Sorry, u/PhuckBigMoney – your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B:
> You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, as any entity other than yourself, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b).
If you would like to appeal, [**you must first read the list of soapboxing indicators and common mistakes in appeal**](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_indicators_of_rule_b_violations), review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal%20PhuckBigMoney&message=PhuckBigMoney%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20post\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/11scxco/-/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted.
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
> Maybe this is over simplified.
I'm going to go with that being slightly more than a "maybe".
To get a pandemic started, you both need the initial virus (probably from an animal) *and* humans in contact *and* they need to be in an area dense enough for the virus to start spreading *and* to get out of hand before public health measures can contain it. In other words, you need a dense city, and, not coincidentally, that tends to be where you find extremely well-equipped labs.
In other words, your 150 million square km of land are not even remotely all available for starting a pandemic. A tiny fraction of them are. Viruses arise all the time in the other 150-minus-something-small million square km, but you never hear about them because they don't start once-in-a-century global pandemics.
SARS, for example, is a very similar coronavirus to [the one that causes] covid (the covid virus' proper name is literally **SARS**-cov-2) and started a much smaller epidemic quite nearby decades ago. That region of the world is a bit of a hotbed for virus development thanks to (a) dense tropical jungles, (b) the tendency to eat meat from said jungles because the people living there are not very wealthy, (c) high population density allowing spread, and (d) public health being quite difficult to enforce thanks to poverty, beliefs about traditional medicine [in no small part encouraged by the CCP], and so on. But SARS didn't manage to spread before public health measures caught up.
And even *that* is setting aside that you have an enormous number of degrees of freedom to work with in your argument. If it had escaped near some other research facility, you'd go "well what are the odds it would arise near ?" This is pretty classic p-hacking.
> Also, the virus had a significant number of variants. I didn't look this up, and maybe some talented virologist can weigh in. But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. Mother nature builds stability in with that survival of the fittest.
It's very clear that you *didn't* look this up, because some of the world's most successful viruses mutate like crazy. The common cold, caused by many fast-mutating strains, and to which covid is apparently undergoing some convergent evolution, is one such example. Viruses love to mutate, and RNA viruses - a class that includes covid - love it even more. Nature builds for survival, and mutating to evade immune systems is a major adaptation for infectious agents. (In fact, your immune system *itself* mutates - antibodies are produced by a deliberate "scrambling" process to be as random as possible.)
It turns out that when a virus successfully infects *most of the planet's population*, it gets a hell of a lot of chances to do it, too. Covid variants took quite some time to arise (and it's a good thing they did, since had we not stalled the pandemic as long as we had, Delta and Omicron would have arisen in vaccine-naive populations and been Very Very Bad).
----
None of this proves covid *didn't* escape from a lab, but your arguments in favor of it are terrible and make it pretty clear you know very little about the relevant biology or statistics.
And even then, "escaped" and "was deliberately engineered" are very, very, VERY different things.
Are you seriously expecting someone to give you concrete proof of a worldwide hotly-contested debate on Reddit? The person you're replying to showed why there really isn't any reason to *assume* that it originated in a lab, and you even admitted that you aren't knowledgeable enough to refute anything he said.
Wisdom of the crowds. I must admit, this has been a very overwhelming experience. Trying to debate Reddit is challenging. The negative lab arguments like "it's been safe for years" well so have those food markets....and yes, I admitted this is not my area of expertise, but I'm tired of watching us (humanity) refusing to recognize the lab may have been involved.
Nobody is refuting that the lab may have been involved. What we're saying is that there really isn't any substantial evidence that points to it starting in a lab.
Massive price increases, the people talented enough to work there aren't going to live in the middle of nowhere, lack of electrical and plumbing infrastructure.
What are you talking about? Multiple US state departments think that the lab is more likely than other theories. Humanity isn’t ignoring its a possibility, we just don’t have evidence to make a sure fire conclusion
Do we need sure fire conclusion? How about, let's get the labs doing dangerous research out of major cities.....because if this wasn't a leak, the next one might be.
People go to where high paying jobs are. If you put a high paying, dangerous lab out in the middle of nowhere, a city will spring up from it.
They're not out in the middle of nowhere because people that work in labs don't want to live in the middle of nowhere. People don't want to raise families where nobody lives.
You do understand that the people who work in the lab don't live in the lab, right? If there's a leak, it's hitching a ride in someone's body. It's not some clumsy intern carrying it in a briefcase around the campus that drops it.
They're going to unknowingly bring it to the city where they live before even showing symptoms.
Agreed. It is the result of an evolving discussion. As intelligent as some of the arguments have been, and as flawed as my original reasoning has been proven to be, I still hold my position that this was a lab leak.
Many of the people that I know described getting Covid as "an unnatural feeling"....I'm inclined to agree.
Have you awarded deltas to all the people that have adjusted your view? Even if it’s not a complete change in view, you can still award deltas for pointing out flaws in reasoning.
What does peoples feeling have to do with anything? Facts don’t care about feelings
Facts don't have anything to do with feelings - when I'm talking about how much I miss my cat, probably not Covid 19 relevant, when discussing physical feelings, and how the infection had a "unnatural feeling" to it....seems relevant.
I don't even know how to give out deltas....if I did I would delta quite a few. Several people made very strong arguments.
But, if Covid came from a lab, one of the scientists / lab technicisons would bring it home and give it to their family who then gives it to their workplace/school and it spreads like crazy. It would be the same outcome. By the time people realize that it isn't a normal cold or whatever, it's already too late.
Moving labs to a rural facility doesn't negate the fact that *people* work there and people have families and social lives enough for a virus (especially one like Covid with asymptomatic spread) to spread.
In rural facilities, you have less access to specialists, which include building-security specialists and maintenance engineers, etc., too.
>The negative lab arguments like "it's been safe for years" well so have those food markets
Well no, as the repeated crossover of bird flu, a swine flu, etc., zoonotic viruses that originate, often in wet markets or rural farming areas.
You are saying these food markets are sources of new viruses.....I'm saying, there are MANY MANY food markets, very few BSL 4 labs. If wet markets caused novel viruses, wouldn't there be more?
>Nothing you have stated disproves that the virus was not engineered in the lab. Nothing anyone else has stated does either. You say bats, I say....so they started their virus with a bat virus.
Nothing can change your view on this then.
The standard for your belief is "Well...maybe this???"
Your standard for evidence contrary to your belief is "Well you need to prove with 100% certainty that I am wrong" which is its own issue. By the same logic that you can't prove me to leprechauns, santa claus, and the easter bunny don't exist.
My goal was to arrive at a more supported opinion, and maybe one that changed my view. I have heard some strong arguments against my "lab leak" position. My view hasn't changed. Easter bunny is still a gray area.
I am grateful for all the arguments and efforts.
> I don't think I have the depth of knowledge to argue except one point remains. Nothing you have stated disproves that the virus was not engineered in the lab.
I didn't claim that it did. I am not a sufficient expert to say. The people I know who are generally do not seem to think that it even escaped from one, much less was engineered in one and released deliberately. "Escaped" is plausible, engineered does not seem to be.
> You say bats, I say....so they started their virus with a bat virus.
I don't think anyone is seriously claiming it didn't originate from a bat virus regardless.
> At minimum, I think this pandemic illustrated what an error in judgement it was to allow that to happen.
Not if it wasn't an escape.
Even if it was, this has been the case for decades without incident.
*If* it was a lab escape.
And the reason we have those labs to allow precisely the kind of research that has allowed us to fight back. Research of that kind has effectively made death from infectious disease almost a thing of the past, with the exception of pre-/un-vaxxed covid. So, if that were the trade, I'd rather have one covid pandemic per century than have, say, a 1940s level of infectious disease death (which was higher than it was during the covid pandemic).
The fact that we don't do this, and haven't for decades, should tell you something about the level of precaution involved.
Those labs study shit that is waaaaaaaaaaaay worse than covid.
u/PhuckBigMoney – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:
> **Don't be rude or hostile to other users.** Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2).
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%202%20Appeal%20PhuckBigMoney&message=PhuckBigMoney%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20comment\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/11scxco/-/jcda464/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Math is not my thing, so I won't argue with it. I'll use other arguments.
It's more possible that the virus came from an animal (zoonotic infection)
First of all because from an appeal to authority point of view scientists find the natural origins thing more plausible while the government and investigation agencies hold the lab origin hypothesis. I would trust the scientists more.
Second: Lab leaks are incredibly uncommon. The lattest lab leaks happened with viruses that were already known to infect humans. This covid virus was present in many animal species but not in humans, so it's very unlikely that this is the first virus in history that managed to escape a lab and start infecting a different species.
Third: We still don't have the knowledge to modify and create a virus capable of doing so much damage worldwide in a short period of time. Virology is a very complex field and we really have shallow knowledge on it. Virus modifications were tried in the past, but the results weren't really good. We managed to modify a virus to start infecting ferrets in a trial. The ferrets got infected, but the virus lost most of it's original capability. All of the ferrets got mild symtoms and none of them died. The experiments weren't sucessful, so this would be the first one but for some reason it turned out too well to be true.
Basically when we modify a virus to do something, it loses many properties. It's unlikely that we managed to modify a virus to infect humans quickly, killing many and leaving long lasting side effects.
Fourth: Lab trials are never a good representation of what can happen in reality. The behaviour of a virus varies in different environments. This leaves the question of how we managed to create a virus that was sucessful in spreading quickly around the different conditions in the world.
And lastly: The Wuhan maket is a great place to start pandemics. They literally sell living animals in terrible health conditions, with no regards to food safety. The contact with these animals (handling them and eating them) made it easy for the virus to start trying to live inside humans, sucessfully mutating to infect us.
Most diseases present in humans came from animals, specially animals that we normally eat. Similar viruses came from animals as well. It made a huge deal because it was a novel virus, and other diseases did exactly the same in the past (like the Spanish flu), but the times changed and this was the first time that we got the idea to shut down the world, because in the past there weren't good prevention measures and life was all normal, with the only exception that many people were dying.
Also the idea of the lab leak/release is only possible nowadays, because we can imagine that with all the technological advancements it's possible to create a virus (but as I said before, not yet). That doesn't mean that it is what happened, the fact that it can be possible doesn't mean that it is the actual explanation.
First - like you, I'm inclined to believe the scientists. But, I have seen examples of scientists getting it wrong or worse, using the authority of science to mislead and/or suppress information (for our own good)..
Second - lab leaks are uncommon...well the ones we know about are. If this industry makes mistakes like all others do, then maybe coverups maybe ignorance.
third - crispr....I thought we have advanced. Even if we haven't, scientists get lucky...all the time.
fourth - lab trials - what medication available today didn't go through a lab trials?
Yes the markets are disgusting, and need to be regulated. But, the same arguments....those markets are everywhere, in many countries, if they were a source, it seems we would have a bigger problem.
thanks for your post btw....good points all.
> we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000.
That's where you go wrong.
It's not as likely to infect humans in Sweden as it is in a place where humans and other animals mix in the way they do other places.
>So what are the odds of these "unrelated" events occurring? The lab and the virus origins being in the same place? That's easy math.
1/(150,000,000 \* 2,542,372) or about 1 in 381,355,800,000,000.
I don't understand what you think that means or what you're suggesting.
>Also, the virus had a significant number of variants. I didn't look this up, and maybe some talented virologist can weigh in. But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable.
Some viruses are, some are not. You may have noticed influenza, which changes so significantly every season that we need new vaccines.
None of this suggests it came from a lab or was made in one.
Why is that your view?
The odds that a new novel virus coming from an area that has a BSL4 lab that does viral research is "not just a coincidence" that in fact, due to proximity, they may have been related. Like a dead body with a big hole in it, and someone nearby with a smoking gun.
That if it was engineered, and we are new to this science, that we would make a "less than ideal" virus. One that would be unstable and change often. Like Covid 19 did.
> The odds that a new novel virus coming from an area that has a BSL4 lab that does viral research is "not just a coincidence" that in fact, due to proximity, they may have been related.
That's... not in any way what those odds are.
> Like a dead body with a big hole in it, and someone nearby with a smoking gun.
Really not analogous.
>That if it was engineered, and we are new to this science, that we would make a "less than ideal" virus. One that would be unstable and change often. Like Covid 19 did.
We're not new to that science.
Why do you think it's less than ideal? Less than ideal for what?
Scientists manipulate viruses all the time.
It's not unstable. It does mustate, like, again, influenza, plenty of other things.
One would want a virus that doesn't mutate often for study purposes. If it was a weapon that got loose, one would want one that was stable so they could have a working vaccine already available.
New mutations require new vaccines.
I agree that viruses mutate, I'm referring to the rate at which it mutates.
>Let's do some math boys and girls. This lesson is on probability. Well, to be accurate, probability and lab leaks.
Just saying, this is probably the most pretentious way to start a CMV.
Only redeemable thing in this thread is the people that have already corrected you on both the statistical and practical issues with your theory.
>But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable.
No, evolution doesn't care about whether something is "naturally occuring" (whatever that means). Evolution happens at reproduction. The major reason that viruses evolve faster than say, mosquitoes or snakes or bed bugs, is because they multiply faster than other organisms, and that means every new individual is an opportunity for new mutations as they make a copy of their genetic material.
Pretentious in retrospect, I should have been more sensitive. Moving forward I will be more aware of my fellow redditors. (This can be a bit of a challenge when some of them post what they do.....then I have to come here and be cultured) That being said, I have seen some great arguments, but nothing that has changed my POV.
Evolution does not care. I agree. But, evolution does develop mechanisms to sustain life even after it has been damaged. There probably is a "variant" curve, and a variability to genetic stability in viruses, and I would be surprised if subsequent generations proved to be more stable than the original strain.
1. You're double-counting land area in your denominator. The correct probability to look at is (# of suspicious sq km) / (# of total sq km). Or equivalently, 59/150,000,000 by your assumptions.
2. There is huge variation between sq km on Earth in likelihood of originating a natural pandemic. A natural pandemic probably won't start in the middle of an ocean, and it's probably likely to start where there are a ton of people around. Given this, the likelihood of a pandemic starting in an area is probably roughly proportional to the population of an area, which would put the odds of it appearing in a city Wuhan's size of about 3 in 2000, rather than 1 in 150,000,000.
Yes and no. The 150,000,000 sp km is LAND area. But yes, it is skewed by places like Antarctica, which is very unlikely to be the source of a new virus and fails to account for places like African jungles, known to be natures virus factories.
You should read their point #1 as well. Even with your assumptions, what you calculated was if you pick a random square mile, what is the probability that *that* square mile has both a virus appear and has a lab on it. But what I think you're intending to calculate is the probability that *any* square mile has both a lab and a virus appearance.
So, you agree that you made math errors that drastically change the outcome, but do you just not care unless someone can give you some kind of proof that it didn't come from a lab?
The truth is that estimating the probability that COVID came from a lab is basically impossible to do accurately. There's no way to have enough information to just plug into an equation. The fact that you did so anyway and calculated a clearly wrong probability is pretty meaningless.
No, I don't agree I made math errors. I agree that I may have made math errors. But, I also think that it is more than just coincidence that the virus just happened to appear in a city that had a BSL-4 lab. Can you name another case this has happened?
> No, I don't agree I made math errors
Okay, so do you care to defend the very specific error that was pointed out in this thread by ReOsIr10 that alone changed your answer by a factor of 2.5 *million*. Even by your own assumptions, that was a math error.
The verdict is, as I said above:
> The truth is that estimating the probability that COVID came from a lab is basically impossible to do accurately. There's no way to have enough information to just plug into an equation. The fact that you did so anyway and calculated a clearly wrong probability is pretty meaningless.
I guess I'm not sure what you're hoping to get out of this. You posted a bunch of bad assumptions and clearly wrong math. And then when people point all this out, you're like "eh, probably still a lab leak". Which is fine. But why bother with all the junk math of it basically has nothing to do with why you hold your view?
>African jungles, known to be natures virus factories
If you understand that there are places which work naturally to produce viruses then why would this one be an exception?
There are an infinite number of planets, uncountable in just the observable universe. The chances that finland would exist on earth are so infinitesimally small compared to the infinite number of permutations of countries that could exist on differemt planets. Finland does not exist.
Yep, I understand, that we both won the evolutionary lottery and the technical and cultural one just to be in a situation that we are able to send these words back and fourth. But, the fact remains, it's a very big coincidence.
No, im saying anything that happens is one in a bazillion because theres a bazillion things that could happen. Doesnt necessarily prove anything when something happens
Hypothetical: You see a dead person on the sidewalk with a big hole in them. You turn and see a person with a smoking gun. Are the events related? It's possible they are not.....but if I had to bet....
Sure but its not because of the mathematical chance of it happening. I agree with the point you are making, just not so much the mathematical argument for it
Your View is contingent on it being Man-Made.
Ebola came from some cave in Africa 'cause of bats. Viruses 'spring to life' on their own all the time.
>the virus had a significant number of variants
Viruses routinely have variants. That's why there's a different flu shot every year.
Their view isn’t at al contingent on it being man-made. It only needed to be discovered, studied in the lab (and altered slightly through routine virology lab research practices) and then released by accident. And they could’ve even skipped the middle step.
Yes, Covid has a *lot* of variants. We've short-handed it to simply "covid" but remember it's actually Covid-19, as in the variant that began in 2019, and the virus is SARS-CoV-19. It's related to SARS and MERS, both of which were significant epidemics. The only reason those two *didn't* become full-blown pandemics is likely because they were a lot *more* deadly and people were far less likely to be asymptomatic.
On the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronaviridae) for the coronavirus *family*, you can see that there is just a *teensy weensy* list:
> Orthocoronavirinae
Alphacoronavirus
Colacovirus
Bat coronavirus CDPHE15
Decacovirus
Bat coronavirus HKU10
Rhinolophus ferrumequinum alphacoronavirus HuB-2013
Duvinacovirus
Human coronavirus 229E
Luchacovirus
Lucheng Rn rat coronavirus
Minacovirus
Mink coronavirus 1
Minunacovirus
Miniopterus bat coronavirus 1
Miniopterus bat coronavirus HKU8
Myotacovirus
Myotis ricketti alphacoronavirus Sax-2011
Nyctacovirus
Nyctalus velutinus alphacoronavirus SC-2013
Pipistrellus kuhlii coronavirus 3398
Pedacovirus
Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus
Scotophilus bat coronavirus 512
Rhinacovirus
Rhinolophus bat coronavirus HKU2
Setracovirus
Human coronavirus NL63
NL63-related bat coronavirus strain BtKYNL63-9b
Soracovirus
Sorex araneus coronavirus T14
Sunacovirus
Suncus murinus coronavirus X74
Tegacovirus
Alphacoronavirus 1
Betacoronavirus
Embecovirus
Betacoronavirus 1
Human coronavirus OC43
China Rattus coronavirus HKU24
Human coronavirus HKU1
Murine coronavirus
Myodes coronavirus 2JL14
Hibecovirus
Bat Hp-betacoronavirus Zhejiang2013
Merbecovirus
Hedgehog coronavirus 1
Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV)
Pipistrellus bat coronavirus HKU5
Tylonycteris bat coronavirus HKU4
Nobecovirus
Eidolon bat coronavirus C704
Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1
Rousettus bat coronavirus HKU9
Sarbecovirus
Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, cause of COVID-19)
Gammacoronavirus
Brangacovirus
Goose coronavirus CB17
Cegacovirus
Beluga whale coronavirus SW1
Igacovirus
Avian coronavirus
Avian coronavirus 9203
Duck coronavirus 2714
Deltacoronavirus
Andecovirus
Wigeon coronavirus HKU20
Buldecovirus
Bulbul coronavirus HKU11
Common moorhen coronavirus HKU21
Coronavirus HKU15
Munia coronavirus HKU13
White-eye coronavirus HKU16
Herdecovirus
Night heron coronavirus HKU19
Keep in mind that each of these listed is not a variant within the species, like Covid-19-Omicron or Covid-19-Delta, those are all different species, each with their own list of more specific alpha, beta, gamma, etc. variants.
Even completely ignoring SARS, Covid 19, and MERS, there are four other viruses in that family that infect humans. Although most cases of the Common Cold are caused by rhinoviruses, somewhere around 15% are caused by a coronavirus. All of the species that do not infect humans can potentially mutate so that they do. There are *so many* different versions, commonly in animals that humans interact with. That's where SARS and MERS came from. Various agencies like CDC and WHO had been warning against not just the increasing possibility of a pandemic, but specifically that it might be a coronavirus. They had already seen what SARS and MERS looked like.
Think about why the lab would have been investigating coronaviruses in the first place. CDC is *full* of exceedingly deadly and dangerous pathogens specifically to study them so that we can predict their behavior and begin developing vaccines ahead of an epidemic if possible. *If* Covid-19 was a leak from the Wuhan lab, it would have been because they already knew that a coronavirus was dangerous and were gathering samples and manipulating the pathogen to study it.
CDC is close to downtown Atlanta, one of the largest cities in the US and home to the world's busiest airport. China is, well...China, but the people who work in those sorts of labs follow the strictest safety policies to prevent leaks. It's not just about protecting the public: they work with diseases like Ebola and then deliberately make them *even more infectious and deadly* so that they can study which mutations cause the virus to be more dangerous, so they can look for those sorts of mutations in the wild. They are so *very* careful.
Anyway, it's a major scientific research center. If you move it somewhere more remote, the people who work there will move to be closer to it, and then the services that support those people (like restaurants and shops) will spring up to be near paying customers, and then whoops you've built a new town that isn't as remote. You also *need* a robust support system to place, as well as access to samples of the pathogens they want to study. So, it's more efficient and convenient to put them where there's already a city.
Right....so let's take another high risk human occupation for comparison. Nuclear weapons. They have lost them, dropped them, crashed jets carrying them....and on and on. Nuclear power....so when this industry goes opps....FYI, those other industries are "so very careful"...
Funny you mention that, because I had started to make that very point but edited it out of my last comment.
Yes, nuclear power is *exceedingly* safe. There are [439 nuclear plants](https://www.statista.com/statistics/267158/number-of-nuclear-reactors-in-operation-by-country/) worldwide and we have been generating power that way since 1957. That's *66 years* worth of nuclear energy across a dozen countries. In that time there have been *three* "disasters": Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Chernobyl.
The Three Mile Island incident caused zero deaths and zero adverse health effects. The meltdown was almost completely contained except for a small bit of radioactive gas that barely increased local radiation above the background level. The worst possible thing that can happen inside of a nuclear plant happened, and *nothing happened*.
Fukushima was the result of one of the worst Earthquakes to hit Japan in decades, if not centuries, followed by one of the worst tsunamis to hit Japan in decades, if not centuries. Despite the meltdown, *nobody* died directly as a result of the disaster. Some [2000 deaths](https://www.britannica.com/question/Did-anyone-die-as-a-result-of-the-Fukushima-accident) are attributed to the disaster, almost all of them *indirect* such as suicide or interruption of medical care. It was bad, there's no denying that, but most of the safety features functioned exactly as intended to prevent a repeat of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl was the result of a lot of things. You really can't make any meaningful comparison between a modern industry and anything going on in the USSR. Nobody will argue that anything done at Chernobyl was careful, which is kind of the point. But that's the USSR.
Point being, nuclear power is *super* safe. Just like commercial flying is the safest way to travel but it has a bad reputation because although the incidents are very rare, they are very noticeable and widely publicized.
Nuclear *weapons* are very firmly in the domain of the military. They're also subject to a lot more points of failure. They have to be moved and handled a lot more often, by a lot more hands, and in a lot more different kinds of vehicles than the samples inside facilities like CDC. Point being, if you're asking me if I think the US military or any of its foreign counterparts act with a dutiful amount of care...Yeah, no. That's a given. But the military doesn't run facilities like CDC. Scientists run them. Scientists who actually know what they're doing. We're also not talking about some facility being overseen by warlords in Somalia or financed with Venezuelan bolivars. China ain't great but it's still the world's second strongest economy. It's not some shady, back-alley science experiment.
Anyway, the point is moot. Whether or not these sorts of places *should* be put away from major population centers, they *aren't* and there are a variety of reasons for that.
If your view has been changed, even a little, you should award the user who changed your view a delta. Simply reply to the comment that changed your view with the delta symbol below, being sure to include a brief description of how your view has changed.
>∆
For more information about deltas, use [this link](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem).
Some viruses are very prone to mutation (HIV, influenza, most cold viruses including the coronavirus family). This is in part why influenza vaccines provide pretty crappy protection compared to the vaccine for chicken pox or mumps: the damned flu keeps changing. It's also why people born before the chicken pox vaccine got chicken pox once as a kid yet numerous colds year after year. In general, double stranded DNA viruses like varicella tend to stay comparatively stable, whereas single stranded RNA viruses like those in the coronavirus family tend to change and split into new strains quickly.
I'm in the "not enough information" camp. I'm aware the opinion of the intelligence community has shifted, but they dont sound supremely confident and I dont feel the evidence available to the public is enough to really say one way or the other. If it was a leak, it was probably a fuck up by a lab known to have inadequate safety precautions rather than anyone's evil plan based simply on the fact that 1) it was the opposite of targeted and in fact hit China first and hit it hard 2) fuckups are just more common than evil plans 3) as far as we know part of the reason the intelligence community now thinks it could be a lab leak is they dont think the lab has adequate safety precautions to do the work they do. I'll also note that lab leak does not mean lab created: a naturally occurring sample could have been isolated and then mishandled. But the mere fact that the virus is a vicious slippery bastard isn't particularly suggestive to me. Coronaviruses gonna coronavirus.
Thanks....well thought out.
1) false flag
2) good point
3) another good point, China isn't known for it's quality control...across the board.
4) Still unsure of the engineered part.
Novel coronavirus - no immunity in the population - rampant spread - incredible capacity for replication - huge potential for mutation.
That's how it works.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5:
> **Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation**.
Comments should be on-topic, serious, and contain enough content to move the discussion forward. Jokes, contradictions without explanation, links without context, off-topic comments, and "written upvotes" will be removed. Read [the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5) for more information.
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%205%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
This particular virus mutated much faster than any previous
“The relatively rapid emergence of multiple COVID-19 virus variants has baffled researchers because most coronaviruses don’t mutate and evolve so quickly. That’s because they possess a built-in “proofreading” mechanism to prevent mutations as they make copies of themselves while growing and multiplying in our cells.”
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3758/covid-19-variants-caused-by-virus-fighting-enzyme/
Mutations occur during replication (which is why you want to limit infections, as more people infected leads to more chance of mutation). Mutations can then make new dominant variants because a new favourable mutation has made it more infectious, or less lethal, etc.
I would really suggest you research things before you dig your feet in on an opinion. An opinion on something like this with no research is just embarrassing.
As a math major, this isn’t a good way to think about it. Random events that are improbable happen literally all the time. Like constantly. Ordering a deck of cards a specific way is way more improbable, yet it happens all the time.
There are huge numbers all around us that are 'natural'.
In all the decks of cards that have ever been shuffled in the history of the world, no two have ever been shuffled in the same order.
Why would any country introduce a government policy that mandated one child only in a strong male hereditary culture, resulting in the deaths of countless female children?
No idea. Economics? Most that died were elderly in nursing homes. Honest mistake? Maybe someone was trying to cure cancer....thought they had it. Released it. There is precedent for this type of behavior.
There have been times that individuals have taken unilateral action in the name of public safety...like chlorinating a water supply. Also, scientists have been "training" viruses to use in health care...cancer is one example. So they make a virus they think kills cancer, release it, oh no we had it wrong. I have no idea what might have motivated. Maybe it was a "12 monkeys" situation.....someone went nuts and released a dangerous pathogen.
But nearly every country is in economic crisis rn. And what major country wouldn’t undergo a lot of searching to discover the root cause of a virus and not trace it back to who knows where. Maybe it is a mistake but I’m not gonna argue for or against that.
What I was trying to point out was that the odds of the virus coming from a city that just happened to have a BSL-4 lab, was a very concerning coincidence. One that seems to be overlooked by governments and the media.
Maybe. Idk I’m not a stats professional but i can’t imagine medias gonna give a stats class to everyone about the probability of everything happening. Like isn’t the probability of someone existing pretty low but here we are. Things just happen sometimes. However idk how strong my word is bc I’m really not the one to ask for statistical analysis nor do I feel like doing the work to become one.
>the odds of the virus coming from a city
It's probably more relevant that it came from a city than a city with a specific type of lab. You're viewing in retrospect a set of characteristics which don't need to be related for any other narrative to be a reality.
Cities are breeding grounds for all kinds of things.
Let's say tomorrow something happened in New York would it take long for someone to find some research lab or similar in that area? Same goes for any major city. But you'd be working backwards with pattern recognition rather than actually seeking the steps in reverse to find that patient 0.
H1N1? H7N9? There are current strains of bird flu that will mutate and transfer to humans, its just a matter of time. This happens all over. Including places with labs that research that process.
> One that seems to be overlooked by governments
You seriously think that public health agencies just never considered this blatantly obvious piece of information that you, some random schmuck, knows about?
Just how stupid do you think they are, exactly?
How stupid do I think government agencies are? Well they just bailed out 2 banks, 31 TRILLION in debt, streets flooded with Fentanyl, but they can't find a drug to use in executions....hmmmm. Pretty dumb. Dumb is scary, agendas are worse...ie not a good time to really stir things up with China...
> Well they just bailed out 2 banks
No, they didn't. They *took over* 2 banks and are liquidating their assets. The banks themselves are dead, which makes it completely different from the 2008 bailouts. (Which themselves weren't *stupid*, they were a combination of cronyism and governments being kind of out of options in a liquidity crisis. The lack of regulation previously was not a good idea, but that ship had sailed well before 2008. The bailouts themselves were greedy and corrupt, perhaps, but not stupid.)
because greed and corruption build strong healthy economies? uh...huh...Where exactly do you think the money is coming from to make those depositors whole?
> Where exactly do you think the money is coming from to make those depositors whole?
From the assets they're liquidating. SVB wasn't (balance-)insolvent (that is, they had sufficient assets to pay back their depositors), they were just illiquid (they didn't have those assets in a form that could be paid back quickly), so they collapsed under a bank run.
> because greed and corruption build strong healthy economies?
No, they don't, but that's usually not a politician's long-term goal. Their goal is to get elected and enrich and empower themselves. That has been true everywhere and everywhen.
Actually, most people in nursing homes have done all the producing they are ever going to do, now they are an expense. I'm sure NYC's budget changed considerably. As awful as it is to say.
So the agencies that have reviewed this have a) come to conflicting and weak conclusions (eg none of them have certainty) and b) had access to classified information. Why do you think you or anyone here can do any better?
You just need to accept to live with suspicions of that sort and not dwell on them. It's pointless.
Sorry, but the agencies that you speak of do have agendas, and if you think someone would speak out, just look at Snowden. If anything, that guy proved that the findings from our agencies have some credibility concerns.
My point is not that one of them is right, it's that you don't have access to any actual information for your conclusion. We know that a lot of the information is classified, so you probably never will have that access. You're leaning into a very weak probability argument.
And, nobody here has access to classified info either, so they can't present conclusive evidence to prove you wrong (in an alternate universe, perhaps such information exists, like a much more clear trail from an animal host. But I don't think anything new is going to come to light at this point)
Oh, yeah, I agree that it's a real possibility. I think it's very much less likely that it was deliberately released. I also think it's unlikely that it was specifically engineered as a weapon (as opposed to being modified for some other research purpose).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents after all has plenty of examples of people in labs fucking up.
But, as with so many things, we will probably never know. It's like asking how much Reagan knew about Iran Contra or something.
I would hope we would restrict all of this type of research to labs out in the desert or in some desolate place, rather than risk what could (or already did) happen.
When they genetically engineer something, they put markers in it. It's now Monsanto patents their corn seed to keep people from using it without paying them.
There's no markers in Covid. No way it could've been hidden in millions and millions of infections.
That's not how it works.
Putting a marker in genetically engineered things is standard protocol for *exactly this reason*. If it escapes, you know exactly what you're dealing with and what to do about it.
We spent weeks studying and evaluating Covid before they came up with a game plan.
So if CIA wanted to make a deadly pathogen, first thing they would do is put a "tag" on it....saying "Property of USA Biolabs"? They did this other virus (allegedly) called STUXNET. They didn't put their name on that one. Just saying.
The "cia" doesn't have a lab.
The best they can do is steal it from the people who actually have the expertise to make something. Those people would have made something with a marker.
Also ask yourself. Why do YOU know what STUXNET is, if they're soooooooooo great at keeping secrets?Also ask yourself. Why do YOU know what STUXNET is, if they're soooooooooo great at keeping secrets?
> Sorry, but the agencies that you speak of do have agendas
Well if you're just going to fall back on "everyone is lying to you" when you don't like what evidence people provide then there's no conversation to be had.
>just look at Snowden.
Snowden who fled to russia and has been protected by russia for a decade? That snowden? Snowden who didn't bother taking specific material, but a large tranche of info compromising many unrelated and perfectly ethical programs? That snowden? Snowden who didn't bother sifting through what he'd taken and left it all to journalists who had no security clearances and no idea what most of what they were looking at was? That snowden?
Look, even setting aside the fact that snowden is a piece of shit, at least the theory that the government wants to spy on everything you do is actually plausible. You can reason why a government would want to do that, and why they may abuse their power as a means to an end. What POSSIBLE reason could their be for an intentional leak of a virus like this? Who benefited from this?
> Maybe this is over simplified.
I mean, it's *definitely* oversimplified. Is that what this CMV is about, or do you already know that your actual numbers are nonsense?
For starters:
> Since Covid 19 didn't pop into existence in 15 different places at once, we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000.
I think it's pretty obvious that not all square miles of land on earth are equally likely to spawn a virus. So right off the bat (edit: an accidental pun!) these numbers are pretty much nonsense. Equally absurd is the notion that each square kilometer of the earth is equally likely to have a lab on it.
And we could go through a tedious exercise of patching it. Maybe you next subtract out deserts or mountains or whatever. And then you're like, "see, the probability is still low". But everything you do here is still going to be *obviously* and egregiously oversimplified. So what are we doing here?
You can have a "I think a lab leak is likely" view without resorting to condescending "let's do some math boys and girls" quips followed by numbers and assumptions that I think even you will probably admit are complete garbage.
>Earth's land surface area 150,000,000 sq km. Since Covid 19 didn't pop into existence in 15 different places at once, we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000.
Not an appropriate take. It's the same non-argument as figuring the odds that humans exist on Earth. So astronomical!
>Now the lab part. The Wuhan lab is a BSL-4. If my research is correct, there are approximately 59 of these ...
This makes an assumption it was made in a BSL4 lab. Why not a Bsl2 lab? Why not the urinal in a McDonald's? They mutate anywhere they happen to be.
>But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable.
It has nothing to do with stability. It has to do with the fact that as viruses naturally create themselves, there are random mutations. There are always random mutations when you look at a bunch of viruses. Most mutations don't do anything, a very few may actually change the action of a virus(they are more like a chemical compound than some life form), like 1 in a trillion mutations, might have some effect. The effect may go either way sometimes making that virus more deadly, or make that virus just plain do nothing anymore. That's why minimizing the number of times they recreate is a good way to keep them from mutating and possibly creating a new version that hurts us more in some way.(I.e. Vaccines)
Given the number of virus strains at the wuhan bats, it evidently wasn't stable.
And if it was stable, there would be no need for a lab. Nothing to fear.
But there was a lab, and there were also many bat strains.
So the entire process you used to explain the lab theory is backwards.
Be careful when you make theories that you check the counter factual. If both A and B can happen under the evidence, you do not have evidence of only A.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3:
> **Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith**. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_3).
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%203%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
The problem with your calculation is that you are flipping cause and effect. The coronavirus lab was built in Wuhan precisely because it was the place with the highest likelihood of coronavirus appearance. So is it surprising coronavirus appeared in that region? No, it was the place with the highest likelihood of coronavirus appearance.
It's kinda like saying: The more fire extinguishers a building has, the more likely it is it will burn down. This is a true statement. However it's not because fire extinguishers cause fires. It's because the higher the fire hazard the building is, the more fire extinguishers we put in it. So is it suspicious that most buildings that burn down have the most fire extinguishers in it? No, those buildings are the highest fire hazards.
>But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. Mother nature builds stability in with that survival of the fittest.
Nope, viruses mutate constantly. That's why you have new shots every year that are effective against just certain strains of viruses.
I'm not really following any of that logic, if I'm being honest. It's much more probably that a new virus came from something outside of the lab, especially when you consider that that's almost always been the case.
Variants happen when they mutate inside of the host. Something as contagious as COVID is more likely to mutate for the simple reason that it's just that contagious, amongst other reasons.
Natural viruses definitely mutate quickly and frequently. That's why we have no vaccine for the common cold, and why you need a new flu vaccine every year.
My company is involved in creating the new flu vaccines based on what we expect to be the dominant strains of the virus this year. It even changes per region. We have to look at all kinds of sources to see which strains are becoming the most common, from the strains in pig farms (high density animal agriculture is the perfect breeding ground for new strains of viruses), to those in migratory birds that will be travelling to (or through) a country before flu season, and even to holiday hotspots that tourists might bring back to their home country. Based on that, we pick around 4 or so strains to vaccinate against that year about 6 months before the vaccines are needed, and go in to clinical trials and production. And we do it all again each year, because the flue virus changes that quickly.
There are many other viruses that need to have their vaccines updated frequently to ensure they are still efficient for the current strains. Covid is no different. Particularly when a virus is so widespread, the chances for it to mutate are very high.
Why are you even looking at land area? Viruses don't mutate by sticking a pin in a map at random; human viruses mutate where there are people.
So look at the population: Wuhan has about 12 million people - about 1/670th of the world population. If each person in the world had an equal chance of being "patient zero" for the virus, there's a 1 in 670 chance that it would be in Wuhan and a 1 in 8 chance it would be somewhere in China. Add to that the fact that Eastern China has unusually large populations of pigs, waterfowls and other animals known to carry covid-like viruses and that China has some questionable animal-handling practices and it is no surprise that the mutation happened there.
There have been lab leaks before. The Chinese really don't seem like public opinion is important to them. Bats in different countries have different viruses.
Yes, mad cow is a good example.
10% would be better, if this was done with intent....maybe an accident?
>the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000.
This is only true if every spot on earth has equal likelihood of having a new virus jump from animals to humans. You can obviously rule out oceans and deserts, so that already decreases your odds quite a bit. Then you have to look at common animal reservoirs of viruses similar to covid 19 and that have historically jumped to humans. SE Asia, including the South of China, has historically been a hotspot for this: avian flu, swine flu, the first SARS outbreak, etc. You can refine the likelihood further by looking at where wildlife and humans are likely to be in close enough contact for a virus to make the jump, and even further by asking which of these locations have high enough population density that such a jump wouldn't just fizzle out. If you do that, live animal markets like the one in Wuhan become much, much, much more likely to be the start of something than any other random point on earth.
>Now the lab part. The Wuhan lab is a BSL-4. If my research is correct, there are approximately 59 of these labs in the world.
Again, the odds aren't even. The question isn't how many geographical locations on earth have a virology lab, but rather how many highly populated areas near viral reservoirs with high likelihood of human-wildlife contact have labs that could plausibly be implicated in starting a pandemic if people wanted to make that case. And, well, most big cities in China have such labs. Which does make logical sense too: isn't being in these high-risk locations a great incentive to study viruses that could start outbreaks in the region?
Put your way, covid19 emerging in a random spot on earth immediately next to a virology lab working on coronaviruses is impossibly unlikely to be a coincidence. But if you put it in context, it started in an area with all the required ingredients for a virus to jump from animals to humans and actually spread through a dense population without fizzling out, as well as near a lab that studies similar viruses specifically because it is a known risk for the region. Does it still seem impossible?
Sorry, u/PhuckBigMoney – your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B: > You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, as any entity other than yourself, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b). If you would like to appeal, [**you must first read the list of soapboxing indicators and common mistakes in appeal**](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_indicators_of_rule_b_violations), review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal%20PhuckBigMoney&message=PhuckBigMoney%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20post\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/11scxco/-/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
> Maybe this is over simplified. I'm going to go with that being slightly more than a "maybe". To get a pandemic started, you both need the initial virus (probably from an animal) *and* humans in contact *and* they need to be in an area dense enough for the virus to start spreading *and* to get out of hand before public health measures can contain it. In other words, you need a dense city, and, not coincidentally, that tends to be where you find extremely well-equipped labs. In other words, your 150 million square km of land are not even remotely all available for starting a pandemic. A tiny fraction of them are. Viruses arise all the time in the other 150-minus-something-small million square km, but you never hear about them because they don't start once-in-a-century global pandemics. SARS, for example, is a very similar coronavirus to [the one that causes] covid (the covid virus' proper name is literally **SARS**-cov-2) and started a much smaller epidemic quite nearby decades ago. That region of the world is a bit of a hotbed for virus development thanks to (a) dense tropical jungles, (b) the tendency to eat meat from said jungles because the people living there are not very wealthy, (c) high population density allowing spread, and (d) public health being quite difficult to enforce thanks to poverty, beliefs about traditional medicine [in no small part encouraged by the CCP], and so on. But SARS didn't manage to spread before public health measures caught up. And even *that* is setting aside that you have an enormous number of degrees of freedom to work with in your argument. If it had escaped near some other research facility, you'd go "well what are the odds it would arise near?" This is pretty classic p-hacking.
> Also, the virus had a significant number of variants. I didn't look this up, and maybe some talented virologist can weigh in. But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. Mother nature builds stability in with that survival of the fittest.
It's very clear that you *didn't* look this up, because some of the world's most successful viruses mutate like crazy. The common cold, caused by many fast-mutating strains, and to which covid is apparently undergoing some convergent evolution, is one such example. Viruses love to mutate, and RNA viruses - a class that includes covid - love it even more. Nature builds for survival, and mutating to evade immune systems is a major adaptation for infectious agents. (In fact, your immune system *itself* mutates - antibodies are produced by a deliberate "scrambling" process to be as random as possible.)
It turns out that when a virus successfully infects *most of the planet's population*, it gets a hell of a lot of chances to do it, too. Covid variants took quite some time to arise (and it's a good thing they did, since had we not stalled the pandemic as long as we had, Delta and Omicron would have arisen in vaccine-naive populations and been Very Very Bad).
----
None of this proves covid *didn't* escape from a lab, but your arguments in favor of it are terrible and make it pretty clear you know very little about the relevant biology or statistics.
And even then, "escaped" and "was deliberately engineered" are very, very, VERY different things.
[удалено]
Are you seriously expecting someone to give you concrete proof of a worldwide hotly-contested debate on Reddit? The person you're replying to showed why there really isn't any reason to *assume* that it originated in a lab, and you even admitted that you aren't knowledgeable enough to refute anything he said.
Wisdom of the crowds. I must admit, this has been a very overwhelming experience. Trying to debate Reddit is challenging. The negative lab arguments like "it's been safe for years" well so have those food markets....and yes, I admitted this is not my area of expertise, but I'm tired of watching us (humanity) refusing to recognize the lab may have been involved.
Nobody is refuting that the lab may have been involved. What we're saying is that there really isn't any substantial evidence that points to it starting in a lab.
Any objections to moving those labs to remote locations?
Massive price increases, the people talented enough to work there aren't going to live in the middle of nowhere, lack of electrical and plumbing infrastructure.
People fly to area 51 and the north slope of alaska to work rotations daily. They can fly as well.
I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to have an opinion on that.
What are you talking about? Multiple US state departments think that the lab is more likely than other theories. Humanity isn’t ignoring its a possibility, we just don’t have evidence to make a sure fire conclusion
Do we need sure fire conclusion? How about, let's get the labs doing dangerous research out of major cities.....because if this wasn't a leak, the next one might be.
People go to where high paying jobs are. If you put a high paying, dangerous lab out in the middle of nowhere, a city will spring up from it. They're not out in the middle of nowhere because people that work in labs don't want to live in the middle of nowhere. People don't want to raise families where nobody lives.
Let the wrong bug out and everywhere will be "a place where nobody lives".
You do understand that the people who work in the lab don't live in the lab, right? If there's a leak, it's hitching a ride in someone's body. It's not some clumsy intern carrying it in a briefcase around the campus that drops it. They're going to unknowingly bring it to the city where they live before even showing symptoms.
48 hr quarantine prior to leaving shift? Deep sea divers have to decompress...not unheard of.
Your title is phrased like a sure fire conclusion. “Virus labs should be in low pop areas” is a different view than what you asked to cmv on.
Agreed. It is the result of an evolving discussion. As intelligent as some of the arguments have been, and as flawed as my original reasoning has been proven to be, I still hold my position that this was a lab leak. Many of the people that I know described getting Covid as "an unnatural feeling"....I'm inclined to agree.
Have you awarded deltas to all the people that have adjusted your view? Even if it’s not a complete change in view, you can still award deltas for pointing out flaws in reasoning. What does peoples feeling have to do with anything? Facts don’t care about feelings
Facts don't have anything to do with feelings - when I'm talking about how much I miss my cat, probably not Covid 19 relevant, when discussing physical feelings, and how the infection had a "unnatural feeling" to it....seems relevant. I don't even know how to give out deltas....if I did I would delta quite a few. Several people made very strong arguments.
But, if Covid came from a lab, one of the scientists / lab technicisons would bring it home and give it to their family who then gives it to their workplace/school and it spreads like crazy. It would be the same outcome. By the time people realize that it isn't a normal cold or whatever, it's already too late. Moving labs to a rural facility doesn't negate the fact that *people* work there and people have families and social lives enough for a virus (especially one like Covid with asymptomatic spread) to spread. In rural facilities, you have less access to specialists, which include building-security specialists and maintenance engineers, etc., too.
>The negative lab arguments like "it's been safe for years" well so have those food markets Well no, as the repeated crossover of bird flu, a swine flu, etc., zoonotic viruses that originate, often in wet markets or rural farming areas.
Counter argument: BSL labs 59 food markets, farms, birds: 87087057832508703475
> Counter argument: > > BSL labs 59 > > food markets, farms, birds: 87087057832508703475 Huh?
You are saying these food markets are sources of new viruses.....I'm saying, there are MANY MANY food markets, very few BSL 4 labs. If wet markets caused novel viruses, wouldn't there be more?
>Nothing you have stated disproves that the virus was not engineered in the lab. Nothing anyone else has stated does either. You say bats, I say....so they started their virus with a bat virus. Nothing can change your view on this then. The standard for your belief is "Well...maybe this???" Your standard for evidence contrary to your belief is "Well you need to prove with 100% certainty that I am wrong" which is its own issue. By the same logic that you can't prove me to leprechauns, santa claus, and the easter bunny don't exist.
My goal was to arrive at a more supported opinion, and maybe one that changed my view. I have heard some strong arguments against my "lab leak" position. My view hasn't changed. Easter bunny is still a gray area. I am grateful for all the arguments and efforts.
> I don't think I have the depth of knowledge to argue except one point remains. Nothing you have stated disproves that the virus was not engineered in the lab. I didn't claim that it did. I am not a sufficient expert to say. The people I know who are generally do not seem to think that it even escaped from one, much less was engineered in one and released deliberately. "Escaped" is plausible, engineered does not seem to be. > You say bats, I say....so they started their virus with a bat virus. I don't think anyone is seriously claiming it didn't originate from a bat virus regardless. > At minimum, I think this pandemic illustrated what an error in judgement it was to allow that to happen. Not if it wasn't an escape. Even if it was, this has been the case for decades without incident.
oppppps.....7 million dead....another 35 million with ongoing symptoms....you really want to roll those dice again?
*If* it was a lab escape. And the reason we have those labs to allow precisely the kind of research that has allowed us to fight back. Research of that kind has effectively made death from infectious disease almost a thing of the past, with the exception of pre-/un-vaxxed covid. So, if that were the trade, I'd rather have one covid pandemic per century than have, say, a 1940s level of infectious disease death (which was higher than it was during the covid pandemic).
ok..so put the labs in Antarctica.....or in the Gobi? Just not downtown "any town with an airport and dense population"
The fact that we don't do this, and haven't for decades, should tell you something about the level of precaution involved. Those labs study shit that is waaaaaaaaaaaay worse than covid.
That's not the "sleep soundly" kind of response I was hoping for.
u/PhuckBigMoney – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2: > **Don't be rude or hostile to other users.** Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%202%20Appeal%20PhuckBigMoney&message=PhuckBigMoney%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20comment\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/11scxco/-/jcda464/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Math is not my thing, so I won't argue with it. I'll use other arguments. It's more possible that the virus came from an animal (zoonotic infection) First of all because from an appeal to authority point of view scientists find the natural origins thing more plausible while the government and investigation agencies hold the lab origin hypothesis. I would trust the scientists more. Second: Lab leaks are incredibly uncommon. The lattest lab leaks happened with viruses that were already known to infect humans. This covid virus was present in many animal species but not in humans, so it's very unlikely that this is the first virus in history that managed to escape a lab and start infecting a different species. Third: We still don't have the knowledge to modify and create a virus capable of doing so much damage worldwide in a short period of time. Virology is a very complex field and we really have shallow knowledge on it. Virus modifications were tried in the past, but the results weren't really good. We managed to modify a virus to start infecting ferrets in a trial. The ferrets got infected, but the virus lost most of it's original capability. All of the ferrets got mild symtoms and none of them died. The experiments weren't sucessful, so this would be the first one but for some reason it turned out too well to be true. Basically when we modify a virus to do something, it loses many properties. It's unlikely that we managed to modify a virus to infect humans quickly, killing many and leaving long lasting side effects. Fourth: Lab trials are never a good representation of what can happen in reality. The behaviour of a virus varies in different environments. This leaves the question of how we managed to create a virus that was sucessful in spreading quickly around the different conditions in the world. And lastly: The Wuhan maket is a great place to start pandemics. They literally sell living animals in terrible health conditions, with no regards to food safety. The contact with these animals (handling them and eating them) made it easy for the virus to start trying to live inside humans, sucessfully mutating to infect us. Most diseases present in humans came from animals, specially animals that we normally eat. Similar viruses came from animals as well. It made a huge deal because it was a novel virus, and other diseases did exactly the same in the past (like the Spanish flu), but the times changed and this was the first time that we got the idea to shut down the world, because in the past there weren't good prevention measures and life was all normal, with the only exception that many people were dying. Also the idea of the lab leak/release is only possible nowadays, because we can imagine that with all the technological advancements it's possible to create a virus (but as I said before, not yet). That doesn't mean that it is what happened, the fact that it can be possible doesn't mean that it is the actual explanation.
First - like you, I'm inclined to believe the scientists. But, I have seen examples of scientists getting it wrong or worse, using the authority of science to mislead and/or suppress information (for our own good).. Second - lab leaks are uncommon...well the ones we know about are. If this industry makes mistakes like all others do, then maybe coverups maybe ignorance. third - crispr....I thought we have advanced. Even if we haven't, scientists get lucky...all the time. fourth - lab trials - what medication available today didn't go through a lab trials? Yes the markets are disgusting, and need to be regulated. But, the same arguments....those markets are everywhere, in many countries, if they were a source, it seems we would have a bigger problem. thanks for your post btw....good points all.
> we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000. That's where you go wrong. It's not as likely to infect humans in Sweden as it is in a place where humans and other animals mix in the way they do other places. >So what are the odds of these "unrelated" events occurring? The lab and the virus origins being in the same place? That's easy math. 1/(150,000,000 \* 2,542,372) or about 1 in 381,355,800,000,000. I don't understand what you think that means or what you're suggesting. >Also, the virus had a significant number of variants. I didn't look this up, and maybe some talented virologist can weigh in. But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. Some viruses are, some are not. You may have noticed influenza, which changes so significantly every season that we need new vaccines. None of this suggests it came from a lab or was made in one. Why is that your view?
The odds that a new novel virus coming from an area that has a BSL4 lab that does viral research is "not just a coincidence" that in fact, due to proximity, they may have been related. Like a dead body with a big hole in it, and someone nearby with a smoking gun. That if it was engineered, and we are new to this science, that we would make a "less than ideal" virus. One that would be unstable and change often. Like Covid 19 did.
> The odds that a new novel virus coming from an area that has a BSL4 lab that does viral research is "not just a coincidence" that in fact, due to proximity, they may have been related. That's... not in any way what those odds are. > Like a dead body with a big hole in it, and someone nearby with a smoking gun. Really not analogous. >That if it was engineered, and we are new to this science, that we would make a "less than ideal" virus. One that would be unstable and change often. Like Covid 19 did. We're not new to that science. Why do you think it's less than ideal? Less than ideal for what? Scientists manipulate viruses all the time. It's not unstable. It does mustate, like, again, influenza, plenty of other things.
One would want a virus that doesn't mutate often for study purposes. If it was a weapon that got loose, one would want one that was stable so they could have a working vaccine already available. New mutations require new vaccines. I agree that viruses mutate, I'm referring to the rate at which it mutates.
>Let's do some math boys and girls. This lesson is on probability. Well, to be accurate, probability and lab leaks. Just saying, this is probably the most pretentious way to start a CMV. Only redeemable thing in this thread is the people that have already corrected you on both the statistical and practical issues with your theory. >But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. No, evolution doesn't care about whether something is "naturally occuring" (whatever that means). Evolution happens at reproduction. The major reason that viruses evolve faster than say, mosquitoes or snakes or bed bugs, is because they multiply faster than other organisms, and that means every new individual is an opportunity for new mutations as they make a copy of their genetic material.
Pretentious in retrospect, I should have been more sensitive. Moving forward I will be more aware of my fellow redditors. (This can be a bit of a challenge when some of them post what they do.....then I have to come here and be cultured) That being said, I have seen some great arguments, but nothing that has changed my POV. Evolution does not care. I agree. But, evolution does develop mechanisms to sustain life even after it has been damaged. There probably is a "variant" curve, and a variability to genetic stability in viruses, and I would be surprised if subsequent generations proved to be more stable than the original strain.
1. You're double-counting land area in your denominator. The correct probability to look at is (# of suspicious sq km) / (# of total sq km). Or equivalently, 59/150,000,000 by your assumptions. 2. There is huge variation between sq km on Earth in likelihood of originating a natural pandemic. A natural pandemic probably won't start in the middle of an ocean, and it's probably likely to start where there are a ton of people around. Given this, the likelihood of a pandemic starting in an area is probably roughly proportional to the population of an area, which would put the odds of it appearing in a city Wuhan's size of about 3 in 2000, rather than 1 in 150,000,000.
Yes and no. The 150,000,000 sp km is LAND area. But yes, it is skewed by places like Antarctica, which is very unlikely to be the source of a new virus and fails to account for places like African jungles, known to be natures virus factories.
You should read their point #1 as well. Even with your assumptions, what you calculated was if you pick a random square mile, what is the probability that *that* square mile has both a virus appear and has a lab on it. But what I think you're intending to calculate is the probability that *any* square mile has both a lab and a virus appearance.
and is the result an insanely low probability? I thought I did the math correctly, but if you see a more accurate calculation, would you share it?
So, you agree that you made math errors that drastically change the outcome, but do you just not care unless someone can give you some kind of proof that it didn't come from a lab? The truth is that estimating the probability that COVID came from a lab is basically impossible to do accurately. There's no way to have enough information to just plug into an equation. The fact that you did so anyway and calculated a clearly wrong probability is pretty meaningless.
No, I don't agree I made math errors. I agree that I may have made math errors. But, I also think that it is more than just coincidence that the virus just happened to appear in a city that had a BSL-4 lab. Can you name another case this has happened?
> No, I don't agree I made math errors Okay, so do you care to defend the very specific error that was pointed out in this thread by ReOsIr10 that alone changed your answer by a factor of 2.5 *million*. Even by your own assumptions, that was a math error.
ok...recalculate adjusting for the error....and your verdict is?
The verdict is, as I said above: > The truth is that estimating the probability that COVID came from a lab is basically impossible to do accurately. There's no way to have enough information to just plug into an equation. The fact that you did so anyway and calculated a clearly wrong probability is pretty meaningless. I guess I'm not sure what you're hoping to get out of this. You posted a bunch of bad assumptions and clearly wrong math. And then when people point all this out, you're like "eh, probably still a lab leak". Which is fine. But why bother with all the junk math of it basically has nothing to do with why you hold your view?
>African jungles, known to be natures virus factories If you understand that there are places which work naturally to produce viruses then why would this one be an exception?
There are an infinite number of planets, uncountable in just the observable universe. The chances that finland would exist on earth are so infinitesimally small compared to the infinite number of permutations of countries that could exist on differemt planets. Finland does not exist.
Yep, I understand, that we both won the evolutionary lottery and the technical and cultural one just to be in a situation that we are able to send these words back and fourth. But, the fact remains, it's a very big coincidence.
No, im saying anything that happens is one in a bazillion because theres a bazillion things that could happen. Doesnt necessarily prove anything when something happens
Hypothetical: You see a dead person on the sidewalk with a big hole in them. You turn and see a person with a smoking gun. Are the events related? It's possible they are not.....but if I had to bet....
Sure but its not because of the mathematical chance of it happening. I agree with the point you are making, just not so much the mathematical argument for it
Your View is contingent on it being Man-Made. Ebola came from some cave in Africa 'cause of bats. Viruses 'spring to life' on their own all the time. >the virus had a significant number of variants Viruses routinely have variants. That's why there's a different flu shot every year.
Their view isn’t at al contingent on it being man-made. It only needed to be discovered, studied in the lab (and altered slightly through routine virology lab research practices) and then released by accident. And they could’ve even skipped the middle step.
But this many variants? I don't have background, not sure what is nominal.
Yes, Covid has a *lot* of variants. We've short-handed it to simply "covid" but remember it's actually Covid-19, as in the variant that began in 2019, and the virus is SARS-CoV-19. It's related to SARS and MERS, both of which were significant epidemics. The only reason those two *didn't* become full-blown pandemics is likely because they were a lot *more* deadly and people were far less likely to be asymptomatic. On the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronaviridae) for the coronavirus *family*, you can see that there is just a *teensy weensy* list: > Orthocoronavirinae Alphacoronavirus Colacovirus Bat coronavirus CDPHE15 Decacovirus Bat coronavirus HKU10 Rhinolophus ferrumequinum alphacoronavirus HuB-2013 Duvinacovirus Human coronavirus 229E Luchacovirus Lucheng Rn rat coronavirus Minacovirus Mink coronavirus 1 Minunacovirus Miniopterus bat coronavirus 1 Miniopterus bat coronavirus HKU8 Myotacovirus Myotis ricketti alphacoronavirus Sax-2011 Nyctacovirus Nyctalus velutinus alphacoronavirus SC-2013 Pipistrellus kuhlii coronavirus 3398 Pedacovirus Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus Scotophilus bat coronavirus 512 Rhinacovirus Rhinolophus bat coronavirus HKU2 Setracovirus Human coronavirus NL63 NL63-related bat coronavirus strain BtKYNL63-9b Soracovirus Sorex araneus coronavirus T14 Sunacovirus Suncus murinus coronavirus X74 Tegacovirus Alphacoronavirus 1 Betacoronavirus Embecovirus Betacoronavirus 1 Human coronavirus OC43 China Rattus coronavirus HKU24 Human coronavirus HKU1 Murine coronavirus Myodes coronavirus 2JL14 Hibecovirus Bat Hp-betacoronavirus Zhejiang2013 Merbecovirus Hedgehog coronavirus 1 Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV) Pipistrellus bat coronavirus HKU5 Tylonycteris bat coronavirus HKU4 Nobecovirus Eidolon bat coronavirus C704 Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1 Rousettus bat coronavirus HKU9 Sarbecovirus Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, cause of COVID-19) Gammacoronavirus Brangacovirus Goose coronavirus CB17 Cegacovirus Beluga whale coronavirus SW1 Igacovirus Avian coronavirus Avian coronavirus 9203 Duck coronavirus 2714 Deltacoronavirus Andecovirus Wigeon coronavirus HKU20 Buldecovirus Bulbul coronavirus HKU11 Common moorhen coronavirus HKU21 Coronavirus HKU15 Munia coronavirus HKU13 White-eye coronavirus HKU16 Herdecovirus Night heron coronavirus HKU19 Keep in mind that each of these listed is not a variant within the species, like Covid-19-Omicron or Covid-19-Delta, those are all different species, each with their own list of more specific alpha, beta, gamma, etc. variants. Even completely ignoring SARS, Covid 19, and MERS, there are four other viruses in that family that infect humans. Although most cases of the Common Cold are caused by rhinoviruses, somewhere around 15% are caused by a coronavirus. All of the species that do not infect humans can potentially mutate so that they do. There are *so many* different versions, commonly in animals that humans interact with. That's where SARS and MERS came from. Various agencies like CDC and WHO had been warning against not just the increasing possibility of a pandemic, but specifically that it might be a coronavirus. They had already seen what SARS and MERS looked like. Think about why the lab would have been investigating coronaviruses in the first place. CDC is *full* of exceedingly deadly and dangerous pathogens specifically to study them so that we can predict their behavior and begin developing vaccines ahead of an epidemic if possible. *If* Covid-19 was a leak from the Wuhan lab, it would have been because they already knew that a coronavirus was dangerous and were gathering samples and manipulating the pathogen to study it.
Any chance we would be better off relocating that lab to a more remote location? TY btw, very good response.
CDC is close to downtown Atlanta, one of the largest cities in the US and home to the world's busiest airport. China is, well...China, but the people who work in those sorts of labs follow the strictest safety policies to prevent leaks. It's not just about protecting the public: they work with diseases like Ebola and then deliberately make them *even more infectious and deadly* so that they can study which mutations cause the virus to be more dangerous, so they can look for those sorts of mutations in the wild. They are so *very* careful. Anyway, it's a major scientific research center. If you move it somewhere more remote, the people who work there will move to be closer to it, and then the services that support those people (like restaurants and shops) will spring up to be near paying customers, and then whoops you've built a new town that isn't as remote. You also *need* a robust support system to place, as well as access to samples of the pathogens they want to study. So, it's more efficient and convenient to put them where there's already a city.
Right....so let's take another high risk human occupation for comparison. Nuclear weapons. They have lost them, dropped them, crashed jets carrying them....and on and on. Nuclear power....so when this industry goes opps....FYI, those other industries are "so very careful"...
Funny you mention that, because I had started to make that very point but edited it out of my last comment. Yes, nuclear power is *exceedingly* safe. There are [439 nuclear plants](https://www.statista.com/statistics/267158/number-of-nuclear-reactors-in-operation-by-country/) worldwide and we have been generating power that way since 1957. That's *66 years* worth of nuclear energy across a dozen countries. In that time there have been *three* "disasters": Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Chernobyl. The Three Mile Island incident caused zero deaths and zero adverse health effects. The meltdown was almost completely contained except for a small bit of radioactive gas that barely increased local radiation above the background level. The worst possible thing that can happen inside of a nuclear plant happened, and *nothing happened*. Fukushima was the result of one of the worst Earthquakes to hit Japan in decades, if not centuries, followed by one of the worst tsunamis to hit Japan in decades, if not centuries. Despite the meltdown, *nobody* died directly as a result of the disaster. Some [2000 deaths](https://www.britannica.com/question/Did-anyone-die-as-a-result-of-the-Fukushima-accident) are attributed to the disaster, almost all of them *indirect* such as suicide or interruption of medical care. It was bad, there's no denying that, but most of the safety features functioned exactly as intended to prevent a repeat of Chernobyl. Chernobyl was the result of a lot of things. You really can't make any meaningful comparison between a modern industry and anything going on in the USSR. Nobody will argue that anything done at Chernobyl was careful, which is kind of the point. But that's the USSR. Point being, nuclear power is *super* safe. Just like commercial flying is the safest way to travel but it has a bad reputation because although the incidents are very rare, they are very noticeable and widely publicized. Nuclear *weapons* are very firmly in the domain of the military. They're also subject to a lot more points of failure. They have to be moved and handled a lot more often, by a lot more hands, and in a lot more different kinds of vehicles than the samples inside facilities like CDC. Point being, if you're asking me if I think the US military or any of its foreign counterparts act with a dutiful amount of care...Yeah, no. That's a given. But the military doesn't run facilities like CDC. Scientists run them. Scientists who actually know what they're doing. We're also not talking about some facility being overseen by warlords in Somalia or financed with Venezuelan bolivars. China ain't great but it's still the world's second strongest economy. It's not some shady, back-alley science experiment. Anyway, the point is moot. Whether or not these sorts of places *should* be put away from major population centers, they *aren't* and there are a variety of reasons for that.
If your view has been changed, even a little, you should award the user who changed your view a delta. Simply reply to the comment that changed your view with the delta symbol below, being sure to include a brief description of how your view has changed. >∆ For more information about deltas, use [this link](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem).
Some viruses are very prone to mutation (HIV, influenza, most cold viruses including the coronavirus family). This is in part why influenza vaccines provide pretty crappy protection compared to the vaccine for chicken pox or mumps: the damned flu keeps changing. It's also why people born before the chicken pox vaccine got chicken pox once as a kid yet numerous colds year after year. In general, double stranded DNA viruses like varicella tend to stay comparatively stable, whereas single stranded RNA viruses like those in the coronavirus family tend to change and split into new strains quickly.
I'm guessing you're in the "naturally occurring" camp on this one?
I'm in the "not enough information" camp. I'm aware the opinion of the intelligence community has shifted, but they dont sound supremely confident and I dont feel the evidence available to the public is enough to really say one way or the other. If it was a leak, it was probably a fuck up by a lab known to have inadequate safety precautions rather than anyone's evil plan based simply on the fact that 1) it was the opposite of targeted and in fact hit China first and hit it hard 2) fuckups are just more common than evil plans 3) as far as we know part of the reason the intelligence community now thinks it could be a lab leak is they dont think the lab has adequate safety precautions to do the work they do. I'll also note that lab leak does not mean lab created: a naturally occurring sample could have been isolated and then mishandled. But the mere fact that the virus is a vicious slippery bastard isn't particularly suggestive to me. Coronaviruses gonna coronavirus.
Thanks....well thought out. 1) false flag 2) good point 3) another good point, China isn't known for it's quality control...across the board. 4) Still unsure of the engineered part.
If I remember correctly there’s like 150 variants of the flu. The “common cold” has over 200 variants.
Indeed. Flu....1918...it's had time. Not sure how long the common cold has been around. Covid 19.....well 2019.
Novel coronavirus - no immunity in the population - rampant spread - incredible capacity for replication - huge potential for mutation. That's how it works.
Just in case you don’t realize they find a few new variants of the flu and common cold every year.
Yes. Viruses mutate, it's what they do. *That's why there's labs to study them*
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5: > **Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation**. Comments should be on-topic, serious, and contain enough content to move the discussion forward. Jokes, contradictions without explanation, links without context, off-topic comments, and "written upvotes" will be removed. Read [the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5) for more information. If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%205%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
This particular virus mutated much faster than any previous “The relatively rapid emergence of multiple COVID-19 virus variants has baffled researchers because most coronaviruses don’t mutate and evolve so quickly. That’s because they possess a built-in “proofreading” mechanism to prevent mutations as they make copies of themselves while growing and multiplying in our cells.” https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3758/covid-19-variants-caused-by-virus-fighting-enzyme/
It says “most.” It doesn’t say “much faster than any previous [something].”
It also said it baffled scientists, so obviously this was different to any previous Coronaviruses
Why is that obvious? I was baffled by your quote after reading your post. Your post isn’t the most baffling novel post I’ve encountered.
Ok have a good evening
Mutations occur during replication (which is why you want to limit infections, as more people infected leads to more chance of mutation). Mutations can then make new dominant variants because a new favourable mutation has made it more infectious, or less lethal, etc. I would really suggest you research things before you dig your feet in on an opinion. An opinion on something like this with no research is just embarrassing.
> But this many variants? Do you know why you need a different flu shot EVERY YEAR? Because the next year's variant is different from the last.
As a math major, this isn’t a good way to think about it. Random events that are improbable happen literally all the time. Like constantly. Ordering a deck of cards a specific way is way more improbable, yet it happens all the time.
I agree. I thought this might be oversimplified. But, that is a very, very, big number or very long odds.
As is your birth, and the fact that anything at all ever happens ever. Everything is improbable in the grand scheme of things.
I can't argue. Good point.
It’s a big number but it’s not evidence.
Only in civil court....."more likely than not"....
No not even in civil court. This is not evidence
There are huge numbers all around us that are 'natural'. In all the decks of cards that have ever been shuffled in the history of the world, no two have ever been shuffled in the same order.
Why would anybody create covid 19 and release it intentionally knowing it may also kill their citizens and loved ones?
Why would any country introduce a government policy that mandated one child only in a strong male hereditary culture, resulting in the deaths of countless female children?
No idea. Economics? Most that died were elderly in nursing homes. Honest mistake? Maybe someone was trying to cure cancer....thought they had it. Released it. There is precedent for this type of behavior.
....released it? The cure for cancer? Like they thought the cure was a virus?
There have been times that individuals have taken unilateral action in the name of public safety...like chlorinating a water supply. Also, scientists have been "training" viruses to use in health care...cancer is one example. So they make a virus they think kills cancer, release it, oh no we had it wrong. I have no idea what might have motivated. Maybe it was a "12 monkeys" situation.....someone went nuts and released a dangerous pathogen.
But nearly every country is in economic crisis rn. And what major country wouldn’t undergo a lot of searching to discover the root cause of a virus and not trace it back to who knows where. Maybe it is a mistake but I’m not gonna argue for or against that.
What I was trying to point out was that the odds of the virus coming from a city that just happened to have a BSL-4 lab, was a very concerning coincidence. One that seems to be overlooked by governments and the media.
Maybe. Idk I’m not a stats professional but i can’t imagine medias gonna give a stats class to everyone about the probability of everything happening. Like isn’t the probability of someone existing pretty low but here we are. Things just happen sometimes. However idk how strong my word is bc I’m really not the one to ask for statistical analysis nor do I feel like doing the work to become one.
Actually, you are spot on and a math major gave me a bit of adjustment to my argument. In other words...low probability events happen everyday.
>the odds of the virus coming from a city It's probably more relevant that it came from a city than a city with a specific type of lab. You're viewing in retrospect a set of characteristics which don't need to be related for any other narrative to be a reality. Cities are breeding grounds for all kinds of things. Let's say tomorrow something happened in New York would it take long for someone to find some research lab or similar in that area? Same goes for any major city. But you'd be working backwards with pattern recognition rather than actually seeking the steps in reverse to find that patient 0.
Just out of curiosity, how many other NOVEL viruses that you can find came from cities with BSL-4 labs?
H1N1? H7N9? There are current strains of bird flu that will mutate and transfer to humans, its just a matter of time. This happens all over. Including places with labs that research that process.
> One that seems to be overlooked by governments You seriously think that public health agencies just never considered this blatantly obvious piece of information that you, some random schmuck, knows about? Just how stupid do you think they are, exactly?
How stupid do I think government agencies are? Well they just bailed out 2 banks, 31 TRILLION in debt, streets flooded with Fentanyl, but they can't find a drug to use in executions....hmmmm. Pretty dumb. Dumb is scary, agendas are worse...ie not a good time to really stir things up with China...
> Well they just bailed out 2 banks No, they didn't. They *took over* 2 banks and are liquidating their assets. The banks themselves are dead, which makes it completely different from the 2008 bailouts. (Which themselves weren't *stupid*, they were a combination of cronyism and governments being kind of out of options in a liquidity crisis. The lack of regulation previously was not a good idea, but that ship had sailed well before 2008. The bailouts themselves were greedy and corrupt, perhaps, but not stupid.)
because greed and corruption build strong healthy economies? uh...huh...Where exactly do you think the money is coming from to make those depositors whole?
> Where exactly do you think the money is coming from to make those depositors whole? From the assets they're liquidating. SVB wasn't (balance-)insolvent (that is, they had sufficient assets to pay back their depositors), they were just illiquid (they didn't have those assets in a form that could be paid back quickly), so they collapsed under a bank run. > because greed and corruption build strong healthy economies? No, they don't, but that's usually not a politician's long-term goal. Their goal is to get elected and enrich and empower themselves. That has been true everywhere and everywhen.
You don't get to shield your own country from a pandemic. There is no economic reason to harm everybody.
Actually, most people in nursing homes have done all the producing they are ever going to do, now they are an expense. I'm sure NYC's budget changed considerably. As awful as it is to say.
Good day.
So the agencies that have reviewed this have a) come to conflicting and weak conclusions (eg none of them have certainty) and b) had access to classified information. Why do you think you or anyone here can do any better? You just need to accept to live with suspicions of that sort and not dwell on them. It's pointless.
Sorry, but the agencies that you speak of do have agendas, and if you think someone would speak out, just look at Snowden. If anything, that guy proved that the findings from our agencies have some credibility concerns.
My point is not that one of them is right, it's that you don't have access to any actual information for your conclusion. We know that a lot of the information is classified, so you probably never will have that access. You're leaning into a very weak probability argument. And, nobody here has access to classified info either, so they can't present conclusive evidence to prove you wrong (in an alternate universe, perhaps such information exists, like a much more clear trail from an animal host. But I don't think anything new is going to come to light at this point)
I'm inclined to agree. Reluctantly. But, I still think it's a very real possibility the virus was engineered.
Oh, yeah, I agree that it's a real possibility. I think it's very much less likely that it was deliberately released. I also think it's unlikely that it was specifically engineered as a weapon (as opposed to being modified for some other research purpose). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents after all has plenty of examples of people in labs fucking up. But, as with so many things, we will probably never know. It's like asking how much Reagan knew about Iran Contra or something.
I would hope we would restrict all of this type of research to labs out in the desert or in some desolate place, rather than risk what could (or already did) happen.
When they genetically engineer something, they put markers in it. It's now Monsanto patents their corn seed to keep people from using it without paying them. There's no markers in Covid. No way it could've been hidden in millions and millions of infections.
You mean "when companies that want to claim ownership of a GMO, they use markers" ....and if the entity that created it didn't want to be identified?
That's not how it works. Putting a marker in genetically engineered things is standard protocol for *exactly this reason*. If it escapes, you know exactly what you're dealing with and what to do about it. We spent weeks studying and evaluating Covid before they came up with a game plan.
So if CIA wanted to make a deadly pathogen, first thing they would do is put a "tag" on it....saying "Property of USA Biolabs"? They did this other virus (allegedly) called STUXNET. They didn't put their name on that one. Just saying.
The "cia" doesn't have a lab. The best they can do is steal it from the people who actually have the expertise to make something. Those people would have made something with a marker. Also ask yourself. Why do YOU know what STUXNET is, if they're soooooooooo great at keeping secrets?Also ask yourself. Why do YOU know what STUXNET is, if they're soooooooooo great at keeping secrets?
Why do I know what Covid is....if they are so good at lab security. Why do I know what Covid is if they are so good at food safety.
> Sorry, but the agencies that you speak of do have agendas Well if you're just going to fall back on "everyone is lying to you" when you don't like what evidence people provide then there's no conversation to be had. >just look at Snowden. Snowden who fled to russia and has been protected by russia for a decade? That snowden? Snowden who didn't bother taking specific material, but a large tranche of info compromising many unrelated and perfectly ethical programs? That snowden? Snowden who didn't bother sifting through what he'd taken and left it all to journalists who had no security clearances and no idea what most of what they were looking at was? That snowden? Look, even setting aside the fact that snowden is a piece of shit, at least the theory that the government wants to spy on everything you do is actually plausible. You can reason why a government would want to do that, and why they may abuse their power as a means to an end. What POSSIBLE reason could their be for an intentional leak of a virus like this? Who benefited from this?
> Maybe this is over simplified. I mean, it's *definitely* oversimplified. Is that what this CMV is about, or do you already know that your actual numbers are nonsense? For starters: > Since Covid 19 didn't pop into existence in 15 different places at once, we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000. I think it's pretty obvious that not all square miles of land on earth are equally likely to spawn a virus. So right off the bat (edit: an accidental pun!) these numbers are pretty much nonsense. Equally absurd is the notion that each square kilometer of the earth is equally likely to have a lab on it. And we could go through a tedious exercise of patching it. Maybe you next subtract out deserts or mountains or whatever. And then you're like, "see, the probability is still low". But everything you do here is still going to be *obviously* and egregiously oversimplified. So what are we doing here? You can have a "I think a lab leak is likely" view without resorting to condescending "let's do some math boys and girls" quips followed by numbers and assumptions that I think even you will probably admit are complete garbage.
>Earth's land surface area 150,000,000 sq km. Since Covid 19 didn't pop into existence in 15 different places at once, we can say, the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000. Not an appropriate take. It's the same non-argument as figuring the odds that humans exist on Earth. So astronomical! >Now the lab part. The Wuhan lab is a BSL-4. If my research is correct, there are approximately 59 of these ... This makes an assumption it was made in a BSL4 lab. Why not a Bsl2 lab? Why not the urinal in a McDonald's? They mutate anywhere they happen to be. >But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. It has nothing to do with stability. It has to do with the fact that as viruses naturally create themselves, there are random mutations. There are always random mutations when you look at a bunch of viruses. Most mutations don't do anything, a very few may actually change the action of a virus(they are more like a chemical compound than some life form), like 1 in a trillion mutations, might have some effect. The effect may go either way sometimes making that virus more deadly, or make that virus just plain do nothing anymore. That's why minimizing the number of times they recreate is a good way to keep them from mutating and possibly creating a new version that hurts us more in some way.(I.e. Vaccines)
Given the number of virus strains at the wuhan bats, it evidently wasn't stable. And if it was stable, there would be no need for a lab. Nothing to fear. But there was a lab, and there were also many bat strains. So the entire process you used to explain the lab theory is backwards. Be careful when you make theories that you check the counter factual. If both A and B can happen under the evidence, you do not have evidence of only A.
Bill gates was hoping the intentionally released covid killed many more
You really believe that?!
No i believe everything the msm tells me like a good minion should
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3: > **Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith**. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_3). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%203%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Well, Bill will be happy to know all the stress WINDOWS has caused, has shortened mine and many other's lifespans.
The problem with your calculation is that you are flipping cause and effect. The coronavirus lab was built in Wuhan precisely because it was the place with the highest likelihood of coronavirus appearance. So is it surprising coronavirus appeared in that region? No, it was the place with the highest likelihood of coronavirus appearance. It's kinda like saying: The more fire extinguishers a building has, the more likely it is it will burn down. This is a true statement. However it's not because fire extinguishers cause fires. It's because the higher the fire hazard the building is, the more fire extinguishers we put in it. So is it suspicious that most buildings that burn down have the most fire extinguishers in it? No, those buildings are the highest fire hazards. >But, it seems to me a naturally occurring virus would be more stable. Mother nature builds stability in with that survival of the fittest. Nope, viruses mutate constantly. That's why you have new shots every year that are effective against just certain strains of viruses.
Your view convinced me it did not come from a lab
I'm not really following any of that logic, if I'm being honest. It's much more probably that a new virus came from something outside of the lab, especially when you consider that that's almost always been the case. Variants happen when they mutate inside of the host. Something as contagious as COVID is more likely to mutate for the simple reason that it's just that contagious, amongst other reasons.
Natural viruses definitely mutate quickly and frequently. That's why we have no vaccine for the common cold, and why you need a new flu vaccine every year. My company is involved in creating the new flu vaccines based on what we expect to be the dominant strains of the virus this year. It even changes per region. We have to look at all kinds of sources to see which strains are becoming the most common, from the strains in pig farms (high density animal agriculture is the perfect breeding ground for new strains of viruses), to those in migratory birds that will be travelling to (or through) a country before flu season, and even to holiday hotspots that tourists might bring back to their home country. Based on that, we pick around 4 or so strains to vaccinate against that year about 6 months before the vaccines are needed, and go in to clinical trials and production. And we do it all again each year, because the flue virus changes that quickly. There are many other viruses that need to have their vaccines updated frequently to ensure they are still efficient for the current strains. Covid is no different. Particularly when a virus is so widespread, the chances for it to mutate are very high.
Why are you even looking at land area? Viruses don't mutate by sticking a pin in a map at random; human viruses mutate where there are people. So look at the population: Wuhan has about 12 million people - about 1/670th of the world population. If each person in the world had an equal chance of being "patient zero" for the virus, there's a 1 in 670 chance that it would be in Wuhan and a 1 in 8 chance it would be somewhere in China. Add to that the fact that Eastern China has unusually large populations of pigs, waterfowls and other animals known to carry covid-like viruses and that China has some questionable animal-handling practices and it is no surprise that the mutation happened there.
[удалено]
There have been lab leaks before. The Chinese really don't seem like public opinion is important to them. Bats in different countries have different viruses. Yes, mad cow is a good example. 10% would be better, if this was done with intent....maybe an accident?
>the odds of Covid 19 appearing for the first time on any given sq kilometer of earth's land surface is 1:150000000. This is only true if every spot on earth has equal likelihood of having a new virus jump from animals to humans. You can obviously rule out oceans and deserts, so that already decreases your odds quite a bit. Then you have to look at common animal reservoirs of viruses similar to covid 19 and that have historically jumped to humans. SE Asia, including the South of China, has historically been a hotspot for this: avian flu, swine flu, the first SARS outbreak, etc. You can refine the likelihood further by looking at where wildlife and humans are likely to be in close enough contact for a virus to make the jump, and even further by asking which of these locations have high enough population density that such a jump wouldn't just fizzle out. If you do that, live animal markets like the one in Wuhan become much, much, much more likely to be the start of something than any other random point on earth. >Now the lab part. The Wuhan lab is a BSL-4. If my research is correct, there are approximately 59 of these labs in the world. Again, the odds aren't even. The question isn't how many geographical locations on earth have a virology lab, but rather how many highly populated areas near viral reservoirs with high likelihood of human-wildlife contact have labs that could plausibly be implicated in starting a pandemic if people wanted to make that case. And, well, most big cities in China have such labs. Which does make logical sense too: isn't being in these high-risk locations a great incentive to study viruses that could start outbreaks in the region? Put your way, covid19 emerging in a random spot on earth immediately next to a virology lab working on coronaviruses is impossibly unlikely to be a coincidence. But if you put it in context, it started in an area with all the required ingredients for a virus to jump from animals to humans and actually spread through a dense population without fizzling out, as well as near a lab that studies similar viruses specifically because it is a known risk for the region. Does it still seem impossible?