This market resolves once we have a definitive answer to this question. (i.e. "I've looked at all notable evidence presented by both sides and have upwards of 98% confidence that a certain conclusion is correct, and it doesn't seem likely that any further relevant evidence will be forthcoming any time soon.")
This will likely not occur until many years after Covid is no longer a subject of active political contention, motivations for various actors to distort or hide inconvenient evidence have died down, and a scientific consensus has emerged on the subject. For exactly when it will resolve, see /IsaacKing/when-will-the-covid-lab-leak-market
I will be conferring with the community extensively before resolving this market, to ensure I haven't missed anything and aren't being overconfident in one direction or another. As some additional assurance, see /IsaacKing/will-my-resolution-of-the-covid19-l
(For comparison, the level of evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change would be sufficient, despite the existence of a few doubts here and there.)
If we never reach a point where I can safely be that confident either way, it'll remain open indefinitely. (And Manifold lends you your mana back after a few months, so this doesn't negatively impact you.)
"Come from a laboratory" includes both an accidental lab leak and an intentional release. It also counts if COVID was found in the wild, taken to a lab for study, and then escaped from that lab without any modification. It just needs to have actually been "in the lab" in a meaningful way. A lab worker who was out collecting samples and got contaminated in the wild doesn't count, but it does count if they got contaminated later from a sample that was supposed to be safely contained.
In the event of multiple progenitors, this market resolves YES only if the lab leak was plausibly responsible for the worldwide pandemic. It won't count if the pandemic primarily came from natural sources and then there was also a lab leak that only infected a few people.
I won't bet in this market.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w33428 Got no mana in this market but I thought people might be interested in this article I saw.
@benshindel Is it well reasoned, though?
See discussion below. The coincidence of cases being around the wildlife market gets zero Bayes points. The coincidence of the first cluster being associated with that market isn’t considered at all. Ditto for the coincidence of all SARS2 genomic diversity being found in the corner of the market where the SARS2-susceptible animals were.
@Marnix Impressively long, but man the logic is bad:
https://x.com/tgof137/status/1886597906897232256
From The Sunday Times in June 2023! If you have a way to access it (it's available on Apple News+), this article is a great read

@LukeShadwell Oh shit it’s albino mice with human lungs. Do you think Fu Manchu novels are in the non-fiction section at the library?
This is illustrating Matt Ridley’s theory and specifically illustrating one of the lies he likes to tell. The book Viral was very obviously written around the idea that there were 8 viral genomes at WIV more similar to SARS2 than RaTG13.
But, before the book was done, the genomes and the underlying sequencing data were published: they weren’t very closely related to SARS2.
Ridley didn’t care. He just started lying and continued to say these were the 9 closest viruses before the pandemic.
I guess we've moved from Fauci being responsible to USAID being responsible. At exactly the same time people are searching for a rationale to end foreign aid. Definitely based on the facts and not politics, right? https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/05/elon-musks-linking-usaid-bioweapons-covid-wuhan/
What happened to Ratcliffe's day 1 priority to clear the air on SARS-CoV-2 origins? His claims that Biden was inappropriately blocking evidence from being published...
Apparently it wasn't a day 10 priority either. Would anyone bet it will be a day 100 or a day 1000 priority? All the people who wouldn't shut up about Biden not releasing the evidence they knew was there and would prove them right are quiet now. Everyone I know who figures "probably zoonosis" said they wanted to see more data then and continues to say it now.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abj0016
Jesse D. Bloom et al.
Investigate the origins of COVID-19.Science372,694-694(2021).DOI:10.1126/science.abj0016
both R. Baric and A. Chan signed this letter dated May 2021
In May 2020, the World Health Assembly requested that the World Health Organization (WHO) director-general work closely with partners to determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (2). In November, the Terms of Reference for a China–WHO joint study were released (3). The information, data, and samples for the study's first phase were collected and summarized by the Chinese half of the team; the rest of the team built on this analysis. Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident, the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely” [(4), p. 9]. Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5).
@George Why do you think Baric signed the letter demanding a better investigation?
Lab leakers think that he made the virus:
https://x.com/tgof137/status/1864053065898500481
If that were true, wouldn't an investigation just prove that he's guilty?
@PeterMillerc030 I believe in an interview he has stated he doesn’t know, is unsure, the origins of the virus. A virologist unsure of its origins is a many degrees of separation from “lab leakers are cranks.” The letter advocates for a Roger’s Commission (space shuttle Challenger) hopefully filled with several Richard Feynman,> IQ160 who are “a real pain in the ass.”
@George Here’s what Baric thought in his congressional interview, since you’re citing his authority and all:


In other words, it’s like hearing “I’d say [the odds are] more like one in a million” and responding “So you’re tellin’ me there’s a chance!”
@George 5% probability of another congressional committee or challenger type commission. Ds don’t want it and Rs have other priorities. Pipe dream.
@George Yes, it's a true mystery. We need Feynman to solve this. Exhume the body!
Lmao I don't think this is particularly evidentiary in either direction, but it's objectively funny:
@benshindel I wouldn't find it funny if someone lied and said I was patient zero and covered up the cause of the pandemic. Maybe I'm alone in that, though.
WIV also didn't get $40M of PREDICT funding... GAO did a whole report on this -- https://www.gao.gov/assets/830/826738.pdf -- $1.4M 2014–2019 USAID-to-WIV funding. Here's a description of the funded research:
Conduct DNA barcoding of bat and rodent samples. Test human and animal samples from study sites in Yunnan and Guangdong provinces. Test, clone and sequence bat samples that test positive for viruses such as coronaviruses and influenza viruses. Publications; Workshops
Funding ended in September 2019 when the overall project ended. Obviously that's when someone at WIV infected themselves out of spite because a $280k/year funding stream was ending /s
Michael Weissman tweets: "Andy Levin has done a though analysis of spatiotemporal data. tl;dr Worobey et al results reverse direction when case time is included in the model." https://x.com/mbw61567742/status/1886408178234954105?t=mMrGUHLvxMZ27ey0Y1mbYw&s=19
From the paper:
"These four conditional Bayes factors are estimated as 2.3:1, 20:1, 27:1, and 12:1, respectively, and hence the overall odds ratio is 14,900:1, indicating overwhelming evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the pandemic resulted from an accidental lab leak. This conclusion is robust to alternative specifications of the detailed statistical analysis."
@MikePa67d Hilariously bad paper. I wrote a quick review:
https://x.com/tgof137/status/1886597906897232256
@PeterMillerc030 The analysis boils down to the likelihood ratios in the last column of this table:

Let's ignore the minor objections to the prior and the 2.3- and 20-to-1 ratios. The 324-1 ratio is itself the product of two ratios (27.1 and 11.95):
Argument that the distribution of Dec 2019 onset cases in Wuhan is 27.1× better described by a lab leak than zoonosis. This analysis uses "proximity to linked cases" as a predictor both for lab leak and for zoonosis. There are linked cases close to Huanan market. So, in doing this, proximity of cases to Huanan market is entirely neglected as evidence. If you repeated the analysis testing whether proximity to Huanan market was more predictive of case locations than proximity to WIV, what do you think would happen to those Bayes factors? You aren't allowed to say "what about Wuhan CDC?" because (1) it's a shit argument and (2) Levin's model is that the lab leak happened on the other side of the river.
Argument that the distribution of cases within Huanan market is 11.95× better described by a lab leak than by zoonosis. Here, the model for "zoonosis" is that all humans are infected by raccoon dogs. The model for "lab leak" is that all humans are infected by other humans. Exactly as in the last bullet point, the "lab leak" model gets proximity-to-animals for free because there are cases close to animals. The fact that market cases happened to be on the same half of the same floor of Huanan market where wildlife stalls thus gets no weight.
It's ironic that Weissman says this confirms his results on unlinked cases... Weissman says unlinked cases are too close to Huanan market. Levin says unlinked cases are too far away. Vindication!
The fact is that it's true the distributions of residences of linked and unlinked cases are different. Linked cases are distributed where you expect from data for where people live who commute to HSM (i.e. rarely across the river). Unlinked cases are distributed where you expected from data showing where people live who transiently visit near HSM and also distributed with the population distribution because of some spread across town for patients with December 2019 disease onset.
@zcoli When we do bayesian analysis, we're basically considering all possible counterfactual scenarios.
A pandemic could start in Wuhan, but it could also start in a lot of other cities, so we consider the odds of that.
A lab leak could have its first case cluster across town at Huanan market, where it looks just like zoonosis by chance, but it could also have its first case cluster in thousands of other places in Wuhan, where it wouldn't look like zoonosis at all.
Even if you can come up with some objections for why you think the market data has some features that point away from zoonosis (i.e. not enough lineage A cases, wrong correlation with raccoon dog DNA, whatever), you still want to include the odds of the market outbreak, conditional on lab leak, and only then adjust downwards from there for your objections.
Weird how all the lab leak bayesian analyses fail to grasp even basic details like this.
@MalachiteEagle So:
Musk believes that the CIA bribed agents to conclude “probably not lab leak”
Musk believes the CIA now that they conclude “probably lab leak”
Musk is now in charge of purging government agencies of people who do things he doesn’t like
The people Musk thinks are involved in step 1 above haven’t been purged
Try to tell a story that simultaneously squares with all of that.
Here’s mine: he doesn’t have any basis to believe it and the utility of “lab leak” for Musk is to distract people with a story unrelated to anything he’s doing now.
@zcoli How about the fact that the government, including the CIA, has, up until Trump, been unanimous in either remaining silent or calling the lab-leak theory “misinformation/disinformation”?
In the first place, Musk is observing that the government is probably lying. Nobody lies for free- either lying is their job, or it merits a bonus.
Now that we know that internally the CIA did in fact know that the obvious is true, there is no contradiction.
@DanielSacks This is false. Under the Biden admin, both the FBI and the Department of Energy concluded with low confidence that a lab leak was more likely than natural release.
@DanielSacks LOL you realize Trump was in charge for one year of the pandemic right?
I kinda understand people being too young to learn from 2002, but not 2020.
@zcoli Trump was one of the first public figures to be adamant about lab leak. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/politics/covid-origins-lab-leak-politics.html
“Some Republicans grew fixated on the idea of a lab leak after former President Donald J. Trump raised it in the early months of the pandemic despite scant evidence supporting it. That turned the theory toxic for many Democrats, who viewed it as an effort by Mr. Trump to distract from his administration’s failings in containing the spread of the virus.”
“The intense political debate, now in its fourth year, has at times turned scientists into lobbyists, competing for policymakers’ time and favor. Dr. Relman is just one of several researchers and like-minded thinkers who has successfully worked the corridors of power in Washington to force journalists, policymakers and skeptical Democrats to take the lab leak idea seriously.”
At the time, Trump had no control over FBI, CIA, because there was no threat of him firing all of them.
@benshindel Nearly all dem politicians were united and adamantly against the lab leak theory as of 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/politics/covid-origins-lab-leak-politics.html
Additionally: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/politics/covid-origin-lab-leak.html
“After the review, the National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence agencies reported that they believed the virus that causes Covid-19 was most likely created by “natural exposure to an infected animal through an animal infected with it, or close progenitor virus.”
“Before the review was conducted, only two agencies favored the natural exposure theory. But the new report said the intelligence council and other agencies favoring the natural theory had only low confidence in their conclusions — a sign that the intelligence behind the determination was not strong and that assessments could change.”
“On the other side of the debate, one agency said it had concluded, with moderate confidence, that the pandemic was the result of “a laboratory-associated incident” in China.”
The joint report concluded that natural was MORE likely than lab leak. Only two agencies thought otherwise BEFORE the report, and didn’t say so until the report was declassified. During the course of the investigation, ONLY ONE agency changed its assessment to “lab leak.”
This report sums it up. US intelligence agencies were seemingly split 5-3 in favor of natural origin as of 2023.
@DanielSacks Despite the split opinion on origins from intelligence agencies, saying the words “lab leak” in 2023 was still considered toxic and worth of deplatforming.
So I stand corrected about the unanimity of government agencies in their internal classified assessments. However my general point remains the same.
At the time, Trump had no control over FBI, CIA, because there was no threat of him firing all of them.
Trump had control of the FBI, CIA, and everything else on April 15 2020 when he embraced lab leak: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-china-compete-us-sources
@zcoli Here's a clip of the story the White House leaked to Jon Roberts and that Roberts asked Trump about: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52305562
In a report attributed to multiple unnamed sources, Fox News said the coronavirus was a naturally occurring pathogen that leaked from a Wuhan facility because of lax safety protocols, infecting an intern, who then transmitted it to her boyfriend.
In the president's daily briefing on Wednesday, he was asked by Fox News reporter John Roberts if he could confirm the cable network's exclusive. "Well, I don't want to say that, John, but I will tell you more and more we're hearing the story and we'll see," Mr Trump replied.
The intern and the boyfriend are no longer in the picture in modern lab leak theory, because it's a paradoxical theory that people become more certain of as they find evidence that makes it less likely.
@zcoli I think that lots of these stories from 2020 are just things the media put together from various leaks. The original information that the intelligence services were providing might differ significantly.
@MalachiteEagle I'm not going to waste time watching the press conference again, but the video is there if you want to. It was multiple White House sources with high confidence and it was a theory that was so dumb no one even mentions it anymore. Reading between the lines of a picture that disappeared from a website when someone finished their Masters degree iirc.
@zcoli ha, I rewatched this one the other day actually. I was thinking of where the story about the intern might have come from. I agree that it sounds like a snowman.