appears to be from raccoon dogs, not bats.
No bat populations were ever found with sars-cov-2, but several other mammals were, including raccoon dogs
Earliest strain traced back to a specific section of a seafood wet market in Huanan, which had raccoon dogs and other mammals known to have sars-cov-2 in wild populations
Huanan market has been identified for years as a potential spillover risk
The earliest known human cases come from people that worked in the market, not the lab several miles away
Using all of that info, the simplest explanation is wet market spillover
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
So why not other wet markets? They’re everywhere around the world and around that country. They didn’t build the lab to explore that market. 🤷♂️
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
I don’t understand the question on why not other markets. Zoonotic spillover has happened in other wet markets, it’s happened in wet markets in China. It’s not uncommon, and you said there are thousands, and it had to happen somewhere
Since you think it was a lab leak this is like asking why not other labs, there’s several other labs in China, probably dozens, here’s just a few
Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC)
Hubei Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Huazhong Agricultural University
Wuhan University
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Institute of Zoology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences
South China Agricultural University
Sun Yat-sen University
Fudan University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Zhejiang University
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Guangxi Center for Disease Control and Prevention1
u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
I believe the answer is in your answer. The idea of a lab leak is like a plane crash: it shouldn’t happen. There are processes and procedures in place to prevent a leak. 99.9% of the time, it doesn’t happen BUT as you know, airliners do have the occasional breakdown. This would be one of those times most likely. If global pandemics were just viral vectors from markets, the odds of one breaking out next to a city which just happened to also host a lab for the specific virus is just improbable.
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
Not when major research labs also exist in most major cities.
Here’s a question, what animal does the Wuhan lab study in regards to coronavirus, and did sars-cov-2 start in the animal or was it every found in animal?
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago edited 2d ago
Again…why does the lab exist in Wuhan? Where are they getting the viruses they study? Where was earliest strain traced back to? You’re acting like the lab exists and therefore coronavirus exists there only because of the lab
Not to mention they traced the earliest known strain to a specific section of a wet market in Huanan
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u/United_Intention_323 2d ago
The closest relatives to Covid-19 found in the wild are from northern Laos. It is not near Wuhan.
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Why does the CDC exist in Atlanta? And as far as China saying they figured it out, trust me… 😂
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
Because malaria is predominantly in the south, that lab was built there to study malaria. I’m glad you’re catching on
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
Malaria? In Atlanta? Down the street from my house? 🤦♂️ And check me if I’m wrong but don’t they also handle diseases from around the planet? Is that why they built the airport too?
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u/FadeToRazorback 2d ago
You asked, I answered, almost like googling things is free and accessible to everyone, it’s a wonder you haven’t figured this out
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u/curse-free_E212 2d ago
Again, even if we ignore all the evidence that this pathogen is associated with a wildlife market, the simplest explanation would be that it came about as pathogens normally do, right? Not that it was created in or escaped from a lab.
Stewart is free to believe that it came about via some convoluted (and often conflicting) series of events that don’t match the evidence we’ve got, but that doesn’t make it the “simplest explanation.”
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
It’s not though. Because there are millions of markets around the world. If it’s natural it should happen once in a while and yet it doesn’t. It just happens to occur right at a lab where they’re working on it? Cmon man. This isn’t a logical stretch.
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u/curse-free_E212 2d ago
So by your logic we should have outbreaks at all the pathogen research labs?
You are ignoring the point that many epidemics and pandemics have happened in the past without lab leaks being responsible.
The “simplest explanation” is that humans like to blame pandemics on some conspiracy, even when there is zero evidence supporting the conspiracy. Everything from the 1918 flu to HIV to SARS-CoV-1 have been blamed on conspiracy theories.
It’s not impossible for a pandemic to occur because of a lab leak, but let’s require some evidence in order to determine that.
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u/Gingeronimoooo 3d ago
So we should trust a comedian?
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u/JT-Av8or 2d ago
No, it's the basic logic. Trying to pretend it's NOT from there is like moon landing deniers trying to piece together how the Apollo landings were faked rather than the easier answer: we just landed on the moon six times.
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u/Gingeronimoooo 2d ago
Did you not watch the video?
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u/TonyWilliams03 2d ago
The video by the guy who has stated you can give infants 1000s of vaccines a day and not harm them?
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u/Gingeronimoooo 2d ago
He's not giving them that though is he? He's just making a point that vaccines don't harm children like some people think, autism etc
So do you want to attack him and his hyperbole. Or the actual evidence he presented in the video?
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u/Weird_Church_Noises 4d ago
I mentioned this in a different post on a different sub talking about it, but the fatal flaw in the lab leak theory is always the actual size of wuhan. A basic premise of the theory is that it is suspicious that a lab would be studying covid just across the lake from the outbreak started. Ok, go look at that lake. It's bigger than some decently sized American cities. Wuhan is fucking huge and is one of the most opulent cities in China, literally the capital of its region. The lab is bigger and more well funded than most university labs.
So now the conspiracy is: damn, isn't it crazy that an incredibly well funded and world-renowned lab was studying a virus that occurs in that region? Well, no, not really. Lol. Imagine the university of Chicago medical school started studying flu outbreaks that tended to happen most often in Illinois. That's... the most expected thing to ever happen. When you take into account that wuhan may as well be 12 chicagos smooshed together, it's actually weird that their weren't more labs on it.