You could just as well say that a sustained an extensive cover up puts the real burden of proof on anyone making such a claim. Even the few early cases—such as they’ve even been shared, which is incomplete—are inconsistent and puzzling. Less confidence would be appropriate.
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They attempted to cover up SARS in 2003 as well- that's just an authoritarian government being authoritarian.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/09/sars.china …
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Replying to @fallenigloos @zeynep and
I mean, go ahead and throw out ANY information via the Chinese government- then all we have to work with is the genome of the virus itself, which is 100% consistent with a natural origin.
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Ralph Baric, perhaps the world’s top bat coronavirologist, says you can’t rule out engineering based on the genome alone and says need lab records. “Consistent with” thus includes almost all scenarios. I can’t believe the confidence people have in their hand-waving assertions.
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Replying to @zeynep @fallenigloos and
“Can’t rule out” is very different than equally likely priors, which seems to be the lab leak supporter’s approach. I can’t rule out that I will win the lottery next year either. Of course you know this and are just trying to exploit the controversy.
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Replying to @twitskeptic @zeynep and
When the lottery outcome is millions of deaths, we have to investigate. The odds of SARS2 emerging in Wuhan due to research activities vs the wildlife trade are not so low as to be comparable to winning a lottery. I would put the odds anywhere between 1:100 to 9:1.
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Replying to @Ayjchan @twitskeptic and
If there's even a 1% chance that this pandemic got started because of research activities - millions dead and tens of trillions of dollars lost - we owe it to ourselves, past and future generations to investigate.
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Replying to @Ayjchan @twitskeptic and
And do what exactly? I don't think the western world needs to work hard to find reasons to sanction China. They can do it any day for pretty much any reason. How will this unlikely odds serve us (other than the truth, which is very valuable, but no one says don't investigate)?
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Replying to @cagrimbakirci @Ayjchan and
Especially if it is an uncontrolled, unplanned and unengineered leak that you guys suddenly fall back to? How is it different, especially after this much evolution, than natural spread? How will it inform the epidemiological response at this point?
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Replying to @cagrimbakirci @Ayjchan and
Every complex system—like aviation—that has managed to become safer has done so because they didn't listen to such dismissive and counterproductive attitudes about investigating causes and mechanisms, and forged ahead with better understanding that led to safer systems.
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No field likes being investigated and potentially facing more regulations and oversight, especially in a context like this, and that's such a basic sociological fact with so many historical examples that it's incredible that one has to keep explaining this again and again.
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Replying to @zeynep @cagrimbakirci and
I don't follow who/what you're arguing against here- no one thinks there shouldn't be an investigation! And there's no reason you can't investigate while also acknowledging the tentative scientific consensus so far.
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Replying to @fallenigloos @zeynep and
How can there be a scientific consensus except a consensus that we don't know enough, don't have access to the relevant data and info, to be making confident likelihood estimates?
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes - Show replies
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