Scott Alexander on COVID-19 originated from a lab-related …

Scott Alexander

Author and psychiatrist

For what it's worth, I was close to 50-50 before the debate, and now I'm 90-10 in favor of zoonosis.

AI Verified (Mar 28, 2024)

Source:

Astral Codex Ten

3mo ago

Policy proposals and claims

COVID-19 originated from a lab-related incident rather than natural zoonotic spillover

votes Against

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AI Verified In the article’s COVID-origin debate context, “zoonosis” is the direct alternative to “lab leak,” and the author says he moved from roughly even odds to “90-10 in favor of zoonosis.” That makes the quote directly about the complete statement and gives a clearly determinable stance signal, even though the exact vote direction belongs to the separate pass. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified The quote is an explicit update against the statement: the author says he was near 50-50 before, but is now "90-10 in favor of zoonosis," which strongly implies opposition to the claim that COVID originated from a lab-related incident rather than natural spillover. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified The quote is authentic. The source page contains the sentence verbatim at line 233 (with only typographic curly apostrophes in the page text), and the same page identifies the post as by Scott Alexander and dates it Mar 28, 2024 at lines 13–15. The stored author, date, and source URL are therefore correct. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim?hide_intro_popup=true)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

replying to Scott Alexander