[tripletao]

The peer-reviewed literature on COVID origins has been unusually bad. I assume you don't think SARS-CoV-2 came from pangolins; but Nature published "Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins", and took more than a year to correct it. (They said the virus was widespread among pangolins, based on multiple positive samples; but in fact multiple papers had been written about one batch of smuggled pangolins.)

Map-based arguments for the exact site of introduction seem generally like noise to me. Worobey has made aggressive claims in preprints and media interviews, but even his Science paper falls back to just "epicenter", a weaker term without standard epidemiological meaning. SARS-CoV-2 must have been introduced into the Americas at air and seaports; but even with the advance warning to public health officials, that's not where the first clusters were found.

[dekhn]

Are you a professional scientist with experience in this area or not?

[tripletao]

Definitely not. But if you just want to hold up credentials, then David Baltimore seems pretty convinced that SARS-CoV-2 arose unnaturally, and I'm pretty sure a Nobel prize beats a paper in Science. So I hope you now agree credentialism is dumb?

Some areas of the origins debate require deep knowledge of the evolutionary biology of related viruses (e.g. the extent to which the coding of the FCS suggests engineering), but most of the debate is understandable with only basic molecular biology and math. From your post history, I'd guess you're better-placed to understand something like Pekar's epidemiological model than most of his reviewers were. So if you're interested enough to comment here, then I'm not sure why you wouldn't try?

[dekhn]

I don't change my opinion of David Baltimore or of SARS-CoV-2 based on his belief (I am actually completely undecided and have been waiting for convincing evidence of any kind for some time). Baltimore is actually a bit kooky, he's not the first Nobellist to do/say dumb things: the inventor of PCR, Kary Mullis, was an HIV-causes-AIDS denier https://www.ihv.org/news/2023-News/USA-Today-Fact-check-Rese... Anyway, Baltimore recanted some time ago, agreeing that he was far too strong in his claims (this is a common problem in science- people who are convinced often get really angry and insistent about their beliefs).

To be honest, I'm so unhappy with modern medical literature that even starting to try to understand a specific model would be highly unpleasant for me- generally, my experience has been that once I start pulling the threads on a paper that isn't strictly strong quantitative biophysics, the sweater comes apart. The vast majority of medical literature requires extensive analysis and a thorough understanding of all the context before you can even really start to make useful criticisms.

My general statement remains: my priors still place a higher weight on trusting papers in major journals that haven't been retracted yet, than on out-of-domain scientists on twitter. It may not even be true in this case- perhaps dawalker is actually totally right and you can't conclude much from the WOrobey paper. But more importantly: nobody yet has shown any true "smoking gun evidence" for the origin of SARS-CoV-2. I am not even going to get remotely excited about it for at least a decade, since that's about how long it takes for the community to calm down and start thinking rationally again.

[tripletao]

I'd tend to agree that Baltimore initially overstated the significance of the FCS, though his updated position seems close to my own. I'd certainly agree that whatever Kary Mullis saw wasn't a physical glowing raccoon, that megadoses of vitamin C won't cure cancer, etc. That's basically my point, though. Prestige--personal, institutional, or otherwise--is no guarantee of quality.

It's not meaningless either, and in general I'd also place higher weight on a paper in a major journal than on a random Twitter thread. As to COVID origins in particular, I believe major journals have published unusually poor-quality work. This continues an unfortunate pattern set in past biosafety incidents (1977 flu, Sverdlovsk, etc.), of dismissing the possibility of an unnatural cause until the evidence was incontrovertible.

The math in the Worobey papers isn't really that inaccessible, and I'd consider some of it as good work if it weren't so grossly oversold. I agree there's no definite evidence for any origin of SARS-CoV-2, and I don't think the article linked here adds much. I do think revelation of the DEFUSE proposal did, and that UNC's and the EHA's prior silence on that is inexcusable.

Definite proof may never come, but for now the American government continues to fund high-risk virological research. That seems terrifying to me. Reckless agricultural practices also continue to risk novel pandemics (in the West too; our use of antibiotics on healthy animals may get remembered as a crime against humanity). The risk of reckless virological practices is additive to that though, and much more easily controlled, simply by defunding. I therefore believe it deserves attention now.

[ricksunny]

>in general I'd also place higher weight on a paper in a major journal than on a random Twitter thread.

The Alina Chan archetype would beg to differ. The journal gatekeeping on tbis topic has been off the charts.