Resolves in the same way as /IsaacKing/did-covid19-come-from-a-laboratory
Update 2025-21-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Clarification on "In the wild":
Refers to any location not listed in other options.
Update 2025-05-07 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator confirmed specific scenarios that would fall under a non-zoonotic origin (which users in the thread associated with a lab origin). These scenarios include if the pandemic virus:
Was created from scratch.
Originated from a virus that was previously sampled from humans (and subsequently became the source of the pandemic, e.g., through a lab-related pathway).
Update 2025-05-08 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator clarified how to select this market's resolution option when the outcome from the dependent market (@/IsaacKing/did-covid19-come-from-a-laboratory) could fit multiple options in this market:
The more specific option available in this market will take precedence.
For example, lab-specific zoonotic options are considered more specific and would be chosen over broader categories they might also belong to.
1,000People are also trading
@GraemeStuart this is a dependent market so answers are supposed to be mutually exclusive -- so I guess that answer means that not only it was from a lab but it was created from scratch (or from a non-animal-infecting virus)
@ArmandodiMatteo from scratch or from a virus sampled from humans (or something non-animal I guess, I don't think modifying a plant virus to closely resemble known animal coronaviruses is a reasonable thesis but hey, just on case), yes
@CodeandSolder that's unfortunate. My understanding is that non-zoonotic means modified in a lab e.g. by gain of function, as opposed to found in nature.
This market seems poorly structured if one option is clearly a superset of another but nevertheless answers must be considered mutually exclusive.
@GraemeStuart clarification: zoonotic origin means the virus passed from an animal host to humans. Non-zoonotic clearly means the virus passed through a lab where it was artificially modified before infecting humans.
@GraemeStuart I did try to clarify more specific options take precedence and considered the lab-specific zoonotic options to be clearly more specific, sorry if it wasn't as clear as I hoped
@CodeandSolder hey, I'm still a little confused about "Accidental transfer in a lab after research gain-of-function modifications" and "Non-zoonotic origins". You said here that if the virus was 'not originally collected from an animal' it would be non-zoonotic - but I'm struggling to figure out what that means at all. What would mean that "Non-Zoonotic Origins" resolves TRUE?
From your comment it seems like anything other than the virus being entirely constructed in a lab from scratch would resolve NO. But "Non-zoonotic Origins" on it's face seems like it should include anything that passed through a lab and changed whatsoever during it's time in that lab.
@LukeShadwell This market is honestly a mess, did buy before realising what you're saying is that even if that answer would be correct it would still resolve NO. Lost a bit of mana on that, honestly feel like that option should just be removed or this market needs to be tidied up in some other way
Reading Rootclaim made me realize I was silently assuming "by China" for this option, while it seems on a surface level pretty possible for a well founded external agent to synthesize a virus close enough to the ones studied there, based on published research, and release it. Is there some reason that's not a feasible (though low probability) explaination?
They would have to start with something that's very close to SARS2. And prior to 2019, there was nothing in the published literature to suggest Wuhan had viruses close to SARS2. So they would need to have access to the sequences in Wuhan through some other means.
@CodeandSolder Full sequence of Ratg13 was released in Jan 2020. Even if someone outside had access to it pre-pandemic, it is not straightforward to get to something like SARS2 using Ratg13's reported sequence.
There was a partial 98.9% match with SARS2 and an RdRp sequence at WIV but that was not the full sequence.
@Akzzz123 I'm not saying it's straightforward, but synthesis from sequence is AFAIK doable at very reasonable cost, from there on the road is the same as lab leak. And even if the full sequence wasn't published stealing a few kb of data from a non-cybersecurity-oriented facility shouldn't pose a significant obstacle to a determined actor, Stuxnet happened after all
I'm not saying it's in any way probable, just that it's not completely absurd
@CodeandSolder Yeah, if they have the sequences, cost would not be a barrier. It would be more around what mutations to add to make it a pathogen that can cause a pandemic. So there would be some experimentation involved (gain of function research), but nothing that cannot be done or is not already being done.
@Akzzz123 I would bet money on the sequences being on at least one PC a researcher accesses e-mail from and could be convinced to open grant_proposal.pdf.exe with little effort, not that a state actor couldn't easily work around that if needed
@CodeandSolder You wouldn't even need to. These idiots were planning to open-source the whole thing.
@JaimeSantaCruz after a few of my "funny conspiracy theories" markets resolved YES I learned not to dismiss any options lol
@JaimeSantaCruz mostly that a lot of things happen, by probability some will be weird, and it's unwise to be confident in dismissing things based on heuristics
@JaimeSantaCruz for example based on metadata I would have guessed below 50% on /CodeandSolder/is-republicans-motion-to-vacate-spe but the underlying analysis was sound and it did happen. It is infeasible to read through everything and heuristics are unavoidable but it's the lowest information form of predicting possible and should not be solely relied on if stakes exist
@CodeandSolder I feel like that is also an error in the opposite direction. Forecasts on motion to vacate were moderately high even before he was elected (https://manifold.markets/octothorpe/during-the-118th-congress-will-the). It's true that if you knew nothing about the topic you might think it was more like a conspiracy theory than a real possibility, but some investigation (or just looking at the markets) quickly shows otherwise.
Being a good forecaster means being able to (on average) dismiss options in proportion to their actual likelihood.
@IsaacKing I don't think it's that plausible, just CDC sequences ~7k influenza samples a year and SARS-COV-2 has relatively distinct symptoms, it seems it got caught very soon after the currently accepted patient zero.
SARS-CoV-2 without the furin cleavage site cannot transmit well. The furin cleavage site also makes SARS-CoV-2 more severe. Since the feature that makes SARS-CoV-2 transmit between humans also makes it severe, it's very unlikely that it was spreading undetected.
Proponents of the seafood market theory would have to reconcile this apparent contradiction that SARS-CoV-2 somehow magically learned to jump to humans (ie acquired a furin cleavage site), at least twice according to their latest dogma, at the seafood market, but left no trace of this evolution anywhere else along the road despite Wuhan being at least 1800km, by road, from where SARS-CoV-2's closest ancestors are found.
Proponents of the lab leak theory can easily explain why this evolution was detected only in Wuhan since the scientists in Wuhan had co-authored a grant proposal in 2018 that showed they wanted to introduce furin cleavage sites into novel sarslike viruses.
SARS-CoV-2 virus lacking the S1/S2 furin cleavage site was shed to lower titres from infected ferrets and was not transmitted to cohoused sentinel animals, unlike wild-type virus.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-021-00908-w
By contrast, the ΔPRRA mutant was attenuated in a human respiratory cell line and had reduced viral pathogenesis in both hamsters and K18-hACE2 transgenic mice (which express human ACE2).