I haven't watched their Congressional testimony, but I've read Quay's "analysis" and heard Asher propound on his bioweapon theory elsewhere.

Quay's analysis is not a rigorous Bayesian analysis in any sense. It's a series of subjective judgments about likelihoods of various scenarios. It's classic garbage-in, garbage-out, dressed up as science by using the word "Bayesian." The thing is, Bayesian inference is only as good as the information and knowledge you put into it. Quay treats cancer patients and invents medical devices. He has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to virology. It's incredibly telling that he's the guy that pro-lab-leak congresspeople invite to talk, instead of an actual virologist.

Asher is just a career political hack with no scientific background.

Edit: Right off the bat, Quay's first claim in his testimony is highly dubious. He claims that the Huanan Seafood market was not where the virus spilled over, because supposedly the earliest version of the virus wasn't found in patients who were at the market. Two problems: 1. We don't actually know which is the oldest lineage of the virus. 2. Only a tiny fraction of people who got sick at the market have had samples taken. Probably hundreds of people at the market caught the virus and had mild or asymptomatic cases. We only have a few samples, from people who fell seriously ill. By the way, mortality evidence independently supports the Huanan market as the area of the first major outbreak.

One problem for the wet market theory is that neither bats nor pangolins were sold at that wet market:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2

"Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded, supporting reformed opinion that pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic."

That doesn't mean there couldn't be a zoonotic explanation, of course, but it does significantly complicate the main alternative to the theory that WIV was doing coronavirus research in humanized mice and that escaped from the lab.

> One problem for the wet market theory is that neither bats nor pangolins were sold at that wet market

That's not a problem for the theory. SARS did not come directly from bats (or pangolins). It went through civets first, which were sold at markets. That's why SARS first showed up in Foshan, 1000 km away from where the bats that harbor the ancestral virus to SARS live.

The Nature paper you linked shows that live animals that are known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were sold at the Huanan Seafood market. Because of that, the paper has been generally received as strongly supporting the idea that the outbreak began at the Huanan market.

Can you give more data on that? Last I knew, the animal reservoir wasn't identified, has that changed recently? We have a wild animal population infected with Covid-19?

I would revise my assessments if we have a clear animal reservoir, but I need to see more data on that first.

The intermediate host hasn't yet been identified, but the site of the first known outbreak was a market where wild animals were sold, exactly like with SARS. On the other hand, there's no evidence that links the outbreak to the lab in any way.

That goes back to seeming odd to me. We know all the animals there thanks to a comprehensive survey and prior outbreaks didn't take even half this long to find.

And several lab workers did get sick early on. We'll likely never find solid proof one way or another at this rate, though, unless an animal reservoir is found.

> We know all the animals there thanks to a comprehensive survey

The people surveying which animals were there were not from the government, and were not studying coronaviruses. They're conservationists, and it's coincidental that they did this survey just before the outbreak.

> And several lab workers did get sick early on.

So the US government claims, without providing any evidence.

> prior outbreaks didn't take even half this long to find.

That very much depends on which outbreak we're talking about. The intermediate species for SARS was found within about a year, but how Ebola spills over is still elusive, decades after its discovery.

Unlike with SARS, this time around, the Chinese government closed the market down quickly, and also quickly shut down the wildlife farms and culled their stock. That might possibly make finding the intermediate host more difficult.

Sure, but knowing the species and origins of the animals gives us a good overview of what's there. It's weird, but not impossible, that we haven't found it given that. If China had been more forthcoming--and had kept samples from the culls--we would likely have more answers.

Regarding the researchers, there were videos by some people in China who later vanished. I know that China is usually China, but that doesn't exactly make me trust them more.

> If China had been more forthcoming--and had kept samples from the culls--we would likely have more answers.

It's entirely possible that the people ordering the culls and the people carrying out the scientific investigations are different and don't talk to each other. From what I've heard, the wildlife trade was shut down very quickly after the outbreak was discovered. This is a bit like the Huanan market: it would have been scientifically valuable to keep it as-is and do a thorough study, but once the authorities discovered there was an outbreak there, they immediately ordered it to be closed and decontaminated - which makes sense from a public health point of view.

Anyways, there has been a lot of extremely valuable research published over the last year+ by Chinese researchers on the origins of the virus (we now know a lot more about the family of viruses that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to, for example), and I think progress will continue to be made.

There are actual virologists who support the lab leak theory, but my guess is that Congress is calling him because he is pushing it as an intentional lab leak. There is so far no evidence at all for that, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Biological warfare is like trying to use a grenade as a handgun. Yes it does hurt your opponent, but...

Yes China did seem to contain COVID well, but if it were (hypothetically) a bio-weapon there's no way they could have known ahead of time they'd be this successful or that the virus wouldn't mutate into something far more dangerous. The CCP can be evil but they're not reckless. They prefer a very measured, calculated, incremental approach, not high-risk gambits like releasing a bioweapon. If that backfired it could decimate their population, drag them into WWIII, or both, and none of that would be a win.

> There are actual virologists who support the lab leak theory

Very few. I don't know of any major virologist who actually says it's more likely, and the overwhelming majority say it's highly unlikely.

Right now, everything points to the outbreak being associated with animal markets, just like SARS.

Using quantity like this to prop up your reasoning and discounting the contributions of someone outside of a field both weaken the strength of your conclusions, unfortunately.

When people who know what they're talking about say one thing, and people who don't know what they're talking about say the opposite, who are you going to listen to?

There are very good reasons why virologists think SARS-CoV-2 spilled over naturally. I've discussed some of the reasons elsewhere in this discussion (there's absolutely no evidence the WIV had this virus before the outbreak, and there's pretty good evidence they didn't, dangerous human-animal interactions outside labs are vastly more common than in labs, the first outbreak was centered on a market that housed live animals).