[sega_sai]

When there is no evidence, the discussion is purely in the sphere of priors. And that doesn't make it very fruitful to discuss, as different people will likely have different priors. I think I agree that the likelihood of lab-leak was downweighted previously probably too strongly, but in the same time, I still don't see too much evidence in favor of it now.

[whitepaint]

What was the evidence of it occurring naturally in the seafood market?

[SiempreViernes]

Uh, nobody ever claimed that the seafood marked was some sort of natural reservoir.

It was just the earliest suspected point of where the animal to human transmission happened, the reservoir was always presumed to be somewhere else.

[whitepaint]

The point I was trying to make is that the idea of it naturally occurring was mainstream. If you tried to guess it might have come from the lab, it'd be just dismissed completely. However, both of these claims had no evidence, so why was just one claim labeled as a conspiracy theory and dismissed entirely by the mainstream media?

Do you disagree? Do you think it might have been political?

[loopercal]

Historically, and happy to be proven wrong here, we've never seen a lab-leak of a novel virus cause a widespread outbreak. We have seen zoonotic transmission cause an epidemic/pandemic. So at least for me, I was working off of, "Is it likely that we're seeing something for the first time? Or is it likely this happened the way it's happened before?"

[misiti3780]

Depends on your definition of widespread. There have been level-4 leaks multiple times in the past. England had an outbreak from a level 4 lab in the past 20 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

[SiempreViernes]

Notice the use of "novel virus", you gave an example where a known virus escaped. SARS-COV-2 was not known before the outbreak in Wuhan.

[whitepaint]

I will reply the same way I did to another comment:

I like your reasoning. My question is: do you think that is why the mainstream media completely rejected the idea of lab leaked virus?

[SiempreViernes]

You'll have to more clearly define what precise meaning you pack into "evidence" because I can't really understand your central claim otherwise.

[whitepaint]

What were the arguments that support the hypothesis of it being a natural occurrence? That there was a seafood market nearby? Ok. There was also a lab nearby that did experiments with corona-viruses. Which theory is more likely? I don't know, do you? My question is: why is one theory more likely than another? Why was the lab leak theory completely rejected and people who played with it were called nuts?

[ModernMech]

The argument that supported natural occurrence was to point to past global pandemics as having been of natural origin. Laboratory research of viruses is a relatively new thing, while pandemics have been happening for a very long time throughout the history of civilization. So in the case where no other evidence is readily available, I'm going to go with natural origin just because that's been the most likely origin historically for pandemics.

[SiempreViernes]

No, the a argument in favour of the natural origin of SARS-COV-2 is that it's a novel virus. There are a lot more unknown viruses outside in nature than there are people working on making new ones.

Also, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not exactly "nearby" the seafood market. It's 25 km away, well across the city and on its outskirts.