Most of us are grossly unqualified to provide opinions on any domain save some hyper specialized domain we invest years of effort into. I always think about that when reading comments on the Internet :)

If only the tech gurus of the internet stayed in their lanes, or if people knew better than to take their beliefs from clueless entrepreneurs who got lucky once, the world would be a much better place. Alas, tis not the one we live in.

A lot of skills in say, running a business, really do transfer. It is possible to gain expertise on how to run a small business and translate that to other realms of running a business. But it is also important, perhaps critical, to recognize limitations. The less similar the situation and environment the less that will transfer. Some times enough transfers that the insights are useful. Some times it is actively harmful to apply previous approaches. Recognizing the differences and what transfers is much harder but also a skill. Becoming skilled enough to help up until your limitations is how you can continuously be successful in domains you have no right to be. The irony is even then you may still not really be able to offer helpful insight.

absolutely agree on this. Expertise is essential because it means familiarity w/ the domain methodology, not because you have a certificate

The lab leak theory was always credible. Here in Canada there was a big scandal with Chinese scientists who worked for one of our labs who secretly transferred specimens from Winnipeg to Wuhan in 2019 and the subsequent police investigation went public in 2020.

Here's a good article that's basically a summary of events (as well as teaser for a book): https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/from-our-lab-to-theirs-...

(Apologies to the thread..)

Its not credible: two viral lineages emerged from the market ~1 week apart before the world knew what covid was; they differ by 2 nucleotides; mutation rates are 1e-6 per base per passage; doubling time is about half a week. A group of sick animals better explains the phylogenetics w/ these constraints. Everything points against lab leak: location, timing, and genetics.

You should google the definition of credible since it seems you don't know it... (Hint, it doesn't mean 100% true)

It really boils down to: do you trust a brutal communist dictatorship that has been attacking the West asymmetrically and wants to invade its neighbours to be honest?

Multiple Western governments believe it was a lab leak and coincidentally I'm sure, relations with China have been quite bad since.

My evidence is genetic material; your evidence is state intelligence

Your evidence is a Chinese claim of genetic material. They've certainly never covered anything up before...

Any conclusion about a pathogen origin requires phylogenetic evidence. Everything else is secondary. You could write a trillion intelligence memos in the absence of genetic evidence and get no closer to the answer.

If you want to deny sequence data that predate worldwide recognition and controversy related to COVID-19, OK. But the origin question can never be answered with this denial.