Peter Miller
@tgof137
Followers
1,152
Following
260
Media
892
Statuses
4,948
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
RIIZE
• 119988 Tweets
Noa Argamani
• 112372 Tweets
Hobi
• 98216 Tweets
Nuseirat
• 92601 Tweets
THANK YOU BTS
• 92179 Tweets
مخيم النصيرات
• 87382 Tweets
#yks2024
• 62734 Tweets
Shlomi Ziv
• 60913 Tweets
Andrey Kozlov
• 60373 Tweets
Almog Meir Jan
• 55117 Tweets
SULWHASOO MOMENT GULF
• 46714 Tweets
サイバー攻撃
• 45070 Tweets
#世にも奇妙な物語
• 37151 Tweets
#BlankTheSeriesSS2EP4
• 33905 Tweets
#ネーションズリーグ
• 33509 Tweets
ULTIMATE LOVE FOR BLANK
• 32557 Tweets
バレーボール
• 31130 Tweets
マッサマン
• 30138 Tweets
#tyt2024
• 28879 Tweets
烈火の炎
• 26626 Tweets
SHOW STOPPER ELVISH
• 25976 Tweets
キスマイ
• 24993 Tweets
スロベニア
• 19143 Tweets
PITANDA NO E DE CASA
• 15455 Tweets
ジェシー
• 14133 Tweets
メインキャラクター
• 12547 Tweets
東キヨドーム
• 11481 Tweets
تحرير الاسري
• 10921 Tweets
男子バレー
• 10118 Tweets
@C_Kavanagh
I found a way to figure out what large language models think about this question.
40
18
663
There's a progression of every lab leak argument -- because the evidence for lab leak is bad, the conspiracy has to grow.
I pointed out a flaw in the lab leak theory, by referencing a natural virus, Lyra11, found way back in 2011. So the theory changed to say that virus is fake.
@tgof137
@RobTownley6
@mbw61567742
@Ticklicker56
@stevenemassey
@abhishek_s_1
@BiophysicsFL
@nizzaneela
@OrionJohnston
@Biorealism
@PatrickSSte
@StevanBolton
@gdemaneuf
@NateSilver538
@natesilver
@jbloom_lab
Lyra11 is a PLA virus. Why should we trust it? Temmam's own sequences are dubious, showing signs of some really weird recombination. Pasteur has been working with the PLA and WIV since 2003 on SARS. They're not overly cautious about choosing their friends.
4
1
4
14
26
94
@Bryce_Nickels
@jonatanpallesen
While responding to you, I literally just got 2 responses from people trying to sell ivermectin online.
That concerns me. Peter Hotez does not.
6
6
92
Thread on proCov2.
This argument comes up a lot in covid origins discussions -- which covid strain came first?
12
31
92
Did the Wuhan lab have a secret virus that they could have used to create SARS-CoV-2? 🧵
21
22
81
I tried simulating the early covid epidemic in Wuhan to better understand a few questions:
When did covid start?
Did it start with 2 introductions of the virus, or only one?
12
19
76
@Davidliberty002
@BretWeinstein
@waitbutwhy
Pornography gets less blurry, making it vastly more dangerous to them.
0
0
68
@tracewoodgrains
@Steve_Sailer
@know_tru
@whstancil
The overton window shifted over time.
Scott Alexander was willing to talk about it by 2022:
Noah Smith made a weak mea culpa by late 2022:
Matt Yglesias by late 2023:
When I did my cost-benefit analysis of the Floyd protests, I did not take into account an explosion in the number of homicides of children.
But it's increasingly hard to ignore the likelihood that this was indeed a cost.
106
77
655
7
5
65
A thread on intermediate genomes, prompted by this new study.
Did covid start from one introduction or two?
What was the original strain of the virus?
Over 4 yrs after being first to publicly release SARS-CoV-2 genome, Yong-Zhen Zhang just published large set of viral seqs from first stage of COVID-19 outbreak in China
He uses data to suggest scenarios re early outbreak & root of viral phylogenetic tree
20
162
473
9
23
64
@yashkaf
@Rootclaim
My calculation was basically, "if you can multiply 10 things for the lab side to make it 1 in 700 million, I can multiply 20 things for zoonosis".
And I spent a lot of the debate saying that the world isn't that simple, both politely and not so politely:
1
3
62
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
Bret, there's a lot you have to explain to make this convincing.
1. Why is the vaccine more dangerous than natural infection, with regards to ADE? Seems like reinfection should be similarly dangerous in either case.
14
4
43
Lab leak supporters aren't very good at understanding science or data, but they are really good at creating controversy.
The latest manufactured controversy involves a diagram I used in the Rootclaim debate which ended up in Scott Alexander's blog post:
@arguablywrong
@slatestarcodex
It gets worse. As evidence against an earlier introduction,
@slatestarcodex
presents a doctored version of Fig. 3E from Pekar et al.'s "Timing the SARS-CoV-2 index case in Hubei province", 2021.
5
13
84
11
9
38
But where does the 700 viruses number come from?
I thought this one would take a lot of effort to track down, but it turns out that Daszak already had a thread up 4 years ago, describing the same 700 sequences!
Our paper out now describes phylogeny of >700 novel RdRp sequences of bat-CoVs from China w/ all others known (500+ bat-, 8 pangolin-CoVs) in press w/
@NatureComms
Collab w/ Wuhan Inst Virol, Guangdong Acad Sci
@DukeNUS
@UQ_News
@nycbat
@dukenus
@EpsteinJon
20
216
372
2
2
34
Last week's lab leak controversy claimed that the WIV had 15,000 secret samples and 700 undisclosed viruses.
4
2
33
@dr_handler
@MJnanostretch
@Rebecca21951651
@_everythingism
@Engineer2The
@RobTownley6
@jbloom_lab
I don't think increased biosafety is bad.
But since I think it's highly likely this pandemic was natural and future pandemics will be, I think selling the public on a false lab leak theory will reduce the emphasis on more important efforts to stop the next natural pandemic.
10
5
31
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
6. To eradicate covid, you need to get most of the US taking pills. Do you expect people who won't get 2 shots or even wear masks to all diligently take pills every week until the virus is gone? To give the pills to their kids?
4
1
26
Understanding the science can get complicated, but I think it can be easier to recognize patterns in how people tell stories.
Those patterns can often help you guess the right answer.
5
1
30
Anyways, that's all a bit complicated.
It took me a while to understand this stuff and I see a lot of confusion about it on Twitter.
I hope this thread sheds some light on the topic.
14
2
29
@mtaibbi
@clairlemon
The problem is that false claims spread faster than the rebuttals.
Like, Steve Kirsch has made a false claim that the vaccines killed 25,000 people.
I debunked it on twitter and wrote a blog post:
Avi debunked it in debate.
14
5
28
@dr_handler
@simon_gordon_
@ibisibis123
@MJnanostretch
@Rebecca21951651
@_everythingism
@RobTownley6
@jbloom_lab
The word amateur is normally used to mean: somebody who does something (e.g. a job) without being paid for it.
I seem to recall getting paid for debunking the lab leak theory.
1
2
26
But it turns out that the paper was written and submitted in 2019.
It was submitted before any lab leak would have happened and before the lab would have anything to hide.
3
0
27
Anyways, I'm not a virologist, just a guy who's interested in covid misinformation.
I often find the way that people tell stories more interesting than the data itself.
6
1
27
The HIV lab origin theories were promoted by other lab leak authors:
7
2
27
@BradCLemley
@clairlemon
@BretWeinstein
HIV is up to 40 million cases and still 100% fatal without treatment. Transmits long before symptoms start, so there's no evolutionary pressure on lethality.
Covid also does some presymptomatic transmission. We have no idea if it will evolve to be more or less deadly.
2
0
23
Every time, there's a hook, a good story -- "look at this secret early data".
When level-headed scientists investigate it, it always turns out to not actually be early or important.
But the story often spreads faster than any careful analysis.
4
1
26
We also have a copy of the lab's database, from 2018. As part of an unpublished paper, the viruses were saved on a foreign server and released a few years later.
There was also no secret virus in that one.
3
1
26
The main reason I ended up rejecting the lab leak theory is that the evidence does not hold up -- the facts point away from the lab and towards zoonosis at a wet market.
5
2
25
I think Francisco is reading the e-mails wrong, though, it looks like Ben Hu actually tried to speed up the publication, not slow it down:
1
0
25
But you can also get to the right conclusion just by noticing who's promoting the theory and what else they believe.
I.e. one of the big accounts promoting it is also a 9/11 truther who thinks HIV was caused by vaccines:
5
1
25
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
7. Some people will inevitably start to make videos telling us that the pills are toxic, or part of a plot to sterilize us all. Do you think YouTube should censor those?
2
0
21
We also know that those were collected over more than a decade, and many were published along the way.
So the most obvious explanation is that Daszak was referring to the same set of samples, not 15,000 secret samples that were collected over years and never mentioned.
2
0
24
@yashkaf
@Rootclaim
We actually considered you in our first round of judge ideas.
I proposed Scott, Zvi, Kelsey Piper, Julia Galef, and you as rationalists who'd be good for the role.
Saar said you were friends with him, so it wouldn't be a fair choice.
2
0
24
For the lab leak theory, evidence just goes from important to fake to important again, on a whim.
2
4
25
We already know that the WIV had about 20,000 samples, 2,000 viruses, and 200 sarbecoviruses.
2
1
24
@thebadstats
@BretWeinstein
I thought the challenge was when he asked if you were a coward.
And then Bret already lost by refusing to have you on his show.
0
0
22
Covid origins sleuths used a FOIA request to get the original copy of the paper.
There was no secret virus in it, even DRASTIC members will tell you that:
2
3
23
So, as of mid-2019, the lab didn't have a relevant virus, or at least had no sequence worth publishing.
3
2
23
Lab leak theorists imagined that some secret virus was in there, but it just got removed before publication, and a FOIA request would prove it.
2
2
23
The paper that Daszak is referencing in that thread (Latinne et al) wasn't published until mid 2020.
Of course you would think that the lab would try to cover up any sequence used to create SARS-CoV-2.
1
0
23
But learning about virology takes work and spotting misinformation is much easier.
If you're looking for shortcuts to figuring out the truth, it's a lot easier to focus on who's pushing the lab leak theory, why they're doing it, and whether they have any filter for truth --
4
1
23
Covid origins is a confusing topic, because the science is complicated and the media incentives are bad (lab leak stories always get more clicks than stories about the wildlife trade)
I did the debate to try to help communicate the science, and I'll keep writing about the issue
3
0
23
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
2. Wouldn't herd immunity via covid infection drive immune escape just like vaccination? Immunity via vaccines should just get us to the exact same place faster, with less deaths.
2
0
20
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
9. Covid can spread to other animals, there will be viral reservoirs. Do you plan to put wild mink on ivermectin?
2
0
17
It also doesn't seem likely to the US intelligence community, which thinks the lab had no secret virus:
2
2
22
And it showed up first at a wet market selling civets and raccoon dogs, just like SARS1 did.
11
1
22
You can imagine some secret program where the lab did gain of function research on other viruses, separate from the viruses that they were sequencing and publishing, but that certainly doesn't seem likely to me.
5
1
23
Some of the scientists and investigative reporters pushing the lab leak theory work with a think tank that also publishes anti-vax authors:
5
3
21
The current market origin theory is that Lineage A and Lineage B are 2 spillovers from animals at the Huanan market.
That explains all the data we have, including why the genetic clock looks reversed -- even though A evolved first in the animal, B spilled over first:
7
4
21
I'd point out a few things here. Notice that they're including both CC and TT intermediates.
The original virus could only be one or the other, so these are mutually inconsistent claims.
The strategy here is very much, "throw things at the wall and see what sticks".
4
1
21
All the early covid genomes can be divided up into Lineage A and Lineage B.
This is my favorite visualization of the early genomes (up to mid February), from
@acritschristoph
.
A is the cluster in the upper left, B is the larger cluster, on the lower right:
3
5
20
Do they update their model when they see a contradiction or flaw in their theory?
Or do they just endorse a larger conspiracy theory to cover up the mistake?
6
0
21
Because that feature was found in nature, Ridley suggested that maybe the lab secretly had that virus.
That makes it hard to disprove the lab leak theory. As soon as some evidence is found in nature, the lab leak theory expands and says the lab had already found that evidence.
4
0
20
Since there's a C->T bias in mutations, it's more likely you'll find a TT genome by chance and less likely you'll find a CC.
4
0
19
For those attached to the lab leak theory, this should make you wonder a little.
Many people think that China used a market outbreak to hide a lab leak.
But, if that was the goal, why would these errors all point in the wrong direction -- away from the market, not towards it?
3
1
20
@NancyJProctor
@peterboghossian
True equality comes when there are no more suburban homes and fences, only tents.
4
0
17
This is the gimmick behind "bayesian reasoning".
If you arbitrarily assign high odds to the things you want to be important, and low odds to the things you don't want to be true, you can make your analysis support anything.
4
2
20
@notthatpele
@Humble_Analysis
We most close the borders before covid persistente reaches the US!
1
2
18
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
14. I do hope you're right that ivermectin works, and i do hope the world uses it for treatment if it does. The world desperately needs cheap and effective treatments. But it's not the least bit clear that we can get by without vaccination.
3
0
18
The other problem is that these proCov2 genomes were not found early. I labelled the red and blue dots from that previous diagram (and measured mutations relative to RATG-13)
The A+29095T genomes are purple, the A+18060T genomes are orange. Those weren't found until January.
4
3
20
@_everythingism
@MJnanostretch
@Engineer2The
@RobTownley6
@Rebecca21951651
@jbloom_lab
The problem with most conspiracy theorists is not that they are too skeptical, but that they are too credulous.
2
6
20
Bloom is now promoting a new paper with data from Shanghai.
First off, it's not early data. It's from late January and beyond.
There may be some data in China from Nov or early Dec that would help solve the origins question, but late January data from another city will not.
3
3
20
Interesting to watch Matt Ridley move on from lab leak to other crank opinions. Now he's asking if lockdowns killed more people than covid:
The red line (all excess deaths) is above the black line (covid deaths) in all these countries except Sweden, and the gap is still growing in some.
Does this simply mean lockdowns killed more people than covid?
@DrJBhattacharya
?
50
142
511
10
2
19
Every case at the Huanan market which was sequenced had Lineage B.
Some people theorized that Lineage A started outside the market.
One theory said that A came from a different market in Wuhan.
Another theory said that A started at the lab and mutated to B at the market.
5
2
19
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
11. If you can't eradicate it, and we don't have antibodies, then we're all taking pills forever. If we stop, then 1 case can sweep the world in 6 months.
2
0
16
The virus was publicly known by the end of December.
But the Wuhan government didn't react until late January.
They let Chinese New Years celebrations happen.
People in Wuhan tried to set a record for largest potluck, with 40,000 families.
7
0
19
The second known lineage A case stayed at a hotel near the market for 5 days before getting sick.
The 3rd lineage A sample was taken at a stall at the Huanan market.
So, the only early places that Lineage A was found are at or near the market.
6
3
18
We don't have a lot of data on where lineage A was, in December 2019, as we only found 2 sequenced lineage A cases.
One of the two cases lived 2 km away from the market, and was found with an unbiased search:
(F in this map is for family infections)
4
3
18
It's also a question of which animals people farm and eat.
People in Texas farm different animals than in China.
(Like lots of cows, which are currently getting infected with H5N1, in a possible prelude to our next pandemic)
1
1
19
When I first heard the lab leak theory, in 2020, I didn't want to dismiss it without digging
Seemed possible for a lab to make a virus
If only a few people knew, maybe they could cover that up
But not the case when your conspiracy includes global scientists, corporations, etc.
2
1
19
In 2021, scientists found bat viruses in Laos, with almost the same RBD as SARS2.
That eliminated any need for a pangolin chimera theory.
For most scientists, that was a clear sign that this feature came naturally from bats.
4
0
18
All this evidence does make sense, though, for the natural hypothesis.
SARS-CoV-2 was able to jump from bats to intermediate host to humans, because it's one of the viruses with wide ACE2 binding.
It has some features of a respiratory virus in that intermediate host.
2
0
18
Today's lab leak theories have little resemblance to 2020's lab leak theories. You could have tuned out for the first year or two and missed nothing.
2
0
18
We can also look at other scientists and what they were doing, during that time.
The Wuhan scientists were acting normally the whole time, going to conferences, going out to dinner, hosting a camp for students at the WIV:
2⃣ On Jan 12-15 2020, the Wuhan Institute of Virology hosted a winter camp for college students; 55 took part!
Meanwhile, the virus was spreading in the city. You'd think they would have cancelled the event, had they known that SARS-CoV-2 had leaked from their facilities... ▫️4/
1
2
33
1
1
18
@Doctor_Eric_B
Also, we all have immunity debt because these ineffective masks stopped us from getting other diseases.
1
0
18
@MJnanostretch
@_everythingism
@Rebecca21951651
@dr_handler
@Engineer2The
@RobTownley6
@jbloom_lab
Here's Ridley in 2010, praising "online amateurs" for changing the "deceptive" climate debate and criticizing climate scientists.
A decade years later, he's praising folks like DRASTIC for changing the debate against "deceptive virologists".
6
6
15
@BretWeinstein
@clairlemon
@mtaibbi
8. You need to eradicate covid around the world, as well. What's your plan for countries that haven't even been able to get rid of polio?
1
0
14
In January, everyone knows about the virus and he's still talking about infecting humanized mice with coronaviruses:
(He's referring to work done at UNC, not in Wuhan).
@ProMED_mail
@hongying_li
@EcoHealthNYC
@nycbat
@Laurie_Garrett
...We isolated SARSr-CoVs that bind to human cells in the lab &
@Baric_Lab
@TheMenacheryLab
+ others showed some of these have pandemic potential, able to infect humanized mice & not protected by candidate SARS vaccine or Monoclonal therapeutics.
2
7
12
2
0
18
Some of these are actually from Wuhan, so at first I thought maybe they had discovered something important and new.
But then I looked up those genomes in GISAID and discovered... the Wuhan ones were also sequenced in Sichuan!
So it's the same problem.
1
0
18
Then, every virus ever found in China is fake:
@tgof137
@RobTownley6
@mbw61567742
@Ticklicker56
@stevenemassey
@abhishek_s_1
@BiophysicsFL
@nizzaneela
@OrionJohnston
@Biorealism
@PatrickSSte
@StevanBolton
@gdemaneuf
@NateSilver538
@natesilver
@jbloom_lab
Try do some sarbecov analysis that doesn't rely on sequences from the PLA and/or WIV. There's almost nothing left. Anything else likely comes from their close friends.
They've built an enormous pile of bullshit for western scientists to feast on. No skepticism in evidence.
1
0
8
5
0
18
This also isn't the first time that people have taken Daszak's words out of context.
Daszak tweeted about 50 SARS related viruses, back in November 2019:
Not true - we’ve made great progress with bat SARS-related CoVs, ID’ing >50 novel strains, sequencing spike protein genes, ID’ing ones that bind to human cells, using recombinant viruses/humanized mice to see SARS-like signs, and showing some don’t respond to MAbs, vaccines...
28
84
94
2
0
18
I looked around to try to find the first time someone asked Daszak about the lab leak theory:
1
1
18
But as of 2024, Yuri has changed his mind to say that the pangolin viruses are real again:
2
0
18
You can also get a feel for when the two lineages first started, just by looking at the viral diversity over time -- when each one first starts, the virus has no diversity.
As it infects more people, there are more mutations and more diversity:
7
4
17
That also doesn't seem like something to brag about, if you know about a coronavirus lab leak that just happened.
Maybe he still doesn't know?
2
0
18
Then, Apple CEO Tim Cook is in on the plot to suppress discussion of the lab leak theory:
3
0
18
@thereal_truther
@DiedSuddenly_
Not sure why this is okay if Sandy Hook conspiracies are off limits:
@KimDotcom
@SamHarrisOrg
My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat.
I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.
18K
11K
116K
1
0
17
@RCAFDM
@sodhuxley
@Steve_Sailer
And no corresponding increases elsewhere in the world.
In Mexico, the murder rate went down by 3% in 2020. In Canada, up by 7%. In Brazil, up by 4%. In the UK, up by 7%. In Germany, up by 4%.
In the US, murders went up by 29%. And the rise was primarily in the black community.
1
0
14
As of 2021, there was a mystery -- Lineage A is 2 mutations closer to known bat viruses but Lineage B seemed to start earlier.
A review paper in 2021 used a bayesian analysis to estimate 96% odds that Lineage B came first.
3
3
16
But that's not everyone -- someone else in the lab leak community came up with a theory that BANAL-52 is fake.
And Matt Ridley, who previously said the BANAL viruses made the lab leak theory stronger, now said it was vitally important to consider that these might be fake:
2
0
17
That analysis would rule out most of the simple lab leak scenarios.
The lab can't just plug a furin cleavage site into a bat virus.
Now the lab needs to be working on some other animal, or they need to follow some complicated process to alter the bat virus.
3
0
17