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Cont: Origins of Covid (2)

So Worobey et al fixed an error in their paper?

Oooowww, discredits everything else. :rolleyes:

The authors thanked attention being brought to the error. It still leaves missing and biased data as I have noted repeatedly including with supporting data in this thread.

The rest of your comments are unsupportable nonsense.
 
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So Worobey et al fixed an error in their paper?

Oooowww, discredits everything else. :rolleyes:

The authors thanked attention being brought to the error. It still leaves missing and biased data as I have noted repeatedly including with supporting data in this thread.

The rest of your comments are unsupportable nonsense.

Please explain as succinctly as you can:

a) what missing data you are referring to

b) what biased data you are referring to

and please do not say "I've documented this in the thread", "use Google", "refine your search skills" etc... or other such evasive responses as we have seen how that goes.

Remember, that YOU have now introduced this new claim by Lisewski, and you have seen the response.

Instead of simply accepting it, you have reacted sarcastically with "So Worobey et al fixed an error in their paper?

Oooowww, discredits everything else. :rolleyes:"

This really makes it hard to see you as arguing in good faith. Wouldn't it be better to respond more like this:

"Oh, it's good that they responded to the point about duplicate data, and I am glad to see they corrected their error. However, I still would like to see some response to 1 and 2."
 
Please explain as succinctly as you can:

a) what missing data you are referring to

b) what biased data you are referring to....
Why should I bother when I've posted these two things multiple times?

Try this, address the missing data I have repeatedly posted about and prove you actually read what I said and why you object to it.

And Worobeys bias, paraphrase how/why I described his underlying bias and why you don't think he has an underlying bias.

At least attempt an effort to debate these issues instead of asking me to repeat what I've posted over and over and over .....
 
Why should I bother when I've posted these two things multiple times?

Try this, address the missing data I have repeatedly posted about and prove you actually read what I said and why you object to it.

And Worobeys bias, paraphrase how/why I described his underlying bias and why you don't think he has an underlying bias.

At least attempt an effort to debate these issues instead of asking me to repeat what I've posted over and over and over .....

I expected as much...

Please explain as succinctly as you can:

a) what missing data you are referring to

b) what biased data you are referring to

and please do not say "I've documented this in the thread", "use Google", "refine your search skills" etc... or other such evasive responses as we have seen how that goes.
Remember, that YOU have now introduced this new claim by Lisewski, and you have seen the response.

Instead of simply accepting it, you have reacted sarcastically with "So Worobey et al fixed an error in their paper?

Oooowww, discredits everything else. :rolleyes:"

This really makes it hard to see you as arguing in good faith. Wouldn't it be better to respond more like this:

"Oh, it's good that they responded to the point about duplicate data, and I am glad to see they corrected their error. However, I still would like to see some response to 1 and 2."
 
I expected as much...

You expected as much?

That's odd,I expected better of you. You vacillate between an actual discussion and this kind of nonsense asking me to repeat something I posted over and over and over and over and over .....

Worobey's missing data? :rolleyes:

His bias? :rolleyes:

You can't even be more creative than that? :rolleyes:
 
Bottom line, the evidence leans heavily toward a lab origin.

What gets in the way?

The politics starting with Trump's outrageous interference through to the current GOP carrying on with the House investigation wanting oh so much to keep blaming China. And there's the side show of Rand Paul wanting to get a 'gotcha' on Fauci about his lying re the GoF research funding.

Then there is the actual matter of some of the WIV GoF funding being traceable to the NIH. More than a few people don't want that to get out.

Fauci's earliest emails with his colleagues certainly pointed toward their belief the lab was the origin.

Their quick reversal claiming to have found out some supposed evidence it couldn't have been the lab was a pretty flimsy back-peddle.

China does not want it known the pandemic is actually traceable to labs in Wuhan (be it the WIV or the CCDC). They continue to withhold critical data on the earliest cases.

George Gao, head of CCDC, now retired, stated publicly the lab origin should not be ruled out. Earlier there was an effort to point the finger outside of China altogether. The Chinese government also preferred to promote this scenario.

Peter Daszak manipulated a number of things from the letter to the Lancet to his interference in the initial WHO investigation team. His goal was to direct suspicion away from the lab-leak, pushing the false narrative the lab origin was a CT. Tedros called him out on that saying the lab origin had not been investigated. More than a few researchers citing a conflict of interest requested the WHO block Daszak from being assigned to any future WHO teams assigned to investigate the WIV.

While investigating the lab origin hypothesis did suffer a setback of at least a year, more and more researchers have questioned dismissing that hypothesis.

There are some researchers like Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle who have maintained an open mind, following the evidence. There's a strong incentive not to criticize fellow researchers, he's been very cautious about that.

Then you have Worobey who stood to have his ego stroked by publishing a very heavily biased study claiming he sees the epicenter of cases surrounding the Wuhan Seafood wet market. The problem is the market was identified early on as a super-spreader site and the data on a good 1/3 of the earliest cases which could have confirmed or refuted whether the market was the initial site continue to be blocked by the Chinese government. [I color coded that for you AS. ;)]


I hit post instead of preview, a sign I need to finish this later.
 
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You expected as much?

That's odd,I expected better of you. You vacillate between an actual discussion and this kind of nonsense asking me to repeat something I posted over and over and over and over and over .....

Worobey's missing data? :rolleyes:

His bias? :rolleyes:

You can't even be more creative than that? :rolleyes:

Yes. I expected as much because I literally predicted your response.
 
Then you have Worobey who stood to have his ego stroked by publishing a very heavily biased study claiming he sees the epicenter of cases surrounding the Wuhan Seafood wet market. The problem is the market was identified early on as a super-spreader site and the data on a good 1/3 of the earliest cases which could have confirmed or refuted whether the market was the initial site continue to be blocked by the Chinese government. [I color coded that for you AS. ;)]


I hit post instead of preview, a sign I need to finish this later.

But what was the bias?

If it is ascertainment bias then he answers these questions in the supplementary material.

(Besides, you attribute bad motives to him as though that in and of itself refutes his paper. It is bad faith methodology to simply claim he wrote the paper because of ego).

What is Worobey supposed to do with data that is not available to him?

By that rationale, EVERYBODY is ignoring data that is unavailable to them, because nobody has that data.

Unless your response to missing data is to simply make up what the missing data consists of. That's a god-of-the-gaps type argument.
 
I was referring to Tedros' comments after the initial WHO report.

WHO Director-General's remarks at the Member State Briefing on the report of the international team studying the origins of SARS-CoV-2; 30 March 2021


But you know that. Attacking me is all some people in this thread have.

As for news reports and secondary sources, those are flooding the media more and more, asserting the scientific evidence supports the spillover hypothesis. Yet what scientific evidence is that?

Not a lot, not any more since Worobey's flawed study, and certainly not enough to support the conclusions being asserted. "Peer reviewed, published" does not mean conclusive conclusions nor does it confer any special weight to the results. Many peer reviewed published studies contradict other peer reviewed published studies.


Technical Comment: Duplicate, Missing, and Biased Data in the Worobey et al. Study Undermine Their Main Result; Dec 2022


Secondary sources indeed. :rolleyes:

You claimed "the hypothesis (laboratory leak) was not examined at all." I am pleased you are now walking away from this and actually looking at the primary source where what he actually says further study is needed.

The team also visited several laboratories in Wuhan and considered the possibility that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory incident.

However, I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough. Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions.

Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.

This is completely different from your claim that a laboratory source was "not examined at all."

FWIW more studies have been done since then.None of which favour a laboratory leak hypothesis.
 
Why should I bother when I've posted these two things multiple times?

I can find no evidence you have ever made such a post. I know of posts where you refer to "data" that no one should reasonably expect to exist in the first place but I can't find any other example where you say what data you think is "missing"

Regardless of what you think you have posted in the past no one knows what data you are referring to and no one can find it in this thread. At this point it's up to you to post it again because for all reasonable purposes you are referring to nonexistent posts.
 
OK, let me get this straight, angrysoba: There was data not available to Worobey so his analysis wasn't flawed because he carried on with a study but couldn't help it data was missing? :boggled:

Huh?

angrysoba said:
By that rationale, EVERYBODY is ignoring data that is unavailable to them, because nobody has that data.
Huh?

Actually in this case China has that data but regardless you are making no sense. You are claiming a researcher should just carry on and draw conclusions despite lacking critical data because it isn't the researcher's fault? :boggled:

Let me guess, you don't think the missing data was critical. Riiight.


Here's a summary:

The seafood wet market was identified early on as a super-spreader site.

Cases of COVID occurred before the wet market cluster but China has withheld the demographic data from these earliest cases.

So Worobey ignores those earlier cases except to rationalize they must have been infected at other markets. He has no evidence whatsoever that was the case but it fills in a major plot hole in his study.

Angrysoba says it wasn't Worobey's fault he ignored that big fat plot hole in his study. (Did I get that part right?)


Other related problems: The fact 2 initial lineages were found, A & B, is seen by some as evidence of 2 spillover events occurring, thus explaining the fact a good 1/3 of the earliest cases cannot be connected to the seafood wet market.

But there is no direct evidence of one spillover, let alone 2.


OTOH, the two lineages differ by only 3 nucleotides (IIRC) and at least one researcher (Quay) thinks A came first and B is a variant of A. That makes a lot more sense than claiming there were 2 spillover events.

Supposedly given one hasn't found direct evidence the 2 lineages evolved after COVID was introduced into the human population ergo said lineages must have evolved while circulating within the intermediate species.

Does that make a lick of sense? No, it doesn't. We know COVID variants occur within the infected human population. In fact, variants are common. Is there a trail of those variants exactly, including every nucleotide change as it drifted from one person to another? No.

Yet we are to believe a variant evolving within the human population doesn't account for lineages A&B while speculating the lineages must represent variants that occurred as COVID circulated within an intermediate species when we cannot find even a single infected intermediate species?


As for Worobey's bias, no one should have to explain that to you but I have in a number of past posts.
 
OK, let me get this straight, angrysoba: There was data not available to Worobey so his analysis wasn't flawed because he carried on with a study but couldn't help it data was missing? :boggled:

Huh?

Huh?

Actually in this case China has that data but regardless you are making no sense. You are claiming a researcher should just carry on and draw conclusions despite lacking critical data because it isn't the researcher's fault? :boggled:

Let me guess, you don't think the missing data was critical. Riiight.


Here's a summary:

The seafood wet market was identified early on as a super-spreader site.

Cases of COVID occurred before the wet market cluster but China has withheld the demographic data from these earliest cases.

*****BZZZZZT!****

Could you link to evidence for this, please.

So Worobey ignores those earlier cases except to rationalize they must have been infected at other markets. He has no evidence whatsoever that was the case but it fills in a major plot hole in his study.

Where are you getting the highlighted from? Where does Worobey say there were other cases linked to other markets prior to the Huanan Seafood Market cases?

If you believe this, no wonder you are having trouble accepting or even entertaining the market spillover hypothesis. You don't even know what is claimed.

Angrysoba says it wasn't Worobey's fault he ignored that big fat plot hole in his study. (Did I get that part right?)

You did not.





As for Worobey's bias, no one should have to explain that to you but I have in a number of past posts.

When you say "Worobey's bias", yes, I would like you to explain that to me.

The only thing I have seen from you so far are ad homs about him being driven by ego to relive his glory days.

If that is your idea of bias, then I have no need to answer it, because it is nothing more than your snide interpretation of someone's motives.
 
So much for "ignoring" the earliest cases, Worobey even wrote an article on the earliest cases and made some important observations:

the earliest known cases should not necessarily be expected to be the first infected or linked to Huanan Market: They probably postdated the outbreak’s index case by a considerable period (10). Moreover, only ∼7% of SARS-CoV-2 infections lead to hospitalization (11); most fly under the radar. Similarly, it is entirely expected that early, ascertained cases from a seafood market would be workers who were not necessarily directly associated with wildlife sales once the outbreak began spreading from human to human. The index case was most likely one of the ∼93% who never required hospitalization and indeed could have been any of hundreds of workers who had even brief contact with infected live mammals.

We know there was asymptomatic spread, and only a relatively small number of people need to be hospitalized.

This is different from the idea of the lab leak in which so many WIV workers get so sick that they have to go to hospital.

BUT it turns out that the earliest known case may not have been infected by Covid until 16th December. Remember, Worobey is not claiming to know who the first case is. It's the claim that the first case may be impossible to detect.

Crucially, however, the now famous “earliest” COVID-19 case (1), a 41-year-old male accountant, who lived 30 km south of Huanan Market and had no connection to it—illness onset reported as 8 December—may have become ill with COVID-19 considerably later (12). When interviewed, he reported that his COVID-19 symptoms started with a fever on 16 December. This is corroborated by hospital records and a scientific paper that reports his COVID-19 onset date as 16 December and date of hospitalization as 22 December (see fig. S1). This suggests that he may have been infected through community transmission after the virus had begun spreading from Huanan Market. He believed that he may have been infected in a hospital or on the subway during his commute; he had also traveled north of Huanan Market shortly before his symptoms began (12). If his symptoms indeed began on 16 December, then it postdated multiple cases in workers at Huanan Market, making a female seafood vendor there the earliest known case, with illness onset 10 December (see fig. S1). Notably, she reported knowledge of several possible COVID-19 cases in clinics and hospitals that were near Huanan Market from 11 December, and Huanan Market patients were hospitalized at Union Hospital as early as 10 December (see fig. S1).

I don't see any claim that earlier cases came from other markets.

I think Skeptic Ginger is mixing up different things, perhaps misattributing some speculation by Peter Daszak after the initial visit to China by the WHO group to Worobey instead.
 
Well, we have this...

Link

Unconfirmed reports of early cases
A September 2020 review noted about the hypothetical possibility that the COVID-19 infection had already spread to Europe in 2019 by presumptive evidences including pneumonia case numbers and radiology in France and Italy in November and December.[1] However, a subsequent retrospective surveillance report determined there was no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 circulation in Rome (Italy) during this period.[2]

Some medical and environmental analyses in Italy, France, and the US found results which suggested the virus was circulating prior to December 2019 by several weeks. A WHO report states: "the study findings were not confirmed, methods used were not standardized, and serological assays may suffer from non-specific signals". It urges further investigation of these potential early events.[3]

So yeah, possibly the virus was circling outside of China before December 2019, and that's certainly what China would like everyone to believe.

But...not confirmed.

October and November
See also: Investigations into the origin of COVID-19
According to an ABC news report, the American National Center for Medical Intelligence shared intelligence regarding a potential respiratory disease in Wuhan. This was denied by the Pentagon.[4] On 13 March 2020, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese government records suggest that the first case of infection with COVID-19 could be traced back to a 55-year-old Hubei resident on 17 November.[5]

On 23 May 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that newly disclosed U.S. intelligence obtained that three researchers working at the BSL-4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms. The report added weight to calls for a broader probe into the theory that the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from a laboratory.[6][7] However, a WHO report states "introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway".[3] Since then, the head of the WHO COVID-19 origins investigative team, Peter Ben Embarek, has stated that the Chinese authorities exerted pressure on the WHO report conclusions, and that he in fact considers an infection via a researcher's field samples to be a "likely" scenario.[8]

So this is again possible, but again, there seems to be little confirmed.

I can't find a non-paywalled version of the article that works, but...

Link

...the Guardian seems to have some reporting on that back then.

It seems though that there has been no follow-up on it, and is not that reliable.

Who knows?

Is this what you are talking about?
 
Well, we have this...

Link



So yeah, possibly the virus was circling outside of China before December 2019, and that's certainly what China would like everyone to believe.

But...not confirmed.



So this is again possible, but again, there seems to be little confirmed.

I can't find a non-paywalled version of the article that works, but...

Link

...the Guardian seems to have some reporting on that back then.

It seems though that there has been no follow-up on it, and is not that reliable.

Who knows?

Is this what you are talking about?

Against the BSL4 case is that Andersen was working in the BSL4 laboratory at the time and was unaware of any outbreak of illness.
https://www.newsweek.com/coronaviru...anielle-anderson-australian-scientist-1604711
She has received a great deal of abuse on line so the number of comments by her are few despite being perhaps the best independant eye witness to events in WIV upto December 2019.
 
The seafood wet market was identified early on as a super-spreader site.

What do you mean by "super spreader event"? Are you saying that there were a lot of cases there so it must be a super-spreader event and therefor couldn't be the point of origin.

In terms of the normal usage of "super spreader event" this clearly doesn't fit the events at the Wuhan fish market. The cases did not occur all at once as part of a single event rather they accumulated over the course of several weeks. Second, since there were two virus lineages involved it could not have been a single event.


Other related problems: The fact 2 initial lineages were found, A & B, is seen by some as evidence of 2 spillover events occurring, thus explaining the fact a good 1/3 of the earliest cases cannot be connected to the seafood wet market.

This is false. The ~1/3 of early cases that hadn't been to the market still had a proximal link to it. They either lived or worked in relatively close proximity to it.
Other related problems: The fact 2 initial lineages were found, A & B, is seen by some as evidence of 2 spillover events occurring, thus explaining the fact a good 1/3 of the earliest cases cannot be connected to the seafood wet market.

But there is no direct evidence of one spillover, let alone 2.

Maybe in Stawman world, but you also need to consider the fact that it was too early to expect multiple virus lineages. The most logical explanation for the existence of 2 lineages that early in the pandemic is that these lineages arose before the first human infection.

This is no issue for zoonosis because there lineages could easily emerge in animal populations before moving on to infect humans. It's a major issue for lab leak because there is no viable explanation for why there were two lineages that early nor is there any viable explanation for how they both got to the same place at the same time, a dozen miles away from the location of the supposed leak and don't show up anywhere near the lab until much later on.
 
Well, we have this...

Link

So yeah, possibly the virus was circling outside of China before December 2019, and that's certainly what China would like everyone to believe.

But...not confirmed. [snip] Is this what you are talking about?
No.

Potential Italy cases were discussed early in the thread. China wanted to point the finger away from themselves. IIRC there simply were no conclusive tests for COVID prior to Dec 2019 but I would need to review what we discussed pages back. It's not the earlier cases I'm talking about.

Honestly angrysoba if you don't know what I'm talking about it seems like willful ignorance. You don't read what I post half the time then demand I repeat what I posted. The fact there were a number of cases that China refused to provide the specifics on was an issue from the very beginning of the pandemic. How you don't remember this says a lot that you really aren't interested in challenging your current belief the origin was a spillover.

If I had to guess I'd say your reading the book, Spillover, set that bias up in your head and you can't let it go no matter how many reliable sources say neither origin hypothesis has been ruled in or out.

Here's the most recent time I discussed the problematic early cases:
It was determined the duplicate data was an error that Worobey corrected. I'll post a more detailed discussion of the paper in a new post.
 
Technical Comment: Duplicate, Missing, and Biased Data in the Worobey et al. Study Undermine Their Main Result; Dec 2022
It was determined the duplicate data was an error that Worobey corrected. One criticism of the study's conclusion was there were no negative controls.
Here are some other specifics from the paper:
Therefore, in contradiction to the key claim by Worobey et al., it cannot be inferred that the observed closer proximity of the 120 cases not epidemiologically linked to the Huanan market is due to their origin being at that market. Together with a previous technical comment [2], which directly questioned the exclusive Huanan market origin of the earliest SARS-CoV-2 lineage B cases, this evidence further invalidates the market origin hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2
IOW Worobey made a lot of assumptions the data did not support. I have said so numerous times.


Addendum 1 [11 March 2023]: Documented written statements from the corresponding author of the Worobey et al. study as well as from the responsible senior editor of Science magazine (see Supplemental Information below) acknowledge these above errors and data problems. Yet, to date, Worobey et al. and Science editors have, despite their official announcements, failed (a) to address and to resolve said point 1 and point 2 above as well as the previous point in the eLetter [2] from 16 October 2022, and (b) to correct the scientific record in question.
 
Against the BSL4 case is that Andersen was working in the BSL4 laboratory at the time and was unaware of any outbreak of illness.
https://www.newsweek.com/coronaviru...anielle-anderson-australian-scientist-1604711
She has received a great deal of abuse on line so the number of comments by her are few despite being perhaps the best independant eye witness to events in WIV upto December 2019.
They weren't doing coronavirus work in the BSL4 lab; it was done in the BSL2 lab. The level 4 lab wasn't even ready at the time the pandemic started. They hadn't resolved a number of issues like adequate staff training.

Shi's problems with online harassment weren't relevant at the time the first cases occurred.


You also continue to ignore certain facts that have been well documented in this thread and documented in multiple sources. It's not that hard to look up 'WIV coronavirus research done in BSL2 lab'. Try it, see what you get. I get multiple sources from DuckduckGo and none on the first page of Startpage. I rarely use Google so I did not check there.

Maybe that's part of the problem, you guys are using inefficient search engines. Just a thought.

Also re the earliest cases try searching for 'China continues to withhold information on earliest COVID cases'. The first 2 hits are the WSJ and the NYT but scroll past those and there are a half dozen alternatives that are not paywalled.
 
Well, we have this...[snip]
In case you aren't reading my replies to Planigale's posts:

Re the earliest cases try searching for 'China continues to withhold information on earliest COVID cases'. The first 2 hits are the WSJ and the NYT but scroll past those and there are a half dozen alternatives that are not paywalled.

as said:
...the Guardian seems to have some reporting on that back then.

It seems though that there has been no follow-up on it, and is not that reliable.

Who knows?

Is this what you are talking about?
There has been follow up on both the cases that might have started outside of China (nothing was conclusive) and on the earliest cases China won't release data on. The Guardian article from Mar 2020 is vague and lacks a lot of details. Try reading further.
 
Technical Comment: Duplicate, Missing, and Biased Data in the Worobey et al. Study Undermine Their Main Result; Dec 2022
It was determined the duplicate data was an error that Worobey corrected. One criticism of the study's conclusion was there were no negative controls.
Here are some other specifics from the paper:
Therefore, in contradiction to the key claim by Worobey et al., it cannot be inferred that the observed closer proximity of the 120 cases not epidemiologically linked to the Huanan market is due to their origin being at that market. Together with a previous technical comment [2], which directly questioned the exclusive Huanan market origin of the earliest SARS-CoV-2 lineage B cases, this evidence further invalidates the market origin hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2
IOW Worobey made a lot of assumptions the data did not support. I have said so numerous times.
Skeptic Ginger neglects to mention that the paragraph quoted above was based on Lisewski's substitution of different datasets for the dataset that was missing due to Worobey et al.'s error.

Those data were not missing from Worobey et al.'s paper. They were missing from the paper's supplemental materials.

That error has been corrected. It is therefore possible to compare Worobey's actual dataset to the two datasets that Lisewski decided to substitute for that dataset (which are here and here).

Even the most casual inspection of Worobey's actual dataset reveals that it is quite different from both of the two datasets that Lisewski decided to use in place of the then-missing dataset.

It is therefore obvious that Lisewski's paragraph quoted above is based upon nothing more than Lisewski's wrong guess that the two datasets he used would be viable proxies for the missing data.

Addendum 1 [11 March 2023]: Documented written statements from the corresponding author of the Worobey et al. study as well as from the responsible senior editor of Science magazine (see Supplemental Information below) acknowledge these above errors and data problems. Yet, to date, Worobey et al. and Science editors have, despite their official announcements, failed (a) to address and to resolve said point 1 and point 2 above as well as the previous point in the eLetter [2] from 16 October 2022, and (b) to correct the scientific record in question.
As noted above, the dataset that was missing from the Supplementary Materials is now available for everyone to see. Examination of that dataset invalidates Lisewski's argument as quoted by Skeptic Ginger.
 
.... As noted above, the dataset that was missing from the Supplementary Materials is now available for everyone to see. Examination of that dataset invalidates Lisewski's argument as quoted by Skeptic Ginger.
No it is not. You misread a lot of things frequently and this is yet another case where you have done so.

A quick search for 'china still withholding information on first covid cases' would provide you with current information. This was updated yesterday though Biden's comments were a few months ago:

Biden Says China Still Withholding ‘Critical’ Info on COVID Origins

President Joe Biden said Friday that China was withholding “critical information” on the origins of COVID-19 after the U.S. intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon — but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab....

“Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it,” Biden said in a statement.

“To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise.” ...

But as time wore on and scientists were unable to find a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2, investigators said they were more open to considering a leak involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which carried out bat coronavirus research. ...
Critical information as in the demographic data on the first ~30 identified cases. China almost certainly knows who patient zero was and where the first human cases emerged from. If it weren't the lab they would have less reason to cover the origin up.
From 2 months ago:
New U.S. intelligence report sheds little light on covid origins
Other researchers have also concluded that the pandemic may have begun at a Wuhan market near where the first cases of an unusual pneumonia were reported. But those assertions have failed to quell the rancorous debate over the virus’s origins, and some scientists say that recent efforts to proclaim that the market is the clear starting point of the pandemic — including recent analysis suggesting that raccoon dogs kept at the Wuhan market may be linked to the first covid cases — needed further scrutiny and ultimately backfired.

Several of the authors behind the “proximal origins” paper have since suggested that their earlier conclusion about no plausible lab origin of covid-19 may have been too strident.
Yet the Proximal Origins paper is cited often as some sort of 'near conclusion' of a spillover.

Needed further scrutiny because the amount of SARS CoV2 virus found with the raccoon dog DNA was not enough to have come from the dog, rather it was more likely deposited by a human. LOOK IT UP.


Really people, it's not hard to actually look at the evidence of a lab origin. All this willful blindness has limited any real discussion in this thread. From where I stand I've been addressing the spillover arguments specifically (Worobey's flawed study, still no intermediary species found, the virus RNA in the market not as conclusive as once thought, etc) yet the lab origin arguments have been distorted like in this post and like in angrysoba's post looking at the wrong early cases. And Planigale nitpicks the wording of 'not investigated' rather than looking at what Tedros actually said about the WHO report dismissing the lab origin as a CT and the following criticisms of Daszak pushing the team away from a lab origin.
 
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.... As noted above, the dataset that was missing from the Supplementary Materials is now available for everyone to see. Examination of that dataset invalidates Lisewski's argument as quoted by Skeptic Ginger.
No it is not. You misread a lot of things frequently and this is yet another case where you have done so.

A quick search for 'china still withholding information on first covid cases' would provide you with current information. This was updated yesterday though Biden's comments were a few months ago:
It is perfectly obvious that Lisewski guessed wrong when he thought the two datasets he decided to use as proxies for the missing dataset were viable proxies for the dataset that is now available for viewing by anyone who actually cares about the truth of this matter.

It is also perfectly obvious that Lisewski's wrong guess, and indeed his entire Technical Comment, had nothing whatsoever to do with Biden's comments and Skeptic Ginger's other red herrings. Furthermore, Lisewski's argument about "no negative controls" in Worobey's paper is itself rooted in the fact that Worobey et al.'s Supplementary Materials contained a copy/paste error. That error has been corrected, invalidating Lisewski's argument about "no negative controls".

The facts stated above are evident to anyone who reads Lisewski's Technical Comment with adequate care and takes the trouble to confirm what I have written by following the links I have provided.
 
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No it is not. You misread a lot of things frequently and this is yet another case where you have done so.

A quick search for 'china still withholding information on first covid cases' would provide you with current information. This was updated yesterday though Biden's comments were a few months ago:

Biden Says China Still Withholding ‘Critical’ Info on COVID Origins

Critical information as in the demographic data on the first ~30 identified cases. China almost certainly knows who patient zero was and where the first human cases emerged from. If it weren't the lab they would have less reason to cover the origin up.
From 2 months ago:
New U.S. intelligence report sheds little light on covid origins
Yet the Proximal Origins paper is cited often as some sort of 'near conclusion' of a spillover.

Needed further scrutiny because the amount of SARS CoV2 virus found with the raccoon dog DNA was not enough to have come from the dog, rather it was more likely deposited by a human. LOOK IT UP.


Really people, it's not hard to actually look at the evidence of a lab origin. All this willful blindness has limited any real discussion in this thread. From where I stand I've been addressing the spillover arguments specifically (Worobey's flawed study, still no intermediary species found, the virus RNA in the market not as conclusive as once thought, etc) yet the lab origin arguments have been distorted like in this post and like in angrysoba's post looking at the wrong early cases. And Planigale nitpicks the wording of 'not investigated' rather than looking at what Tedros actually said about the WHO report dismissing the lab origin as a CT and the following criticisms of Daszak pushing the team away from a lab origin.

angrysoba “looking at the wrong early cases”.

Jesus ******* Christ.
 
We have discussed many things in this thread. You cannot blame me for not knowing precisely what you mean by your vague hand waving. Yet your answer was that we have discussed it so I should know. But when I offered a few examples you tell me it was not those because we had discussed those earlier in the thread.

Do you behave like this IRL?
 
angrysoba “looking at the wrong early cases”.

Jesus ******* Christ.
Yes, you ******* were. The discussion was about the first cases in Wuhan Worobey left off of his map. It was not about whether the pandemic started in the EU or Italy or anywhere else outside of China.

Why in the hell would the Chinese government withhold information about the first cases if they weren't in China? :boggled::boggled::boggled: :rolleyes:
 
angrysoba “looking at the wrong early cases”.

Jesus ******* Christ.

Yes, you ******* were. The discussion was about the first cases in Wuhan Worobey left off of his map.

When you refer to the "first cases in Wuhan Worobey left off of his map", are you talking about the December 2019 cases that appear as gray dots in the inset portion of the map in Worobey's Figure 1A?

ETA: By the way:
This was updated yesterday though Biden's comments were a few months ago:

Biden Says China Still Withholding ‘Critical’ Info on COVID Origins
That web page says it was updated "August 28, 2021 2:07 AM".

It seems to me that a date in 2021 could not have been yesterday.

I note also that Biden's remarks were made in August 2021, which was 24 months ago. Whether "24 months" counts as "a few months ago" is subjective, which is why I prefer the more objective "24 months ago".

Finally, I note that the article concludes as follows:
Recent scientific papers, however, are tilting the debate back towards a zoonotic origin.

...snip...

Additionally, a paper by 21 top virologists in the journal Cell bluntly concluded: “There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin.”
I'm not entirely sure that conclusion is the reason you directed our attention to that article.
 
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We have discussed many things in this thread. You cannot blame me for not knowing precisely what you mean by your vague hand waving. Yet your answer was that we have discussed it so I should know. But when I offered a few examples you tell me it was not those because we had discussed those earlier in the thread.

Do you behave like this IRL?
Yes I can blame you for not following a simple discussion about Worobey's missing data and the Chinese withholding vital information about the first COVID cases! There was nothing vague about this very simple matter, Worobey has not presented sufficient evidence the market was the origin of COVID.
Are you not capable of following a simple discussion? My apologies if this is a disability on your part.

Issue: Worobey's study on the seafood market being the epicenter of the pandemic is flawed. The market was identified as a super-spreader site in the first few days of the pandemic.

A significant number of patients in Wuhan in Dec 2019 who had COVID symptoms were not included in Worobey's study except where he rationalized why they weren't connected to the market. Half of his conclusions were pure unsupported speculation.
Worobey made excuses to shoehorn the data in that didn't fit his hypothesis like not all the early cases having a connection to the market.

You can't seem to follow this simple discussion. The discussion was never vague.



Clinger is off on some sidetrack that the data China was withholding about these first patients has since been released. No it has not despite multiple requests from international sources like the WHO requesting China release the critical information about these earliest patients.

And Planigale is off looking for semantic/pedantic gotchas instead of addressing the evidence.

____________________________________________________________

Recently what at first looked like corroborating evidence the market was the epicenter with raccoon dogs being implicated by swabs taken in the market stalls turned out to be an unsupported interpretation that correlation was causation. Since that was clarified by people looking at the data from the swabs the authors of the Proximal Origins paper have backed off on their certainty.
Of course the media jumped the gun on all of this: the swabs, Worobey's paper, the Proximal Origins paper pronouncing the spillover hypothesis was strongly supported and the lab origin nearly ruled out. So goes the media, so goes the public adopting the insufficiently supported conclusion the market was the source.

But the evidence is what it is, conclusions are not always supported, and eventually people interested in finding the actual source of COVID will not be deterred. It will however take a long time to undo the damage done by the over-stating of the spillover origin.
 
Clinger is off on some sidetrack that the data China was withholding about these first patients has since been released.

That's news to me.

I do not believe any of my recent posts have mentioned China at all. I did refer to Worobey's map of early cases in Wuhan, which is of course part of China, but I have not suggested in any way that "the data China was withholding about these first patients has since been released."

So Skeptic Ginger's accusation is not supported by the archives of this forum, just as her apparent belief that yesterday was 28 August in the year 2021 is not supported by the calender.
 
When you refer to the "first cases in Wuhan Worobey left off of his map", are you talking about the December 2019 cases that appear as gray dots in the inset portion of the map in Worobey's Figure 1A?
Here we go again. :rolleyes:

Did you bother looking for the earliest cases China is withholding data on? Do that first before asking me to confirm your misstated data.

And BTW, half of the 155 cases on Worobey's map had no connection to the market. 20 identified cases were left out altogether.

Notice also how a map of the proximity to the labs of the CCDC were not analyzed despite these 2 labs being very close to the market and despite one CCDC lab being moved to the other location just as the pandemic started. And NO I will not cite a source for this again. Look it up.
 
That's news to me.

I do not believe any of my recent posts have mentioned China at all. I did refer to Worobey's map of early cases in Wuhan, which is of course part of China, but I have not suggested in any way that "the data China was withholding about these first patients has since been released."

So Skeptic Ginger's accusation is not supported by the archives of this forum, just as her apparent belief that yesterday was 28 August in the year 2021 is not supported by the calender.

I said Biden's comments were older but the article itself had been updated.

You said:
Those data were not missing from Worobey et al.'s paper. They were missing from the paper's supplemental materials.

That error has been corrected. It is therefore possible to compare Worobey's actual dataset to the two datasets that Lisewski decided to substitute for that dataset (which are here and here).
That does not address China withholding information on the earliest cases. You claim that missing data was provided.

You are wrong, deal with it.
 
Yes I can blame you for not following a simple discussion about Worobey's missing data and the Chinese withholding vital information about the first COVID cases! There was nothing vague about this very simple matter, Worobey has not presented sufficient evidence the market was the origin of COVID.
Are you not capable of following a simple discussion? My apologies if this is a disability on your part.

Issue: Worobey's study on the seafood market being the epicenter of the pandemic is flawed. The market was identified as a super-spreader site in the first few days of the pandemic.

A significant number of patients in Wuhan in Dec 2019 who had COVID symptoms were not included in Worobey's study

Tell me about these patients because your link said NOTHING at all.

This is what you linked to....

Link

“Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it,” Biden said in a statement.

“To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise.”

It says NOTHING at all about what you added...

Critical information as in the demographic data on the first ~30 identified cases.

The red bit is not in the article. You just added it yourself.

You really are unbelievable.

Who do you think you are kidding with this ******

And then you ask me if I have a disability.

Dude, this again is the very definition of gaslighting and you have done this already with the whole cable thing.

Now you are doing it again.

Do you not see something extremely obnoxious about these games of yours?
 
Besides, as I have mentioned before, Worobey et. al point out that there are limitations to the study:

Study limitations
There are several limitations to our study. We have been able to recover location data for most of the December-onset COVID-19 cases identified by the WHO mission (7) with sufficient precision to support our conclusions. However, we do not have access to the precise latitude and longitude coordinates of all of these cases. Should such data exist, they may be accompanied by additional metadata, some of which we have reconstructed, but some of which, including the date of onset of each case, would be valuable for ongoing studies. We also lack direct evidence of an intermediate animal infected with a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor virus either at the Huanan market or at a location connected to its supply chain, such as a farm. Additionally, no line list of early COVID-19 cases is available, and we do not have complete details of environmental sampling. However, compared with many other outbreaks, we have more comprehensive information on early cases, hospitalizations, and environmental sampling (7).

So that hardly constitutes "ignoring".
 
Issue: Worobey's study on the seafood market being the epicenter of the pandemic is flawed. [/HILITE]

From where I stand I've been addressing the spillover arguments specifically (Worobey's flawed study, still no intermediary species found, the virus RNA in the market not as conclusive as once thought, etc)

OK, let me get this straight, angrysoba: There was data not available to Worobey so his analysis wasn't flawed because he carried on with a study but couldn't help it data was missing?

Not a lot, not any more since Worobey's flawed study, and certainly not enough to support the conclusions being asserted.

It's hardly a game changer just like it wasn't a game changer when the furin cleavage site was found in bats not in the same family as SARS CoV carrying Horseshoe bats, just like it wasn't a game changer when 2 separate lineages were found early on, just like Worobey's flawed study was not a game changer, and just like it wasn't a game changer when the finding of COVID RNA in the same market stall as some Raccoon Dog DNA turned out to be a nothing-berger.


The evidence for a lab leak grows. The evidence for a spillover is stalled. Worobey's study is flawed, the finding of some genetic evidence from swabs at the market isn't holding up as significant after all.

DeBarre goes on to suggest the study ruling out pangolins as an intermediate host was flawed.

Sounds to me like "The failing New York Times".

It's a rhetorical strategy to bog down the debate rather than your claim of furthering debate.

Worobey accepts that there are limitations to the study as there are in all studies. The fact you keep bringing up no intermediate host as though the authors hadn't thought of it makes you look like you argue in bad faith.

This is also another doozy of yours:
The market was identified as a super-spreader site in the first few days of the pandemic.

You repeat this passive construction repeatedly while neglecting to mention that the very people who identified it as a super-spreader site (as opposed to the origin) was the WCDC, or in other words one of your suspects.
 
Sorry I haven't gotten back to this sooner:
Interesting but blatantly biased. Just listen to the language he uses.

He claims there is lots of evidence for "one" hypothesis and "none" for the hypothesis now shifting to popular preference. It wasn't hard to guess where he was going with that.
Really? That's not what I remember him saying.
Unfortunately the written version of the article is behind a paywall and I can't re-listen now. Maybe later.

I guess if "biased" means that he has an opinion on the matter, and presents facts and arguments to support that opinion, then you are correct.

He calls the lab leak hypothesis "not plausible" and "lurid".
Again, I seem to remember his saying the opposite. That lab leaks have occurred and therefore it is not an implausible possibility. (He was more dismissive about the idea that it was engineered to be a bioweapon.)


Quammen notes that people start out with their preferred biases then stick with those. Later he goes on to describe all his previous work reporting on spillovers. He makes a brief mention of lab accidents but never once says that he might be biased toward spillover hypothesis.

"Never once" said that he might be biased toward spillover hypothesis? I thought he suggested precisely that possibility. :confused:

Has anyone else listened? Because it seems like I heard something different from SG.
 
Here we go again. :rolleyes:

Did you bother looking for the earliest cases China is withholding data on? Do that first before asking me to confirm your misstated data.

And BTW, half of the 155 cases on Worobey's map had no connection to the market. 20 identified cases were left out altogether.

Notice also how a map of the proximity to the labs of the CCDC were not analyzed despite these 2 labs being very close to the market and despite one CCDC lab being moved to the other location just as the pandemic started. And NO I will not cite a source for this again. Look it up.

So this remains evidence against WIV and Shi's laboratory as a source for SARS-CoV-2.

If people waited for perfect data then no research would be done. The whole reason for the use of statistics is to address the issues around incomplete data.

Where is the evidence that China is withholding data on early cases? Given most cases will be asymptomatic they just wouldn't know about them, prior to recognition of a novel coronavirus outbreak with person to person transmission even symptomatic cases might be treated as a normal virus infection and no special dat or samples taken. Most likely no-one has information about the first cases.
 
Sorry I haven't gotten back to this sooner:

Really? That's not what I remember him saying.
Unfortunately the written version of the article is behind a paywall and I can't re-listen now. Maybe later.

I guess if "biased" means that he has an opinion on the matter, and presents facts and arguments to support that opinion, then you are correct.


Again, I seem to remember his saying the opposite. That lab leaks have occurred and therefore it is not an implausible possibility. (He was more dismissive about the idea that it was engineered to be a bioweapon.)




"Never once" said that he might be biased toward spillover hypothesis? I thought he suggested precisely that possibility. :confused:

Has anyone else listened? Because it seems like I heard something different from SG.

I haven't listened to the podcast, but have read the article.

Indeed, he talks about "priors", and says that it was Jesse Bloom (not Quanmen himself) who made the point about people going with their priors.

When I spoke with him back in February 2021, a year into the pandemic, and asked about the origin question, Bloom said, “I think what you have is a lot of people strongly defaulting to their prior beliefs.” Scientists who study zoonotic diseases (those that spill over from nonhuman animals into people) might be inclined to assume a natural origin.

And then Quanmen goes on to do what SG said he didn't...

That gave me pause to consider my own priors. For the past 40 years, I’ve written nonfiction about the natural world and the sciences that study it, especially ecology and evolutionary biology.

Then he has a fairly long description of his career looking at spillovers, before concluding...

These cases and many others like them are among my own priors, and no doubt they do incline me toward the idea of natural spillover. It happens often, sometimes with dire consequences.

Maybe SG is right though. She said "not once" does he talk about his biases, and yet he explictly asserts "priors" twice.

By the way, the "brief" mention of lab accidents is a fairly detailed paragraph:

Research accidents have occurred, too, in the history of dangerous new viruses, and longtime concerns over such accidents constitute the priors of some who favor the lab-leak hypothesis for Covid. Such accidents might number in the hundreds or the thousands, depending on where you put the threshold of significance and how you define “accident.” There was an event that (probably) reintroduced a 1950s strain of influenza in 1977, causing that year’s flu pandemic, which killed many thousands of people, and a 2004 needle-stick injury of a careful scientist, Kelly Warfield, while she was doing Ebola research (but she proved uninfected by Ebola). Also in 2004, just a year after the global SARS scare, two workers at a virology lab in Beijing were independently infected with that virus, which spread to nine people in total, one of whom died. This followed two other single-case lab-accident infections with SARS virus the previous year, one in Singapore, one in Taiwan.

So I think it is unfair to claim that Quanmen doesn't consider his own biases (according to SG, he wrote an "outdated" book on the subject). It is also unfair to say that he barely mentions lab accidents.

But it wouldn't be the first time I have apparently looked at the same thing as SG and seen something wildly different.

Don't expect any admission from SG though. She will likely assert that you are mad, incapable of reading, "ignoring" something or have a "disability".
 
Here we go again. :rolleyes:

Did you bother looking for the earliest cases China is withholding data on? Do that first before asking me to confirm your misstated data.
No, I did not "bother looking for the earliest cases China is withholding data on", because any cases for which China is withholding data are irrelevant to anything I've been saying in this thread during the past few weeks. I note also that I have not asked Skeptic Ginger to confirm my "misstated data".

It seems therefore that Skeptic Ginger is quite confused concerning just about everything I have written in this thread in recent weeks.

And BTW, half of the 155 cases on Worobey's map had no connection to the market. 20 identified cases were left out altogether.
I asked you a question you have not answered, and appear to be going to great lengths not to answer. I will now break that question down into a series of simpler questions:
1. When you say "Worobey's map", which of Worobey's maps are you talking about? (In my original statement of this question, I suggested you might be talking about the map in Worobey's Figure 1A, but that was just a guess. Skeptic Ginger has neither confirmed nor negated that guess.)

2. What are the "20 identified cases" that "were left out altogether"? (For the record, I note that any such cases are not relevant to anything I have written in this thread in recent weeks.)

3. Where can I find the locations of those "20 identified cases"? (Just so I satisfy my own curiosity by adding their locations to the map Skeptic Ginger will identify by answering question 1 above, if she ever gets around to answering that question.)​

Notice also how a map of the proximity to the labs of the CCDC were not analyzed despite these 2 labs being very close to the market and despite one CCDC lab being moved to the other location just as the pandemic started. And NO I will not cite a source for this again. Look it up.
The location of those labs is not secret. Anyone who thinks this is an issue is free to draw in the location of those labs and to do their own analysis.

In particular, anyone with the requisite background in statistics could perform that analysis using the data in Worobey's Supplementary Materials combined with the location data Skeptic Ginger could provide for the "20 identified cases" (but has not provided, and is probably unwilling to provide: "And NO I will not cite a source").

I said Biden's comments were older but the article itself had been updated.
On 28 August 2023, Skeptic Ginger said the article had been updated "yesterday". According to the web page she cited, the article was last updated on 28 August 2021.

Skeptic Ginger was off by two years. As seen from the quotation above, she still has not admitted her claim that the article had been updated "yesterday" was off by two years.

This is of course a trivial matter, but her obstinacy concerning this trivial matter illustrates a pattern of stubborn detachment from reality that runs throughout many of her recent posts.

For example:
You said:
Those data were not missing from Worobey et al.'s paper. They were missing from the paper's supplemental materials.

That error has been corrected. It is therefore possible to compare Worobey's actual dataset to the two datasets that Lisewski decided to substitute for that dataset (which are here and here).
That does not address China withholding information on the earliest cases. You claim that missing data was provided.

You are wrong, deal with it.
None of my recent posts have said anything at all about "China withholding information on the earliest cases", because any such withholding of data is irrelevant to anything I've been saying in my recent posts.

In particular, my only "claim that missing data was provided" involved the fact (not just a claim) that Worobey et al. had updated their Supplementary Materials to include a dataset that had been missing due to a copy/paste error. The data in that dataset could not have had anything to do with "China withholding information on the earliest cases", because any data that were unavailable because of such withholding could not possibly have been included within the dataset provided (belatedly) by Worobey et al.

Concerning Skeptic Ginger's responses to my posts, as quoted above, I have to agree with angrysoba:
Dude, this again is the very definition of gaslighting and you have done this already with the whole cable thing.

Now you are doing it again.

Do you not see something extremely obnoxious about these games of yours?


Despite the devoted efforts of many people, we still do not have solid evidence that would allow us to rule out either zoonosis or a lab leak. In my opinion, the most persuasive argument for zoonosis remains the Bayesian prior: Zoonosis is the origin of most pandemics, and there is no persuasive evidence for any alternative to zoonosis.

I will say, however, that (in my opinion) the lab leak theories deserve more serious advocacy than Skeptic Ginger has been providing.
 
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