[HN Gopher] The Next 'Lab Leak'
___________________________________________________________________
The Next 'Lab Leak'
Author : johncena33
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-11-23 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Biologists are able to generate highly specialized viruses for
| research for decades now, i m sure it was possible before covid.
| I think going forward you should be afraid of nature. We have
| evolved global transportation / shipping / tourism beyond the
| carrying capacity of modern epidemiology / bacteriology to keep
| up with spreading pathogens. SarsCov2 might be just one of many ,
| since human population has not peaked in numbers yet.
| tpmx wrote:
| > Covid might not have come out of a medical research lab
|
| It most likely did, though.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Why is that the case? I thought we don't actually have any real
| good evidence either way.
| tpmx wrote:
| There is no smoking gun kind of evidence because PRC blocked
| all efforts to properly investigate this. _This is obviously
| a red flag in itself._
|
| There is _plenty_ of circumstantial evidence.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > There is plenty of circumstantial evidence.
|
| Yeah. It doesn't sit right with me that Peter Daszak, who
| has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was the
| driving force behind the February 2020 Lancet letter of
| scientists "strongly condemning conspiracy theories" like
| the lab-leak theory - all without disclosing that conflict
| of interest.
|
| Daszak should testify before congress.
| black6 wrote:
| Wuhan has a biolab.
|
| That biolab specializes in coronaviruses.
|
| That biolab was funded, in part, by the US NIH to conduct
| gain of function (a rose by any other name...) on
| coronaviruses.
|
| SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus.
|
| The SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak was first observed in Wuhan.
|
| It's such a logical chain of circumstantial evidence, and
| They expected everyone to believe that it came from a
| fucking pangolin?
| thedorkknight wrote:
| Who is the "They" that you all keep mentioning? I haven't
| heard anyone push the pangolin theory since, like, March
| 2020. I listen to the podcast "This Week in Virology" a
| lot and can only remember them occasionally addressing it
| as a discarded theory.
|
| It seems to me like people are talking about some
| Boogeyman here. I need specifics on this "they" because
| otherwise it just comes across as rhetoric
| drran wrote:
| Who will discover a new virus faster? A researcher from a
| specialized lab or a random guy?
| bradford wrote:
| China has routinely been opaque, blocking investigations
| over all sorts of things. I don't like it either but I
| think it's premature to use it as evidence of malice on
| China's part.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| > China has routinely been opaque, blocking
| investigations over all sorts of things. I don't like it
| either but I think it's premature to use it as evidence
| of malice on China's part.
|
| China (and everyone else) doesn't get to have their cake
| an eat it too. They want to be opaque as national policy,
| that's their prerogative, but they don't get to do so
| _and_ expect positive inference regarding what is behind
| the curtain.
|
| In other words, assuming the worst plausible scenario is
| the only, or at least a, rational interpretation of
| possibilities against a policy of intentional opacity.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Is America going to let Chinese investigators start
| combing through their labs and almost the populace to see
| if an alternate domestic theory that it originated in the
| US earlier (after all, there's been reports that it was
| in NYC in fall 2019 already).
|
| Can you see how a government might be concerned about
| keeping an adversary do that because of the sovereignty
| violation it brings up as well as concerns about spies
| being part of that group (eg how the CIA used a
| vaccination program as cover to find Bin Laden in
| Pakistan)?
|
| It's not the only rational explanation. It's just the one
| you choose to prefer (and it might perhaps be the most
| plausible given how the Chinese government appears to
| operate, but it's not beyond reasonable doubt). Heck,
| this was the theory behind invading Iraq and looks like
| the US never did find those WMDs.
| readams wrote:
| I think it's more correct to say that lab leak is a plausible
| theory. But it's going too far to say it's the most likely
| theory. I do wish China hadn't clammed up and would have
| allowed a real investigation. We'll never really know, I
| suspect.
| dnautics wrote:
| we will never really know. But, one of the most damning
| articles is this one:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/
|
| in which the final claim is "Furin cleavage sites occurred
| independently for multiple times in the evolution of the
| coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring
| hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2."
|
| Er, that's not really strong support for the naturally
| occurring hypothesis, it's a refutation against 'naturally
| occurring is impossible'.
|
| The spontaneous evolution of furin sites is rare in the
| specific clade of SARS-CoV-2, so if it's support it's very
| weak. The phylogenetic trees presented in the paper are VERY
| much loaded to obscure this fact (omitting betacoronaviruses
| in the alpha-delta tree, and in the breakout betacoronavirus
| tree, arbitrarily loading up multiple copies of "basically
| the same" strains which all present a furin cleavage site to
| make the pie slice of furin site-presenting sequences
| bigger).
|
| On the other hand, copy-pasting interesting motifs into a
| different but related genetic entity to achieve GOF is
| basically "the first strategy you do" as a synthetic
| biologist. Hell, even I did it (to gain function in a non-
| pathogenic system) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24934472/
| "we substituted one of four amino acids (Asp, His, Asn, Gln)
| at each of the 12 ligating positions because these amino
| acids are alternative coordinating residues in otherwise
| conserved-cysteine positions found in a broad survey of NiFe
| hydrogenase sequences."
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| What's the most likely theory in your opinion? The nearby
| fish market?
|
| What sounds more likely, a bat in the fish market of Wuhan or
| the influenza lab next to it?
| smallerfish wrote:
| Not a fish market.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KZ2b0Pc3I
| smsm42 wrote:
| Given there's no other plausible explanation ("bat soup from
| wet market" theory is completely laughable to anybody who
| bothers to look closely, and there's no viable path
| identified that doesn't involve Wuhan labs in one way or
| another) - it's as much "just a theory" as evolution is "just
| a theory". Sure, if you work really hard and ignore a lot of
| facts and have very active imagination, you could imagine
| some alternative scenario. But the level of proof and
| agreeing with available facts in this theory would be way
| lower than in the theory that admits it came through the
| Wuhan lab. How did it happen - which accident led to it,
| which rules were bent, who didn't report feeling sick and who
| was bitten by a bat but didn't want to talk about it out of
| fear of losing their job, did messing with the virus genome
| and GoF research play a role and how big the role was - we
| don't know and probably never will. But calling it the most
| likely theory is not "going too far" - it's just admitting
| the evidence we have and looking at it objectively and not
| trying to fit the facts into predetermined conclusion because
| we don't like the one that the facts suggest.
| paulpauper wrote:
| It has been now almost 2 years and still no closure or definitive
| explanation about where Covid came from? It would seem as if
| nothing changed . You have all these investigators ,scientists,
| and reporters but no progress it seems.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| It took 15 years to find the animal reservoir for the original
| SARS virus: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
| cblconfederate wrote:
| TBH this is not a scientifically very interesting question.
| It's quite likely that if one wanted to make this virus they
| could have. It doesnt appear to be the pinnacle of
| bioengineering so scientists are not curious to find out how
| they did it, if they did. And lab standards are already
| stringent, so leaks will keep happening. I don't believe the
| virus was leaked, not because it couldn't have but because it's
| equally probable that it's natural. And i 'd hate to see even
| slower progress in biology because of new safety standards that
| limit the number of people who can work in a wet lab.
|
| It's a politically interesting question though.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > And lab standards are already stringent, so leaks will keep
| happening. I don't believe the virus was leaked, not because
| it couldn't have but because it's equally probable that it's
| natural.
|
| So you're not interested in knowing whether it was a leak, or
| if it was, whether it was accidental, and you're not at all
| interested in making bio labs more secure (which one might
| be, if one knew it was a lab leak!)?!
|
| So... no need to improve, just let it keep happening?
|
| And you don't think there's any interest in the science
| behind making a custom virus, or spreading it?
|
| OK, fine, you're not interested. Ah, but:
|
| > so scientists are not curious to find out how they did it,
| if they did
|
| All scientists? Most? A significant number of them?
|
| Are you saying no one should be curious about this, or just
| that you aren't?
|
| > It's a politically interesting question though.
|
| Ah, so _do_ investigate? I can 't tell what you meant.
| teejmya wrote:
| https://archive.md/8hDJt
| nice_byte wrote:
| i don't understand why the so-called "lab leak theory" of origin
| for sars-cov2 is treated as some sort of conspiracy theory. it is
| completely plausible, and things like this have happened in the
| past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak), not
| due to malice but due to incompetence.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Because people get polarized and are incapable of nuance.
|
| It's important to remember what some of the lab leak theories
| have said:
|
| - that it is a engineered bioweapon
|
| - that it is genetically altered to contain parts of HIV
|
| - that it was intentionally released during the 2019 military
| games
|
| Once in a camp it is difficult to accept nuance.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Not only it is plausible, it's very very likely. What are the
| odds that a lab that works on gain of function of Corona
| viruses is the exact place where the epidemic started?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| The "exact place" the epidemic was discovered is in Wuhan,
| which is also where the lab is. That's a _correlation,_ and
| clearly worth investigating, but it 's not in and of itself
| proof.
|
| I was originally dismissive of the "lab leak hypothesis", in
| no small part because of how quickly it got caught up in
| politics. I'm less so now, but I do think it's important to
| remember that when we ask "how likely is it that a novel
| coronavirus epidemic would start in a city that also has a
| laboratory working with novel coronaviruses and it just be a
| coincidence," the answer may be "not very" if the city with
| the laboratory is the size of, say, Frederick, Maryland
| (78,000), but "maybe more than you think" if it's the size of
| New York City (8.8M).
|
| The lab leak idea bears further investigation, but
| "authorities have been too dismissive of that" shouldn't lead
| us to assume "well, it was obviously a lab leak."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Because it's completely untestable and short of someone
| "admitting" it we will never know for sure.
|
| So whether you believe it or not depends entirely on you're
| prejudices. I'm prejudiced not to but others may feed
| differently.
|
| And it makes absolutely no difference at all. You still need a
| vaccine, you still need lockdowns and quarantines and to manage
| your healthcare. And we should all be taking action on China
| whether it's incompetence (around food hygiene) or incompetence
| (around bio hazard management).
|
| This is why I hate the whole Lab Leak thing. It's people
| "straining out a knat and swallowing a camel". It's a
| distraction and it unnecessarily complicates messaging and
| discussion that can be pretty vital.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| It absolutely makes a difference, because we need to stop
| this from happening again. We can't just accept that labs are
| going to continue to release dangerous viruses and then just
| deal with the effects every time.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The issue here is China. My evidence for this is that this
| keeps happening in China (SARS etc).
|
| So if it's lab leak, the problem isn't the US or Russia or
| Butan doing lab work. It's China doing lab work insecurely.
|
| And if it's a food hygiene thing, it's not a world food
| hygiene thing, it's a Chinese food hygiene thing.
|
| So the action here is to sanction the fuck out of China.
| And that is true whether it's lab leaked or zoonotic or any
| other unimaginable source.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| Uh... are you forgetting about a thing called H1N1?
| Granted, it wasn't as dangerous as COVID, but that
| originated in the good ol' US of A. I wouldn't be so
| quick to jump to harsh ideas just for the sake of it -
| this could have happened in any country really - all you
| need is human interaction with animals and enough time.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > Because it's completely untestable and short of someone
| "admitting" it we will never know for sure.
|
| What a weird assertion.
|
| It would be perfectly testable in any democratic country. Set
| up an independent commission, give access to the lab's
| complete files, perform a lot of tests on samples held there.
| That's exactly what would happen. Opposition parties would be
| demonstrating non stop demanding answers.
|
| Instead this is China, a communist dictatorship with, on top
| of that, a strong culture of never losing face. It's only
| untestable because of that, not for epistemological reasons.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| So it's testable, but only if we overthrow the CCP, make
| China a functional democracy, change Chinese culture to
| encourage openness, seize the records before they destroy
| them (which them might already have) and if we can't find
| those records or they say nothing incriminating, we accept
| tthat they're innocent because abcence of evidence is
| evidence of abcense?
|
| Sounds untestable to me...
| himinlomax wrote:
| In the context of a scientific hypothesis, "untestable"
| means that it can't be tested, not that someone doesn't
| want it to be tested. The fact that someone really really
| really doesn't want it to be tested does not make it
| untestable. It makes it untested but eminently testable.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| The pushback on the lab leak theory happens because proponents
| of the lab leak theory are pushing that theory in bad faith. If
| there's a lab leak, then they can excuse mis-handling of the
| USA COVID response.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Malice is also completely plausible. Biowarfare is like
| chemical and nuclear warfare, it's not new, it has been used
| before, and it probably will be used again.
| darkerside wrote:
| Hanlon's Razor says, never attribute to malice that which is
| adequately explained by stupidity.
|
| In this case, the malice explanation demands stupidity
| because it was released in their own city. Not sure what
| Hanlon would say about that.
| notahacker wrote:
| Not to mention the stupidity of developing what would
| surely be the least useful bioweapon in history (most
| people of fighting age get mild and brief symptoms or no
| symptoms, but it's infectious enough to get back to your
| own population and kill similar proportions of your own
| vulnerable before you figure out how to deal with it)
| mcculley wrote:
| Also the U.S. Army lost control of some anthrax in 2001:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
| sterlind wrote:
| that whole saga was so fascinating. the culprit ended up
| (likely) being one of the scientists involved, with the
| motive of justifying funding into anthrax research. because
| of the incredibly low mutation rate of anthrax, they couldn't
| identify the strain by DNA testing.
|
| they had to do new science to fingerprint strains based on
| the quantities of different populations in the samples vs.
| the bottles - an investigation the culprit himself was
| involved in. as they uncovered the flask responsible and the
| very limited number of people who could get their hands on
| it, the attacker killed himself.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Has a virus ever leaked from a lab whose existence (or ability
| to transmit along humans) had not previously been known? Surely
| the vast majority of new human-infecting viruses have been
| novel mutations that happened naturally.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| For the same reason we were influenced to used COVID-19 as a
| name rather the presumed geographical place of origin as is
| traditionally done.
| gennarro wrote:
| Presumably people are being more careful now. Would like to see
| some sort of news or legislation about this but I'm sure it's
| unlikely.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And what kind of legislation would tickle your fancy?
| Intentional release is already legislated against. How do you
| legislate the prevention of accidents? Are you specifically
| talking about disclosure? I can get on board with that, but
| I'd be shocked if there's not already legislation around
| that.
|
| Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how
| does that apply to a foreign country?
| merpnderp wrote:
| Well for starters, the reason a lot of this research was
| pushed to China was congress had grown tired of finding
| ways to punish the CDC for lab leaks and mistakes here in
| the US. It was only recently that the CDC had been allowed
| to restart a lot of its more dangerous research. So how
| about the US stop funding dangerous research regardless of
| where it is at?
|
| Either the lab leak was true and this was a self-inflicted
| wound, or it was highly suspicious and uselessly dangerous
| research, as it didn't help us stop the pandemic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But in very weird round about way, it did allow us to see
| that mRNA technology is viable. So, happy little
| accident? Apologies to Bob.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I used to think Mission:Impossible 2 was ridiculous, now
| it's one of my favorites.
| tombert wrote:
| I know basically nothing about foreign policy at all, but
| just in the "tombert thought experiment" land I'm going to
| give my "asshole opinion" [1].
|
| -----------
|
| > Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how
| does that apply to a foreign country?
|
| Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade
| agreement/embargo on countries that don't follow a minimum
| level of disclosure/safety protocol? E.g. if country A is
| shown to have covered up a massive lab leak, we impose some
| kind of tariff on them for N days.
|
| Obviously there are no easy solutions to problems like
| this, but I think that would be the place I start, because
| obviously US law doesn't really apply to places outside of
| the US; the only thing we could do (at least the only thing
| that I could think of) that's even close to punitive
| enforcement would be to apply leverage.
|
| [1] "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one and
| most of them stink"
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade
| agreement/embargo
|
| Imagine, if you will, a scenario where one country is
| manufacturing such a large percentage of products so that
| an embargo would cause massive disruptions to pretty much
| everyone everywhere. Now imagine that country being the
| suspect in a situation where the punishment is that very
| embargo. What do you do?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > And what kind of legislation would tickle your fancy?
| Intentional release is already legislated against. How do
| you legislate the prevention of accidents?
|
| That's a ridiculous line of reasoning: legislation helps
| mitigate accidents all the time.
|
| Pilots don't _want_ their bird to fall out of the sky, and
| yet legislation around pilot training, practices and
| certification limited the number of accidents.
| redog wrote:
| > Presumably people are being more careful now
|
| Probably so, but just like hollywood and guns.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think to some extent our media has developed an attitude
| towards inconvenient ideas that they are conspiracies. They
| can't discuss stuff like that without emphasizing how totally
| not true they are. I am not saying it is or isn't true but that
| the media will tend to suggest inconvenient stuff is not true.
| callmeal wrote:
| >i don't understand why the so-called "lab leak theory" of
| origin for sars-cov2 is treated as some sort of conspiracy
| theory.
|
| Because wildlife->human is a lot more plausible than that.
| Consider for instance a novel mutation that arises from [0],
| transmitted to humans and is coincidentally discovered near a
| lab that was researching this disease. Would that also be
| considered a 'lab leak'?
|
| https://www.wbur.org/npr/1054224204/how-sars-cov-2-in-americ...
| Ambolia wrote:
| Lab leak doesn't mean modified virus, and yeah those types of
| bats don't exist anywhere near Wuhan except inside that lab.
| TTPrograms wrote:
| If the lab leak was real, covering it up to the extent they did
| requires a literal conspiracy (not to mention hypothetical
| function gain research). In the absence of concrete evidence,
| it is quite literally a conspiracy theory.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with literally conspiracy theories
| when literal conspiracies are likely.
| TTPrograms wrote:
| The problem with literal conspiracies is that the
| probability of public disclosure increases exponentially
| with the number of people who are "in" on the conspiracy.
| This is why a priori one typically assigns low likelihood
| to them (especially if they require a large number of
| conspirators).
| burnished wrote:
| I'm under the impression that the viral precursor they were
| expecting to find in animal populations has not been found
| (and that if it were a natural occurrence it would have been
| found) and that at least one researcher at the Wuhan lab had
| previously proposed gain of function research like this
| before. I'm sure stranger coincidences have happened but with
| that in mind I think its fair to elevate a lab leak theory
| from 'premature/purely political in intent' to 'reasonable'.
| varjag wrote:
| There is no evidence of animal host transmission either. Does
| it make it literally a conspiracy theory too?
| TTPrograms wrote:
| Do you believe animals literally conspired to transmit to
| humans?
|
| I believe what you're describing is rather "the coordinated
| malevolent animal transmission theory".
| varjag wrote:
| What does it even supposed to mean? The lab theory is not
| that humans conspired to spread the virus, but it
| happened due to negligence. What's happening then is a
| cover-up, not a conspiracy.
|
| Cover-up is the default mode of handling failure in an
| aspiring Communist state. When a major accident happens
| that can be covered up, it will be covered up.
|
| The above mentioned Sverdlovsk outbreak was presented as
| natural as well: the official culprit was _cough_ a wet
| market nearby _cough_. Took 13 years and the dissolution
| of USSR to admit the cover-up.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| I mean... if you think the animals actually maliciously
| conspired I suppose
| varjag wrote:
| Do you _really_ suppose the lab theory is Wuhan
| virologists conspiring to spread the virus?
| legolas2412 wrote:
| Hypothetical function gain research?
|
| You mean the literal proposal to put furin cleavage sites on
| coronavirus collected in the wild, filed for a grant in 2018,
| which was rejected for being too dangerous. Also, SARS-Cov-2
| is the only beta coronavirus with a furin cleavage site. And
| if you have ever been anywhere near academic grant process,
| you'll know that you use a previous grant to do the next
| grant work, as preliminary results.
|
| So tell me it is just a coincidence that just after writing
| this grant proposal in 2018 to take coronavirus in the wild
| and putting furin cleavage sites on them, the first beta
| coronavirus with a furin cleavage site turns up _in the same
| place_ right next to the lab, right after they moved their
| sister BSL-2 lab.
| [deleted]
| sobkas wrote:
| I don't know how to think about this article
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...
|
| It looks bad
| wwweston wrote:
| Because it's almost inherently conspiracy fodder, true or not.
|
| It tickles the part of human psychology that looks for threat
| _agents_ , rather than just threats.
|
| Lots of us here on the more analytical side might have trouble
| understanding that fully, especially if we relate to Fauci's
| early 2020 statements which more or less amount to "it doesn't
| really matter which plausible origin turns out to be the case,
| either way the task in front of us is to figure out how to
| mitigate the damage and address the virus."
|
| It _could_ have been a lab leak. It _could_ have been (and now
| looks more likely to have been [0][1]) natural spillover from
| increasing contact with zoonotic reservoirs. What 's the
| difference?
|
| The answer to that question on a practical level is re-thinking
| safety protocols for related research (and perhaps a
| conversation about the risks of conducting viral research vs
| the risks of viral ignorance).
|
| On a less practical level, though, the answer is that it
| prompts inhabiting a narrative where they key issue is human
| threat agents.
|
| The irony is that many of the people who choose that as the
| most important thing to pay attention seem slower to consider
| how human threat agents might use that narrative.
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/18/coronavirus...
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-many-
| scientists-...
| zimbatm wrote:
| Imagine if a policeman was saying the same thing about a
| crime; why investigate, finding the culprit is only
| conspiracy fodder, let's only take care of the victims.
|
| Not investigating, and hiding the truth is what gives room
| for conspiracies to grow.
|
| Also how can we better understand and prevent pandemics
| whithout understanding where they come from. Wasn't the
| coronavirus research lab founded on that premise?
| akavel wrote:
| I don't find the parallel good. Trying to invent a better
| one, I thought I'd say the coronavirus situation is IMO
| more like a question of whether, say, some particular
| volcano's explosion was natural, or human-induced.
|
| As such, one can either focus on generally being more
| prepared against volcano explosions, or focus on trying to
| find a person among volcano researchers and tourists who
| may have done something to tickle the volcano to explode.
|
| I mean, it's sure also not a perfect analogy; but how I see
| it, focusing on preparedness and handling of a situation
| that _does_ happen naturally from time to time for sure,
| sounds to me like a sensible choice to focus effort into.
| With that said, totally, if there 's some possibility it
| might have been human-induced, it makes sense to try and
| track and prevent it in the future; thing is, me
| personally, and I would risk theorizing that also many
| other people, am strongly afraid of such approach too
| quickly and too easily turning into a witch-hunt, anti-XYZ
| propaganda, and stirring hate by unscrupulous people - with
| scapegoating seemingly socially much easier to turn
| towards, than tiresome and "boring" epidemologic
| preparedness and discipline.
| czzr wrote:
| A better analogy is a forest fire - perhaps a human
| triggered it, maybe it was lightening. Whichever caused
| this specific fire, you cannot build a fire prevention
| strategy solely around stopping people lighting fires.
| echelon wrote:
| > Because it's almost inherently conspiracy fodder, true or
| not.
|
| No it's not! Reasonably minded persons consider this entirely
| plausible.
|
| The way the conversation is being actively steered away from
| this topic is concerning.
|
| > It could have been a lab leak. It could have been (and now
| looks more likely to have been [0][1]) natural spillover from
| increasing contact with zoonotic reservoirs. What's the
| difference?
|
| There's a huge difference. Each scenario has different
| lessons to learn, culpability, etc.
| wwweston wrote:
| > No it's not! Reasonably minded persons consider this
| entirely plausible.
|
| I didn't say it was implausible. In fact, I have at least
| one sentence in my comment that acknowledges it is
| plausible to _entertain_. It doesn 't appear to be
| plausible as a _conclusion_ (see the two articles I linked,
| which _do_ include sources who initially wanted to explore
| the lab leak theory), but it was plausible enough as a
| hypothesis.
|
| What I said is that _even if it is the truth_ , it evokes
| conspiracy-oriented thinking in a specific way, and
| elaborated on the dynamic.
|
| > Each scenario has different lessons to learn,
| culpability, etc.
|
| "Culpability" -- thank you for reinforcing my point about
| human threat agents. And also regarding "lessons to learn",
| or as I put it, managing risks in viral research vs the
| risks of not doing viral research... which of course is a
| conversation that goes on anyway.
| krinchan wrote:
| I have to agree. The desperation to "blame China" seems
| to be driven by people with fantasies about going to war
| with China. Not even economic war with China beyond
| current tensions is possible without completely wrecking
| the economy in ways that will take all of us but the
| Bezos of the world down. Very little of this seems
| grounded in reality or good faith desire to know the
| truth of the matter.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >There's a huge difference. Each scenario has different
| lessons to learn, culpability, etc.
|
| Perspective matters. Yes, learning to not have it happen
| again is an ideal thing. However, from Fauci's point of
| view at the time and his role, the how/why absolutely
| didn't matter as he stated.
| beervirus wrote:
| There are some thoughts you just aren't allowed to think, lest
| you be labeled a trump-supporting nazi racist.
| Giorgi wrote:
| It is Hacker News trope really, more and more evidence mounts
| that it was indeed - a lab leak, there has been lengthy
| research reports from journalists on this matter, but Hacker
| News remains in doubt. Which is strange, one kind of expects
| Hackers to weight everything and see if theory withholds
| scrutiny.
|
| Same thing happens with that ultrasound attack against US
| diplomates in Cuba, Hacker news users claim it was just
| grasshopers while more and more evidence mounts it was a
| Russian attack.
| hlwez wrote:
| NIH admitted to funding gain of function research at Wuhan.
|
| Done. Over. Period.
| wwweston wrote:
| > more and more evidence mounts that it was indeed - a lab
| leak
|
| Perhaps you mean "less and less evidence"?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/18/coronavirus.
| ..
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/why-many-
| scientists-...
| Giorgi wrote:
| No I mean more and more evidence:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-
| revi...
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-lab-leak-
| theo...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline
| -...
| wwweston wrote:
| If you read the links I've posted, you'll note at least
| two things about them:
|
| 1) They include observation from figures who _started_
| open to the idea that the lab leak hypothesis was
| plausible enough to explore, but have concluded that it
| 's unlikely (and explain why)
|
| 2) They are more recent
| drran wrote:
| If you read links you've posted, you'll note that the
| BSL4 lab in Wuhan, China is ruled out only. Did they rule
| out <<Vector>> BSL4 lab in Novosibirsk, RF?
| knownjorbist wrote:
| Why would you link older articles as though they're part
| of a trend, when the person you responded to had more
| recent information to share?
| [deleted]
| bedhead wrote:
| Because political ideals. The left treats this as a conspiracy
| because:
|
| (1) Trump initially blamed COVID on China and the ethos of the
| left is that Trump isn't ever allowed to be right, and "resist"
| means unconditionally doing the opposite. So once Trump said
| it, half the country unplugged their brains.
|
| (2) It's no fun to blame a lab in Wuhan when the left could
| instead blame DeSantis/Republicans/Unvaxxed.
|
| (3) The US is kinda wimpy about a real fight over this,
| regardless of who is in office. Xi would tell Biden (or
| whoever) to pound sand if the US ever really tried
| investigating this and seeking some sort of retribution. Again,
| the path of least resistance is to stick one's head in the sand
| and find a convenient scapegoat like Joe Rogan or whatever.
|
| (4) Too many people have already definitively declared it
| impossible so they're pot committed to their position even if
| it's wrong, no different than mask efficacy (zero). There have
| been a couple issues where one side went all-in so there's no
| reversal or even slight walking back because the repetitional
| risk is too high.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| You pretty much nailed it. The left is so deranged in their
| hatred, they can't consider that this explanation isn't just
| plausible, but very likely.
| knownjorbist wrote:
| The irony in this statement is palpable. You're so
| obviously ready to confirm your priors that you'll actively
| go out of your way to avoid other plausible explanations.
| himinlomax wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there was a conspiracy. Not a conspiracy to
| create a pandemic, but a conspiracy to hide an accident due
| to incompetence. Not all conspiracies are myths, just
| consider Watergate: there was a conspiracy to hide Nixon's
| shenanigans. The only difference is that one happened in a
| dictatorship while the other happened in a democracy with a
| free press.
| bedhead wrote:
| Oh I agree, at a bare minimum there's nothing even remotely
| wacky about the lab leak theory. I'm just explaining why
| half the country has counterintuitively decided to brand it
| as lunatic fringe conspiracy rather than it being self-
| evidently plausible if not likely.
| cardosof wrote:
| I don't understand why lab leak isn't, like, the first or most
| important investigative line. It's just a matter of asking and
| checking - thoroughly - every person and every machine involved
| with the lab in that timeframe. After all, "the disease is the
| same name as the lab!" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8
| ayngg wrote:
| iirc it is because it heavily implicates both Peter Daszak,
| who was the head of the UN investigation of the Lab Leak
| theory, who orchestrated the Lancet letter denouncing the Lab
| Leak theory, who has now been shown to have conducted gain of
| function research on bat coronaviruses at the WIV, and Fauci
| who provided funding for this through Daszak's EcoHeath
| Alliance and NHAID after there was some sort of restriction
| on that kind of research stateside. On top of that China is
| completely uncooperative with the effort and wouldn't provide
| any evidence to implicate themselves.
| k4c9x wrote:
| It never really was. Reasonable conversations were being had,
| just not on polarized platforms. People's knee-jerk reactions
| to downvoting and "cancelling" every thing that mentioned it,
| in good faith or bad, last year was a direct response to the
| powers-that-were choosing the "China did it (maybe on purpose)"
| narrative to misdirect peoples anger and frustration.
|
| If those same people would have said things like "obviously,
| it's _possible_ it was leaked from a lab, we're going to work
| on finding that out and let you know what we find as we do. In
| the mean time, here's what we're going to do about the
| immediate problems we're facing..." and ended it there, there
| wouldn't have been any backlash. That's what going on now, and
| that's why this post (good or bad, I can't say, I can't access
| it) wasn't flagged into oblivion the second it hit the front
| page.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| When one slightly orange tinted guy can effectively ban
| discussion of any topic on all platforms by vaguely
| mentioning it, the problem is not that guy, it is everybody
| else.
| [deleted]
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Simple: MSM cast it as a whacko theory because Trump suggested
| it
| kipchak wrote:
| Pretty much everyone involved stands to lose from it proving to
| be true that a lab leak occurred. China looks bad, the CDC/US
| looks bad, researchers look bad, EcoHealth Alliance looks
| bad[1], the lancelet looks bad.[2] Heck even politifact and
| factcheck.org reported the idea as debunked for the first year
| or so, and Facebook for around the same time took down content
| with that angle.[3] It would also likely result in a backlash
| against interest in GOF research in general.
|
| The only group that stands to benefit are those who benefit by
| making those groups look bad, who will also unfortunately
| exaggerate their claims for greater effect.
|
| [1]https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656
|
| [2]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6
| ...
|
| [3]https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/facebook-ban-
| covid-...
| nbardy wrote:
| This is a spot on description. It's also the sad truth of why
| our institutions are decaying.
|
| They have become heavily biased towards self-preservation
| over function.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The real question is why self-preservation cannot best be
| obtained through functioning.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| because organizations are made up of people and people
| are imperfect. Eventually someone is bound to screw up
| large enough to put an organization's survival at risk.
| And the natural response by other members to try and
| suppress knowledge to ensure survival. That of course
| just makes things worse.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| Isn't that because there is insufficient jeopardy for
| covering up a mistake?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Good leaders are merciful to sins confessed and decisive
| towards sins discovered.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| People don't like to change and a lot of the time for
| institutions to continue existing they need a radical
| shift in their approach or outlook.
| [deleted]
| christkv wrote:
| The other problem is the damage they have done to the
| institutions and the publics trust. Even if it's a natural
| event they all have to go. Who can trust them to tell the
| truth the next time. They have burned those bridges.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| > The only group that stands to benefit are those who benefit
| by making those groups look bad, who will also unfortunately
| exaggerate their claims for greater effect.
|
| Does this also hold for Root Cause Analysis?
| kipchak wrote:
| Assuming there was a lab leak, the root cause to me would
| seem to be organizations overestimating the benefit from
| GOF research compared to the risks. Why that happened is a
| bit harder to answer. A couple potential explanations are a
| leak was actually a one in a million chance (this seems
| unlikely given past issues)[1], there is some extreme
| benefit we just haven't seen yet (also seems somewhat
| unlikely) or organizations are likely to accept risks if it
| means everyone gets to keep their jobs and grants keep
| coming in.
|
| How to fix that problem is difficult, as gain of function
| research is complicated and obscure enough to be off the
| radar of most people until something goes wrong, so
| questioning scientific orthodoxy is somewhat impossible for
| the average person. I'm not sure what can be done about it,
| other than those with respectable credentials advocating
| for transparency and and regular people maintaining a
| healthy sense of curiosity.
|
| [1]https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=837679
| richardw wrote:
| What looks bad is having millions of people die and not
| learning how to prevent it in future. This should be a
| blameless post-mortem. Shit went wrong, this is how we fix
| it. Truth and reconciliation, not hide-behind-feels. The
| people who want to apportion blame grow stronger from all
| this cat and mouse.
| coolspot wrote:
| Governments likely have it in form of top-secret
| intelligence reports for top decision makers.
| [deleted]
| mistermann wrote:
| _Or so logic would suggest_ , but observation suggest
| otherwise, at least for ~mainstream/normal people.
| sauwan wrote:
| I was with you up to here:
|
| >The only group that stands to benefit are those who benefit
| by making those groups look bad
|
| I mean, collectively as humans we stand to benefit from
| knowing what happened so we can make more informed cost
| benefit decisions in the future about conducting risky
| research (if that's what happened).
|
| There's going to be quite a bit more externalizing risk while
| "privatizing" (even if it's nation states) gains in the
| future with bio-engineering, so these conversations should be
| had.
| colpabar wrote:
| > I mean, collectively as humans we stand to benefit from
| knowing what happened so we can make more informed cost
| benefit decisions in the future about conducting risky
| research (if that's what happened).
|
| You're not wrong, but I think what you're missing is that
| the risky research was funded (in part) by the us federal
| government, and no one voted for that in the first place.
| So even if we were all enlightened, what could we change?
| So many people _still_ don 't even know that there was a
| lab studying coronaviruses in wuhan.
| richardw wrote:
| You could highlight all the research being conducted in
| future so more stakeholders can weigh in on the risks.
| You can raise the requirements for conducting such
| research, or in extreme cases prevent it from being done.
| The assumption that "nothing can be done" has to be the
| worst approach, given the multitude of alternatives.
| Simply trying increases the odds that improvements are
| found.
| csee wrote:
| They voted for it via representative democracy. If it
| comes out that there was a leak and politicians still
| want to fund this kind of thing, then they'll get less
| votes.
| darkerside wrote:
| Nobody votes for most things in a representative
| democracy. I don't think you'd be surprised to know that
| bad press is effective at changing behavior.
|
| The notable exception is Donald Trump, whose superpower
| is that shame causes him to double down. He's the
| kryptonite for a representative democracy. Just because
| of that, I'll never understand why people voted him in.
| edgyquant wrote:
| People voted for it indirectly and if they knew that the
| virus originated because of that (I'm not saying it did,
| I have no idea) it would allow them to pressure
| politicians in insuring it never happens again.
| kipchak wrote:
| I definitely agree that there's good reason to know what
| actually happened, if for nothing else for the sake of long
| term trust in institutions. Instead of group, something
| more like organizations and institutions with the ability
| to investigate and hold people accountable would probably
| be more accurate.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I want to disagree with you and say it doesn't matter, but
| you're definitely right hiding bad situations is in the
| playbook of the authoritarian and should have no place in
| our society.
| darkerside wrote:
| We have always been at war with Eurasia
| csee wrote:
| It matters in the same way that understanding why a plane
| crashed matters. If you can't figure out why a plane
| crashed then you can't improve flight safety much.
| inciampati wrote:
| This is a helpful apolitical perspective. We need to
| improve social safety. But the pandemic is different in
| scope. It's not that the plane crashed. Rather, our
| technology "may have" allowed us to accidentally make a
| pandemic. It's as if no plane crash had ever occurred
| before, and now we made one happen. If we understand what
| really happened, we might see this event as bringing us
| into a new era in our evolution. The fact that we can
| imagine this to be the case even while firmly denying it
| to be what happened it's a firm sign that the times have
| changed.
| baby wrote:
| Transparency is the most important tool in becoming a
| better society.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I mean, collectively as humans we stand to benefit from
| knowing what happened so we can make more informed cost
| benefit decisions in the future about conducting risky
| research (if that's what happened).
|
| I really don't think so. Knowing what actually happened
| makes no difference. What is important is knowing what
| problems exist and what can possibly happen as a
| consequence of them.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" I really don't think so. Knowing what actually
| happened makes no difference. What is important is
| knowing what problems exist and what can possibly happen
| as a consequence of them."_
|
| Doing a root cause analysis is useful, because it
| provides you with information about certain modes of
| failure and their causes. Ignoring past failures, and
| using a 'tabula rasa' approach will deprive decision-
| makers of valuable information, and lead to repeating
| past errors.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| That's such a diffuse benefit that you'd need to compare it
| to other things that benefit literally everyone alive - for
| example, the environment which sustains our existence - to
| determine how effective a motivator that is.
|
| It's not looking great.
| jdjdjrj wrote:
| Politifact and factcheck get plenty of things wrong so I
| wouldn't say "heck even" to that. These websites are a joke.
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| It's plausible, sure, but it'll never be proven, especially at
| this distance.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Because the stupiderati immediately jump from that to it being
| deliberate. It makes it very hard to talk about in an open
| community.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Wouldn't the type of heated rhetoric you used be part of why
| it is difficult to talk about?
| tunesmith wrote:
| Fine, referring to them as "stupiderati" was over the line.
| But generally, it is the people who hear "lab leak" and
| immediately jump to the conclusion that it was 100%
| deliberate that make it difficult to talk about.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| By cherry-picking that particular lab leak, you're making it
| look like this only happens in 'other' countries. Plenty of lab
| leaks have happened right here in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
| mackal wrote:
| I think part of the push back from the lab leak theory is that
| it's often accompanied by lab created and leaked. I'm far from
| an expert, but from what I understand, there are 0 signs it was
| lab created. Now isolated from the wild in a lab and then
| leaked is still considered possible, but they just don't know.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| _> ...the so-called "lab leak theory" of origin for sars-cov2_
|
| That isn't what this article is about.
|
| I thought the article actually did a real public service by
| moving the discussion beyond whether Covid did or didn't emerge
| from the Wuhan market. Because either way, it's much much more
| important to say, "how could we, in the future, prevent the
| scenario of a lab leak from happening."
|
| It keeps the discussion focused on what's important.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >i don't understand why the so-called "lab leak theory" of
| origin for sars-cov2 is treated as some sort of conspiracy
| theory. it is completely plausible, and things like this have
| happened in the past
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak), not
| due to malice but due to incompetence.
|
| It's remarkable how quickly they settled on bats and everything
| but this was misinformation that would get you banned from
| various american tech companies.
|
| It's also remarkable how quickly they moved to shutdown many
| discussions. The lab leak only months earlier from Canada where
| a chinese national shipped viruses to wuhan.
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e...
|
| There's no evidence of coronavirus being involved at all with
| the canadian lady, but they sure did call it conspiracy theory
| and shutdown talks quick.
|
| Throw this in context of a pissing match with China and Canada.
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/26/china/meng-wanzhou-china-arri...
| and China in return arresting and putting Canada diplomats on
| death row.
|
| I think lots of answers came along from fauci's emails. All of
| these are not coincidences and China is probably not the source
| of covid. Hence why there was such a quick reaction to blame
| china.
|
| Blame Canada!
| hiddencost wrote:
| Most of the people pushing the lab leak hypothesis have the
| specific goal of fomenting anti China sentiment. Trump ignored
| covid despite the extensive advice of experts and then tried to
| distract from his failure by trying to foment war with China.
| This argument is an extension of that.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| What Trump believes or uses for his political gain does not
| magically become incorrect by virtue of being believed or
| used by Trump. I don't think you're trying to suggest
| anything as silly as that, but still worth explicitly
| pointing out.
|
| Trumpian tempests should remain in a teapot of their own, and
| lab leak theory should be discussed on its own merit.
| Xenophobia innuendos and "but Trump" dog whistles are
| unhelpful in sussing out the truth.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What Trump believes or uses for his political gain does
| not magically become incorrect by virtue of being believed
| or used by Trump.
|
| OTOH, I will tell you that I definitely look at what my
| daughter says with a far more critical eye than I do what
| my son says, because my daughter has a track record of
| lying and my son does not.
| s5300 wrote:
| Probably more so trying to distract from the fact he's over
| $200m in debt to the CCP. Wouldn't want anybody looking too
| deeply into that.
| notacoward wrote:
| Nobody associates it with a conspiracy theory just because it
| gets mentioned. That happens because the people most
| aggressively pushing it online often make that association
| _themselves_. In between demands for expensive new
| investigations, they often veer off into talk of Dasczak is
| part of a vast gain-of-function underground and Fauci is
| helping them cover it up, and Big Pharma is pushing vaccines
| because they can 't make a profit from ivermectin, and
| something something about discouraging masks at the start of
| the pandemic, and mask/vaccine mandates are somehow part of a
| plot to destroy America, and so on _ad nauseam_. Seen plenty of
| it right here. Such people might be a small minority of the
| people who think we should look more closely at virus research
| standards, but they 're an incredibly visible minority and
| their stridency causes the whole issue to be framed in
| conspiracy-theory terms.
| dnautics wrote:
| What? Unless I'm mistaken, There is no GOF underground with
| Dasczak, it's very above ground (to be clear, the NIH didn't
| fund GOF on SARS-Cov2, just on... adjacent viruses). Don't
| know if Fauci is covering it up, but he certainly hasn't
| stepped forward to condemn Dasczak, even though the NIH
| already has condemned EcoHealthAllicance.
|
| It's also kind of insane that Dasczak was a lead signatory to
| the "this is not a lab leak" opinion piece without disclosing
| a MAJOR conflict of interest. He should have stayed out of
| it.
| merpnderp wrote:
| If you don't think a lot of people died early on in the US
| because the Surgeon General went on TV and said masks were
| basically useless for the average person, with every
| talk/news show running pieces about how you'd just touch a
| doorknob then your eye, and thus are more likely to get
| infected by wearing a mask, then you either can't remember
| what happened or are ideologically driven.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| But that's totally irrelevant to where the virus came from,
| unless you're arguing that there's a massive global
| conspiracy.
| merpnderp wrote:
| I was just pointing out that in his etc etc ad nausea
| example, at least one point the people he disagreed with
| were making was right. And they're partially right about
| the vaccine motivations which is to make money.
| Ivermectin doesn't need big pharma to make it look bad,
| but if ivermectin worked it wouldn't be a big change from
| historical norms for large corporate competition to
| downplay it. It's not some weird conspiracy theory to say
| big pharmaceutical companies have done shady stuff and
| broken laws to push their drugs.
| api wrote:
| Everyone I've seen discussing it treats it as possible. The
| "conspiracy theory" part comes in when people claim or speak as
| if it's proven when it absolutely is not. There is no smoking
| gun evidence for it, but it can't be ruled out either.
|
| That in itself is kind of scary though. It means a lab leak
| could happen silently and we may never correctly attribute it.
| elif wrote:
| NYT treating it like a conspiracy theory is consistent with
| their editorial deference to official government narratives.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| Marburg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Marburg_virus_outbr
| eak_in...) is another notable lab leak.
|
| Might be a better match in some ways as it was a previously
| unknown pathogen, from a previously unknown family of viruses,
| isolated only after several lab workers got sick.
| dls2016 wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/
|
| " The World Health Organization has confirmed that breaches
| of safety procedures on at least two occasions at one of
| Beijing's top virology laboratories were the probable cause
| of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
| there last month, which infected nine people, one of whom
| died."
|
| It even happened with a coronavirus in China before!
| asdff wrote:
| Because there is a whole contingent of people who take the
| argument in bad faith for xenophobic reasons and there is not a
| lot of solid evidence in this case to argue in good faith
| beyond "theoretically possible."
| umanwizard wrote:
| Whether unsavory people believe in something has zero bearing
| on whether it's true.
| fragmede wrote:
| Unfortunately, the unsavory people don't live in a vacuum
| separate from us. If it ends up being true, then it's true,
| and whomever is President at the time will do what they can
| do. If it ends up being false, however, the people
| (generally Asian Americans) who have been maimed, or killed
| by those unsavory people in the meanwhile don't get an
| undo. Continued discussion with no new real evidence, like
| the situation with Hillary Clinton's emails, is propaganda,
| pure and simple.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I dunno, I always though the lab leak theory was less
| racist than laying blame at the feet of the dietary
| habits of low-income chinese.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| It's almost as if everyone has forgotten that the wet
| market/eating strange things hypothesis was concocted by
| the Chinese government.
|
| You guys should see the propaganda du jour- the Chinese
| government claims covid comes from deer in North America.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Which was also based on equal amounts of flaky evidence
| guided by the people that didn't want to associate
| themselves to the acting President at the time and his
| party. These people left truth behind, butchered science,
| eroded trust and sacrificed their integrity. In tough
| times, our leadership didn't stand up for the truth.
|
| I think the society would be far better off if we
| completely cut out politics and make it super boring.
| Relentless push to put behind this tribal warfare and
| serve the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.
|
| Lex Fridman's interview with the NIH director was eye-
| opening. They're acting like children. Of course, you
| can't see how unpopular it was because Youtube has hidden
| the dislikes. The cocktail of Big Tech + ruling party is
| equally as scary to me as Trumpism.
| Loughla wrote:
| That's sort of covered by the second half, though
|
| >and there is not a lot of solid evidence in this case to
| argue in good faith beyond "theoretically possible."
|
| Also, bad faith arguments tend to be posited on the fact
| that they are incorrect. Otherwise they would just be
| arguments.
| himinlomax wrote:
| And hiding something because it's believed by bad people is
| going to make those bad people look like heroes when they
| turn out to have been right in this particular instance.
|
| If the goal is to make racists look good, that's a great
| plan.
|
| Personally I rate the plausibility of a lab leak at over 90%.
| Quick back of the envelope: there is one such lab in China,
| where there are about 100 cities with over 1 million
| inhabitants. The probability that a pandemic randomly
| appeared in any one of them is therefore 1%, or put another
| way, there is a 99% probability that it appeared in Wuhan
| because of a link to the lab. There has been no new
| information in the past two years to change that assessment.
| Gunax wrote:
| Sorry to grand-stand a bit, but I think the narrative is
| missing the point of the 'lab leak theory'.
|
| The 'lab leak' is actually a bit of a misnomer. What they
| really mean is that it was created/modified/bred intentionally,
| versus just being discovered in some bat cave or whatever.
|
| It's not the _leaking_ per se that is what worries people--it
| 's the idea that this has a human-created origin. It's an
| experiment or weapon which was accidentally leaked to the
| world.
| zionic wrote:
| Also the emails saying things like "this could do to virology
| what chernobyl did to nuclear science".
|
| They know their cushy careers and research grants are gone if
| they normalize the lab leak.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> They know their cushy careers and research grants are gone
| if they normalize the lab leak. _
|
| These sorts of comments on HN are always fascinating to me.
|
| Scientific researchers make $20K/yr for 6 years of their 20s,
| often working 60 hour - 80 hour weeks. If they are
| successful, around the age of 30 they will then make between
| $40K and $60K in a temporary, term-limited position (post-
| doc). This might repeat several times -- each more stressful
| than the last -- until they land a permanent job. Still
| working like dogs the whole time, btw. That final permanent
| job, which very few will ever actually get, probably pays
| between $60K and $100K. A very lucky few among the lucky few
| might make up to $200K by the time they turn 40, but most
| will never surpass $150K in their lives.
|
| My undergrad mentees all make $160K+ as 22 year olds, often
| get to $300K pretty quickly, and will max out in the >$500K
| range some time in their 30s.
|
| Software folks accusing life scientists of getting fat off of
| research grant money is really something else.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I've often found that when people take a _" follow the
| money, man"_ position on an argument, they are not in fact
| following the money. e.g., the arguments I used to see
| against anthropogenic global warming based on essentially
| the same idea you're pushing back on -- that it was a fraud
| perpetrated by climate scientists so they'd keep raking in
| the donations and grants. When I inquired as to why "follow
| the money" wouldn't in fact suggest far greater skepticism
| of oil companies in the debate, I never got much of a
| response.
| mjfl wrote:
| The people smart enough to conduct investigations into this
| know that the only outcomes will be harsher restrictions on lab
| research stateside without much consequences for China, and
| thus they are unmotivated.
| siva7 wrote:
| This is the unfortunate truth on the psychological side.
| There is simply no motivation to push the lab leak theory for
| those scientists involved. Not for the chinese because that
| would be their death sentence and not for the outside world
| because funding and restrictions will get a lot harsher. On
| the other side everyone can live with the other theories
| because they imply more research funding and no one has to
| die for political reasons.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Not for the chinese because that would be their death
| sentence
|
| I don't believe it would affect "the Chinese" at all, other
| than spending time to ladle out a new dose of conditioning
| for their own public.
| meibo wrote:
| Maybe they meant the death sentence for the team of
| scientists working on coronavirus research at the Wuhan
| virology lab, that surely must have had to make some kind
| of statement to the Chinese state if it did exist. I'm
| sure they have the greatest interest to leave the rest of
| the country and world in the dark.
| Ambolia wrote:
| We should have leashed very short both politicians and
| virologists after this disaster, but the blame game has been
| shifted very skillfully at every point, from anybody worrying
| about a pandemic, to anybody not worrying about it, to your
| neighbor who wears the mask wrong, to three guys in the
| middle of desert who didn't take the vaccine, while nobody
| with power ever answers about anything.
| nextos wrote:
| Well, but we certainly need to do something about this. SARS-
| CoV-2 is relatively mild compared to other potential lab
| leaks.
|
| It has nothing to do with taking an anti China stance, as
| this has happened elsewhere.
|
| It would also be advisable to investigate the early stages of
| the pandemic as clearly many parties were deliberately hiding
| information. This led to avoidable casualties and,
| ultimately, the whole pandemic might have been possible to
| contain.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" It has nothing to do with taking an anti China stance,
| as this has happened elsewhere."_
|
| This is a classic collective action problem, not some
| nationalistic thing (though some will believe or pretend it
| is). Each specific lab wants relatively lax rules and no
| consequences for failures, but everyone else needs higher
| standards.
| adt2bt wrote:
| If I had to guess, it's something along these lines (again I'm
| just guessing, these are general social sentiments that I
| observed over the past 2 years):
|
| 1. Trump mismanaged the pandemic, this resulted in cognitive
| dissonance amongst his supporters. (they like him but their
| brain doesn't like the feeling that it was wrong)
|
| 2. A 'convenient' explanation to avoid this dissonance is COVID
| is a Chinese bio-weapon. They (big bad China) released COVID to
| make Trump look bad and to kill Americans.
|
| 3. Liberals, seeing through this, push back on this generally
| unsubstantiated claim (at the time and potentially even now)
| that COVID is a bio-weapon. In the eyes of most, Liberals have
| taken the side of 'COVID is a natural random mutation, not a
| lab leak'.
|
| 4. Now whether or not it's a lab leak or natural is a political
| game, where your team wins depending on where the facts finally
| lie (or if you can manufacture enough support for your 'side').
|
| 5. See: Rand Paul v Fauci in various senate hearings about
| gain-of-function research and funding for a Wuhan lab &
| generally liberals trying not to talk about it because it would
| be another example of them 'lying' in the eyes of conservatives
| (think 'masks don't help' but alllll over again).
| umanwizard wrote:
| Spot on. Nearly everything these days gets shoehorned into
| the insane US culture war, including the origins of Covid.
| dnautics wrote:
| I don't buy this, obviously not an unbiased sample, but
| most individual liberals I know are on board with it being
| a lab leak. Can't necessarily say that about 'liberal
| leadership class' in the US, though.
| adt2bt wrote:
| (GP here) I generally agree with this. It's why I wrote
| 'in the eyes of most'. IMO liberals are bad at defining
| their own opinions in the court of public opinion, and
| often are viewed as !Conservative, even if their views
| are more nuanced.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| This seems like a pretty good take to me. As an American who
| cares a lot about having compelling reasons for my beliefs
| and opinions, it's so fucking exhausting.
|
| Lately, I've been getting more comfortable with just saying
| "I don't know" for the latest controversial topic. It's not
| great for making small talk though.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The bottom tier of society REALLY wants it to be out of malice.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It's like religion in the ancient days. When a plague or
| earthquake hit people didn't understand (didn't want to
| understand) that these are the effects of a giant mechanical
| system and not the fault of anyone. The ancients created gods
| to justify these things, modern people blame the great other.
|
| If you were French in the 1890s you'd love to blame any
| societal tragedy on Germans, if you were German in the 20s
| you'd be blaming France, etc.
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah. There are still plenty of people in modern times that
| want a singular scapegoat for an accident. And even people
| who think natural disasters are a result of god punishing
| us for allowing people to be homosexual
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It's politics.
|
| China needed to buy some time so that there wouldn't be
| pressure for sanctions due to covid, so all the Chinese shills
| started calling it a conspiracy theory.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I don't think so. Not that I believe it's impossible it
| originated in China from a lab accident, I think you should
| have proof before claiming that but okay. But when people
| started claiming it came from China they weren't doing so off
| of hard evidence or being rational. They were doing so
| because of xenophobia and nationalist pride and it's just
| easier to blame these problems on an other than it is to
| believe shit happens.
|
| Now this year there have been more scientific minded people
| who have proposed a pretty rational set of circumstances that
| it could have came from China, but
|
| 1. These circumstances are not proven and are little more
| than a hunch of what could be, and
|
| 2. The type of people who push the "Chinavirus" rhetoric
| aren't those same scientific minds thinking rationally and
| instead they've had their opinion slightly verified by more
| recent understanding (again, slightly, because there is no
| proof.)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > But when people started claiming it came from China they
| weren't doing so off of hard evidence or being rational.
|
| Here is the NIH director being asked uncomfortable
| questions and being completely irrational:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZE-SJShkE
|
| This comment summarizes it better than I can:
|
| > I'm curious why Dr. Collins believes so strongly that a
| lab leak was unlikely, that is his reasoning, given that he
| states SARS had leaked on at least a couple different
| occasions resulting in some deaths, yet was quickly
| contained. The non-answer to this question, or his
| reference to an investigation into the intermediary, which
| he admits has not yet been found and will take much time,
| are insufficient to address the elephant in the room. It's
| frustrating hearing "trust the experts and bureaucracy"
| when throughout the interview so many instances of
| incompetence and failure exist in history. The question
| needs to be asked regarding gain of function and yet Mr.
| Collins is more concerned about the reputation of the
| scientific community. Both are important, but how can we
| have a public conversation without probing Senators like
| Rand Paul? "Public" conversations within the scientific
| community are referenced by Dr. Collins as well as the
| achievements of the Human Genome Project, but I don't
| understand how he can be so defensive of public figures'
| reputations. Again, how are we to have conversations and
| trust when the bureaucrats and scientific community don't
| communicate answers to these huge problems! Excuse us, Mr.
| Collins, but we just had a major pandemic and this current
| version of SARS was not contained and you can say you wish
| China were more forthcoming, but perhaps those three
| instances of gain of function research in the flu versus
| your woeful insufficient in my opinion defense of a natural
| gain of function and leak in the case of SARS covid-2, at
| least deserves some respectful, humble conversation.
| Labeling Senators as playing politics is not helpful since,
| in regards to Dr. Paul, what alternative to asking
| questions do you propose to serve the public interest?
| (This is coming from someone who read Dr. Collins book "DNA
| The Language of Life" having enjoyed this book as one of
| the best on the topic of science and faith.)
|
| I am sure the Director of NIH didn't get to this position
| with incompetence. Good men are being turned into a hot
| mess. I would still trust NIH but they really need to clean
| up. I want to hold CDC and NIH more accountable than say
| some lunatic saying "China virus" on Parlor.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, there's not much evidence for it. And, honestly, there's
| arguably an aspect of wishful thinking to it. "This was the
| result of a leak" is much less scary than "this just showed
| up", because in the leak scenario, the next one probably
| _could_ be stopped through better procedures, whereas the
| entirely natural scenario... well, there are some precautions
| that can be taken, but good luck preventing exiting new viruses
| from showing up from time to time.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| _> ...good luck preventing exiting new viruses from showing
| up from time to time._
|
| But even with a "natural origin," there are things that could
| be done. I've heard it said that the real Chinese cover-up in
| that scenario is the widespread trading of wild animals (with
| one wild animal vendor even travelling from Wuhan to other
| markets which China had insisted only sold frozen food and
| kitchenware).
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/virologist-suggests-coronavirus-
| origi...
|
| You still have the same problem in the end: a "lack of
| transparency" (if not downright dishonesty) from the Chinese
| government. And also, an obvious avenue for reforming the
| dangers that helped spread the 2020 pandemic -- which is not
| being explored because of difficulties in even establishing
| the facts of the initial outbreak.
|
| I honestly don't know why this idea -- this possibility, this
| scenario -- isn't getting equal consideration.
| postalrat wrote:
| So what's the harm in accepting it was a lab leak? You might
| end up with better procedures?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Better for whom? Certainly not for the labs. It's far
| better for the labs to draw their own conclusions from the
| leak, privately, at their own pace. Also, there's a
| significant financial disincentive: funding for gain of
| function research will be severely impacted by recognizing
| the lab leak as the most plausible explanation.
| inciampati wrote:
| Right now I'd conclude that you can accidentally release
| things from labs with virtually no consequences. Just
| make sure that a similar virus exists naturally somewhere
| on the same continent, don't share any internal records,
| don't let your staff talk to the press, and you have
| plausible deniability.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Closest known relatives of virus behind COVID-19 found in
| Laos
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2
|
| The NIAID claimed that it didn't fund research into BANAL-52
| and similar. "the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 . . .
| were not studied under the EcoHealth Alliance grant"
|
| https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/coronavirus-
| ba...
|
| However, that was recently revealed to be extremely unlikely,
| since bat coronavirus samples were in _fact_ collected from
| Laos, where BANAL-52 was located. Even more suspiciously, the
| Laos genetic samples disappeared from the WIV database in
| late 2019.
|
| https://wap.business-standard.com/article/current-
| affairs/wu...
| cletus wrote:
| There are many variations of the "lab leak" theory for Covid-19.
| For example:
|
| 1. Was the sample found or engineered? Or found then engineered?
|
| 2. Was it a deliberate leak or accidental?
|
| Here are some open questions that haven't been answered or
| examined (at least publicly) to a sufficient degree:
|
| 1. If Covid-19 jumped from an animal species to humans, possibly
| through another animal, then why hasn't it been found in the
| wild? For example, SARS was relatively quickly found in the wild.
| To date there's been no equivalent discovery of the lineage of
| human-transmissible Covid-19. An alternative theory, that
| Covid-19 spread to humans at a wet market, would strongly suggest
| that Covid-19 would be found in the wild;
|
| 2. The Chinese had a database of Covid strains that was taken
| offline in late 2019. To the best of my knowledge, no independent
| third-party has been able to examine the contents of this
| database and see if it relates to Covid-19;
|
| 3. Covid-19 seems to be related to bat coronavirus strains from
| hundreds of miles away. How was the jump made? Through what
| species? and
|
| 4. We don't really know who Patient Zero was.
|
| None of this adds up to positive evidence of any variation of the
| "lab leak" theory but given that there is no alternative theory
| that holds up to serious scrutiny or doesn't have serious flaws
| or unanswered questions, it has to stay in the running.
|
| My suspicion is the Chinese government doesn't know either but,
| more importantly, they don't want to know because absolutely no
| good can come from that becoming public. There is literally no
| upside. This applies on the individual level too. If you're a
| manager of a lab or even just a lab technician, do you really
| want to be held responsible, even just in the public eye, for
| "starting" Covid-19? God, no. That may well be bad for you, your
| family, the government and countless others.
|
| So there's a concerted effort to not know.
|
| And the WHO's response to all this has been utterly anemic from
| the early days of the pandemic where China's pronouncements were
| taken at face value to the late joint investigation with
| laughably narrow frames of reference.
| [deleted]
| alevskaya wrote:
| CS people always underestimate the difficulty of this stuff. I
| used to be a genetic engineer: Even in the best of times doing
| real field science on the lineage analysis of sars-cov-2 would
| take many many years. In a time of acute political hostility it
| will take much longer.
|
| You argue it's just political expediency not to look, when the
| truth is that it is brutally difficult work to "prove" any
| exact zoonotic sequence even if the political will is there in
| abundance. (It took a ~decade for sars-1, and the story's still
| a bit unclear with ebola.) The global scientific community does
| want to figure this out, but the lab-leak circus has made the
| job infinitely harder.
|
| We do know of very close sarbecovirus relatives in Yunnan and
| Laos. Given the early epidemiological nexus of the wet markets
| there is every reason to believe this arose out of a reservoir
| in the fur or meat industry... but given the amount of animal
| culling that has occurred, it could be a real challenge to
| figure out the exact intermediate host, especially given the
| enormously broad mammalian host range of sars-cov-2 and the
| number of animal species commonly sold in those wet markets.
| himinlomax wrote:
| It wouldn't be hard, from a technical or scientific point of
| view, to give access to the labs' files to an independent
| commission of inquiry. That's what democracies do, but
| obviously not communist dictatorships. If there was a leak,
| it could be easily found, and if there wasn't, while the
| absence of evidence would not be definite proof, it would
| lower the plausibility for the hypothesis.
| Imnimo wrote:
| >If Covid-19 jumped from an animal species to humans, possibly
| through another animal, then why hasn't it been found in the
| wild? For example, SARS was relatively quickly found in the
| wild.
|
| On the other hand, Ebola's animal reservoir remains uncertain.
| The implication of the question is that all animal reservoirs
| are easily and quickly discovered, but just because that's true
| for some examples doesn't mean its universally true, and
| doesn't mean that lack of a known animal reservoir is strong
| evidence against the existence of one.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The whole gain of function boost was created to prevent a 2nd
| SARS and was shifted to china, as funding dried up, the further
| the event wandered into the "distant" past.
|
| Covid is neither a bioweapon nor a step-ladder for
| totalitarians worldwide. Its simply necessary un-bribeable
| politics and change, despite systemic dysfunction.
|
| That massive turn-around in society we need, we always demand
| and secretly fear, its upon us now and no lobbyist can put that
| djinn permanently back into the bottle.
|
| One variant and we are back into our walls, condemned to bread
| and games and the realization, that infinite growth is
| unnecessary.
|
| So compared to the massive disaster ahead, with billions of
| dead, this is quite a gentle steering maneuver. Sure those who
| are mentally not agile enough to travel to this different world
| currently born, well they will stay behind and swept away with
| the refugee crisis yet to come.
|
| The rest of us - we will stay peaceful, although loosing it
| all, with just a cellphone to dream and play on in some
| tattered tent.
|
| And this is the best outcome, and if you weight the future
| billions against the current million dead, even a moral one.
|
| Now downvote, the advocate of benevolent diabolo.
| canaus wrote:
| What do you mean by massive disaster ahead? Are you stating
| there is a massive disaster ahead, or COVID has steered us
| into a direction that adverts that?
| Ambolia wrote:
| Nobody took responsibility for the first one nor seem interested
| in investigating it, but I should worry about the next one?
| Kenji wrote:
| Nobody should be afraid. Fear is not an emotion to cultivate.
| Enjoy your life until you meet the grim reaper, regardless of
| whether that happens tomorrow or in 50 years.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I think we have to accept at this point that pandora's box has
| been opened with our ability to now directly synthesize genetic
| material and modify organisms. It wont be long before anarchic
| hackers can start doing this just to troll the world. There's
| sort of a parallel with computing, where viruses were never
| really a problem until everyone had access to the technology. I
| can see a future where we all need to get regular "security
| upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an mRNA
| cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been
| released.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >I can see a future where we all need to get regular "security
| upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an
| mRNA cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been
| released.
|
| I think it's inevitable, along with a medical infrastructure
| that tailors therapies to individual genome. The world is going
| to become a very dangerous place to the portion of our
| population that can't afford the latest updates.
| sterlind wrote:
| if the FDA switches to approving drug
| development/manufacturing processes, rather than the final
| products themselves, mRNA vaccines could be made on-demand,
| quickly enough to do this.
|
| for instance, CAR-T immunotherapy is such a process. no
| patient's dose is the same, since it involves removing
| T-lymphocytes from the patient, genetically modifying them in
| a bespoke way, and putting them back in. if the process
| itself weren't approved, you'd need to run clinical trials on
| every individual dose.
|
| pipeline approvals are probably at least a decade away,
| though it'd be very smart if the government would get it all
| ready in case we need it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| yes honestly I'm surprised that so much attention is devoted to
| lab leaks and state actors who at least have a self-
| preservation instinct compared to explicit bioterrorism by
| groups with an ideological death wish.
|
| Not sure we're super far away from the moment where these
| technologies become cheap and simple enough to cause mayhem.
| Ever since the sarin gas attack in tokyo in the 90s I've
| honestly wondered how this isn't already a much bigger issue.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone
| actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that
| they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end
| to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know
| and love.
|
| If it ever becomes possible to achieve personal or political
| gain through the development of bioweapons I suspect we are
| in extremely deep trouble.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone
| actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that
| they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that
| end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they
| know and love.
|
| The point is that's what has kept us safe so far. But when
| the complexity of bioterrorism gets to the level of script
| kiddies, there's plenty of people that are intelligent
| enough and driven to do it with nothing to lose. The
| difference with nuclear or chemical attacks is that those
| both require massive industrial capacity and complex
| delivery mechanisms. Think of the mayhem when a single
| hacker can modify a flu virus to infect the entire world.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| The worst (best?) possible odds of someone landing in the
| middle of the "socially isolated/sociopath + suicidal" and
| "smart enough to use newly simplified genetic technology"
| venn diagram is 1 in 8 billion-ish. I'd put money on there
| being more than that if I thought I would survive to
| collect.
| sterlind wrote:
| I was (pleasantly!) surprised that nobody from ISIS
| traveled to Africa during the Ebola epidemic to infect
| themself, then flew back to NYC to hang out in Times
| Square. Doesn't require much brains, just the willingness
| to commit suicide and the motivation to kill a bunch of
| people, both of which ISIS had in spades.
| sterlind wrote:
| if you invent the pathogen along with its vaccine, you can
| vaccinate yourself and the group you care about, while
| killing off the undesirables. you could also make genocidal
| weapons by designing a virus that recognizes a certain
| genetic sequence and inserts itself only there (or the
| converse, use that as a safety by inserting a gene for an
| inhibitory protein.)
|
| monstrous things are achievable with a bit of engineering.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| As a note, please do not try this at home. There would be
| a large amount of selective pressure for the virus to
| change the genetic sequence it recognizes / is inhibited
| by, and suddenly you've got a virus that can infect the
| "wrong" people. Likewise a vaccine puts significant
| selective pressure towards immune escape.
| uwagar wrote:
| so ud be walking on your footbridge to work and your eyes start
| to roll. nothing to fear. you are just being updated :)
| dylan604 wrote:
| we don't have to crazy and make them Over-the-air updates.
| unless, the udpates are only going to be applied in sleep
| mode.
| [deleted]
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I want to take the contrarian take to most people in this thread.
|
| Sure, lab leak could be true and with all the available evidence,
| could very well be true but the confirmation of of it being true
| may have more far reaching domestic and geopolitical
| ramifications that may do more harm than good.
|
| It seems like there's some game theory going on within the
| political sphere of many western governments in that increasing
| anti-China sentiment by confirming lab leak could further put us
| down the path to an eventual confrontation (read: war) with
| China, in which we lose a lot more.
|
| The only thing we gain by admitting to lab leak is the truth but
| is the truth (that we've pretty much deduced at this point) worth
| worsening relations not only politically but gives anti-Chinese
| factions in the west more evidence as a prelude to war?
| sharperguy wrote:
| Wasn't the lab in question an internationally funded operation,
| with many western countries, including the US involved?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Yes. It's pretty caustic to build a society on noble lies like
| you are proposing.
| timeon wrote:
| I do not know, isn't it already perceived that lab-leak or not
| - Covid is China's fuckup?
| jyscao wrote:
| >lab-leak or not - Covid is China's fuckup?
|
| If lab leak is confirmed, depending on how deep you want to
| root out those who are responsible, then much of the virology
| community from US and those who fund them are equally to
| blame, if not more. There is no "Chinese Science" or any
| country-specific brand of science in the world nowadays,
| there is just Science. And in both methodologies/techniques
| and funding, much Science leads back to the US.
| opportune wrote:
| From my perspective China did an amazing job at handling
| COVID, it is other countries that fucked up by not taking it
| seriously - not doing quarantining properly, waiting until
| domestic spread was out of control to take half-hearted and
| unenforced measures to slow the spread. In comparison China
| took quarantining and contact tracing very seriously and was
| effective at stopping their domestic spread early in the
| pandemic.
|
| You could blame China for most hypotheses for Covid's
| origins: lab-leak from gain of function research, unsanitary
| wet markets, or not following proper cleanliness procedures
| for field research. But I think those things (besides lab
| leaks) could have happened in literally any developing
| country, and most probably would have done even worse at
| containing it than China.
|
| What I don't think you can blame China for is the virus
| escaping their country. They would be (rightly) be under a
| ton of fire from the international community if they had not
| allowed non-citizens to leave their country at the start of
| the pandemic.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| China took it so seriously that they imprisoned
| doctors/whistleblowers that were taking it seriously.
| trasz wrote:
| [citation needed]
| homieg33 wrote:
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-
| asia-559...
| option wrote:
| Millions people died from COVID. It's true origins is one of
| the most important question we must answer, however
| uncomfortable the truth may be. And yes, if there are those
| responsible, they should face consequences.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Why is it one of the most important questions we must answer?
| option wrote:
| You can't reliably answer "How to prevent X from happening
| again?" Without first reliably answering "How the hell did
| X happen?"
| czzr wrote:
| I'd like to know the answer of where it came from and I'm
| open to possibility of it being a lab leak. But actually
| knowing how it happened is basically irrelevant to the
| planning we need to do for the next one. There will be
| future viruses, they could come from many different
| sources, we need to be prepared irrespective of the
| source.
| [deleted]
| jyscao wrote:
| >The only thing we gain by admitting to lab leak is the truth
| but is the truth (that we've pretty much deduced at this point)
| worth worsening relations not only politically but gives anti-
| Chinese factions in the west more evidence as a prelude to war?
|
| IMO yes, not because it might give anti-China warhawks a _casus
| belli_ , but in spite of that.
|
| Since the start of this whole ordeal, instead of taking a step
| back and do some serious introspection about the risks of their
| research conduct, these misguided virologists and their
| institutions have doubled down on GoF research. And if that was
| indeed the ultimate cause triggering the cascade of events
| leading to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, which I personally think is
| the most probable scenario given all the circumstantial and
| genetic evidence we have, then it is absolutely worth it to
| prevent another lab leak. The next one might not be as mild as
| this one.
| hlwez wrote:
| Fauci funded "research" that ripped vocal cords out of puppies so
| the "scientists" wouldn't have to hear them scream in pain as
| they were EATEN TO DEATH by horseflies.
|
| He also funded "research" that poured acid on monkeys' brains to
| 'induce terror'.
|
| and you people still trust this raging piece of shit? He should
| be fucking shot.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Regardless of covid's source. Are we ready for something that is
| truly bad? It sure is a good thing that covid turned out to not
| be anywhere near as deadly as the spanish flu as they touted it
| to be.
|
| Here's an article from April 1st 2020.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trum...
|
| Trump put in travel restrictions for china in february of 2020
| and was called xenophobic and fear mongering over what wasn't yet
| a pandemic. Sorry but the democrats went on the offensive
| attacking trump for doing what everyone did.
|
| Flipside, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-
| pandemic...
|
| Trump had a pandemic playbook on how to react to a pandemic and
| didn't use it? Is it possible because of the political attacks on
| him?
|
| It's pretty obvious that politics got in the way bigtime. I have
| no expectations this will be different next time.
|
| Then we had clearly political decisions made all throughout. By
| May 2020 we had the data in that people like Dr. Neil Ferguson of
| Imperial College said covid is the equivalent of the Spanish Flu
| of 1918.That was wrong and we still reacted like it was indeed
| still dangerous. When in reality it was less dangerous than the
| normal flu season(largely due young children being unharmed).
|
| The number of political abuses is so high that society right now
| would not accept another pandemic. That they are almost certainly
| full of shit at this point.
| hwers wrote:
| The news have abused my "you should be afraid" notification too
| many times for me to take this to heart.
| daenz wrote:
| What kind of sick editors get off on a headline that starts
| with "You Should Be Afraid" anyways? There are far more
| constructive phrasings, but no, they shamelessly want the
| fearful clickbait.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We've taken out the baity bit, as the site guidelines ask.
|
| " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Eduard wrote:
| The new / current title "The Next 'Lab Leak'" is even more
| misleading and baity, as it suggests a lab leak just happened
| or is imminent.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| When mainstream news starts putting 'The Next' without a question
| mark in headlines it certainly gives conspiracy theories some
| credibility.
| [deleted]
| theduder99 wrote:
| How many level 4 biosafety labs exist in the world where this
| type of dangerous research is carried out? 15. How many are in
| China? 2, one of which is in Wuhan the epicenter of the
| origination of the virus. Lab leak theory should have been the
| default root cause until proven otherwise by independent
| researchers (which China won't allow in).
| aisengard wrote:
| The coronavirus lab is in Wuhan because it's a big city in a
| region where historically a lot of coronoviruses originate, so
| it makes sense that they'd be researching them there.
| ModernMech wrote:
| How many pandemics, out of all the pandemics that have ever
| happened throughout history, have been due to a lab leak?
| Wouldn't the default assumption be the one that had been the
| cause most of the time?
|
| Yes the factors you raise the likelihood of a lab leak theory,
| or they could just be circumstantial. Without more, the fact
| that pandemics throughout history have a natural origin weighs
| heavily in favor of our current pandemic having a natural
| origin.
| legolas2412 wrote:
| What, why was the black plague not developed in the genetic
| engineering labs by Genghis Khan.. Maybe because the labs did
| not exist?
|
| How you can compare the history of humanity to the last ten
| years, the time when we really have started such experiments,
| is beyond understanding.
| burnished wrote:
| Maybe reverse it. What is the likelihood, given that a
| pandemic has arisen, that it will arise in a city where a lab
| leak is a possible origin (having the laboratories and the
| research going on)? I'm going to guess that it is very
| unlikely.
| aisengard wrote:
| It is indeed unlikely, because it's much easier to detect
| an outbreak in a controlled setting like a lab before it
| infects a critical mass of the population. Indeed, lab
| leaks have happened before and were contained before it
| reached more than a handful of people.
|
| Much more likely that covid was rip-roaring uncontrolled
| through the Wuhan population well before the first official
| diagnosis, so it was already unstoppable. The real
| conspiracy is that China massively fucked up its handling
| of the outbreak because their government is generally
| incompetent and they don't want people prying too hard into
| any of it because it would be highly damaging to its world
| image for everyone to know just how incompetent they are.
| The labs have proven to be much better at this than some
| unelected cabal of autocratic government bureaucrats.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Most pandemics throughout history started when there were no
| labs at all, so they can be ignored in this calculation.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Why? You'd need to know the independent probability of a
| natural origin pandemic to compute this. Surely to figure
| this out you would need to look at history to make this
| calculation. How else would you estimate that value?
| drran wrote:
| > How many are in China?
|
| Virus know nothing about countries. Check all 15 labs.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| I'm not so worried about humans maliciously trying to destroy the
| world. There are few who would do so intentionally.
|
| Far more worrying is when people do what is easiest for them,
| regardless of the cost to their neighbour.
|
| A mask collects particles, including the COVID-19 virus. Please
| can we work together to pick up the masks from the street?
|
| Worms will eat the masks. Bats will eat the worms. And the bats
| will give COVID back to us.
|
| We're not responsible for world-scale Epic issues: plastic in the
| ocean, climate change, pandemics. We are fully responsible for
| the Issues we see. Please, let's clean the streets while we
| cycle/walk dogs/skateboard and the butterfly effect will help to
| fix the bigger problems too :)
| Vecr wrote:
| Don't worry about worms, it's already in deer and I would
| assume a large number of other non-human animal populations
| already. It's obviously still in bats as well, SARS-CoV-3 is
| inevitable unless there's some sort of mass killing of bats,
| but it might not end up being very bad or transmissible.
| msie wrote:
| People taking shortcuts is the root of so many problems.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I haven't seen any science on this, but I'd guess there is
| about a 0% chance of human->mask->worm->bat covid transmission.
| Do you have any basis for this fear? Obviously mask pollution
| is a bit of a problem, but not so much for risk of covid
| contamination.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| The only thing I am afraid of is ideas being disregarded because
| they don't help you politically.
|
| Reality is what reality is. Whether this was leaked by a lab in
| China or not should not depend on which side of the election we
| are on. Ivermectine is not effective or not based on which side
| of the political spectrum you are on.
|
| And if it doesn't work, that doesn't mean we make fun of those
| who believe it does, it means we try something else. It took
| thousand of failed attempts to find the one bacteria that could
| effectively attack TB.
|
| If you want to reject reality and substitute your own, I won't
| stop you. Don't force it upon me.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If such labs and research are dangerous, shouldn't we, you know,
| be more careful in working with them, especially in a country
| which is notorious for hiding data, cutting various corners and
| preferring good looking lies to the ugly truth, and being in
| control to doing the right thing?
|
| And shouldn't we ensure that people who work with such labs when
| and if it is necessary to do so are fully, 100% transparent and
| subject to public oversight? And if they, say, lie to the public
| and/or use weasel phrasing to hide their actions and mislead the
| overseers and the public about what kind of research is conducted
| in the dangerous labs and how it is financed and supported -
| shouldn't there be some consequences to it? I mean, beyond ones
| for lying to the Congress, which has become so routine now nobody
| even bats an eye at it?
| gootler wrote:
| Oh people of the internets are so smart as shit. Bravo sleuths!
| robbmorganf wrote:
| This article briefly mentions SARS-CoV-2, but at length it
| discusses Ebola and others quite a bit more. This article isn't
| about what happened with COVID-19, but about whether we should
| have BL4 labs at all.
|
| In my opinion, we absolutely should. Awful diseases like Ebola
| are effective at what they do, so they're great places to learn
| about molecular biology and genetics. It seems feasible that we
| can manage the risk well enough to get a net expected benefit.
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