I don’t think it’s super clear, but I do think it’s the clearest that we are likely to get that’s more than 10% likely. I disagree that SARS could 15 years, or at least I think that one could have been called within a year or two. My previous attempt to operationalize a bet had the bet resolve if, within two years, a mutually agreed upon third party updated to believe that there is >90% probability that an identified intermediate host or bat species was the origin point of the pandemic, and that this was not a lab escape.
Now that I’m writing this out, I think within two years of SARS I wouldn’t have been >90% civet-->human origin. I’d guess I would have been 70-80% on civet-->human. But I’m currently <5% on any specific intermediate host for SARS-CoV-2, so something like the civet finding would greatly increase my odds that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural spillover.
Having looked more into it, it’s quite plausible that we will have confirmation that it’s a lab leak in a few months or years. The US intelligence community is currently tasked with looking for evidence, and it’s quite plausible that someone in China actually knows that it’s a lab leak and the US intelligence community manages to intercept clearcut information that goes beyond the reduced cell phone traffic and possible road closures around the WIV in October 2019 and the 3 researchers from the WIV who went to the hospital with symptoms matching flu and COVID-19 in November 2019.
Given that full transparency from Chinese authorities is unlikely, assessing the probabilities is the best we can do. Fortunately, that has been done with with impressive scientific rigour by DRASTIC member Dr. Steven Quay MD, PhD in his technically detailed 193-page Bayesian analysis of 26 known facts about the outbreak:
which he explains in layman’s terms in his interview with Julius Killerby (cited in my comment above).
The advantage of this approach is that it follows the scientific method: laying out clearly its premises and calculations so that they can be challenged and tested by experts in the field.
The evidence is so convincing that, along with his influential piece in the Wall Street Journal (co-authored by astrophysicist Richard Muller)
his Bayesian analysis—made available to both the WHO and the Biden administration—likely represents ‘the writing on the wall’ for public decision-makers. It was the ‘nudge’ indicating that keeping the story low-key was no longer an option, given the amount of technical expertise weighing in on the subject in public discussion.
In my view, given the dramatic quality of the statistical evidence, the Biden administration now finds itself the dog that caught the car. The three-month time period for a report from the intelligence community is likely only a breather to assess how to handle the truth of the matter politically with China, and no longer an attempt to establish what is actually true.
I don’t think it’s super clear, but I do think it’s the clearest that we are likely to get that’s more than 10% likely. I disagree that SARS could 15 years, or at least I think that one could have been called within a year or two. My previous attempt to operationalize a bet had the bet resolve if, within two years, a mutually agreed upon third party updated to believe that there is >90% probability that an identified intermediate host or bat species was the origin point of the pandemic, and that this was not a lab escape.
Now that I’m writing this out, I think within two years of SARS I wouldn’t have been >90% civet-->human origin. I’d guess I would have been 70-80% on civet-->human. But I’m currently <5% on any specific intermediate host for SARS-CoV-2, so something like the civet finding would greatly increase my odds that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural spillover.
Having looked more into it, it’s quite plausible that we will have confirmation that it’s a lab leak in a few months or years. The US intelligence community is currently tasked with looking for evidence, and it’s quite plausible that someone in China actually knows that it’s a lab leak and the US intelligence community manages to intercept clearcut information that goes beyond the reduced cell phone traffic and possible road closures around the WIV in October 2019 and the 3 researchers from the WIV who went to the hospital with symptoms matching flu and COVID-19 in November 2019.
Given that full transparency from Chinese authorities is unlikely, assessing the probabilities is the best we can do. Fortunately, that has been done with with impressive scientific rigour by DRASTIC member Dr. Steven Quay MD, PhD in his technically detailed 193-page Bayesian analysis of 26 known facts about the outbreak:
https://zenodo.org/record/4477081#.YNAFry0ZNE4
which he explains in layman’s terms in his interview with Julius Killerby (cited in my comment above).
The advantage of this approach is that it follows the scientific method: laying out clearly its premises and calculations so that they can be challenged and tested by experts in the field.
The evidence is so convincing that, along with his influential piece in the Wall Street Journal (co-authored by astrophysicist Richard Muller)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184
his Bayesian analysis—made available to both the WHO and the Biden administration—likely represents ‘the writing on the wall’ for public decision-makers. It was the ‘nudge’ indicating that keeping the story low-key was no longer an option, given the amount of technical expertise weighing in on the subject in public discussion.
In my view, given the dramatic quality of the statistical evidence, the Biden administration now finds itself the dog that caught the car. The three-month time period for a report from the intelligence community is likely only a breather to assess how to handle the truth of the matter politically with China, and no longer an attempt to establish what is actually true.