[HN Gopher] The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory
___________________________________________________________________
The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory
Author : aliasEli
Score : 96 points
Date : 2021-07-06 08:47 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| When looking at all of the facts, it's almost certain corona came
| from the WIV corona lab.
|
| The virologists who claimed otherwise in early 2020 have
| financial conflicts of interest if funding was cut, or if they
| were banned from the lab by the CCP. You can see the same CCP
| influence over WHO and the WHO "investigation."
|
| What hasn't been explained is why WIV deleted all their corona
| DNA sequences from the NIH database (some have been partially
| recovered.) Their claim is that their excel was taken down for
| computer security reasons, but the NIH database is separate.
| Normally NIH deletions are only done for "mistakes."
|
| Australian media have been investigating hard since early 2020
| (they were not subject to TDS or racial shaming) and are
| basically one source away from connecting all the dots between
| the US, Australia and Chinese involvement in corona and GoF.
|
| COVID-19 is an international conspiracy involving numerous
| virologists who travel between multiple countries, partly to
| evade GoF restrictions in their home countries.
|
| (If you recall the CCP saying that the virus came from the US, I
| believe they were referring to the funding source. The CCP says a
| mixture of transparent statements and PR, but often there is a
| kernel of truth in their message.)
| ab7675226 wrote:
| "WIV officials told the investigators that serum samples for all
| staff and students in the bat coronavirus group subsequently
| tested negative for Covid antibodies. We have only their word to
| go on because the lab hasn't been independently audited, but if
| that's true,..."
|
| My goodness, that statement from the essay is missing critical
| context. The lab hasn't been independently audited because the
| CCP refused permission for any independent inspections.
|
| And yes, you are allowed to take into account their refusal to
| allow inspections when making a judgement on whether the CCP is
| covering up a lab-leak.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| "Bats being bats..."
|
| What about the undeniable fact that China (the government) is
| blocking all international research into the origin of Covid.
|
| Is that only China being China?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Yes? They even mention it in the article about SARS and MERS
| approach before natural origin was estabilished.
| rob_c wrote:
| It doesn't have to have been engineered to have escaped. Why this
| convolution keeps happening is beyond me, we "know" this isn't a
| bio-superweapon.
|
| Taking this as read, either:
|
| Researchers at the lab failed to spot something like this in the
| wild, in an area where they were looking for this. So, failed to
| raise the alarm appropriately with acceptable transparency.
|
| or, Researcher work at the lab led to the collection of this from
| bats and some set of unknown situations led to it getting into
| the populace. So, caused the disaster they were trying to
| prevent/research.
|
| Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of
| days. Which is understandable given the nature of the work going
| on inside the lab The fact that everyone involved seems to have
| thrown up barriers into a sensible discussion on this is
| unfortunate and renders most conversations mute such that we'll
| probably never know how bad it was.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| The article addresses this very point. I have 0 trust in the
| CCP to do or say anything not in it's own interest, but on the
| whole the "They found a novel virus in the wild, sampled it,
| and then it escaped their lab" seems a lot less likely than
| "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and
| got sick".
| canoebuilder wrote:
| There is a wide literature on this at this point. Please
| don't make conclusive statements that also indicate you don't
| have the faintest bit of background in what you are talking
| about.
|
| At this point, this is not a complete black box, "novel
| virus." There is a scientific understanding of the virus.
| There are known related viruses in the wild, just not
| anywhere near Wuhan. There are multi-pathway paper trails
| linking this class of viruses to the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology and the people working there.
|
| I don't mean to be too harsh on you, the media environment
| around all this has been so bizarre, how various waves of
| suppression have ebbed and flowed. But if you've known where
| to look, are an independent thinker, not one who just repeats
| what the large media bullhorns are trumpeting, and can
| connect dots for yourself, there's been discussion,
| discourse, evidence gathering of the very likely source of
| this virus since the beginning.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| > At this point, this is not a complete black box, "novel
| virus."
|
| Not sure why you insist on being pedantic on word choice
| here. It obviously isn't a novel virus at this point; but
| it was in 2019 -- or whenever WIV would have found it.
|
| I'd also bet dollars to donuts you have no experience in
| virology apart from participating in online forums. Which I
| don't think is any kind of point against you; but it makes
| it weird when you come out swinging with "you don't have
| the faintest bit of background in what you are talking
| about."
|
| > I don't mean to be too harsh on you, the media
| environment around all this has been so bizarre, how
| various waves of suppression have ebbed and flowed. But if
| you've known where to look, are an independent thinker, not
| one who just repeats what the large media bullhorns are
| trumpeting, and can connect dots for yourself, there's been
| discussion, discourse, evidence gathering of the very
| likely source of this virus since the beginning.
|
| I laughed out loud at this. If this is satire it was really
| well done.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Quote marks can be easily misinterpreted, I was just
| using the phrase you used, my bad.
|
| "Faintest bit of background" Meaning, your two competing
| hypotheses leave out pretty much everything that is known
| at this point, not an academic credential or such, just a
| basic reading on the known facts at this point.
|
| "Natural origin" was the leading hypothesis from the
| start more than a year ago. At this point, there is no
| evidence for it, there is substantial evidence against
| it, and the pile of circumstantial evidence for the Wuhan
| lab being the source is a mile high.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment, or a provocation
| in a comment, by breaking the site guidelines yourself.
| That only takes us deeper into hell. We're trying to
| avoid that here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal swipes and flamewar in HN
| threads. It leads to hell and discredits the position
| you're arguing for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mandmandam wrote:
| > "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild,
| and got sick".
|
| More like, "some random person ran across a novel virus in
| the wild, a thousand miles from the nearest bat population,
| while they were hibernating; and this all just happened to be
| within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety
| history that _literally studies coronaviruses_ , and didn't
| let independent examiners in for a year, even then limiting
| their time and access severely."
| Maursault wrote:
| >and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a
| laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally
| studies coronaviruses
|
| If the argument is:
|
| 1) a lab was built in Wuhan that studied coronaviruses,
| then a global coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan
|
| 2) Therefore the lab caused the global pandemic
|
| then it is a fallacious argument.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
| blast wrote:
| That's not the argument. Nobody's pretending that
| propositional logic can decide this. It's a question of
| how to weight empirical evidence. Some people think it's
| relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a
| lab working on new coronaviruses, especially since
| concerns had been raised about unsafe conditions there.
| [deleted]
| mikem170 wrote:
| But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of
| Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected
| samples from infected people:
|
| > In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings
| of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he
| found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A,
| B and C.
|
| > His research determined that A was the founding variant
| because it was the version most similar to the type of
| SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered
| in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to
| humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he
| also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant
| type in Wuhan.
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were
| type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations
| from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says,
| initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of
| nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of
| Wuhan, five were A types.
|
| It doesn't seem fair to assume this originated in Wuhan.
| Instead the Wuhan markets may have been the first super-
| spreader site.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| mikem170 wrote:
| There's evidence pointing to an origin 600 miles south of
| Wuhan [0], based on sampled early cases and genetic
| sequencing.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| taxicabjesus wrote:
| > Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of
| days.
|
| There's a case to be made that "China _acted_ as-if this was
| the end of days, " and _western media went along with the
| narrative._ For example, people were not falling dead in the
| streets from cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan China. Those were
| staged.
|
| Example of the Propaganda in the UK: "CORONAVIRUS IS CAUSING
| PEOPLE TO DROP TO THE FLOOR IN THE STREET" (subtitle on video,
| article published January 24 2020),
| https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/infected-people-see...
|
| I think it likely that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading much earlier
| than the official narrative allows. Competitors in the Wuhan
| Military Olympics seem to have caught #EarlyCovid (COVID-19
| before it had a name):
|
| "Congress is investigating whether the 2019 Military World
| Games in Wuhan was a covid-19 superspreader event" -
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/23/congress-...
|
| "During the two-week event, however, many of the international
| athletes noticed that something was amiss in the city of Wuhan.
| Some later described it as a "ghost town." As the covid-19
| pandemic took hold worldwide in early 2020, athletes from
| several countries -- including France, Germany, Italy and
| Luxembourg -- _claimed publicly they had contracted what they
| believed to be covid-19 at the games in Wuhan,_ based on their
| symptoms and how their illnesses spread to their loved ones. "
| (emphasis added)
|
| Australia probably had #EarlyCovid:
| https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407130748373504002
|
| cui bono - "who stands, or stood, to gain (from a crime, and so
| might have been responsible for it)?"
|
| While China is certainly a beneficiary of their theatrics, why
| do the power structures in the rest of the world go along with
| the con job?
|
| I got the blood test for SARS-CoV-2 immunity last week. If it's
| positive I would take this as confirming that I did actually
| have #EarlyCovid (COVID-19 before the lab test was available).
| I remember an odd headache in the December 2019/January 2020
| period. This won't prove I had #EarlyCovid, but it's DATA AND
| SCIENCE to back up my inconsequential mussing about the Long
| Con [0] of our era.
|
| @MichaelPSenger stands on his little twitter platform trying to
| point out the Long Covid Con. For example:
| https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/134832483816790835...
|
| There's a lot of servings of crow [1] to go around, but no one
| in power will call out those most deserving.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick
|
| [1] https://grammarist.com/idiom/eat-crow/
| random_kris wrote:
| I also was quite sick with covid like symptoms in Europe a
| month before first official case was announced.
| Coincidentally I was traveling at a conference a week before
| getting sick.
| [deleted]
| lamontcg wrote:
| The article covered this.
|
| When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting
| viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in
| them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all.
|
| While collecting the samples they're of course exposed to the
| environment and could have gotten sick, but they have
| dramatically less exposure to the environment that the workers
| who collect bat guano for fertilizer in China, or the people
| who clean the cages in the wet markets. It would be highly
| unlikely that one of them was naturally patient zero when
| there's a million times more human exposure going on in China.
| And hopefully they were wearing respirators in the caves and
| mines since they know the risks.
|
| When it comes to the live virus the problem is that SARS-CoV-2
| doesn't look like any other known virus. The difference between
| it and RaTG13 is still 4% which is like the difference between
| us and gorillas. It is a few decades of viral evolution and
| serial passage through many millions of hosts away. So for a
| lab that was all about finding new sequences and publishing
| them they would have had to keep this new viral backbone
| perfectly secret, they would have had to keep this new
| ACE2-infecting spike protein perfectly secret. Then there would
| have had to be some novel lab accident since SARS-CoV-2
| requires aerosolized particles to be breathed in, you don't get
| it off surface transmission so the petri dish binding studies
| don't produce an environment where a lab accident is very
| possible.
| native_samples wrote:
| _" When collecting samples from the wild they aren't
| collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which
| have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at
| all."_
|
| None of this is right. RNA (of which mRNA is just a subtype)
| is extremely unstable and degrades almost immediately unless
| carefully protected, which is why viruses need a capsid and
| why mRNA vaccines need cold chains. You can't just touch some
| animal and collect raw RNA. Also the only type of thing a
| virologist could recover from a bat of any interest to them
| is viable virus because their whole goal is to study actual
| viruses.
|
| _" Then there would have had to be some novel lab accident
| since SARS-CoV-2 requires aerosolized particles to be
| breathed in"_
|
| There's nothing unexpected about that. These supposedly novel
| lab accidents happen all the time. Viruses constantly escape
| from labs. SARS1 has escaped in China many times, and the
| last foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK came from a lab that
| had captured samples from the previous outbreak and kept them
| replicating.
|
| _" petri dish binding studies don't produce an environment
| where a lab accident is very possible"_
|
| Virologists don't only try to grow viruses in petri dishes.
| Look up serial passage. Animals are frequently used for that
| purpose. The WIV has been found to have been developing and
| buying bat cages. It's not really disputed that they were
| infecting live animals with viruses.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah I meant RNA but it was early in the morning and my
| fingers autocorrected to mRNA.
|
| And many samples ARE degraded and only partial reads can be
| recovered.
|
| > "These samples are not like huge vials of blood,"
| Rasmussen said. "It's not like a big Erlenmeyer flask of
| green liquid." Researchers would have to grow the virus in
| cells in order to stand a real chance of infecting people,
| she added, and it's difficult to grow viruses from these
| swabbed samples even if you try to. There's not much virus
| in them, and what you get tends to be contaminated with
| virus-killing detritus. "Technically it's very challenging
| to directly isolate virus from field samples from wild
| animals. So that makes it unlikely that just handling those
| samples would result in some kind of infection." Finally,
| Rasmussen added, the chemical solution that's used to
| stabilize the viral RNA for sequencing is a very potent
| disinfectant its own right.
|
| (from the title article)
|
| PCR amplification means that you can find the needle in the
| haystack and find enough RNA to construct aa genome out of
| it. A lot of the time you only get partial reads or don't
| get the whole genome. There isn't enough viable virus there
| in order to infect anyone.
| spfzero wrote:
| The difference between us and gorillas is best understood as
| the number of genes, not the % of nucleotides. Virus genomes
| are much, much smaller.
|
| Since viruses can multiply so quickly, when grown in large
| numbers of lab mice they can mutate relatively quickly into
| something with a "desirable" trait.
|
| In fact if as you say the virus has passed through millions
| of wild hosts on its way to being perfectly adapted to
| infecting human lungs, why has no one found even one of those
| millions of hosts?
| lamontcg wrote:
| They're still several decades of evolution away, given how
| fast viruses mutate in the wild.
|
| > We confirm that a direct proximal ancestor to SARS-CoV-2
| is yet to be sampled, since the closest relative shared a
| common ancestor with SARS-CoV-2 approximately 40 years ago
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.22.427830v3
|
| And do you have any idea how many animals there are in
| China? There's 1.4 billion people to start with. There's
| 100 to 100,000 more vertebrates than people in the world.
| Take even 50,000 samples and you're still barely scraping
| the surface.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Didn't the article cover the scenarios you mentioned? The
| article said that the lab's normal job was to look for new bat
| viruses, and that it's pretty hard to get infected from a qtip
| swabbed over a bats anus stored in a stabilizing solution. The
| bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to
| nature as the most probable origin, and it's not unusual for it
| to take many years to figure these things out.
| forcry wrote:
| >The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time
| points to nature as the most probable origin..
|
| Some scientists think otherwise, quite strongly in the
| opposite direction, it seems..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs
| mikem170 wrote:
| I found this link [0] that seems to debunk, in a lot of
| detail, the congressional testimony of these two physicists
| on the specifics of their claims for evidence of gain of
| function manipulation in the gentic sequence of covid-19.
|
| That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst
| other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19
| evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a
| lab.
|
| [0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-
| latest...
|
| [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
| forcry wrote:
| Well, if the authors of these posts disagree, they should
| contact the government and offer their testimony as well,
| then we can consider their argument to hold similar
| weight.
| Smashure wrote:
| I've never seen someone say "their argument wasn't made
| in front of congress, so it doesn't hold the same weight"
|
| Attack their argument, not the location where they said
| the argument.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Congressional testimony tends to be more political than
| scientific, don't you think? Facts about DNA are still
| facts, regardless of who congress invites to speak before
| them. I never considered Congress to be gatekeepers of
| science.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Here's a question: How many times did classic SARS escape
| from a lab?
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_.
| ..
| mikem170 wrote:
| So that is the basis for what? Is that a fact that changed
| your mind about the origins of covid?
|
| We know that lab leaks happen. Scary stuff. Even how many
| lab leaks there are here in the U.S. The paper you link to
| describes several lab leaks during a period of time while
| SARS was being widely studied.
|
| Its quite a leap from knowing there are lab leaks to
| implying that covid, or any other virus, leaked from a lab.
| There's relevant genetic evidence indicating that the
| earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan [0].
| Also it is estimated, based on antibody testing, that there
| are millions of people every year who get infected with
| various bat coronaviruses [1].
|
| More/better evidence is needed to prove a lab leak, given
| that nature does things like this all the time.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-
| coronavirus...
| mandmandam wrote:
| > The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time
| points to nature as the most probable origin
|
| Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence:
| such as the earliest cases happening in a single-digit mile
| radius from one of the worlds few labs studying gain-of-
| function in coronaviruses, while bats are hibernating, a
| thousand miles from the nearest bat colony, and the
| extraordinary response and threats re calls for investigation
| from officials.
|
| To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL -
| researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was
| very smooth.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I'm not sure about your statement saying the earliest cases
| were near the wuhan lab. Do you have a source for that?
| I've seen the opposite, that there is genetic evidence that
| the virus originated 600 miles south of Wuhan, where there
| are bats:
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type
| A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A.
| But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was
| the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome
| samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five
| were A types. [0].
|
| The above would imply that the markets in Wuhan were a
| super-spreader site for covid-19, but not the origin.
|
| Coronaviruses in bats and jumping from bats to humans is
| incredibly common, with 3% of people they randomly tested
| in bat cave areas with bat coronavirus antibodies [1],
| which this source extrapolated to mean that 1-7 million
| people a year are infected by various bat viruses.
|
| I agree with you that genetic evidence is the strongest
| evidence we have at this point.
|
| > To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL -
| researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it
| was very smooth
|
| Would be interesting if some lab tried to duplicate some of
| this theorized tricky editing, to prove it could be done.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-
| coronavirus...
| canoebuilder wrote:
| > _The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time
| points to nature as the most probable origin,_
|
| Highly tendentious claim...
|
| > _and it 's not unusual for it to take many years to figure
| these things out._
|
| Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my
| understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in
| recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of
| months. Are you privy to some valuable knowledge that is not
| widely dispersed in the literature? Because what you're
| saying would seem to contradict it.
| mikem170 wrote:
| So you think that it's less than 51% probable that this
| virus jumped from nature (from animals) into people, like
| every other virus we know about?
|
| There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just
| this article.
|
| EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this
| reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page
| pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence
| he references points to covid originating 600 miles south
| of wuhan [1], which was also discussed in this writeup by
| another virologist [2] who also got into detail on the
| genetic evidence that we do have. Here's another article on
| how common it is for humans to be infected by bat viruses
| [3], here's the infectious disease expert from Biden's
| treansition team saying covid likely jumped from animals to
| humans [4]. The original article detailed how it took 15
| years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive
| with that, too.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid1
| 9_did...
|
| [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
|
| [2] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
|
| [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-
| coronavirus...
|
| [4] https://text.npr.org/1000780650
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Yes, similar viruses are known far outside Wuhan. In this
| case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan
| and no known bat coronavirus source anywhere near Wuhan,
| other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology..., lends
| credibility to the lab theory, does it not?
|
| Infections from nature aren't rare, unfortunately neither
| are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the
| relative few places on earth where this type of viral and
| pathogen research occurs to all the places humans
| interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world,
| you could say infections coming from labs are actually
| are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted.
| There is even a paper trail of government officials
| expressing concern about lax safety measures at this
| particular lab. Well before the world heard of
| coronavirus.
|
| If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses,
| I don't see that as a point against the theory that one
| or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and
| manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus
| that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside
| the lab.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I understand that there are a shocking amount of lab
| leaks in the world. Hundreds in the U.S. in the last
| decade, for example. Scary stuff.
|
| > In this case, with the first known infections occurring
| in Wuhan
|
| Do you have a source for that? I was seeing sources
| stating the opposite, based on genetic sequencing of
| collected samples, like this [0]:
|
| > His research determined that A was the founding variant
| because it was the version most similar to the type of
| SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered
| in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to
| humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he
| also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant
| type in Wuhan.
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were
| type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations
| from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says,
| initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of
| nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of
| Wuhan, five were A types.
|
| And this [1]:
|
| > Upon further investigation, the first case detected
| from December 1st was found to have no connection to the
| Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was
| never linked to any future cases of COVID19. A third of
| the first 41 cases had no connection to the market,
| including 3 of the first 4 cases reported. Given this
| data, we have a new hypothesis: The first human cases of
| SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened before December
| 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan Seafood
| Wholesale Market.
|
| I'm not sure of your sources. I went back and re-read
| your original reply. You stated that "previous epidemics
| of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was
| identified in a matter of months". Did you know that it
| took 15 years to identify the source of SARS, from 2002
| until 2017? [2]
|
| I don't know if any of that might change your thinking on
| this. I've paid the most attention to genetic evidence
| like the above. Ultimately I think that's what will lead
| to a definitive answer.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
|
| [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| "The original article detailed how it took 15 years to
| find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with
| that, too". Wrt SARS, other animals in the wild were
| identified as mostly asymptomatic carriers long before
| scientists found that bat cave. Not so with COVID
| [deleted]
| ricksunny wrote:
| The authors of the original Lancet letter (Daszak included) just
| came out with a similarly-toned new one in the same publication -
| with 3 of their co-signers from last year now having dropped out
| of it:
| https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/14122249205375139...
| aliasEli wrote:
| Link to the new letter in the lancet:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| hanklazard wrote:
| > On Feb 19, 2020, we, a group of physicians, veterinarians,
| epidemiologists, virologists, biologists, ecologists, and
| public health experts from around the world, joined together to
| express solidarity with our professional colleagues in China.1
| Unsubstantiated allegations were being raised about the source
| of the COVID-19 outbreak and the integrity of our peers who
| were diligently working to learn more about the newly
| recognised virus, SARS-CoV-2, while struggling to care for the
| many patients admitted to hospital with severe illness in Wuhan
| and elsewhere in China.
|
| This is such an odd way to discuss an issue of finding the
| truth. This first paragraph of the article seems to
| intentionally try to create a sense of sympathy for the Chinese
| scientists against whom "unsubstantiated allegations" were
| being leveled. Of course we should all feel bad for well-
| intentioned people being thrown into the controversy of the
| pandemic origins, but this is not about shielding people from
| difficult circumstances--this is about finding truth so that we
| can minimize the risk that this ever happens again.
| aerosmile wrote:
| The minute the PRC government destroyed the evidence, they lost
| the presumption of innocence. Let's also remember - we're dealing
| with very smart people who very well knew the price they were
| paying by not cooperating with the international community, and
| yet that path seemed more attractive than just "coming clean."
|
| I wonder what the judicial system would have to say if a murder
| was committed in my house, and there was evidence that I
| destroyed the evidence. Also, I don't have an alibi, and have
| multiple prior felonies. Would that be enough to put me in jail
| again?
| lamontcg wrote:
| A totalitarian state acted like a totalitarian state by not
| addressing rumors and suppressing them, because it can.
|
| You can't judge them like a Western Democracy with a free press
| and think that they'd just "come clean".
| beerandt wrote:
| It has nothing to do with ability (it can), and everything to
| do with reasoning and motive.
|
| The government (and party) only acting in their self interest
| means they'd share and push any explanation that wasn't
| nefarious. No they don't have to do anything, but an innocent
| explanation is something they'd benefit from by disclosing.
| lamontcg wrote:
| No. By addressing conspiracy theories in an Authoritarian
| system you give them credence through something more or
| less like the Streisand effect. If you have information
| control mechanism like the Great Firewall of China and you
| do not have a free press, then you can more effectively
| control your domestic population through information
| suppression. You don't have to explain anything if nobody
| talks about it in the first place.
|
| You're applying the logic of a democracy with a free press,
| which assumes people will talk about it. You also probably
| think that China worries about what you think and that they
| would care to address your concerns, when the 1.4 Billion
| Chinese citizens is of much greater concerns to them.
|
| This is the same delusion that Western intelligence
| agencies like the CIA had with Saddam Hussein. Everyone
| expected that his putting up a fight against the weapons
| inspectors was a very clear sign that he had something to
| hide. If he had nothing to hide why not let them in. After
| the fact we found out he didn't actually have a functioning
| weapons program. His failure to be open to the weapons
| inspectors seems deeply weird and irrational from the
| perspective of a Western Democracy. But he was running a
| strong-arm totalitarian state. He needed to stand up to the
| US and the rest of the world for domestic political points.
|
| China doesn't care what you think or what the US thinks.
| China cares what 1.4 billion Chinese think. China can
| better control what they think by flat-out suppression of
| information, because they've built those systems of
| control.
| eloff wrote:
| Yes, the cover up and hostility towards the lab leak hypothesis
| may actually be the strongest evidence for it.
|
| Which is to say, not much. But we have no evidence for the
| natural origin story, and it's a somewhat strange coincidence
| that the initial outbreak was near a lab studying these very
| same kinds of viruses. Granted you might put such a lab in
| places where there are lots of bat viruses to be found, but
| that's still a much, much larger area than the city of Wuhan.
| The closest known wild virus came from a source 800 miles away.
| Draw a circle over a map of China including both Wuhan and that
| bat cave and you can see that quite clearly.
|
| Combine that with the fact that Sars cov1 escaped labs in China
| to infect researchers not once, but at least twice, and the
| Bayesian calculation swings heavily to the lab leak hypothesis.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > may actually be the strongest evidence for it.
|
| That, plus the fact that a novel bat coronavirus originated
| blocks away from a facility...that studied novel bat
| coronaviruses.
|
| How much of a coincidence is even possible?
|
| Humor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8
| mikem170 wrote:
| Did you know that there's been evidence pointing to an origin
| 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on sampled early cases
| and genetic sequencing?
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| codewench wrote:
| It's worth noting that the paper this article is based on
| is somewhat contested. For example
|
| "There are several serious flaws with their findings and
| interpretation." [1]
|
| "The authors' misinterpretation of MJNs fosters
| misconceptions, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of
| fundamental phylogenetic principles."[2]
|
| [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/23/12522
|
| [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/23/12518
| mikem170 wrote:
| Thank you for those links. I appreciate the new inputs.
| ("Sampling bias and incorrect rooting make phylogenetic
| network tracing of SARS-COV-2 infections unreliable" and
| "Median-joining network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes is
| neither phylogenetic nor evolutionary")
|
| Do you think that these conflict with the statement
| Forster made that "I would be a bit careful about
| pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't have
| many samples from the early phase," he says. "But it
| seems to me we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wuhan when
| looking for the origin." [0]. They did have a variety of
| samples, enough to throw doubt on where the origin was,
| right?
|
| I brought this up just to point out that it is not a
| foregone conclusion that Wuhan was the location of the
| first covid-19 cases in humans. Do you think that is an
| incorrect statement?
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| erostrate wrote:
| Combine that with the sick lab researchers, with the work
| performed at BSL-2 instead of BSL-4, with the main researcher
| being a world leading expert on gain of function research,
| with a WIV database of genomes surprisingly taken offline,
| with inconsistent sequencing dates reported by WIV
| researchers, with huge conflicts of interest from several of
| the main researchers supporting the natural origin theory
| (Daszak), etc, etc, etc.
|
| I'm about 80/20 on a lab leak.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Combine that with reports that WIV worked with live bats,
| not just samples:
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/news/evidence-mounts-wuhan-lab-
| studie...
| spfzero wrote:
| To make the argument that, because in the past the transmission
| from animal to human happened in nature, that in the present it
| could only happen there, implies that your assumptions stay
| constant.
|
| Things have changed since Ebola 50 years ago and Sars1 20 years
| ago. For one thing, millions of dollars have been invested in
| gain-of-function research. There are many more labs, many times
| more investigators and projects running. These scientists are
| working to create the characteristics in viruses that make them
| more deadly and more infectious.
|
| Also, today powerful new bio-engineering tools are available, in
| the past 10 years especially. Today the situation is different,
| since there are now new pathways for a deadly virus to come into
| being.
|
| I don't think anyone can argue that the number of dangerous
| viruses being studied in laboratories around the world is the
| same now as it was 20 years ago.
|
| If you want to argue against a lab-leak today, you really need to
| argue that the BSL-rated laboratories are perfectly leak-proof.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| > WIV officials told the investigators that serum samples for all
| staff and students in the bat coronavirus group subsequently
| tested negative for Covid antibodies. We have only their word to
| go on because the lab hasn't been independently audited...
|
| Why has the lab not been independently audited? If I was going to
| make a case against someone making an error, saying "well, that
| group said they didn't make an error" seems like a bad argument.
|
| > The first human case of Covid could have been infected hundreds
| of miles away, perhaps closer to the horseshoe bat caves of
| southern China.
|
| Have we found such a person?
|
| > You can get on the fast train in Wuhan and be in Guandong
| Province, the home of the original SARS outbreak, in under four
| hours.
|
| If someone had been in Guandong, and taken a train to Wuhan, it
| seems to me that the early cases would not have been so
| concentrated in Wuhan, for two reasons: 1) if Wuhan is really all
| that accessible by different means of transportation, you'd
| expect people would just as easily take it from Wuhan to other
| places, and 2) presumably, the fast train doesn't just stop in
| Wuhan (Google says it's 1000 km away), meaning an infected person
| on the train could easily have infected someone else on the train
| who got off in between. Honest question: is that not how the
| spread of disease would work?
|
| > There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or
| anyone else, ever had any strain that similar to Covid-19.
|
| Again, that's what we're trying to figure out. You can't take the
| thing we're trying to figure out as evidence one way or the
| other, that's Begging the Question
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question)
|
| > Given that Covid (or its direct ancestor) must exist in nature,
| it's more likely that it got out naturally (like SARS and MERS)
| than that it took an undetectable detour through a secure biolab.
|
| I don't understand this jump. Most people I've read arguing that
| the lab leak theory is possible agree that there must be some
| base virus in nature. The question is, what is the more likely
| path from that natural virus to the COVID outbreak, through a lab
| or through some other animal (or animals)? I understand the
| argument that we didn't find the transmission chain for SARS or
| MERS or Ebola for years, but why does asserting it started in
| nature lead to the conclusion it therefore had a natural path?
| This again seems like the author is trying to prove a conclusion
| using the conclusion.
|
| > The fact that China is being secretive about Covid-19 isn't
| evidence for any particular theory.
|
| When SARS came out, I don't remember the Chinese government
| blaming Italian frozen food or athletes at an international
| athletics competition for SARS. I don't remember them promising
| people that it's not transmittable between humans, or that it's
| not a big deal. I think simply saying "China is being secretive"
| is not looking at the whole picture.
|
| > All theories of the origins of Covid-19 should be investigated,
| including lab origin theories. We should go wherever the science
| takes us.
|
| This seems right to me. We can't make bricks without clay though.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| _Why has the lab not been independently audited? If I was going
| to make a case against someone making an error, saying "well,
| that group said they didn't make an error" seems like a bad
| argument._
|
| Well, remember back in February 2019 when China said Covid was
| basically over and capped their infection count at about 60k?
| While every other country reported the truth in the millions,
| they just said 'no, it stopped at 60k (as of today less than
| 100k still)'.
|
| They are liars, that's why there's no independent
| investigation. China believes it deserves automatic respect and
| the rest of the world should take it's word for it. They do not
| accept that many countries work hard to earn a modest
| reputation of integrity.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > it seems to me that the early cases would not have been so
| concentrated in Wuhan
|
| There's genetic evidence that the origin was 600 miles south of
| Wuhan [0]:
|
| > His research determined that A was the founding variant
| because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-
| Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats.
| Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from
| bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered
| that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan.
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A,
| the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in
| other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the
| predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in
| Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types.
|
| And this [1]:
|
| > Upon further investigation, the first case detected from
| December 1st was found to have no connection to the Huanan
| Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was never linked
| to any future cases of COVID19. A third of the first 41 cases
| had no connection to the market, including 3 of the first 4
| cases reported. Given this data, we have a new hypothesis: The
| first human cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened
| before December 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan
| Seafood Wholesale Market.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
|
| [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Huh, the second sentence of the article made me doubt how good it
| is...
|
| > Last spring, the media accurately reported the scientific
| consensus that Covid (also known as SARS CoV-2) is a natural
| virus [...]
|
| To be pedantic: No, lady, Covid is the disease, and the virus is
| SARS-CoV-2. Like AIDS and HIV (disease and virus respectively).
|
| It's a little thing, but accuracy in journalism is still
| important (or is it just me?).
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Additionally:
|
| 1. There wasn't a consensus, some scientists disagreed
|
| 2. A natural virus can leak from a lab
|
| Also, a reminder that biosecurity incidents are common, there
| were about 17 in the last decade [0]. Just (natural) SARS-CoV-1
| leaked from the lab 4 times [1].
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| > 1. There wasn't a consensus, some scientists disagreed
|
| Consensus means "general agreement", it doesn't mean
| unanimous.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consensus
| whatthesmack wrote:
| There wasn't general agreement either. There was a
| propaganda piece architected by Peter Daszak (Leader of
| EcoHealth Alliance, who Fauci's NIAID contracted with for
| gain-of-function research at WIV after Obama banned it),
| signed by a few scientists, and The Lancet published. The
| "general agreement" many folks may be thinking of is the
| general agreement amongst mainstream and social media that
| a lab leak shouldn't even be investigated and anybody that
| suggested doing so was a maniac.
| native_samples wrote:
| The article has far more severe accuracy problems than that.
| The author appears is a typical journalist with a left wing axe
| to grind, so nothing in the article should be taken at face
| value. Look at this sentence:
|
| _" Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas entertained a
| particularly fringe version of this last variation, speculating
| that China might even have attacked Wuhan with a biological
| weapon"_
|
| She actually provides a link here, which goes to a Twitter
| thread [1] where Cotton starts out by saying the exact
| opposite:
|
| _" @paulina_milla and her "experts" wrongly jump straight to
| the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon.
| That's not what I've said. There's at least four hypotheses
| about the origin of the virus: 1. Natural (still the most
| likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market).
| 2. Good science, bad safety (eg, they were researching things
| like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach
| occurred). 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-
| bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach). 4. Deliberate
| release (very unlikely, but shouldn't rule out till the
| evidence is in). Again, none of these are "theories" and
| certainly not "conspiracy theories." They are hypotheses that
| ought to be studied in light of the evidence, if the Chinese
| Communist Party would provide it."_
|
| In other words, merely enumerating every hypothesis that had
| been proposed by anyone got turned into "Republican thinks
| China might have attacked its own city". That is a blatant mis-
| representation of his position and shows the journalist is
| willing to manipulate her reader. Moreover this was in February
| 2020, long before the recent evidence of a lab leak became
| available, and thus Cotton's openness to the lab leak theory
| looks rather prescient in hindsight.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202139232292866
| rdxm wrote:
| This is the best assessment to date I've seen.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...
| _huayra_ wrote:
| As someone who is out of the loop on this and only a basic
| understanding, it seems very peculiar that scientists were so
| quickly to just jump on the "it must be bats and a wet market"
| thing so early on despite the Wuhan lab being right there.
|
| It's like when some out-of-control company creates a superfund
| site through gross negligence of industrial byproduct handling
| and then goes "idk cancer gonna cancer. you can't link that to
| us!".
| busymom0 wrote:
| Because the scientists were too busy playing politics.
|
| > "... it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become
| a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for
| an investigation into lab origins."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory...
|
| It never occurred to these people that claiming the virus came
| from bats because they eat bats there is the more "xenophobic"
| thing and not the possible lab leak caused due to poor
| handling.
|
| The next time someone asks us to trust the science, our
| response should be "okay, but can I trust the scientists?" And
| if they can be so easily manipulated based on politics, what
| else are they and the dissenters being silenced on?
| forcry wrote:
| >The next time someone asks us to trust the science, our
| response should be "okay, but can I trust the scientists?"
|
| Originally, trust in scientists was not required. Because
| anyone could have repeated the experiment and should see
| results consistent with what the scientists were saying.
|
| This is where the credibility of science come from and it
| made people's trust in science grow to a kind of blind faith.
| But then some point, experiments became too large to be
| attempted by anyone. This along with entities like
| "consensus" and "reputation", that can reject any conflicting
| results, enabled entities that control all of these to have a
| veto power on scientific truth.
|
| This is our current situation. And I am not sure people
| recognise the true danger of this situation. This is the kind
| of power that in holy men held in ancient times, where you
| could make people to do mass murders and other atrocities in
| the name of god. So I think it is very dangerous. It might
| not be that bad as of now, but we are in that path.
|
| One solution to this problem is to recognise and reduce the
| trust in "science" that is a result such collaboration.
|
| May be we can do it by using a measure of how easily
| verifiable a result is. For example, if something is
| verifiable by anyone in this planet, it should have a measure
| of 1. And if it is only verifiable by a single entity, then
| it should have a measure of zero. If it is verifiable by a
| few entities, then it should be somewhere between.
| native_samples wrote:
| That's a nice idea but there are a lot of problems with it.
|
| 1. Being able to replicate a study is _necessary_ but not
| _sufficient_ for the conclusions to be correct. Scientists
| pump out a lot of studies that are just doing stats on
| public data sets. These should be easily replicable, but
| the conclusions may still be nonsensical if the analysis
| isn 't done right (and a lot aren't done right), or if the
| scientific work itself contains fraud or logic errors (and
| a lot do).
|
| 2. There are no incentives for scientists to make their
| work replicable. Their salary does not depend on it. Their
| salary isn't going to depend on it, because the scientific
| institutions are all basically dependent on funding by
| governments or rich benefactors who aren't paying attention
| - funding "science" is not a means to an end but the end in
| and of itself for these groups, and thus they aren't
| particularly motivated to double check the quality of what
| gets released.
|
| Consider the above problem: scientists were deceiving
| people because they thought helping Trump is the same thing
| as helping "racists". Scott Alexander did a very thorough
| analysis of this where he pointed out that Trump is not, in
| fact, racist and a lot of the claims that his followers are
| don't make any sense [1]. If self-proclaimed scientists
| can't do even basic sanity checks on their own beliefs like
| that, you can imagine how much they struggle with more
| complicated claims.
|
| [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-
| crying-wo...
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| It's much worse than you even hint at. The WIV lab - the one
| place that might have vindicated the innocence of the lab and
| perhaps the natural origins of the virus - was shut down and
| wiped clean while every measure was put in place to stop any
| semblance of transparency. Chinese scientists who tried to talk
| about it were disappeared.
|
| An international team was assembled to wage a propaganda effort
| in order to keep the WIV leak theory from ever becoming viable.
| detaro wrote:
| Shouldn't the next step not be "I wonder what the scientists
| consider that my basic understanding doesn't cover", not
| "scientists are lying"?
| paulddraper wrote:
| Not when scientists were constantly saying "there's so much
| we don't know" and citing a possible 3% mortality rate.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Being a scientist myself, I did that. But it could simply not
| understand how - in early 2020! - "the scientist" could be so
| sure and demonized the lab leak theory so fervently.
|
| And now in mid-2021, one of the few things that we know for
| sure is that some of the key scientists in the "It must be
| natural" camp have ties with the WIV and thus a _strong_
| conflict of interest that they did not disclose.
|
| And then of course, there is the fact that China is blocking
| all research. Is that only China being China?
| aliasEli wrote:
| What do you mean "did not disclose", most scientists that
| had connections with WIV were pretty open about it.
| haihaibye wrote:
| Author of the Lancet paper did not disclose ties to WIV
|
| https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/under-fire-
| lancet-...
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Unfortunately not. And Lancet and Nature admit it now.
| Here is the Lancet update from 2021:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS014
| 0-6...
|
| More info on the same topic:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-
| theory-...
| willis936 wrote:
| Watch Contagion (2011). COVID-19 has been predicted for nearly
| 20 years, including the origin story. When the most likely
| explanation was predicted based on understanding, why should
| the politically charged finger pointers be given credence? An
| investigation _should_ happen, but the lab-leak proponents
| appear to have ulterior motives rather than to innocently seek
| the truth.
| emilgouliev wrote:
| "When HIV/AIDS emerged in the 1980s, it was alleged, with a
| little Soviet help, that the virus had been developed in an
| American lab. Between Washington's inaction on the epidemic and
| its sordid past of shady experiments, proponents said the
| theory couldn't be dismissed out of hand.
|
| After many early cases of tick-borne Lyme disease were first
| identified around Long Island Sound, it was deemed too much of
| a coincidence that the U.S. military's Plum Island animal
| research lab sat on an island in the sound itself.
|
| When SARS emerged in 2003, so did fears of the severe acute
| respiratory syndrome's unnatural origin. "It's a very unusual
| outbreak," bioweapons expert Ken Alibek told the New York Times
| at the time. "It's hard to say whether it's deliberate or
| natural." One Russian scientist posited that "the propagation
| of the atypical pneumonia may well be caused by a leak of a
| combat virus grown in Asian bacteriological weapons labs."
|
| And in recent years, efforts to eradicate Ebola have been
| hobbled by attacks on health care workers motivated, at least
| in part, by a belief that the virus is man-made."
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/lab-leak-theory-doesnt-...
|
| This literally happens every goddamn time. Natural explanation
| is simpler.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| It is not that lab leaks in general are unheard of.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
| derbOac wrote:
| So, in those cases I would say even though they are
| conspiratorial, I'd hope someone would be looking into those
| possibilities at least to _some_ extent if they 're even
| marginally possible. The nature of these things is when
| conspiracies are real, they're often made to look like
| something else, and to make people who see them look crazy.
|
| The other thing is that this case seems different? It's not
| some vague accusation based on some xenophobic idea of "The
| Other" or a geopolitical adversary, or a threatening location
| -- for instance, a US military rival, or a military base --
| but rather a large lab specifically focused on experimental
| virology research. _Even more specifically_ , it's a lab that
| has been involved in genetically manipulating closely related
| viruses to be more virulent. There's been suspicious coverup
| activity by multiple parties, which in itself is not
| evidence, but I think raises some "worthy of investigation"
| rationale, and also has been a serious ethical problem in
| itself regardless of the actual SARS-CoV-2 origin.
|
| I guess in short, yes, there's always conspiracy theories.
| But this time is different. I don't really see this situation
| as comparable to other situations, because the evidence
| justifying serious consideration is so specific.
|
| Personally, I think the train has left the station on ever
| figuring out what really was the source. This delay in itself
| seems suspicious to me but I don't know that I'll ever really
| feel confident about any particular explanation.
|
| As for "simpler", I think that depends on your subjective
| opinion. I personally think that the perspective that the
| "natural explanation" is simpler is naive, and underestimates
| human behavior, especially in our time.
|
| Take Ebola: is it really irrational for non-white, non-
| Euroamericans to be suspicious of health care workers given,
| for instance, what happened at Tuskegee and in the search for
| Osama Bin Laden? There's a reasonable argument that it is
| irrational, but also a reasonable argument it's not
| irrational. Turn it around. What's simpler?
| jeegsy wrote:
| > This literally happens every goddamn time. Natural
| explanation is simpler.
|
| NO it doesn't. Just because some theories LATER turned out to
| be wrong does not mean that we automatically dismissing this
| or that theory. It really doesn't matter if the "lab leak
| theory" is later on definitively discredited. To me thats not
| the point. The point is whether or not there was any
| justification for not only ignoring but actively removing it
| from discourse urgently as was done at a time when no one
| knew anything for certain.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Agreed - dismissing the lab-leak theory early on without
| conclusive evidence either way was certainly suspicious.
|
| Any scientist worth his/her salt shouldn't dismiss any
| theory outright without having hard data to back it up.
| mbauman wrote:
| There are two things going on here:
|
| - There's strong evidence that it's not bioengineered;
| scientists used very strong and convincing language here.
|
| - There was initially hope of finding the zoonotic
| reservoir; scientists used couched language here to
| subtly detangle a natural virus vs. a natural virus that
| had adapted to passage in cell culture in a lab, and had
| priors assuming a zoonotic source would be found.
|
| Guess which language journalists glommed onto.
| goldenkey wrote:
| You want to use a razor to shave a bear. Simplicity is not
| enough to favor a belief model. Machine Learning has shown us
| that large complex models can perform much better at
| providing the ground truths.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
|
| Razor's aren't scientifically rigorous theorems. Feel free to
| use them but don't argue by them in a public forum, it's
| disingenuous to truth.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Pretty good point. People resort to occams razor as if it
| is a fundamental constant of nature valid in all cases.
| Occams razor has heuristic value not probitive value.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The real motive behind most of these kind of articles: "...loose
| talk about a lab leak elevates tensions between China and the
| United States, undermining the collaborative research we need to
| understand this pandemic and prevent the next one."
|
| Translation: "please shut up about this, it doesn't matter now
| and we need to get China calmed down, and this talk is making
| them defensive and therefore uncooperative." The rest of the
| article is mostly just FUD to try to provide a plausible excuse
| for ignoring the obvious fact that China is covering up, so that
| raises the possibility that there is a mistake for them to cover
| up.
|
| I would prefer the truth to be brought out. But, I have to admit,
| it may be that the "let's just pretend we don't realize they
| screwed up" policy is in fact the wiser one.
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| I do think many people who write on this topic have a conscious
| or unconscious bias in favor of the natural origin hypotehsis.
| You provided one example of such bias. Here's a couple more:
|
| - Chinese nationalists (although they rarely author
| publications outside of China) - people who expressed strong
| opinion on this matter a year ago (based on the information
| they had then), and now don't like to admit they were wrong
| even in the face of new evidence. - people who think the lab
| origin hypothesis is an example of anti-Chinese racism, and
| therefore take the opposite the side to fight racism.
|
| On the other hand, I would argue that even more people who
| write on this topic outside of China are biased in favor of the
| lab origin hypothesis. This is because many groups of people
| would (consciously or subconsciously) like to use this
| opportunity to blame the Beijing government for this huge
| disaster. Examples:
|
| - those who dislike the communist ideology (e.g., those whose
| loved ones died to wars with the communists, or those who just
| dislike authoritarianism on general principles) - those of
| China's neighbors who dislike the Beijing government's
| aggressive policy towards them (India, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam)
| - those who dislike the Chinese in general, for racist reasons
| - Americans who don't want to see China surpass the US in
| global power
|
| These biases are present even among journalists and scientists,
| since many of them cannot (or don't even bother trying to)
| separate their feelings as regular people from their role as
| unbiased reporters or researchers.
|
| Overall, this means it's very hard to take seriously anything
| written on this topic. Perhaps I would tend to trust:
|
| - An expert who has been consistently friendly to Bejing but
| argues in favor of the lab origin hypothesis; or - An expert
| who has been consistently unfriendly to Beijing but argues in
| favor the natural origin hypothesis.
|
| One of the rare examples of such people is Jeffrey Sachs, who
| chairs the Lancet Covid-19 origins commission. He has been at
| least somewhat friendly to Beijing (well as friendly as you can
| be in the West without committing a professional suicide). And
| yet, he says that there's at least enough evidence that both
| hypotheses are worth pursuing (that is, that it's not 100%
| obvious that it was a natural origin). Unfortunately, he's not
| an expert on this topic (he's an economist). Still, I would
| follow his comments with interest. https://www.project-
| syndicate.org/onpoint/finding-the-origin...
| jstrong wrote:
| agree with your read on the article but not on your conclusion.
| in general, I don't think fudging the truth for strategic
| reasons ever turns out well in the long run, mostly because,
| we're not smart enough to anticipate what the long run impact
| of our strategic lying will be. secondly, the strategy itself,
| going out of our way, up to and including hiding the causes of
| a global pandemic, in order to avoid ever hurting china's
| feelings, just does not seem viable to me at all.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The real motive behind most of the lab leak articles:
|
| "Please shut up about zoonotic origins, we don't want to have
| to worry about factory farming of animals, and for fucks sake
| could you imagine a world where we had to admit the goddamn
| VEGANS were right? That certainly can't ever happen. They're
| already insufferable assholes, could you imagine?"
|
| (p.s. be very, very angry at China so you don't think about the
| US policy response that wound up with half a million Americans
| dead -- once you pin fault on someone that allows everyone
| later to neatly escape any guilt)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Hmmm...maybe there are articles that slant that way, but I
| haven't run across them. Can you cite an example?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Can you cite an example of an article which literally says
| "we need to shut up about this to calm China down?"
| commandlinefan wrote:
| They seem to be trying to insist that the virus didn't even
| originate in Wuhan at all, leak or no leak.
| mikem170 wrote:
| There is evidence pointing in that direction [0]:
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A,
| the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in
| other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the
| predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in
| Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| ab7675226 wrote:
| "Rasmussen notes another major piece of new evidence against a
| lab origin: If Covid-19 were invented as part of a benevolent
| gain-of-function experiment, the goal would be to make it more
| transmissible, or more lethal to people, in order to study that
| strain in the lab. But when current strains of Covid-19 are
| cultured in cells in the laboratory, the virus tends to mutate
| fast and become less contagious to humans. "
|
| The author presents the mutation history as an argument against a
| 'benevolent gain-of-function experiment.' But the key word there
| is 'benevolent.' And it is there on purpose. Let me formalize
| this: Set(gain-of-function experiments) - Set(benevolent gain-of-
| function experiments) => Set(non-benevolent gain-of-function
| experiments).
|
| So if it was a lab leak from a gain-of-function experiment, it
| is, according to Rasmussen, a lab leak from a biowarfare gain-of-
| function experiment.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| The evidence is sadly too thin to make a definitive call one way
| or the other at this point. We may never know.
|
| But at the same time I have to wonder how much it matters? It's
| the difference between telling some researchers to double-check
| their containment procedures vs. not? I think it's extremely
| unlikely that this was an intentional attack from CCP on their
| own people. It wasn't a Uyghur town as far as I know, and even so
| containment was nearly impossible so it's a dumb idea anyway.
|
| So the only two plausible theories is it was either a natural
| source or an unintentional lab leak. At the end of the day it
| doesn't matter that much which one was true, the response is
| about the same. Maybe on the extreme end the lab could be shut
| down and its work moved elsewhere. People are wasting an enormous
| amount of energy arguing over this.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Skimmed the article but failed to see any evidence for a zoonotic
| origin. Did I miss it?
| lamontcg wrote:
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.22.427830v3
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
|
| https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf
| kryz wrote:
| There is no real case made for zoonotic origin in this article.
| The tone of the article exhibits some bias and spurious logic
| in the support of a zoonotic origin
| paulddraper wrote:
| The evidence is that it's happened before so it could again.
|
| It's not like there's a paper trail. The best you can say is
| that the virus looked very similar between species, so a
| natural jump is plausible.
| jfktkrkfk wrote:
| In 10 years China will be the foremost global superpower.
|
| I would urge everyone to be very carefully in their criticism of
| China or support of Taiwan.
|
| Remember that what you say on the Internet can live forever.
| People are being cancelled for far less.
|
| And China will not cancel in the way the West cancels. Instead of
| being fired, be prepared for your whole life to be destroyed, and
| maybe you being even imprisoned if you step in Asia (see Hong
| Kong security law).
|
| So think before voicing support for lab leak theory, especially
| if you are science adjacent.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| weird that you'd create an account to post something that
| basically amounts to a threat of retribution, in case someone
| posts something bad about China.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| No, I don't think I will.
|
| Self-censoring just in case one of the most oppressive
| governments might get powerful enough to get you? That's the
| first step to making this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| jo123hn wrote:
| The Lab Leak Hypothesis itself is not criticism of China, and
| it's very important that we get to the bottom of it! If it
| turns out to be true we need to learn from it before we leak
| something much deadlier.
|
| You're advocating for self-censorship of an important topic,
| based on the assumption that in 10 years a new global
| superpower will arise and start punishing those that discussed
| the hypothesis. It makes no sense to me. Unscientific and
| overly cautious!
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The problem with China is that they consider everything
| that's not unconditionally positive automatically as
| criticism.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| How is this not just a crap take on Roko's Basilisk?
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| It's still much more realistic than Roko's Basilisk :)
| Someone wrote:
| In 20 years, China will start to feel the effects of rapid
| population aging caused by its one-child policy.
|
| Compare https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-
| america/2... or https://www.populationpyramid.net/western-
| europe/2041/ with https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2041/
|
| China's challenge is to grow GDP per capita fast enough to
| handle that.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| In 20 years, it will be such an economic powerhouse (its
| megacities at least), to attract significant amount of young
| people from neighboring countries or ie Africa. You have half
| a billion mostly poor people in South east asia alone.
|
| They will do what western Europe is doing for decades - brain
| drain the smart poor from previously enslaved regions to
| sustain at least some young demographics to support badly
| designed social systems.
|
| Its like printing money to get out of state debt - you let
| the consequences be solved by next generation(s), if
| required.
| garmaine wrote:
| China can't imprison people outside of its own borders.
| VortexDream wrote:
| It can, at the very least, harass and threaten people outside
| their borders, as is already done today in many Western
| countries against Chinese/Russian/Saudi-
| Arabian/Belarussian/etc dissidents living abroad. Modern
| democracies are wholly ill-equipped to deal with modern
| authoritarian governments and the means they have and are
| willing to use.
| jfktkrkfk wrote:
| Wrong:
|
| > _Since 2017, it says, at least 695 Uyghurs have been
| detained or deported to China from 15 countries._
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-
| development/2021/jun/25/b...
| garmaine wrote:
| I'm not a PRC citizen.
| tomp wrote:
| Why not? It certainly could under the "foremost superpower"
| scenario... like the US can today (e.g. Assange, McAffe, Meng
| Wanzhou (Huawei CFO), ...
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| Even if so, I think it is a bit far fetched to image that
| China will go after pseudoanonymous commenters from 10
| years plus in past on an American internet forum.
| adventured wrote:
| There's going to be more criticism of China in the next
| 10 years than in the past 30 years combined, as their
| power continues to expand. It's going to be an ocean of
| criticism.
|
| China will have to go after a couple hundred million
| people. It's silly, to put it mildly.
| jfktkrkfk wrote:
| You underestimate the power of AI and social credit like
| tools. Now add human-free justice systems and block lists
| to the mix.
| willis936 wrote:
| Ridiculous. Software isn't magic. Hell, it's barely even
| impressive. Persecuting 100 million people outside your
| borders requires one thing: power. If China invades every
| nation and dissolves every other government then they can
| commit genocide on every other people. Until then, it's
| just one poster's deranged fantasy.
|
| Good luck with any of that post-Manhattan Project.
| garmaine wrote:
| It's the Roko's basilisk, China superpower edition.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Ever since the SARS outbreak of 2002-03, after all, paper
| after paper and countless popular pieces have warned that, sooner
| or later, nature would produce the next big SARS."_
|
| In 1995 Laurie Garrett warned about how the world could be
| brought to its knees by another airborne flu-like illness in _"
| The Coming Plague"_.[1]
|
| The first SARS and avian flu and swine flu, and CJD and mad cow
| disease were just more warnings that humans were continuing to
| play russian roulette with the way they were living with an using
| animals. Virologists knew this and warned about this, but the
| rest of the world chose to ignore them.
|
| As things return to "normal" for the parts of the world lucky
| enough to get vaccinated it's likely that we're going to return
| to sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that this could
| never happen again, especially if we believe SARS 2 was created
| by humans instead of being just another natural disease... with
| probably a bunch more waiting in the wings.
|
| [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-
| Balan...
| stavros wrote:
| > The first SARS and avian flu and swine flu, and CJD and mad
| cow disease were just more warnings that humans were continuing
| to play russian roulette with the way they were living with an
| using animals.
|
| How do we live with and use bats that makes viruses crossing
| over more likely, though?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Directly via bat guano farming and direct human/bat contact
| (plus some presence of live bats in wet markets and the
| workers that need to clean those).
|
| Indirectly via animals like minks/civits being farmed. The
| bats can occasionally infect those animals, when those
| zoonotic jumps happen there's then a large bioractor of
| animals in close contact, resulting in a "serial gain of
| function" experiment to produce a virus which is adapted to
| those animals and can spread.
|
| Every factory farm is a stochastic virus research laboratory
| that isn't even BSL-1 trained.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It might have been bats this time, next time it might be
| chickens.
| danparsonson wrote:
| By increasingly moving into their territory and disturbing
| populations of animals with which we were hitherto not in
| contact.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Wuhan is a very old city. Settled in 1500 BC.
| danparsonson wrote:
| The point is not where the city is, but where its
| inhabitants (or visiting traders) go in search of natural
| resources.
| aliasEli wrote:
| I does not have to be an immediate infection from bats to
| humans. With both SARS and MERS an intermediate host
| transmitted it to humans.
| Taniwha wrote:
| Both the Ebola and Marburg viruses both seem to live in bats
| in Africa and periodically transfer to humans - given it's
| happening in one place means it's not surprising it happens
| elsewhere
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| Sure, but does it happen right next to a world renowned
| Ebola virus research center?
| Taniwha wrote:
| You mean like this one?
|
| https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-
| conditions/researching-eb...
|
| Where else would you research ebola?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I would be willing to bet that if Ebola were a frequent
| issue in a country that had the ability to construct a
| world-class virus research center, there would be a
| research center very close to the locations where Ebola
| had a natural reservoir.
|
| No matter how hard you yell it, correlation is not
| causation (and even when there is causation, the
| direction of the causation isn't always obvious).
| kian wrote:
| Wuhan Virology Institute is not located near a natural
| reservoir.
| native_samples wrote:
| Ebola has in the past escaped from labs.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/marburg/index.html
|
| (Marburg virus is a variant of Ebola)
| mikem170 wrote:
| There's genetic evidence that the first cases were not
| from Wuhan [0]:
|
| > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were
| type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations
| from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says,
| initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of
| nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of
| Wuhan, five were A types.
|
| [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2020-05-...
| pjc50 wrote:
| > especially if we believe SARS 2 was created by humans instead
| of being just another natural disease
|
| Here's the thing: if we knew the answer definitively to the
| lab-leak question, how would it change the pandemic response?
| The things we need to do to combat the virus remain the same.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| For the current pandemic yes, but we could start banning all
| gain of function research to make another one less likely.
| And increase lab safety measures.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Since virtually every disease comes from nature and not
| from labs, the thing that would really make a big
| difference is stopping encroaching on animal habitats and
| distancing ourselves from animals (including stopping the
| eating of animals).. not to mention massive increases in
| funding to virology and way better pandemic planning.
| simonh wrote:
| That's not necessarily the best response even in that case.
| We know for a fact that animal to human transmission
| happens, and that it will happen again. I don't know the
| ins and outs but it's possible that gain of function
| research could be crucial in preventing or fighting future
| natural outbreaks. That's a judgement that we should
| consider carefully.
|
| If you're fighting a shooting war and you have an explosion
| in a munitions factory, you don't necessarily decide to
| stop making munitions, or perhaps even that type of
| munition because it's too dangerous. You make a judgement
| that balances the risks.
| forcry wrote:
| >If you're fighting a shooting war and you have an
| explosion in a munitions factory, you don't necessarily
| decide to stop making munitions
|
| What an apt analogy!
| dv_dt wrote:
| Except that munitions don't self replicate. It's more
| like deciding to do munitions research specifically in
| enemy territory where the research could be taken an used
| against you on any security breach.
| dTal wrote:
| Except the gain-of-function research specifically
| targeting covid-like viruses did not help us prepare or
| respond to the current pandemic _one bit_. On that basis
| _alone_ we should suspend this research. It 's not worth
| the risk.
| thomaslord wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the specifics of gain-of-function
| research, but on its face this comment sounds a lot like
| "we haven't developed a vaccine for COVID yet, so we
| should ban trying to develop a vaccine" would've sounded
| a few months before the vaccines came out.
|
| In scientific research particularly, not having seen
| results yet doesn't mean we should abandon the research.
| If gain-of-function research is supposed to help us gain
| a better understanding of viruses and we're likely to see
| more pandemic-worthy viruses like SARS and SARS-CoV-2
| arise naturally, I think any ban should be considered
| _very_ carefully.
| accurrent wrote:
| Governments really need to start getting their shit together
| and stop blaming each other for their own mishandling (this
| will never happen I know). There is no point in trying to blame
| each other or cook up new regulations (enforcing regulation,
| particularly international regulation is just never going to
| happen). Quite frankly,most governments should seriously start
| considering how they will defend their citizens against
| biological threats. This means governments should do the
| following:
|
| 1. Build vaccine manufacturing capabilities. These are as
| important as other aspects of physical armed force defense.
| _Every country_ should try to have their own facility given how
| vaccine supplies are being weaponised by certain powers.
|
| 2. Build up hospital capacity and make healthcare affordable.
| Train more doctors and nurses. In particular nurses are very
| important and generally require less training, so I would focus
| on building up a reserve of nurses. Pandemics will only get
| worse with our aging population. Our beds:human ratio is
| terrible even in the most advanced countries.
|
| 3. Invest in R&D towards breakthrough technologies in testing.
| There are currently tests like Breathonix's breathe based test
| that can detect a covid infection in 2 minutes with pretty
| decent sensitivity.
|
| 4. Build a medical reserves corps. This would be a group of
| citizens who voluntarily are trained in basic first aid.
|
| 5. Build more oxygen plants/equip hospitals and ambulances with
| oxygen concentrators.
|
| 6. Conduct drills like the Army does that simulate such an
| emergency. Practice emergency buying. Keep your medical corps
| on their toes.
|
| 7. Make sure every god damn citizen has a bank account so you
| can transfer emergency funds into the account in the event of a
| major economic disruption.
|
| 8. Estimate the financial impact and provide backup options for
| people who work in the service industry. If you were an air
| hostess for instance, you would have some basic training in
| medical emergency handling. In the event of a pandemic, your
| income source will be hurt. However, the government would
| definitely be scrambling for nurses and contact tracers. These
| are jobs that could be taken up temporarily during the duration
| of the pandemic.
|
| 9. Work on technolgies and training for deployment of field
| hospitals.
|
| None of these actions should change irregardless of whether the
| vaccine is a lab leak or not a lab leak.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| The biggest thing that made the pandemic so bad outside of
| china was large fractions of the population not taking it
| seriously. That said this pandemic was objectively not that
| bad by historical standards.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The US was a major source of anti vaccination FUD. And
| while in the US vaccination is stalling because of "muh
| freedom" EU governments developed an app that stops
| unvaccinated people from entering restaurants and
| airplanes. The latest 3D chess move was letting children
| get the jab without their parents permission. I was
| seriously worried about our civilization for a moment but
| sanity prevailed. We will be at 90% soon.
| forcry wrote:
| > "muh freedom"
|
| Freedom is costly. A lot of people died, and I mean,
| really, "A LOT", and I am talking people at the prime of
| their lives, for freedoms that we enjoy all over the
| world.
|
| "muh freedom" indeed.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| What is this app you're talking about that won't let me
| visit restaurants or fly in EU? Either you're on purpose
| spreading misinformation or think whatever happens in
| your geographic location x is what is happening
| everywhere aka you're narrow minded.
|
| Edit: ok, you're an arrogant yank, which explains it.
| Whatever you read about the mystical EU on reddit is 9
| times out of 10 total bs.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| As a blame-free explanation of why SARS-CoV-2 become so
| widespread, I think the parent comment is basically
| correct. From [0], "SARS, caused by a respiratory-tract
| virus, also failed [to become a pandemic], although it came
| close to causing a pandemic after its emergence in late
| 2002. It killed almost 800 people worldwide, but was
| rapidly stopped mainly because infected people developed
| symptoms quickly." In contrast, Covid-19 spreads pre-
| symptomatically, and infections are frequently mild or
| asymptomatic. The test-trace-isolate containment strategy,
| such that it was, relied on people acting in response to
| symptoms. People without symptoms can't do that, and if
| someone has what feels like a normal cold they're just not
| very likely to take special precautions, at least early on
| when the disease is rare and there's still a chance of
| containment. The pandemic response we prepare for next time
| needs to compensate for this, such as by adopting proactive
| disease surveillance or increasing efforts in other areas.
|
| As for the pandemic not being that bad, we did get lucky in
| a couple ways: it was possible to rapidly develop many
| vaccines, and the mortality rate was relatively low. Covid,
| disturbingly, was sort of the least bad version of a global
| pandemic, at least compared to the alternative scenarios
| outlined in warnings (e.g., [0]) over the past several
| decades.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002527/
| accurrent wrote:
| Actually, I would see this as a shifting of blame from the
| government's perspective. Anyone who runs a government
| should know that legislation will be broken. People will
| not comply with orders. Thus the government should
| implement extremely simple and transparent legislation -
| something that most governments tend not to do. This
| legislation should be possible to enforce. One of the best
| ways to gain empathy is to involve citizens in the process.
| Rather than blame the citizens, start by thanking those who
| do follow orders. Involve citizens in the process. I'm sure
| we could have used a lot more contact tracers and swabbers
| during the pandemic, how about training unemployed citizens
| and using them for this task?
|
| I live in Singapore where due to our size and wealth we
| have been able to manage the pandemic, arguably better than
| most countries. Its not only the fact that Singapore
| enforces legislation that helped us. There are many
| instances where legislation has been broken, and not all
| cases will be prosecuted. But one thing that worked well is
| the government treated us well. The moment they announced a
| "circuit breaker" (not lockdown cause that sounds scary)
| the government accompanied that with multiple payouts
| through the year to ensure people have basic sustenance.
| Further, the prime minister thanked us for complying with
| orders rather than picking on the few that did not comply
| with orders. Also we lived though SARS, and every now and
| then get scares from the Avian Flu so pandemic response is
| something we have lready been conditioned bu.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| My point was not to assign blame but rather observe that
| the difference in the way the popuations reacted. Western
| populations likely did not take the pandemic as seriously
| as say China or Japan because of mixed messages from
| government, conspiratorial thinking, and exceptionalism.
|
| For conspiratorial thinking have a look at
| godlikeproductions.com
|
| countless threads about virus fake, virus harmless, masks
| don't work, vaccines kill. I am confident that
| godlikeproductions.com has killed far more people via
| covid than gab or parler did through "insurrection" or
| racism. And yet cloudflare continues to provide services
| to godlikeproductions.com It is almost as if they don't
| care as long as those dying are not san francisco elites.
| accurrent wrote:
| True. But I don't think its only the populations. We have
| had a few clowns in Singapore who have expressed similar
| opinions. Yes, many of them have been prosecuted and
| charged for not complying, but I'm sure there are some
| who still have weird ideas about covid being a hoax or
| the vaccines being untrustworthy. (In fact we have had a
| lot of trouble convincing the older population to
| vaccinate some of them think the government approved
| American vaccines are too experimental)
|
| Japan honestly has done a terrible job managing the
| epidemic if compared with the rest of East Asia. It
| cannot be clubbed with China. In China we do not actually
| know the amount of compliance as that data is not
| available to us. I know of at least one protest held in
| Wuhan during the lockdown.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/wuhan-
| ren...
| taeric wrote:
| I want to believe this. With how varied the level of
| reaction was in the states, coupled with how spread the
| impact was, I'm not sure we can say just yet.
|
| Even the places that were heralded as amazing are starting
| to fall. I see Vietnam is on a rise now. Thailand? Who is
| left?
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| The big problem was GOVERNMENT, though.
|
| Seriously, the mRNA vaccines were created in a few days once
| the seriousness of the virus was realized. And then held up
| for 9 months of testing because the government wouldn't allow
| challenge trials. We could have been vaccinating people a few
| months into the pandemic and instead we waited nearly a year
| to roll out the vaccine at scale.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned it's largely irrelevant, because the real
| question is how the governments all handled the Covid crisis,
| once it was out in the open.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Not really. Once thing the lab leak theory would explain is
| that why the virus was so unexpectedly infective right from the
| start (adapted to human tissue e. g. via passage in humanized
| mice).
|
| In that sense, I hope that it was a lab leak. It will be better
| for us humans.
| scotty79 wrote:
| There's nothing unique about covid spreading to humans. It
| infects various species very easily. Cats, dogs, ferrets.
|
| It wasn't uniquely adapted to humans in the beginning. Humans
| are just more connected species than for example panthers.
|
| As it grew to pandemic levels it spawned mutations slightly
| more adapted to humans.
| forcry wrote:
| >It wasn't uniquely adapted to humans in the beginning.
|
| Seems wrong.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92388-5#Abs1
|
| >Conspicuously, we found that the binding of the SARS-CoV-2
| S protein was higher for human ACE2 than any other species
| we tested, with the ACE2 binding energy order, from highest
| to lowest, being human > pangolin > dog > monkey > hamster
| > ferret > cat > tiger > bat > civet > horse > cow > snake
| > mouse.
|
| >>These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2
| isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to
| human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human
| respiratory transmission.
| scotty79 wrote:
| "Overall, given the high binding energy of S protein for
| pangolin ACE2, the possibility of pangolins being an
| intermediary vector for SARS-CoV-2 cannot be excluded"
|
| There's really no wonder that virus that spreads through
| human population is slightly better adjusted to humans
| than animal species its ancestor was infecting.
|
| It's the case of water in the puddle surprised how well
| the puddle shape fits the water shape.
|
| What I'm saying is that this virus is sufficiently
| general that it can infect multiple species with high
| efficiency and if hamsters were more densly connected
| than humans it could have been a hamster pandemic before
| it would become human pandemic.
|
| This virus fits us well but not uniquely well.
| forcry wrote:
| >There's really no wonder that virus that spreads through
| human population is slightly better adjusted to humans
| than animal species its ancestor was infecting.
|
| This does not make sense to me, because I think the COVID
| virus was pretty stable for a long time (being an RNA
| virus and all that, I don't know). So the idea is that it
| was optimally adapted during the time of the jump to
| humans (of course it could have got the perfect mutation
| right at the time of the jump, but the chances of that
| happening is astronomically small), and the optimal human
| transmission was not acquired later when it started
| circulating in humans.
|
| So the only way to have this happened is if it was
| optimized in a GoF research in a lab.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Virus doesn't need to be perfectly adapted to infect a
| species.
|
| It easily infects species other than humans.
|
| It's stable but not that stable. The variant that spread
| out of China was already different than the variant that
| initially caused trouble in China. Since then we got few
| new variants and that's only counting the ones that
| spread enough for us to notice.
|
| There are no perfect things in biology. All things are
| just good enough. This virus was just good enough at
| spreading between people that given our connectivity it
| spread pandemically.
|
| If the virus was was somehow uniquely well adapted to
| humans (which it isn't) it would be still more probable
| that its ancestor was just an unknown human coronavirus
| (other than 4 that cause some common colds) that we
| haven't discovered yet, because it spread completely
| asympthomatically. And the mutation it acquired made it
| slightly lethal not more infectious.
|
| I don't think that happened because then why would
| pangolins be better suited for it than dogs, although
| dogs and cats being high on the list is quite curious.
|
| And I'd be careful about reasoning that if I can't
| imagine any other way something could happen then it must
| have happened exactly the way I think it happened. It's
| good to be aware that no matter who I am and what I know,
| my ignorance always exceeds my knowledge and imagination.
| aliasEli wrote:
| This is simply the result of natural selection, there are
| tons of viruses that are less infectious, but they simply die
| out.
| vcavallo wrote:
| It had this quality seemingly out of the gate, not after a
| period of selection. that's part of the problem.
| aliasEli wrote:
| The mechanism that duplicate the virus genome is fairly
| imprecise, which means that they produce an astronomical
| number of mutants. The only mutants that we will really
| notice are the ones that survive. There is nothing
| sinister about the fact that the very first COVID virus
| was already adapted to humans because otherwise it would
| never have been to infect humans.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > Once thing the lab leak theory would explain is that why
| the virus was so unexpectedly infective right from the start.
|
| There's nothing unexpected about Covid being infective
| because spread in humans is why we took note of it and are
| currently discussing it. That is, we're discussing P(human
| infectiousness | human epidemic). If we _randomly selected_ a
| virus from amongst _all_ viruses, then yes, P(human
| infectiousness) would be expected to be low, but we're not
| doing that. The former is plain selection bias (by which I
| mean the technical error; I'm not accusing you of bias).
| drclau wrote:
| I wouldn't go as far as to say it's completely irrelevant. If
| it was a leak, we will want guarantees that another leak is not
| possible (ie. better safety, or downright stop dangerous
| research, such as gain of function). It's all about reducing
| risks.
| zamalek wrote:
| So: assume that a leak can happen all the time, find out how,
| and fix it. Red team/blue team your virus lab. This
| blamelaying is complete nonsense, and is a huge waste of
| funds across multiple regions.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| You have to know who is to blame in order to know how it
| escaped. If we don't know how this leak happened we can't
| fix it.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I struggle to understand this thinking. If (and I don't know)
| this was a leak of a gain-of-function modified virus, it's a
| scientific experiment that killed 10 million people.
|
| We need to know so we don't do it again.
|
| I'm not concerned about whether the car driver was drunk, I'm
| more concerned about how the paramedics responded to the crash.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Well I don't think we will ever uncover the truth about the
| origin of the outbreak, I'm interested in the fact that China
| (seemingly) and East Asia managed to contain the virus, in
| Europe their was initially a huge outbreak, then some level
| of containment, and in the US and Americas there was a huge
| outbreak with no respite. That's three different responses to
| the same thing.
| aritmo wrote:
| It's kinda obvious that the 'lab leak theory' was created just to
| attack China.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| No, COVID-19 came from Wuhan, regardless of theory.
|
| The CCP banned domestic air travel from Wuhan to other cities
| in China early in the pandemic, so the CCP knew at the highest
| levels where it came from. The various crematoria in Wuhan
| worked around the clock for months.
| simonh wrote:
| It originated because we know for a fact that lab leaks do
| happen. SARS leaked from a lab in Beijing a few years ago and
| there have been leaks in Russia, the USA, the UK and many other
| countries. It's just a fact that these things can happen. That
| by itself doesn't make this particular lab leak theory
| particularly likely or plausible, but it definitely make it
| possible.
|
| I have no time whatsoever for the nutters who say the lab leak
| is definitely correct or has been proven. Likewise I have no
| time for people who say the lab leak was not possible and
| should not be considered. In both cases there's a big chunk of
| motivated reasoning, and quite possibly wilful ignorance going
| on IMHO.
| corty wrote:
| Of course the theory is used that way, it fits nicely into
| various political arguments. But that doesn't influence the
| veracity of the lab leak theory either way.
|
| Looking at the article, it also uses weak arguments to support
| its thesis: "She first takes aim at the popular version of the
| lab leak theory that posits that Covid was taken from nature
| and escaped in its wild form. The problem with that scenario,
| she told me, is that a swab from a bat contains very little
| infectious virus. Each bat weighs less than half an ounce, and
| each sample is basically a Q-tip swiped briefly over a bat's
| mouth or anus. These samples are stored in vials in the
| freezer; they're not likely to spill or leak, the way disaster
| movies have primed us to suppose."
|
| The real-world counter-argument to this is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus
|
| Lab leaks do happen, and all researchers in those labs do have
| an interest to play down the danger and cover things up to
| continue working.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Marburg is a different virus. Coronaviruses infection very
| much depends on the size of viral load.
|
| It's not like ebola where single micro droplet is enough.
| aliasEli wrote:
| > a swab from a bat contains very little infectious virus
|
| We know that they were doing gain of function research, but
| that only works with live viruses. So they must have some
| method to cultivate the virus. When they can do that small
| size of the initial sample is no longer relevant.
| aliasEli wrote:
| There is some evidence that they had live bats in the
| laboratory. This would make sense, bats are quite different
| from other mammals, and it seems very likely that some bat
| viruses can not be cultivated in standard cell cultures.
| shroom wrote:
| Why is that?
|
| I find it equally obvious that China released the virus to
| attack the world. Exhibit A: China only have 92.000 cases total
| and no new cases in like a year. Point is I have a hard time
| believing what's true or false when the "fat cats dance".
| Atleast it's no secret that China have silenced doctors and
| people working in close proximity of the virus in the early
| days of discovering it.
| emilgouliev wrote:
| You might have a point if China was the only country that was
| able to keep their case numbers low, but dozens of countries
| did even better than China. Perhaps South Korea or New
| Zealand is to blame instead.
| makomk wrote:
| South Korea seems like a bad example, because they had
| twice as many Covid cases as China with less than a
| twentieth the population. Actually, it looks like even New
| Zealand has reported substantially more Covid cases per
| capita than China, and they're literally an island a
| thousand miles away from anywhere else. China's low case
| numbers really are remarkable.
| aliasEli wrote:
| South Korea did well at the early phases of the
| epidemic[0]. The problem now is that they don't have
| enough vaccines[1].
|
| China used some draconian measures to achieve their
| results.
|
| [0]
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-
| kore... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccin
| ation_in_South_...
| HoytRaymond wrote:
| I would argue the exact opposite: the lab leak theory is
| intentionally downplayed to _protect_ China /relations with
| China.
|
| There are a lot of coincidences that make a lab leak a real
| possibility. It is possible those are all coincidences and the
| virus is of natural origin, but it is also possible that those
| are not coincidences and the virus originates from a lab leak.
|
| Most likely we will never know since virus origin
| investigations are difficult to begin with, and China has no
| motivation to fairly cooperate in this investigation. It also
| is not actually important, since it is extremely unlikely the
| virus was intentionally released.
|
| For political reasons it is better to go with the natural
| origin story and avoid stirring things up - there is no gain to
| be had from pressing the issue.
| goldenkey wrote:
| No gain in truth, let's just lie. Yeah, I think my government
| says the same things about UFOs. It's working out really
| well, for the past 80 years. We should have the truth so we
| can be abreast of what is possible in this world. For
| example, if actual engineers knew that Mach 10 UFOs existed,
| they'd probably be working on next-generation propulsion
| systems. And as for the lab leak, those in biological
| research would be a little bit more careful. How do you avoid
| mistakes if you are unaware one ever occurred? A lab leak
| that killed millions and changed years of our lives is not a
| white lie! It's egregious that you are willing to sacrifice
| truth for a diplomatic pin cushion.
| s5300 wrote:
| >as for the lab leak, those in biological research would be
| a little bit more careful.
|
| You say this as if you know that they're purposefully not
| being careful or something.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There are different levels of "careful". Look at the
| early days of nuclear research, chemicals or aviation
| industries compared to present-day regulations in those
| fields.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Or....hear me out....
|
| It was created because people thought it was weird that a novel
| bat coronavirus originated blocks away from a research facility
| specializing in novel bat coronaviruses.
| tonfreed wrote:
| China refuses to allow research into the origin of the virus and
| blames whoever is pissing them off that day.
|
| I don't think it's beyond reason to think, in a country where
| officials routinely fudge numbers to avoid jail time, that
| someone covered their ass for too long and now it's the entire
| CCP's problem. This article looks like it's just running cover
| because, idk, GOP evil I guess.
| forcry wrote:
| >'Evidence Strongly Favors The Lab Origin': GOP-Called Medical
| Witness Discusses COVID-19 Genesis
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs
| watertom wrote:
| Full disclosure: I do not think this virus was engineered I do
| not think this was deliberately released
|
| I do think the Chinese were studying this virus in the lab, not
| engineering it, but studying it. I do think it was the result of
| a lab accident, a technician tried to cover up an
| accident/carelessness in order to avoid getting punished or
| fired, normal human behavior.
|
| HOW DID THE CHINESE KNOW THEY HAD A NEW VIRUS WHEN THEY ONLY HAD
| A HANDFUL OF CASES????????
|
| Covid-19 presents like the flu, without a test you don't can't
| know if it's the flu or Covid-19, but the Chinese knew they had a
| new virus in late Nov, early Dec when there were only a handful
| of cases. HOW DID THEY KNOW???
|
| The only way to tell if you've got something new is because: a)
| unique symptoms b) a statistically significant increase in cases
| c) a statistically significant number of deaths
|
| In the early day of Covid-19 you had none of these present, with
| only a handful of cases NOBODY WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED ANYTHING WAS
| AMISS.
|
| I can see it now, "Hey, I'm thinking that we have these flu
| cases, in flu season, and there isn't anything remarkable about
| the cases but I think they are the result of a new virus, so we
| should raise a red flag and swing the government into action."
| Highly unlikely.
|
| There is one other way that you know you've got something new: d)
| you know something that no one else knows, like there was a lab
| accident.
|
| How did the Chinese know they had something new, when they had no
| evidence or indication that something new was circulating?
|
| This is the only question that needs to be answered. Nothing
| else. If there isn't a reasonable and logical answer to how the
| Chinese knew they had a new virus with only a few cases that
| looked just like the flu, and no other information, then it
| stands to reason they knew something else.
|
| What I think happened.
|
| A lab tech had an accident or was careless, and exposed
| themselves to the virus they were studying in the lab. The tech
| didn't report the incident because they didn't want to be
| punished or fired. The tech incorrectly assumed that everything
| was fine, but then got sick. Then when some other lab workers got
| sick, the safety people at the lab got involved and they learned
| what really happened, and they pushed the panic button, quietly.
| The rest is history.
| jandrese wrote:
| From what I understand they knew because there was a lot more
| than a handful of cases. The government was suppressing the
| news because that's what you do when you have bad news in an
| authoritarian state. Remember the early news from doctors who
| were trying to understand what was going on and were getting
| censored by the government? They had to form an underground
| information exchange until the problem finally got so big (and
| spread internationally) that they couldn't pretend anymore.
|
| IMHO, this discussion about the lab is a distraction from the
| real discussion we should be having. The one about suppressing
| discussion between doctors who are merely reporting on what
| they're seeing and delaying the worldwide response as a result.
|
| Even today the CCPs official numbers on COVID infections in
| China are extremely unlikely. They claim to have had fewer
| cases than even New Zealand. Clearly there is political
| influence being exerted over the official figures.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| Who is this author and as the lay public, can we trust the
| authoritative tone she takes? Basic clicking around shows she's a
| journalist, not a scientist, and has written articles e.g.,
| highlighting the medical struggles of Jordan Peterson with
| statements about him like:
|
| > His stern ethos of self-help and bootstrapping has made him a
| darling of the so-called intellectual dark web, and a gateway
| drug for countless budding right-wingers who have stumbled upon
| one of his lectures on YouTube.
| (https://newrepublic.com/article/156829/happened-jordan-peter...)
|
| It seems too much of a coincidence that another member of "the
| so-called intellectual dark web" is perhaps the most recognizable
| proponent of the Lab Leak Theory. She also writes for The Nation,
| which is unapologetically leaning pretty hard to the left.
|
| In other words, I question both her motives and authority.
| lmm wrote:
| The article opens by pooh-poohing the idea that three WIV
| researchers with flu-like symptoms in November might have had
| Covid-19, then a couple of paragraphs later asserts that it's
| well-known that Covid-19 was already circulating in Wuhan in
| November. Isn't there a contradiction there?
|
| How widely accepted is the notion that Ebola is a bat virus? The
| last I heard (which was a while ago) the leading theory was a
| simian reservoir.
|
| > What we're left with is this: If the WIV had a secret strain
| (or strains) at least 99 percent similar to Covid-19, it got that
| raw material from the wild. That would mean there's at least one
| wild virus that's at least 99 percent similar to Covid-19
| somewhere in nature, where humans had contact with it at least
| once. So far, it hasn't been found, but it's got to be out there,
| whether Covid is 100 percent natural or human-tweaked. So, given
| that Covid (or its direct ancestor) must exist in nature, it's
| more likely that it got out naturally (like SARS and MERS) than
| that it took an undetectable detour through a secure biolab.
|
| Is this really true? Everyone acknowledges that WIV researchers
| (quite openly and properly) sought out new coronavirus strains,
| including expeditions into remote mountains etc. to look for bat
| caves and take samples from bats that would probably never have
| otherwise had contact with humans. Everyone acknowledges that WIV
| cultured cells from its samples and worked closely with them
| under what were, at least in retrospect, inadequate (BSL-2)
| safety precautions. For a virus that we're all agreed must
| originate with a bat in a remote cave somewhere to get to a
| human, yes this is a more complex route than one lost bat biting
| a farmer or something. But I'm not sure it's really so much less
| plausible that humans who deliberately collected, studied, and
| worked closely with this virus for many man-hours might have
| slipped up once.
|
| (We will probably never know for sure what happened - another
| thing that everyone acknowledges is that the PRC government
| destroyed a lot of potentially relevant evidence. On balance I
| think a purely natural origin is probably most likely, but I do
| think that the people who dogmatically shouted down any lab leak
| theory come off a lot worse than those who kept, and keep, an
| open mind)
| simonh wrote:
| On the first point, they're just saying that 3 people seeing a
| doctor about flu symptoms at that time of year is not unusual
| (most Chinese routinely go to hospitals for any medical
| treatment), and that even if they did have Covid instead of flu
| they might have got it outside the lab. There were people in
| Wuhan with Covid back then, but there were a lot more people
| with flu. The odds that any given three people with flu
| symptoms in Wuhan at that time actually had covid was still
| very small.
|
| On the route into humans, I'm no expert but as I understand it
| while these viruses are found in bats the most likely route to
| humans is via another mammal intermediate such as a pangolin or
| cat. The reasons for this seems to be that bats are just too
| small and the virus load too thin to pose a threat to humans.
| So bat to human is very unlikely, but bat to cat is more
| plausible, and then cat (etc) to human also more plausible.
| I've no way to validate if that's accurate.
|
| It really is all numbers games though. All we can say is what
| is more or less likely, and I think that's all the article is
| trying to explain.
| zohch wrote:
| > they're just saying that 3 people seeing a doctor about flu
| symptoms at that time of year is not unusual (most Chinese
| routinely go to hospitals for any medical treatment)
|
| But what evidence is there that this was the case, that they
| just had normal flu like symptoms, and it was not more
| serious? What information at all do we have about their
| cases, and how trustworthy is this information, and why does
| this have to come out through leaked intelligence reports if
| China is so sure they have nothing to hide?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Much more relevantly, what evidence is there that this
| _wasn 't_ flu? That is where you need to start. You can't
| assume your conclusion and demand everyone else disprove
| you.
| jyounker wrote:
| What evidence do we have that it was anything other than
| normal flu?
| plank_time wrote:
| 3 people who work on coronavirus research at a lab that is
| known for lax standards catch coronavirus, and you think it's
| more plausible that they each caught it from outside?
| lamontcg wrote:
| There's no evidence they caught coronavirus
|
| There's no evidence they were even sick
|
| Nobody knows which workers they are or who their names are
|
| The article in the WSJ that really ignited the story about
| the "three researchers at WIV" is the same guy that in 2002
| co-authored the piece in the NYT with Judith Curry about
| Saddam Hussein's nuclear WMD program.
| aliasEli wrote:
| > The reasons for this seems to be that bats are just too
| small and the virus load too thin to pose a threat to humans.
| So bat to human is very unlikely, but bat to cat is more
| plausible, and then cat (etc) to human also more plausible.
|
| Some bat species, e.g. flying foxes are not really small and
| can weigh about 1 kg. Also bats are very strange that they
| can tolerate high virus loads without getting ill. There is a
| report that one of the Chinese researcher got infected while
| collecting samples.
| simonh wrote:
| According to the article these specific bats involved in
| the research are very small.
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