This market resolves once we have a definitive answer to this question. (i.e. "I've looked at all notable evidence presented by both sides and have upwards of 98% confidence that a certain conclusion is correct, and it doesn't seem likely that any further relevant evidence will be forthcoming any time soon.")
This will likely not occur until many years after Covid is no longer a subject of active political contention, motivations for various actors to distort or hide inconvenient evidence have died down, and a scientific consensus has emerged on the subject. For exactly when it will resolve, see /IsaacKing/when-will-the-covid-lab-leak-market
I will be conferring with the community extensively before resolving this market, to ensure I haven't missed anything and aren't being overconfident in one direction or another. As some additional assurance, see /IsaacKing/will-my-resolution-of-the-covid19-l
(For comparison, the level of evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change would be sufficient, despite the existence of a few doubts here and there.)
If we never reach a point where I can safely be that confident either way, it'll remain open indefinitely. (And Manifold lends you your mana back after a few months, so this doesn't negatively impact you.)
"Come from a laboratory" includes both an accidental lab leak and an intentional release. It also counts if COVID was found in the wild, taken to a lab for study, and then escaped from that lab without any modification. It just needs to have actually been "in the lab" in a meaningful way. A lab worker who was out collecting samples and got contaminated in the wild doesn't count, but it does count if they got contaminated later from a sample that was supposed to be safely contained.
In the event of multiple progenitors, this market resolves YES only if the lab leak was plausibly responsible for the worldwide pandemic. It won't count if the pandemic primarily came from natural sources and then there was also a lab leak that only infected a few people.
I won't bet in this market.
1,000
3.00https://open.substack.com/pub/jimhaslam/p/baric-referenced-a-2017-molecular?r=44y3h&utm_medium=ios
“Andreas Martin Lisewski is a computational biologist at Constructor University in Bremen, Germany. Among other topics, he also studies “computational methods to tell synthetic from natural genomes.” Andreas recently published a bombshell paper that found a 2017 “precise molecular blueprint for SARS-CoV-2.”
@benshindel I’m just a layman with no expertise in molecular biology or genomics. I can only read the words and look up the ones I don’t understand. People with expertise in those fields keep smelling smoke so perhaps, maybe, there is a fire. On the other hand people with the requisite credentials say an engineered lab leak is crazy talk. So perhaps 50% is correct at this time. What’s your take?
@benshindel Click... Haslam. Hasn't that guy been rejected by lab leakers because his conspiracy theories are just that dumb? Skimming down the page a bit...
So number 16 is "ancestral" SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan? Huh? The "QTQT" sequences is in SARS-CoV-2 and a few bat (and one panagolin) virus genomes with shared ancestry. Where is "QTHT" coming from?
Not wanting to waste more time with this, I'll just say that it is in fact very interesting to anyone with some kind of biophysical chemistry background to see the SARS2 and MERS S1/S2 sequences aligned next to each other. Lots of similarity between the properties of the amino acids in the alignment. But also so much difference that there's no plausible pathway from the MERS sequence to the SARS2 sequence via some series of experiments. It's very obviously evolution converging on similar solutions to the same problem.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimhaslam/p/jeff-sachs-covid-was-made-in-a-us?r=44y3h&utm_medium=ios
Jim Hassan substack. I recently criticized his book for lack of citations. This post has citations and analysis. Usual caveat:none of what he presents is definitive to the question.
🥼
@George LOL. She could go back and fix the problems with her 2020 preprint, she still hasn't made the effort to get that published.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/6B3B11AD36CBE45A0FDA22F6654048
@George If she had anything novel to publish that was at all solid, she would publish a manuscript herself.
Her very inaccurate opinion article in NY Times is recent and reflects what she has to offer. The reason it’s not in a scientific journal is because it wouldn’t stand up to any scrutiny.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-joe-biden-had-pardon-anthony-fauci
Why Joe Biden Had to Pardon Anthony Fauci
@StopPunting Yup. And yet, even this guy who's willing to believe made up stuff can't find evidence for lab leak that's sufficiently strong to include in his article.
While there is no evidence that these experiments are related to the coronavirus that would eventually spread out of Wuhan in late 2019 and early 2020, there is still much we do not know about the extent of US involvement in similar experiments at the Wuhan lab around the time covid started to spread.
@StopPunting The beatification of Anthony Fauci is the other side of TDS coin.. Evidently Tony has been fucking up since the HIV epidemic. He’s an example of The Peter Principle but when you work for the government the “company” never goes out of business.
I think you might have an epidemic of TDSS, I'm not sure what TDS has to do with anything here, yet its all you ever seem to talk and think about.
Are you ok, are you able to think about anything other than TDS? Are you able to formulate any coherent thoughts without thinking or relating it back to TDS?
@StopPunting see the number above. It’s at 50%. Dept. of Energy, FBI, and now CIA say lab leak likely. Why is it at 50% and not 98%? I could not believe that it had anything to do with what DJT said at a press conference almost five years ago.
TDS broke more brains than the NFL. ™️
@George “It” being multiple theories that can’t simultaneously be true. One of which is definitely false if the recent WSJ article described it accurately.
https://x.com/ChrisCillizza/status/1884054517874057655?t=UO1mFFnvdrbJi8Pt6kt8Hg&s=19
The Trump Derangement Syndrome fever might be breaking.
@George Cillizza must be thrilled that DC finally has plummeted to a maturity level that fits his sense of humor -- https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/after-uproar-over-hillary-clinton-bitch-joke-i-post-i-pulls-plug-on-mouthpiece-theater
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/cia-covid-lab-leak-theory-real-story-germany-3503375
CIA joins growing support for Covid 'lab leak' theory – but the real story is in Germany
The CIA’s shift came the day after one of Europe’s most influential scientists said his view had “evolved” with fresh data as he called for China to prove if the disease really came from animals. “The more time passes, the more sceptical I become,” confessed Christian Drosten
3...2..1...Trump..MAGA...political bias...
He's a German virologist...
🦗🦗🦗🦗
Is Drosten a fraud who overhypes results of experimental infection (and transmission between) raccoon dogs or is he an authority on the subject of DEFUSE, which based on this interview he hasn’t read?
Appeals to authority are never great arguments; selective appeals to authority are never rational at all.
Folks seeing raccoon dogs in Huanan market as a plausible zoonotic source don’t cite Drosten’s opinion. They cite the experimental data and the history of raccoon dog infection with SARS.
If someone cherry picks opinions from people rather than citing evidence, it’s because they don’t have any evidence.
@zcoli However, if you’re appealing to authority you can at least cite vaguely credible sources and not a tabloid journalist who gets basic facts wrong.
Here is a map from a Birrell article that’s never been corrected. He’s aware of the errors.
Trivial error: there are not provinces within Wuhan.
Major error 1: the red “hotspot” is an uninhabited park administered by the city district that’s the same shade of red on the map.
Major error 2: It’s from PCR tests in May 2020 and isn’t going to be correlated with a spillover circa November 2019.
Folks such as Drosten should pay attention to this sort of thing when they’re told what is in DEFUSE. Not getting the full story when facts are cherry picked and misrepresented in this way and never corrected.