A lack of correlation definitely does not mean causation, and they never found any relevant evidence of CoV-2 transmission in the wet market. They also never found cases of Covid prior to November 2019, which would mean this virus somehow became an extremely good for for human transmission within weeks of making the jump.
If two variables are correlated that means they share a relationship. If you are stating that the relationship is coincidental then you should have a basis for that rationale. This can easily be estimated. There are 59 BSL4 labs in the world. The wet market is 14 km away from the lab. The Earth's land surface area is 148,326,000 km2.
14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2
36,329 / 148,326,000 = 0.000245
There is a 0.02% chance that a random disease will outbreak within 14 km of a BSL4 lab.
The problem with this sort of crude statistical analysis is that it assumes humans and coronaviruses are evenly distributed across the earth's surface. This obviously isn't the case. Wuhan is a densely populated major population centre and transit/commerce hub with a population larger than the Bay Area, and the [large] surrounding region supplying produce to Wuhan's markets includes rural areas noted for animal coronaviruses, including the suspected origin of SARS. Which isn't to say there's no statistical reason to consider the lab and the outbreak might be linked, but back of the envelope maths which ignores the existence of cities is the opposite of a compelling case.
No to mention that the outbreak is the first known one, not the origin which - if not spread from a lab - is likely somewhere considerably more rural and less likely to attract attention. Took 15 years to trace the probable natural origin of SARS in China (1000km away from the first city outbreak, 1km from a neighbouring village) which wasn't as highly politicised. The subsequent lab-originated local SARS outbreaks were traced to people associated with the labs more easily (though again, they weren't as highly politicised).
These viruses come from animals, not humans. The probability of rural infection is probably much higher, as you said. So cut it in half, it's more like a 0.01% chance.
Yes, if you completely ignore the probability of detection being much higher when the virus reaches an urban area, and the reference in my post to the original SARS virus being traced to an "origin" in an urban area 1000 miles from its animal source, much like the MERS virus was identified in Jeddah and not amongst camel herders in the desert, you can make up new estimates which also bear no resemblance to the actual underlying probabilities.
No to mention that the outbreak is the first known one, not the origin
Epidemiologists conducted an extensive investigation to trace the origin. The probability of detection is not higher in the city. So I'm afraid that's incorrect. You're not making any sense here. You're disputing both the lab leak theory and the wet market theory? You're just shifting the goalposts to fit your argument.
Epidemiologists conducted an extensive investigation to trace the origin and also didn't find any connection whatsoever with the lab. I'm not sure why every theory that doesn't involve the lab is forced to conform to the assumption that epidemiologists know everything there is to know about the source of COVID, something epidemiologists themselves didn't claim when identifying the wet market as the initial superspreader event, most likely from animals or traders originating from unknown regions outside the city.
Of course a novel coronavirus - especially one that does not produce severe or unusual symptoms in most infected people - is more likely to be identified when it becomes established in a city where it spreads quickly to many people with access to good healthcare, not a rural area where there are fewer people and more basic healthcare which infected people are less likely to use. This is why the outbreak of the original SARS novel coronavirus was identified in an urban area 1000 miles from the suspected zoonotic source of the virus, not in the neighbouring village whose unidentified inhabitants (or animal produce) most likely transmitted it to the city. It is not me "shifting the goalposts" that you continue to pretend I didn't point that out in my first post.
Setting aside all the other evidence for and against the lab-leak hypothesis, I gotta argue with your numbers. Humans are not randomly distributed over the land-surface of the earth. Neither are virology labs. The first known starting point of a disease outbreak will almost definitely be in a densely populated area, since that's basically a requirement for an outbreak. So taking that into account we have to correlate densely populated areas with BSL4 labs. For a back-of-the-envelope estimate, let's use the assumption:
> "About 90% of the earth’s people live on only 10% of the land."
And let's assume that all of those 59 labs are in that 10% as well.
I'm sure it's actually smaller than that - since not all of that 10% of the land has enough density to be the epicenter of an outbreak, but... let's roll with that 10%
That'd put you off by a factor of 10.
14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2
148,326,000 * 10% = 14,832,600
36,329 / 14,832,600 = 0.00245 aka 0.2%
On top of that there have been multiple tries at this - in recent memory we've seen SARS classic, Covid-19, MERS-CoV, and Swine Flu. That's four chances at a target at least as big as 0.2%.
My probabilities are rusty, but I believe that's 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% = 99.2% chance of none of those appearing near a lab or an 0.8% chance it was near a lab. If we take that into account, it starts to seem a bit more likely that we'd see something like this...
And let's not even touch the > 1300 BLS3 labs that are out there.
With all respect, how do you think this proves your point at all?
Do you not find it absurd in the extreme that the novel Coronavirus lab a few km from the outbreak of a novel coronavirus was barred from investigation?
Is it not a giant raging blinking neon clue that when Australia wanted an investigation China threatened them with economic apocalypse?
And in this context, you think a .8% chance that it would appear near a lab is high enough to discount the possibility??? My head is exploding.
> With all respect, how do you think this proves your point at all?
I wasn’t trying to prove a point, I was trying to dis-prove a point: that you can’t prove the lab leaks based on geography alone. 0.02% chance is VERY unlikely - it’s not proof but it sure does suggest. A 0.2% chance or a 0.8% chance is… well it’s still rare, but not shockingly rare. Again I suspect the geographic odds are even higher, if you properly correlate outbreak-size population density and labs. Bsl3 labs brings the odds closer to 5% (or 19% if you count the four other novel disease incidents and I’m doing my probability math right).
Again, none of this disproves a lab leak. But it sure does tell us that we can’t prove it with geography, as the post I was responding to suggested.
