potholer54
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2021
26:08 · 182K views · May 16, 2020
Science journalist potholer54 examines the claim that SARS-CoV-2 came from a Wuhan lab, tracing the sources behind it and the weaknesses in the evidence.
HN commenters recommend it as a methodical debunking of early lab-leak claims.
6 comments from Hacker News
> I'm not denying the plausibility that it was simply a mistake with a highly contagious virus being studied in their Wuhan lab There are two labs in Wuhan. The institute of virology, and the wuhan CDC. The institute of virology is 12 km from where the virus started spreading. The CDC lab -which does not study viruses- was the one at the center of the spread. The amount of bullshit associated with the origins of the virus is embarrassing. It would be one thing if it was planted propaganda- there are obvious lies and embellishments, but the sheer number of mistranslations, misunderstandings, and hilariously implausible theories taken as fact is insane. Potholer54 did a rather methodical takedown: this video
A lot of this “circumstantial evidence” was and is game-of-telephone nonsense. Many mix together two completely different institutions (the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology) which are several kilometres apart, for example. (Edit: this video is a great look at said game of telephone.)
If anyone here wants a break from Joe Rogan and Eric Weinstein's world view here is a suggestion: this video Did SARS-Cov-2 start in a Chinese lab? Potholer54 is an Australian science journalist whoes mission it is to debunk junk science and conspiracy theories. He is very entertaining and very insightful.
Here's a two of his videos where he claims that COVID-19 emerged from a lab: [LINK] [LINK] And here's a pretty thorough analysis of the flaws with this theory: this video
I believe you misunderstood his analysis. At timestamp 6:36 of his video [1], laowhy86 analyzes a copy of the draft "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" to conclude that the virus must have come from the lab. This preprint has been shown to be false by future scholarship (see the citations of the draft at [2] for some examples). Potholer then analyzes the veracity of the claims within that preprint in his video [3], starting with an excerpt of [1] starting at 2:02. So the timeline should be: Feb. 2020 - Preprint published -> Apr. 2020 - laowhy's video -> May 2020 - potholer's rebuttal [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video