[HN Gopher] Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus ...
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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research
Author : BellLabradors
Score : 663 points
Date : 2021-09-24 16:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Note that the leaked documents were released three days ago, and
| this is just The Intercept's reporting on them. They can be found
| here: https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-
| do...
| Gatsky wrote:
| I don't think there is ever going to be any satisfaction on this
| issue. A lab leak is pretty unlikely, has nonzero probability and
| will never be falsified or proven. The pandemic has happened. The
| seeming weirdness from virologists is understandable because they
| don't want to be stigmatised/regulated more/defunded/have their
| labs moved to the dark side of the moon. If you doubt this
| explanation then you must not hang out with academics very much,
| their capacity for self-interest is astounding. In fact they see
| the pandemic as a huge opportunity to get a lot more funding, and
| wouldn't be so foolish to derail that by engaging with the lab
| leak issue in the slightest.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| My hypothesis on this whole mess.
|
| China was going to do bioweapon research and there was nothing we
| or anyone else could do about it.
|
| Quietly funding research in Wuhan was a way for the US IC to keep
| an eye on what China was doing.
|
| Something from that lab escaped. It's not clear or particularly
| relevant to me whether what escaped was directly involved in the
| particular experiments we funded. In my mind if the US funded 50
| experiments and China funded 50 other experiments of
| categorically the same type, and one of those 100 escaped, both
| are culpable regardless of whether it was on of our 50 or their
| 50.
|
| Fauci and other officials can't just come out and say "This is
| part of a top secret weapons/intelligence program where we were
| using this funding to spy on China." And so they will lie in
| public. They will lie under oath. And there will be no
| consequence because the people (Congress/Presidents/etc) with the
| classified truth are all similarly culpable (they probably
| okayed/funded it).
| dosman33 wrote:
| This train of thought is entirely too charitable. The US has
| the NSA, CIA, NRO, etc. for a reason and it's not to combat
| domestic terrorism. We don't have to be sponsoring their work
| to find out what they were doing. But I can understand the need
| to rationalize this somehow.
| ryeights wrote:
| Why is this being flagged? Genuinely asking.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| HN has lots of quiet pro-China readers
| meibo wrote:
| Every anti-chinese story on here usually gets flagged into
| oblivion(or page 2, even with plenty of upvotes), be it by bots
| or Chinese tech workers.
| dang wrote:
| That's not even close to true. The opposite is closer to
| true.
|
| You may be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias (you're
| more likely to notice and put weight on the things you
| dislike), which leads to false feelings of generality.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| Your comment broke the site guidelines badly. Please read the
| rules and follow them when posting to HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| president wrote:
| HN (Y Combinator) has an incentive to curb posts that could
| potentially make China angry. Being a forefront Silicon
| Valley investment company, they have to play the globalist
| game. Therefore, I suspect there may be policies in place,
| whether spoken or unspoken to suppress these types of posts.
| I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that
| also downvote/flag these posts as well.
| dang wrote:
| I can assure you with high confidence--since I'm the person
| making these calls--that this has nothing to do with how we
| moderate HN.
|
| I mean, it's possible that you know more about my
| unconscious than I do - but I think the odds are low. I'm
| pretty sure we're just trying to have an internet forum
| that doesn't suck and don't give a shit about the
| "globalist game".
|
| Re "I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals
| that also downvote/flag these posts as well" - would you
| mind reviewing the site guidelines, which specifically ask
| you not to post like that?
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| Interesting. You don't actually refute any of his
| arguments.
| dang wrote:
| What arguments? I didn't see any. But perhaps the
| following will help:
|
| > _HN (Y Combinator) has an incentive to curb posts that
| could potentially make China angry._
|
| We have no such incentive and people post such things (if
| by China you mean the Chinese government) all the time.
|
| > _Being a forefront Silicon Valley investment company,
| they have to play the globalist game._
|
| Short answer: no we don't. Longer answer: whatever
| "globalist game" means, I've never encountered the
| slightest reference to this kind of thing in the years
| I've worked for YC.
|
| > _Therefore, I suspect there may be policies in place,
| whether spoken or unspoken to suppress these types of
| posts._
|
| There are no such policies, as anyone can easily see for
| themselves by looking through what actually gets posted
| here:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| > _I don 't doubt that there are bots or Chinese
| nationals that also downvote/flag these posts as well._
|
| As explained above, it's against the site guidelines to
| post like this when you have zero evidence. This is an
| important rule, for reasons I've explained many times
| over many years:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=co
| mme...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| ---
|
| I believe that covers everything. Better?
| justapassenger wrote:
| I've flagged it. Article is ok. But the title on HN is a cheap
| clickbait.
|
| Someone, in USA, asking for a grant in the past doesn't point
| to anything about origins of SARS-CoV-2.
| dang wrote:
| (We've since changed the title - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742.)
| Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
| Unless the Intercept changed the page the submission also
| breaks the guidelines about editorializing submission titles.
| TFA headline reads: Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk
| Coronavirus Research (I didn't flag it, just voicing a
| possible reason for the submission to be flagged)
| gjs278 wrote:
| delete your account
| BellLabradors wrote:
| What do you think of these quotes?:
|
| ""Some kind of threshold has been crossed," said Alina Chan,
| a Boston-based scientist and co-author of the upcoming book
| "Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19." Chan has been
| vocal about the need to thoroughly investigate the
| possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab while
| remaining open to both possible theories of its development.
| For Chan, the revelation from the proposal was the
| description of the insertion of a novel furin cleavage site
| into bat coronaviruses -- something people previously
| speculated, but had no evidence, may have happened.
|
| Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University
| who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have
| originated in a lab, agreed. "The relevance of this is that
| SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its
| entire genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a
| fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction," said
| Ebright, referring to the place where two subunits of the
| spike protein meet. "And here is a proposal from the
| beginning of 2018, proposing explicitly to engineer that
| sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated
| coronaviruses."
|
| Martin Wikelski, a director at the Max Planck Institute of
| Animal Behavior in Germany, whose work tracking bats and
| other animals was referenced in the grant application without
| his knowledge, also said it made him more open to the idea
| that the pandemic may have its roots in a lab. "The
| information in the proposal certainly changes my thoughts
| about a possible origin of SARS-CoV-2," Wikelski told The
| Intercept. "In fact, a possible transmission chain is now
| logically consistent -- which it was not before I read the
| proposal."
|
| But others insisted that the research posed little or no
| threat and pointed out that the proposal called for most of
| the genetic engineering work to be done in North Carolina
| rather than China. "Given that the work wasn't funded and
| wasn't proposed to take place in Wuhan anyway it's hard to
| assess any bearing on the origin of SARS-CoV-2," Stephen
| Goldstein, a scientist who studies the evolution of viral
| genes at the University of Utah, and an author of the recent
| Cell article, wrote in an email to The Intercept."
| jayd16 wrote:
| When someone is hawking a book and playing up the subject
| of that book, take it with a grain of salt.
| dekhn wrote:
| Are you a scientist?
|
| I was. I can tell you that all of those quotes require a
| great deal of inspection and you cannot take them at face
| value.
|
| At the very least, most scientists speak ultra-confidently
| about this beliefs (beyond their own internal level of
| confidence) because they've learned to use narrative
| techniques to make their beliefs sound true.
|
| Any scientist who is actively speculating that this funding
| is "strong evidence" rather than saying "it's logically
| consistent and seems more than coincidental" is just wrong.
| That's a big mistake a lot of the early folks who claiimed
| it was human engineered made. The evidence is not strong,
| but not strong enough to convince a rational person.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There is a thing that you are full of. I'mma be polite
| but you are full to the brim of it.
|
| edit: Wow, flagged within one minute. That's not weird at
| all /s
|
| So I'll expand: The comment above is ridiculous for 7
| reasons. Try to find them all.
| dang wrote:
| No need for sinister explanations--your comment broke the
| site guidelines egregiously, so users flagged it,
| entirely appropriately. We ban accounts that post like
| this, so please don't.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
| mandmandam wrote:
| ... Egregiously? Really? Shit, what would a _mildly bad_
| comment look like?
|
| It's also weird that you'd take issue with my comment and
| not the one I'm replying to. Did you read it? It's got
| literally 7 kinds of deliberately crafted misinformation.
| dekhn wrote:
| there's no deliberately crafted misinformation in my
| comment. It's a simple and straightforward evaluation of
| the reliable evidence we have so far.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Are you a scientist?
|
| Implying only scientists can have opinions based on
| evidence.
|
| > I was.
|
| Argument from "authority" (without evidence btw).
|
| > I can tell you that all of those quotes require a great
| deal of inspection and you cannot take them at face
| value.
|
| Hand waving.
|
| > At the very least, most scientists speak ultra-
| confidently about this beliefs
|
| Not true at all.
|
| > (beyond their own internal level of confidence) because
| they've learned to use narrative techniques to make their
| beliefs sound true.
|
| You're thinking of storytellers.
|
| > Any scientist who is actively speculating that this
| funding is "strong evidence" rather than saying "it's
| logically consistent and seems more than coincidental" is
| just wrong.
|
| That's not true, considering that "Peter Daszak, despite
| coming out forcefully against the lab leak theory, and
| purposely downplaying his involvement with the lab in so
| doing, and being inexplicably selected as a member of the
| WHO team to investigate the lab origin theory, completely
| neglected to mention having made this proposal a mere two
| years prior", as well as myriad other deliberate
| misinformation from Peter.
|
| > That's a big mistake a lot of the early folks who
| claiimed it was human engineered made.
|
| There was more than enough evidence to warrant an
| international independent inspection of both labs in
| Wuhan. Location alone was enough, without everything
| else.
|
| > The evidence is not strong, but not strong enough to
| convince a rational person.
|
| Implying rational people will come to the same conclusion
| as you, despite all the above.
|
| I say all this because you claim to be the rational
| scientist in the room, when actually there's so much
| smoke in the room that anyone saying there's no fire
| needs a strong head check.
|
| Smell the air: smells like smoke - and something else.
| dang wrote:
| Your comment consisted of nothing other than calling
| someone full of shit. (Doing it euphemistically doesn't
| change this.) That's obviously against the site
| guidelines and correctly flagged. Then you made sinister
| insinuations as if the flags weren't an obvious
| consequence of what you'd posted.
|
| Please read the site guidelines and don't post anything
| like that to HN again - you actually already did it again
| downthread ("Smell the air: smells like smoke - and
| something else"). Flouting the rules like that, after we
| specifically asked you to stop, will get you banned here.
|
| Pointing the finger at someone else isn't a very tasteful
| way to respond about your own behavior, but as it
| happens, I don't see how the other comment broke the
| guidelines. The commenter may be 100% wrong, but there's
| no rule against being wrong on HN. If someone else is
| wrong and you know the truth, the thing to do is
| patiently and respectfully provide correct information
| and better arguments. Name-calling is definitely not ok,
| and please stop posting in the flamewar style. It's the
| opposite of what we want here.
|
| What we want is described well in this sentence pg wrote
| years ago: _Comments should be written in the spirit of
| colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the
| truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule
| and misrepresent the other side._
| mandmandam wrote:
| First "egregious violations" and now "sinister
| insinuations"... You are a trip. Literally that guy and
| you downvoted me, it's doubtful anyone else even saw the
| thread.
|
| And I stand by those "sinister insinuations", for the
| record. There is no way, none, that multiple commenters
| found this old dead thread, moved to the second page, and
| flagged my comment within minutes of its posting. Occam's
| razor would suggest that OP has the power to flag people
| single handed.
|
| I notice that you say "we" asked you. Is this the 'royal'
| we? Are there multiple people behind this account?
|
| Dang, feel free to take this the wrong way, but I think
| you could use a perspective check. I've heard that acting
| as a gatekeeper too long can inflate one's ego. Ask
| yourself if you're doing as much good here as you used
| to.
|
| While we're chatting all friendly; do you ever wonder
| what the real life consequences of removing that story
| about Gina Haspel all those times are? I think about it a
| lot. I wonder if you give even a tiny little shit about
| helping cover for such a ghoul. My nightmare is that you
| rationalised that ghastly act so well, you don't even
| remember doing it.
|
| Don't take that as pointing the finger to deflect from my
| own horrific actions, lol. I genuinely wonder how you
| live with doing that all the time, and now seems a good
| time to ask you - you must have a great view up there on
| that moral high ground.
| dang wrote:
| By "sinister insinuations" I just mean that you're
| imagining manipulations that didn't actually happen. The
| flags on your comment were perfectly ordinary, from quite
| a few legit HN users, none of whom (other than me) have
| been posting in this thread. Similarly, "that guy" did
| not downvote you, other users did; and plenty of users
| have seen this thread--HN has a lot of readers. Whatever
| concept of HN you have that suggests these things
| couldn't happen, it must be false, since they did happen.
|
| Half a million stories get submitted to HN every year.
| Plenty get moderated in some way; plenty are in some way
| ghoulish. I'm afraid I don't remember them all; I hardly
| remember any of them. It feels like you may be putting
| too much weight on one data point, if you're asking "how
| you live with doing that" about a specific story from
| years ago. The answer is that the moderation principles
| here are clear and we try our hardest to apply them even-
| handedly.
|
| Incidentally, you can't derive any political agreement or
| disagreement from the way we moderate HN - we moderate
| stories and comments all the time that we personally
| agree with and/or consider important. If you scroll back
| through moderation comments on HN you'll find that
| commenters from every political and ideological angle get
| moderated, because people on all sides break the HN
| guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I'm
| not claiming that we have no bias, but certainly we work
| hard at this and have a lot of practice at it.
|
| If you would please start doing a better job of adhering
| to those guidelines now, I'd appreciate it.
| mandmandam wrote:
| You know, if not adhering to your interpretation of the
| guidelines results in rate-limiting and threats to ban,
| then they're not actually guidelines, they are rules. It
| would be nice if you were honest about that.
|
| And no, there is absolutely no way that my second comment
| was flagged by multiple users within minutes. This thread
| was long dead by then, and this is on the second page.
| What you say about the first comment is highly doubtful
| too, considering it was flagged within one single minute,
| with one single downvote - and was already also on the
| second page.
|
| If repeatedly removing the story of an infamous torturer
| who destroyed congressional evidence taking one of the
| most powerful technical positions in the country -
| against loud and polite protestations - is really not
| remembered by you then you have two big problems. 1, your
| humanity, and 2, you need more moderators here because
| clearly you are being stretched too thin. Ask PG for a
| bit more budget, for the sake of your soul and the people
| here creating this content.
| titzer wrote:
| > in USA
|
| The first page of the document listed collaborators from the
| Wuhan Institute of Virology.
| endisneigh wrote:
| [deleted]
| boolean wrote:
| > Why can't we just assume the worst and take action based on
| that?
|
| Because they might require vastly different actions?
| newswasboring wrote:
| 1. We can do two things at a time. Investigation of origins
| does not block anyone from making and following policies to
| stop the spread.
|
| 2. I don't know about you but I have lost more than 1.5 years
| of my life to this. World around me has changed fundamentally
| in many ways. Just for closures sake I would like to know why
| this happened to me.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 2. It has more to do with your country's government than the
| source of the virus, hence my comment
|
| Even if you knew would anything change? I'm not advocating
| for ignorance, rather that it's impossible to know
| conclusively without full cooperation and it's in the
| interest of all parties to deflect
| newswasboring wrote:
| > Even if you knew would anything change?
|
| Yes. Closure. I know it's a vague human need, but it is a
| need at least I have. It will definitely be good for my
| mental health. And why do you want people to cease just
| because something is hard? All criminal cases are hard.
| Some are solved. Let's try to solve this one.
| darkerside wrote:
| Why put a murderer in jail? It won't bring the victim back.
| sayonaraman wrote:
| you mean figuring out what caused a global pandemic, deaths of
| millions of people and trillions dollars of economic damage is
| of no consequence?
| endisneigh wrote:
| if we figure out, what then? Are they to blame for all the
| death?
| newswasboring wrote:
| Yes absolutely. If someone engineered something so deadly
| in a lab, in a non war political climate, and can be so
| irresponsible as to leak it and cause all this death then
| yes. They are absolutely responsible.
| sayonaraman wrote:
| well how about establishing safety procedures, research
| guidelines and international regulation body governing
| dangerous GoF research so that such outbreak doesn't happen
| again.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Can't we do that either way?
| sayonaraman wrote:
| you've gotta know the details, kind of like those 19th
| and 20th century epidemiologists who went to the ground
| zero of say cholera outbreak* and investigated how it
| started and what was its source, and how exactly it
| originated and spread, and such investigations were
| helpful to bring about vaccines and preventive measures
| (and more recently see Ebola response for example).
|
| Now while we do have effective Covid vaccines (at least
| for some variants of the virus), knowing the exact origin
| of a major pandemic, either it came from a natural source
| or a lab, is of major importance for science, medicine
| and public health.
|
| Arguably we're lucky COVID was not as deadly as some
| other viral pandemics of the past** and we have to gather
| as much info as possible on its origin and distribution
| in order to prevent something like this (or worse)
| happening in the future.
|
| *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Haffkine
|
| **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Here's four reasons:
|
| - Only with accountability can there be some deterrence.
| Especially if there were actors outside of China that were
| involved.
|
| - The _details_ of the post-mortem will give us valuable
| insights that we can 't get by simply imagining up a worst case
| from our armchair. If a plane crashes, we want to figure out
| why it crashed and make specific improvements, rather than just
| assuming what happened and acting based on a loose and
| inaccurate mental model.
|
| - If it did leak, there needs to be a cultural reckoning and
| introspection as to how this was allowed to be so taboo for so
| long.
|
| - If it did leak, public knowledge of that may be what causes
| there to be sufficient political will to get regulatory
| safeguards implemented
| ImaCake wrote:
| I don't find this evidence compelling. Also did any of you read
| the leaked proposal? [0] It would have been super useful to fund
| this! The intercept has done a massive disservice to the grant
| proposal here with their poor portrayal of it.
|
| Reading the introduction, it looks like it would have been
| incredibly useful data to have for the origins of COVID-19 since
| much of the work looks like it would have been surveillance for
| bat coronaviruses. I note that the second work program would be
| research on effectively vaccinating bats to prevent spread of
| coronaviruses. Australia did something similar by vaccinating
| horses against Hendra virus.
|
| Unfortunately it doesn't matter in the end what evidence is put
| forth. People are going to believe the lab escape hypothesis
| because there are powerful interests intent on pushing that
| narrative. The arguments in favour of lab escape seem plausible,
| even if they conflict with the molecular evidence. Most people
| don't know enough about the arcanery of molecular biology to
| trust it over the hearsay of documents and politicians.
|
| 0. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-
| prop...
| rmu09 wrote:
| Relevant interview with peter daszak
| https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ recorded at the december
| 2019 nipah conference in singapure.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| There is a live stream right now by Dr. Kevin McCairn
| (neuroscientist) commenting on this paper, a grant application
| from EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak) detailing what they were
| going to do in Wuhan: https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE
| taurusnoises wrote:
| "Video removed by uploader." Is there anything about this virus
| that isn't suspicious!? Like, can't even a YouTube video stay
| up when it's supposed to?
| xenophonf wrote:
| I only have the GP's word that the removed video was about
| the topic they claim it was. For all I know, this video could
| have been a rickroll.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| You are right to be skeptical.
|
| It would be nice if they could be left up in YouTube, but
| it's either removing them right after the stream ends, or
| YouTube takes it down and blocks his account, which has
| happened multiple times in the last 18 months.
|
| You can find all of them in his website after registration
| (e-mail and password): https://www.mccairndojo.com/
|
| Some of the videos are still available in YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q
|
| His surviving Twitter account:
| https://twitter.com/w_mccairn
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| Some people:
|
| >> Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology
| at Columbia University, was adamant that the proposal did not
| change his opinion that the pandemic was caused by a natural
| spillover from animals to humans. "There are zero data to support
| a lab origin 'notion,'" Racaniello wrote in an email.
|
| There seems to be zero data to support his spillover idea too.
| But now we have documentation of people wanting to do the exact
| experiments that could lead to this, and he's still sticking to
| his fantasy.
|
| I dont think the point here is to definitively determine the
| origin of this virus, it's to point to the fact that unchecked
| scientists are wanting to do exactly the kind of experiments that
| could kill us all. IIRC an Ebola gene was successfully put in a
| flu virus years ago but contained - hemorrhagic influenza anyone?
|
| This stuff needs to stop.
| mberning wrote:
| At the very minimum we should not be funding this type of
| research. Just the act of going into a cave and looking for
| specimens is dangerous. Ideally there would be a worldwide ban
| on it. We should take the money and effort and redouble out
| efforts to create antiviral therapies.
| novaRom wrote:
| Daszak in a famous interview has said: "You can manipulate
| coronaviruses in a lab quite easily". It was a month or two
| before COVID outbreak in Wuhan.
| phreeza wrote:
| The question is if it is possible to stop this kind of research
| at all, given the potential military applications. Will it not
| just push research from publicly known and inspected (like
| Wuhan) into secret military labs?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Perhaps the US could start by not funding the labs in
| question.
| chrsw wrote:
| I could be missing something but this isn't exactly the smoking
| gun the title makes it seem. I'm sure there are proposals, plans
| and applications for all types of things. What I'm waiting for,
| perhaps naively, is strong evidence, revelated an independent
| investigation, that there was some foul business going on here.
| Until I see that, I'm more inclined to rely on the word of
| experts who have no connection to any of this. A novel aspect of
| a viral genome isn't enough for me to leap to the conclusion that
| it's human made.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think the chain of evidence is suspicious to say the least.
|
| 1. In 2018 EcoHealth Alliance(Peter Dazsak and team) apply to a
| grant to darpa for viral modification research and highlight a
| change in "furin cleavage site" at the same location as
| covid-19's change, this change has never been seen before in
| nature.
|
| 2. In the darpa proposal is listed "Wuhan institute of
| virology" as a team member, this was a year before the covid-19
| outbreak in wuhan in 2019.
|
| 3. Rather damning for Peter Dazsak is he publicly denied any
| plausibility in the idea of a lab created source for covid-19,
| while behind the scenes at the same time telling his two
| students to distance themselves from this darpa proposal as the
| virus was rapidly spreading through cities in the world.
|
| 4. Even more unusual is that Peter Daszak and Linfa Wang, two
| of the researchers who submitted the proposal, did not
| previously acknowledge it until now.
| BioResearcher2 wrote:
| This is rather damning for other reasons that people may not
| even realize. DARPA is a rather fast moving agency, and DARPA
| grants can be fairly short term with a fast turnaround in
| comparison to say NIH or NSF. Thus for DARPA grants (and
| others, but especially DARPA), it's extremely common have
| already started some aspects of the research in order to make
| the timelines in the grant achievable. Thus as someone in a
| nearby field (not something with such hefty security issues,
| but bio-related), when I see it say that they wrote down they
| wanted to insert this site into the virus, that is a public
| admission that someone in some lab has already started
| gathering preliminary data showing that it could work.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
| derbOac wrote:
| There must have been something about the title that changed, so
| I'm responding to something that's maybe a bit different with
| context. However...
|
| Some other sites' coverage of this highlighted some of the
| grant content a bit more prominently. I agree it's not quite a
| smoking gun, but the content of the grant that was discussed
| was eerily similar to what's been put together by investigating
| organizations. It's akin to if you were trying to solve a
| burglary and concluded "if this happened, the suspects would
| have done A, B, D, and H", and then later you found some emails
| sent back and forth by the suspects saying "hey how about we do
| A, B, D, and H?" It's not proof they actually did it but it's
| about as close as you can get to a smoking gun without it being
| a smoking gun.
|
| The timing is also uncanny.
|
| I don't want to miscommunicate the extent to which I think the
| grant proposal proves anything, as I don't think it does, but
| it blurs the moral difference so much that I start to find
| myself wondering why as a society we shouldn't react with
| _some_ things as if it did. That is, I don 't think it rises to
| some level where I would say it definitely proves beyond a
| reasonable doubt that anyone did anything, but I do think it
| compels some deep reflection about the scientific-media-
| authority-academic-funding complex.
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title ("New Leaked Documents Point to Engineered
| Lab Origin for SARS-CoV-2") broke the site guidelines badly by
| editorializing. Submitters: please don't do that--it will
| eventually cause you to lose submission privileges on HN.
| Instead, follow the site guidelines, which include: " _Please
| use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait;
| don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (I'm assuming, of course, that it wasn't the article title that
| got subsequently changed. If that was the case, ignore the
| above.)
| nl wrote:
| Maybe putting that specific guideline on the submission page
| might help?
| klyrs wrote:
| > (I'm assuming, of course, that it wasn't the article title
| that got subsequently changed. If that was the case, ignore
| the above.)
|
| Not the first time I've seen you say this. Would it be
| worthwhile to fetch articles when they're submitted, if only
| for your own sanity?
| dang wrote:
| Fetching them in a way that information (like titles) can
| be meaningfully extracted from is a lot harder than it
| sounds - we've worked on it in the past and got bogged down
| in lots of details and corner cases etc. An easier way
| might be to rely on one of the archiving services, e.g.
| archive.org. If a snapshot could be taken at submission
| time than it would be there to refer to later.
|
| On the other hand, titles changing on the fly isn't _that_
| big a headache as far as sanity-affecting headaches go. NYT
| does it all the time, or used to. The main thing I don 't
| like to do is scold someone for breaking the title
| guideline and then finding out later that it was the site,
| not the submitter, that changed it.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| > information (like titles) can be meaningfully extracted
|
| From a technical perspective it's probably simpler to
| just grep the page for the user-submitted title.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Sometimes you have to paraphrase the title due to the
| length limit.
| nl wrote:
| The issue is likely mostly paywalled sites and SPAs where
| this isn't as simple.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Yet another reason to ban paywalled sites.
|
| I really don't understand why a site that wants people to
| actually read the article and discuss the contents
| promotes articles that at least 90% of readers won't be
| able to (easily) access.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| Sure, and I agree that this problem isn't worth spending
| a lot of resources on if the level of toil is acceptable.
|
| But most paywall sites do display the title so that you
| know what great journalism you're being asked to pay for.
| I suspect that the typical SPA shows titles as well. So
| greping should work in those cases.
|
| But my point was while title extraction is a hard problem
| requiring you to solve lots of corner cases, title
| greping is simple and handles the vast majority of cases.
| The corner cases are then handled by humans (as, IIUC,
| all cases are currently).
|
| Accepting a user-generated title and comparing it to the
| text gives you a boolean. If they don't match you can
| just ask the user to affirm that what they submitted is
| really the title. Then, if you like, you can have a "this
| title may be dodgy" icon on posts that don't match.
| xoa wrote:
| The truly irritating thing is that even that wouldn't
| necessarily be enough, because so many sites actually do
| live A/B/C/[n] title tests simultaneously to randomized
| sets of users then choose whichever one gets the most
| clicks or whatever metric first. Even without any manual
| shenanigans. So there's a window where merely refreshing or
| browsing from a different IP will yield a different title.
| Sometimes evidence is left in the URL or interactions with
| older systems on the a site but that's all baroque. So so
| so many edge cases in grabbing titles.
|
| Probably not worth the effort on HN to try to automate vs
| just treating it case by case. It doesn't usually seem to
| be a problem. "Pre-optimization is the root of all evil"
| and all that.
|
| Edit: or archive.org as dang says, but I don't know if even
| they see all versions of a page if there is a simultest
| situation. Regrettably seems pretty SOP on even reputable
| places.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Professors never make proposals that they're not sure would
| work nowadays. It's too risky with an already uncertain grant
| system so most (especially successful) labs only write in
| proposals things they have already proven but not fully
| disclosed. They'll then use the money they get to test and
| finish half of the next project and then write the next
| proposal with that knowledge. Thus it's very likely they
| already did this research a good way through when this proposal
| was submitted.
|
| While this doesn't prove they made and leaked the virus, it
| doesn't exonerate them either. A proper investigation is
| needed. When you say you rely on experts, you should definitely
| listen to them but unfortunately when people are defending
| their colleagues it's much harder to do this. Further, many
| scientists would take any questioning of this persons ethics as
| castigation of the whole scientific establishment and become
| defensive. Even otherwise, it looks like the tide is changing
| among experts now, more and more are agreeing the lab leak is a
| viable hypothesis.
| fredgrott wrote:
| short biology explanation as I do not know how much the HN
| readers has.
|
| We did not have the tools to do genetic manipulation as far s
| the physical techniques until recently...ie they were not
| around when I took biochem in 1990s.
|
| HOWEVER, we still do not have enough concrete knowledge about
| this domain to reliably design anything on purpose including
| viruses organs ,etc.
|
| Anybody that states otherwise is a danger to themselves and
| others. Blunt as I can put that.
| JPKab wrote:
| There is a long chain of improbable coincidences required to
| believe that the virus came directly to humans from animal
| reservoirs in nature.
|
| Coincidence 1.) Wuhan is roughly 1800 KM away from the caves in
| Yunnan province where previous bat-borne coronaviruses jumped
| to humans harvesting bat guano in earlier SARS outbreaks. It is
| a massive metropolitan area, and far more cosmopolitan than
| many westerners believe. They don't eat bats in Wuhan, and bats
| were never present at wet markets. Possible for a virus to jump
| from bats to humans here, but unlikely based on priors and the
| realities of horseshoe bats being highly unlikely to come into
| contact with urbanized humans at a level to transmit a virus
| that isn't adapted to human lung receptors.
|
| Coincidence 2.) Wuhan has 2 different facilities where bat-
| borne coronavirus research took place. There are only a few of
| these labs in the entire world, and none others in all of
| China.
|
| Coincidence 3. ) Unlike both SARS-1 and MERS, where animal
| reservoirs for both were found within months, almost 2 years
| later, no animal reservoir has been identified for SARS-2.
| Unlike both MERS and SARS-1, SARS-2 has never been particularly
| infectious to other animal species. SARS-1 in its early stages
| was still highly transmissible between bats. SARS-2 never
| exhibited this characteristic.
|
| Coincidence 4. ) The evidence that would have easily exonerated
| the labs was deliberately destroyed by the CCP early in the
| pandemic, with extensive blocking of access to any and all
| foreign investigators.
|
| Coincidence 5.) The same city where this outbreak occurred was
| a known location, based on other grants to EcoHealth Alliance,
| of researching bat coronavirus experiments involving the use of
| "humanized mice". No, "humanized" isn't some novel, sci-fi or
| conspiracy theory idea. They are genetically modified mice
| which are routinely used in research. The variety used in the
| lab were engineered to have human ACE-2 receptors lining their
| respiratory tissue. Sounds crazy, I know, but here's the grant
| summary (it was awarded) for the research, and notice the
| "humanized mice" at the very end of the text:
| https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje...
|
| All of this evidence is circumstantial, but every day that goes
| by where no zoonotic reservoir is identified (the CCP isn't
| looking at all, because they know the answer) increasingly
| points to this being a lab accident and a subsequent coverup by
| a paranoid authoritarian regime, along with a scientific
| community desperate to prevent virology from being impacted the
| way nuclear energy research was by Chernobyl.
| baja_blast wrote:
| there will never be an independent investigation
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This is correct. China delayed a site visit for more than a
| year. And then when it happened they controlled what was
| said. And on top of that the only US representative was
| Daszak, since the WHO rejected a few other candidates from
| the Trump administration and picked someone who was seemingly
| favorable to the outcome they (or perhaps China?) desired. It
| is incredible that all these countries around the world
| didn't immediately implement sanctions and a maritime
| blockade after such obviously untrustworthy actions in an
| incident that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
| adflux wrote:
| Like sending a murderer to investigate his own murders
| chrsw wrote:
| If this is true, then I think we have a bigger problem on our
| hands. Even if there's no lab connection to the COVID-19
| outbreak.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Is China a bigger problem than the pandemic? Hmmmm....
| imbnwa wrote:
| I mean, even in the case that occurs, what is the endgame?
| _Fine_ China? _Sanction_ China? _Demand_ accountability from
| China? Not happening, not when they make everyone 's chips
| among other things.
|
| Can someone enlighten me about the value of this theory? It
| just seems like another vector of anti-establishment distrust
| discourse with a more intelligent veneer; easy to profit off of
| (clicks, book sales, etc) and doesn't require a conclusion.
| api wrote:
| If this were true, the US is also involved. That would mean
| both countries are responsible.
| jtdev wrote:
| They don't "make everyone's chip's"... that would be Taiwan.
|
| Regarding what should be done: stop giving money to China for
| GoF research would be a great start...
| speed_spread wrote:
| GoF? Is China still caught in the OO Design Pattern trap?
| burnished wrote:
| Gain of Function.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Fine China? Sanction China? Demand accountability from
| China?_
|
| If China caused this and then lied about it, there would
| absolutely be geopolitical will to organize and extract
| concessions.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Perhaps if we have zero recourse against China in this sort
| of situation, then the first step would be to work to remove
| the conditions that lead to that lack of recourse.
| majormajor wrote:
| This was a proposal to DARPA from a US-based group so the "if
| it came from the Wuhan lab we need to deal with China" part
| of the common reaction to the lab-origins idea seems wildly
| unfounded.
|
| If it came from a lab - hell, even if it DIDN'T come from a
| lab, but _could have_ - then we need to globally think about
| what sort of things we 're doing and how safely we can do
| them.
| [deleted]
| gmkiv wrote:
| The value is to inform the larger discussion of the risks and
| benefits of gain of function research.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
| [deleted]
| iammisc wrote:
| The value is that it shows the American media for what it
| is... CCP apologists more willing to believe the communist
| government of China than a sitting American president with
| access to classified evidence. And also their use of 'woke'
| language to hide truth.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm following: are you saying that the current
| president should be believed, or the former one? Similarly,
| are you saying that either president has cited classified
| information that directly contradicts the media's reporting
| on COVID-19?
|
| To my recollection, neither president has forcefully
| declassified _any_ evidence that supports the more
| egregious claims made about COVID (that it was
| intentionally leaked). In the mean time, there seems to be
| ample & bipartisan willingness among the general public to
| at least entertain more benign "accidental leak" theories.
| iammisc wrote:
| Robert Redfield former CDC director said trump had access
| to intelligence implicating the lab. Biden presumay does
| as well.
|
| Also, nowhere here is any claim it was intentional.
| markdown wrote:
| > that there was some foul business going on here
|
| The lab leak hypothesis isn't a hypothesis that foul business
| went on.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| I agree with your characterisation of the evidence, except I
| think "Points to" is not synonymous with "smoking gun" so I
| don't think the criticism of the title is valid. In terms of
| how important this evidence is, it isn't just "a novel aspect
| of a viral genome", it is the aspect of the genome which is
| hardest to square with a natural origin. And it is an aspect
| that scientists involved in this research explicitly proposed
| inserting into coronaviruses. From the article:
|
| "Let's look at the big picture: A novel SARS coronavirus
| emerges in Wuhan with a novel cleavage site in it. We now have
| evidence that, in early 2018, they had pitched inserting novel
| cleavage sites into novel SARS-related viruses in their lab,"
| said Chan. "This definitely tips the scales for me. And I think
| it should do that for many other scientists too."
|
| Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University
| who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have
| originated in a lab, agreed. "The relevance of this is that
| SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its entire
| genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully
| functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction," said Ebright,
| referring to the place where two subunits of the spike protein
| meet. "And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018,
| proposing explicitly to engineer that sequence at that position
| in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses."
|
| And then what's more, they sat on the fact that they had
| requested funding for this research for the last 18 months,
| when the world has been desperately trying to find any relevant
| information on the virus' origins. The fact that they did not
| put this forward themselves in in and of itself suspect.
| JPKab wrote:
| "And then what's more, they sat on the fact that they had
| requested funding for this research for the last 18 months,
| when the world has been desperately trying to find any
| relevant information on the virus' origins. The fact that
| they did not put this forward themselves in in and of itself
| suspect."
|
| They didn't just "sit on it". EcoHealth and Peter Daszak
| deliberately and aggressively attacked anyone who pointed to
| lab-leak origins as conspiracy theorists and bigots. They did
| so in an article in The Lancet journal where they also stated
| they had no conflicts of interest.
|
| Reading this statement, knowing what you know now, and it
| becomes very clear how sinister and calculated the
| misdirection was:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
|
| And look at the end of the letter, at the sentence: "We
| declare no competing interests." That's a blatant lie, as we
| now know.
|
| Those of us who have been seeing this for a long time were
| attacked, bullied, and tarred as bigots because of these
| irresponsible scientists desperately trying to cling to their
| grant funding. My comment history on HN has numerous
| comments, from months and months ago, where I was attacked,
| downvoted, and called an anti-Asian bigot for saying what is
| now obvious. Talking about this before the 2020 election
| resulted in immediate accusations of being a Trump
| sycophant/white nationalist, along with banning and deletions
| from social media. As a lifelong heterodox thinker, I always
| sort of shrugged my shoulders at being surrounded by people
| who predominantly just go with the herd on things. But this
| entire situation has now made me actively despise the "herd".
| After being a lifelong liberal Democrat who got demonized,
| bullied, and yes, beaten up for opposing the Iraq war in the
| conservative area I grew up in, I was shocked to realize that
| the other side isn't any different. Just a little more
| sophisticated. They don't physically assault you, but they'll
| try to get you fired, and equate you with a Nazi in a
| heartbeat.
|
| As a result of this pandemic, my mother-in-law and aunt are
| dead, a friend took his own life when his charter fishing
| business went under, and my wife's mental health has been
| crushed. I myself was infected a month before I was eligible
| for the vaccine. Luckily it was a mild case, but I still
| don't have my sense of smell. Billions around the world had
| it worse than me, and it is unforgivable that the media, big
| tech, and the scientific community have colluded to obfuscate
| the true origins of this manmade disaster. The Soviets would
| have dreamed of having this kind of cover as Chernobyl spewed
| radiation into the atmosphere.
| mannanj wrote:
| Hey JPKab, just wanted to post that I empathize with you
| and I've experienced the same criticism. You aren't alone,
| and even if it may feel the entire country hates and
| condemns you for questioning that not everyone is that way.
|
| I've found some hope among opponents with disagreeing
| beliefs, and I think remaining optimistic (reasonably) is
| an important piece of retaining the power to drive forward
| change in this area. Let's remain supportive and hopeful in
| ultimately the same goal as our opponents: caring for and
| providing safety, love and compassion for all humans.
| bb88 wrote:
| To me the title of the article should have been:
|
| "Leaked DARPA proposals adds weight to lab-engineered sars-
| cov-2 hypothesis"
|
| ...or something along those lines. The problem is that
| "points to" is a pretty strong direct relationship. But these
| docs aren't directly related apparently (since the research
| was rejected by DARPA). It just shows that labs were
| potentially interested in creating such viruses. But that
| does hint that such a scenario could have been possible.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This
| information contradicts those previous statements. It
| appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need
| more investigation.
| chrsw wrote:
| I guess "smoking gun" is too strong. Maybe what I should have
| said is something like "there's been a new development which
| completely changes the characterization of the sequence of
| events leading up to the pandemic."
|
| What you're saying is worth looking deeper into, but it's not
| enough to start making claims yet, imo. There are probably
| hundreds or thousands of proposals and papers floating around
| now that talk about different things one can do with genetic
| engineering. If something should arise that is related to the
| concepts in some of those papers you wouldn't necessarily
| jump to the conclusion that there's a causal connection. Not
| without more information, anyway.
|
| "it is the aspect of the genome which is hardest to square
| with a natural origin" This doesn't tell me it's artificially
| created. The most this tells me is it's not well understood.
|
| "The fact that they did not put this forward themselves in in
| and of itself suspect." It could be related. Or it could be
| unrelated and there maybe some other explanation. My point
| is, when you want to charge someone with a serious crime,
| which I think this falls under, you need to come with some
| pretty strong evidence that directly ties whoever is involved
| to the events of the crime. This evidence may very well exist
| and it's not been shared publicly.
| JPKab wrote:
| I'm going to take a wild guess that when you first heard
| Trump call it the "China virus" you were as utterly
| horrified and revolted as I was. You had every right to be.
|
| Like me, you probably viewed it as a deliberate attempt to
| distract from his administration's incompetence. Like me,
| you probably decided right then and there that it was a
| natural virus and recognized that a bulk of the people
| saying otherwise just HAPPENED to be people who wanted
| Trump re-elected.
|
| There comes a point where you have to recognize that you
| have made decisions with incomplete information and
| emotional biases, and that those decisions sometimes need
| to be completely cast out, with an objective, reasoned look
| at the latest facts.
|
| At this point, the evidence that you reasonably state needs
| to be found has long been eradicated by the second most
| powerful nation state the world has ever seen. An
| authoritarian one, with the ability to make any critic
| disappear. There will never be an actual smoking gun,
| because the CCP had months of knowledge of what they had
| accidentally released before the rest of the planet knew it
| existed. All of the evidence was within their borders. The
| eradication of this evidence is itself an incredibly strong
| indication of guilt, particularly combined with the
| mountains of circumstantial evidence that point to this
| being a lab leak. If a detective walks into a suspected
| murderers bedroom, and finds that all of the surfaces have
| been bleached and the carpet has been ripped up, he doesn't
| have definitive evidence that the suspect is a murderer.
| But he does have evidence that they are trying to hide
| something.
| phreeza wrote:
| I really hate the way everything around the coronavirus has been
| politicized. It is a very important question to investigate the
| lab leak hypothesis thoroughly. However, the hypothesis seems to
| have gone from "the virus leaked from a lab" to "the virus has
| leaked from a lab and thus the chinese communist party is
| responsible for any and all consequences", which drives people
| into their political camps depending on who they want to assign
| blame to, which is a total mind killer.
| trhway wrote:
| That is the same EcoHealth which was doing it in Wuhan :
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699
|
| "That organization - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance - was
| awarded grants strating 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses
| from bats.
|
| EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was
| given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
|
| So, in early 2018 they propose specific modifications to the
| virus, and in the end of 2019 such a modified virus emerges right
| near their lab...
|
| Btw, in their first $666K (with Wuhan getting $160K) 2014 tranche
| of the $3.3M grant award, the "Are Human Subjects Involved" is
| already "Yes" with IRB review already pending - see p.13 here
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understandi...
|
| I from the start (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340283)
| was saying that one of main reasons of doing it in Wuhan was the
| human testing.
| roca wrote:
| Daszak should be compelled to reveal everything he knows and all
| relevant evidence --- all proposals, all emails, all files, any
| other documentation.
|
| I'm mystified why this hasn't already happened. I mean, his
| career depends on government largesse so it shouldn't even
| require coercion. Full cooperation or no cash.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It's not just Daszak. The NIH itself has refused to cooperate
| with members of Congress who've called for transparency. I'm
| not sure why the Biden administration is OK with agencies being
| secretive about something that like this that clearly deserves
| public scrutiny: https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-nih-
| transparency-wuhan-res...
| willupowers wrote:
| Right now it looks like the U.S. might have been working with
| Wuhan on a vaccine. And Wuhan had an oopsies. We just have a
| confirmation statement from DARPA that they weren't working
| with WIV. I bet someone knows the rest of the details why
| we've been watching a circus act for a couple years now.
| stablechaos wrote:
| Because all of the major players, the Chinese Communist Party,
| the US government (DARPA & the NIH), and several universities
| and their IRB boards (UNC-Chapel Hill, WIV, and others), all
| had a hand in this, and the second they give legitimacy to this
| theory--that the hubris and recklessness of scientists and
| bureaucrats led to the deaths and suffering of millions--then
| they'll never be able to put the cat back in the bag.
|
| They also know that if it was their fault, the CCP did a good
| enough job of scrubbing the evidence that we'll never meet the
| standard of evidence that would satisfy many of those who
| choose to take the authority at their word. We're seeing this
| first-hand in this thread.
| gfodor wrote:
| Well, the good news is that either way we are still exposed
| to a lab leak of an airborne highly contagious coronavirus as
| much as we were before. Oh wait did I say good news?
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Not either way. Investigations to find out whether this
| virus was in fact made in lab has tremendous utility. First
| it would seek reparation from all parties involved in
| creating this chaos. Second it will dissuade other lunatic
| research group or companies getting funny ideas in the
| future.
| the-dude wrote:
| How can any reparation be meaningful on this scale of
| damages?
| hirako2000 wrote:
| We don't ask this question when it comes to murder. Why
| would we in this case?
| pishpash wrote:
| You're assuming the government has a different interest than
| him.
| someguydave wrote:
| what he knows might embarrass or reveal dishonesty from others
| in the government or those seeking positions in the government
| roca wrote:
| The government is not a monolith. The US Congress could do
| this and individual Congresspeople don't have an obvious
| interest in covering this up.
|
| Edit: the problem looks like partisan politics to me.
| Republicans have been agitating to pressure Daszak, and
| therefore Democrats are against it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I've been _extremely_ wary of how some of the evidence of
| Covid-19 origins have come about, particular because so much of
| it has been presented as "Well, we've never seen this before,
| so it must have lab origins."
|
| That said, I think the context around this is _extremely_
| damning for Daszak. I didn 't realize this until reading the
| Wikipedia article on Daszak, but _he_ was the one that
| organized the Feb 2020 letter in the Lancet condemning
| suggestions of a lab origin for Covid-19 as conspiracy
| theories. But how could he do this while conveniently leaving
| out that his own organization _was_ involved in highly risky
| coronavirus research?
|
| Again, I don't think this news puts us much closer to
| uncovering the origins of Covid-19, but it _does_ show how some
| of these folks leading the charge of "it had to be natural"
| were at the very least being duplicitous in their
| communications.
| sjwalter wrote:
| This whole narrative was revealed ages ago by internet
| reporters, particularly by Dr. Chris Martenson of
| peakprosperity.com.
|
| What's not being reported even in this Intercept article is
| that Fauci and the Eco Health Alliance are heavily involved
| with each other. One week before Daszak et al released their
| ridiculous "lab leak is a conspiracy theory" Lancet article,
| as revealed in Fauci's emails (which supposedly revealed
| nothing), Fauci had a conference call with Daszak and other
| Eco Health folks, after discussing the fact that the lab leak
| hypothesis was gaining traction.
|
| They have a big conference call, the Lancet article is posted
| a week later.
|
| Here's all the details:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNxoVFZwMYw
|
| I know "Bro, just watch this youtube video" is lame-ass
| evidence in general, but Dr. Martenson has been incredibly
| data-driven and level-headed throughout the pandemic, is a
| pro-masker, and his views have evolved over time with new
| data.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Also the state department knew of dangerous research taking
| place in unsafe conditions at 1-2 years before:
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-
| rogin...
| fsh wrote:
| The original cable was published in the meantime [1]. I
| don't see any mention of "dangerous research taking place
| in unsafe conditions". Why don't you read it for
| yourself? It's only three pages.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-
| state-depart...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| To my eyes, this cable confirms what the Politico article
| said. It says there is a "serious shortage of
| appropriately trained technicians and investigators
| needed to safely operate this high-containment
| laboratory". This is on Page 2, in the last paragraph. As
| for what's dangerous, Page 3 specifically mentions
| research undertaken with funding from NIH/NIAID studying
| SARS-like coronaviruses that can interact with ACE2
| (transmittable to humans). Handling such viruses,
| particularly ones whose infectiousness has been increased
| (gain of function), in a lab without properly trained
| staff, seems pretty alarming to me.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I've never heard of peakprosperity.com, but it seems to be
| a site geared towards preppers/libertarians/those who are
| already predisposed to a lack of institutional trust. You
| can claim he's data driven and level headed, but the
| context that he's operating in--and the audience that he's
| speaking to--tells me that he's probably not being unbiased
| in his analysis.
| theduder99 wrote:
| please send me some good sites which produce unbiased
| analysis, thanks.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| That's not my job, sorry.
| abnry wrote:
| It's easy to be a critic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sometimes, an issue needs to be called out even if you
| don't have the solution.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You
| can't hide behind the "go and look it up" response as is
| often uttered by science deniers.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| The extraordinary claim is that the virus was man-made.
|
| Edit to say: I don't think saying the virus came from
| nature requires any additional proof. The claim that
| requires extraordinary, indisputable proof is the claim
| that it was man-made. And I have yet to see it, from this
| or any source. Just a big compilation of weak,
| circumstantial evidence.
| willupowers wrote:
| It's no longer an extraordinary circumstantial claim. It
| might never have been because this kind of research that
| very well could cause a COVID pandemic was being
| concealed by the very people that decided very early that
| there was no question the origin was natural. They were
| performing risky and highly similar research and they
| made huge contradictory statements that conflict with
| this leaked evidence, and they are very well connected to
| each other. You are going to need extraordinary reasons
| why these people don't deserve an investigation into what
| they had been doing and what they did know that wasn't
| being shared.
| teh_klev wrote:
| So link to the actual indisputable proof.
| avionicsguy wrote:
| Well while this is not indisputable proof there is a very
| relevant discussion on virological.org related to both
| Furin cleavage sites and orgins of SARS-COV-2. The
| damning part of the leaked research proposal is that they
| ALREADY had partner researchers located near caves in
| three different parts of Yunnan Province.
|
| For a more detailed discussion of the origins of SARS-
| COV-2 while not directly addressing the leaked DARPA
| proposal please see: https://virological.org/t/tackling-
| rumors-of-a-suspicious-or...
|
| They also discuss that the base virus was mostly likely
| linked to bats in Yunnan province. How it got from Yunnan
| to Wuhan is a matter of question.
|
| However, if the research was being conducted in the US
| and accidentally leaked into the population it may have
| been in circulation for sometime (months) before causing
| serious illness or disease (mutations).
| sjwalter wrote:
| Eh, regardless of what you think of the source, it's
| backed by hard, verifiable evidence.
|
| Peak Prosperity was not about prepping much at all until
| Covid, as far as I know. Dr. Martenson started pushing
| home gardening and stocking up when covid hit--in fact,
| he started saying such things in like February 2020--
| pretty prescient.
| hammock wrote:
| >I didn't realize this until reading the Wikipedia article on
| Daszak, but he was the one that organized the Feb 2020 letter
| in the Lancet condemning suggestions of a lab origin for
| Covid-19 as conspiracy theories.
|
| Tangent, but if it takes this long to learn a fact like that,
| consider a critical audit of your regular news sources.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm always curious about this -- what would a good
| recommendation be to get a broad base of news while also
| relying on credible information?
|
| E.g. I want to know the different reasonable perspectives
| on issues/events without entertaining every kooky idea. In
| this case, I feel like I lumped what seems a plausible
| concern in with kooky ideas, and so missed the entire non-
| kooky narrative.
| Tade0 wrote:
| It helps to be up to date with what the kooks think.
| Majority of conspiracy theories start with a factually-
| correct, compelling premise and only then go overboard
| with speculation.
| [deleted]
| willhinsa wrote:
| You should stop outsourcing credibility evaluation to
| others and see what you think of the kooks. The kooks
| called the coronavirus sooo much better than everyone
| else, from the jump.
|
| You'll get a lot more "noise", sure, but the signal you
| do get can be _incredibly_ useful. You learn to place
| less trust on any individual thing you hear, and get a
| better bullshit detector as you go. It 's well
| worthwhile, and you'll be surprisingly well informed all
| without some large entity telling you "what's really
| happening".
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Good call out; People should re-evaluate their sources. I
| had a similar epiphany 10 years ago, since then I'veve
| expanded my sources considerably, and if it's something I
| am interested in, then I will look for at least one counter
| view point
| refurb wrote:
| Indeed. "Thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory" was how the
| lab leak was described earlier this year by the media.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You've mischaracterized what I meant. When I was reading
| the Intercept article, and it first started talking about
| EcoHealth and Daszak, the names were familiar but I
| couldn't remember where I heard them, so I searched and
| found the Wikipedia article on him, and it was then that I
| was like "Oh yeah, it's _this_ guy. " It's not like some
| news sources were keeping this information from me.
| roca wrote:
| Yes, I have an open mind about natural vs lab origin, but
| either way, Daszak seems to have been engaging in a cover-up.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > while conveniently leaving out that his own organization
| _was_ involved in highly risky coronavirus research?
|
| Don't get me wrong, but in online discussions, all too often
| telling the whole truth makes people ignore your message.
| That's probably also why dishonest politicians can get
| populist votes from many people. Whenever you include the
| material to dig your grave with, people just take that by the
| horns and stop looking at the rest of your argument even if
| that disclosure is the reason why you are a qualified expert
| that should be weighing into the discussion on a given topic.
|
| I don't know the details about this Daszak guy, I only know
| what you wrote and the comments above yours. Perhaps this
| does not apply in this situation; that's not for me to say.
| But I can see why they might not have dug their own grave
| while trying to communicate a message with honest intentions.
| It is _extremely_ easy to have subtly wrong wording or just
| bad luck and get people to ignore everything you said before
| or after "my lab worked on coronaviruses".
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Umm, wouldn't "I worked on coronaviruses, hence I know a
| lot about them" make his argument stronger?
|
| Anyway, this was in Lancet, a scientific publisher, not a
| mass medium, disclosures of interest are mandatory. I know
| that in today's age it looks like science papers are just
| mass media because they're so easy to consume and
| distribute, but they are not. They're supposed to be
| rigurous, otherwise people would lose trust in them. Which
| is exactly what happened in this pandemic: it's a worldwide
| lack of trust in science, scientists, leaders, governments.
| lucb1e wrote:
| It ought to make the argument stronger, yes, but not
| everyone reads the full text. Especially if it will get
| third-party media coverage, you're dependent on what part
| the media will report or in which proportions because
| they always make a selection. With honest intentions the
| vast majority of the time I'm sure, but still a selection
| of what they think is the message their readers should be
| getting.
| tikiman163 wrote:
| Guys, two points here. One, this proposal was rejected. This did
| not happen! Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of
| an existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus
| shows was not the case.
|
| This has nothing to do with the corona virus strains we are
| currently dealing with, and more importantly, there has never
| been any credible research proving that Covid was made in a lab.
| The only paper that got any traction suggested it was non-
| manipulation based gain of function research, but that was
| disproved only a few weeks after the paper's release as well. I
| know we all want to know where it came from, but the odds against
| us ever having actual evidence of it being from a lab are
| virtually zero. And no, rejected research proposals do not
| constitute proof of anything.
| rodrigods wrote:
| You're saying that a research proposal that combines corona
| viruses and the very specific advantage from the virus that
| makes it so effective in spreading in humans is not a strong
| evidence?
| colordrops wrote:
| I read the entire thread for this submission last night, which
| has an amazing amount of deep discussion, to wake up to a
| comment from a user without much post history saying nothing
| more than "guys, nothing to see here" pushed to the top. And
| the account name matches that of many other farmed accounts on
| Twitter and Reddit, that being two words and some random
| numbers. I can't help but be very suspicious.
|
| I know this is may be against the hacker news ethos, but ive
| been on here for 10 years and don't make comments like this
| lightly.
| rustybelt wrote:
| You're conflating came from a lab and created in a lab. It is
| very possible that the virus was leaked from a lab without
| being created there. Maybe not your intention, but your post
| comes across this way.
| Aeolun wrote:
| As was stated elsewhere in this thread, researchers are often
| halfway done with something before they even write a proposal.
|
| > Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of an
| existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus
| shows was not the case.
|
| I think that's invalidated if your first point is valid right?
| Since the proposal wasn't accepted.
|
| Doesn't mean they didn't go on to do it anyway (possibly in
| slightly different form), someone was clearly thinking about
| it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I think that's invalidated if your first point is valid
| right?
|
| No. There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct
| genetic manipulation.
|
| If they did it, it's not COVID-19.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct
| genetic manipulation.
|
| There's also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with
| such a low chance it may as well be) have occured
| naturally.
|
| What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my
| side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff
| themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research
| turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee that other
| research turns up the opposite.
|
| There's too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there
| to be no fire.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yes the football players were on the field, they talked
| about kicking the ball, they requested to kick the ball
| but suggesting they might have kicked the ball is a
| conspiracy theory.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| >There's also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with
| such a low chance it may as well be) have occured
| naturally.
|
| Now, I remember reading about it most likely not being a
| result of direct genetic manipulation, and it sounded
| sound to me.
|
| Do you have any sources for your assertion that there is
| evidence it cannot have occurred naturally?
|
| As far as I read such viruses have a natural tendency to
| sometimes jump species, as was likely the case with SARS-
| CoV and MERS.
| angelzen wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649120
|
| People have asserted in this thread that it would take
| 30-40 years for the closest known natural covid relative
| to aquire the necessary 1000 mutations and turn into
| covid. And yet here we are, almost 2 years since the
| pandemic started, with no identified natural reservoir
| for covid.
|
| Where is the covid source?
|
| -----
|
| Consider
| https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf,
| a pro natural origins review of the literature. They tie
| themselves into knots to explain that the infamous furin
| cleavage site, while absent in the closest covid
| relative, could have naturally occurred, even if they
| admit they have zero actual evidence for that.
|
| > Although the furin cleavage site is absent from the
| closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 (Andersen et al.,
| 2020), this is unsurprising because the lineage leading
| to this virus is poorly sampled and the closest bat
| viruses have divergent spike proteins due to
| recombination (Boni et al., 2020; Lytras et al., 2021;
| Zhou et al., 2021). Furin cleavage sites are commonplace
| in other coronavirus spike proteins, including some
| feline alphacoronaviruses, MERS-CoV, most but not all
| strains of mouse hepatitis virus, as well as in endemic
| human betacoronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1
| (Gombold et al., 1993; de Haan et al., 2008; Kirchdoerfer
| et al., 2016). A near identical nucleotide sequence is
| found in the spike gene of the bat coronavirus HKU9-1
| (Gallaher, 2020), and both SARS-CoV-2 and HKU9-1 contain
| short palindromic sequences immediately upstream of this
| sequence that are indicative of natural recombination
| break-points via template switching (Gallaher, 2020).
| Hence, simple evolutionary mechanisms can readily explain
| the evolution of an out-of-frame insertion of a furin
| cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2).
|
| On the flip side, Nicholas Wade claims that Peter Daszak
| grant application proposes exactly that:
|
| > The..grant proposal..now puts beyond doubt that
| engineering cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses was a
| technique to be explored at..Wuhan
|
| https://nicholaswade.medium.com/new-routes-to-making-
| covid-1... (medium paywall, sorry) via https://twitter.co
| m/R_H_Ebright/status/1441190122360225797.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Not how probability works. What's the probability the
| entire universes atoms are arranged the way they are? The
| number is so finitely minute it's "impossible", because
| you're trying to make predictions on specific order out
| of chaos. The probability of any viruses currently
| existing would be equally infinitely tiny.
|
| Research is not equivalent. Just because two people make
| an argument does not make them equally valid. Unless you
| are a medical researcher you're not meant to somehow know
| how medical research papers work and what their results
| are on your own. It's not black and white. It's the same
| as trying to take electrical engineering papers and base
| opinions on it without any knowledge of the math or how
| it works.
| beerandt wrote:
| It's not the probability of any specific configuration,
| but the probability of a specific configuration over any
| other particular configuration.
|
| All configurations could have an infinitesimal chance of
| occurring, but one configuration could still have a
| billion to one chance of occurring over another
| particular configuration.
|
| Which is especially relevant if we have a relatively
| recent basepoint of comparison.
|
| An infinite number of monkeys with typewriters might
| eventually reproduce Shakespeare, but 10000 monkeys doing
| it on their first try points to causation beyond
| "chance".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > What am I supposed to believe here?
|
| Well, there are plenty of options that are not direct
| genetic manipulation and random evolution from a known
| virus.
| rualca wrote:
| > There's also evidence it cannot possibly (...) have
| occured naturally.
|
| I feel this claim is simply not believable nor possible
| to take at face value, given that in order for a proof of
| impossibility to even be considered you need supporting
| evidence and a falsifiable model, which you have none.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_impossibility
|
| Given this, do you have any reference that supports your
| assertion? I'd like to hear your rationale to claim that
| something like this is outright impossible.
| SilasX wrote:
| You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment:
| "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)".
|
| If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted
| scientific theories can't put a "very low probability" on
| certain things being observed ... what? That's exactly
| what a scientific theory -- or indeed, any well-posed
| belief -- should do!
| rualca wrote:
| > You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment:
| "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)".
|
| No, I left out the weasel words from the original claim.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
|
| Either GP's claim is factual and indeed he is aware of
| proof of impossibility, or he is not and he's just
| knowingly spreading disinformation.
|
| > If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted
| scientific theories (...)
|
| I object to the idea of random people on the internet
| knowingly spreading disinformation with baseless claims
| that fly on the face of critical thinking, and then
| resorting to vague appeals to authority, inversions of
| the burden of truth, and outright bullying to force-fed
| their disinformation.
|
| If there is any proof whatsoever supporting the claim
| that such thing is impossible then just support your
| claim and present the evidence or source. Don't expect
| everyone to just take your word for it, specially after
| you tried desperately to invert the burden of proof.
| SilasX wrote:
| >No, I left out the weasel words from the original claim.
|
| It's not a "weasel word", "Scientific theories placing a
| low enough probability to match lay usage of
| 'impossible', and clarifying that you mean as much" isn't
| a weasel word; it's being precise, and scientific
| theories _do_ classify things that way.
|
| >Either GP's claim is factual and indeed he is aware of
| proof of impossibility, or he is not and he's just
| knowingly spreading disinformation.
|
| There's a third possibility: OP is aware that some
| scientists think the mainstream scientific theory places
| a low probability on the claim in question, but does not
| rise to the level of an impossibility theorem.
|
| >I object to the idea of random people on the internet
| knowingly spreading disinformation with baseless claims
| that fly on the face of critical thinking, and then
| resorting to vague appeals to authority, inversions of
| the burden of truth, and outright bullying to force-fed
| their disinformation.
|
| I don't see how the parent did any of that, just how
| another commenter is overreacting to ideas they don't
| like.
|
| Are you seriously telling me that if I look through your
| posting history, I won't find a single case of you
| suggesting something without posting links to rigorous
| proof?
|
| If you're going to scream bloody murder at the idea that
| any unsupported idea would ever be uttered here, you
| could maybe _glance_ at the sibling comments in the
| thread, like mine:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28653730
| rualca wrote:
| > It's not a "weasel word", "Scientific theories placing
| a low enough probability (...)
|
| If that was the case then go ahead and just show the
| theory.
|
| Just provide a single evidence that supports said claim.
| Any at all.
|
| Don't just handwave after claiming something is
| impossible, otherwise you're just intentionally spreading
| lies and misinformation.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, I remember this being a big point of contention with
| scientists going both ways. I saved this link [1] with
| the quote:
|
| >"I should mention that after discussions earlier today,
| Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome
| inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,"
| Andersen added.
|
| Although that was from Jan 2020 and I'm sure more
| evidence has come in since then to shed more light.
|
| https://twitter.com/WendellHusebo/status/1400098956747718
| 660
| resonious wrote:
| This novel virus started spreading pretty close to a lab that
| studies viruses. I think that counts as "actual evidence" that
| it came out of a lab. Of course, evidence != proof. And even if
| it did come from the lab, that in itself does not imply malice.
| beowulfey wrote:
| That is not evidence! It is at best a coincidence. An even
| stronger coincidence would be that this lab had a
| genotypically similar virus stored prior to its detection.
| But even that is not evidence of release; it is just a
| stronger hypothesis.
|
| If I was near a bank robbery at the time of occurrence, it
| does not count as evidence that I did it. Not even if I have
| a history of robbing banks. It must be combined with other,
| stronger evidence (I was inside the bank, my fingerprints
| were there, I was caught on camera) to build a case.
| OJFord wrote:
| I've seen enough police/crime/legal dramas to know that's
| 'circumstantial evidence'..! Of course that doesn't
| preclude it being a coincidence. (Hence the phrases 'that's
| just circumstantial' and 'that's one hell of a
| coincidence').
|
| (I'm only commenting on the words, I don't think I care
| where it came from at this point, not sure I could ever
| really believe it, whatever was concluded. Unless perhaps a
| bunch of countries/labs agreed, including the blamed one if
| applicable.)
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| But it is the only evidence, coincidental or otherwise. No
| other evidences have been found.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Lack of evidence usually means something didn't happen.
|
| We don't imprison people for crimes on the basis we
| couldn't find any strong evidence, thus what ever shitty
| "evidence" we did find must be an acceptable basis for
| punishment.
| indrax wrote:
| Friendly suggestion to all that Bayes Theorem is the right
| way to deal with this kind of weak evidence. We should not
| adhere to arbitrary legal standards in our own thinking
| about the truth.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| "Came from a lab" in this context means "engineered in a
| lab".
|
| There is only circumstancial evidence for it, but it is
| reasonable to suspect COVID-19 is the result of a researcher
| getting infected, not noticing, and introducing the virus to
| the human population. There is no evidence for, and it is
| very unreasonable to believe it was created in a lab.
| sgt101 wrote:
| The novichok poisoning in Salisbury happened next to the UK's
| chemical weapon capabilities in Porton Down. This is evidence
| that it got out from Porton Down.
|
| The Russian agents videoed wandering about with bottles of
| poison are evidence of another mechanism of introduction.
| Perhaps the presence of a market full of various wild animals
| known to carry coronavirus's is also worth considering.
| rustymonday wrote:
| Exactly. It likely wasn't made in a lab, but it likely did
| escape from the lab accidentally.
| avianlyric wrote:
| How does that follow? Where did the virus come from?
| Viruses don't spontaneously come into existence in labs.
|
| If it wasn't made in the lab, then it was already naturally
| occurring. Which means it didn't need to escape anything,
| on account of it existing in the wild before it ever got
| near a lab.
| robflynn wrote:
| If something were naturally occurring in a remote
| location where not many humans were around to cause mass
| spread, and the virus was being studied (but not
| engineered or modified) and the virus escaped, that could
| be an example of a naturally occurring, non-manmade,
| virus which escaped a lab.
| platz wrote:
| did you not read anything about the article, it talk
| about novel modification in a lab that is unlikely to
| occur in nature, not creation out of whole cloth
| sgt101 wrote:
| possible that it did escape...
| avianlyric wrote:
| Let me correct that for you. Novel virus start spreading near
| a lab setup specifically to study those viruses, in an area
| where they're known to be naturally occurring, and where it
| was suspected they could make the jump to humans.
|
| The lab in Wuhan was studying Coronaviruses because of the
| threat they potentially posed to humans, and because the
| nearby bat populations were know to carry them.
|
| Saying that the existence of a lab studying novel viruses in
| their natural habitat is evidence that I can from a lab, is
| like saying the existence of fire stations in a cities is
| evidence that fire fighters start fires.
| nekt wrote:
| Why does this keep getting pushed as if its true? This is
| not true.
|
| This is covid misinformation and the WHO should come and
| arrest you.
|
| The bats that supposedly harbored this virus are from more
| than 1000 miles away from Wuhan.
| spfzero wrote:
| > "This did not happen!" It did not happen, with DARPA money,
| upon this particular proposal. There are many other ways for
| that research, or similar, to have happened. This tells us
| there were researchers actively seeking to.
| dash2 wrote:
| The fact that the grant proposal was rejected does not mean the
| research didn't happen. They could have got alternative
| funding. This happens a lot.
| sgt101 wrote:
| They would have had to be very quick though. Submission was
| end of march 2018, there would have been a review process and
| I think it's unrealistic to put that at under six weeks. So
| that takes us to mid may 2018. Then they would have to have
| got some money and ask someone else - again that's going to
| take three months or so unless they had the money in their
| account. Then the project would have to be stood up - lab
| space sorted and so on so that takes us to 2019 even on an
| express train. I think that the Darpa projects in this call
| were aimed at start in 2019 btw.
|
| So then the work would have to have happened and the virus
| escape happened in 10 months. In the proposal they are
| looking at q5 of the project for the genetic engineering to
| happen.
|
| I don't think that the time lines work - also the genetic
| engineering was slated to happen in North Carolina...
| madamelic wrote:
| > also the genetic engineering was slated to happen in
| North Carolina...
|
| This is honestly the most damning part of evidence.
|
| China has shown over and over their current strategy is to
| snap up resources, countries and partnerships that the
| West, and specifically the United States, refuse or ignore.
|
| China would have strong motivation to have SARS related
| research considering SARS originates in their country.
|
| So we have a country with strong motivation, lots of money
| and a repeated willingness to ignore ethical & safety
| concerns... I don't see how it isn't a big question mark.
| Especially considering how quickly and forcefully China
| shut down the conversation and refuse to allow in
| investigators.
| rualca wrote:
| > This is honestly the most damning part of evidence.
|
| What evidence? There was a grant proposal, and the
| proposal was rejected. Why do you feel that the fact that
| the rejected proposal referred to North Carolina is
| supposed to be "damning" at all, or even remotely
| relevant?
|
| > China would have strong motivation to have SARS related
| research considering SARS originates in their country.
|
| It has. They fund their own lab at Wuhan. Why is this
| damning in light of a failed grant proposal that never
| went off the ground?
| salawat wrote:
| You don't get it. just because tge grant was denied, does
| not mean the work was not _done_. The fact it was even
| written at all is evidence someone thought it 'd work.
|
| You're willfully blinding yourself to how the world
| actually works.
| rualca wrote:
| > You don't get it. just because tge grant was denied,
| does not mean the work was not done. The fact it was even
| written at all is evidence someone thought it'd work.
|
| You should really pay attention to what you're claiming,
| specially as there is absolutely zero substance or
| evidence supporting your claim. Your accusation boils
| down to the same exact witch hunt logic that led angry
| mobs to burn innocent people at the stake: claim you
| believe someone happened without zero evidence at all,
| proceed to allege someone of having the means to do it,
| from a massive logical leap start to accuse someone who
| you alleged is capable of something of actually doing it
| in spite, again, of having zero evidence at all, and
| proceed to throw that victim to the fire.
|
| I suppose our witch hunting days are behind us, but
| you're dragging them back to the present by repeating the
| same logical mistakes and in the process throw innocents
| into the fire.
|
| Do the world a favor and cut out all the baseless
| accusations and unsubstantiated claims. It's one thing to
| argue that some bits should be investigated, but it's an
| entirely different thing to screw up logical and rational
| thinking so badly to the point that you make the same
| completely baseless and unsubstantiated claims you're
| making.
| missinfo wrote:
| Check out this prescient article from 2017, when the ban was
| lifted:
|
| Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that
| could escape the lab and seed a pandemic...
|
| Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for
| Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public
| Health, called review panels "a small step forward."
|
| Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, "have given us
| some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to
| improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating
| an accidental pandemic."
|
| Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels would turn down such
| work.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...
| tootie wrote:
| Prescient how? This article is about a rejected proposal. Not
| only did the research not happen, we have no reason to believe
| this type of research caused the pandemic.
| echelon wrote:
| There's more evidence for this type or research happening
| where the pandemic arose than there is for natural origin.
| tootie wrote:
| There's some evidence this kind of research happens.
| There's not really evidence it was happening in Wuhan nor
| evidence that the virus we have is the result of
| experimentation. Historically lab leaks are vanishingly
| rare and acquisition from animals is extremely common. For
| lab leak to be even a plausible story the evidence would
| have to be very strong and it is nowhere near convincing
| right now.
| TheTester wrote:
| Lab leaks are not rare the actual thing is that lab leaks
| that turn into pandemics are an anomaly but only because
| pandemics are an anomaly statistically speaking
| willupowers wrote:
| Looks like a pretty probable lead to me to continue
| investigating, especially since this leak evidence
| directly conflicts with many previous statements from
| Daszak and associates.
| tootie wrote:
| Continue investigating what though? The research this
| team has done is all public knowledge. A rejected
| proposal doesn't shed much light. Lab leak remains
| remotely possible, but not supported by any direct
| evidence. Meanwhile, evidence for animal source is
| getting stronger:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1
| willupowers wrote:
| The USA might need to come out and say "we were working
| on a vaccine with Wuhan." EHA and WIV might need to say
| "we had an oopsies." I doubt China will admit anything
| though. So this is the circus we must deal with until
| people wake up and demand for answers.
| echelon wrote:
| Exactly. The evidence for this scenario is incredibly
| compelling and it deserves more investigation.
|
| I haven't seen any refutations of these claims apart from
| "those involved say no". There's a nonzero chance that
| these people are lying to cover things up or protect
| their reputations. Millions of deaths being attributed to
| a lab accident would be pretty damning.
|
| Why do people on HN want this to not be the case? (As
| evidenced by all the downvotes?) The truth could be
| anything, and we should be looking for it. This is one
| possibility that carries a lot of weight and demands our
| attention.
|
| There's nothing wrong in stating that the evidence is
| substantial and that we should investigate more. Why put
| your head in the sand?
|
| This isn't anti-science.
| rhacker wrote:
| A rejected proposal does not mean research does not happen.
| It means they were unable to get funding from DARPA. It does
| not necessarily mean they were unable to get funding from
| "somebody".
|
| And yes we do have reason to believe this type of research
| caused the pandemic.
| lolwut8374 wrote:
| So, who did they get funding from, if not one of the only
| bodies in the world capable of funding this kind of work?
|
| Oh, that's right, they didn't. You can tell that by looking
| at what they did work on next. Did you look?
|
| Like it says in the article.
| willupowers wrote:
| We already know the NIH partially funded field survey
| work that appears to be very similar to this. It's pretty
| obvious to see that they continued applying elsewhere and
| may have been successful in getting the funding the
| requested. It just might be from several grants.
| lolwut8374 wrote:
| Right, did you look at the publication records of the
| academics involved?
|
| When you beg for grants you have to publish to show
| you're good for the next one.
|
| This isn't a mystery.
|
| It's literally right there, published for your subscriber
| access.
| jmvoodoo wrote:
| If you were doing research that led to a global pandemic
| that killed millions of people, would you then publish
| your results? I have a feeling that might not have the
| effect of showing you're "good for the next one."
|
| Obviously the lack of evidence isn't proof that this
| happened, but I also don't think it's safe to say that
| it's proof it didn't.
| avs733 wrote:
| As an academic, ain't no way research from an unfunded
| grant proposal is happening...
|
| The problem with your second statement is that we all of
| these posts and articles are attempts to throw evidence to
| support something you have already decided is true. More
| bad/non evidence does not make an argument and continually
| citing bad evidence that doesn't prove your point reduces
| the credibility of the argument you are making.
| dgfitz wrote:
| As a non-academic: huh?
|
| The claim wasn't that the research was unfunded, just
| unfunded by DARPA.
|
| To your second point, bad/non-evidence of essentially
| __everything__ is why the internet is the way it is
| today. You're saying "fake news is fake" which isn't
| really saying anything at all.
| derbOac wrote:
| Ok, as another academic: this happens _all_ the time.
| People use funds from one grant to subsidize other
| research. I 've heard a colleague refer to it "as using
| one project to pay the bills of another project."
|
| It's all also a moot point in that just because the grant
| wasn't funded from DARPA doesn't mean it wasn't funded.
| And if it was funded, it doesn't mean we would know who
| funded it.
|
| Not trying to be conspiratorial, just trying to point out
| the funding on this grant or lack thereof doesn't mean
| anything about it happening or not happening. It just
| means the researchers were interested in it happening.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is it supposed to ironic posting stuff like this under a new
| account with this name?
| mkhpalm wrote:
| NIH had been funding grants for spillover risk with Eco Health
| Alliance / Daszak since 2014.
|
| https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304
| teh_klev wrote:
| I don't want to diminish the work of "epidemiologist"'s but
| they aren't virologists. They're ultimately specialised
| statisticians and shouldn't have any say in how or what
| research is carried out.
| rapind wrote:
| What? I'm no virologist or epidemiologist and yet I
| definitely want to have a say. And when physicists start
| creating black holes, and AI researchers start creating
| thinking killer robots, and generals go to war, etc.
|
| I value expert opinions but oversight is necessary.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > What? I'm no virologist or epidemiologist and yet I
| definitely want to have a say
|
| Well there you go.
| djenendik wrote:
| Only a virologist should tell another virologist what to do.
| Got it.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Nope, a _panel_ of virologists and related researchers with
| the same scientific understanding in the field should make
| these decisions.
| djenendik wrote:
| It's ok to have wishful thinking. Plenty of grants
| include virologists and epidemiologists, so your proposal
| isn't practical.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Sure, they could provide anecdotal input based on past
| outbreaks, but they don't have the biological expertise
| to decide solely on what research should or could be
| carried out.
| djenendik wrote:
| Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A
| fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a
| sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to
| be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.
| teh_klev wrote:
| "Anecdotally"
| djenendik wrote:
| That was a reference to your previous comment. Does
| anecdotal count for nothing? Fine, run a survey of
| virologists and epidemiologists and report the
| intersection of set. It will not be arbitrarily small.
| djenendik wrote:
| I looked through the grant. To my eye, I consider some of
| the participants as epidemiologists.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Imagine if the same rule were applied to international
| bankers, military generals, or plumbers. Why should a
| virologist be able to have a say as to which part of his
| plumbing system I work on? Leave that up to a panel of
| like-minded plumbers to decide for him.
| leereeves wrote:
| Epidemiologists study the spread of diseases and their impact
| on communities. That's an important factor to consider when
| judging the potential impact of risky research, and it's not
| something virologists are trained in.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Sorry, but epidemiologists have no ability to make these
| predictions. Epidemiologists generally work in the field of
| "who, when, and where" based on historical data evidence.
| leereeves wrote:
| Mathematical disease modelling is also part of
| epidemiology. You may have seen their work discussed in
| the press early in the COVID epidemic when they predicted
| the possible death count and the likely impact of various
| interventions.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Well what were their predictions vs actual outcome?
| diatone wrote:
| Speaking from experience, last year we had an outbreak in
| Melbourne, Australia. The local government's response was
| guided by modelling from epidemiologists (and others),
| and went on to match the peak and length of the outbreak
| to the model's estimations almost down to the day[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-29/coronavirus-
| melbourne...
| runsWphotons wrote:
| They seem to be doing fairly well now, as well.
| jcoq wrote:
| Cc
|
| It would,
| giardini wrote:
| My first question is "What is China's next move?"
|
| But there are so many other questions:
|
| - intentional release? If so why?
|
| - any other viruses/bacteria under study(almost undoubtedly,
| "Yes")?
|
| - if so, where and what is planned?
|
| China makes plans(written plans) for _everything_. Even if the
| release was an accident, there were reasons for doing the
| studies. What were /are they?
|
| -What other viruses and/or bacteria are undergoing similar study
| in China? Are there any bacteriological production facilities in
| place now (as are present yet in Russia IIRC)?
|
| - Can we count on Russia's past actions, facilities and quite
| clear warnings to provide a sufficient counterweight to China's
| fiddling in the lab? Or should we return to full scale biological
| warfare research ourselves? We can undoubtedly outpace both given
| time but at this point I see a need for some reasonable planning
| or we're likely to worsen the situation.
|
| We still haven't considered non-governmental entities that may
| have an interest in biological warfare, ranging from the MIT grad
| student with a gene lab in his basement to the environmental
| organization that believes reducing the world's human population
| is a necessity.
| willupowers wrote:
| I don't endorse this guy since he's a little too political for my
| taste but it's the best ELI5 of the situation I can find for
| everyone.
|
| https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ
| jwhite_nc wrote:
| Simultaneous Invention is possible.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I don't know if Covid19 came from a lab but I'm becoming fairly
| confident the next Covid will.
| StrangeClone wrote:
| Chinese propaganda it seems
| qaq wrote:
| I have no clue what actually happened but this sequence looks
| weird to me:
|
| * Event occurs
|
| * Access to investigate is limited
|
| * A deep independent investigation is blocked
|
| *Internet is flooded with msging that unless there are hard facts
| uncovered by independent investigation some of the origin
| theories are def conspiracy theories
| mannanj wrote:
| Unless there are hard facts and proven evidence claiming you
| are not a quack and a conspiracy theorist, you sir, are a
| conspiracy theorist. /sarcasm (I am mocking the contradictory
| perspective people take on anyone even thinking differently
| about things)
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| What's the difference between a conspiracy theory and the
| truth?
|
| About 18 months.
| mitjam wrote:
| Honest question: Could Daczak be held liable for damages if lab
| origin was verifyable or is that even then not possible?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I would like to see an international body of scientists from all
| countries regulating, and monitoring, all biologicals research
| around the world.
|
| Think of it being an requirement to join the United Nations.
|
| Those countries that arn't in the UN, or don't want moderation;
| well let's say let the CIA do their dirty work, or outright
| tariff/humanitarian wars.
|
| (I don't have a clue to the origin of this mutating virus, but
| letting any lab anywhere experiment on biologicals does not seem
| prudent.)
| lamontcg wrote:
| 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have
| been used in this research
|
| 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have
| been used in this research
|
| 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have
| tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in
| coronaviruses
|
| 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have
| been found with furin cleavage sites
|
| 5. Furin cleavage sites have independently evolved in multiple
| different branches of coronaviruses, probably a dozen times that
| we know of now.
|
| 6. The furin cleavage site is short and can easily happen through
| recombination with another virus due to coinfection.
|
| 7. This is very likely what happened due to infection with the
| SARS-CoV-2 ancestor and an HKU9-like virus.
|
| It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were
| worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is
| the thing which actually happened.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| All valid points, but let's be real scientists and work the
| other way? Can you conclusively rule out that this virus wasn't
| engineered (and then maliciously covered up) in a lab? The
| reason this approach is important is because the stakes here
| are higher. This means people who should have been careful
| weren't, and are responsible for the death of millions and
| they're happy continuing to cover up their part in it.
|
| The more important part here is an investigation on the origins
| of the virus is more about beurecracy than the actual science
| so unless you can conclusively prove that this virus could have
| never been engineered by a human you should stop bringing
| "improbability" of all of these processes as why we should
| trust these scientists.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Natural occurrence is how almost every known virus exists.
|
| Given that prior, "can you disprove the lab" is the Russell's
| Teapot hypothesis. No, I can't. I also can't disprove it rode
| in on a meteorite or was beamed in by aliens. And I'm not
| about to start.
| btmorex wrote:
| We haven't had the technology to create novel viruses for
| very long so you statement is meaningless.
| stablechaos wrote:
| And the novel technology to create novel viruses was
| being actively developed in this lab. They've proudly and
| openly published results to this effect. Further, they
| were trying to get tens of millions in grant funding to
| develop the technology further.
| passivate wrote:
| That is the wrong way to go about it. You have to approach it
| as you would in legal theory. Innocence is not something that
| is proven. The verdict is guilty or not guilty (which means
| evidence wasn't sufficient to convict, but that doesn't mean
| the defendant is innocent). In this case you have to prove
| that the virus was engineered by providing evidence.
|
| >All valid points, but let's be real scientists and work the
| other way?
|
| What you're proposing isn't science and it isn't what 'real
| scientists' do.
| blix wrote:
| Depends on which real scientists you are talking about.
|
| I've worked with many "real scientists" who will consider
| possiblity unless they see conclusive evidence against it.
| On the frontiers, there is very little conclusive evidence;
| this is why they are the frontiers.
|
| I have also met "real scientists" who actively dismiss
| conclusive evidence if it doesn't line up with what they
| think will get funded.
|
| It doesn't seem the first flavor is the one you are talking
| about.
| passivate wrote:
| >I've worked with many "real scientists" who will
| consider possiblity unless they see conclusive evidence
| against it. On the frontiers, there is very little
| conclusive evidence; this is why they are the frontiers.
|
| Oh sure, I consider the possibility that there might be
| aliens out there. However, we both know that this is very
| different than considering the possibility that Obama was
| a reptilian. In any case, scientific frontiers are areas
| of active research. So yeah, lets go spelunking!
|
| >I have also met "real scientists" who actively dismiss
| conclusive evidence if it doesn't line up with what they
| think will get funded.
|
| That is an all too common human flaw :)
| blix wrote:
| I'd argue there is more evidence for the lab leak theory
| than either aliens or reptilians; it's a tremendously low
| bar. There is not even flimsy circumstantial evidence for
| aliens, yet many people believe.
|
| Yes knowingly abandoning the princinples of science in
| order to acquire money is quite the flaw. For whatever
| reason it is basically non-existent among grad students,
| but not uncommon among successful professors. It's almost
| like our institutions select for and reward this
| behavior.
| gfodor wrote:
| How about we at least agree that we can all _imagine_ this
| having been a lab leak, and therefore should take the
| requisite changes to protocols, funding, and so on that we
| would do if it were proven as such.
| proc0 wrote:
| There's more than science here. This is also game theory,
| if a lab leak is still plausible. Why was this being
| researched? Who knew about it and why was it covered up,
| and to what extent was it covered up?
|
| Personally I think it's naive that people are omitting
| human and government intentions from all this, as if they
| are not actors in complex political world. These huge world
| changing events don't happen in a vacuum, and government
| actors are usually aware of all these ongoing research
| efforts for agendas and specific goals, which of course
| includes misleading the public.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Game theory could plausibly explain why PRC keeps
| resurfacing their unsubstantiated _US military origins
| theory_.
|
| Assuming an actual lab leak at WIV, from a US project
| similar to the one rejected by DARPA. And PRC is aware of
| all these facts.
|
| Under these assumptions, this story/rumour could be seen
| as a threat, which re-emerges whenever PRC feels under
| pressure: "We won't go down alone for this"
| proc0 wrote:
| Agreed, and it was unsubstantiated till now (and also
| with the funding of it, etc).
|
| My point was mostly that we won't really be able to
| figure out the microbiology details of it in order to
| make reasonable conclusions. I think it would be like
| trying to figure out the physics of the nuclear bomb
| during the Manhattan project, and concluding no such bomb
| can be built because no physicist has figured out nuclear
| reactions yet.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Your parent said like scientists. Not like jurists.
|
| And as far as I understand it, they are correct. Science
| doesn't _convict_ an effect, it provides a lower bound on
| the likelihood of the effect 's existence.
| text70 wrote:
| You can disprove it by showing there are restriction enzyme,
| or Gibson, or Cre recombinase genetic element sites present
| in the genome, left over as artifacts from engineering. Find
| the sequenced genome and BLAST it for these sequences, easy
| peasy.
| darawk wrote:
| > 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would
| have been used in this research > 2. There is no spike protein
| anyone knows of which would have been used in this research
|
| > 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have
| tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in
| coronaviruses
|
| I believe what you mean to say here is that there is no
| published literature describing these things. That may be true.
| But the people doing this work are the ones who would develop
| and then publish such knowledge, if it were indeed something
| they were working on.
|
| > It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we
| were worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover
| event is the thing which actually happened.
|
| It isn't. What is suspicious is the following:
|
| 1. It happened in the city that houses the lab where this
| research was proposed to take place.
|
| 2. The natural reservoir of these viruses is hundreds of miles
| from this city.
|
| 3. The outbreak occurred exactly 2 years after this research
| was originally proposed, in the city that it was proposed to
| take place in, in roughly the amount of time one might expect
| this research to take.
|
| 4. Peter Daszak, despite coming out forcefully against the lab
| leak theory, and purposely downplaying his involvement with the
| lab in so doing, _and_ being inexplicably selected as a member
| of the WHO team to investigate the lab origin theory,
| completely neglected to mention having made this proposal a
| mere two years prior.
|
| If I were a major virus researcher, and my proposal to
| investigate the _exact thing_ that just caused a massive global
| pandemic had been denied by DARPA two years prior, I would be
| shouting it from the rooftops as vindication. See, had you just
| let me investigate this, maybe we could have avoided this
| pandemic! But he didn 't do that. He didn't mention it at all,
| despite its obvious relevance to all that has gone on.
|
| This is not the behavior of someone with nothing to hide.
| Whether or not this virus originated in this lab, it's pretty
| clear that Peter Daszak is up to something he'd rather the
| world not discover.
| passivate wrote:
| I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are
| subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments
| over their use and validity.
|
| Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the
| virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked
| paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a
| piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin
| in china.. I mean, I'll take anything.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Yeah, because all those things weren't scrubbed in the
| first 4 hours after this became globally known. All the
| evidence we have is by necessity circumstantial.
| passivate wrote:
| Any example where this has happened in the past on a
| global r&d science project? We're talking about
| scientists and lay people assisting them, not trained
| spies. Past employees, disgruntled employees, warehouse
| personnel, vendors/suppliers , bat handlers, emails,
| paper, nothing?
| darawk wrote:
| > Could you provide some data to support the assertion that
| the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a
| leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data
| on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the
| garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anything.
|
| Where did I say it was engineered? We have no evidence of
| its natural origin either. Can you provide its natural
| reservoir? An animal sample? Another coronavirus with this
| furin cleavage site? Anything?
|
| What we are trying to do is ascertain the likelihoods of
| various scenarios given _the evidence we have_. Not the
| evidence we wish we had. I do not believe, nor have I
| anywhere asserted, that we have _proven_ the virus was
| unnatural in origin. I also do not believe we have proven
| that the virus was natural in origin.
|
| What I _believe_ is that the evidence is presently
| insufficient to determine, and fairly ambiguous. What is
| unambiguous is the extraordinarily shady and self serving
| behavior of Peter Daszak. Why it is that he 's doing that,
| I don't know. It could be because he participated in the
| engineering of this virus, but it could be for entirely
| separate reasons that pertain to him. I do think we should
| at least make a serious effort to find out, though.
| inciampati wrote:
| The viral phylogeny and history of it's evolution are a
| mountain of evidence. Why don't you trust them?
|
| We don't see adaptation to the new host. This means that
| either the spillover happened a long time before it was
| detected (months, years), or the proximal host was a
| primate. Or, the virus could have been adapted to human
| cells and their surface proteins in relatively
| straightforward laboratory experiments. Then, if
| accidentally released, the phylogeny and virus adaptation
| process would look exactly like the one we are seeing with
| hundreds of thousands of viral genomes.
|
| A spillover from nature would look like SARS1. There are
| rapid phenotypic adaptations in the beginning of the
| epidemic. The initial virus is infectious, but not anything
| like SARS2. In SARS2, it takes many months for real
| phenotypic change to appear. The rate of variation is
| clock-like because there are few easy phenotypic wins to be
| made.
|
| This _is_ hard evidence. What do you make of it? Maybe you
| have to understand genetics and evolution to "read" this
| material, but that doesn't negate it.
| passivate wrote:
| >A spillover from nature would look like SARS1.
|
| Why do you say so? Co-evolving organisms/species and
| their cross-interaction in a large changing global
| environment is not a deterministic process, or rather is
| not a process that we can predict with any great degree
| of accuracy. What things would "look like" is
| extrapolation, not evidence.
|
| In any case, my main objection to your argument is that
| you're drawing inferences from an imperfect dataset and
| them employing backwards reasoning "Well nothing else
| explains it except theory A". Sorry, but that doesn't
| satisfy me. I still want to see actual evidence of actual
| work being done in an actual lab that corroborates the
| hypothesis. It is pretty much impossible to keep such
| large multi-year scientific development projects secret
| in this day and age. There are dozens of people involved,
| past employees, lab assistants, etc, etc. I work in
| biotech (I'm not claiming to be any expert on anything)
| and maybe that's why I'm finding it difficult.
| ImaCake wrote:
| >The viral phylogeny and history of it's evolution
|
| ... point to it being a natural zoonotic spillover event.
| Wuhan had a virus institute because it is a place where
| novel viruses are found, not the other way around.
| wk_end wrote:
| This is not true as far as I'm aware. Novel bat
| coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 are usually found deep in
| bat caves in the south of China, ~2000km away from Wuhan.
| The WIV was established in the 50s, long before serious
| coronavirus research was a thing.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Heh good point. Maybe its proximity has helped it become
| important, or it could be an accident of geography.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It all
| comes down to burden of proof. The more circumstantial
| evidence of a lab leak piles up, the more reasonably open-
| minded people will tend to shift their priors in that
| direction.
|
| You will only accept hard evidence, yet you are aware that
| parties in China have actively removed some possible
| evidentiary sources. And others in USA promoted a campaign
| to shut down lines of enquiry, whilst withholding relevant
| information.
|
| Many disciplines use Bayesian statistical models. In this
| case it may be the only way to "prove" a lab leak -
| assuming that were actually true.
|
| I understand how this makes me sound like a conspiracy
| theorist. I hate that. It would certainly be better to have
| hard evidence. I belive we have to reserve judgement in
| it's absence. And keep investigating both avenues.
| passivate wrote:
| Statistical models work great for well defined problem
| spaces like the probability of rolling a die in a
| particular way. You can reason in your own mind the
| probability of aliens or extinction events or lab leaks
| or anything really, but it doesn't get you very far (IMO)
| in proving anything.
|
| To paraphrase Wernher von Braun - "Hard data is worth a
| thousand expert opinions." :)
| lovemenot wrote:
| You seem to be conflating subjective and opinion on the
| one hand with statistical on the other.
|
| Actually, Bayes statistics works great in poorly defined
| problem spaces where we can update our priors as new
| information becomes available. Just like in the issue
| under discussion.
|
| Your example of rolling dice is Frequentist, not
| Bayesian. We wouldn't use Frequentist stats in this
| domain, for the reasons you mention.
| passivate wrote:
| >Actually, Bayes statistics works great in poorly defined
| problem spaces where we can update our priors as new
| information becomes available. Just like in the issue
| under discussion.
|
| Can you give me a few comparable scenarios where it
| worked great?
| prox wrote:
| For me the things that sticks out is that they found the
| origin of the original sars in mere months, but nothing
| when it comes to Sars-cov-2. I don't know how big animal
| reservoirs can be tbh.
|
| Btw A conspiracy theorist doesn't change his conspiracy
| when new evidence comes to light. So if you are a
| critical thinker, you just want to know what happened
| there, whether lab or natural origin (or a combination of
| both?)
| lovemenot wrote:
| As I remember for SARS-1 it was bats via palm civets sold
| in wet markets.
|
| It would be interesting to see an updating Bayesian model
| played out over 18 months of investigation into SARS-
| COV-19 natural origin with no result so far. Absence of
| evidence is not proof of non-natural origins, but it does
| shift one's priors.
|
| Thanks. I guess beyond the stereotypes there's no actual
| conspiracy theorists. Just people reasoning imperfectly
| with imperfect data.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Lab leak doesn't mean engineered. It could have been wild
| samples collected and brought to the lab which then were
| handled by a careless technician.
| Mizza wrote:
| I have a little long bet going that in 10 years, Peter
| Daszak's name will be on the same lists as the world's worst
| mass killers.
|
| Imaging writing this:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7159294/
|
| and then being forced to disclose this:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8215723/
|
| 4.5 million dead so far. More than Pol Pot, less than Leopold
| II. There's still time.
| akimball wrote:
| 15.9 million per The Economist
| googlemaps wrote:
| There is a nearly identical RBD in the wild. But... without the
| furin cleavage site.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649716
|
| And you know what, northern Laos where the RBD was found, and
| south Yunnan, where the well documented sars outbreak happened
| (which presumably led to the discovery of ratg13), share a
| border with each other
| uap wrote:
| What if EcoHealth (originally Wildlife Preservation Trust
| International) was infiltrated by eco-terrorists who did the
| reasearch anyway then released a depopulation virus to punish
| humans and 'restore balance' to the ecosystem, in a sicko
| 'Army of the 12 Monkeys'-style act of terrorism? But either
| they weren't that successful ( _only_ 5 million deaths is not
| depopulation) or their goal was lockdowns and reduced air
| travel to give the environment a breather.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Please don't pollute HN with mindless, needless speculation
| sayonaraman wrote:
| I doubt Wuhan GoF researchers will be publishing their findings
| anytime soon, until then it's all speculation.
| willupowers wrote:
| Not really speculation any longer. Daszak made a bunch of
| statements that poured water on this potential concern, and
| so many other contradictor statements to this evidence. When
| there is a discrepancy or a number of discrepancies (in this
| case), there is a good chance of a valuable investigation.
| harshreality wrote:
| There's nothing in that list that argues against SARS-CoV-2--
| and its spike protein and furin cleavage site in particular--
| being produced by serial passage through any of a variety of
| cell lines expressing human ACE-2.
|
| It does seem unlikely that the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or spike
| protein, or even just a small segment including the furin
| cleavage site, was synthesized. Although without knowing what
| protein folding modeling capabilities and synthesis
| capabilities the WIV had, who knows for sure?
| lamontcg wrote:
| There's 1,000 nucleotide differences between the closest
| known progenitor and SARS-CoV-2. That is an evolutionary
| distance of 30-40 years in a coronavirus. You can't replicate
| that many years of evolution by serial passage in a lab.
| Serial passage isn't a magic wand.
|
| And the rest of it is that you're arguing in favor of a
| science fiction explanation for the capabilities of the WIV
| lab.
| willupowers wrote:
| 30-40 years difference from SARS-CoV. However, the proposal
| actually says it would use other unpublished sequences for
| development. These unpublished sequences may have been much
| closer to SARS-CoV-2. I think you should read the leaks.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| >However, the proposal actually says it would use other
| unpublished sequences for development.
|
| Could you give the page # for this?
| createdapril24 wrote:
| This is a question I've encountered a few times. How
| quickly, versus natural evolution, can serial passage
| evolve a virus?
|
| Using this figure, we could have some parameters around how
| much time such a project must have taken and its latest
| start date (assuming its evolved from known or closely-
| related-to-known viruses).
|
| Using this figure, and a theoretical timetable, we can also
| specify how close a cousin virus we would need to have for
| such a process to develop SAR-CoV-2.
|
| This could give us a more specific understanding of the
| feasibility of such research.
|
| For example, RaTG13 is closest known virus was discovered
| in 2013. Does the rate of serial passage enable evolution
| from RaTG13 over ~7 years? If not, this provides a factual
| argument allowing us to determine even if gain-of-function
| research was imposed on RaTG13 the moment of its discovery,
| it could not have been developed into SARS-CoV-2. (I don't
| know how to evaluate the actual accuracy of this, but
| provided as a example of how knowing the serial passage
| rate would be helpful).
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > How quickly, versus natural evolution, can serial
| passage evolve a virus?
|
| Look how many infections were needed to go from Covid
| Classic to the Delta Variant. What's that a billion?
|
| Comment I read from someone that aught to know what they
| are talking about pointed out that gain function in a lab
| produces viruses that are good at infecting cells in
| petri dishes. Not ones that are good at infecting
| vertebrates with full fledged immune systems trying to
| kill it.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Serial passage isn't magic, it is just what nature does.
|
| In the lab you'll get a handful of mutations not
| thousands.
|
| After serial passage through some large fraction of a
| billion humans, with large evolutionary pressures due to
| the recent species jump, the delta variant is still well
| over 99% homologous to the reference Wu-1 strain.
|
| A 96.1% different would require serial passage through
| billions of organisms, but they measure this difference
| in terms of years of evolution in nature which is on the
| order of 30-40 years.
| inciampati wrote:
| In the lab we can vastly exceed natural mutation rates,
| rendering this appeal to nature baseless.
|
| The rate of evolution is a function of the mutation rate
| and the effective population size. There is no reason to
| believe that a lab setting, with highly parallel
| evolution on a very large, diverse population, will be as
| slow as passage through hosts in nature. The application
| of mutagens, and also the lack of selection by a host
| immune system can support much higher rates of change.
| And in coronaviruses, recombination is also very
| frequent, and this could easily give rise to multiple %
| levels of divergence in a single step. Finally, it's
| trivial to synthesize a genome of this size, and also to
| synthesize pools of related viruses based on common
| backgrounds.
| tomp wrote:
| > After serial passage through some large fraction of a
| billion humans
|
| Wouldn't this count as _parallel_ passage though? Sure
| there's more variability and evolutionary pressure on the
| mutations, but the _speed_ of evolution (the number
| nucleotide mutations) is the same over the same period of
| time regardless of how many billions of people it infects
| in parallel.
| angelzen wrote:
| Then 'it was not serial passage' theory is unfalsifiable
| (sorry for the double negation):
|
| * If a wild strain is too far away from covid, then it
| would have taken too long to do the passage.
|
| * If a wild strain is almost identical to covid, then
| obviously covid derived from that without seeing the
| interior of a lab.
|
| Under what circumstances would you consider that serial
| passage work done in a lab might have had something to do
| with covid?
| passivate wrote:
| Well said, also you have little control over which
| colonies will take over.
| COGlory wrote:
| What is a viral backbone?
| createdapril24 wrote:
| These are all very compelling claims. I am wondering if you can
| provide at least one reference for each. E.g. "There are now
| many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with
| furin cleavage sites" is a claim that can be referenced pretty
| easily with a link to papers reporting said sarbecoviruses.
| willupowers wrote:
| I believe the uniqueness has been established by the issue
| that the specifics of the 12-nt insertion is never found
| anywhere in a natural setting. Many papers have gone back and
| forth over this and there's no natural example.
| createdapril24 wrote:
| Can you explain the importance of the 12-nt insertion, and
| also provide some references regarding it not being evolved
| naturally?
| lamontcg wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612.
| ..
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1
|
| https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeo.
| ..
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.5847.
| ..
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j.
| ..
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1
|
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-871965/v1
| areyousure wrote:
| From your first link: "SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus in
| subgenus Sarbecovirus having this feature"
|
| From your second link: "Finally, the poly-basic (furin)
| site present in SARS-CoV-2 is absent in both RshSTT182 and
| RshSTT200."
|
| Your third link doesn't discuss furin cleavage sites very
| much.
|
| Your fourth link literally doesn't contain the substring
| "furin".
|
| Your fifth link literally doesn't contain the substring
| "furin".
|
| Your sixth link at least partially supports your claim with
| a single mention of furin, saying "The two viruses shared
| part of the furin cleavage site unique to SARS-CoV-2", but
| the whole truth is that while they have insertions at the
| S1/S2 cleavage site in the spike protein, they do not
| contain the full furin cleavage site.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RmYN02
|
| From your seventh link: "None of these bat viruses harbors
| a furin cleavage site in the spike."
|
| (Protip: in this claim #4 of yours under discussion, you
| should change "sarbecoviruses" to "betacoronaviruses".)
| createdapril24 wrote:
| I only reviewed the first link. What I took away from it
| is that furin cleave sites occur in the family of
| coronaviruses naturally, but have not been seen in those
| most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. This note about not
| having closely related coronaviruses having such a
| feature is also true of SARS-CoV-1, which also leads
| evidence to its ability to occur naturally within a given
| subgenus (unless we posit also original SARS was lab-
| leak, but I do not think anyone has posited this.)
|
| I have not evaluated 2-7.
| btilly wrote:
| The proposal that this article is about weakens your argument
| significantly.
|
| They were going to experiment with multiple backbones,
| experimenting with multiple variations of spikes, looking
| specifically to try novel types of furin cleavage sites.
|
| There was no public reporting of what happened with this
| research. We don't know what they have because WIV database was
| taken offline. They claimed to have searched it, but what they
| claimed was the closest match in the database was not, in fact,
| as close as a sequence they had published. Given that
| demonstrable lie, there is no way to verify any claim about
| what sequences were or were not known and possibly involved in
| this research.
|
| Furthermore the person who submitted the proposal was also the
| person who broke ethical standards to preemptively shut down
| all discussion of a human release.
|
| That isn't to take away from the possibility of a natural
| spillover. The facts that you say about that are facts. But
| accidental release is also possible. And the lack of
| transparency from those who are most likely to have made the
| mistake heightens suspicions, it does not lessen them.
| lamontcg wrote:
| But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of
| that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike
| doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that
| completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented
| anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is
| concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing
| related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live
| culturable virus that you can work with is _difficult_. They
| aren't out collecting bats in the morning and whipping up
| live novel virus backbones in the evening. And if they
| actually carried out the research in this grant proposal you
| don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are all
| SARS-1-like.
|
| It is research that "sounds like" what happened with the
| SARS-CoV-2 zoonotic spillover, but that isn't a strange
| coincidence. They were researching the thing they were
| worried about happening, and then it happened. Their research
| proposals naturally rhyme with what actually occurred because
| they had studied and understood the problem enough to guess
| more or less accurately what the process would be. There are
| still massive gaps in between this proposal and SARS-CoV-2
| that you could fly a plane through.
| inciampati wrote:
| These researchers were apparently simulating the process of
| spillover and host adaptation of recombinant coronavirus in
| the lab. Of course this process will resemble a natural
| event in some respects. In a natural event, we would expect
| some traces of the adapting virus to be left in the world.
| Here, there are none. The virus appears having already
| adapted completely to it's new host.
| createdapril24 wrote:
| The specific claims here that are most compelling to me
| are:
|
| "The grant proposal very specifically is concerned with
| using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to
| SARS-CoV-2." The counterargument is "Well, they could have
| altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere."
| The takeaway is that it is not likely this specific
| proposal was funded elsewhere, leading to SARS-CoV-2.
|
| "If they actually carried out the research in this grant
| proposal you don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are
| all SARS-1-like." I do not personally know how to evaluate
| the accuracy of this claim, but if true, it resonates with
| the first claim: this proposal funded elsewhere would not
| lead to SARS-CoV-2.
|
| The argument claims about it being hard/expensive I think
| are less compelling, as there is a lead time of several
| years with experts in field performing research. A more
| compelling version of this argument would look like
| (completely making up numbers): "On average, it takes 4.5
| years to develop the first samples of a novel virus using a
| selected backbone, CRISPR technology, and gain-of-function
| culturing. Therefore, even if this research was funded in
| 2018 we would not expect it to have led to SARS-CoV-2". I'm
| not saying that argument is accurate at all, just saying
| it's more specific than "it's difficult".
|
| The argument claims about the evidence being missing I
| think isn't going to be motivating for a person who has a
| reasonable expectation that secret research is done and
| does not have trust in government transparency (either US,
| China, or otherwise). I'm not making a point here that
| evidence isn't needed (far from it, evidence IS needed).
| I'm evaluating from a polemic perspective what kinds of
| claims and arguments are useful for advancing the
| conversation with someone who holding a dissonant
| viewpoint.
|
| Thank you by the way for making specific claims that can be
| fact checked such as the two referenced at the top of this
| comment.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they
| pursued funding elsewhere."
|
| It isn't as simple as altering the proposal. You're
| speculating a very large and hidden process using
| sequences that were kept perfectly secret and have not
| been leaked, with virus backbones that would take
| considerable effort to create but which were never shared
| publicly (and kept perfectly secret before SARS-CoV-2
| happened before there was any need for perfect secrecy).
| We have this leaked information from 2018 about the
| proposal with the WIV1/SHC014 backbones which leaked
| because it was not kept with perfect secrecy. Yet they
| managed to do all that work in perfect secrecy without
| any leaks. That is the hallmark of a conspiracy theory.
| It requires a bit of a time machine because Daszak would
| have to have known in 2018 to tighten up his "OpSec" in
| response to the pandemic that hadn't happened yet and
| leaks that hadn't yet occurred.
|
| Things are also getting worse for the lab leak theory on
| other fronts, I just stumbled across this a few minutes
| ago:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1
|
| If there's multiple lineages from multiple zoonotic
| spillover events that makes the lab leak theory a poor
| fit and will require a lot more mental gymnastics.
| gojomo wrote:
| You seem to be suggesting that because this 2018 grant
| was recently "leaked", we now have... perfect info on all
| other grants & projects, including any that are part of
| the 'black budgets' of the US or China.
|
| But maybe some things just haven't leaked yet? Or were
| kept secret by others even more skilled at secrecy &
| misdirection than Daszak?
| inciampati wrote:
| First, it really doesn't take major effort to make a
| viral backbone. You'd like to make a protocol that
| generates them in high multiplex (thousands, millions,
| billions) and then selects on that background to find
| functional ones. The current virus could descend from a
| recombinant generated with such an approach. It might
| never have been sequenced or observed directly because it
| was one of innumerable examples that were competitively
| cultured.
|
| But, this nature piece is really problematic. When
| removing likely sequencing errors, the independent
| "spillover events" appear to fit perfectly into a single
| phylogeny with each node separated by a single mutation.
| And the A clade descends cleanly from the B clade. There
| are not enough mutations between them to support a
| complex explanation like multiple spillovers. This is
| linked but not explained properly by the nature piece
| https://virological.org/t/evidence-against-the-veracity-
| of-s...
| willupowers wrote:
| That and a coupe authors already arrived at contrary
| conclusions before this nature piece was even released.
| It fails to even acknowledge their work, compare, or
| comment why there should be favor in their own claims
| above others with different approaches that might be
| better suited (biostatistical methods to model a
| progenitor and the probable evolution of the lineages).
| derbOac wrote:
| ... but then you'd have to explain the infection
| geography in humans with two events. Not saying it's not
| possible, but lining it up with what's known
| epidemiologically speaking is different.
|
| Also, I'm not sure why the lab leak hypothesis is
| suddenly trickier. They had all sorts of samples.
|
| Labeling this all as "mental gymnastics" as in the
| article, or "a dagger in the heart of the lab leak
| hypothesis" is just the sort of motivated analysis
| confirmatory bias that caused all this in the first
| place. I'm not sure how arguing that SARS-CoV-2 involved
| two spillover events with crossover from multiple species
| is less mental gymnastics than "a lab had multiple
| samples".
|
| Honestly I'd like to see more dispassionate discussion of
| this. That Nature piece is shameful.
|
| At some level I don't care if it was a lab leak or not
| but I wish there wasn't this level of motivation behind
| both sides.
|
| In any event, the grant proposal should raise a lot of
| red flags regardless. What bothers me often is this
| implied assumption that if the lab leak hypothesis is
| false, everything else is fine. It's all fine that a
| plausible biosecurity failure scenario was ridiculed,
| that major research groups clearly lied about and tried
| to cover up conflicts of interest, that we can trust
| these (GoF) lines of research are safe, that we can just
| trust the authority figures to not cause another
| pandemic, etc. etc. etc.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Just wanted to chime in and thank you both for an
| extremely interesting discussion. Carry on. Being a fly
| on the wall is fascinating here.
| craftinator wrote:
| Really? I find it halfway interesting, as it is a
| discussion between someone who clearly understands the
| science and bureaucracy that surrounds that type of work,
| and someone who is chaining speculation and "what if's"
| like their life depended on it.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Definitely. Because companies need both types of people
| to succeed. I've also been on both sides of the table.
| It's easy to underestimate the what-iffer and to
| overestimate the established senior --- and vice versa.
|
| Better than TV.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Jaysus, I just wanted to say thanks for a convo. To
| confess my sins, I didn't read it too closely on either
| side. I'm currently trying to fall asleep. The idea that
| people did know a thing or two about biology on HN was
| appealing.
|
| I have to say though, the flagged reply was thoroughly
| entertaining. Thank you sir or ma'am for the high praise;
| I aim to please.
| christwhatanass wrote:
| Fuck off. The what iffer in this case is looking for
| someone to blame.
|
| That's generally not productive, not helpful, and in this
| case, they're hoping to blame the people who foresaw this
| very issue and wanted to stop it.
|
| Not helpful at all, but you're here sucking his cock like
| he is going to solve it on his own.
| gfodor wrote:
| You should def care if it was a lab leak or not, because
| as we have learned the only way we are going to address
| these risks properly if it was. The way to see this is
| obvious is that we are not acting _as if_ it was a lab
| leak, and we should be.
| scythe wrote:
| >Yet they managed to do all that work in perfect secrecy
| without any leaks. That is the hallmark of a conspiracy
| theory.
|
| But nobody is alleging that they did _all_ the work in
| _perfect_ secrecy. Clearly we know about a lot of the
| work: you 'd use the same equipment, location, and so
| forth. Only a few things are left that need to be secret;
| namely, the origin of the viral sequences that preceded
| SARS-CoV-2. And if those were present in the wild it
| seems not entirely surprising that WIV could have simply
| obtained them.
|
| Furthermore, it is not really that surprising that
| research which potentially develops weapons of mass
| destruction is kept secret, pandemic or no. Whether it
| caused the pandemic or not, people are still generally
| concerned that this kind of thing was occurring.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I guess all the stuff the NSA kept perfectly secret
| before the Snowden leaks were the hallmark of a
| conspiracy theory, too.
| acdha wrote:
| That is a good example to consider: the conspiracy
| theories were around things like magic crypto-breaking
| boxes, men in black getting crypto keys, or deeply-hidden
| backdoors in Windows. What they actually kept secret was
| that they were tapping cables covertly using the same
| tactics against American companies that they'd used
| throughout the Cold War -- the secret being that they
| were using them domestically.
|
| Applying Occam, I'm going to bet that the origins of the
| virus will turn out to be entirely zoonotic or that
| someone got infected doing fieldwork rather than the lab
| engineering claims.
| jhgb wrote:
| > The counterargument is "Well, they could have altered
| the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." The
| takeaway is that it is not likely this specific proposal
| was funded elsewhere, leading to SARS-CoV-2.
|
| That sounds like a very tenuous line of reasoning to me.
| Almost like saying "We know that Mr. A proposed shooting
| Mr. B, so let's reconsider that Mr C. may have stabbed
| Mr. D."
| mcherm wrote:
| At the end of the day we also have zero evidence of the
| animal transfer hypothesis. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was never
| documented in bats (prior to its spread among humans). No
| one has been able to demonstrate the capability of the
| virus to acquire it's current features in vivo in bats.
|
| But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis.
| Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how
| KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect
| certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for
| various possibilities.
|
| This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was
| leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The
| existence of this grant application is evidence supporting
| the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that
| someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic,
| about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to
| what we have observed in the virus.
|
| [1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/
| Justin_K wrote:
| The only evidence that exists is indirect because of
| China's stonewalling. When International researchers are
| denied access to the EpiCentre of a global pandemic, you
| cannot use the argument that there is no evidence.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| It's even worse than that. They did actually given access
| to Wuhan lab to WHO investigation team tasked with
| studying the possibility of lab leak, back in
| February/March last year. The team concluded that that it
| could not have leaked from Wuhan lab. The name of the
| lead investigator of the team? Peter Daszak, the very
| same one. I'm not making this up.
| stablechaos wrote:
| "Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the
| middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural
| area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major
| virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses,
| collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations,
| in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local
| community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically
| create this virus as closely as possible for the research
| to be successful...
|
| It's like seeing smoke billowing out of a building and
| refusing to accept that there's a fire until you see the
| flames. Very convenient that your standard of evidence
| surpasses anything we can possibly obtain after the CCP
| scrubbed everything.
| bawolff wrote:
| > It's like seeing smoke billowing out of a building and
| refusing to accept that there's a fire until you see the
| flames.
|
| The stuff you cite is circumstantial at best. Yes, given
| the seriousness of covid i would like someone to
| investigate it, but i would hardly call it billowing
| smoke.
|
| > Very convenient that your standard of evidence
| surpasses anything we can possibly obtain after the CCP
| scrubbed everything.
|
| Is that really relavent? Say CCP would in theory destroy
| evidence if such a situation arised. That's not an
| argument that says it is china's fault, its just an
| argument that we might not ever know. Its not like the
| people arguing that it was natural aren't using lack of
| chinese whistleblower as the evidence for naturalness.
|
| At the very least i'd like evidence that suggests there
| is a higher probability that it was a chinese experiment
| than a natural occurance. Occam's razor and all. Arguing
| that it might be impossible to know what happened,
| increases uncertainty, but doesn't affect the relative
| probabilities.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Occam's razor works against your argument...given
| everything we know so far, the simplest explanation is
| that a chinese lab leaked a virus and it's covering it.
| There is no jump in logic needed. It's actually easier to
| explain why the virus was so close to the Wuhan lab.
| bawolff wrote:
| Occams razor states "entities should not be multiplied
| beyond necessity"
|
| It doesn't seem neccesary for a chinese lab to be
| involved, and the only evidence so far (afaik) is that it
| exists and was studying something similar. Meanwhile
| there exists (albeit definitely not ironclad) evidence
| that china wasn't involved.
|
| If there is no evidence beyond circumstantial evidence
| that china had a lab near by, and there is a pretty much
| equally reasonable explanation that the event happened by
| chance, than i think occam's razor favours the one with
| less entities involved.
|
| I'm not saying that china isn't involved. I'm saying that
| we basically have no idea and the argument that china did
| it is no more strong than the alternative. On the balance
| i find the natural explanation more compelling, but
| ultimately we have no idea. I also think there may be
| some cognitive biases going on - covid 19 has hurt, and
| we want scapegoat to blame. If it was natural, than we
| have only ourselves to blame for being underprepared. If
| china did it, we convinently have someone to hate.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| If you take it like that, the it seems like the lab leak
| theory is even more probable. For the lab leak to work,
| we have all the entities we need: the bat fever a few
| years ago, ongoing studies on those coronaviruses,
| outbreak near the lab, very suspicious lab behavior,
| Chinese coverup.
|
| If you take the other hypotheses, it goes like this: some
| bat coronavirus -> jumps to an unnamed animal -> jumps to
| a human. There is an unknown entity in this equation,
| which is the third party animal. This is necessary for
| the theory to work.
|
| If you make me chose between a theory that has all the
| elements and one that might or might not find a mythical
| animal in the future...I think Occam's razor favors the
| one with all known elements. Otherwise, ad-absurdum, you
| can win any argument stating it's Occam's razor: you just
| introduce a single magic black box which can substitute
| any number of entities.
|
| I am not doing this to blame China. I blame China for the
| opacity of the response, which at times seemed like they
| didn't care what happens with everyone else. I can blame
| China regardless of how this virus appeared. I also blame
| our top scientists, which covered their asses instead of
| coming out with everything they know and work for the
| greater good.
|
| What I do want is better bio-labs safety protocols,
| something that can be monitor by third party inspectors,
| say from UN, just like we have for nuclear facilities.
| Lab leaks happen, it's not a Chinese thing: https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
| bunnie wrote:
| Maybe it's the other way around. They put the lab in
| Wuhan because it's easy to get many samples of the
| zoonotic viruses of concern due to the presence of many
| natural reservoirs and wet markets, and you want a lab
| near the action because you want to be able to study the
| hot spots.
|
| In other words, your argument is like saying occam's
| razor concludes that fire extinguishers start fires
| because they are always found in the vicinity of fires.
|
| Also I think many on this thread greatly underestimate
| the adaptive and evolutionary capabilities of nature.
| Having done some wet lab myself, I'm impressed at the
| ability of nature to do lateral gene transfer, and also
| it's damn hard to make any experiments work. Plus there
| are multiple layers of safety and containment around any
| lab experiment. Movies make engineering look like AI
| robots in labs and biology experiments that work on the
| first try, and people who say lab near outbreak must
| implicate the lab have probably spent more time watching
| movies about outbreaks than trying to engineer organisms
| themselves. Having spent a lot of time trying and failing
| to engineer organisms, occam's razor screams to me that
| the most likely explanation is natural evolution.
|
| The real lab of concern are the hundreds of millions of
| people living in close contact with animal reservoirs,
| performing millions of competitive, uncontrolled
| evolution experiments daily, with single hosts sometimes
| simultaneously infected by multiple viruses, thus
| facilitating lateral gene transfer... and this continues
| to be the status quo. If you can accept that MERS and
| SARS CoV-1 are naturally evolved, then occam's razor
| would indicate that SARS CoV-2 is just one point in a
| series, and yet another coronavirus outbreak is likely to
| emerge in the next decade or so, from a dense urban area
| near animal reservoirs.
|
| Distracting ourselves by fantasizing that only humans
| could be so devious to create such a virus makes us miss
| a very important opportunity to try and prevent the next
| outbreak through careful monitoring and research.
|
| So, if you believe that we should have fire departments
| and fire extinguishers near ignition sources then, maybe
| we should have /more/ labs like Wuhan's in high risk
| areas, not less. And we'd want to encourage more cross
| border cooperation, not antagonize it, because viruses
| don't give a damn about your politics.
|
| It's concerning that threads like this, on a forum as
| ostensibly pro-science as HN, are pushing ourselves
| further away from science and transparency...
| sumedh wrote:
| > are pushing ourselves further away from science and
| transparency...
|
| because China was not transparent and hid (probably
| destroyed) evidence. Its concerning that people dont want
| to hold China accountable.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-china-
| blocked...
| avianlyric wrote:
| The goal should be to find the truth. Not "hold China
| accountable". We can't punish people for crimes we can't
| prove they committed.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > the presence of many natural reservoirs and wet
| markets, and you want a lab near the action because you
| want to be able to study the hot spots.
|
| The closest relative to this virus (it's not even that
| close, just 95% similarity) was found in a bat cave
| hundreds of miles away. They flew it in Wuhan and made
| experiments on it (this is all documented, not some crazy
| theory). Something tells me it's more likely to escape
| from the lab right there, rather than somehow infect
| people for hundreds of miles undetected. Your analogy is
| wrong, the lab is not really a fire extinguisher, because
| a fire extinguisher cannot cause fires on it's own! Lab
| leaks happen all the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L
| ist_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
|
| A better analogy is: a nuclear scientist works with heavy
| metals at a lab (far away from home), suddenly his family
| gets radiation poisoning. I wonder if it was the
| scientist that made a mistake, or should we focus all our
| search for natural radiation sources in the family's
| house? Sure, it's always a possibility, but what is it
| more likely? Also, you should at least acknowledge that
| the person is working with radiation and investigate that
| possibility thoroughly.
|
| Those lab safety measure were criticized by the US state
| department
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-
| dep...
|
| > And we'd want to encourage more cross border
| cooperation, not antagonize it, because viruses don't
| give a damn about your politics.
|
| The Chinese took the virus database offline 2 months
| before the official outbreak...what a coincidence. And
| what a cooperation effort. Renaming the closest relative
| virus to hide it's trail. And a lot more.
|
| Yeah, we need more cooperation, and China needs to do it
| first. They created this mess, the least they can do is
| cooperate rather than hinder investigations. We need
| better lab security and better protocols worldwide.
| fsh wrote:
| SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes
| a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural
| village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim.
| It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen
| occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to
| test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel
| coronaviruses?
|
| I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it
| is not so clear if more human-animal contact happens in
| rural areas or in big population centers. SARS was
| eventually traced back to palm civets which are farmed
| animals. In this industry wild animals, many of which are
| susceptible to SARS-like coronaviruses, are being bred in
| large numbers. To me this sounds like a perfect breeding
| ground for the viruses as well.
| stablechaos wrote:
| It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a
| series of things to be considered independently. When a
| lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being
| coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no
| serious investigation by the people in charge of
| something so significant, an injustice is being done.
|
| Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms
| of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and
| centered in Wuhan, wet-markets and exotic animal markets
| are the likely culprit.
| phreeza wrote:
| Which other coincidence is there apart from the proximity
| of the lab to the initial detection site?
| mcherm wrote:
| Well, there is the similarity between features of the
| virus and research being proposed in a grant application
| written half a world away just a couple of years before
| the virus spread to humans. That's a coincidence of note.
| phreeza wrote:
| Yea agreed this seems like an additional data point, that
| looks suspicious, but it is very new (at least to me) and
| I will wait to see what experts make of this.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| "A lot of small things adding up" is also how conspiracy
| theories are formed and sustained. Be it Qanon, GME,
| Pizzagate, 9/11-was-an-inside-job, etc. They all rely on
| small details that are not individually damning, but in
| aggregate fit a compelling narrative. You have to be
| extremely wary of this sort of thinking.
|
| I don't think that a lab leak is implausible, but your
| statement that the small pointers "cease being
| coincidences" because they fit a narrative imparts far,
| far too much certainty to the lab leak theory.
| roenxi wrote:
| > When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being
| coincidences.
|
| The internet doesn't handle subtlety well, so just to
| spell it out...
|
| If we admit things are coincidences then they can't be
| added up to get evidence. Lots of coincidences isn't
| evidence. The point is these things aren't coincidences.
| If a new coronavirus breaks out next door to a lab
| studying coronaviruses, then the lab is a possible source
| of the virus and the proximity is evidence. It is weak
| evidence and still unlikely, but evidence nonetheless.
|
| However, when the lab is very close and the closest known
| bat virus (RaTG13) is a very long way away as is the case
| for SARS-CoV-2 then that is starting to get quite murky
| as evidence goes. It would be much easier for RaTG13 to
| travel the rather large distance from its natural
| location to Wuhan in a freezer/test tube than in a bat.
| stablechaos wrote:
| And there are three completely plausible explanations for
| why Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak's research could have
| led to the outbreak:
|
| (a) It was successfully created in the lab using gain of
| function research they were developing
|
| (b) It was accidentally or purposefully cultured
| naturally from one of the many strains they had collected
| from the field
|
| (c) A researcher, assistant, or contractor was infected
| in the field as they were doing field work
|
| Option (c) is particularly compelling because it doesn't
| require much additional complexity beyond the "official
| explanation". It still maintains that the origin of
| Covid-19 was a zoonotic spillover event, but points to
| the research as the direct cause of that event. And it's
| not necessarily the case that if the virus was in the bat
| population already that it necessarily would have spread.
| Rural populations might become briefly infected with a
| pandemic-level virus, but the spread is naturally
| quarantined since they have little contact with major
| metropolitan areas.
| krona wrote:
| You're correct, however after years of examining blood
| samples from hospital patients it was possible to trace
| the phylogeny of SARS to a zoonotic origin. This has not
| been possible for SARS-CoV-2, least of all because the
| government doesn't want such an investigation to take
| place. I can't think why.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Was the first SARS discovered in the vecinity of a lab
| studying SARS?
| aga98mtl wrote:
| >SARS was first discovered in a major city too.
|
| How many major cities are there? hundreds. How many with
| a research center experimenting on coronavirus? (1 china,
| 2 in the USA) Just in China there are more than 100
| cities with 1 millions people. Odds are 99+% that it has
| something to do with the research center. A very generous
| take would be that it has 1% chance of being unrelated.
| gfodor wrote:
| The "zero evidence" claim is fun because every day there
| is a failure to discover an origin species is de facto
| evidence of a non-zootonic origin, since that evidence is
| not subject to being hidden and is highly incentivized to
| find given it would be exculpatory.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > since that evidence is not subject to being hidden and
| is highly incentivized to find given it would be
| exculpatory
|
| Why? The wet markets in Wuhan were sterilized and emptied
| (meaning that the animals inside were removed, killed,
| and their carcasses disposed of) at the very start of the
| outbreak - several days before anyone had definitive
| evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could be transmitted by person
| to person contact.
|
| I'm sure that the Chinese government would love to have
| definitive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is zoonotic, but that
| evidence likely went up in smoke (January 1st, 2020)
| weeks before anyone realized that COVID-19 would turn
| into a legitimate pandemic (January 23rd, 2020).
| cfn wrote:
| I can't find the reference right now but the evidence can
| be gathered from hospital records. There is a progression
| in cases and some particularities that can be studied to
| establish the origin of a disease.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > I can't find the reference right now but the evidence
| can be gathered from hospital records.
|
| This is why there has been a lot of attention on certain
| animals, such as raccoon dogs and minks. It turns out
| that a lot of the early infections linked to the various
| Wuhan markets were from shop owners and employees who
| either sold or were in close contact a small number of
| animal species. It also turns out that these animals can
| be infected by SARS-CoV-2. See
| https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/animal-sales-from-wuhan-
| wet-....
|
| The issue is that (as far as I'm aware) there's no
| immediate evidence that SARS-CoV-2 jumped to humans from
| any of these animals, only that there was an (again, as
| far as I'm aware) unknown intermediary species. However,
| because the animals at the wet market were disposed of,
| there's no way to definitively link SARS-CoV-2 to them.
| prox wrote:
| Could a recombination be possible? So lab virus meets
| wild virus in zoonotic environment and sars-cov-2
| appears?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| For SARS ans MERS the evidence were "we found a variant
| of the virus before its mutation allowing it to jump to
| humans in civet/Camel".
| t0rt01se wrote:
| The "zero evidence" claim is a blatant attempt to shift
| the burden of proof. In my opinion the burden of proof
| remains with those hypothesizing zoonotic origin.
| dash2 wrote:
| I'd suggest the opposite. [edit: not the opposite, the
| same!]
|
| If it's conceivable that gain of function research can
| release a virus that kills millions, then the burden of
| proof is with the researchers to prove that they're safe
| and this didn't happen.
| t0rt01se wrote:
| Please read my comment again. Perhaps you aren't
| suggesting the opposite.
| dash2 wrote:
| Oops! Thanks.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| > blocks away from a major virology lab
|
| Make that 33 km: https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions
| ?engine=fossgis_osrm...
|
| Further more, phylogenetic, epidemiological and pneumonia
| excess death data all point to an epicentre in Huanan
| market and an initial spread north of the Yangtze river.
| See figure 1 in this article: https://www.cell.com/action
| /showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(21)00991-...
|
| It took a couple of weeks for this virus to spread south
| of Yangtze and reach the district where Wuhan Institute
| of Virology is.
| avereveard wrote:
| Interesting that the no lab peole keep beating the same
| "evidence" drum, conflating to the public eye evidence and
| proof meaning.
|
| Every single denial comment around here hinges on this
| confusion in terms and then tries to stick the "no proof"
| meaning to all the evidence, instead of bringing whatever
| evidence there is that it was a natural strain evolution or
| debating the various points.
|
| Funny how instead a meta analysis of the discussion show
| one side piling up evidences while the other insists in
| trying to convince people that no proof equals no evidence.
| dash2 wrote:
| You sound knowledgeable. Can you point us to any long-form
| discussions on these topics? As a layperson I'd like to
| know more.
| willupowers wrote:
| Calm down dude. Clearly you have some attachment to one
| theory over another, which is poor science.
|
| The investigation will continue and those missing items you
| mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak
| that there are might be a significant number of unpublished
| sequences at WIV and EHA, etc.
|
| If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual
| scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak
| evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions
| however.
| ImaCake wrote:
| A lot of comments against this, but I think this is a pretty
| good summary of why I think this is a zoonotic spillover event.
| To put it bluntly, evolution is much more creative than us and
| SARS-COV2 seems like a master stroke. Much of the arguments in
| favour of the lab escape hypothesis read like arguments made by
| people who are not virologists or related experts.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Fairytales about lab leaks won't absolve us of our abject failure
| to deal with this novel pathogen, nor will they help us prepare
| for the next.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Refusal to investigate whether this is the biggest disaster in
| scientific history is odd.
|
| If dangerous research killed 15 million people we need to know.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Even if it did and we do know, do you honestly think it would
| stop rather than be moved to secret bio weapons research
| facilities?
| rhino369 wrote:
| Yes, because the type of research that would have led to
| covid-19 was public health research, not weapons research.
| Gain-of-function research is done to help learn about
| pandemics so we can prevent them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the experience of the current situation is not
| helping us prepare for the next either. That's the sad part to
| me.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| Reducing the frequency of these leaks would seem like a good
| idea.
| gfodor wrote:
| Actually given people like you seem insistent that such lab
| leaks cannot happen, having it proven as such would help us
| prepare for the next because it would force us to listen to the
| people who have been warning us it will happen for years.
| trhway wrote:
| >our abject failure to deal with this novel pathogen
|
| the response during the initial critical phase could have been
| been different if it wasn't led by the people with obvious
| conflict of interests like Fauci and was looking more like
| coverup than an actual response.
|
| The EcoHealth NIH grants for coronavirus/Wuhan included "Human
| Subjects", so who knows how much of the initial spread was the
| part of it.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| If you are an expert in virology I'd love to know the answer to
| this question:
|
| If given the right resources, would it be feasible to synthesize
| a pandemic-inducing virus in a lab setting?
|
| If so, a general question: why haven't the villains of the world
| done so already?
| mannanj wrote:
| What if they already have? What if COVID-19 was that virus?
| jpollock wrote:
| Isn't the stated response from several countries that the
| response to something like that is nuclear?
| MaxDPS wrote:
| At the moment, that type of research takes a lot of resources.
| In the future, I'm sure that will change, which is a bit
| worrying.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| To answer your final question:
|
| That's more of a doomsday terrorist fantasy than viable bio
| weapons research.
| shadilay wrote:
| The villains already have.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-person...
| mdorazio wrote:
| Not an expert, but this has more or less already been done [1]
| and led to a temporary moratorium on this research.
|
| To your last question, releasing such a thing would basically
| assure your (and your people's) own destruction in addition to
| your target's, as we've seen by how difficult it has been to
| control COVID. So you'd have to want _everyone_ dead, and
| generally speaking the people who would be willing to actually
| do something like that don 't have the resources and knowledge
| to make it happen.
|
| [1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
| perspective/2012/06/fouchier...
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as
| a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It is reasonable & responsible to downplay theories that get
| constructed in absence of sufficient and meaningfully qualified
| evidence.
| 015a wrote:
| Ok, but to play in this space for a second: toward the
| beginning of the pandemic when these theories were flying
| left and right, where exactly was the "sufficient and
| meaningfully qualified evidence" to assert that it had
| natural origins?
|
| Is the default to simply assert that, because it is
| biological, it naturally evolved? In the modern era we're in,
| I'm not convinced that is a sensible default.
|
| The most sensible default is to say we don't know, and all
| reasonable possibilities are being explored. That is _not_
| the same as saying that its reasonable and responsible to
| downplay a completely reasonable theory; for all that 's
| holy, the virus was first discovered in the same city as
| China's only L4 biohazard lab studying human pathogens,
| literally _that evidence alone_ is enough to say the lab-leak
| theory is "reasonable". Not a smoking gun! But REASONABLE
| and not worthy of downplay.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Is the default to simply assert that, because it is
| biological, it naturally evolved?
|
| Unless you're a creationist, then yes?
| dabbledash wrote:
| GP didn't say "if you thought there was insufficient evidence
| before, you have some reflecting to do!"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm advocating a principle that applies well to the OP.
| dabbledash wrote:
| Then your comment would make more sense as a response to
| the OP.
|
| If anything it seems like you would agree that in the
| absence of evidence humility is appropriate. People who
| acted like only fringe conspiracy theorists would even
| consider lab origins should reflect on their
| overconfidence and arrogance. It's not a slam dunk either
| way and probably never will be, if i had to guess.
| jtdev wrote:
| Animal origin theory/wet market/etc. have zero "meaningfully
| qualified evidence", are you as skeptical about those
| theories?
| iammisc wrote:
| Such as the theory, presented often without evidence, that
| Sars-Cov-2 came from an imaginary population of bats in
| Wuhan?
| tootie wrote:
| The evidence is that every other coronavirus ever studied
| was zoonotic. It's still the most reasonable explanation.
| This story doesn't really move the needle.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its fine to call someone crazy if they're posting about
| some coverup about bats without any evidence too, no?
| iammisc wrote:
| Except there was no bat coverup. The american media
| bought into that theory without any evidence while
| simultaneously castigating and ridiculing the lab leak
| one. The coverup of the lab leak theory in the press was
| thus in plain sight.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I mean, if it's a random comment on the Internet that makes
| a claim without presenting evidence, yet evidence does
| exist and is readily available, I don't have much of a
| problem with that. After all, you just made the claim that
| the theory is often present without evidence without
| actually presenting evidence of _that_ claim. The real
| question is what evidence exists, not what evidence may or
| may not be presented with every online comment you may come
| across.
| andyxor wrote:
| there is a lab called "Wuhan Coronavirus Research Lab" in
| the epicenter of coronavirus pandemic ground zero, and
| there is evidence of lab members seeking (and getting)
| grants in the US for dangerous gain-of-function research in
| the last few years, doesn't it make you stop and think?
| mhh__ wrote:
| There's a difference between outright rejection and calling BS
| on obviously conclusion-driven argument from people playing
| politics.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I've asked people to explain to me why I should care one way or
| another, beyond curiosity, and no one has been able to answer
| yet.
|
| That is to say, is there an actual person who is perfectly fine
| with all the terrible things the CCP plainly does, but finding
| out that they've been incompetently handling research will
| suddenly make them change their views?
| sjwalter wrote:
| One real great reason to care one way or the other is that
| the lab leak vs. natural origins debate heavily informs
| whether or not GoF research makes sense at all, as in,
| whether it should be pursued or globally & aggressively
| banned.
|
| The basis for GoF research (at least, the publicly-espoused
| thesis, bioweapons research being a likely secondary
| interest) is that such research can help us stop or reduce
| the impact of a pandemic. If the natural origin theory turns
| out to be the truth, then this adds lots of weight to the
| idea that we SHOULD be aggressively pursuing GoF research in
| order to fix the next naturally-occuring viral pandemic.
| However, if sars-cov-2 actually came from a lab leak, then we
| have evidence that such research is both far more risky than
| we thought and as well that natural pandemics are less likely
| than we think, so we should probably not do it at all.
| 015a wrote:
| The reason why you need to care is because this isn't a CCP
| problem; its a global problem.
|
| Sure, maybe the CCP screwed up containment, and that mistake
| cost millions of lives. Every single major government around
| the planet has facilities like the one we're discussing.
| Every single one has made mistakes like the CCP possibly did.
| The CCP were just unlucky in that their mistake wasn't
| confined to one person or the welcome lobby.
|
| Knowing it was engineered in a lab would put a bigger
| spotlight on facilities like these. Unfortunately, its most
| likely to only result in sanctions against China, but if the
| people in charge could summon an ounce of sense, it could
| also mean more of these facilities being shut down, their
| research suspended, and the live cultures of humanity-
| destroying plagues in their vaults destroyed.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > it could also mean more of these facilities being shut
| down
|
| ... which is a critical thing to consider when reading
| virologists' opinions claiming that it couldn't be a lab
| leak. There is a very obvious conflict of interest here.
|
| I don't have a good answer how to deal with this conflict,
| since it is hard for non-virologist to judge the arguments,
| but ignoring the conflict of interest entirely is not the
| solution.
| [deleted]
| iammisc wrote:
| Yes... Many people claim 'global warming' or 'globalization'
| make pandemics more frequent and more likely and want us to
| spend lots of money preparing for pandemics. However, if this
| pandemic turned out to be engineered or modified, then there
| is a political solution to this enhanced likelihood of
| pandemics from rogue nations.
| tshaddox wrote:
| "Suggesting this as a possibility" is a pretty weak statement.
| But it's actually good to criticize someone for claiming _that
| it happened_ without having any evidence, even if there happens
| to later be evidence that it happened.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Depends on whether your criticism was "we don't know for sure
| whether it happened" or "it did not happen".
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| You're assuming that because you were unaware of that
| evidence, that others were as well.
|
| But we've known since the COVID outbreak that there was
| experiments making novel corona viruses infect humanized mice
| in Wuhan just before two of the WIV researchers got sick and
| a nearby military event also got sick. We've further known
| that COVID-19 has a DNA structure unlike natural viruses --
| matching a bat virus except for a single protein that appears
| to be from a pangolin virus.
|
| It was always clear the preponderance of evidence pointed
| towards a lab leak -- and that claims of a natural virus were
| special pleading by interested parties or a political stunt
| by media parties.
|
| You were always irrational and acting based on propaganda to
| question a lab leak -- it was the only reasonable and
| supported-by-evidence hypothesis the entire time.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Let's not confuse the issue.
|
| Evidence is a method of confirmation. Motives, incentives and
| suspicious evasions can help us form hypotheses to evaluate.
| Dismissing a hypothesis as something unworthy of examination
| may fall under the 'suspicious evasion' subheading.
| [deleted]
| speed_spread wrote:
| My problem with people saying "but it was engineered!" is that
| it the origin does not change what our reaction should be. The
| virus is here and now we have to face it. Whether it's a
| natural mutation, part of a big masterplan, or an accidental
| release is a matter of international politics, in which most of
| us have very little, if anything to contribute.
| baja_blast wrote:
| yes, but if this research continues we are all at risk of
| another highly contagious human adapted virus escaping again.
| The goal should be to try and ban this type of research
| worldwide. While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are
| far easier to contain due to the time it takes for a virus to
| gain enough mutations to be easily infectious to other humans
| such as what happened with SARs1 and MERS. Researchers
| developing viruses to be highly adapted for humans just
| creates viruses that are impossible to contain like COVID.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are far
| easier to contain
|
| Coronaviruses have _never_ been easy to contain. Not this
| one, nor any of the many other coronaviruses that have been
| endemic in humans for thousands of years.
|
| We call the common cold common for a reason.
| angelzen wrote:
| If we go back to business as usual, covid will be far from
| the last allegedly engineered virus to kill millions. The
| health sciences establishment is in dire need of a reality
| check, their actions have consequences reaching well beyond
| petty grant politicking.
| Factorium wrote:
| Its unlikely the virus was engineered expressly to kill
| millions - it seems increasingly likely that the virus was
| engineered to drive mRNA vaccine sales, as well as to
| disrupt the 2020 American election (by forcing an
| unprecedent switch to mail-in paper ballots and upending a
| vibrant US economy - at the same time as China was
| struggling under international tariffs).
|
| Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done
| if you bought in October 2019:
|
| https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y
|
| You'd be 25x in less than 2 years.
|
| How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55
| million in September 2019!
| https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-
| det...
|
| The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of
| using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral
| proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This
| presumably means much cheaper manufacturing.
|
| Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since
| antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more
| likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete
| protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the
| 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by
| these leaky vaccines.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It is unlikely the virus was engineered specifically for
| some goal that would involve an intentional release.
|
| The most likely explanation is that the lab was engaging
| in risky scientific research, because they wanted to do
| ground-breaking science and were asking themselves
| whether they could, not whether they should.
|
| Then they made a mistake, had a gap in the protocols,
| didn't follow them out of laziness, or some other
| accident, and infected themselves.
|
| As attractive as such theories sound, pandemics are
| unpredictable enough that noone sane would start one to
| further some specific goal. At a large scale, there are
| rarely true winners in a pandemic (or war).
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus origins,
| but this did not get mentioned in any reports. Instead he warns
| other not to discuss it. He does not include notes that research
| was done on modifying bat viruses to make them infectious to
| human cells. These behaviors look like a guilty person, do they
| not?
|
| The wuhan and eco-health researchers had already started work on
| the furin cleavage sites and why would they stop when DARPA
| blocked it? Funding can't only come from the US. Did CCP also
| block this research?
|
| > there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering
| work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North
| Carolina could easily be used in China.
| rualca wrote:
| > Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus
| origins (...)
|
| As a reference never hurts, specially in a topic prone to
| disinformation, here's a link to the WHO's page on its official
| list of members of their "Global Study of the Origins of SARS-
| COV2".
|
| Dr. Peter Daszak, Ph.D (EcoHealth Alliance, USA) is listed as a
| member.
|
| https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the...
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Do also note that damn near every lab today would not propose a
| new approach or project without already secretly having gone
| half the way in it with prior funds. No one proposes a
| potential novel idea without already being fully sure it will
| work.
| splittingTimes wrote:
| 100% true for theoretical/computational physics, solid state
| physics, optics, catalysis research, and many more. You use
| existing grants to explore completely different topics and
| once you have something promising where you are 50-80% there,
| you write the next grant. Rinse, repeat.
|
| Particle physics (or gravitational wave research for example)
| is the odd one out here. Maybe because it is 100% fundamental
| research, where it is known to not produce applicable
| results.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Not true where you have to get ethics consent. You can't do
| this because you're lab will be shut if you are found to be
| doing experiments in secret. Yes - in some labs for maths,
| physics and so on you are right, but not medicine & biology.
|
| If you don't believe this then look at the failure rate of
| the projects.
|
| The other thing is that the funding agencies really, really,
| really don't like this - they want high risk research not
| handle turning. So if you get caught out you will get
| blacklisted - it's misconduct.
| madamelic wrote:
| > You can't do this because you're lab will be shut if you
| are found to be doing experiments in secret.
|
| It's almost like if you move your research to a country who
| has no regards for safety or ethical concerns, that
| suddenly isn't a problem.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Certainly not true in the area of particle accelerator
| experiments. Every single step there is done in public so to
| say. And it's not that it's a niche, literally thousands of
| scientists and engineers work on this stuff. (Also I know
| people that had to change thesis topics half-way through,
| although I cannot fully recall the reasoning for that.)
|
| It's well-known that there has been high-risk coronavirus
| research across the globe. Actually there are even
| documentaries from before the pandemic, not sure why this has
| to be double-emphasized.
| rualca wrote:
| > It's well-known that there has been high-risk coronavirus
| research across the globe.
|
| It's the first time I heard of anything of the sort.
|
| Do you have any reference pointing out, or is this just
| Facebook hearsay?
| ezconnect wrote:
| Corona virus and gain of function was done in the US and
| when a leaked accident occurred it got banned and
| outsourced to the world. The research labs and stories
| was famous during MERS outbreak. India, Pakistan and
| China is the best known countries with advance research
| labs for it.
| N00bN00b wrote:
| > It's well-known that there has been high-risk coronavirus
| research across the globe.
|
| Not to me.
|
| >Actually there are even documentaries from before the
| pandemic, not sure why this has to be double-emphasized.
|
| Got any names/years so I watch them?
| stablechaos wrote:
| This is something I wish more people understood about
| academia with regards to this grant.
| jollybean wrote:
| This 'looks guilty' thing is akin to witch hunting.
|
| If millions of people died and you were right there when it
| happened, a likely suspect, you might want to deflect blame as
| well.
|
| Populism and Politics have little to do with the truth. If the
| masses are fired up over one theory, or if the highly
| politicized academic community is fired up over one of their
| own sensitivities, it can be destructive for many involved.
|
| Refusing legitimate investigation - now that's a bad sign
| because people should want to clear their names.
|
| We don't know what the answers are but it warrants further
| investigation.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > why would they stop when DARPA blocked it
|
| Because the Trump administration decided that along with a
| bunch of other offshore collaboration funding decided to pull
| the money (America First!). There's a Vincent Racaniello
| episode on Microbe TV that explained what happened there. I
| don't remember the episode but here's his channel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos
|
| I think if folks would listen more to virologists than the
| press they'd find out that it's incredibly difficult to
| engineer new viruses (that's actually in his coursework - also
| on his channel), but it's also incredibly difficult to create
| stable "gain of function" (for weaponising) which has been
| suggested as the source of SARS2 and that whole Wuhan
| conspiracy theory thing.
| gojomo wrote:
| But why would one denial from one particularly finicky
| funding source (Trump-era US agencies) make researchers - who
| thought they were doing essential work - stop such essential
| work? Why wouldn't they use other funding, possibly from
| overhead funding or prior grants, or from other less-finicky
| funders? And in a jurisdiction - China - where many of the
| same limits or reporting-requirements might not exist?
|
| Are virologists the only humans who, thwarted by one
| jurisdiction's limits, give up without considering doing
| their career-making, essential-to-humanity work elsewhere?
|
| _> ...it 's incredibly difficult to engineer new viruses...
| [and] ...also incredibly difficult to create stable "gain of
| function"..._
|
| Indeed, but humans do incredibly difficult things all the
| time. In fact, they're often attracted to the challenge, and
| seek funding to help them do it, and often don't let a 'no'
| from any one funder stop them from bootstrapping work in
| other ways.
|
| It's also incredibly difficult to engineer & get approval for
| vaccines to a brand-new disease, but that got done, recently,
| faster than ever before.
|
| It was incredibly difficult to create nuclear weapons, but a
| lot of countries have done it independently.
|
| Given the significant number of dangerous pathogen escapes
| from disease labs, it's also "incredibly difficult" to keep
| dangerous contagions safely contained. It's comparatively
| easy to accidently let them out!
| tikiman163 wrote:
| Covid wasn't a brand new disease. They had most of the
| research necessary to create a vaccine completed two years
| before the outbreak. We would likely have had the Johnson
| and Johnson vaccine by July of 2020 if Trump hadn't shut
| down the pandemic response team purely because it was
| created by Obama. They were the ones already preparing the
| ground work necessary for a vaccine to existing SARS Corona
| virus diseases that had already emerged as far back as
| 2011. Project Warp Speed wasn't so successful because it
| provided funding or cut red tape, most of the vaccines we
| got didn't even participate. We got vaccines so fast
| because nearly a decade of related research had already
| been completed.
|
| My point is it would have required a virtual miracle for
| the proposed gain of function research to have produced
| something that could have escaped in the time framed that
| is possible regarding the rejected grant request.
| Additionally, good research has proven that Covid couldn't
| have been due to gain of function research either.
| nekt wrote:
| If that is the case why did Peter himself say a covid
| vaccine was impossible at the Nipah conference in 2019?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The 2019 nipah conference was December 09-10. The first
| COVID patients with symptoms had only entered the
| hospital the previous day and the epidemic was still
| unrecognized. Why was anyone talking about a vaccine for
| a disease no one knew existed at an unrelated virus
| conference? Can you source anything to that effect?
| nradov wrote:
| All 3 vaccines used in the US received funding through
| Operation Warp Speed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
| pfortuny wrote:
| Not necessarily guilt but a HUGE conflict of interest...
| lazyeye wrote:
| As much credibility as the executive team at Philip Morris
| releasing an open letter outlining how smoking doesn't cause
| cancer.
| kyrra wrote:
| Peter Daszak was also one of the people organizing the letter
| in the lancet back in 2020 denying that it came from a lab.
|
| Original letter:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
|
| Lancet responding to criticism:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| noptd wrote:
| Yeah, turns out 26 of the 27 scientists all had some conflict
| of interest related to the Wuhan lab:
|
| >All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet
| dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come
| from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers,
| their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph investigation can
| reveal.
|
| Source: https://archive.ph/dXc0n
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| He proudly proclaims his research in this video, he is not
| hiding anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w
| lps41 wrote:
| He absolutely did try to hide things. He tried to hide his
| relationship to the original Lancet article denouncing the
| lab leak theory, because he knew it was a staggering conflict
| of interest:
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-
| theory-...
| kennywinker wrote:
| Person organizing PR statement takes actions to make that
| PR statement as effective as possible? Not exactly a cover
| up. I don't "like" my own instagram posts for the same
| reason.
| lps41 wrote:
| It's expected that conflicts of interest be disclosed in
| journalism and things like this. Instead he actively
| worked to hide his conflict of interest.
| noptd wrote:
| Exactly, and it looks like almost all of them did:
|
| >All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet
| dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have
| come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese
| researchers, their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph
| investigation can reveal.
|
| Source: https://archive.ph/dXc0n
| dash2 wrote:
| Scientists have to hold themselves to a higher ethical
| standard than PR flacks.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Even with this one bit of evidence (assuming it actually
| indicates what we think it might) we aren't there yet. We might
| be eventually but not today.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't buy this. This proposal had been reviewed by someone
| (probably multiple someones) in 2018, and when a year later we
| get a human transmission coronavirus that sweeps the entire globe
| _nobody_ remembers this thing immediately (even vaguely)?
|
| I can't say if it's a setup, but I'd be very sceptical of this
| proposals origins.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Why is lab leak vs zoonotic a front in the culture war rather
| than a question for which we should see the truth in a
| dispassionate manner?
| mannanj wrote:
| My opinion is the same reason other topics of discussion in
| society become culture wars. Why do they really?
|
| - Gay vs straight: religious and political beliefs - Abortion:
| same reasons IMO - Left vs right: politics that self propagate
| and stay in power with division
|
| What what some other examples that we can try to isolate the
| causes for and extrapolate to here.
|
| My opinion on the reasons for this theory being a culture war
| is the government and its predominate scientists have pushed a
| "hero" or "patriot" perspective onto one class of its citizens
| that if you're not devoting your energy towards increased
| vaccine engagement or government policies towards containment
| of this virus you are doing something wrong. Everyone else is a
| villain or bad guy or extremist conspiracy theorist.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| If this is true, Peter Daszak and any implementers should get the
| death penalty for such a cavalier attitude towards these
| activities. It is such a willfully negligent set of actions and
| this looks extremely bad for him and his acolytes.
| andyxor wrote:
| If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a
| duck, then it probably is a duck
| mhh__ wrote:
| The difference is that I'm guessing 99% of people reading this
| (myself include) have no idea what a duck is, let alone how it
| quacks.
|
| Merely the amount of "gotcha!"-ing that happens as the news-
| pendulum swings from each side of this debate suggests to me
| that this in large part driven by emotions and tribalism rather
| than solely an honest desire for the truth.
| radus wrote:
| Strongly agree with this. Sure seems like a lot of people
| have become duck experts overnight though.
| jtdev wrote:
| Go back and listen to the exchanges between Rand Paul and Dr.
| Fauci... Fauci repeatedly lied before Congress regarding funding
| for this GoF research which now appears to have been the source
| of the virus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue... trust the
| science.
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| Was EcoHealth Alliance, the group referenced in the article,
| working in Wuhan?
| jtdev wrote:
| Yes, they funded GoF research at WIV. And it's founder Peter
| Daszak worked to undermine the lab leak theory as a member of
| the WHO COVID19 origins investigation team... can you say
| "conflict of interest"?
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Yes they were, in particular with the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology, and Peter Daszak himself was in Wuhan in October
| 2019.
|
| EcoHealth just got defunded by the US Congress with bipartisan
| support:
| https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/144122144752803020...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| In addition there was some controversy as they were behind
| the Lancet open letter that first renounced the idea of a lab
| origin. They got a bunch of scientists associated with their
| organisation to sign it, without mentioning EcoHealth by name
| or stating competing interest.
|
| My spidey sense is certainly tingling, though of course no
| smoking guns. But the jigsaw pieces fit. Can't get the
| funding in North Carolina? Let's try Wuhan.
| shadilay wrote:
| I believe they declared "no competing interest".
| noptd wrote:
| Right, and 26 of the 27 who signed that letter had
| conflicts of interest -https://archive.ph/dXc0n
| [deleted]
| NoGravitas wrote:
| This grant proposal, in particular, however, was to do work
| in North Carolina.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Citing from the grant application, page 12:
|
| > We will conduct in vitro pseudovirus binding assays,
| using established techniques, and live virus binding assays
| (at WIV _[Wuhan Institute of Virology]_ to prevent delays
| and unnecessary dissemination of viral cultures)
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-
| prop...
| ffggvv wrote:
| either way china covered it up and owes us repararions. atleast
| 10T worth
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I agree with the comment from justapassenger. The title has been
| altered from the headline into inflammatory clickbait.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| The article has been previously submitted with and has
| languished without interest, I think that the Intercept's
| headline alone is underplaying it a little and is not suited to
| this forum. I think if you read the article, the HN headline
| above is accurate. What specifically do you think is
| inaccurate? Even in tone?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| That's a reasonable question. First - my understanding is
| that we're expected to repost headlines verbatim, even if
| they kind of suck. It's not some unbreakable rule but it's an
| objective we should commit to.
|
| Past that, I offer that headlines that will lead _the public
| we have_ toward thoughtful, measured, conclusions (that
| reflect where we actually are) - this would seem to be our
| best goal.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| Fair enough, it seems I can't edit it now, Dang obviously
| feel free to do so.
| dang wrote:
| (We've since changed the title - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742.)
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Reminder that the NIH and NIAID (which Fauci leads)
| systematically undermined oversight processes meant to flag
| dangerous research for additional review. See
| https://dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih-gain-of-function-anth...
| mhh__ wrote:
| Is the Daily Caller a reliable source?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| They are reasonably reliable. I am by no means a regular or
| even occasional reader, but it is very difficult to find left
| biased news sources covering this lab leak story with any
| degree of honesty and professionalism. You can verify the
| claims in this particular article by visiting the Twitter
| feed of the Professor they mention.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I'll just leave this here...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 (July 2020)
| throaway6679 wrote:
| The stridency with which people attempt to shut down discussion
| of a lab origin points in the direction of a coverup.
|
| An example of this happening is on Wikipedia where one editor in
| particular seems to have declared it to be a "conspiracy theory"
| and scrubs every mention of it. The editor in question scrubs
| talk pages and their own talk page, thus effectively preventing
| any kind of consensus forming, which is out of the ordinary for
| Wikipedia. They have remarkable stamina, and thus can our out-
| wait other editors.
|
| Wikipedia seems to be one example of a much bigger effort to
| suppress discussion of a potential lab leak.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Wikipedia Talk pages are an underrated venue for restrained
| flame wars. If you're looking for your two minutes of hate
| today, just go to any Talk page for a controversial subject
| that's been "debunked" in the last year or so.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Link to the editor?
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