[aphextron]

And I'm sure I'll be downvoted to oblivion for even bring it up. But the evidence, as you've explained, has increasingly been mounting. I was all in on calling people Sinophobic for even suggesting this in the first few months. But there's simply no other plausible explanation at this point. And Beijing has been completely unresponsive in even denying it.

[yhoneycomb]

When did you call people sinophobic? Seems like you talk more about how we are at war with China than anything.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[JPKab]

I too allowed my brain to be hijacked by my hatred for Trump. I allowed my biases to cause me to essentially outsource my decision-making to my enemy who then by aggressively going for a conclusion in a manner that was too early for concrete evidence, caused me to embrace the alternative explanation which itself frankly defied a lot of logic. I'm very embarrassed about this and it's something I have to confront about my own brains weaknesses.

Why is that?

It's quite a coincidence for a bat born Corona virus that is unusually adept at infecting human lung tissue to emerge in the same exact city as the world's leading batborn Corona virus research center. For this to not be related to anything in that research facility is starting to border on improbable but of course could happen.

However when you combine this with the way the Chinese authorities behaved, and then add into this fact that they still cannot find any form of intermediate animal host no matter how much effort is expended, it really starts to push the natural-born theory to a high degree of improbability.

I owe many of my friends a huge apology over this. It's not fun but I'm calling them one by one to apologize because I feel like it will remind me in the future to check my own cognitive biases before jumping to conclusions.

I lament the fact that the majority of the public that did the same thing as me will never question their own judgment or stop to wonder why they were manipulated so aggressively by a media that was more concerned with confirming the biases of their audience and themselves than seeking out real truth.

[cipher_system]

Wouldn't it make a lot of sense to locate a bat born Corona virus research center in a region with a lot of bat born Corona viruses?

[JPKab]

That's not the region where they come from. They are primarily collected from their locations of origin which is in Yunnan. This is not to say that there are not horseshoe bats in Wuhan although they don't like urban areas and live in the outskirts. It's simply to state that the concentration of viruses that have escaped into animal populations and then humans are all concentrated in Yunnan.

I assure you this is very uncomfortable information for me and I was horrified while reading it because I didn't want to believe it. It's especially alarming to me because I'm concerned about the geopolitical implications of people in nations like India gradually realizing this.

I am not foolish enough to make conclusions yet because I do believe it's too early but as of now the likelihood of origin has shifted strongly in favor of an accidental lab escape. The animal transmission model via nature simply requires numerous highly improbable events for it to be the culprit. This doesn't rule it out it's simply makes it a lower probability of occurrence.