Theories on the origin of Coronavirus (split from Is it OK to go Caving)

[PeteHall]

I'm not saying it did come from a lab, I couldn't know that. I'm just saying that it is a possibility and seems more likely than most conspiracy theories:

1) There is a lab in the city where the outbreak started that works with bat coronaviruses.

2) Other virus labs in China have previously released the SARS virus by accident.

3) Many scientists expressed their concern to journals such as Nature about this lab in Wuhan.

4) RNA analysis suggests it isn't a man-made virus but this doesn't mean it wasn't a natural virus that was being studied and was released (like the SARS virus was released from other labs from time to time).

This seems to be what most people I talk to are saying. Albeit, I talk to engineers, not scientists and the approach is therefore different.

From an engineering perspective, we're not usually interested in absolute certainty. As an engineer, I ask:
(1) Does it stand up?
(2) Does it stand up if I poke it?
(3) Is there a more efficient way to make it stand up?
I'd then apply a safety factor to account for uncertainties/ imperfections.

Applied to Coronavirus:
(1) a natural outbreak, or a lab escape both stand up as a theory; both are feasible, though with different uncertainties.

(2) At present, we just don't have enough information (and maybe never will) to see if either theory stands up when poked in the right direction. Neither theory has been proven beyond doubt, nor has either theory been disproved beyond doubt. So far, both stand up to the poking that has been applied.

(3) Is there a more efficient way to make it stand up? Well this is a matter of perspective. In my simple engineering mind, the idea that it escaped from a local lab, handling similar viruses and known to have let things escape in the past is a much more efficient (likely) solution that the idea that it naturally made its way from a bat in a cave, via another species in the wild that has yet to be identified and got all the way to a wet market, right next to a lab handling similar viruses (of all places in a 10M km2 country) without infecting anyone or leaving any trace, then suddenly started a global outbreak from that point.

Not sure how a safety factor fits my analogy, so I'll leave that for now 

I'm not saying this is what happened, time will (or may) tell, however it seems to me (and most people I talk to) that this is a realistic scenario, worthy of consideration.

 

[Duck ditch]

No 3.  Sorry don?t know how to cut and paste.  This isn?t what is happening.  Humans are capturing bats and bringing them to the market. They are stuffed into a cage next to another live animal from somewhere in the world.  They get butchered and get sold as meat.  It?s not some random bat coming into town.  There?s labs all over the world working on viruses. Wuhan has a lab.  So has Oxford.  Your other two points are fair. 
I?m not saying it?s impossible that it escaped via a lab.  However I refer to mikems post above. 

 

[ZombieCake]

The human race has a particular talent for finding ever more ingenious ways to kill each other.  Bio weapons and their use have been around for a long time, e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326439/
Governments are always very selective on what they tell the masses and how they tell it.
From the anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, it seems that the outbreak started in 2019.  China might not be publically popular; however, it is an economic powerhouse.  A lot of things are directly or indirectly made there and it owns about $1.1 trillion of US debt for example.  So private political and trade wrangling would be somewhat different from the public presentation.
So if there was a leak from a lab, once found out the chances of a multi-national cover up are pretty high, until it all started to get out of hand.  Diversionary tactics to blame a market after the event are also to be expected (maybe some read the plot of the 2011 film Contagion), and could be an additional vector.
A question is why would so many nations suddenly and willingly go to such unprecedented lockdowns (compared with other outbreaks), with all the economic and social consequences that would cause, if they didn?t have the knowledge it escaped from a lab, or some other additional information that is being kept secret?  Or, maybe a few knew the truth and others just followed suit.
Of course then the fear, panic, and paranoia takes over.  The media hype and scare stories wanting clicks and ad revenue, and what now looks to be again rather dodgy models from some academics (especially given their subsequent behaviour), fuels the fire.

 

[Speleotron]

I don't think Ferguessen's model was dodgy. He predicted 200 k to 500 k deaths in 2020 if there was no lockdown. With a lockdown we have had 40 k to 60 k deaths in 4 months so his initial prediction doesn't seem so far out.

 

[royfellows]

I don't think Ferguessen's model was dodgy. He predicted 200 k to 500 k deaths in 2020 if there was no lockdown. With a lockdown we have had 40 k to 60 k deaths in 4 months so his initial prediction doesn't seem so far out.

Its been ripped to shreds everywhere.
Just one link, many others.
https://technocracy.news/neil-fergusons-computer-model-is-ripped-to-shreds/

Would explain why he didn't want to make it public.

 

[Speleotron]

The code might be bad but the predictions seem OK. With 41 k to 60 k deaths in 4 months with lockdown, does 200 k to 500 k deaths over the full year without lockdown seem unreasonable?

 

[JoshW]

I don't think Ferguessen's model was dodgy. He predicted 200 k to 500 k deaths in 2020 if there was no lockdown. With a lockdown we have had 40 k to 60 k deaths in 4 months so his initial prediction doesn't seem so far out.

Its been ripped to shreds everywhere.
Just one link, many others.
https://technocracy.news/neil-fergusons-computer-model-is-ripped-to-shreds/

Would explain why he didn't want to make it public.

can't believe I got to the end of that "article" but *spoiler alert* the end sentence is:
Indirectly, on the surface at least, this ties Ferguson to climate change, a cause that the lockdown has served very well by managing to shut down the world economy.

This sentence tops off a paragraph where they dig into his past and desperately tie him to Bill Gates, a name that will get the loonies (anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, flat earthers etc) frothing at the mouth.

EDIT: also makes a big deal of the model having "been heavily massaged by Microsoft engineers" another attempt to get the anti-bill gates bunch in on the cause

 

[andrewmcleod]

From an engineering perspective, we're not usually interested in absolute certainty. As an engineer, I ask:
[...]
(3) Is there a more efficient way to make it stand up?

But engineering is a directed, logical process.
Nature is a pile of happy accidents.
So applying engineering to nature is not a fair comparison. That's what science is for.

 

[andrewmcleod]

I don't think Ferguessen's model was dodgy. He predicted 200 k to 500 k deaths in 2020 if there was no lockdown. With a lockdown we have had 40 k to 60 k deaths in 4 months so his initial prediction doesn't seem so far out.

Its been ripped to shreds everywhere.
Just one link, many others.
https://technocracy.news/neil-fergusons-computer-model-is-ripped-to-shreds/

Would explain why he didn't want to make it public.

https://thecritic.co.uk/in-defence-of-neil-ferguson/

and more specifically to do with the code:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01685-y?fbclid=IwAR2U5aHkUdTn1frSW3XCFbmS0aEQK0_SA18251wNj6gIpcEiNG6O2bvHv8w

The results of the model were a surprise to exactly one group of people - the British government. Everyone else (including me) went 'yes, that tallies with my back-of-the-envelope calculation'.

Yes, scientists are often crap coders and write crap codes. They aren't paid to code, there is no incentive to write good code; scientists are pressured to publish. I know, because I used to be one (albeit briefly and not very succesfully).

Programmers often build clean, individual units of code, test them and then combine them together to carry out a particular task. They usually have the advantage that it has probably been done before and the expected outcomes are known.
Sometimes scientific codes are written like this, but quite often they start as a little program that slowly grows into a bit of a monstrosity. It's much more difficult to test many scientific codes since quite often the 'right' answer isn't actually known, and it is more common to just check the answer 'looks' right. Testing is often by running a code using initial conditions where the output is known or expected, or by comparison to the 'real' world. For example in Astrophysics you can compare your star formation code against real observations, although this is very hard to do. Generally you don't know what the important physics your code even should have in it is, so worrying about having a perfect code is usually missing the point

Many 'minor' bugs will be lost in the noise anyway, so codes are often a mess - but that doesn't make the whole code 'wrong' (or at least, the degree to which the results are 'wrong' due to bugs is small). Sometimes the bugs are catastrophic, which is obvious; sometimes it is less obvious, but at least you might get another paper out of it That's why you test - but whole-system testing, which doesn't improve code quality generally.

In other words, it's hard!

 

[Speleofish]

A lot of people have ripped Fergussons model to shreds but there's a recent publication supporting it (though I've lost the reference). What I'm not clear about is whether his department produced a range of possible outcomes and the worst case is the one that got all the publicity.
The modelling we received predicted a peak of 280 odd ventilated patients by late April (based on his predictions) when in fact we peaked at 60-ish. However, our own modelling suggested that a further week's delay in locking down could have doubled or trebled that. Given all the uncertainties in these sort of models, I don't think his predictions were particularly improbable.

 

[Speleofish]

As far as the source of the virus is concerned, there's a good Nature article on this. It suggests it's unlikely the virus was manufactured (1) because the RNA backbone of the virus is novel and anyone trying to create a novel virus would probably have started with the backbone from a known coronavirus; (2) the 'receptor binding domain' (RBD) - the bit that binds to a receptor on the human cell surface - is also novel and would be expected, based on computer modelling, to be very ineffective at binding to human cells. This is clearly not the case but, if you were trying to make a virus, you'd probably start with a structure that seemed likely to work.
Finally, there's a paper by Kristian Andersen (Nature Med 26, 450-452, 2020) arguing there's a lot of data suggesting it's natural but no data showing any connection to a lab.
Bottom line, there seems to be a consensus that it's natural and that it probably didn't escape from a lab but proving it either way is impossible.

 

[PeteHall]

From an engineering perspective, we're not usually interested in absolute certainty. As an engineer, I ask:
[...]
(3) Is there a more efficient way to make it stand up?

But engineering is a directed, logical process.
Nature is a pile of happy accidents.
So applying engineering to nature is not a fair comparison. That's what science is for.

You are probably right, however it is a logical way to analyse an uncertain situation. In this scenario, I am effectively asking "is there a more simple explanation?" Occam's Razor if you like.

Perhaps I should have used the word "simple" instead of "efficient". In construction, this often amounts to the same thing as efficiencies during construction generally come from simple fool-proof designs.

To my mind, the theory that it accidentally escaped from the lab is the most simple possible explanation and therefore the most likely. That's not to say I think it is definitely the case, just that it seems to be the most probable explanation.

 

[Speleotron]

I think the virus being man-made and the virus having escaped from a lab are two separate possibilities. The Wuhan lab worked on natural viruses as well as man-made ones and it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that just escaped. I'm not saying this is what happened, how could I know? But there is historical precedent for natural viruses escaping from labs in China and all round the world, SARS escaped from labs in China in the same way (this didn't start the outbreak).

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/304/5671/659

 

[mikem]

& the technocracy website cited has an anti politician stance, so will be biased against the report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

 

[Duck ditch]

The rumours start in the White House. Trump says he has tremendous evidence but doesnt release it. Even though it would benefit his position tremendously.  Governments throughout the world shut down because the scientists say it?s fucking serious.  Fucking deaths in hospitals cause panic and paranoia. 
Luckily everybody else is looking in the wet market where 100s of viruses start off but luckily don?t take over the world.  It started in Wuhan labs. Maybe.

How about.  It started in bats then another species then to humans because of bad practice in wet markets conspiracy theory.  Does that help.

 

[andrewmcleod]

How about.  It started in bats then another species then to humans because of bad practice in wet markets conspiracy theory.  Does that help.

As was predicted would happen for years... The simplest and most likely explanation.

 

[zzzzzzed]

Given all the uncertainties in these sort of models, I don't think his predictions were particularly improbable.

Fergusson?s model predicted that Sweden would have 40,000 deaths by 1st May without a severe lockdown.  His model predicted that the most severe type of lockdown could reduce that to 10,000 to 20,000 deaths by 1st May.

They didn?t lockdown and the actual deaths were below 2,500 by the 1st May.

That suggests to me that his model was wrong.
https://www.aier.org/article/imperial-college-model-applied-to-sweden-yields-preposterous-results/

 

[mikem]

As always, hindsight is a fabulous thing (does the model take Sweden's differences into account, or was it specific to UK population...)

 

[pwhole]

As I've pointed out before, foresight is an even more fabulous thing than hindsight, which seems to be rarely used by most politicians, even with the resources at their fingertips. But I'm not sure if Sweden and Great Britain can be compared accurately. The population of Sweden is only a fifth of Britain's, and it's clustered mostly around the south and south-east - hardly anyone lives in the north and north-west, so there's huge expanses of empty land. Britain has a much more evenly-distributed population, though I have no idea if it's more densely-populated in urban areas than Sweden. The average incomes aren't that far apart, but the spread between rich and poor may be different too.

Demographics may play a part, and also cultural factors like how much a population trusts its government may have an impact on how 'willing' people may or may not be to do a certain thing. As I've mentioned many times before, most people I see in my area on the street don't seem to be observing social distancing at all, and haven't really been since a couple of weeks after lockdown. Large shops are still enforcing it, but local stores and takeways have only made token nods to it really. The ever-present begging teams sprawl over the pavements in large groups discussing strategies, pitches and shifts. Whether we have a higher incidence of Covis-19 in this particular area as a result I have no idea yet, but it can be pretty scary if you are really trying to observe it when few others seem to be.

It's a very mixed community here, with people of Chinese, Turkish, Pakistani, Indian, Sudanese, Yemeni, Somali, Ethiopian and Polish origin, apart from the white British, who are probably not in a majority. Truthfully, the people who make the most visible effort (by wearing a mask) are the Chinese, and nearly all have them. Not many other people do, though I always cover my face in the local shops as most don't yet have screens.

If I go to the posher or more 'socially liberal' districts (invariably whiter), folks are visibly more cautious, and in some cases will cross the road to avoid passing, even on a 4m-wide pavement. So maybe income and social standing really do play a part on how you behave, even if you fundamentally don't trust the government much. As in, if you can afford to ride out the disruption by playing safe, and you care about your health, you may well avoid it. If you can't afford it, or don't care, you may well not.

Obviously those who can't afford it but DO care, are going to be the least happy people in this situation. Though I'm not asking for sympathy

 

[mikem]

Yes, as with most illnesses, it does line up with poverty - the north east is particularly badly affected at moment.