***In fact, there appear to have been 2 separate spillover events. No early cases cluster around any other location, such as the WIV, so this already suspicious event essentially happened twice! ***
Note these claims have been seriously challenged in the past few months:
Lv et al (2024) find the multiple spillover theory is unlikely. A single point of emergence is more likely with lineage A coming first. So market cases are not the primary cases (all market linked cases were lineage B). Their findings are consistent with Caraballo-Ortiz (2022), Bloom (2021). t.co/50kFV9zSb6
Jesse Bloom showed again the available market samples don’t support market origin. t.co/rorquFs1wm
Michael Weissman uses a mathematical argument to show ascertainment bias in early case data. (George Gao, the Chinese CDC head at the time, acknowledged this to the BBC last year—they focused too much on and around the market and may have missed cases on the other side of the city).
The Account that identified errors in Pekar et. al. leading to an erratum last year has found another significant error. Single spillover again looks more likely. t.co/GAPihZu51P
Brand new account, reposting old arguments? Not suspicious at all.
Stoyan and Chiu (2024)
“Just because the market was the epicenter doesn’t mean the pandemic started there,” while technically true, is fairly meaningless. If the center were at the lab every lab leak proponent would be shouting at the top of their lungs this conclusively proves the lab leak theory. Debating one particular statistical analysis doesn’t disprove the very elementary technique of “look at the data, it’s obvious” aka https://xkcd.com/2400/.
The multiple spillover theory might be wrong. But then again, so might all of the analyses that Roko cited in his initial post, including the paper about genetic engineering, the Richard Ebright tweet, the RTK estimates, etc. The point of that part was to show that it’s very easy to generate high Bayes factors if you highball favorable pieces of information, ignore unfavorable ones, make convenient assumptions, and multiply numbers together.
This analysis is obviously heavily biased. No Bayes factor at all for the cases being at the market? Again, no LL supporter would seriously say the BF would be one if the cases were clustered near the WIV. This is the exact same sort of highly motivated reasoning that Rootclaim applied, and neither of the judges bought it, for the same reason. The CGG analysis is just wrong, etc.
***In fact, there appear to have been 2 separate spillover events. No early cases cluster around any other location, such as the WIV, so this already suspicious event essentially happened twice! ***
Note these claims have been seriously challenged in the past few months:
Spatial statistics experts Stoyan and Chiu (2024) dispute the analysis that Huanan Seafood Market was necessarily early epicenter. https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954
Lv et al (2024) find the multiple spillover theory is unlikely. A single point of emergence is more likely with lineage A coming first. So market cases are not the primary cases (all market linked cases were lineage B). Their findings are consistent with Caraballo-Ortiz (2022), Bloom (2021). t.co/50kFV9zSb6
Jesse Bloom showed again the available market samples don’t support market origin. t.co/rorquFs1wm
Michael Weissman uses a mathematical argument to show ascertainment bias in early case data. (George Gao, the Chinese CDC head at the time, acknowledged this to the BBC last year—they focused too much on and around the market and may have missed cases on the other side of the city).
arxiv.org/abs/2401.08680 (now published but paywalled https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556)
The Account that identified errors in Pekar et. al. leading to an erratum last year has found another significant error. Single spillover again looks more likely. t.co/GAPihZu51P
Weissman’s Bayesian analysis provides a thorough overview and is probably as good a case for lab origin as any. https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-probability
Brand new account, reposting old arguments? Not suspicious at all.
“Just because the market was the epicenter doesn’t mean the pandemic started there,” while technically true, is fairly meaningless. If the center were at the lab every lab leak proponent would be shouting at the top of their lungs this conclusively proves the lab leak theory. Debating one particular statistical analysis doesn’t disprove the very elementary technique of “look at the data, it’s obvious” aka https://xkcd.com/2400/.
The multiple spillover theory might be wrong. But then again, so might all of the analyses that Roko cited in his initial post, including the paper about genetic engineering, the Richard Ebright tweet, the RTK estimates, etc. The point of that part was to show that it’s very easy to generate high Bayes factors if you highball favorable pieces of information, ignore unfavorable ones, make convenient assumptions, and multiply numbers together.
This analysis is obviously heavily biased. No Bayes factor at all for the cases being at the market? Again, no LL supporter would seriously say the BF would be one if the cases were clustered near the WIV. This is the exact same sort of highly motivated reasoning that Rootclaim applied, and neither of the judges bought it, for the same reason. The CGG analysis is just wrong, etc.