> Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan - something which a) should have been likely
Um... why? The virus has to jump species somewhere. If the first documented case was in Shanghai, you could make the same argument.
I think what you're trying to say is that the jump had to have happened in Yunnan, because that's where that particular bat sample was found. But that's not what the data says at all. The Yunnan virus was a relative, not an ancestor. There are uncounted millions of wild coronavirus strains we don't see for every one we sequence. There is no reason at all to believe that some Wuhan-local bat, say, had a related strain that became the covid ancestor. Or some other species, etc...
Again, that's the way viruses evolve. It's the way pandemics start. It's the way pandemics have always started. Demanding that this is somehow a crazy engineered virus dropped on us by a despotic foreign government is... how pandemics start in bad movies.
Your comment was rightly flagged because you broke the site guidelines and took the thread a big step further into flamewar hell. Please don't do that. Please do review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN.
pg knows as well as anyone else that if someone makes an attempt to paint you into alignment with a right-wing conspiracy theory, they're probably doing it with ill intent, especially if you made no such claim.
If you want the HN guidelines to be consistent, they shouldn't demand people presume good faith when the tactics of cancel culture are wielded in threads to try to tag people with the label they are promoting right or left wing conspiracy theories, which can direct a mob in their direction if not strongly pushed back against.
The guidelines are consistent. You should have replied to the argument instead of attacking the other comment. If you had simply posted your sentence "The claim is not that [etc.]" and omitted all the name-calling, your comment would not have been flagged and it would have been more persuasive too. By packing it with insults, you discredit your own point. By the way, that's one of several less-obvious reasons for presuming good faith even when you don't feel like it.
I agree with you that the GP swerved into a strawman at the end and shouldn't have. Indeed they broke the site guidelines there ("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.") But piling on with grossly worse violations is exactly the wrong thing to do in such a case. If you have a better point, you should serve it properly by keeping your cool. Assuming you're in the right, doing otherwise just discredits the truth, and that actually causes harm.
Um... why? The virus has to jump species somewhere. If the first documented case was in Shanghai, you could make the same argument.
I think what you're trying to say is that the jump had to have happened in Yunnan, because that's where that particular bat sample was found. But that's not what the data says at all. The Yunnan virus was a relative, not an ancestor. There are uncounted millions of wild coronavirus strains we don't see for every one we sequence. There is no reason at all to believe that some Wuhan-local bat, say, had a related strain that became the covid ancestor. Or some other species, etc...
Again, that's the way viruses evolve. It's the way pandemics start. It's the way pandemics have always started. Demanding that this is somehow a crazy engineered virus dropped on us by a despotic foreign government is... how pandemics start in bad movies.