The seeming lack of widespread concern about the origins of COVID given that if it is of artificial origin it would be perhaps the worst technologically-created accidental disaster in history (unless I’m missing something) is really very disappointing.
To take some version of the opposite side: If we managed to figure out that, say, there was an X% chance per year of lab-leaking something like COVID, and a Y% chance per year of natural origin + wet market crossover producing something like COVID… that would determine the expected-value badness of lab practices and wet market practices, and the respective urgencies of doing something about them. It wouldn’t matter which specific thing happened in 2019. (For an analogy, if the brakes on your car stopped working for 30 seconds while you were on the highway, this would be extremely concerning and warrant fixing, regardless of whether you managed to avoid crashing in that particular incident.)
That said, it seems unlikely that we’ll get decent estimates on X and Y, and much more unlikely that there would be mainstream consensus on such estimates. More likely, if COVID is proven to have come from a lab leak, then people will do something serious about bio-lab safety, and if it’s proven not to have come from a lab leak, then people will do much less about bio-lab safety; this one data point will be taken as strong evidence about the danger. So, getting an answer is potentially useful for political purposes.
(Remember: SARS 1 leaked from a lab 4 times. That seems to me like plenty of evidence that lab leaks are a real danger, unless you think labs have substantially improved practices since then.)
Thanks, I appreciate it—I didn’t really understand the downvotes either, my beliefs don’t even seem particularly controversial (to me). Just that I think it’s really important to understand where COVID came from (and the lab leak theory should be taken seriously) and try to prevent something similar from happening in the future. I’m not much interested in blaming any particular person or group of people.
The word “disappointing” suggests that the action taken to suppress widespread concern (like overruling the intelligence analysts) are bad. Why wouldn’t you want to blame those who are responsible for the disappointing state of affairs?
Some people are invested emotionally, politically, and career-ally in said denial. I am curious how many of them will have the humility to admit they were wrong. Sadly, this has become my only metric for the quality of public servants: Can they admit it when they are wrong? Do they offer to change, or do they just blame others for their failures? I assume none of them have this capacity until I see it. The “lab leak” story will offer an opportunity for us to observe a large number of public servants either admit their mistakes … or not.
I think the framing of focusing on public servants is one about obscuring responsibility for people on forums like this who went along with the disinformation campaign to suppress the lab leak theory.
Spoiler: Less than 1% will admit they were wrong. Straight denial, reasoning that it doesn’t actually matter, or pretending they knew the whole time lab origin was possible are all preferable alternatives. Admitting you were wrong is career suicide.
The political investments in natural origin are strong. Trump claiming a Chinese lab was responsible automatically put a large chunk of Americans in the opposite camp. My interest in the topic actually started with reading up to confirm why he was wrong, only to find the Daszak-orchestrated Lancet letter that miscited numerous articles and the Proximal Origins paper that might be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. The Lancet letter’s declaration that “lab origin theories = racist” influenced discourse in a way that cannot be understated. It also seems many view more deadly viruses as an adjoining component of climate change: a notion that civilizing more square footage of earth means we are inevitably bound to suffer nature’s increasing wrath in the form of increasingly virulent, deadly pathogens.
The professional motivations are stark and gross. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Thoughts on the origin are frequently dismissed if you’re not a virologist. But all the money in virology is in gain of function. Oops!
I think the motivation to suppress the lab leak theory was to avoid compounding the crisis at the time with anti-Chinese sentiment, including racist attacks on Chinese Americans. Emotions were running really high.
I think we’ll now see little energy for continuing that bias, and more energy for correctly identifying the source to prevent future pandemics from similar origins.
TBF, I predict that the public debate will still resemble a dumpster fire, as do most complex human affairs. Humans are cute, not smart.
Was “avoiding anti-Chinese sentiment” really a motivation? The official explanation is that some Chinese person ate like a barbecued bat or got bit by a pangolin or something. I don’t see how a lab leak would make people any more racist or hateful towards the Chinese than the official explanation did.
I suppose that it probably was a motivation even though it did not make much rational sense to me. I just wonder if that concern was more of a matter of political identity rather than a considered response.
IIRC research at WIV was done in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance and/or other similar US-based orgs. Granting WIV BSL4 necessary for this kind of gain-of-function research was in part based on their assessments. US establishment had a reason to cover it up because it was in part their own fuckup.
The seeming lack of widespread concern about the origins of COVID given that if it is of artificial origin it would be perhaps the worst technologically-created accidental disaster in history (unless I’m missing something) is really very disappointing.
To take some version of the opposite side: If we managed to figure out that, say, there was an X% chance per year of lab-leaking something like COVID, and a Y% chance per year of natural origin + wet market crossover producing something like COVID… that would determine the expected-value badness of lab practices and wet market practices, and the respective urgencies of doing something about them. It wouldn’t matter which specific thing happened in 2019. (For an analogy, if the brakes on your car stopped working for 30 seconds while you were on the highway, this would be extremely concerning and warrant fixing, regardless of whether you managed to avoid crashing in that particular incident.)
That said, it seems unlikely that we’ll get decent estimates on X and Y, and much more unlikely that there would be mainstream consensus on such estimates. More likely, if COVID is proven to have come from a lab leak, then people will do something serious about bio-lab safety, and if it’s proven not to have come from a lab leak, then people will do much less about bio-lab safety; this one data point will be taken as strong evidence about the danger. So, getting an answer is potentially useful for political purposes.
(Remember: SARS 1 leaked from a lab 4 times. That seems to me like plenty of evidence that lab leaks are a real danger, unless you think labs have substantially improved practices since then.)
I don’t get the downvotes, this post is just agreeing with the OP.
Thanks, I appreciate it—I didn’t really understand the downvotes either, my beliefs don’t even seem particularly controversial (to me). Just that I think it’s really important to understand where COVID came from (and the lab leak theory should be taken seriously) and try to prevent something similar from happening in the future. I’m not much interested in blaming any particular person or group of people.
The word “disappointing” suggests that the action taken to suppress widespread concern (like overruling the intelligence analysts) are bad. Why wouldn’t you want to blame those who are responsible for the disappointing state of affairs?
It’s a polarizing topic and some people seem to be emotionally attached to lab leak denial.
Some people are invested emotionally, politically, and career-ally in said denial. I am curious how many of them will have the humility to admit they were wrong. Sadly, this has become my only metric for the quality of public servants: Can they admit it when they are wrong? Do they offer to change, or do they just blame others for their failures? I assume none of them have this capacity until I see it. The “lab leak” story will offer an opportunity for us to observe a large number of public servants either admit their mistakes … or not.
I think the framing of focusing on public servants is one about obscuring responsibility for people on forums like this who went along with the disinformation campaign to suppress the lab leak theory.
Professionally?
Spoiler: Less than 1% will admit they were wrong. Straight denial, reasoning that it doesn’t actually matter, or pretending they knew the whole time lab origin was possible are all preferable alternatives. Admitting you were wrong is career suicide.
The political investments in natural origin are strong. Trump claiming a Chinese lab was responsible automatically put a large chunk of Americans in the opposite camp. My interest in the topic actually started with reading up to confirm why he was wrong, only to find the Daszak-orchestrated Lancet letter that miscited numerous articles and the Proximal Origins paper that might be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. The Lancet letter’s declaration that “lab origin theories = racist” influenced discourse in a way that cannot be understated. It also seems many view more deadly viruses as an adjoining component of climate change: a notion that civilizing more square footage of earth means we are inevitably bound to suffer nature’s increasing wrath in the form of increasingly virulent, deadly pathogens.
The professional motivations are stark and gross. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Thoughts on the origin are frequently dismissed if you’re not a virologist. But all the money in virology is in gain of function. Oops!
I think the motivation to suppress the lab leak theory was to avoid compounding the crisis at the time with anti-Chinese sentiment, including racist attacks on Chinese Americans. Emotions were running really high.
I think we’ll now see little energy for continuing that bias, and more energy for correctly identifying the source to prevent future pandemics from similar origins.
TBF, I predict that the public debate will still resemble a dumpster fire, as do most complex human affairs. Humans are cute, not smart.
Was “avoiding anti-Chinese sentiment” really a motivation? The official explanation is that some Chinese person ate like a barbecued bat or got bit by a pangolin or something. I don’t see how a lab leak would make people any more racist or hateful towards the Chinese than the official explanation did.
I suppose that it probably was a motivation even though it did not make much rational sense to me. I just wonder if that concern was more of a matter of political identity rather than a considered response.
This was probably a factor but also:
IIRC research at WIV was done in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance and/or other similar US-based orgs. Granting WIV BSL4 necessary for this kind of gain-of-function research was in part based on their assessments. US establishment had a reason to cover it up because it was in part their own fuckup.
The WIV did not do any work on Coronaviruses under BSL4. They did gain-of-function experiments under BSL2 and BSL3.