I'd recommend being a little more strict with your language if you want to convince anyone here.
"It started"..."solidly established" - that's enough inaccuracy for most HN people to ignore the whole of your post.
Compare that with the context and abstract of the paper you've cited: "the earliest human cases", "circumstantial evidence", "earliest known COVID-19 cases", "spatially associated with vendors", "insufficient evidence to define upstream events"
At this point, it is all opinion vs opinion based on circumstantial evidence or the lack thereof - and claiming anything else is either a) Faith or b) Misrepresentation.
I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic."
Many people have only vaguely followed this issue. Those who have been following it closely know that a lot of basic facts have actually been settled over the last year. The location of the initial outbreak in Wuhan (namely, in a market that sold wild animals similar to the animals that caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002) is one of those settled facts now.
> I chose my language precisely. The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming, beginning with the title: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic."
You may have chose your language precisely, but you've read meaning into the text that wasn't there.
An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy theorists that the market was "the early epicenter". The fact that the initial major spread event happened there is pretty clear, the question is where did the virus originate - where exactly did it become the coronavirus we know and love? Did it mutate into that form by being passed between animals stored in the market? Was it brought to the market from bats caught in the wild? Did a lab employee doing highly sensitive transmissibility research pop to the market on their way home to give their spouse a hug?
The idea that these are "settled facts" flies in the face of papers like this that go to great lengths to hedge their language. There are things we know. There are things that are likely, or less likely, or unlikely. There are things we have been prevented from knowing.
There are lots of opinions. There are people with settled opinions. There are settled opinions that have come about with the best of intentions (worries about stoking sinophobia and anti-science thinking, worries about lack of accountability and governmental deceit). There are those shouting their "truths" with the best and worst of intentions, whether aiming to promote truth, or peace, or clickbait.
You may have chose your language precisely, but your language is shouting about your settled opinion, not settled facts.
(P.S: "The paper is much more definitive than you're claiming" - since the sentence I wrote was just a chain of quotes from the paper, without any real commentary, I'd be interested to know how you feel the paper was "much more definitive")
> The idea that these are "settled facts" flies in the face of papers like this that go to great lengths to hedge their language.
This paper does not go to great lengths to hedge its statements, and the authors have very explicitly stated on numerous occasions that their work rules out the lab leak idea.
> An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy theorists that the market was "the early epicenter".
The paper addresses this. First, the fact that multiple strains of the virus were found directly in the market is a very strong indication that there were multiple spillover events at the market. Second, it has now been established that wild animals that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were being sold at the market during the time period when the outbreak began. This is a big deal, because this is exactly how the original SARS spilled over in 2002. Third, the concentration of cases at and around the market, but not around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is also strong evidence that the spillover was associated with the market, not the lab. If it were in the lab, there would likely be a cluster of cases at the lab itself, and in the surrounding areas where people from the lab frequent, not on the other side of the city, where wild animals that have caused previous SARS coronavirus outbreaks happen to be sold.
People who have followed the scientific investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 over the past 2.5 years know that the lab leak theory was always highly unlikely, and that all the evidence that has come to light has made it ever more unlikely. At this point, lab leakers (or at least those who are trying to keep their theories halfway consistent) are trying to argue that the virus somehow got from the lab to the market, where it began spreading. Their theories are becoming more convoluted and contrived as the evidence rules out each version of the theory, and it's getting a bit absurd.
A lot of people want to believe the lab leak theory. Scrolling through the comments here, there is a substantial overlap between this group and anti-vaxxers, as well as other people who oppose any efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus. I don't think people are clinging to this theory for rational reasons.
My initial statement wasn't for or against - it was that the method of argument isn't going to work on many people here on Hacker News, not because we're a bunch of antivaxxer conspiracy theorists, but because we're predominantly a bunch of people who work with logic, day in day out.
Things like:
> the authors have very explicitly stated on numerous occasions
... appeal to authority, and then fails to mention even one of those occasions, instant ignore
> First, the fact that multiple strains of the virus were found directly in the market is a very strong indication that there were multiple spillover events at the market. Second, it has now been established that wild animals that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were being sold at the market during the time period when the outbreak began.
This feels like an attempt at causing a "baffled by BS" response, something HN is particularly immune to - though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you're simply trying to use the correct nomenclature. In reality, you've not said anything here that contradicts anything I've said - multiple spillovers simply indicates that an animal reservoir existed before or concurrently to the initial outbreak period - it doesn't give any evidence for or against any particular primary source. If the unfamiliar terminology doesn't cause people to instantly skip, the lack of new insight will.
> Third, the concentration of cases at and around the market, but not around the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Generally speaking, I wouldn't expect there to be a large number of cases of a disease spread at or near a facility that deals with the testing of viruses and has strict containment protocols. Don't know about you, but I would hope they know how to wash their hands 99.9% of the time - I would hope a virus finding its way out of the campus or shared between professionals would be an extremely rare event.
That said, it would be interesting to see a side-by-side study, with the same statistical techniques, of a similar type of lab. There have been other lab leaks every few years, but as the paper points out, the large amount of attention brought about by the pandemic means a lot more data about this leak than we usually get.
> People who have followed the scientific investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 over the past 2.5 years know that the lab leak theory was always highly unlikely
... and it's exactly this intuition that stokes skepticism. Because if something was always considered unlikely, that's rarely the basis for sound science.
> Their theories are becoming more convoluted and contrived as the evidence rules out each version of the theory
Again, this statement suffers from low sample size, lack of examples, and uneven evaluation. A supporter of your POV presents a new hypothesis? Tries to find evidence to support or refute it? That's great! Science at work. A supporter of the Lab-leak theory presents a new hypothesis? It's just an absurd convoluted and contrived new theory because they couldn't get their last one to work.
And again, people skip over it, because the bias is obvious, and it doesn't come close to answering the question that laypeople are searching for answers to - i.e. where did SARS-CoV-2 originally come from.
Anyway, hopefully this has helped you see why a rational rejection of your arguments in this particular space is not evidence of tinfoil hats clinging to irrational conspiracy theories. By all means, bring your faith. Bring some evidence too, and many of us would love to join you. But without the evidence, a certain assured opinion is not going to help you here.
> My initial statement wasn't for or against - it was that the method of argument isn't going to work on many people here on Hacker News, not because we're a bunch of antivaxxer conspiracy theorists, but because we're predominantly a bunch of people who work with logic, day in day out.
Looking at the comment section here, I do see a large number of anti-vaxxers, and their comments appear to be very popular. I've noticed this quite a bit on HN, and I'm not sure what the reason for it is.
I know a lot of people both in tech and in scientific research. While tech people are generally very clever, that does not necessarily mean that they all understand how scientific research works, or that they keep up with the latest research into coronaviruses. A common mistake that some technical people make is assuming that their reasoning ability in programming, engineering, etc. somehow means that they don't have to have domain knowledge to discuss a different technical subject.
You have to actually follow the research into coronaviruses to find out what's known about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Simply put, people who get their information from Ebright's Twitter thread are not in a good position to evaluate this question.
> By all means, bring your faith. Bring some evidence too
I linked to a very thorough scientific paper on the subject, which establishes that the initial outbreak in Wuhan was at the market, not at the lab. If you're calling that "my faith," you're just not arguing in good faith.
"It started"..."solidly established" - that's enough inaccuracy for most HN people to ignore the whole of your post.
Compare that with the context and abstract of the paper you've cited: "the earliest human cases", "circumstantial evidence", "earliest known COVID-19 cases", "spatially associated with vendors", "insufficient evidence to define upstream events"
At this point, it is all opinion vs opinion based on circumstantial evidence or the lack thereof - and claiming anything else is either a) Faith or b) Misrepresentation.