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Notes -
BTW, the show notes point to the research papers discussed on the podcast if you would rather see the arguments in that format (providing quote from the internet archive because the TWiV website appears to be down for me at the moment):
The podcast is an interview with the lead author on the papers going over the arguments, although presumably in less detail than the papers themselves.
My understanding is that the first paper shows that the cases show a pattern that strongly suggests the first human cases occurred at the market and not at the lab. And the second paper shows there were multiple spillovers both at the market, which is also inconsistent with the source being the lab.
This link predates the publication of those papers by a few months. I acknowledge that the lab leak theory wasn't a total nonsense conspiracy theory, but the accumulated evidence points pretty strongly against it at the moment. And, more importantly, whether or not it's right, it's a distraction from actions we already know we should be taking (but aren't) to prevent future pandemics.
What does this mean? Nobody here is making policy based on our discussions, what actions should we be taking instead of talking about things we want to talk about? And if lab leak turned out to be true - which you acknowledge is not outside the realm of possibility - why would that not be an important thing to investigate, never mind so unimportant as to be a distraction?
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