[vkou]

I don't think the desire to see the conspiracy and not the boring, mundane explanation is a failure of communication, scientific thinking, or critical reasoning skills.

I think it's simply the consequences of politically motivated reasoning. (At least, for people who have spent much time thinking about it.)

> I've yet to see anyone effectively communicate why the intuitively more probable answer is the less probable one.

I just communicated why the market leak theory is both more intuitive, and more probable.

There were two possible sources for the virus in the city, and hundreds of thousands of non-sources for it. The first detected source of it was the market.

If the first outbreak of it were in the lab, (but was hidden), probability and intuition indicates that the next place it would have shown up at would have been some randomly selected place of the city, which has nothing to do with viruses. A mall. A theatre. A ball game.

The fact that of all the possibilities, it showed up in the one particular place that is also a prime suspect for it's own viral outbreak means that the most obvious explanation (market leak) is likely the correct one.

When a swine flu outbreak is traced to a particular stall in a factory farm, we don't conclude (without further evidence) that actually it was caused by a university miles away.

[danenania]

Another explanation could be detection bias: it was tracked to the market not because it originated there, but because vastly more resources have been expended on investigating the market compared to any other place in the city.

You’re assuming “it was tracked to there” = “it originated there” but that’s a big leap.

[vkou]

> You’re assuming “it was tracked to there” = “it originated there” but that’s a big leap.

If the market were one of multiple second-generation infection spreader sites, we'd have had significantly faster growth in the rate of infections.

With the power of hindsight, the rate of spread of COVID is well-understood, and the timelines of people getting sick is consistent with one initial outbreak site. There just aren't any known cases where someone came down with COVID on day 1 of the outbreak, without also having gone to that market.

[danenania]

All of that is subject to detection bias as well. There’s a lot of uncertainty involved in tracking early cases. It’s not anything close to solid evidence.

[vkou]

It would be a damn weird form of bias when every early case that could be accounted for was somehow tracked to only the market.

The location bias hypothesis would work if they looked at all patrons of the market, and checked if they got sick. That's not what they did, though, because they didn't have a list of all the patrons of the market. It doesn't have a guestbook.

They looked for people who got sick, and asked them where they went before they fell sick. And all of them turned out to have gone to the market - and not on the same day.

[danenania]

The exact methodology of how they found these people is very important, as there are many potential sources of bias, not to mention conflicts of interest.

I did some searching and it seems that you are perhaps basing your conclusions on this article/the studies it points to? - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

> A geospatial analysis reports that 155 early COVID-19 cases from Hubei Province, China, in December, 2019, significantly clustered around a food market in Wuhan, China.

However, I couldn't find details on how these 155 cases were selected or what exactly "significantly clustered" means. 155 is a small sample, so the details are important.

Also important is whether the data on these cases was provided by government sources. If so, I would question how reliable or representative that data is.

[lolinder]

> I just communicated why the market leak theory is both more intuitive, and more probable.

No, you didn't, you stated that it was.

The rest of your post makes sense as an explanation. Maybe lead with that next time instead of condescendingly telling people that they're politically motivated, stupid, or whatever else you meant to imply by calling it a conspiracy theory.

COVID-19, at least in the US, has been an enormous failure in science communication, and being condescending towards those who already feel alienated by the terrible communication isn't going to help.

[vkou]

The meat of the argument of the post was a restatement of the past three posts that I've made. I did lead with the argument, in somewhat less detail.

[lolinder]

No, you didn't, you led with this:

> In 2024, this isn't fact, it's just baseless conspiracy.

> All evidence has ended up pointing to bush meat contamination.

This isn't science communication, it's a condescending rebuke.

That said, I'm done here. Thanks for clarifying in the end, and happy new year!