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.
1,000
3.00
@George LOL. She could go back and fix the problems with her 2020 preprint, she still hasn't made the effort to get that published.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/6B3B11AD36CBE45A0FDA22F6654048
https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-joe-biden-had-pardon-anthony-fauci
Why Joe Biden Had to Pardon Anthony Fauci
@StopPunting Yup. And yet, even this guy who's willing to believe made up stuff can't find evidence for lab leak that's sufficiently strong to include in his article.
While there is no evidence that these experiments are related to the coronavirus that would eventually spread out of Wuhan in late 2019 and early 2020, there is still much we do not know about the extent of US involvement in similar experiments at the Wuhan lab around the time covid started to spread.
@StopPunting The beatification of Anthony Fauci is the other side of TDS coin.. Evidently Tony has been fucking up since the HIV epidemic. He’s an example of The Peter Principle but when you work for the government the “company” never goes out of business.
I think you might have an epidemic of TDSS, I'm not sure what TDS has to do with anything here, yet its all you ever seem to talk and think about.
Are you ok, are you able to think about anything other than TDS? Are you able to formulate any coherent thoughts without thinking or relating it back to TDS?
@StopPunting see the number above. It’s at 50%. Dept. of Energy, FBI, and now CIA say lab leak likely. Why is it at 50% and not 98%? I could not believe that it had anything to do with what DJT said at a press conference almost five years ago.
TDS broke more brains than the NFL. ™️
https://x.com/ChrisCillizza/status/1884054517874057655?t=UO1mFFnvdrbJi8Pt6kt8Hg&s=19
The Trump Derangement Syndrome fever might be breaking.
@George Cillizza must be thrilled that DC finally has plummeted to a maturity level that fits his sense of humor -- https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/after-uproar-over-hillary-clinton-bitch-joke-i-post-i-pulls-plug-on-mouthpiece-theater
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/cia-covid-lab-leak-theory-real-story-germany-3503375
CIA joins growing support for Covid 'lab leak' theory – but the real story is in Germany
The CIA’s shift came the day after one of Europe’s most influential scientists said his view had “evolved” with fresh data as he called for China to prove if the disease really came from animals. “The more time passes, the more sceptical I become,” confessed Christian Drosten
3...2..1...Trump..MAGA...political bias...
He's a German virologist...
🦗🦗🦗🦗
Is Drosten a fraud who overhypes results of experimental infection (and transmission between) raccoon dogs or is he an authority on the subject of DEFUSE, which based on this interview he hasn’t read?
Appeals to authority are never great arguments; selective appeals to authority are never rational at all.
Folks seeing raccoon dogs in Huanan market as a plausible zoonotic source don’t cite Drosten’s opinion. They cite the experimental data and the history of raccoon dog infection with SARS.
If someone cherry picks opinions from people rather than citing evidence, it’s because they don’t have any evidence.
@zcoli However, if you’re appealing to authority you can at least cite vaguely credible sources and not a tabloid journalist who gets basic facts wrong.
Here is a map from a Birrell article that’s never been corrected. He’s aware of the errors.
Trivial error: there are not provinces within Wuhan.
Major error 1: the red “hotspot” is an uninhabited park administered by the city district that’s the same shade of red on the map.
Major error 2: It’s from PCR tests in May 2020 and isn’t going to be correlated with a spillover circa November 2019.
Folks such as Drosten should pay attention to this sort of thing when they’re told what is in DEFUSE. Not getting the full story when facts are cherry picked and misrepresented in this way and never corrected.
How strong is the evidence that John Ratcliffe depends on? You can watch "What Really Happened in Wuhan" from a few years back here and find out: https://youtu.be/oh2Sj_QpZOA?t=2899
Host: There was a buy-up of PCR equipment used to test for coronaviruses in Wuhan in 2019. The next month, one of those machines went to the Wuhan Institute.
Host: Is this something you're aware of? That they bought a PCR machine in November 2019?
Ratcliffe: I wouldn't be able to comment on that.
Host: How significant would this purchase be?
Ratcliffe: It would be significant.
Host: Is it a smoking gun?
Ratcliffe: Ultimately, I don't think there's ever going to be one specific smoking gun, um, I think there's, um, more than just smoke here. I think there's fire from a whole bunch of different sources. Um, I think that would be another compelling piece of evidence... if you need more. I don't need more.
A PCR machine. Singular. A "compelling piece of evidence."
What else does Ratcliffe describe with the same word?
Host: Is there still major intelligence that goes to proving the virus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that's still not in the public domain?
Ratcliffe: Yes. There's compelling intelligence that hasn't been declassified. When you declassify intelligence, you risk, you know, the potential human sources or signals intelligence where your eyes and ears into their actions are coming from and, so, we put out as much as we felt we could safely do, um, at the time, but I think the time has come for the Biden administration to declassify additional information that would again, um, uh, more evidence, if you need it, that Chinese Communist Party officials acted badly, bullied international officials, um, covered up intelligence and reporting on this, um, there is more intelligence out there and I'd like to see it, uh, declassified because it'll create additional pressure not just on Chinese Communist Party officials but others that still continue to deny that China is a bad actor here.
Does that sound like someone confident in the evidence? Why isn't it declassified yet if it was a priority for him when he was out of power to do it?
@zcoli I don't know, I was 1 year old. No one is proposing invading China, though, and as far as I'm aware the US government hasn't said this with complete certainty, and certainly at least not the UN.
@LukeShadwell I recommend reading up on that history and looking for examples of where major conclusions from public intel summaries that didn’t show any evidence or work panned out.
Also: no one’s proposing invading China over this because no one has sufficient leverage to do it. It’s all incredibly analogous to the run up from 2001-3, where blaming Iraq for 9/11 was the radical position and the sensible middle was agreeing Iraq had WMD. In actuality it was all unsubstantiated. As with C19 origins, appeals were made to secret evidence but folks who paid attention saw that evidence wasn’t being held back, it just didn’t amount to more than wishful reading between the lines.
@PeterMillerc030 Ironically the other reporter on the beat now with Gordon at WSJ was on the other side of Iraq reporting — one of the few. But he learned how stenography-access-book writing game is played in the interim.
@zcoli I have read up on it, never mind that I'm British and the majority of my close family were all alive at the time. I don't personally think it's as comparable as you're representing it to be. Yes, it teaches that 'The CIA' and governments in general often lie, and there are applications of that in this case. The Chinese government also has a version of events - because you're clearly saying that because the US lied once before, they must also be lying now, why doesn't China come under the same assumption?
@LukeShadwell The red baiting thing won’t work with me. Not playing that game and putting on a performance to prove I’m also skeptical of whatever is somewhat similar that comes from China. If you have a specific example of what you want me to call bullshit, maybe I can help.
@zcoli I'm not "red baiting" you, I'm not trying to imply you're a big fan of China. I was asking what I was asking - I'm saying that if you're going to apply that justification to the US, then it should also apply to China. Hence I don't think it's comparable.
@LukeShadwell China is definitely lying about covid origins.
At a popular level, they spread theories that the virus started in a US laboratory.
On a scientific level, the story keeps changing. First they said that there were no wild animals sold at the Huanan market (in 2021).
Then they said that there was animal DNA at the market but they wouldn't share the data or disclose which species were found (in 2022).
Then they shared the data, in 2023, but insisted that maybe covid came to the market on a popsicle, instead:
I suppose they could also be playing a 3 dimensional chess game where they deny that market animals started covid in order to somehow hide a lab leak. But why not just say that the market outbreak caused the pandemic and end the discussion, if you wanted to hide a lab leak?
@LukeShadwell The other analogy to ~2002 is the requirement, more or less, to declare that we all know Hussein is a bad guy and wants WMDs before weighing on on whether or not the evidence for WMDs added up. It's a non-sequitur. I don't need to performatively demonstrate that I'm also skeptical of "China" (can we be more specific about this?) in order to be skeptical that there's anything underlying a CIA determination given the track record. I don't need to agree that a research lab leak is theoretically plausible to debate whether the last pandemic originated as a lab leak. It's a silly rhetorical trap that people fall into all the time.
I don't know the details for how the laughable descriptions of animals in the market ended up in the WHO origins report—probably more complex than "China" enforcing some monotonic point-of-view. I do know that there were live, crying animals in Huanan market on 31/Dec/2019 because a vendor tried and failed to hide some animals in a bucket from a news crew that afternoon.
This is all more complex than the CIA or China "lying" but it's pretty simple to just stick to the facts.
@LukeShadwell another example where the IC community was apparently closer to being correct is with Sverdlovsk. Excerpt from 'Dark Winter' by Raina MacIntyre.
@MikePa67d Ironically, the equivalent of the cow-in-the-mineshaft-ex-machina that doesn’t explain the public data this time around is the Mojiang miner hypothesis.
Since you’re citing MacIntyre out of all possible sources on this, it’s a good reminder how easy it is to make anything a lab leak: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7104603/