[HN Gopher] Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't
be ruled out
Author : todd8
Score : 268 points
Date : 2021-04-09 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| metalliqaz wrote:
| it's not xenophobic, but xenophobic people really love to talk
| about it. that's the problem with the discourse.
|
| of course the irony is that it doesn't even matter. We already
| know China (1) tried to cover it up, screwing the rest of the
| world, and (2) has poor wet market sanitation practices that seem
| designed to cultivate these kinds of diseases. Those issues are
| already bad enough.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The opposition to the idea comes down to one thing 1)Donald
| Trump et al supported this hypothesis, and thus disagreeing
| with the hypothesis becomes reflexive for many.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Just shows how politics have divided us. No one seems to be
| thinking independently and that includes myself - I try but
| often the first reaction is otherwise.
|
| You can despise someone deeply, but if they are citing facts,
| reason, logic, etc - have no association, they stand on their
| own. Doesn't matter who uttered it.
| abecedarius wrote:
| > xenophobic people really love to talk about it
|
| Guilt by association + Overton Window enforcement.
|
| I guess you're pointing this out and not endorsing it?
| kolbe wrote:
| Which is obviously a problem. The US more or less has two
| sides, and both are routinely responsible for(or at least
| align with) morally reprehensible things. It should not be a
| problem to choose truth regardless of where if falls in a
| political spectrum. And no one who wants to just find the
| truth should have to second guess their findings because
| they're politically inconvenient for someone.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| that's correct
| nicoburns wrote:
| It does matter in the context of deciding whether we ought to
| fund gain of function research going forwards.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I suspect that the Chinese government actively works to
| conflate criticism as xenophobia. This same strategy is exactly
| why it's so hard to discuss Israel in anything other than a
| positive light.
| brigandish wrote:
| > but xenophobic people really love to talk about it
|
| All too often I see this used as the standard for labelling
| someone a xenophobe and it becomes a classic case of begging
| the question. Since we all agree it's not xenophobic to speak
| about it, perhaps it's time we wait for _actual_ xenophobia
| before making what should be serious accusations?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| What exactly are the good guys supposed to do in a situation
| where bad guys enjoy the truth: support the noble lie, or
| hiss "you are not supposed to talk about this"?
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's not the worst rule of thumb as long as the social
| context is taken into account (i.e. it wouldn't be as
| appropriate here.) Heuristics do save time.
| lazide wrote:
| Since some of the very first discussion of the topic in
| public was by the president using it as a political football
| alongside a trade war with China and a nontrivial amount of
| public fear and aversion to random people that happened to
| look Chinese, that well is pretty solidly poisoned at this
| point?
| s5300 wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm reading this incorrectly and
| misinterpreting...
|
| But Asian hate crimes are waaay up since the beginning of
| Covid-19
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684
|
| Do you not call this xenophobia?
|
| It would be my elementary understanding that this rise in
| hate crime against Asians may be related to the President of
| the U.S. aggressively referring to the virus as the "china
| virus" and broadcasting that this was all China's fault
| during this time.
| lurquer wrote:
| Strange how Asian is equated with Chinese.
|
| How insulting.
|
| It's often the typical virtue-signaling liberals who group
| disparate languages, races, religions, and cultures in one
| monolithic block. What do you mean by Asian that would
| encourage one to use the term synonymously with "Chinese"?
| Are you referring to "people with slanty eyes"?
|
| White urban liberals do this a lot... to them, all "brown"
| people are the same. A person from Mexico, Honduras,
| Guatemala, etc... they're all equivalent and exchangeable.
|
| Sad to see this same racist mindset used now for all of
| Asia.
| s5300 wrote:
| I thought about including something about this in my
| post, but as we're on HN, I deleted it as I didn't feel
| it was needed.
|
| While you could be trolling, I'll never know - but simply
| put, the average person who would commit a hate crime -
| especially physically and publicly - is likely completely
| unable to distinguish/genuinely unaware of the various
| Asian ethnicities along with their distinguishing
| features. To them, it's all the same. Note, this has
| nothing to do with me - it's just a truth.
| neilparikh wrote:
| News articles are not equating Chinese and Asian.
|
| It seems very obvious to me that those doing racist hate
| crimes aren't going to ask their victims if they're
| Chinese or not before attacking them, so you'd see an
| uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in general, not just
| anti-Chinese hate crimes, and so it makes sense to talk
| about anti-Asian hate crimes as a whole.
| lurquer wrote:
| > It seems very obvious to me that those doing racist
| hate crimes...
|
| Who are doing racist hate crimes?
|
| There is nothing obvious about it.
|
| The media narrative is that Trump's use of the term
| "China Virus" or "Kung Flu" has led to attacks on ALL
| Asians.
|
| I've never seen any evidence of this.
|
| And what is disgusting is assuming any old lady anywhere
| -- be she Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, etc--
| who get pushed or mugged is the result of "anti-Asian
| racism" fueled by criticism of China.
|
| That somebody would push an old lady because of their
| dislike of the CCP, is unbelievable enough. But, now I'm
| supposed to believe some mysterious 'racists' are
| harassing Japanese people because they dislike the CCP...
|
| Where's is the evidence for this 'obvious' state of
| affairs?
|
| It's absurd on its face.
|
| Their is more 'racism' against Chinese from Vietnamese
| populations for instance... and vice versa. Ditto for
| Japanese v. Korean and Chinese v Japanese.
|
| The fabled 'white supremacist' out there certainly know
| the difference between the various ethnicities. Your
| fabled red-neck Bubba knows the difference between
| Chinese and Vietnamese and the rest... many of these red-
| necked bubbas come from families that fought in the
| Korean War, Vietnam war, have been stationed in Japan,
| and took R&R in Thailand.
|
| It seems the only segment of society that lumps them all
| together are white liberals who blithely assume all
| "people with slanty eyes" are the same. Just as they do
| with all "brown" people.
| mywittyname wrote:
| My best friend is from Vietnam. He's face harassment in
| public for "being Chinese" since Covid started. I've seen
| it first-hand a few times. One of which, the instigators
| were clearly planning to escalate until they saw the
| company he keeps (very fit, very tired of this shit
| guys).
|
| So yeah, it's fair to say that the racist assholes
| engaging in this harassment don't care where you're from.
| It doesn't matter if your a 9th generation American. If
| you "look Chinese" that's a convenient enough excuse for
| them to start shit.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Strange how Asian is equated with Chinese.
|
| It's "anti-Asian hate crimes" and not "anti-Chinese hate
| crimes" because the people being harassed and attacked
| are from eastern Asian ethnic groups in general, not
| specifically Chinese ethnic groups.
| kolbe wrote:
| Causal inference may not be important to media campaigns,
| but it is to reality. Can you honestly say that you have
| found causal evidence that people earnestly talking about a
| Wuhan having a lab leak is the cause of 24 extra hate
| crimes in a city of 8 million people?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Regarding 1), _local_ authorities tried to cover it up. Or did
| we all forget how fast China built hospitals in late 2019?
|
| I just want to add, so, that SARS-Cov 2 was found in blood
| samples from November 2019 in Europe. And also, what does it
| matter anymore where it came from? We don't need the host to
| develop a cure, we have a couple of working vaccines by now.
| lhorie wrote:
| > has poor wet market sanitation practices
|
| Honest question: Is that a fair/accurate generalization to
| make? If Hell's kitchen episodes and accounts from food
| industry workers are any indication, sanitation practices in
| food handling establishments elsewhere are not necessarily
| always stellar either. And surely China has some equivalent of
| WholeFoods?
|
| One ought to be careful not to attribute a characteristic
| differently depending on whether they belong to the class of
| people in question[0]. If it turns out that reality is that
| _some_ chinese establishments have poor sanitation practices
| just like _some_ US establishments do, and it just so happens
| that they got unlucky (perhaps partially due to not-so-
| directly-related aspects like zoning law differences or
| propensity for higher bat populations due to local fauna /flora
| ecosystems), the us-vs-them blaming game doesn't necessarily
| have as strong legs to stand on.
|
| [0] https://xkcd.com/385/
| lazide wrote:
| Have you seen a easy Asian wet market in person before? If
| you're comparing it to Whole Foods I'm not sure you have?
|
| The term itself is somewhat ambiguous
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market] in that it can
| cover both cases. However the style common in many places in
| China (and many other areas in east Asia) is one where there
| is no refrigeration or adequate sanitation. To avoid
| spoilage, animals are brought in live and slaughtered as
| needed to provide meat. It can be when a customer picks it,
| or when needed to stock a counter.
|
| These styles of market are problematic disease wise because
| it brings many species of animals together in crowded and
| often unsanitary conditions, high stress, with humans in
| close contact with them, and lots of people and animals
| coming and going constantly.
|
| If you're looking for a way to encourage Zoonotic disease,
| it's hard to do better.
| srean wrote:
| > If you're comparing it to Whole Foods I'm not sure you
| have?
|
| From the way I read it, he is not making that comparison
| ska wrote:
| > for a way to encourage Zoonotic disease, it's hard to do
| better.
|
| CAFO style agriculture is a front-runner also.
| citrusybread wrote:
| >Have you seen a easy Asian wet market in person before? If
| you're comparing it to Whole Foods I'm not sure you have?
|
| Have you seen one in the last decade? It's changed
| dramatically, and ranges from an open-air grocery store to
| yes something more depressing like what is in that wiki
| article.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg
| lazide wrote:
| That is great to see, though for instance half that video
| would have flagged a US health inspector. Much cleaner
| than what I saw in Vietnam, Malaysia, or less high end
| areas of Hong Kong, or friends in Beijing or Fujian were
| used to when they lived in China. I can't be sure how
| serious to take Foxnews in this regard, since you can
| pick and choose a lot of course.
|
| Cities have been improving, and I don't doubt Covid is
| helping. SARS seemed to help a lot in Singapore.
|
| The comparison to Whole Foods with consistent
| refridgeration, regular clearing, limited supplies,
| regular health inspections still seems unlikely anywhere
| outside of the major metros.
| lhorie wrote:
| To be clear, I didn't mean to compare a butcher shop to a
| Whole Foods, but rather to point out that not all food
| markets are live animal markets, and that blanket
| statements like "China does X" can gloss over the fact that
| every country has nuances.
|
| Your link suggests that the primary factor of disease
| transmission in live animal markets is the exoticness of
| the slaughtered animals. It certainly makes sense to make a
| distinction based on that criteria, since, for example, I
| can find high traffic markets that sell live animals in
| North America as well, though typically they sell less
| exotic animals (most commonly, lobsters).
|
| This distinction, I feel, is meaningful because of the
| implications: north american diet is relatively restricted
| in terms of meat variety (we do mostly beef, pork, chicken,
| maybe lamb and few other meats on fairly rare occasions -
| even chicken gizzard isn't commonly consumed, for example).
| I'm not familiar enough with China to say to what extent
| exotic meat consumption is cultural vs driven by necessity
| vs other factors.
|
| However, I do still feel that it might be crass to say
| things like "well chinese people ought to stop eating weird
| shit and close those filthy markets", without understanding
| the circumstances that lead to the status quo, and
| consequently how they could be changed realistically. (To
| be clear, I'm not saying you specifically are making these
| types of comments, but it's not an unpopular sentiment)
| VintageCool wrote:
| There is a big wet market in Wuhan, pretty close to the
| virus research lab.
|
| According to the below video, eating exotic wildlife
| dates back to the starvation conditions of the Mao years
| and is now mostly practiced by the rich. The conditions
| in which these animals are kept are unsanitary, even by
| comparison to a market with live animals that you might
| be familiar with in the US.
|
| There was a push to end the practice after SARS-CoV-1,
| but they came back a few years ago.
|
| https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/videos/2020/3/6/21168006
| /co...
| lazide wrote:
| Definitely a valid point - there is a huge variety in
| what it looks like on the ground. Your other point re:
| availability, cost, etc is also right on point and part
| of what I was trying to cover.
|
| The variety angle is because 1) the more factors you can
| roll the dice on at any given moment, the more likely you
| can come up 'winning' with a magically terrible combo
| through mutation. That ocelot flu mutate to something
| that could infect bats? Groovy. No bats though, so
| doesn't go anywhere. If you have bats though.....
|
| 2) Many animal viruses can be low or no impact in a
| species, and some can infect others to different effects.
| This gives a given virus more chances to roll the dice
| and get the 'magic' combo without killing itself off by
| killing the host. The more other species it gets exposed
| to; the better.
|
| 3) some species have elements more common with humans
| than others. If a virus gets mostly infectious in one
| host, adapting in another environment can get it closer
| to dangerous to humans.
|
| Also, if you live in an area without solid electricity or
| reliable refrigerated trucks - what else are you supposed
| to do? If you grew up in one of those areas, why bother
| with the more expensive option if you're used to this (or
| poor and don't have a choice).
|
| A lot of our simplification in diet now is due to the
| ability to choose higher grade options coupled with
| strict government regulations on how food sold to the
| public can be sourced and the conditions it can be 'made'
| in. It used to be (several generations ago now), wild
| hunted deer, pidgeons, squirrel, a side of pork from your
| neighbor, etc. were common parts of daily food intake,
| and you HAD to cook your food or you wouldn't go a week
| without something really nasty happening to you. There
| are many parts of the county that still do this, though
| usually more out of convenience than necessity.
|
| Now you can pick from animals raised for purpose, with
| supply chains inspected and complying with a books worth
| of regulations. In many cases, you could go years without
| getting sick if you didn't cook your food (don't try
| this, it's still a dumb idea).
|
| It's easy to point fingers, but if you haven't seen it
| and lived in the environment, you can't just change it
| without a lot of other things happening first or very
| nasty side effects (starvation, nutritional issues, etc).
| bluGill wrote:
| Wet markets are not as sanitary as others. However all
| evidence we have suggest that covid was first spread there,
| not that it originated there. Someone got covid - we don't
| know who or how - and then went to the wet market. That
| person could have gone to any crowded local venue and spread
| it just as well, but it seems they didn't.
| cthalupa wrote:
| They aren't equivalent, and it's not even solely a factor of
| sanitation. You are keeping tons of live animals in cages in
| close proximity to each other and tons of people. Stress is
| extremely effective at weakening immune response, which makes
| it easier for pathogens to replicate, jump hosts, and jump
| species. Now the pathogen is an a different environment,
| which begins to force adaptation, which is to say the
| pathogens that mutate in beneficial ways to their new
| environment begin to outcompete the rest. And this just keeps
| happening. And happening. And happening. And with new strains
| of disease brought in from pathogen reservoirs in the wild.
|
| There's only so much good sanitation processes could even
| achieve here, in the same way there's only so much that bad
| sanitation processes at a restaurant can do. Bad sanitation
| in a restaurant almost always means an increase in known
| pathogens that we can either take care of fairly easily, or
| even in the worst case scenarios of something such as
| botulism, have limited ability to spread among the general
| population.
|
| The risk of an unsanitized kitchen is just totally different
| from that of even a somewhat sanitized wet market.
| hnbad wrote:
| I've been to "fish markets" in Germany that kept live
| animals (mostly poultry and rabbits) in cages in close
| proximity to each other and tons of people. Just because
| it's uncommon or illegal in the US doesn't mean it's exotic
| or unusual in the rest of the world. We only freak out
| about "wet markets" because 1) the name sounds gross (but
| it's catchier than "perishable goods street market", I
| guess) and 2) orientalism.
| cthalupa wrote:
| If the wet markets in china were just poultry and
| rabbits, it would not be an issue. We have a good
| understanding of the potential zoonotic diseases from
| those vectors.
|
| We - including China - do not have a good understanding
| of the potential zoonotic diseases from the large variety
| of wild game that is captured and sold in these markets.
| lancebeet wrote:
| >If Hell's kitchen episodes and accounts from food industry
| workers are any indication, sanitation practices in food
| handling establishments elsewhere are not necessarily always
| stellar either.
|
| The issue with wet markets isn't the sanitary practices of
| their workers so much as the fact that meat and other food is
| handled in very close proximity to live animals being
| slaughtered, and this combined with a large volume of foot
| traffic. Granted, I haven't seen all episodes of Kitchen
| Nightmares, but I've never seen slaughter of any kind taking
| place at a restaurant in that show, let alone at a restaurant
| that is visited by tens of thousands of people each day.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >it's not xenophobic, but xenophobic people really love to talk
| about it. that's the problem with the discourse.
|
| People love to talk about stuff that supports their world view.
| draw_down wrote:
| > it's not xenophobic, but xenophobic people really love to
| talk about it. that's the problem with the discourse.
|
| AKA, "you're not allowed to say that". The problem with the
| discourse is that it exists; its existence is problematic. (
| _Considered_ problematic, I 'm not claiming that)
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751680.
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| a collection [0] of these kinds of 'lab leak' related stories
| over the past year
|
| [0] http://jollo.org/LNT/public/wuhan.html
| cletus wrote:
| Look, this is simple: the lab leak theory shouldn't be discounted
| until the WHO or some independent body does their due diligence
| on, at an absolute minimum, these points:
|
| 1. Account for what coronaviruses Wuhan labs actually have. The
| Chinese authorities have been circumspect on this; and
|
| 2. Examine the virus database that was taken offline right before
| all this started.
|
| To be clear: I'm not insinuating that this is true or that China
| has covered something up here. I consider it more likely that no
| one simply knows (including in China) but for China there's
| little upside in being open about this so we can explore these
| avenues of inquiry. This "not wanting to know" isn't uniquely a
| China problem either.
|
| The WHO simply hasn't done the due diligence warranted to
| eliminate this theory. That's all.
| jjhawk wrote:
| https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2021/03/22/why-cov...
|
| Similar article which made the same case. This one provided a few
| more interesting stories about just how close we have come to
| potentially similar leaks in the past (and based in US labs).
| dandare wrote:
| >... for scientists to voice suspicions about a possible lab
| leak,... especially when there was already a long history of
| viral disease outbreaks spilling over from nature.
|
| This is a really wired formulation whe we actually know, with
| absolute certainty, that every pandemic ever suffered was
| natural.
| dhimes wrote:
| The only issue here is that lab safety protocols may have to be
| tightened up in the lab responsible. Scientists mutate things in
| the lab all the time in order to have a tool for effective study.
| If this came from a lab, then it would be the same thing (not
| some sort of weapon, like the hysterical Right wants people to
| believe).
|
| Most believe that it didn't, but rather that it was in the human
| population a few months before we knew. But maybe not.
| modzu wrote:
| i'm curious what you would add to biosafety level 4 to tighten
| it up?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_leve...
| dhimes wrote:
| I didn't hear that it was a level 4 lab. Those are for the
| viruses deemed most severe. Plenty of work goes on at other
| labs- at least in the US. Not sure about China.
|
| Maybe you can enlighten me.
| devit wrote:
| Only allowing robots and disallowing all human presence in
| the lab.
| jkelleyrtp wrote:
| The BSL prescribes the precautions that must be taken to
| maintain safety, but it's up to human oversight to actually
| enforce those practices. It's not uncommon for viruses to
| escape even BSL4 both in the US and abroad.
|
| Both labs in Wuhan have had accidental contamination
| incidents while collecting field samples in caves. Working
| with hazardous materials is always dangerous, and history has
| no shortage of lessons to teach us.
| ab7675226 wrote:
| It's not that you need to tighten up the rules... it's that
| you need to actually follow them. The Wuhan lab had a
| reputation for not following the rules for the CCP-Claimed
| Biosafety Level 4.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| If there is a leak at a BSL 4 lab that implies that the lab
| is not strictly adhering to protocols not that the protocols
| are loose.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| We warned about this lab.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-
| depart...
|
| Note part 6.
| kaliali wrote:
| Looks good on paper but what is actually happening in
| reality? How do I know they follow those procedures? How do I
| know they're not paying someone to give a checkmark for
| inspection?
|
| What would be the punishment if they were caught not
| following procedures? Would they publicly punished or would
| the embarrassment for the Chinese government be quietly swept
| under the rug?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Eliminate or reduce the hazard is the most effective measure.
|
| A commonly used hierarchy is "ERICPD", from most to least
| effective: Eliminate, Reduce, Isolate, Control, PPE and
| Discipline
| moosey wrote:
| The most likely candidate for this virus, and most future viruses
| that produce pandemics, will be environmental destruction and
| animal agriculture.
|
| We know there are novel viruses out there, too many to count.
| Even if this started in a lab the most likely reason is that
| scientists need to study the viruses that we will be coming into
| contact with as we commit, as a species, to more environmental
| destruction. I'm really exhausted of watching scientists get
| blamed repeatedly for the failures of our economic and social
| systems to act responsibly.
|
| Sure, the lab hypothesis might have some weight, some possibility
| of being true. It's still a red herring, either a distraction
| from the real issues we face by accident or design, or both.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The question of a lab leak is not incidental. The virus has
| caused massive suffering (and will continue to as we understand
| the fallout IMO).
|
| If it leaked from a lab and that was hidden from the world we
| have to wonder how much suffering could have been avoided if
| all the information was given freely as Chinese authorities
| knew it.
|
| There are some who suggest the virus was allowed to spread
| beyond China as a way to ensure China didn't fall behind
| competivley. Pure speculation, but we need to knowing if it
| came from a lab is a hugely important question.
| lamontcg wrote:
| All of this can be explained by a real simple alternative
| hypothesis.
|
| Farmed animals like minks and racoon dogs were kept in cramped
| breeding conditions. Rhinopholous bats infected with
| sarbecoviruses are also present in Hubei. Those bats probably
| roosted above the animal pens and shit down on the animals below
| for years. The animals would periodically become infected.
| Eventually through mutation or recombination a strain became
| epidemic in the animals and evolved to be successful in a very
| closely related ACE2 receptor to humans.
|
| Then you had a large bioreactor which spread the virus doing
| "gain of function". Eventually it swapped backwards and forward
| from humans to those animals until it acquired the ability to
| spread epidemically in humans in late 2019.
|
| That process absolutely could have evolved a furin cleavage site,
| or it may have simply been present in the bat version of the
| virus (like the RacCS203 sample from Thai bats). Recombination
| with human HCoVs may have also happened in this process where the
| intermediate animal coronavirus infected a worker who also had a
| cold.
|
| When you read last year about the Danish mink farms with millions
| of mink being infected with SARS-CoV-2 you should realize that is
| a much better bioreactor to do natural "gain of function"
| experiments in than any BSL lab in the world has. Something like
| that, with a similar species, is likely how the virus hopped from
| bats to humans.
|
| This actually better explains all of the suspect features of
| SARS-CoV-2 than a BSL program does.
| cicero wrote:
| An alternative hypothesis does not rule out the other
| possibilities, even if it provides a better explanation. What
| matters is what actually happened, not what provides the
| neatest explanation.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Every time this comes I ask - "so what?"
|
| So again, I ask - even if it's true, so what? It's impossible to
| conclusively prove, and even if proven what exactly is proven?
| That an accident occurred? OK, so what?
|
| The article attempts to answer this:
|
| > The vitriol also obscures a broader imperative, Relman says,
| which is that uncovering the virus's origins is crucial to
| stopping the next pandemic. Threats from both lab accidents and
| natural spillovers are growing simultaneously as humans move
| steadily into wild places and new biosafety labs grow in number
| around the world. "This is why the origins question is so
| important," Relman says.
|
| However the reality is from the perspective of the USA it doesn't
| even matter. Even if China was malicious and deliberately sent it
| off to us, it could've been easily stopped but we didn't do it.
| Unless we're going to go to war over this it seems like a
| pointless exercise as conclusive evidence will never emerge as it
| requires cooperation from China.
|
| We're worrying about whether it was created from labs in China,
| meanwhile we couldn't even prevent a massive superspreader event
| in Boston via the Biogen conference, filled with people who
| already has an awareness of the virus to begin with.
|
| Even now as I type this cases of the variant are increasing and
| the amount of people taking the vaccine is decreasing and silly
| accidents like the J&J fiasco are occurring. Not to say that we
| can't explore both things simultaneously, but it's pretty obvious
| that the return on investment will differ - one will do... what
| exactly? And another will prevent more cases.
| 8note wrote:
| The biggest so what is that if it's a lab leak, the failure can
| be analyzed and improvements be made to the safety process
| chasd00 wrote:
| to me the biggest so what is if it's a lab leak then that lab
| is liable for millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in
| economic damage all over the planet.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Even if China was malicious and deliberately sent it off to
| us, it could've been easily stopped but we didn't do it..."
|
| Hmmm...if it could "easily" have been stopped, then why did
| every single country in Europe and North America simultaneously
| fail to do so?
| disambiguation wrote:
| > It's impossible to conclusively prove
|
| no it's not. it might be impossible to prove the negative, but
| if it did come from the lab there should be physical records
| and first hand witnesses.
|
| > so what
|
| so maybe we make it a point to have the lab shut down so this
| doesn't happen again? maybe we publicly acknowledge there are
| secret teams working on secret science and viruses that can
| kill people en masse?
|
| but you have a point, it's always easier to embrace nihilism
| than tackle hard problems head on.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You have a misunderstanding of reality. The USA has done the
| exact same research before, and we have (also) had accidents
| around pathogens being mishandled, and we have had a
| consequent ban.
|
| However we ended up unbanning it and we still do it now. If
| the goal is to simply stop this type of research in its
| entirety, there's still no point of trying to get China to
| stop as we have no authority in China (or any other country)
| to begin with. Even if China were to claim they've stopped we
| have no way of knowing.
|
| Let's just assume China did have a lab accident. OK, then
| what? We tell them to stop doing it? Let's say they agree. In
| the future they decide to start doing it again. The entire
| thing is pointless to begin with. We can't get our own
| citizens to consistently wear masks and we think we're going
| to substantially change China's behavior here - hilarious.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00210-5
| johncena33 wrote:
| By that logic, we shouldn't have judicial systems. We shouldn't
| have any post-mortems. There shouldn't be any kind of
| accountability.
| ericb wrote:
| On the one hand, yes, many who ask this seem to have something
| political in-mind, so on that score, I kind of agree that
| there's no "there" there.
|
| Aside from that, though, we can consider international treaties
| against gain of function research? International inspections?
| Have a debate on whether this type of research is allowed?
| Create improved international procedure standards for Biolab
| safety?
|
| I mean, it has killed more people than American killed in WW2.
| Maybe a root cause analysis and better procedures are
| justified?
|
| edit: corrected stat
| engineer_22 wrote:
| You're off by an order of magnitude.
|
| Total deaths in WW2 estimated at approx 70 million. [1]
|
| Johns Hopkins estimates COVID-19 deaths are approaching 3
| million. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
|
| [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
| ericb wrote:
| Mis-remembered. Number of _Americans_ who died in WW2.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2021/02/03/9628119...
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Roger that.
|
| Americans killed in WW2: 410,000
|
| Americans killed by Covid: 550,000
| endisneigh wrote:
| > I mean, it has killed more people than WW2. Maybe a root
| cause analysis and better procedures are justified?
|
| Yes, I agree. However I believe what should be analyzed is
| why certain countries failed to contain it. Whether it was a
| lab accident or wild game doesn't really matter. There's no
| way the entire world could prevent accidents or people from
| interacting with wild animals.
|
| At the end of the day the most effective thing is to ask why
| it spread as much as it did in your own country.
|
| There are politicians in our (USA) own country that denounced
| COVID even as recently as this January. People who fabricated
| data (Cuomo), who peddled poor science (Trump), etc. etc.
|
| Don't misunderstand me, China definitely deserves their share
| of the blame, but I just believe that share is small.
| Ultimately the USA's response to COVID could've been much,
| much better by pretty much every metric imaginable.
|
| And let's just act like COVID is over, either.
| abecedarius wrote:
| All else aside, the attempt to squelch these inquiries as off-
| limits justifies resistance. The more scientific consensus is
| about social power, the worse for science.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| FWIW I think it would be possible to prove conclusively in the
| form of documents leaked from whatever lab was conducting the
| experimentation.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| The same difference it would make to try to figure out if a
| plane crashed because a meteorite flew into it or because the
| human engineers screwed up some software component - to know if
| we should put more scrutiny on human activity that can cause
| catastrophes.
| s__s wrote:
| Consequences for gross negligence.
|
| Updated international laws.
|
| Possible banning of gain of function research.
|
| Stronger safety procedures.
| endisneigh wrote:
| How would you know if it's gross negligence or an accident?
| What consequences are you thinking of that we haven't already
| done?
|
| Hilarious that we want to punish China but we won't punish
| our own politicians.
| legolas2412 wrote:
| > How would you know if it's gross negligence or an
| accident?
|
| That's a different question from "what difference does it
| make"
|
| > What consequences are you thinking of that we haven't
| already done? Sanctions, trade tariffs, political
| condemnation of an authoritarian state? There are many
| steps to pressure China before an open war is declared.
|
| > Hilarious that we want to punish China but we won't
| punish our own politicians.
|
| Why not both? I think Trump is already punished a bit, he
| lost the election.
| 8note wrote:
| Really it's a scape goat for gross negligence. Governments
| everywhere have been incredibly negligent in handling covid,
| and they really want to be able to pin it on china, taking no
| responsibility for their own response
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Even if China was malicious and deliberately sent it off to
| us, it could've been easily stopped but we didn't do it.
|
| I don't think this is the argument.
|
| China was affected by it immediately to, so it would seem that
| this wasn't intentional.
|
| The question is what exactly was the Wuhan lab studying, why,
| and funded by whom. We already know part of this was funded by
| the US Government.
|
| The information is all online about their studies specifically
| with ACE2 and coronaviruses, and suddenly we end up with a
| global pandemic where the virus latches onto human ACE2.
| Originating in Wuhan.
| erdos4d wrote:
| I'm with you, this has a borderline culture-war vibe to it,
| especially how some people are very into it and bring it up a
| lot. I don't see how an accident or natural origin changes
| anything.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| The gain of function research was at least in part US funded.
| We probably shouldn't fund gain of function research in Chinese
| labs if the resulting viruses are going to cause a global
| pandemic, for a start.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| The conflict over the investigation is justifiable. It's
| necessary to understand how the virus got started. If it's lab-
| grown we will want to be very careful to scrutinize each
| other's labs. If it's natural we will want to be very careful
| to scrutinize wild game. The implications of any scenario are
| broad and complex, but clearly we don't want a repeat of 2020
| if we can avoid it.
|
| Another point: just because there's some uncomfortable conflict
| over the investigation doesn't mean we should abandon and
| investigation, in fact it probably means we should investigate
| more vigorously.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Thank you for your comment, but your comment is precisely the
| kind of comment I disagree with.
|
| What difference does it make? Let's say that it's both lab-
| grown and wild game. OK, so that means we should scrutinize
| both. OK, then. Now what?
|
| No amount of scrutiny can prevent an accident from occurring.
| It's not as if this pandemic happens every year. We're
| talking about a once in a century event. Not to mention some
| countries prevented the virus from spreading within their own
| countries very effectively, and others, well, did not.
| ckw wrote:
| If the virus was a product of gain of function research,
| the primary purpose of which is to reduce the risk of
| pandemics, then the research becomes much more difficult to
| justify. The argument I guess becomes then, yeah,
| periodically we'll cause a pandemic, and millions of people
| will die, but we'll be so much better at dealing with
| diseases that arise naturally, as SARS and MERS did, that
| on balance it will be worth the extra pandemics...
|
| Whatever you think about this, it seems unbelievably
| foolish to locate these labs in the middle of metropolises.
| endisneigh wrote:
| OK, so what. What can we do to make China stop doing this
| research if they want to? Are we going to go to war over
| this? No. Are we going to have an embargo with China? No?
|
| So effectively this becomes a situation of "oh yeah they
| should've not had that accident, oh well." In the USA
| we've had the same problem ourselves (lab accidents with
| pathogens), and we banned gain of function research and
| ended up removing the ban a few years later.
|
| The entire exercise is meaningless. Note - I'm not even
| saying we shouldn't research the origins of COVID, what
| I'm saying is, the result doesn't really matter.
| troyvit wrote:
| Why does it have to be a "we" vs "China" discussion at
| all? Why don't we think non-politically about it for a
| minute and recognize that as a global species we have a
| chance to learn as much as we can from a pandemic that
| affected us globally so that we can try to do better when
| the next one inevitably comes along?
|
| And yeah, maybe China doesn't wanna think that way, but
| let's find out first, and second find out why.
|
| On the other hand there are some great ways to think
| about this politically. If by "we" you mean the U.S. we
| don't really have a leg to stand on as far as respect
| from the international community right now anyway, so any
| fight we bring to China is basically one on one.
|
| Other countries besides the U.S. would be able to wring
| significant concessions from China if they chose to a)
| believe collectively that it was China's malfeasance that
| caused the pandemic, and b) stood together to demand a
| response.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| We're not talking about a once a century event. This is the
| third novel coronavirus outbreak in the past 2 decades, and
| it seems clear that SARS at least _could_ have been
| pandemic if we hadn 't gotten lucky.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but ultimately what's relevant here are the number
| of deaths. The other two killed orders of magnitude fewer
| people worldwide given the amount of time, no?
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Here's an example: one of your local health department's
| jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation
| practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food.
| Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from
| contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency.
|
| Prior to that, people did get sick, and public
| investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody
| wanted to admit to themselves that they were to blame, that
| they had hurt or killed someone, but the society benefited
| from the momentary discomfort and those hard truths.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good
| analogy.
|
| The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone
| at your store and your competitors stores are getting
| food poisoning.
|
| Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food
| is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning
| within your store, you're researching whether or not the
| contaminated food originated at Burger King.
|
| It's not bad to research whether or not the contaminated
| food originated at Burger King, but regardless knowing
| that isn't going to stop the food poisoning from
| spreading within your store.
|
| I like this analogy because there are already food safety
| laws just like how there are safety standards for working
| within a lab. Regardless, accidents happen, and people
| get poisoned. Kind of like the Chipotle outbreaks.
| [deleted]
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks!
|
| If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a
| tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you
| survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a
| thorough investigation to prevent it from happening
| again.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, I completely agree.
|
| Now would you want McDonalds to research Chipotle or stop
| outbreaks in their own stores? Seems pretty obvious to
| me. Perhaps I'm missing something?
|
| Ultimately Chipotle is already incentivized to figure it
| out themselves, unless the argument is Chipotle is
| intentionally infecting their own customers?
|
| Going back to the original point - what the USA should do
| for its own citizens won't change regardless of whether
| COVID was an accident, from wild game, etc.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Good, I'm glad we agree that investigation matters :)
| endisneigh wrote:
| You've completely misunderstood my point. My point is
| that we're McDonalds - not Chipotle. Should McDonalds be
| investigating Chipotle's problems or their own? It's
| really that simple...
|
| If you believe McDonalds in this analogy should be
| investigating the origins of Chipotle's problems as
| opposed to resolving their ongoing issue then we'll just
| have to agree to disagree.
| cronix wrote:
| I don't understand your analogy. If a sizeable population
| of the world got sick from eating at Chipotle...and it
| was easily communicably spreadable infecting even those
| that never ate there...and people died as a result (3
| MILLION)...and it caused massive world-wide economic
| damage...I'd bet they'd be quite interested in the cause
| no matter where they worked. In your analogy, the impact
| wasn't just limited to those who ate at Chipotle. It was
| everyone.
| neolog wrote:
| American Airlines can't reduce its risk by reading
| Delta's FAA incident reports?
| endisneigh wrote:
| That situation isn't analogous, but American Airlines
| would reduce its risk _more_ by reading its own incident
| reports compared to Delta 's, yes. In general focusing on
| one's own failings is superior to focusing on another's.
|
| Are you serious?
| [deleted]
| 99_00 wrote:
| There are obvious and profound geopolitical implications.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Such as?
| 99_00 wrote:
| Political, social, and economic decoupling.
| avmich wrote:
| > 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the
| possibility of a lab leak, because the US was itself funding gain
| of function research on novel coronaviruses in the Wuhan BSL4 lab
|
| It's not necessarily a Chinese lab where the leak originated from
| (hypothetical, of course). It could be a Russian lab - there are
| arguments for Novosibirsk Vector biology center as the origin of
| the leak.
| ncmncm wrote:
| What nobody seems willing to say out loud to a reporter is that
| even talking at high levels about SARS-CoV-2 having possibly
| escaped from the lab would very probably sabotage Chinese
| cooperation in finding out more about its origins, whether it did
| or did not in fact did escape the lab.
|
| Now it appears that whatever damage could be done was, and China
| did block access to key information. I haven't seen anything to
| indicate it did come from the lab, or didn't. China's actions are
| consistent with either scenario. It would be very embarrassing to
| Chinese leadership if the lab-escape idea became popular,
| regardless of whether it was true, but especially if it were
| found to be true. China will be acting mainly to try to stop the
| idea gaining popularity, and be much less concerned with whether
| the international community actually learns its true origin.
|
| But if the Chinese leadership had confidence that it escaped the
| lab, my interpretation is they would probably do a lot more
| stone-walling than they are doing. But that doesn't mean it
| didn't.
|
| My brother flies freight in and out of Wuhan, never leaving the
| airport, and says border-patrol behavior at that airport is very
| strange, unlike at any other Chinese city. Before they are
| allowed to take off, the whole plane is carefully searched by
| soldiers in complete-isolation bunny suits, and passports
| collected on arrival are then carefully matched, one by one, to
| each crew member before departure. His interpretation is that
| China wants to be certain that nobody in Wuhan leaves China whom
| they would rather have stay.
|
| What that would mean, if correct, I cannot guess.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| They have been stone walling. The WHO was not allowed into the
| lab for a long period providing time for a cover up there was
| no agreement investigation until September 2020. They were then
| told to take the lab workers testimony at face value and not
| investigate the lab leak hypothesis any further.
|
| Doctors have escaped and claimed that it was lab engineered
|
| https://bgr.com/2020/09/15/coronavirus-whistleblower-wuhan-l...
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Covid-19 is a biological weapon released by "the elite" in order
| to achieve there agenda.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Almost no theories can be "ruled out" in this space. Viruses
| evolve in crazy and essentially unobservable ways.
|
| Nonetheless, we know there was a close relative documented in
| bats on the same continent within a comparable timeframe. The
| clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission was the
| vector, for the simple reason that this is the way every single
| other pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened. There is
| _nothing_ unique or notable about covid from the perspective of
| viral evolution. Period. So Occam says we go with the simplest
| theory.
|
| Attempts to wave away that fact have nothing to do with science
| about what was happening in Wuhan and everything to do with
| modern political opinions about a government 1000km away in
| Beijing.
| gfodor wrote:
| Occam's Razor doesn't really apply to this one, because each
| side has different priors on which theory is actually the
| "simplest."
|
| Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human case
| documented before those in Wuhan - something which a) should
| have been likely and b) China would be _highly_ incentivized to
| root out since it would disprove the lab hypothesis, it implies
| patient zero was probably in Wuhan. If that 's true, Occam
| could cut the other way, since the notion that case zero of a
| virus making a species transition would just so happen to occur
| in a city with a virology lab doing research on the same kind
| of viruses is a bit hard to believe.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > we don't have a single human case documented before those
| in Wuhan
|
| The disease spread all over the world before people
| discovered the first cases, so it's not very surprising if
| previous cases on a less developed area than Wuhan were
| ignored.
| gfodor wrote:
| Well, sure, but my point is that now that people are
| suspecting it was the lab, we ought to expect China to be
| digging furiously for evidence of an earlier case. At least
| so far, I haven't heard of any such evidence.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Willful ignorance is the first posture I would expect
| from the CCP - that would be the specific avoidance of
| gathering evidence that would be embarrassing if found to
| exist.
|
| The second posture I would expect (if the first posture
| was not takwn) is that if they did seek and find evidence
| of particularly embarassing variety, they would actively
| stonewall access to awareness of that evidence and do
| everything they could to suppress that evidence. The
| statement,
|
| >we ought to expect China to be digging furiously for
| evidence of an earlier case
|
| is prima facie either incorrect or irrelevant to whether
| your ever becoming aware such evidence exists.
|
| China does not possess Western democratic institutions,
| (however flawed as even those might be), to achieve
| accountability. To wit, over here on the Western side of
| things, it's going to be hard enough getting NIH to
| examine whether NIH funded this work in contravention of
| US gov mandates not to (see HHS Potential Pandemic
| Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) Framework, 2017).
| learnstats2 wrote:
| > a) should have been likely
|
| Given that coronavirus would not be observable until there is
| a cluster of symptomatic cases in a city (and a doctor with
| relevant experience who can observe multiple cases - here Li
| Wen Liang ), I find it highly _unlikely_ that we could
| observe earlier cases, if they spread less rapidly or outside
| a city - or even within another city with less institutional
| knowledge.
|
| > b) China would be highly incentivized to root out
|
| Even if so, this doesn't form part of any prior. China being
| incentivized to act in that situation, doesn't affect how
| likely or unlikely that situation was.
| gfodor wrote:
| The point is that even if we didn't observe such cases
| originally, given the incentives now, I would have expected
| China to investigate and surface evidence of such cases,
| even if circumstantial. So your second point is not a real
| point: the incentives don't determine the likelihood of it
| occurring, but they do dictate the likelihood of an
| investigation to determine if it did occur.
| infogulch wrote:
| > China being incentivized to act in that situation,
| doesn't affect how likely or unlikely that situation was.
|
| China being incentivized to find evidence supporting the
| CCP's desired image absolutely does affect how likely it
| would be for such evidence to surface if it exists.
|
| We see virtually no such evidence; we can assume that's not
| because China's lack of trying to find it; which should
| adjust our prior against such evidence existing at all.
| Yes?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Wuhan is a gigantic city, bigger than NYC. You'll be able to
| find an example of nearly anything in any category there. But
| it's also completely unsurprising they were researching the
| coronavirus category: the 2003 SARS outbreak was a
| coronavirus too, and obviously motivated an incredible amount
| of research across the world, but particularly in China.
| gfodor wrote:
| You're flipping the condition on the probability here.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yes, quite deliberately.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Are they incentivized to do that? Remember they're dealing
| not just with The west's opinion, but also home opinion,
| where I don't know that documenting that they should have
| found this weeks earlier would go over well. Not to mention I
| think they're happy with the current local conspiracy theory
| that this was actually the US's fault. It also seems likely
| that a big city especially one with a big lab would be more
| likely to be able to identify that the disease going around
| was new
| gfodor wrote:
| I'm not an expert on China but I would generally assume
| that the consequences and reputational damage of being seen
| as responsible by the rest of the world for COVID-19 would
| outstrip nearly any other possible consequences being
| mitigated against by not seeking to clear themselves.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human
| case documented before those in Wuhan - something which a)
| should have been likely
|
| Um... why? The virus has to jump species somewhere. If the
| first documented case was in Shanghai, you could make the
| same argument.
|
| I think what you're trying to say is that the jump had to
| have happened in Yunnan, because that's where that particular
| bat sample was found. But that's not what the data says at
| all. The Yunnan virus was a _relative_ , not an ancestor.
| There are uncounted millions of wild coronavirus strains we
| _don 't_ see for every one we sequence. There is no reason at
| all to believe that some Wuhan-local bat, say, had a related
| strain that became the covid ancestor. Or some other species,
| etc...
|
| Again, that's the way viruses evolve. It's the way pandemics
| start. It's the way pandemics have _always_ started.
| Demanding that this is somehow a crazy engineered virus
| dropped on us by a despotic foreign government is... how
| pandemics start in bad movies.
| gfodor wrote:
| Your argument is clearly being made in bad faith because
| you are creating a strawman in your final point. The claim
| is not that the virus was one that was engineered and
| deliberately dropped by a despotic government. Given that
| you don't have a basic understanding of the good faith
| hypotheses being promoted, I'll have to assume you are at
| best ignorant at worst a state actor.
|
| edit: lol at getting flagged for this.
| dang wrote:
| Your comment was rightly flagged because you broke the
| site guidelines and took the thread a big step further
| into flamewar hell. Please don't do that. Please do
| review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| and stick to the rules when posting to HN.
| gfodor wrote:
| pg knows as well as anyone else that if someone makes an
| attempt to paint you into alignment with a right-wing
| conspiracy theory, they're probably doing it with ill
| intent, especially if you made no such claim.
|
| If you want the HN guidelines to be consistent, they
| shouldn't demand people presume good faith when the
| tactics of cancel culture are wielded in threads to try
| to tag people with the label they are promoting right or
| left wing conspiracy theories, which can direct a mob in
| their direction if not strongly pushed back against.
| T-A wrote:
| > The clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission
| was the vector
|
| Except nobody has been able to identify that animal. With SARS
| it was quickly determined to be civets, with MERS camels. With
| Covid, more than a year on, we still don't know.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/26/1021263/bat-covi...
| ufo wrote:
| IIRC it took more than a year for people to conclude it was
| the civets.
| T-A wrote:
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/302/5643/276
| ricksunny wrote:
| >for the simple reason that this is the way every single other
| pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened
|
| prima facie false.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu#Virology
|
| " it is widely believed that the virus was leaked to the public
| in a laboratory accident (may have been kept frozen in some
| laboratory beforehand).[4][5][10][11][12][13][17][19"
|
| And on top of that, the original SARS leaked from Chinese,
| Taiwanese, and Singapore labs a minimum of 4 times.
|
| So parent's cited statement is false and does not apply.
| nicoburns wrote:
| We also know that a very closely related strain of the virus
| was being studied in the only BSL 4 lab in China, located less
| than a mile from the meat market where the virus supposedly
| originated.
|
| For me Occam's razor says unintentional lab leak.
| ab7675226 wrote:
| Occam's Razor indeed. The lab in Wuhan was studying bats and
| coronaviruses. Animal transmission is completely consistent
| with a lab leak, especially given that the virus in question is
| transmissible before symptoms.
|
| The wet market in Wuhan was not selling bats.
| pvaldes wrote:
| If there are insects, bats will come sooner or later, and
| tiny bat-bombs will follow.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Actually occam's razor would say that the many many many more
| instances of bat-human contact throughout the Chinese
| countryside are likely responsible, not a lab leak.
|
| Did you know that people use Bat Guano (literally bat shit)
| eyedrops to cure visual ailments in rural china? Among other
| risky practices. Bat guano is often handled with bare hands
| and used to fertilize fields without proper sanitary
| practices. The many tens of thousands of these events that
| happen everyday are a MUCH more likely scenario.
|
| I have a PhD in virology and wrote a post all about this on
| Reddit a while back: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comment
| s/gk6y95/covid19_did...
| thedrbrian wrote:
| And despite the tens of thousands of people rubbing bat
| turds in their eyes the first cases come from people living
| in the middle of a massive city.
|
| I just find it incredibly suspicious that the massive city
| with a BSL4 lab doing research into bat viruses is where a
| bat virus first turns up.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > And despite the tens of thousands of people rubbing bat
| turds in their eyes the first cases come from people
| living in the middle of a massive city.
|
| Uh... yeah. Because massive cities have, y'know, _more
| people_ mixing together with more varied activies. It
| would be very surprising indeed if a new pandemic just
| happened to pop up in a tiny hamlet in rural Tibet. But
| cities are absolutely where we expect to see this happen.
| martin_bech wrote:
| But the distance inside China is the equivilant of a known bat
| virus in a remote location somewhere in Budapest, where only
| farmers live, and ground zero of the virus beeing downtown
| London streetfood market.. (were all the food and everything
| tested negativ..)
| newacct583 wrote:
| You don't think bats exchange viruses between Budapest and
| London? That's nothing. Viruses in interacting populations
| are routinely continent wide.
|
| Let me flip this around: do you have even one example of a
| virus within a compatible species spectrum that does _not_
| expand across continent scales over the "few year" timeframe
| we're discussing?
| Loughla wrote:
| I don't understand what your argument is. Can you please
| expand?
| zthrowaway wrote:
| We should really be considering this if we want to make sure
| something like this doesn't happen again.
|
| Unfortunately this theory coming out during the Trump era made
| people knee-jerk shoot it down for political reasons, and you can
| also say the CCP is very invested in making sure they don't have
| pie on their face if this ends up being what truly happened.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Also the CCPs investments into "political" careers in the WHO
| helped them alot there.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| What is the actionable "fix", though? I mean: there are very
| real questions to be asked about gain-of-function research.
| There are other questions to be asked about standards for lab
| safety. But we should be asking these questions _anyway_ ,
| especially now that we've seen how devastating a real pandemic
| can be.
|
| Whatever happened in Wuhan it seems like the primary evidence
| is gone now. Trading in unverifiable theories about a lab leak
| is only useful insofar is that it kicks the ball forward on
| these issues. However the risk here is that these debates will
| make the issues controversial and politicized in ways that
| actually make safety improvements _more_ difficult and not
| less.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| One actionable fix is not putting virus labs in big cities
| (just like Nuclear and industrial plants), the other is
| stronger regulation of animal markets. Both make sense
| independent of where the virus originated from.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can
| tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the
| location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the
| virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona
| viruses).
|
| Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place
| where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with
| DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where pangolins
| are caught, sold, and eaten by people.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| It originated in a city with a research lab that was
| criticized for bad safety practices. That lab performed gain
| of function research on coronaviruses, and the strangest
| element of covid-19 is the spike protein furin site, which
| enables the infectivity in humans, and is not present in
| other coronaviruses.
|
| Or we can take the Bayesian approach, and look at the base
| rate of novel pathogens coming out of China over the past 70
| years and determine how many were lab leaks versus not, and
| realize the majority were lab leaks.
|
| This doesn't mean it for sure was a lab leak, but it does
| mean it should be investigated, which is all any one
| reasonable has been saying for the past year anyway.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| There is a lot of evidence. The lab in question was
| specifically warned about by the US State Department for
| studying coronaviruses that affect human ACE-2.
|
| I mentioned this in another comment, but here's the 2018
| State Department warning.
|
| Please note part (6) about human ACE2 coroniavirus:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-
| depart...
|
| > with DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where
| pangolins
|
| This is false. You can read the science here (note the
| "receptor binding studies of reconstituted RaTG13 showed that
| it does not bind to pangolin ACE2."
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.2020002.
| ..
| ChemSpider wrote:
| > in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in
| the past,
|
| Not correct. All previous SARS outbreaks were in a totally
| different places (~1000 km away).
|
| Prof. Shi (Shi Zheng Li , the head of the Wuhan virus lab)
| herself said in her March 2020 interview that she was totally
| surprised of a SARS outbreak in Wuhan. It is _not_ a location
| where it was expected.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > The problem is evidence. What is the evidence?
|
| I'd wager our intelligence services have it. That's why many
| who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab
| theory.
|
| Forget the politics for a minute with regards to people like
| Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... they have seen information
| we don't have access to. How can we say they're wrong on this
| without seeing the same classified information?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's why everyone who has seen classified information
| is sticking with the lab theory.
|
| That's false.
|
| > Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... forget the politics,
| but they have seen information we don't have access to.
|
| Yes, one _would_ need to forget the politics in order to
| overlook how selective a misrepresentation this is of
| "everyone who has seen classified information", so its
| clear why you ask us to do that.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I changed "every" to "many", I wasn't intending to paint
| that with a broad brush. But they are making public
| statements with access to information that we don't have.
| So who's to say they are wrong?
|
| Personally I am no fan of Trump but on this particular
| subject I can't say he's right or wrong, and he has more
| information than I do on it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But they are making public statements with access to
| information that we don't have. So who's to say they are
| wrong?
|
| Anyone with any experience with any public statements any
| of them have made that have subsequently been subject to
| scrutiny on virtually any topic is in a position to say
| that them saying something based on nondisclosed evidence
| on an issue that aligns with factional/partisan
| propaganda interests has, at best, zero evidentiary
| value. (In Trump's case _specifically_ , his habit of
| stating falsehoods even when it doesn't particularly help
| his case might lead one to conclude it has actually
| _negative_ evidentiary value.)
| 8note wrote:
| Trump's administration couldn't keep secrets, so somebody
| would have blabbed if there was classified evidence.
|
| Trump himself would give the evidence to boost his own ego
| on fox and friends
| mylons wrote:
| we should definitely shout down anyone who says it, though!
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| When someone's reasons for saying it are simply because it
| aligns with their own prejudices, shouting it down is
| reasonable.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| And you presume to know peoples reasons for saying things?
| Perhaps you are the prejudiced one.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| That's literally the ad hominem fallacy. We should
| investigate the claim on its own merits, not the merits of
| whoever is making the claim
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Uh-huh, lets have a polite conversation sprinkled with some
| Latin. Mean while racists are empowered to attach Asian
| Americans in the street because they "created the virus".
| bscvbscv wrote:
| Whoa, I found someone who actually believes in the
| "racists attacking asians because they created the virus"
| narrative. Holy shit.
|
| Black people are attacking asians. You say that's because
| of this idea that Asians created the virus. Do you have
| any actual evidence of their motivations?
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| Hyperbole isnt helping anything
| mylons wrote:
| let's just turn our brains off because there might be
| racism around
| benmmurphy wrote:
| The premise should be up for debate but we shouldn't
| accept the implication that because a lab in China leaked
| the virus it is moral to attack Chinese looking people in
| the street. You are effectively accepting the racist's
| reasoning if you ignore the implication and devote your
| energy to attacking their premise. I see this over and
| over again. Someone says A can't be true when A is a
| statement of fact because a group will make the argument
| A => B where B is something they find morally repugnant.
| When it comes to statements of fact you are much better
| arguing over A => B than hoping facts about the world
| conveniently line up with your moral conclusions.
| tzs wrote:
| It is ad hominem but not ad hominem fallacy. Wikipedia
| gives a good summary [1] of when ad hominem is not a
| fallacy:
|
| > Valid ad hominem arguments occur in informal logic, where
| the person making the argument relies on arguments from
| authority such as testimony, expertise, or on a selective
| presentation of information supporting the position they
| are advocating. In this case, counter-arguments may be made
| that the target is dishonest, lacks the claimed expertise,
| or has a conflict of interest.
|
| For example, if someone tells you that hydroxychloroquinea
| will cure COVID and cites a doctor, it is an ad hominem not
| but not a fallacy to counter that the same doctor also says
| that infertility, impotence, cysts, and various other
| reproductive medical problems are caused by witches and
| demons that have sex with people in the dreamworld, where
| they also gather sperm from people and use it on other
| people to produce more demons. (And yes, there really is a
| doctor who says all that).
|
| It's not a fallacy because it is not offered to refute the
| claim that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID--it is offered to
| show that the person making the claim is not competent to
| make the claim.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
| HPsquared wrote:
| How do you determine a person's reasons for saying something,
| and how can you tell what a person's prejudices are?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Presenting the idea of laboratory escape as a remote but
| possible scenario is perfectly reasonable. Presenting it as
| a fact, without backing it up with evidence or subtly is a
| good indication that they are speaking from a place of
| prejudice.
| mylons wrote:
| it must be nice to understand everyone's intentions all the
| time
| kgwxd wrote:
| Researchers should be discussing it. Until conclusive evidence
| is found, the only reason to post it on social media is to add
| fuel to the conspiracy fire, a fire that's inspiring people to
| kill people that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the
| origin of the virus.
| adamrezich wrote:
| who has killed someone because of a belief related to any of
| this?
| mylons wrote:
| maybe Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Other multi-billion dollar
| entities should censor their platforms and stop inciting
| violence algorithmically? why do I have to self censor
| because I'm smart enough to consider this with a beginner's
| mind, and not a bigot's?
| kaliali wrote:
| SHOUT DOWN ANYONE WHO WONT FOLLOW THE NARRATIVE
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. It's not what this
| site is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking
| to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. They include:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| Rochus wrote:
| _"If we are at the point where all science is politicized and
| no one cares about truth and only being politically correct,"
| he [Petrovsky] says, "we may as well give up and shut down and
| stop doing science."_
| tinntin22 wrote:
| Ironic, if you said this during the Trump era you were a racist.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. It's not what this
| site is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking
| to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. They include:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| tebuevd wrote:
| no guys, the proximity of the Wuhan Lab to the Wuhan wet market
| is just a huuuge coinkidink ;)
| dang wrote:
| Please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, I agree, but I find myself thinking it doesn't matter now.
| What matters is:
|
| 1) could an accident at a lab lead to another pandemic in the
| future? yes, certainly
|
| 2) ok then, how are we going to prevent that?
|
| This seems much like what the world had to figure out after
| nuclear power became widespread; how do we keep this new
| technology from leading to catastrophic problems? It required
| international inspection, sanctions for nations who don't comply,
| and even big powers had to play along.
|
| Whether this pandemic started in a lab or not, we need a system
| to prevent the rapid proliferation of biologically advanced
| research, in more and more countries, from resulting in
| pandemics. So, the question of whether China had a lab leak that
| caused this one seems irrelevant at this point; what we need to
| do going forwards is the same regardless.
| defen wrote:
| > ok then, how are we going to prevent that?
|
| By not doing bioweapons or gain-of-function research? Wasn't
| the whole point of that research to _prevent_ these sorts of
| pandemics? Even if COVID-19 wasn 't from a lab leak...were
| those experiments actually helpful in being able to combat the
| pandemic? The answer seems to be no.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I've read that https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/ was funding
| coronavirus gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab prior to
| the pandemic. My question is why Eco Health Alliance wanted this
| research? What benefits come from artificially evolving a
| dangerous pathogen? Here's the article
| https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ec...
| chenster wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| Inconclusive evidence. The real message is "We don't know."
| fullshark wrote:
| I'd add "and the CCP really doesn't want us to know"
| EMM_386 wrote:
| The 2018 US state department cables warning about this
| possibility can be read here:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...
|
| Please note part (6) regarding WIV scientists studying human-
| disease causing SARS coronaviruses.
|
| Also note this report with the science to back it ("The genetic
| structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin"):
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.2020002...
| fsh wrote:
| Could you cite where exactly the cable warns about this
| possibility? I could not find such a statement in the text.
| jeduehr wrote:
| VERY VERY importantly, the cables were not written by or
| authored by scientists. It was all Trump State Department-hired
| businessmen and diplomats who inspected the facility and wrote
| that cable.
|
| Why should we expect them to be good at determining what is a
| dangerous or risky lab facility?
|
| Notably, in the same cable, they also requested more funding be
| sent to the facility, so they could conduct more pandemic
| surveillance work (and possibly prevent outbreaks like this).
| twobitshifter wrote:
| This is just an ad hominem. You do not know who inspected the
| facility, their qualifications, and what research went into
| the cable.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Actually I do.
|
| I have A) direct relationships with the people who study
| viral biodefense at USAMRIID and serve on the government
| panels, and they were very surprised to hear about these
| cables. They didn't find the authors credible at all. One
| is an entrepreneur and the other a career diplomat.
|
| And for all those who don't have a PhD in the subject or
| know the people who know people, B) it's detailed closely
| in this washington post article who was there and what they
| wrote:
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/nationa
| l...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-
| dep...
| twobitshifter wrote:
| >The U.S. delegation was *led* by Jamison Fouss, the
| consule general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy's
| counselor of environment, science, technology and health.
|
| The first article lists the "leaders" of the delegation
| only. Diplomatic business always needs diplomatic
| leaders, so it doesn't tell us anything of the Doctors
| who were with them. Reading the rest of it, there's a
| very convincing case that China is hiding something. The
| doctors that have "disappeared" are especially troubling
| as well as the information lockdown they imposed.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| In light of the disruption COVID-19 has caused, it's necessary to
| understand how it got started. If we are going to keep our
| intellectual honesty, nothing should be dismissed from
| consideration, including the lab hypothesis. In the middle of all
| that, geopolitics is getting in the way, and rightly so. China
| increasingly considers itself a peer nation to USA - so an
| unfettered foreign-led investigation is unlikely.
| didibus wrote:
| I'm going to jump to the next step... So what?
|
| Does it really matter where the virus emerged from? What changes
| would we make if it came from bats by nature's own doing? Or of
| it came from wet markets? Or if it leaked from a research lab?
| COGlory wrote:
| The evidence is circumstantial, but there has yet to be any
| evidence ruling it out. To be clear, the lab leak hypothesis is
| always possible. Things can always leak out of labs, let's not
| kid ourselves.
|
| Some things (going by memory here) that seem to support the
| hypothesis:
|
| 1) Major point of differentiation for this virus is that compared
| to it's closest known relatives, it has acquired a furin site
| (eukaryotic protein cleavage site) that enhances its virulence.
|
| 2) That furin site RNA contains a non-canonical amino acid codon
|
| 3) That non-canonical codon contains a restriction site that
| could easily be used to track, whether, say, your added furin
| site is surviving multiple cell passages, by performing a
| restriction digest and running the fragments on a cell.
|
| Like I said above, it's circumstantial, but this is all very
| normal. Both adding the furin site (how does coronavirus evolve
| into something more virulent?) and tracking it that way. Then all
| it takes is someone to get infected (EVERYONE working in biology
| has broken at least one lab safety rule in their life, even in
| BSL4) and either not be symptomatic and realize, or not say
| anything.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical to
| this one have also been found in nature, and have been
| generated in nature in very short spans of time (on the order
| of a few decades, which is what is suspected to have happened
| with SARS-CoV-2).
|
| I describe the evidence in detail in this detailed longform
| post I wrote on reddit a few months back: Hi, I have a PhD in
| virology focused on emerging viruses, and a few months back I
| wrote a very lengthy and involved piece full of sources.
|
| And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is. And
| how misguided your point 3 is.
|
| The post also won a "best of r/science 2020" award!
|
| You can find it here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
|
| See under "Addendum to Q2"
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical
| to this one have also been found in nature
|
| I don't believe this is correct.
|
| There are no other examples of a CoV within the sub-genera
| Sarbecovirus of a species/strain that shows evidence of
| insertion of a polybasic furin cleavage site.
| COGlory wrote:
| I read through your post and it was incomplete and hand wavy,
| although that makes sense because it was written for Reddit.
| The bias was also obvious, and remarkably unscientific in how
| you approached the "problems" in a deterministic manner. You
| cherry picked examples (for instance, saying we can detect
| Cas9 mutations) that make no conclusive point (for example,
| there are a variety of ways to add a furin site to a genome
| that don't involve Cas9) but are indistinguishable as proof
| by the Reddit audience. The bottom line is, though, you are
| cherry picking arguments that lay people are more or less too
| unaware of their cherry picked status to argue with.
|
| As a virologist, who "engineers viruses", I also take some
| offense to this line: >The virus itself, to the eye of any
| virologist, is clearly not engineered.
|
| I also suspect that the viruses referenced in the featured
| article would object to that line as well.
| jeduehr wrote:
| That's interesting, because of the scientists featured in
| the above article... None of them are virologists.
|
| Petrovsky, for instance, if you look at his google scholar,
| hasn't published a paper in a virology journal in the 10
| years that I looked. He's published in some predatory
| journals, ones I wouldn't be caught dead publishing in.
|
| He's also gotten /close/, I guess, by publishing about
| tuberculosis. But it really is different and the man
| clearly has never done any viral biosafety work or worked
| or supervised work in any secure facilities working with
| viruses.
|
| If he did, I think he might be more cautious about being so
| cavalier with the probabilities here.
|
| David Relman studies the gut microbiome.
|
| I have no reason to believe you're a virologist with any
| training other than your word, but that isn't actually all
| that important to my argument.
|
| Using viruses in your research doesn't make you a
| virologist any more than using pens in an art school thesis
| makes you an expert in ballpoint pens.
|
| All of that aside, the consensus among people who actually
| use or study dangerous viruses in biosafety labs (both
| those for and against gain of function research, btw) is
| that the virus likely came from a wild zoonotic crossover
| event.
|
| Not a malicious lab leak.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I agree with you that I am uncomfortable with the "hand-
| waviness" of the OP's response. If you are a virologist, I
| would really like your opinion on the _science_ of the
| following document:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.202000
| 2...
|
| Like you, I don't enjoy when facts I post are de-railed
| without actually addressing any of them. It happens a lot,
| but I try my best to not let them be the last word.
|
| There is plenty of factual information out there that makes
| an accidental lab-leak hypothesis strong.
| rndmize wrote:
| I feel that for people paying attention to COVID news, this has
| always been the case; there's never been any kind of conclusive
| evidence on the origin of the virus (that I've read of). The
| article outlines three main possible origins - natural,
| accidental combination in lab, deliberate construction in lab.
| (There's a fourth option I've seen floating around - deliberate
| release of a constructed virus.) It seems that most of the
| scientists in the article are considering the second option;
| however, right-wing media has apparently in multiple instances
| sought to take their work to push the third, or even fourth
| option.
|
| It is thoroughly unsurprising to me that most scientific
| publications would take a stance against releasing studies or
| articles considering option two or three, as right-wing media and
| politicians were/are fishing for anything with a suitable
| scientific veneer they could throw out as evidence of someone to
| blame. (And its not hard to see why - telling your constituents
| they have to deal with job losses, family deaths and lockdowns
| because someone in China ate a bat leaves people without
| something to blame, and the politicians tend to be the closest
| relevant people.) Given the amount of anti-asian
| racism/crime/murder we've seen spiking in the last year, I think
| the publications' stances (and the more mainstream media) to lean
| heavily towards option one is understandable - no one wants to be
| the used as justification for hate crimes or political action a
| la the Iraq war buildup.
|
| Perhaps in another year or two things will have cooled down
| enough that stuff like this can be considered without collateral
| damage.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Absolutely. Lots of issues that are just way too high-emotion
| right now for rational and objective discussion.
|
| One other reason it's way too hot to discuss right now: it
| would suggest that scientists were at least partly to blame for
| the pandemic. Even if you're not Chinese, you might not want to
| be discussing that idea if you were a scientist yourself.
| rsync wrote:
| Once again, I will ask for (what I believe is) an interesting
| piece of context ...
|
| How many labs _like this one_ are there in the world ? Are there
| 20,000 of them ? Are there 7 ?
|
| Of the labs _like this one_ in the world, how many of them are
| doing GoF research on coronaviruses ? 1200 of them ? 1 of them ?
|
| This won't be conclusive but given the reasonable heuristics that
| I work with, having a sense of these proportions would go a long
| way ...
| phyalow wrote:
| According to Wikipedia there are 56 BSL-4 labs globally, I cant
| find any good references on the amount of labs (BSL-3/BSL-4)
| doing GoF research on coronaviruses, but I cant imagine it is a
| significant amount.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_...
|
| There is one fascinating article I came across published by
| Nature in 2017 which has all sorts of innuendo given the state
| of facts on the ground today.
| https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people
| are still unaware that:
|
| 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected
| from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural
| a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such
| viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"
|
| 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the
| possibility of a lab leak, because the US was itself funding gain
| of function research on novel coronaviruses in the Wuhan BSL4 lab
|
| 3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people realize[1]
|
| [1]https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It's because they have been trained to think: corona leaked
| from a lab is tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Heh when can we start discussing the "lab intentional
| release" hypothesis?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned you can start right now, I'm not
| afraid of ideas. I think however that, unless someone makes
| a really big mistake, it'll never be possible to prove such
| a hypothesis.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Of course; if we wait around for documentary proof of
| covert operations to emerge it almost invariably arrives
| long after the point where anything can be done with the
| information.
|
| There are oddities in the whole timeline which stand out
| to me. The social media videos of people keeling over in
| streets and buildings in Wuhan from the virus, which
| doesn't appear to be a genuine phenomenon of its
| pathology and therefore looks planted for psyop purposes.
| The CDC behaving so incompetently around testing and
| acknowledging the threat of the virus that it beggars
| belief (see: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-
| coronavirus-cdc-re...). No one from the global ruling
| class succumbing to the virus even as it claims multiple
| Covid-skeptical leaders in Africa where its impact is
| otherwise quite muted. Cuomo, Newsom, and Whitmer
| implementing policies which grossly amplified nursing
| home deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. Various
| maneuvers of public consent management, e.g. "15 Days to
| Slow the Spread" to get people to start lockdowns,
| followed by "we have to keep going until we get the
| vaccines" alongside zero investment in new ICU capacity
| and even reductions in hospital staff. The obvious wealth
| transfers and consolidation of the economy away from the
| middle class and small businesses which has occurred,
| along with the accelerated adoption of surveillable tech
| platforms as the primary means of interpersonal
| communication. Doctors reduced to begging on Twitter for
| people to run trials on repurposed generic treatments
| while all the stops are pulled out for the vaccines (even
| the Washington Post has recently acknowledged that
| financial incentives and political considerations are
| preventing cheap drugs from getting a fair shake: https:/
| /www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/08/ivermectin-...)
| .
|
| But yeah, certainly nothing I can point to as hard proof.
| [deleted]
| allemagne wrote:
| This top comment and the thread caused by posting it actually
| seems to be the main source of heated discussions about whether
| lab leak suggestions are xenophobic or not.
| yumraj wrote:
| > It's not xenophobic for people from the US....
|
| While racism and xenophobia is real, it has been and is being
| used very effectively, especially by China but others too, to
| deflect/blunt genuine criticisms and claims.
|
| Just as an amusing example, we talk openly about UK variant, SA
| variant, Brazil variant - but never talk about original as
| Wuhan variant - it is simply coronavirus.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's cuts both ways. Some of the UK Politicians happily
| throwing around "China/Wuhan virus" got butt-hurt on Twitter
| when people called the B117 strain the "UK Variant."
|
| We shouldn't be using that terminology for variants either.
| While I understand that people largely use location names for
| the sake of convenience, it really doesn't feel good to be a
| person from one of those locations.
| wisty wrote:
| Were they "butt-hurt" or were they feigning outrage to
| point out the hypocrisy of their opponents? I feel the
| later happens a lot on the internet (and some people even
| loose sight of the original intent).
|
| It's like "censorship is OK if a private company does it".
| This makes a bit of sense if you're attacking a
| Libertarian, but for left wingers to earnestly think that
| private companies should have the right to shut down
| discussion they don't like is very odd.
|
| Sometimes I worry that large portions of online debate has
| been overrun by people making claims they don't really
| believe because they're a bad slippery slope take on the
| views of the people they disagree with; and sometimes
| people have even started to buy the deliberately bad
| arguments their side has created.
| muskox2 wrote:
| In my opinion, location names are the easiest and most
| memorable way to refer to variants. The tradition is as old
| as the "Spanish flu"... which isn't from Spain at all.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| They might be the easiest way to refer to variants but it
| does seem to incentivise countries/regions not
| disclosing/testing for new variants in the first place.
| proc0 wrote:
| Really? Why would it bother anyone there is a strain after
| your city/country/continent? Seriously I can't think of one
| reason it would bother me. It's so much easier to NOT take
| things personally. It's easier, and feels better.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| "Some...". Well, a few right wing idiots. Even the BBC
| calls it UK variant:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55659820
|
| > it really doesn't feel good to be a person from one of
| those locations.
|
| I am from one of these locations and could not care less.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think that's a little bit different because the origin has
| a different perceived connotation of blame.
| powerapple wrote:
| the reason behind it is that almost 70% asian experience
| racism, and we don't see British people being attacked in
| street randomly
| yumraj wrote:
| And other people of color, referring to South Africa and
| Brazil variants, do not face racism?
| temp8964 wrote:
| "almost 70% asian experience racism"? Only if you mean how
| college admission in the U.S. discriminates against Asian
| kids.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| Hey @dang -- I know you love to let dumb racist shit
| stand on this website, but where do you draw the line?
| newacct583 wrote:
| > 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the
| possibility of a lab leak
|
| Inherently? Of course not. But does xenophobia motivate a lot
| of this argument? It certainly seems to. Look at how quickly
| proponents of this nonsense jump from detached discussion about
| the possibilities to outraged condemnation of the PRC. Just
| read the discussion here in this thread.
|
| If you only wanted to discuss the lab and the virus and try to
| put relative likelihoods on the natural evolution vs. Andromeda
| Strain theories, that would be one thing. But... that doesn't
| seem to be all you want.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Just because the motivation for the argument is bad, it
| doesn't mean that the argument itself is bad. I think you
| agree by saying it's not "inherently" xenophobic.
|
| All we need to do to take xenophobia out of this discussion
| is to not be xenophobic ourselves. The xenophobes may talk to
| themselves. But let's make sure we are talking about this
| problem instead of falling for the "guilty by association
| fallacy".
| newacct583 wrote:
| > Just because the motivation for the argument is bad, it
| doesn't mean that the argument itself is bad.
|
| Inherently? Of course not. But in practice it tends to act
| as a good prior for detecting bullshit. How many of these
| people would _really_ be making the same argument in this
| way had the virus appeared in Bonn or Montreal?
| bruiseralmighty wrote:
| Excuse me but PRC = People's Republic of China correct?
|
| How would it be xenophobic to criticize a government? This
| conflation is so pervasive and toxic to the discourse.
|
| The Chinese government _does_ bear some of the responsibility
| here. The Chinese people _do not_. At a minimum, they
| actively tried to cover-up an investigation into a leak and
| leaned on the World Health Organization in order to do so.
|
| This had two negative affects globally. First is the slowed
| response time from the rest of the World as they were assured
| this was mild and contained. Second is the rightfully
| degraded trust in the WHO which will impede ongoing and
| future efforts not only to stop Covid-19 but also future
| pandemics.
|
| The reason right-wing media sources are the only ones talking
| about this is because they are the only ones with the freedom
| to do so. If we do not like that some of these source are
| implying that Chinese people as a group are to blame, then
| that is an invitation for more mainstream outlets to stop
| carrying water for the Chinese and American governments.
|
| Be upfront, the WHO was compromised by the Chinese
| government. There could have been a leak, a hypothesis that
| is looking more likely with each passing week. If this was in
| fact a leak, then gain of function research could also be
| implicated. This produces a conflict of interest with experts
| in the field because their funding and research may utilize
| gain of function methods.
|
| Done.
|
| This was a known unknown over a year ago, but stifled due to
| political interests. The casting of xenophobic aspersions
| onto the right-leaning media sources who got this correct is
| an attempt at damage control for the same political
| interests.
|
| I get it. Admitting those media sources were better when it
| really mattered means fewer people will get vaccinated and we
| may get a Trump 2.0. That is the political price of lying and
| getting caught. Jacketing all these conversations with
| underlying accusations of "well they were right but also
| racist" is not going to be a win. If you want to win you have
| to actually be better.
| newacct583 wrote:
| With all respect, this sounds very much like "It's not
| xenophobia if your fear of the foreigners is justified".
| throwaway4good wrote:
| You are missing the important bit: The lab leak would have to
| be covered up by the Chinese authorities and the WHO would some
| how have had to be in on it.
|
| Read the section in the WHO report on COVID19 and listen to the
| reputable international scientist that actually went and
| visited the lab and interviewed the people who worked there.
|
| https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >The lab leak would have to be covered up by the Chinese
| authorities and the WHO would some how have had to be in on
| it.
|
| Indeed. There's another important bit that you seem to be
| missing.
|
| Did you know that Peter Daszak, one of the "reputable
| international scientists" you speak of who helped investigate
| and author that report was himself the _project lead_ for the
| US funded gain of function research at the WIV?
|
| Who would be more inclined or in a better position to cover
| that up than him?
| rebelos wrote:
| To think that China couldn't or wouldn't carefully control
| this situation and what information is available to external
| parties is being credulous to the point of this sounding like
| propaganda. They did everything they could to downplay the
| severity of the issue for months while they had people in
| hazmat suits trying to decon Wuhan.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Why didn't they do the same for the SARS-CoV-1 leaks that
| happened in Beijing over a decade ago, then?
| rebelos wrote:
| That's a terrible counterargument full of logical holes
| coming from someone who's supposedly a "PhD in virology".
| But you're also a green account that's so rabidly and
| suspiciously coming to China's defense throughout these
| comments that I literally assign no credence whatsoever
| to anything you've said. Several other scientists here
| have already eviscerated the arguments in your r/science
| post as well.
|
| I don't know who you are, but "unbiased virologist
| commenter" is definitely not it.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I feel like people are doing a poor job distinguishing between
| "engineered" and "leaked."
|
| There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to
| conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of
| "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus,"
| but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the
| result of gain of function research.
|
| My personal feeling is that these statements are true:
|
| * The virus is unlikely to have been engineered (in the way I
| described above) and leaked.
|
| * There is circumstantial evidence the virus was the result of
| gain of function research and it leaked.
|
| * There is circumstantial evidence the virus was a natural
| research sample and it leaked.
|
| * There is circumstantial evidence the virus was introduced by
| an animal/person who traveled to the wet market.
|
| Some of these are more likely than others, and an individual's
| own calibration for what is likely or unlikely will probably
| come into play more than evidence in the short term and
| possibly long term as well. I can say the vast majority of us
| are not qualified to answer the question either way though.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I like this presentation of evidence. Rarely do you see such
| a short acknowledgement that there are multiple contradictory
| theories, each having some evidence, and making no attempt to
| pick which theory is correct.
|
| Sometimes its wrong to present "both sides" like that. Like
| pretending the evidence against the moon landings is equal to
| the evidence for the moon landings. But if you're going to be
| wrong, this is probably the best kind of wrong.
| beowulfey wrote:
| well, often the benefit of listing out as much evidence as
| possible (basically, look at the facts on hand) is that it
| can help clarify WHICH theory makes the most sense
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I think this is one of those areas where our day-to-day
| probability heuristics do not align with the actual
| probabilities. So, as an individual, trying to decide
| which theory makes the most sense is a Sisyphean task.
|
| For example, I have seen a lot of comments that the
| closest natural COVID reservoir is 500 miles away, that
| sounds like a lot! But the average tractor trailer can
| cover that in a day no problem, so our heuristic needs to
| include how many trucks are moving between those areas,
| how many have come in contact with wildlife or are
| transporting it, etc. Since it only takes one
| transmission the problem rapidly becomes too complex.
|
| Fortunately the answer has no bearing on decisions being
| made in the here and now, so we can afford to wait and
| let experts do their jobs and hope we take the right
| steps long term if it was something that could have been
| avoided.
| ricksunny wrote:
| > we can afford to wait and let experts do their jobs
|
| We can emphatically _not_ expect the experts to do their
| job. Those cited as having the most expertise
| (virologists who undertake gain-of-function research,
| symbolically under the auspices of HHS' toothless P3CO
| regulation framework) have the most to lose from a
| finding that the pandemic's source was a lab leak. They
| lose all the grants and public financial support, not to
| mention endure unending public scorn that will haunt the
| their careers for the duration.
|
| For evidence that the relevant, oft-cited scientists act
| precisely this way, one need no more than to look at
| @BlockedVirology's retweets:
| https://twitter.com/blockedvirology
|
| Scientists are human - I would highly recommend
| disabusing oneself of the notion that they might act
| contrary to overwhelming human incentives in as weighty a
| context as investigating the origins of the greatest
| pandemic in a century.
|
| The only alternative in the face of this embedded
| conflict of interest in our (society's) ability to
| credibly investigate the pandemic's origins is for
| technically-minded individuals (who _don't_ run
| multimillion dollar virology labs) to avail themselves of
| the findings gathered to date on the origins (there's
| lots! Just need to take a look, the contributors to the
| above feed are a good place to start), and advocate to
| their representatives for a credible & even-handed
| origins investigation.
|
| Failing that, expect no origin beyond all reasonable
| doubt to be credibly identified in our lifetimes.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Scientists are human, and they will make mistakes, the
| benefit is that there are many of them with different
| incentives. The "Blocked Virology" twitter account
| references a lot of previous lab escapes to say that lab
| escapes are possible, this is good evidence against your
| point - how do you think we know about the previous
| escapes? It wasn't a random group of technically-minded
| individuals, it was experts that tracked it down.
|
| The level of arrogance necessary to believe that any
| "technically minded" individual can find where the virus
| originated is mind blowing to me. Logic isn't the end-
| all-be-all, for many fields you must also have knowledge.
| We should not ignore the blindspots that deep knowledge
| can introduce but to just dismiss it is absurd.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Actually a lot of virologists are also critical of GOF.
|
| Just look at public health people, epidemiologists. Folks
| like Andrea Sant, Michael Osterholm, David Topham, etc.
|
| These folks criticize GOF all the time, and are a big
| part of the group that helps write regulations to make
| Virology research safe.
|
| But you know what these same virologists also don't
| believe? That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab.
|
| That should tell you something.
|
| Science is adversarial, and virology is no exception.
|
| That's why when consensus exists about something, you
| should respect it. There is quite a large consensus about
| this one.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| > That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab
|
| This is a straw man argument. No one is seriously
| claiming that this is a "cooked up" (artificially
| created) virus. It could be a natural virus that escaped
| the lab.
| Banyonite wrote:
| > That's why when consensus exists about something, you
| should respect it. There is quite a large consensus about
| this one.
|
| Respecting a consensus is reasonable. That having been
| said, I would be interested to hear what the virologists
| to whom you refer think about Ralph Baric's work. Ralph
| Baric is a very well-known virologist specializing in
| corona virology. His group synthesized quite a few SARS-
| CoV variants, a number of years before SARS-CoV-2 made
| its appearance. While there's no proof that SARS-CoV-2
| was created in a lab, there are quite a few studies
| describing the synthesis of different SARS-CoV variants,
| some quite dangerous.
|
| From one of many papers on which he was a co-author
| (https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048.full):
|
| "Using the SARS-CoV infectious clone as a template (7),
| we designed and synthesized a full-length infectious
| clone of WIV1-CoV consisting of six plasmids that could
| be enzymatically cut, ligated together, and
| electroporated into cells to rescue replication competent
| progeny virions (Fig. S1A). In addition to the full-
| length clone, we also produced WIV1-CoV chimeric virus
| that replaced the SARS spike with the WIV1 spike within
| the mouse-adapted backbone (WIV1-MA15, Fig. S1B)"
|
| EDIT: jeduehr, given your background in virology, I would
| be interested in any technical critique you may have
| regarding the Yuri Deigin article referenced in my post
| below.
| jeduehr wrote:
| It's important to understand the distinction between
| chimeric and mosaic viruses.
|
| Baric makes Chimeras. CoV-2 in comparison to the other
| closely related viruses in nature, is a mosaic. Lots of
| little changes all over the genome, not big copy and
| pastes.
|
| See here for more detail on that distinction: https://www
| .reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpbagf
| [deleted]
| darepublic wrote:
| You can present evidence for and against moon landing being
| a hoax and if done properly the delusional theory among
| them (hoax) should be really clear. Presenting the evidence
| as plainly as possible should be elucidating not misleading
| cameldrv wrote:
| I'm not sure you can rule out "engineered as you described
| above."
|
| WIV had recently published research on, and had an active
| grant to perform (at the time of the outbreak), chimeric
| Coronavirus research, and they were one of the two world
| leading labs in this. In that research, they were
| transplanting the spike gene from one virus to the "backbone"
| of another. You could call this "engineering" or "gain of
| function" depending on your perspective.
|
| The thing that raised people's suspicions about this is that
| the spike RBD strongly resembles a virus sequence they
| released recently (Pangolin-CoV), and the backbone strongly
| resembles another virus they recently published (RaTG13).
| That suggests that there was some sort of recombination
| event. That recombination could have occurred in nature, in
| an animal that was simultaneously infected with two viruses,
| or it could have occurred in the lab.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| 96% is strongly resembles?
| andi999 wrote:
| Sources, please.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| This article delves into the spike protein and its furin
| cleavage site which some have argued looks engineered:
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-
| esca...
|
| Incidentally (or perhaps not?), there is some evidence
| that the furin-cleavage site is what makes the virus
| resistant to hydroxychloroquine, which can be countered
| by combining it with a TMPRSS2 inhibitor: https://journal
| s.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >I can say the vast majority of us are not qualified to
| answer the question either way though.
|
| It's also worth noting that even the leading experts can get
| these things wrong, as was the case with the Sverdlovsk lab
| leak.
|
| Soviet authorities covered it up by blaming local meat
| markets, and leading US experts concurred with them, only to
| reverse their conclusion 6 years later.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak#Acci.
| ..
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| It's worth noting that in both the Sverdlov case and in
| this one, world scientists are only being given access to
| the situation in an extremely controlled fashion. A primary
| reason we can't say more on what happened in this case is
| the CCP's tight control over access that could help clarify
| the situation.
|
| Which will always look suspicious, whether it was actually
| a completely natural virus or not.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Never heard about Sverdlosk, interesting story.
|
| > Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar issued a decree to
| begin demilitarization of Compound 19 in 1992. However, the
| facility continued its work. Not a single journalist has
| been allowed onto the premises since 1992. About 200
| soldiers with Rottweiler dogs still patrol the complex.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Absolutely, without multiple trust-worthy first-person
| accounts backed by evidence, the likely best we can hope
| for is an eventually-consistent story that we are "pretty
| sure" about. Considering the size of the impact on the
| world, that will take a long time.
| tootie wrote:
| Even the WHO report didn't rule out the possibility of a
| leak. They just said the evidence is weak and the evidence of
| animal to human transmission is stronger.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| My personal feelings are that all 3 are possible, but
| approximately 0.0001% of people will actually consider the
| likelihood of each one, but rather, most will choose
| whichever one is most convenient and comfortable to believe
| in.
|
| Of course as an Asian person, whatever people believe in will
| have a direct impact on me. I remember after 9/11, the amount
| of awful things that were said and done to the Sikh
| population in my city. It didn't matter they had literally
| nothing to do with the attacks. People were angry and wanted
| someone to blame.
| anonymousisme wrote:
| As a white American in Beijing during the 9/11 attacks, I
| experienced lots of not-so-surprising behavior from my
| Chinese hosts. Many Chinese felt that America deserved what
| they got. Tensions were still high from the "Hainan Island
| Incident" only a few months earlier.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
| Banyonite wrote:
| There is a rather detailed description of circumstantial
| evidence that leans towards the gain of function statement:
| https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-
| throug...
| cdblades wrote:
| > but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the
| result of gain of function research.
|
| That's not a lens that can be used to usefully evaluate
| claims.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's also not xenophobic to suggest the possibility of a lab
| leak because lab leaks happen regardless of who's doing the
| research; even at BSL-4 facilities, mistakes are made. And also
| because there were two separate SARS-CoV-1 leaks/outbreaks from
| Chinese labs which the PRC admitted to. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC403836/
| elif wrote:
| There are also cases isolated from US blood samples taken
| before any known infection in China's outbreak, so the racist
| nature of this discussion is really misplaced. In reality,
| statements about the origin of this virus are almost purely
| geopolitical speculation, and it is from these politics that
| racism is injected into the etymology.
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-01/covid-
| inf...
| drran wrote:
| The First covid-like symptoms were registered in November
| 2019 in Russia.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh11FtfaP0
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| It is not xenophobic to suggest that.
|
| However; since the "leaked virus" narrative was mostly
| parroted by rightwing media, and promoted from an overtly
| racist and xenophobic administration and political party, (in
| the USA) - it very much muddies the waters. There's also some
| very strong, direct evidence, that political appointees
| discussed (over email) strategies for subverting messaging
| from actual scientific experts who had actual data and
| studies backing up alternative explanations.
|
| It would be nice if such narratives arose organically from
| actual events, and could be discussed openly. But that's
| impossible in our present political environment, and that's
| one of many many hazards of far-right politics. Any
| questions? Just ask Galileo his opinion on the matter.
| godelski wrote:
| This is why it becomes important for us to have good faith
| conversations. I don't think it is impossible to have said
| conversations, but more difficult. We have to act in good
| faith and determine who is using this language as a dog
| whistle vs who is using it normally. We've seen how
| assuming everything is a dog whistle has backfired on us,
| so I'm not sure erroring in that direction is correct. But
| at the same time I don't think we should necessarily act as
| if there is no possibility someone is using language in
| that way (muddied waters). I think we just proceed with
| caution and do our best.
| godelski wrote:
| I just want to add: "A government is not the people and the
| people are not the government." Just in case this needs to be
| stated for anyone here or reading. If you disagree with a
| people's government that doesn't mean you should treat the
| people of said government in a critical manner. Their views
| do not necessarily reflect that of their government (often
| they do not, just look at us here in America where
| criticizing the government is the great American past time)
| clairity wrote:
| the american experiment in democracy was to make the
| government synonymous with the people. certainly that was
| pulled back a bit by the republican (as in republic, not
| the political party) elements by our founders, who were
| themselves 'elites' of the time. in china, the communist
| party is meant to be the same: a party of (all) the people.
|
| certainly xenophobia expresses itself acutely in
| mediopolitical contexts where power and money are on the
| line, but also in forums like this where such ego boosts
| are basically costless. it's not really about a distinction
| between the people and the government.
| refenestrator wrote:
| The fact that this particular theory reaches the front page
| of hacker news every week, despite zero evidence besides the
| existence of a lab.. hey, we're just asking questions, here,
| right?
|
| Frankly, it would be irresponsible NOT to provacatively
| suggest this thing we have no evidence of, repeatedly.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, and a
| few months back I wrote a very lengthy and involved piece full
| of sources.
|
| And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is. And
| how misguided your point 3 is.
|
| The post also won a "best of r/science 2020" award!
|
| You can find it here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
| mistermann wrote:
| In what way is point 3 misguided?
| jeduehr wrote:
| Everyone is citing the evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 leak as
| reason to believe that viruses escape labs.
|
| But you know what's interesting about that?
|
| We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese
| scientists told us about it./
|
| They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety
| community (the people with degrees in these things) helped
| china become more standard and respectable and safe.
|
| And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're accusing
| them of covering up the same thing.
|
| Scientists are not their government, and China's government
| is not a huge fan of it's scientists. Just look at the
| great leap forward. And how they're treating Shi Zhengli
| now that she is arguing the virus came from a zoonotic
| event in the provinces. China's party line no longer
| agrees, and she's been silenced.
|
| Why would she lie for her government when they don't even
| agree?
| mistermann wrote:
| What you wrote here is not wrong, but point number 3
| stated:
|
| > 3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people
| realize[1]
|
| As I see it, there are two variables involved:
|
| - how frequently lab leaks happen (total number of
| historic leaks - known + unknown)
|
| - people's realization / awareness of how often they
| happen
|
| > And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're
| accusing them of covering up the same thing.
|
| Regardless of whether there is evidence or not (have they
| been perfectly transparent and enthusiastically
| encouraging of inspections?), a leak did happen, or it
| did not happen...and then on top of it, there is the
| problem of whether we have knowledge of it or not.
|
| > Why would she lie for her government when they don't
| even agree?
|
| Like many other things in life, it is not known.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Re: inspections, Shi Zhengli has been yes.
|
| Her government, not so much.
|
| I am definitely not a fan of the Chinese government. But
| the scientists I've met at conferences and the papers
| I've reviewed from their labs have been of a very high
| quality.
|
| Not saying such people could not commit atrocities or
| coverups like this. But I do find it personally less
| likely.
|
| That isn't the evidence I rely on most in my personal
| assessment, though. The epidemiology and molecular clock
| data points to a zoonotic origin outside of Wuhan. Check
| out here to see what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/sci
| ence/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcfs2
|
| Which makes the lab leak a whole lot less interesting of
| an idea since its' circumstantial evidence isn't actually
| the circumstance anymore.
| mistermann wrote:
| Agreed, I've read other plausible claims of ~evidence
| suggesting the Wuhan origin theory is incorrect.
|
| Generally speaking, I think the whole world would be
| better off if we aligned our perceptions of our knowledge
| more closely with its likely true quality: very often, we
| think we know things, but we are actually just estimating
| if not outright guessing, and then declaring it to be
| true. Unfortunately, very few people seem to be
| comfortable with this idea regardless of their political
| orientation or education level. But as I see it, it is
| simply applying the discipline and methodology of science
| to the real world, so it's kind of weird how unpopular it
| is with educated people who are _otherwise_ enthusiastic
| promoters of Scientific Thinking.
| [deleted]
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >But you know what's interesting about that?
|
| >We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese
| scientists told us about it./
|
| Sometimes humans tell the truth, sometimes humans don't.
|
| Pointing to one group of people who told the truth, and
| asserting that means another group _must_ be telling the
| truth is just silly.
|
| Especially considering the former example was in regards
| to a small accident relative to potentially the greatest
| accident in human history.
|
| I know I would be _strongly_ inclined to lie if I was
| responsible for the accidental death of millions of
| people.
|
| If a human being was not inclined to lie about their
| responsibility for greatest accident in human history,
| why would humans ever lie about any mistake?
| jeduehr wrote:
| But at the time when it was important, in both of these
| leak events, only extremely few people had died. Not
| millions.
|
| It was far from the worst accident in human history at
| that point, it looked like nothing and in America lots of
| people thought it would never affect us at all.
|
| That's when it came up and when Zhengli had her lab
| searched and checked their freezers etc.
|
| It's also important to think about the other BSL4 labs
| around the world they sent tons of samples to. If they
| were hiding SARS-CoV-2, why wouldn't it have slipped into
| any of these many thousands of inter-lab samples?
|
| Releases aren't all that common but cross-contamination
| within and between secure sites actually is.
|
| Why has no one found SARS-2 in any of the samples sent
| out of Wuhan to Australia, Singapore, Canada, or the US?
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Which part of #1 is false?
|
| 1.1 Gain of function research primarily uses samples
| collected from nature
|
| 1.2 and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a
| way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature.
|
| 1.3 If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear
| "natural"
| jeduehr wrote:
| 1.3. you cannot take any virus known in nature (like
| Ratg-13 for example) and "cook" it for long enough or in
| any specific way to make it look like SARS-CoV-2.
|
| You can't do it in the time we've been able to handle
| viruses like this or modify them in the ways we can. You'd
| have needed to start a few decades ago, have tools that
| we've only just invented, and a huge number of willing test
| subjects.
|
| I cover this in extreme detail in the post I linked under
| Q2 and Q3.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpbt6o
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpc7c8
|
| One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is the
| synonymous/nonsynonomous ratio of the genome and it's
| mosaic mutations.
|
| That's not something you can just cook up over night, it
| takes many millions of viral generations which require A)
| diverse hosts (like you find in a natural ecosystem), B)
| many millions of hosts, like you find in nature, and C)
| decades of time.
|
| The chinese virology labs don't have the resources, time,
| or space to do something like that. And maybe it would be
| kind of possible today with CRISPR and many thousands of
| oligonucleotides printed off of a desktop printer, but that
| technology hasn't existed for more than a few years. The
| timelines just don't add up.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| > _and a huge number of willing test subjects_
|
| Who said the test subjects have to be willing? That's
| never stopped our government before.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Okay they at least need to stay quiet, sit in their
| warehouse of cages, and no journalists need to find out
| about it. And there can't be any leaks from anyone
| involved suddenly gaining a deathbed conscience.
|
| The conspiracy becomes so immense it's absurd the many
| thousands of people who would have to keep quiet.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed response. As a layperson,
| these specifics are over my head.
|
| Assuming everything you say is true, that still would not
| rule out a lab leak of a virus collected from nature,
| would it?
|
| >You can't do it in the time we've been able to handle
| viruses like this or modify them in the ways we can.
| You'd have needed to start a few decades ago, have tools
| that we've only just invented, and a huge number of
| willing test subjects.
|
| Does this imply that covid19 has been circulating among
| humans for a very long time?
| jeduehr wrote:
| Yes, a lab leak of a virus collected from nature is the
| most plausible of these lab theories.
|
| But the epidemiological evidence points to covid-19
| originating outside wuhan entirely, that's why I find
| that theory less likely, among other reasons. See here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcfs
| 2
|
| Also if they had collected it in nature, it would have
| been in their freezers, or likely that people involved in
| that research would have been patient zero etc. See here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcf3
| 3
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpce2
| z
|
| Wuhan institute of virology also aren't the labs I'm
| worried about. They were built and designed by very
| reputable people in the virology community. Not saying
| you should trust them, but at least recognize that the
| people who are most qualified to distrust them think it's
| unlikely.
|
| See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y9
| 5/-/fqpccr1
|
| >Does this imply covid-19 has been circulating in humans
| a long time?
|
| No, it implies it was relatively stable passing amongst
| several species of bats (and other related mammals)
| before a single or a few crossover events into humans
| recently.
|
| It's behaving exactly like we would expect a zoonotic
| transmission to behave. It's not very well adapted to
| bats, it's not very well adapted to humans. It's sort of
| "promiscuous" likely because it has infected several
| different species over several decades before arriving in
| humans.
| abecedarius wrote:
| WIV had many unpublished coronavirus samples, and took
| their database offline in fall 2019. RaTG13 is just the
| least distant relative to SARS-CoV-2 that they did
| publish.
| AlarmALlama wrote:
| Hi. Do you still stand by your point 3.1.1, specifically your
| mutation rate of 2 changes/month, given that newer variants
| are believed to have arisen from intense mutational events in
| a small number of immunodeficient people?
| jeduehr wrote:
| Hi, yes I do.
|
| Because those mutation events in a small number of people
| still require a longer time to become "stable" in the
| overall population of viruses.
|
| Generally speaking, the more virus "generations" you have,
| the more likely you are to generate a successful variant.
| But then it takes time for that variant to achieve dynamic
| equilibrium in the greater population of viruses. For it to
| take over.
|
| And the initial SARS-CoV-2 had so little diversity for so
| long, that we can say it likely had been stable before
| passing into humans, or there would have been more initial
| diversity in it compared to its closest viral relatives.
|
| It is a picture overall consistent with a random crossover
| event. Not ruling out a lab leak (because that's quite
| difficult if not impossible to do). The absence of evidence
| is not evidence of absence.
|
| But we have just as much evidence to say the virus came
| from aliens who planted it in humans as we do to say it
| came from a human lab that has no trace of the virus
| anywhere in it.
| itssssotrue wrote:
| The fact that you state that your article won a "best of
| r/science 2020" award is a bit like stating you came in first
| at the special olympics.
| dlp211 wrote:
| This is frankly an ignorant comment. Many of the best
| Special Olympic athletes would absolutely thrash your
| average in shape adult. Many of the men in their respective
| disability category for the 100m dash are sub 11-second,
| putting them in or near world class athlete times. And
| while those aren't Usain Bolt times, and not every category
| of Special Olympic athlete is equal, your average athletic
| male would be lucky to be in the 11-12 seconds range.
| jeduehr wrote:
| I would rather you criticize the facts of my argument than
| the platform it's raised on.
|
| I was under the impression HN has a certain sense of
| propriety in its "comment guidelines."
|
| Or do you want to stoop as low as the forums you criticize?
|
| Thanks
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| You can't expect him to restrict his criticism to the
| content of your arguments and not your person if you
| claim your argument must be true because you have a PhD
| and no time to retype your essay for us lowlifes.
| jeduehr wrote:
| I didn't say my argument must be true because I have a
| PhD. I said you should trust that I'm not talking out of
| my ass because I have a PhD.
|
| I'd much rather you read my arguments and criticize my
| content.
|
| The fact is, criticisms in these things come from all
| angles. I was simply preempting one type of criticism in
| saying I have a PhD so I have thought about this and
| studied it a lot.
|
| And then directly responding to another (that reddit is
| full of crap) by saying the content is what's important
| anyway.
|
| I'm not saying I'm right because I have a PhD. In the
| post I drectly say "I'd much rather you read the
| arguments anyway"
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| I would like to criticise your content but you haven't
| posted any. You have simply claimed the posters claims #1
| and #3 were false "because you said so".
|
| Anyways I applaud and respect you for working your way up
| to the PhD and I am sure you are trying your best to
| spread the truth, but it would be more effective if you
| rehashed the main parts of that essay for all the readers
| here to see if you want to clear up whatever errors the
| poster has put out into the world.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| I'm sorry man, but wouldn't you be able to just reply
| directly if you feel inclined to disagree with the parent.
| I'm not saying HN is entitled to your opinion but it feels a
| little lazy and disrespectful to the parent to say "you're
| wrong" then drop a link off site to a massive general summary
| of the situation in order to respond to a few specific
| points. Especially since point 3 has a source from a decently
| reputable news site with reputable sources.
| jeduehr wrote:
| Hi, I actually ended up responding below to point 3 in
| particular but I also respond to it in my original post.
| Very few, if any of these arguments are novel.
|
| The reason you will find extremely few people with actual
| credentials in the science we're discussing in these
| discussions is that working scientists don't have the time
| or will to get into these debates with people who wouldn't
| have the faintest idea how to actually conduct the research
| they're criticizing.
|
| That post I linked took like dozens and dozens of man hours
| to write, workshop, source, and edit.
|
| And I wrote it so I could link it in situations like this,
| and not repeat myself dozens or hundreds of times.
|
| Personally, I'm studying for the biggest exam of my
| professional life at the moment, and I'm procrastinating
| here because I find these discussions so horrifying.
|
| This entire thread could be a valuable case study in the
| Dunning Krueger effect.
|
| Not saying it's not worth talking about, but rather that
| the amount of time and effort it takes to refute bullshit
| is several magnitudes more than the amount of effort it
| takes to create it.
|
| In my case, that's 10+ years studying viruses so people on
| the internet with no credentials can tell me I'm wrong.
| phyalow wrote:
| Firstly it is "Dunning-Kruger". Secondly you are engaging
| in an argument from "authority" without evidence which is
| often fallacious and always disingenuous.
| jeduehr wrote:
| I'm typing on a phone keyboard so forgive my typo.
|
| And I linked to a literal mountain of evidence describing
| both my credentials on this topic and then an extremely
| detailed and heavily sourced set of arguments.
|
| I'm not talking out of my ass, I'm sorry it sounds that
| way. After you have several hundred of these discussions
| and they keep popping up with zero new evidence, it tends
| to color your attitude.
|
| Please accept my apologies
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| That's fair if you don't want to engage because you feel
| you don't have time, but the spirit of the website is to
| have an open discussion. That means people will say wrong
| things. If you don't have time to engage with
| that....it's totally fine. But just saying I'm right and
| dropping a large read goes against the spirt of
| discussion. No one is forcing you to. If you wanted to
| just do a general response to everyone just make a
| comment on the main article with your link.
|
| Good luck on your exam as well.
| jeduehr wrote:
| I am engaging, against my better judgement!
| chimprich wrote:
| Thanks for posting this - really interesting and valuable
| in my view.
|
| > The reason you will find extremely few people with
| actual credentials in the science we're discussing in
| these discussions is that working scientists don't have
| the time or will to get into these debates with people
| who wouldn't have the faintest idea how to actually
| conduct the research they're criticizing.
|
| We have such a big problem with public perception of
| science. I think many people are willing to be educated,
| but internet forums tend to degenerate into arguments
| between people who think they know a lot more than they
| do (even in (especially?) places like HN).
|
| Controversial idea: I think in the future we should pay
| researchers to spend x% of their time just interacting
| with people on internet forums answering questions and
| correcting misperceptions. The amount of disinformation
| out there is staggering.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Alina Chan seems at least equally qualified and
| disagrees:
|
| https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1374108473571557377
| jeduehr wrote:
| Alina Chan, also not a virologist.
|
| She's a geneticst or biochemist. She just uses some
| viruses in her research sometimes, like basically all
| biochemists.
|
| Calling her qualified in virus biosafety is like saying
| someone with a PhD in Visual Arts is qualified as an
| expert in ballpoint pens because they've used them to
| draw. Sure they know some things about using ballpoint
| pens and which ones they prefer, but would you trust them
| to tell you how to design one from scratch? Or how to fix
| pens?
|
| Not as much as some guy with a PhD in engineering and
| design at Mont Blanc, get what I'm saying?
|
| I have also responded to her criticisms substance
| elsewhere, but she makes some big leaps in judgment that
| show she hasn't ever worked in a BSL4 lab before. Or
| studied the nitty gritty of virus genetics in nature
| before.
| [deleted]
| ChemSpider wrote:
| > I have also responded to her criticisms substance
| elsewhere,
|
| Link?
| maxerickson wrote:
| This idea that everything always needs to be litigated from
| first principles is stupid. They pointed out what they
| thought was salient about their write up, if you don't want
| to read it don't, if you do and think they are wrong, you
| can write about why.
| rdxm wrote:
| real-politik and nation state realities are too often discounted
| on this topic. was there a lab leak? yes, that's highly likely.
| What was the genesis of this event? also highly likely it was
| related to pushing the bio-weapon envelope.
|
| China is obviously pushing hard to catch-up, and doing so in
| every offensive dimension is highly likely given past behavior,
| to think otherwise is dangerously naive. What makes this crazy is
| the hubris(or discounting) of the numerous close calls for
| disaster during the cold war on this topic.
|
| The lack of real transparency on this with WHO exploration tells
| you all you need to know about whether this was a simple protocol
| eff-up or a blown military program..
| hnbad wrote:
| While interesting on a purely intellectual level, I think people
| unhealthily obsess over this.
|
| Epidemiologists have warned about the possibility of a pandemic
| for years. They've even been pretty clear about factors that
| manifested in SARS-CoV-2, like it having flu-like symptoms and
| originating in China.
|
| Whether the virus leaked from a lab, from a chicken or from some
| guy eating a bat, doesn't matter. This was going to happen one
| way or another and many countries, especially in the West, were
| incredibly arrogant thinking it wouldn't be a problem for them.
|
| Consider Vietnam: they followed the news very closely early on
| and already had procedures in place that would reduce the
| likelihood of transmission. While Europeans and Americans were
| only talking about some new disease in China, they started
| wearing masks and tracing contacts. When we only just started
| recommending people make masks at home, they already had the
| situation under control and were providing free meals to
| quarantined foreigners.
|
| We didn't take SARS-CoV-2 serious because we expected our
| "superior" hygiene, technology and healthcare systems to protect
| us even if authoritarian China had to "wall people in" to contain
| the spread. Surely we wouldn't need draconian uncivilized
| measures like lockdowns. In Germany we even maintained this
| arrogance when Italy had to send in military convoys to get rid
| of the bodybags -- of course _they_ wouldn 't be able to contain
| this, because everybody knows they're careless and flamboyant and
| disorganized.
|
| At several points, the US lost as many people to COVID per day as
| it lost to 9/11. Germany is already riding the third wave with no
| real plans in sight and a dysfunctional vaccine rollout. New
| mutations are arising and taking their toll in Western countries.
| This isn't on China, this is on us.
|
| So if you follow these stories out of pure curiosity, good on
| you. If you follow them because you desperately want someone to
| blame: stop. Blame your own country's government. This is on
| them. All they needed to do was take the experts seriously and
| not listen to industry lobby groups instead. Countries like
| Australia have understood this. Countries like Germany are too
| busy cutting backroom deals and playing party politics instead.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Agreed. Putting blame is not helpful at the moment or at best a
| sideshow. What counts now is how to deal with the situation.
| Knowing that China is to blame or not won't save lives.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The virus does have an inexplicable feature: a so-called "furin
| cleavage site" in the spike protein that helps SARS-CoV-2 pry its
| way into human cells. While such sites are present in some
| coronaviruses, they haven't been found in any of SARS-CoV-2's
| closest known relatives.
|
| This is false. First of all it should be stated clearer that
| there has been parallel evolution across several branches of
| coronaviruses which have independently evolved a furin cleavage
| site (so there is evolutionary pressure and advantage for
| coronaviruses to follow this path):
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...
|
| And then the statement is just wrong. The related sarbecoviruses
| found in Thailand have similar furin cleavage sites:
|
| > The RacCS203 S gene is most similar to that of RmYN02
| (Supplementary Fig. 3a). The two viruses shared part of the furin
| cleavage site unique to SARS-CoV-2 (Supplementary Fig. 3b) and
| have an almost identical RBD aa sequence with only two residue
| differences out of 204 aa residues
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1
| superkuh wrote:
| Yes. And making it even more obvious the extremely well known
| (now) story of how the researcher that discovered the technique
| of stablizing the spike in it's pre-fusion conformation with
| proline substitutions (before being acted on by furin
| proteases) did so while working with MERS-CoV. It's not even
| obscure knowledge anymore that MERS had the same furin cleavage
| site. It's filtered out into public non-expert awareness.
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