No, it is not in conflict.
Well it is conspiratorial of course. The issue is not merely the suggestion that people conspire to commit crimes, hide their involvement, or whatever. The issue is that that we can imagine people could have such motives doesnât mean they do have such motives.
We canât accept a hypothesis based essentially on motives we imagine people have, so as to explain why evidence that hypothetically could have existed if the hypothesis is true, has not been found.
Then we have a hypothesis based on not having evidence combined with imagining an explanation for why. This is textbook conspiracy-theory thinking. The problem here is methodological.
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I think you need to consider that we were in the middle of a pandemic, and social media companies probably felt some responsibility for how their platform algorithms could influence public opinion for both bad and good.
They know their systems have weaknesses in ways that favor controversy, makes people afraid, and riles people up, so since they probably didnât want to contribute to that during a global pandemic it seems they had no other choice than to simply not allow certain ideas to proliferate on their platforms.
And I say no choice because a story about a virus being concocted in secret in a chinese lab(and much worse extentions such as it being a bio-weapon to cripple western economies) is essentially guaranteed to travel faster and draw more attention, than any putative rebuttal ever could, however thorough and clear it might be.
Things just arenât so simple as you are characterizing them.
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Here are some of these clear signs:
- you would expect that samples near animal traders would more likely be tested positive than samples near vegetable traders, which they are not.
- you would also expect that samples collected from the market would be admixed with animal genetic material. However, a study performed by the Chinese CDC found that such samples were only admired with human genetic material, which is highly indicative that virus-positive market samples derive from infected humans as opposed to other species.
Has anyone here affirmed that itâs inherently racist to suggest a lab leak was possible? Can you quote them? I think youâre boxing at shadows.
Of course, in an ideal world. The problem was that there wasnât exactly a dispassionate atmosphere of rational inquiry at the beginning of the pandemic. From the very beginning, bombastic accusations were thrown out about bioweapons and irresponsible research, and it shouldnât be surprising that this made cooperation challenging. Either way, evidence didnât emerge in favour of a lab leak, and evidence in favour of a natural origin has accumulated.
From this study that, I believe, @Giltil is using as a source:
"The merchantsâ activities were assessed against the NAT results of the environmental samples. The sampling covered 19.8% (134/678) of the vendors in the market (95% confidence interval (CI): 16.8-23.0%). Of the positive samples, 44 were distributed among 21 vendors in the market, 19 of whom were located in the west zone and the remaining two located in the east area (Fig. 1A). Some vendors sold more than one product type, leading to differences in the denominators. While the results provide some indication of association of cases with different products, but no significant differences were observed between different vendors, including cold-chain products (18.4%, 16/87, 95% CI: 10.9-28.1%), aquatic products (17.8%, 13/73, 95% CI: 9.8-28.5%), seafood products (11%, 6/56: 95% CI: 4-21.9%), poultry (22%, 8/37: 95% CI: 9.8-38.2%), livestock (14%, 5/36: 95% CI: 4.7-29.5%), wildlife products (11%, 1/9: 95% CI: 0.3-48.2%) and vegetables (25%, 2/8: 95% CI: 3.2-65%) (Extended Data Fig. 1). "
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016093117
Here is an example of gain of function research using modification of ACE2 versus viral changes. This optimization required 7 mutations. Was gain of function research going on in the Wuhan lab?
Source?
What are these evidence in favor of a natural origin that according to you have accumulated ?
As for the evidence for a lab leak, here they are:
- Geographic evidence of the SARS-CoV-2 emergence
- The furin cleavage site
- The human-specific codons in the furin cleavage site
- The restriction map of SARS-CoV-2 consistent with an infectious clone
- DEFUSE proposal to insert human-specific furin cleavage site in a SARS-CoV infectious clone in Wuhan
- The behavior of Chinese researchers and authorities connected to the Wuhan labs
Note that as Washburne wrote « No single piece of evidence is enough to disprove the zoonotic origin theory, but each piece of evidence is an anomaly under the zoonotic theory and easily explained in a theory that SARS-CoV-2 arose as a consequence of research similar to that proposed in DEFUSE. After understanding and examining this evidence, especially how these many pieces of evidence combine to be stronger than the sum of the parts, it becomes clear beyond reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab ».
Note also that I am undecided about the value of evidence 4.
Depends on your definition of âgain of function.â If you think about it youâll realize all research that involves screening mutations for their effects could be considered potential gain of function research since thereâs always the potential that some novel phenotype can result from those mutations.
To make matters more complicated the question is also perhaps more relevantly whether such research was funded and whether any putative functions gained were intentionally created and the research funded with that goal in mind.
Once again reality just isnât so simple as the political narratives portray them. And in any case whether that research meets the definition of âgain of functionâ doesnât substantiate the lab leak conspiracy theory.
Whatâs âhuman-specificâ about the codons? If I recall our previous discussions, theyâre rare codons in the SARS-Cov2 genome, but in what sense are they âhuman-specificâ?
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@Giltil, just a note that âhuman-specificâ usually would be taken to mean that these codons are rare in other animals (such as mice). This is in fact not the case.
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That favours natural zoonosis, since it emerged from the wet market.
False.
SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered | PNAS
Not even you are conviced by this.
Irrelevant.
Vague to the point of uselessness.
So is that all you have? Unimpressive.
Meanwhile, those who accept the zoonotic hypothesis can point to the EXACT CAGE in the market where the pandemic likely orginated.
No contest.
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The geographic evidence points away from the Wuhan labs.
This data is agnostic as to the origins of COVID-19.
These codons are not âhuman-specificâ. They could as easily be of animal origin, or derived from random mutation.
Only in Washburneâs fantasies. We and others have thoroughly debunked this.
The Wuhan labs have been pretty open, even prolific, when it comes to sequencing (and publishing on) coronaviruses. The accusation implicit in this piece of âevidenceâ (actually, not data or evidence at all) predicts that SARS-CoV-2 should be almost nucleotide-identical to a virus already described by the Wuhan labs. To my knowledge, no such thing has been reported.
LOL. @Giltil et al. demand confessions, culpability and guilt totally beside the point. This last point isnât data or evidence, it is a joke.
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Here it is:
And here is the relevant passage:
« To explore the potential origins of the SARS-COV-2, we conducted RNA-seq analysis using 27 SARS-CoV-2 positive environmental samples collected on January
1st, 2020 from the HSM. We analyzed the correlation of SARS-CoV-2 and the
abundance of other species. The abundance of Homo sapiens showed the correlation
to SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 4), which highly suggests the SARS-CoV-2 might have
derived from Homo sapiens in the HSM. No animals were concluded, implying that
no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced. »
This claim has always seemed completely blown out of proportion to me. There are several problems:
- The proposal wasnât funded and the applicants claim the work was never carried out.
- The proposed location of the planned SARS-CoV clones was North Carolina, USA, not Wuhan, China.
- If they inserted the furin site, that would still require the rest of the virus to be unique and natural
- The furin site doesnât look particularly engineered: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119
You gotta love @Giltil. Citing a study from the Chinese CDC, just after he claims that the Chinese authorities have been trying to impede investigation of the virusâs origin.
The Worobey paper explains how this data supports the hypothesis that the spillover of the virus into humans occurred at the market (The preprint Gil cites is reference 24):
In a related study, we inferred separate introductions of SARS-CoV-2 lineages A and B into humans from likely infected animals at the Huanan market (38). We estimated the first COVID-19 case to have occurred in November 2019, with few human cases and hospitalizations occurring through mid-December (38). A recent preprint (24) confirms the authenticity of the CCDC report (data S1) and records additional positive environmental samples in the southwestern area of the market selling live animals. This report also documents the early presence of the A lineage of SARS-CoV-2 in a Huanan market environmental sample. This, along with the lineage A cases that we report in close geographical proximity to the market in December 2019, challenges the suggestion that the market was simply a superspreading event, which would be lineage specific. Rather, it adds to the evidence presented here that lineage A, like lineage B, may have originated at the Huanan market and then spread from this epicenter into the neighborhoods surrounding the market and beyond.
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BTW, I just had a look at my comment which closed out our previous discussion of this subject:
I think itâs time to resume calling myself âAnti-Creationist Prophet.â 
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Hand-drawn-looking dotted lines aside, this really doesnât look particularly convincing to me as significant positive correlation.
Just 2 or 3 samples are driving the whole trend.
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Iâm floored that youâve concluded that. 
To be clear, you answered,
with,
It appears that you intend to explain why you find one of those statements more âracistâ than the other, but now declare neither of them âracistâ.
It appears to me at least that Glenn Greenwald, the author of the tweet (âCan someone explain to me why itâs racist to wonder⊠see above) is likely opposed to either claim actually being âracistâ, but then you ask,