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This is a good, balanced article. I've been of a similar mind for over a year now. The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm

This is a good, balanced article. I've been of a similar mind for over a year now. The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm the US seems silly. But an accident involving a well-intentioned gain-of-function experiment seems quite possible and was something that the US was concerned about with its own gain-of-function research. In any case, this, like so much of this other nonsense around Covid [lockdowns in Contra Costa County when the major hospitals were empty-ish; no gradual escalation of lockdown given mid-January knowledge of Covid], seems pretty amenable to a calm, clear analysis... Hypothesis | Evidence | Likelihood ------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------- CCP Virus | [That'd be 360 degree dumb of the CCP] | *low* Gain of function lab accident | [Existing concerns and experience] | *moderate* Zoonotic transfer | [No likely vector for extant virus] | *moderate-low* Doesn't seem too difficult...

MilnerRoute 6y ago
The "likely vector" would be the millions of peasants living near bat caves in rural China (who actually have already been shown to have antibodies to bat viruses). And some of whom traveled to the market. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/841729646/virus-researchers-cast-doubt-on-theory-of-coronavirus-lab-accident https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296... So I would upgrade that quite a bit from "moderate-low." (One of the researchers in this NPR article seems to rate it as an obvious suspect, so I'd call that "high likelihood.")
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  Those millions of peasants living near bat caves would have traveled to thousands of markets all over China, but the virus originated at the one market in China that is basically across the street from a virus lab? It's not impossible, but my money is on the lab.
  - MilnerRoute 6y ago
    The lab was not "across the street." It was a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
    - manicdee 6y ago
      The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Also, the first known confirmed case has no known connections to the Huanan market or the virology institute. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-harmful-hunt-for-covid-19s-patient-zero https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
        ladon86 6y ago
        > How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Presumably the same way it travels 25,000 miles across a planet of 7.5bn people - via the people.
        heidar 6y ago
        The first sentence in the BBC article. > Chinese authorities and experts are at odds about the origin of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. I'm not saying this argument is invalid in general but it's important to assume that we know next to nothing about this whole situation and that the things that we know are potentially false pieces of information pushed by the CCP. They've tried to sweep this under the rug and control the discussion from day one and this happens to be something they're incredibly good at.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  According to the article, the bat caves are nearly a thousand miles away. It seems unlikely peasants were traveling a thousand miles for the purpose of visting the market. It also presents some reasons why bat viruses on their own were unlikely to become as contagious as COVID, citing the example of RaTG13's discovery. So the "zoonotic transfer from bats" theory requires an extraordinary new strain (possible!) to travel a thousand miles before spreading enough to be detected.
  - heidar 6y ago
    Also not mentioned in the article but bats are in hibernation at the time of year when the spread started, making it even less likely.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    It’s too late to edit, but I’d like to ask downvoters to respond instead of downvoting. The submission references and contradicts the information provided in the GPs link and discusses how the politicization of the origin led to these organizations making much stronger statements than the evidence warranted. I cited some of the information the OP mentions that contradicts assertions made by the GP. If I am wrong or misinformed, I would like to know it. The submission is an excellent article. I have no dog in this fight but it did shift the needle of uncertainty for me, particularly when I learned about prior leaks and the suppression of investigations in China. It’s a long article but worth the read.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Cactus2018 6y ago
> The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm the US seems silly. But to harm someone else? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/coronavirus-neanderthals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/coronavirus-neande... ]] Dr. Paabo said the DNA segment may account in part for why people of Bangladeshi descent are dying at a high rate of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/oios-tan093020.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/oios-tan0930... ]] IMAGE: THESE GENETIC VARIANTS ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY ABSENT IN AFRICA AND OCCUR IN THE HIGHEST FREQUENCY IN BANGLADESH. https://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/pub/web/244496_web.jpg https://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/pub/web/244496_...
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  But, uh, Bangladesh itself has a lower rate, by far, than the U.K. While I greatly admire Dr. Paabo's work, this part seems pretty speculative.
peteradio 6y ago
Not disagreeing with your Likelihoods but I'm not sure your evidence really makes sense. It does not really follow that a self-harm would always be avoided, the game of chess is all about sacrifice. Perhaps China thinks the West is short-sighted and would be politically bound to act against its long term interest, so why not? Maybe there are other reasons why you think the "CCP Virus" hypothesis is 360 stupid besides "self-harm"?
- ivanhoe 6y ago
  Wouldn't it be way easier and more logical to start the infection on a foreign soil? All the previous similar epidemics were successfully contained before reaching Europe, and if there was not for quite serious fuck ups in the beginning (Italian dude not even showing up on the meetings, etc.) perhaps even this one could have been stopped early on. So if it was China wanting to hurt US, then they'd have to be seriously stupid to first infect themselves and hope it will somehow reach US over Europe. It'd be like a terrorist who sends a bomb to their own address in hope that it will somehow eventually reach their enemies. It makes zero sense.
  - peteradio 6y ago
    Not really wanting to play devil's advocate too much longer ... but if this virus popped up in let's say Spain rather than China wouldn't we wonder how the fuck it got there, what's the vector? I'm not sure if these things can be fingerprinted, would intelligence anyway trace it to China? Perhaps (to China) a clear oops backstory is more preferable to a murky "this thing definitely came from China but how?" backstory.
    - saberdancer 6y ago
      So the solution to that is to make it extremely suspicious by releasing the virus in Wuhan, city far away from the bat caves where they have a virus lab and which isn't really well known for outside travel? Wouldn't it be much more logical to release it in one of the southern cities, Hong Kong or Macau. Hong Kong would be a perfect candidate as it would allow China to institute strict lockdown in the city which had decent amount of protests in the past years.
manicdee 6y ago
The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. This is where people have firearms, are trained in using them, but some circumstance led to the firearm being discharged without intent and injuring or killing someone. There’s every reason to believe that a country attempting to develop bio weapons may accidentally release that bio weapon against its own people for the same reason: mistakes were made. It may also be the case that the bio weapon was successfully deployed in the USA months before some unsuspecting American went on their tour of China thinking they will get over that mild flu in the clean air of Wuhan. The USA health care system is basically designed to ensure that a pandemic will spread as quickly as possible, since the expense of medical care means people will actively avoid seeing a doctor unless they are literally dying. So engineer a virus that affects wet membranes, limit its symptoms to “mild flu” and you will get maximal transmission even without propaganda suggesting that no action needs to be taken to control the disease because it’s not really that bad. So in this hypothetical scenario it is not “360 dumb of the CCP” at all. They know how dangerous it is and how to contain it when it inevitably arrives on their shores. They have a vaccine but they won’t use it until a believable amount of time has passed. The future of warfare isn’t drones circling in the skies with guns pointed at the people on the ground.
- gavrif 6y ago
  > The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. What is the fourth most common death from firearms in the USA?
  - kbelder 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the second would be. The first is presumably "deliberate discharge," and then...?
    - gavrif 6y ago
      Yeah, I just found that statement so weird that I had to reply. If I had to guess first and second are deliberate suicide and deliberate homicide. But I suspect there's a huge fall from those numbers to what is the third and presumably last rank.
wesleywt 6y ago
Many people over estimate our capabilities regarding manipulation of biological systems. A gain function is extremely difficult to get right. It is more likely that zoonotic transfer occurred. Either within a wet market or people operating in that industry or a lab worker accidentally exposing him/herself. Sequence analysis show a unique mutation that increased receptor binding affinity that was not predicted by previous models. It just shows, nature knows best. I find this debate extremely stupid. We always known that as natural habitats are being encroached upon, the more likely diseases like this will emerge. By focusing on our human conspiracies, I am afraid we will ignore Nature's conspiracy to get us.
- esja 6y ago
  Then can you explain how this virus became (instantly) better adapted to humans than it is to bats? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199
kunfuu 6y ago
Yet another hypothesis being pushed by the CCP party-state is the seafood imports hypothesis. Although the motivation behind CCP's push is questionable, this hypothesis shall be treated seriously, given that in the early investigation before the ban, signs of the virus were detected at stores selling seafood instead of stores selling illegal games.

MilnerRoute 6y ago

The "likely vector" would be the millions of peasants living near bat caves in rural China (who actually have already been shown to have antibodies to bat viruses). And some of whom traveled to the market. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/841729646/virus-researchers-cast-doubt-on-theory-of-coronavirus-lab-accident https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296... So I would upgrade that quite a bit from "moderate-low." (One of the researchers in this NPR article seems to rate it as an obvious suspect, so I'd call that "high likelihood.")

travisoneill1 6y ago
Those millions of peasants living near bat caves would have traveled to thousands of markets all over China, but the virus originated at the one market in China that is basically across the street from a virus lab? It's not impossible, but my money is on the lab.
- MilnerRoute 6y ago
  The lab was not "across the street." It was a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
  - manicdee 6y ago
    The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Also, the first known confirmed case has no known connections to the Huanan market or the virology institute. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-harmful-hunt-for-covid-19s-patient-zero https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
      - ladon86 6y ago
        > How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Presumably the same way it travels 25,000 miles across a planet of 7.5bn people - via the people.
      - heidar 6y ago
        The first sentence in the BBC article. > Chinese authorities and experts are at odds about the origin of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. I'm not saying this argument is invalid in general but it's important to assume that we know next to nothing about this whole situation and that the things that we know are potentially false pieces of information pushed by the CCP. They've tried to sweep this under the rug and control the discussion from day one and this happens to be something they're incredibly good at.
Amezarak 6y ago
According to the article, the bat caves are nearly a thousand miles away. It seems unlikely peasants were traveling a thousand miles for the purpose of visting the market. It also presents some reasons why bat viruses on their own were unlikely to become as contagious as COVID, citing the example of RaTG13's discovery. So the "zoonotic transfer from bats" theory requires an extraordinary new strain (possible!) to travel a thousand miles before spreading enough to be detected.
- heidar 6y ago
  Also not mentioned in the article but bats are in hibernation at the time of year when the spread started, making it even less likely.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  It’s too late to edit, but I’d like to ask downvoters to respond instead of downvoting. The submission references and contradicts the information provided in the GPs link and discusses how the politicization of the origin led to these organizations making much stronger statements than the evidence warranted. I cited some of the information the OP mentions that contradicts assertions made by the GP. If I am wrong or misinformed, I would like to know it. The submission is an excellent article. I have no dog in this fight but it did shift the needle of uncertainty for me, particularly when I learned about prior leaks and the suppression of investigations in China. It’s a long article but worth the read.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Cactus2018 6y ago

> The chances of the CCP releasing a self-harming bioweapon in order to harm the US seems silly. But to harm someone else? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/coronavirus-neanderthals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/coronavirus-neande... ]] Dr. Paabo said the DNA segment may account in part for why people of Bangladeshi descent are dying at a high rate of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/oios-tan093020.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/oios-tan0930... ]] IMAGE: THESE GENETIC VARIANTS ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY ABSENT IN AFRICA AND OCCUR IN THE HIGHEST FREQUENCY IN BANGLADESH. https://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/pub/web/244496_web.jpg https://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/pub/web/244496_...

rossdavidh 6y ago
But, uh, Bangladesh itself has a lower rate, by far, than the U.K. While I greatly admire Dr. Paabo's work, this part seems pretty speculative.

peteradio 6y ago

Not disagreeing with your Likelihoods but I'm not sure your evidence really makes sense. It does not really follow that a self-harm would always be avoided, the game of chess is all about sacrifice. Perhaps China thinks the West is short-sighted and would be politically bound to act against its long term interest, so why not? Maybe there are other reasons why you think the "CCP Virus" hypothesis is 360 stupid besides "self-harm"?

ivanhoe 6y ago
Wouldn't it be way easier and more logical to start the infection on a foreign soil? All the previous similar epidemics were successfully contained before reaching Europe, and if there was not for quite serious fuck ups in the beginning (Italian dude not even showing up on the meetings, etc.) perhaps even this one could have been stopped early on. So if it was China wanting to hurt US, then they'd have to be seriously stupid to first infect themselves and hope it will somehow reach US over Europe. It'd be like a terrorist who sends a bomb to their own address in hope that it will somehow eventually reach their enemies. It makes zero sense.
- peteradio 6y ago
  Not really wanting to play devil's advocate too much longer ... but if this virus popped up in let's say Spain rather than China wouldn't we wonder how the fuck it got there, what's the vector? I'm not sure if these things can be fingerprinted, would intelligence anyway trace it to China? Perhaps (to China) a clear oops backstory is more preferable to a murky "this thing definitely came from China but how?" backstory.
  - saberdancer 6y ago
    So the solution to that is to make it extremely suspicious by releasing the virus in Wuhan, city far away from the bat caves where they have a virus lab and which isn't really well known for outside travel? Wouldn't it be much more logical to release it in one of the southern cities, Hong Kong or Macau. Hong Kong would be a perfect candidate as it would allow China to institute strict lockdown in the city which had decent amount of protests in the past years.

manicdee 6y ago

The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. This is where people have firearms, are trained in using them, but some circumstance led to the firearm being discharged without intent and injuring or killing someone. There’s every reason to believe that a country attempting to develop bio weapons may accidentally release that bio weapon against its own people for the same reason: mistakes were made. It may also be the case that the bio weapon was successfully deployed in the USA months before some unsuspecting American went on their tour of China thinking they will get over that mild flu in the clean air of Wuhan. The USA health care system is basically designed to ensure that a pandemic will spread as quickly as possible, since the expense of medical care means people will actively avoid seeing a doctor unless they are literally dying. So engineer a virus that affects wet membranes, limit its symptoms to “mild flu” and you will get maximal transmission even without propaganda suggesting that no action needs to be taken to control the disease because it’s not really that bad. So in this hypothetical scenario it is not “360 dumb of the CCP” at all. They know how dangerous it is and how to contain it when it inevitably arrives on their shores. They have a vaccine but they won’t use it until a believable amount of time has passed. The future of warfare isn’t drones circling in the skies with guns pointed at the people on the ground.

gavrif 6y ago
> The third most common death from firearms in the USA is accidental discharge. What is the fourth most common death from firearms in the USA?
- kbelder 6y ago
  I'm not sure what the second would be. The first is presumably "deliberate discharge," and then...?
  - gavrif 6y ago
    Yeah, I just found that statement so weird that I had to reply. If I had to guess first and second are deliberate suicide and deliberate homicide. But I suspect there's a huge fall from those numbers to what is the third and presumably last rank.

wesleywt 6y ago

Many people over estimate our capabilities regarding manipulation of biological systems. A gain function is extremely difficult to get right. It is more likely that zoonotic transfer occurred. Either within a wet market or people operating in that industry or a lab worker accidentally exposing him/herself. Sequence analysis show a unique mutation that increased receptor binding affinity that was not predicted by previous models. It just shows, nature knows best. I find this debate extremely stupid. We always known that as natural habitats are being encroached upon, the more likely diseases like this will emerge. By focusing on our human conspiracies, I am afraid we will ignore Nature's conspiracy to get us.

esja 6y ago
Then can you explain how this virus became (instantly) better adapted to humans than it is to bats? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199

kunfuu 6y ago

Yet another hypothesis being pushed by the CCP party-state is the seafood imports hypothesis. Although the motivation behind CCP's push is questionable, this hypothesis shall be treated seriously, given that in the early investigation before the ban, signs of the virus were detected at stores selling seafood instead of stores selling illegal games.