User talk:CutePeach/YESLABLEAK
Does WP:NOLABLEAK say we should remove these mentions?
editI will say this essay is more WP:PAG-based and succinct than other recent pro-leak essays, which is obviously a great thing. I appreciate the effort put into it for that reason. But I will also say, it appears to be making a straw man argument (relevant WP policy)...
WP:NOLABLEAK doesn't say we shouldn't cover the lab leak theories, it says we should contextualize these theories in the mainstream scholarly view, which is that they are "unlikely."This is directly in line with WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, WP:DUE, and WP:SOURCETYPES. This essay portrays NOLABLEAK as a deletionist argument, when that isn't really what it is. It may have been used for such arguments at some point in the past, but that A) isn't how it's used today, and B) isn't what it actually says. No one is currently arguing that we should "remove" mentions of the lab leak, far from it. The issue is more about how we describe the lab leak, and what words we use. We should be careful not to misrepresent the views of other user essays like this.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:05, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- Shibbolethink, before being a misapplication of our WP:MEDRS and WP:SCHOLARSHIP policies, WP:NOLABLEAK’s statement
we should contextualize these theories in the mainstream scholarly view
is a logical fallacy. We should not have to apply the scientific process such as peer review to matters of Law, and the International Health Regulations in specific. This was very clearly stated by Ebright from very early on in this whole thing [1]. This was also explained to you by DGG here [2], Colin here [3]. DGG and Colin probably never even read that Ebright’s quote. It's just intuitive and logical.
- I’d like to be able to work with you, but I am constantly finding that you are unable to stop your personal POV from interfering with your ability to make neutral editorial decisions on Wikipedia. I initially welcomed the discussion on your POV and your reddit post - in order to elevate the discourse - but in the end it became like Colin described, a forum discussion. You just wrote that you
support
a rewrite of Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19#Reactions [4], even though the President of the USA, the Group of Seven, the U.S. National Academies, the US Senate, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leaders of thirteen other nations, as well as the European Union and the Director-General of the World Health Organization himself (the guy who actually commissioned the study) have reacted very critically to the report. You really think this rewrite will pass the scrutiny of our colleagues on WP:NPOV/N?
- As a first step, I think we should be allowed to talk about our POVs in less accusatory terms, because there is nothing wrong with you having a POV, and you can’t deny it isn’t a factor in your editorial decision making. As soon you saw this essay, you were over in WP:FT/N talking about nominating the shortcut for RfD [5]. Please strike the term
malfeasance
from this message of yours [6], and we’ll continue the discussion there. I never accused you of malfeasance. CutePeach (talk) 13:19, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
How mainstream is the view that coronaviruses are very commonly zoonotic?
editHere is another misleading argument in this essay: "Some virologists have argued that something about Sarbecoviruses and SARS-like viruses gives them the ability to jump the species barrier and become human transmissible, like a super giant magnet attracting our analogous meteorites from outer space.
"
This isn't just an off-hand hypothesis of "some virologists," it's the mainstream accepted view among coronavirus experts, and it's supported by lots of evidence.[1] It has nothing to do with humans being "magnetic" for coronaviruses or anything like that. It's because coronaviruses (especially sarsbecoviruses) are known to circulate so heavily and in such a distributed way across bats and other wild animals.[2][3][4] (Animals, I might add, whose habitats we are continually eroding,[5] using for bushmeat and traditional chinese medicine,[6][7] and thereby bringing the animal in repeatedly closer contact with the human population).[8][9]
This is also not new. This is a decades old idea. Virologists have known for years that bats are some of the best at transmitting zoonotic viruses.[10][11][12] We also know that all seven known human-tropic coronaviruses have a zoonotic origin,[13] and have crossed over between us and related species (and back and forth) numerous times.[14][15] This could be due to the similarity between human ACE2 receptors and that of many similar mammalian species (bats, ferrets, minks, dogs, etc),[16] or the fact that these coronaviruses are so easily transmitted period (via droplets, fomites, etc.)[17]
The 4 "common cold" coronaviruses circulate extremely well in humans, but are not very pathogenic.[18] SARS-1 and MERS transmit well, but don't sustain transmission, and are not very adapted to humans (they burn out).[19] They are also both extremely pathogenic. SARS-2 is a mix of these two types of coronaviruses.[1] It's not an absurd scientific conclusion to see that coronaviruses appear to have a spectrum of pathogenicity inversely related to their "adaptation" to humans, and this is part of why they cross over into humans so readily.
This is all what most relevant experts think, and hence what wikipedia is supposed to say. Influenza viruses are also the same way with regards to: plentiful zoonotic reservoirs,[20] wide and varied circulation,[21][22] and high and low pathogenicity species relating to propensity for sustained and abruptive transmission.[23][24][25] Importantly, before this pandemic many experts were warning about the possibility of a zoonotic pandemic from coronaviruses and other similar zoonotic highly-cross-species transmissible diseases![26]
Globally speaking, and in the frame of history, this is not an unusual event, virologists expected this. We know that such pandemics happen every 20-30 years,[27][28] and they appear to be increasing in frequency.[29][30][31] The global "virome" of circulating and zoonotic viruses is massive and interwoven with the human race via our animal friends, causing tons of zoonotic infections every day. Coronaviruses are just the ones everybody's talking about lately.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:13, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- Shibbolethink I don’t disagree on your main points, but I would point out to you that there is significant diversity in the other zoonotic viruses that have managed to make the jump to humans, and become human transmissible - like SARS-CoV-1 and 2. If a MERS-like CoV emerged in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, right after a new lab was set up there to collect and study exactly that exact species of CoVs, then we’d certainly be wanting to take a good look at that lab to see if its a case of reemergence of MERS, or something similar. Were it to be found that the lab or the Saudi government was truing to conceal data - such as an unknown sister clade of the novel virus - the more weight we’d give our lab origins hypothesis, and the more we’d press the WHO to investigate it. You would not expect a civilization-ending meteorite to hit earth in the same spot another meteorite hit twenty years earlier, and that analogy is very apt for this puzzle. Currently we don’t have enough data on SARS-like viruses or Sarbecoviruses to find any matches for the features we see in SARS-CoV-2, such as the FCS and double CGG sequence, which remain anomalous. CutePeach (talk) 22:23, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
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Shibbolethink, what is also true, globally speaking, is that even the best current secure facilities for cultivation and study of dangerous microorganisms have had accidents, and research that deliberately increases the danger of the organisms studied there makes such accidents inherently more dangerous to an unknowable extent--whether or not this particular pandemic had its origin in such an event. It's the mere possibility of such a causation which has made this clearer to those who may not have realized the danger previously. DGG ( talk ) 07:20, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
- @DGG: That's why you have stuff like "Despite the unlikelihood of the event, and although definitive answers are likely to take years of research, biosecurity experts have called for a review of global biosecurity policies, citing known gaps in international standards for biosafety." But that doesn't justify any of the provably false statements above (the claims about the furin-cleavage site [FCS] and the "double CGG sequence" have been debunked, notably, see here for an in-depth overview of the FCS or here for a rebuttal of the more common claims about deliberate engineering, including the "anomalous" codons), nor the sometimes openly hostile attitude from some proponents of the idea... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:43, 22 July 2021 (UTC)