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by whydid 1334 days ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is why people are skeptical.

3 comments

Great attempts are made to prevent lab leaks, so a failure of procedure can't be considered extraordinary.
It depends on bayesian priors.how mahy coronaviruses were studied, how frequently a new virus is found next to a biolab of said virus by chance etc. The extraordinary claim could be that it is of natural origin actually.
Fun fact! There are just 9,110 named virus species as of 2021. But there are estimates that mammals and birds may have as many as 1.7 million undiscovered viruses. An older source says there were ~200 some known viruses that could infect humans as of 2013. They estimate there are 800k unknown ones which could infect us. Basically every time they look for viruses, they find new ones.
However, the evidence that Ecohealth Alliance refuses to share their Wuhan lab notebooks “explains away” other beliefs.

If you’re at home and you hear loud booms, then look at the calendar and see it’s July 4, the date “explains away” the thousands of other explanations for why you are hearing loud booms.

How many bat coronaviruses existed in the vicinity of the Wuhan market, including the specimens from the laboratory ? How many bats were freely roaming in the neighborhood? That's a much better probability analysis, not a flu virus in Antarctica
Right, what I’m saying is we know <1% of virus types, and it’s reasonable to believe we know <1% of coronavirus strains.

The bats don’t need to be at all near the market, the theory is an intermediate host was in the market. A bat could infect the host population days prior or years prior. A long potential span of time.

It might be illustrative to look at MERS. They found camel populations >3,000 miles away from the outbreak with antibodies to MERS. One potential explanation is the virus doesn’t sicken camels and had been spreading in their population for a long time prior to transmission to humans.

Or we look to SARS. They did not find SARS in a bat population, but after 5 years of searching they did find a cave where all the building blocks existed. It was a couple provinces away from the outbreak. >500 miles.

So despite your beliefs, how many bats freely roaming the neighborhood may not actually be a much better probability analysis than flu viruses in Antarctica. /s

Because the theory of intermediate host hasn't Led anywhere after 3 years but we know for sure and as a fact that experimentos with bat coronaviruses did happen 1km from epicentro, I don't get why people insist so much. I think it's more like "I hope it's not true" thing.
No experiments with bat Coronaviruses happened "1 km" from the epicenter. WIV is 15km away.. so even if you were to believe it originated at the WIV, it's still odd why it took off at a seafood market 15km away instead of at the very busy campus or any market much closer to their research center.
How is it an extraordinary claim?

It is by far the simplest and most obvious explanation.