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April 13: Guardian says the hypothesis that the virus may have originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory
theguardian.com/us-news/2020/a…

April 14: Washington Post reports the virus may have originated in a lab
archive.is/OIguS
The distribution-based community

Some stories are hard to discuss because they depend entirely on distribution to be taken seriously.

When an individual says it, it's a fringe theory. When the Washington Post reports it, we always suspected that!
To be clear, this was a courageous story with original reporting by @joshrogin and (if it holds up) should win all the awards! State Dept cables add confidence among people who need institutional signoff.

That said, this paper was around since Feb 15:
img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02…
Personally, I'm against conflict. I think the one good thing that could come out of this line of thinking is to read all of Zhengli Shi's papers on coronaviruses, and those of her coauthors.

Here's a list:
researchgate.net/scientific-con…

See also:
nature.com/articles/nm.39…
You should also read @trvrb's thread from Feb 20 which goes through some of the molecular phylogenetic evidence FOR zoonosis & AGAINST escape from a lab.

This is the kind of calm, rational discussion we need:
This is not purely a scientific question. It's a geopolitical question.

If it actually was a lab accident, some nations may seek reparations from China.

Others may instead align with China to get early access to vaccines, masks.

See also:
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…
Very complex topic. Most think it's zoonotic. Even if it *was* a lab accident, blaming China could be a great way to get your country to the bottom of the list for drugs, vaccines, masks if they are the world leader.

May polarize the world into US/India and Belt & Road camps.
One important neutral source of data that we have is multiple alignments of viral sequences.

This preprint from Current Biology has a detailed analysis that supports closer homology of the SARS-COV-2 virus to pangolin rather than bat-derived sequences.

cell.com/pb-assets/jour…
All these statements can be true:

- Escaped-from-lab vs bioweapon are distinct theories
- Naturally pathogenic vs gain-of-function also distinct
- Fine-grained distinctions between these theories weren't made (archive.is/wip/GqUm1)
- Yet the discussion really *is* dangerous
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
Expect much more of this. Why give free content in the form of quotes & interviews to media corporations?

Every content deal is a business relationship, down to the individual quote. If it doesn’t make sense, just go direct. Build your own distribution to avoid distortion.
Gen Z gets this intuitively.

They are all individual media entrepreneurs who understand the commercial value of attention (“check out my Soundcloud”).

And so corporate journalists are getting paywalled from below.
A Gen Z influencer might love the media and want to become a journalist. Or they might hate the media and distrust all journalists.

Or a mix of both.

But either way they won’t give a scoop to an employee of another media corporation. Maddow doesn’t go on Ingraham or vice versa.
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
Ideally we’d have vaccine, drug, or testing to identify green zones.

But testing hasn’t ramped. Cases haven’t fell. And we have mass unemployment.

We need to make hard choices. Elad helps with new data showing under 40s are 52% of US but 1% of deaths.

So: age-based unlockdown?
Elad’s work is valuable because he pulls data from many countries. Data we only really had over the last month.

Death isn’t the only outcome, of course. The young may still be hospitalized. Or suffer long term issues.

But it looks like they usually live.
A huge question is: for the young who survive COVID-19, are there long-term issues?

It’s anecdotal, but the serious and/or lengthy illnesses of healthy people under 45 like @katgleason & @DavidLat gives pause.

You still don’t want to get this. See also:
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
Good article that surveys the heterogeneity of data on the virus' severity. Death is of course the worst outcome, but hospitalization and emerging reports of long-term damage to the lungs or heart aren't great either.
washingtonpost.com/health/as-offi…
Also a good NYT article on heterogeneity.

I consider the most solid evidence for high severity to be (a) spikes in all-cause mortalities in places like Italy, Spain, NYC and (b) case studies by physicians who've dealt with surges of virus patients.
nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/…
Here's a theoretical framework for dealing with heterogeneity. If we could assemble a single large table of all cases, all the various statistics we are looking at could be conceptualized as roll ups or SQL queries on that large table.
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