right, an intermediate host or some other mechanism could have moved the virus a long way before it went exponential.
Exactly. I’m confused why this might make you skeptical when it’s generally accepted as having happened with SARS CoV-1. Could you explain?
If the virus moves around randomly, it should appear somewhere at random in a large radius of the animal reservoir, and it’s unlikely to make it to specifically the lab where it was being studied!
Sure, but this is a separate point. That it turned up in Wuhan beside the WIV is surprising.
That it turned up hundreds of kilometers away from the precipitating reservoir isn’t.
But that’s my point. Going so far and turning up AT WUHAN is surprising. There are about 700 million people within that radius of the specific cave in Yunnan. That’s 100 times more people than live in Wuhan. So there’s a 100:1 update in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.
And then there’s the timing. How did the virus know to spill over in 2019, just 15 months after the DEFUSE proposal, and not in say the 1990s, or the 2030s?
We’re already at a 1000:1 based on these two, which is enough to close the case. The fancy stuff about enzymes and stuff is just further icing on the cake.
I somewhat agree with this, though it’s separate from the point I was making.
It seems to me (and I could be misinterpreting you) that in your post, you’re suggesting the greater the distance between the cave and the initial site of infection, the less likely natural origin theory is true. I wanted to point out that this is inaccurate.
It doesn’t directly strengthen the lab leak theory: P(emergence at Wuhan & caves distant | leak) is pretty similar to P(emergence at Wuhan & caves nearby | leak).
It does greatly weaken the natural origin theory: P(emergence at Wuhan & caves distant | natural) << P(emergence at Wuhan & caves nearby | natural).
If those are the only credible alternatives, then it greatly increases the posterior odds of the lab leak hypothesis.
Partly disagree—the relevant question isn’t distance, it’s the amount of wildlife from specific places. New York is further from Atlanta than from Litchfield, CT, but there are more people from Atlanta in New York at any given time. And we know that there’s a lot of trade in wildlife in Wuhan from distant places, which is the critical question.
I’ve always wanted to see some hard data on this. All the wet markets in China and Vietnam, numbers of animals per month, etc. That kind of model would be extremely useful in pinning down just how unlucky an innocent WIV would be.
Looks like such data doesn’t exist, and post-2020 wildlife trading ban, new data won’t tell us anything about pre-ban conditions—but we know there is lots of cross-border and long distance transport of wildlife. See, for example, this. And elsewhere in Asia, we see similar descriptions of very large volume of wildlife trade over long distances.
Exactly. I’m confused why this might make you skeptical when it’s generally accepted as having happened with SARS CoV-1. Could you explain?
Sure, but this is a separate point. That it turned up in Wuhan beside the WIV is surprising.
That it turned up hundreds of kilometers away from the precipitating reservoir isn’t.
But that’s my point. Going so far and turning up AT WUHAN is surprising. There are about 700 million people within that radius of the specific cave in Yunnan. That’s 100 times more people than live in Wuhan. So there’s a 100:1 update in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.
And then there’s the timing. How did the virus know to spill over in 2019, just 15 months after the DEFUSE proposal, and not in say the 1990s, or the 2030s?
We’re already at a 1000:1 based on these two, which is enough to close the case. The fancy stuff about enzymes and stuff is just further icing on the cake.
I somewhat agree with this, though it’s separate from the point I was making.
It seems to me (and I could be misinterpreting you) that in your post, you’re suggesting the greater the distance between the cave and the initial site of infection, the less likely natural origin theory is true. I wanted to point out that this is inaccurate.
It doesn’t directly strengthen the lab leak theory: P(emergence at Wuhan & caves distant | leak) is pretty similar to P(emergence at Wuhan & caves nearby | leak).
It does greatly weaken the natural origin theory: P(emergence at Wuhan & caves distant | natural) << P(emergence at Wuhan & caves nearby | natural).
If those are the only credible alternatives, then it greatly increases the posterior odds of the lab leak hypothesis.
Partly disagree—the relevant question isn’t distance, it’s the amount of wildlife from specific places. New York is further from Atlanta than from Litchfield, CT, but there are more people from Atlanta in New York at any given time. And we know that there’s a lot of trade in wildlife in Wuhan from distant places, which is the critical question.
I’ve always wanted to see some hard data on this. All the wet markets in China and Vietnam, numbers of animals per month, etc. That kind of model would be extremely useful in pinning down just how unlucky an innocent WIV would be.
Looks like such data doesn’t exist, and post-2020 wildlife trading ban, new data won’t tell us anything about pre-ban conditions—but we know there is lots of cross-border and long distance transport of wildlife. See, for example, this. And elsewhere in Asia, we see similar descriptions of very large volume of wildlife trade over long distances.
Good point!
I am not suggesting that.
Your post appears to, by repeatedly emphasising the distance in the context of arguing that a zoonotic origin is unlikely.
Why not? Are you pointing at that the relevant factor is “population within that distance” instead of “distance”?
yes.