[HN Gopher] More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus ... ___________________________________________________________________ More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins Author : temp8964 Score : 251 points Date : 2021-05-14 23:52 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | haspoken wrote: | http://archive.is/vgHCm | ChicagoDave wrote: | Everyone should read Frank Herbert's White Plague. | | The transmission vector can be anything. | johncena33 wrote: | What does a sci-fi author or book have to do anthing with | actual investigation of a real-life pandemic? | brutal_chaos_ wrote: | No answer will be given, of course, but perhaps it can open | one's mind to new avenues of thought that may help lead to | an/the answer. | hayst4ck wrote: | A lot of people here claiming there is no evidence. Whether they | think there was none because they didn't bother to look, they | think the evidence is poor, or they can't imagine any | authoritative evidence without the help of China it's just not | true. | | People imagine Chinese social media as something that is | completely locked down when in reality it was abuzz with | information when a new mysterious disease was appearing in Wuhan. | Countries like Taiwan were suspicious and taking action as early | as December. | | Here is a set of evidence I have a hard time poking holes in: | | https://project-evidence.github.io/ | | There are some pieces of evidence that are compelling alone: | - beyond a reasonable doubt, coronavirus research was done at | WIV. - beyond a reasonable doubt, collection of coronavirus | from bats was done for the lab. - beyond a reasonable | doubt, there have been instances of poor PPE/safety measures. | throwkeep wrote: | > Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother | to look | | The origin was politicized in the US and taboo to even question | it, so few did. It was labeled a crazy conspiracy theory by the | media and that shut the door on open inquiry until recently. | prox wrote: | This is why there is a big difference between skepticism and | conspiracy. A skeptic digs deeper to gather more data and | facts, a conspiracy loosely joins a few data points and makes | a poor conjecture. | | Conspiracy is political ammunition, skepticism is healthy | debate and gladly welcomes more data. | andrewclunn wrote: | "Skepticsm" is when over educated pseudo-intellectuals want | THEIR theories to have the ring of "science," while | dismissing others as conspiracy theorists. | TheAdamAndChe wrote: | All of science is driven by hypothesis, but those | hypotheses don't just appear out of nowhere. Suspicion, | bias, and bad data can all drive focus on a particular | field. In that way, such conjecture is a powerful | scientific tool that in my opinion is too often dismissed. | lumost wrote: | It is a miraculous coincidence that a novel virus would | spontaneously emerge at the exact location of a virology lab | studying that virus. | | The counterpoint to this is that this lab was setup in this | location for the exact reason that a novel coronavirus would | potentially emerge from bats in the region. This would require | both miraculous forethought on the potential for bats in the | region to produce novel coronaviruses, and a strange desire to | place the virology lab near the location. | | Most high level virology labs are centered based on | considerations such as ability to hire talent and security/land | concerns. It's relatively straightforward to organize | expeditions to any region of the world at this point to collect | samples. | | Which means that for the standard explanation to hold true. | | - A virology lab was created to study potentially dangerous | versions of coronavirus (WIV founded 1956) | | - The virology lab must have been placed near the location | where animals were producing interesting virus strains. (WIV | studying coronaviruses from all over China since 2005 including | Horshoe bats from Yunnan province carrying progenitor strains | of the SARS virus | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology) | | - A novel coronavirus emerged near the WIV lab in Q4 2019 due | to unrelated sales of locally hunted bats. | | Strange things occur, but this would be strange enough as to | require plausible studies identifying animal sources of | Covid-19 to take at face value. | pedalpete wrote: | Isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt" a legal construct, rather | than a scientific one? Science looks at probabilities and | measurable numbers not one person or another's "reasonable | doubt". | querez wrote: | I'm sorry, but this feels like conspiracy-theory peddling and | FUD. What the linked site calls "evidence", is are at best | "hints" or "possible signs". No evidence anywhere. Instead, you | have wildly weird texts like section 8.3 ("A Note on | Biowarfare") that literally just reads "This document does not | make any attempt to link the work done at these laboratories as | part of a 'bioweapon' or "bio-warfare" program.". It's | completely and utterly disconnected from the rest of the text. | Why even bring it up? Just so you can throw the word | "bioweapon" out there? | | Plus, the site always seems to see "causation" whenever there | is correlation, and never even stops to admit that there's the | possibility they got the chain of causation backwards: if there | was a lot of coronavirus-carrying bats in the region wouldn't | it make sense to build a research institute there? And publish | on all the findings? The site goes on to cite papers and job | postings that are exactly the kinds of research (and job | postings) you'd expect from a site that focuses on coronavirus | related research. Yet the linked site makes it sound ominous, | when it is utterly mundane. | | So one has to ask who actually produced this site to begin | with? To quote the page: | | > "We are an anonymous group of researchers" | | Very convenient. In other words, no-one with a serious research | background could be convinced to put their name on this | nonsense. | syshum wrote: | >>Oh, how convenient. In other words, no-one with a serious | research background could be convinced to put their name on | this nonsense. | | Appeals to authority are one of the failings of modern | science, The data and facts should stand up to independent | review no need for "credentials" | hayst4ck wrote: | You say the article feels like a conspiracy theory, yet it | points to negligence as the likely culprit, which is pretty | much the opposite of a conspiracy. You call it FUD (fear | uncertainty doubt), but I'm totally uncertain how it would | qualify as FUD. | | There is one obvious conspiracy by the Chinese government to | prevent all understanding of the virus. That does fit the | definition of what a conspiracy is. | | > "This document does not make any attempt to link the work | done at these laboratories as part of a 'bioweapon' or "bio- | warfare" program." | | This makes perfect sense if you are an American, because in | the anti-intellectual Trump era, there was a well circulated | rumor that COVID was a Chinese bio-weapon that the CPC | figured it could deal with better than Americans because | China can weld people's door's shut, and you can't do that in | America. This is on par with the widely circulated Chinese | rumor that the American military brought it to Wuhan. | Obviously both of those are extremely unlikely and very much | conspiracy theories. Certainly on the American side our | scientists said it's extremely unlikely that COVID was | engineered and has none of the markers of bio-engineering | very early into covid. | | This is the article stating that it is not addressing that | conspiracy theory, which was very much part of the | conversation when it was written over a year ago. | | > Just so you can throw the word "bioweapon" out there? | | Out of your own ignorance of the context you are assuming | malice. | | >and never even stops to admit that there's the possibility | that the causal reasoning is backwards | | This is literally the second paragraph in the article, and it | was bolded for emphasis: This document does | not attempt to provide a concrete conclusion on | whether either claim is factually true. Rather, it examines | the probability that each claim is true to allow the reader | to make his or her own conclusions. While either claim | cannot be irrevocably proven true, an attempt has been | made to ensure the evidence used to support these | claims is as factual as possible. | | Furthermore, you completely ignored the meat of the article | focusing on a couple of weaker and overall not super central | points. | | > Very convenient. In other words, no-one with a serious | research background could be convinced to put their name on | this nonsense. | | It's almost like there is an extremely draconian | authoritarian ruling government with very deep reach that has | a long history of disappearing people it doesn't like or | punishing them via connections with people who have power | over them that people might be afraid of. | lumost wrote: | There doesn't appear to be any regional association with the | WIV's research on Bats. WIV studied bats fro all over China | and notably isolated the likely center of the 2003 SARS | outbreak to a set of bats in Yunnan. The institute was | founded in 1956, long before Coronavirus research started in | earnest. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#SA. | .. | bigpumpkin wrote: | Wuhan is, however, in the range of Horseshoe Bats. [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_horseshoe_bat So | people who suggest that it's far from Yunnan are missing | the point. | pishpash wrote: | This is not evidence of anything in particular, without some | Bayesian calibration: | | - What other kinds of virus research besides coronavirus was | done at the WIV? - What proportion of coronaviruses are anyway | derived from bats? - What were the outcomes of the instances of | poor PPE/safety measures with regard to containment? | | Without this calibration, all you've written is innuendo. | ggm wrote: | The sheer amount of the word "seems" and "plausible" here ought | to tell you what is being discussed: what's being discussed is | not primary evidence, it's interpretation of the meaning and | impact, _in the mind of the discussing parties_ | | If you want to go judicial on this, _" on the balance of | probabilities"_ in the context of an ongoing political and trade | dispute between the parties, feels to me like an attempt to | appeal to pseudo rational claims, more than an actual, | dispassionate declaration of likelihood. | | The article says "keep an open mind" which strongly suggests the | "evidence" is equivocal. If you're not a virologist or scientist | who works in the primary field, and I am not one either, you're | at _BEST_ attempting to interpret science at second or third | hand. Science often uses words differently to colloquial speech. | The word "must" for instance, has no normative force always. | This "must" be because blah blah blah is not saying "causative" | unless it actually says so. If it doesn't say _WHY_ it _MUST_ | mean something, it 's opinion. If it says _MUST_ because of the | _balance of probabilities_ it 's actually _MAY_ in any case. | natch wrote: | Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here | is a list of them: | | https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... | | Spoiler: They are all "mysteriously" missing or at least have | disappeared from their normal lives. | monday_ wrote: | The trouble here is that a lot of institutions and public persons | have more or less staked their credibility on dismissing the lab | origin hypothesis. They had their reasons - if anything, over the | last years their standing and the value of expert opinion was | under constant pressure (notice I'm talking about a reason, not a | justification). | | But this makes any admission of an error and, by extension, any | useful reflection on it very, very improbable. I think if the lab | origin is true and at some point becomes common knowledge, it | will be treated like the Iraq war. The people responsible for | botching the response and the message will fail up and treat the | pandemic as if it were a tsunami, rather then human error. | [deleted] | bonzini wrote: | Lab manufacturing is one thing and has been widely debunked, | lab leak is another. I don't think the lab leak has been | dismissed as much. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | What does it matter, beyond natural curiosity, whether it was | released from a lab or not? It is of no real consequence because: | | (1) if it *was* released from a lab, its highly suspect that it | was intentional due to it infecting China's own citizens; if it | was some kind of "attack" you would think they would plant it | somewhere else. | | (2) this is somewhat of the price we (as a society) pay for | experimentation on diseases and viruses. It suffers from it- | could-happen-here-ism where COVID or a COVID-like disease could | be released by any other country and we'd still be in the exact | same situation. | | So, in my mind, the only definitive issue is whether it was | released maliciously or by accident. If it was malicious, that's | a completely different, crimes against humanity, type problem. If | it was not, then I don't think it matters really how COVID | happened. | mateo1 wrote: | It's quite surprising that so far I've never read your first | point, not once, in any article. Another point is that if some | other actor was planning to release this virus in China, they'd | definitely do it in Wuhan. | | In the end, this discussion doesn't even matter. The fact is | that we, the non-specialists with no access to hard evidence, | will probably never know what happened, and in fact it does not | matter at all. | | The origin of the virus is completely irrelevant to its | consequences and the potential for accidental or purposeful | releases of new viruses, engineered or not, is still there | regardless. We're lucky(?) we got ample warning of what | biological threats can do, and we got it with a low mortality | and morbidity virus. | | After all, trying to infer the origin of the virus by it's | mutations and features is a bit like trying to infer if a | computer virus is made in Russian by the inclusion of Cyrillic | variable names or something, anyone can put them in there, so | it's basically not even evidence. | mjparrott wrote: | If it was by accident, then it calls into question the quality | controls over labs. It isn't "equally likely to happen | anywhere" if the quality and safety standards vary by location. | Operating a lab with poor safety standards is not "bad luck". | xxpor wrote: | The problem is: what is anyone going to do about it? China | will never admit it, even if it is true (I have no position | one way or the other). | antattack wrote: | It's not going to be possible to prove lab origin w/o Chinese | cooperation. | | However, lab origin should not be totally dismissed, so we can | have a discussion about safety of _gain-of-function_ research | now, rather than waiting for some verifiable event to happen in | the future. | kossTKR wrote: | Why are people acting like China is doing anything in | isolation? | | The Wuhan Lab was funded through the american Ecohealth | alliance, and a dozen american scientists probably know just as | much as the Chinese do. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 | fullshark wrote: | I don't know who is acting like that, but that's the kind of | thing that becomes very interesting if you believe COVID | leaked from a lab and not appeared suddenly at a wet market. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | As it takes longer and longer to find any evidence in nature a | lab leaking is becoming the most likely source. | Dah00n wrote: | That may be but we have hardly started looking yet. We haven't | even found a source of SARS from 2002 yet.. | | > _"... no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat | populations despite 15 years of searching... "_ | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11... | | Edit: Added source. | ChemSpider wrote: | Wrong. A likely Sars1 origin was found within months. For | Sars2 Chinese researches sampled 40000 animals (according to | WHO report) and found nothing. | | Sars1: Prof. Zheng-Li Shi from Wuhan Institute of Virology, | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Shu-Yi Zhang from the | Institute of Zoology, and some researchers from Australia | also tracked the source of SARS virus to bats, and their | findings were published in Science in September 2005 | Dah00n wrote: | Finding a virus in an animal isn't that same as finding the | source. A source has _not_ been found. Only later and | intermediate hosts (as in 2005): | | >"As no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat | populations _despite 15 years of searching_ and as RNA | recombination is frequent within coronaviruses, it is | highly likely that SARS-CoV newly emerged through | recombination of bat SARSr-CoVs in this or other yet-to-be- | identified bat caves " | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=1 | 1... | | >" _No direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat | populations_ , but WIV16 was found in a cave in Yunnan | province, China between 2013 and 2016, and has a 96% | genetically similar virus strain." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_synd | r... | [deleted] | austincheney wrote: | That is an argument from ignorance logical fallacy. The | inability to find something has no bearing on whether it exists | or not and thus has no bearing on the probability of an | inverted outcome. | | Dark matter/energy also frequently fall into this sort of | argument. There is no evidence that they do exist, which does | not suggest the absence of their existence. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance | btilly wrote: | It stops being a fallacy and starts to become a valid | consideration when the search for the thing not found has | been thorough enough that it would have been very likely to | be found if it had been there. | | Suppose that I remember leaving $5000 in plain sight on a | table. My initial priors are a 90% chance that it is there, a | 9% chance that I put it somewhere else by accident, and a 1% | that my friend Bob took it. I conduct a search that would | have found it with 100% odds if it was on the table, 95% odds | if I had put it somewhere else by accident, and a 0% chance | if Bob took it. Add in the evidence of the search and all of | a sudden the new odds are 0% chance that it is where I | thought it was, about a 31% chance that I put it somewhere | else, and a 69% chance that Bob took it. | | This is the first major disease to jump to humans in the last | 20 years that we haven't quickly tracked down the path to us. | We're good at it. The fact that we didn't succeed this time | when more effort was put into the search is something that | should give us pause. | austincheney wrote: | Logic does not cease to be fallacious merely because | somebody works hard and becomes frustrated. | jerf wrote: | Many of the logical fallacies are logical fallacies from | an Aristotelian perspective of statements that are either | True or False, and nothing in between. "True" is a high | bar. | | Many of them dissolve when treated correctly with | something like a Bayesian analysis. [1] This is one of | them. Absence of evidence _is_ , in fact, _evidence_ of | absence, contrary to the frequent assertions otherwise. | It just isn 't _proof_. The strength of the evidence is | proportional to the amount of the possibility space | searched and the quality of that search. | | It is not fallacious to observe that our normally- | successful efforts to find a natural cause failing raises | the probabilities of the remaining explanations, and that | of those possibilities, "lab origin" has a lot of the | remaining probability. It doesn't mean that natural | origin is disproved, nor did it mean any of the other | possibilities are certain, but it is valid to adjust ones | probability estimates. | | (I've also learned from experience a lot of people will | read this as being critical of the Aristotelian | perspective or something. I am not. It is a valid logic. | There are other valid logics. Many of them are more | practically useful than rigid True and False, but | Aristotelian logic, like Newtonian physics, is still a | very important one to understand as it serves as an | important limiting case for many other more complicated | logics.) | | [1]: This is not a position statement on Bayesian vs. | frequentist. | austincheney wrote: | The problem with your reasoning is that you are falsely | equating _absence of evidence_ into a qualifier for an | opinion or conclusion, which it isn 't. The absence of | evidence only means that such evidence is missing and is | in no way suggestive of anything else. All conclusions | drawn from an absence of evidence are otherwise | unqualified assumptions. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_assumption | | This was the exact reasoning people bet the farm on the | housing market prior to late 2008. There was no evidence | the housing market ever depreciated, so with that absence | of evidence the housing market must therefore not ever | depreciate. Contrary to that reasoning the housing market | crashed and I got my house as a foreclosure at a heavily | depreciated value. | whatthesmack wrote: | Not sure what your point is. The source for SARS and MERS | were found within months. We're over a year into this with no | clue. Based on the current circumstances' inconsistencies | with historical circumstances, this appears to be something | different. | actusual wrote: | His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing | shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man | is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for | this, did he commit the murder? | dgfitz wrote: | How do you know he was home? | dkersten wrote: | No, but when the second hypothesis is the one that CCP | has banned any investigation and news of, is not | cooperating on the investigation and when there had been | claims about the WIV safety _and_ the WIV has openly | stated that they were researching bat-borne SARS-like | coronaviruses, then the lack of evidence for any other | cause makes this one seem all the more likely. That 's a | lot of coincidences. | | If CCP are covering it up, then of course there will be a | lack of direct evidence. The above doesn't prove it | conclusively, but it does make it rather suspicious. Why | would CCP be hampering the investigations if they have | nothing to hide? It was over a year before they let the | WHO have a look. Plenty of time to get rid of any actual | evidence. | checker wrote: | Source for finding SARS source within months? | | This is contrary but I'm open to debate. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747529/ | adrianb wrote: | Wikipedia [1] seems to include sources: | | > In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples | of wild animals sold as food in the local market in | Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS | coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets | (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical | signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the | SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian | palm civets to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm | civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was | also later found in raccoon dogs (Nyctereuteus sp.), | ferret badgers (Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In | 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like | coronaviruses in Chinese bats.[60][61] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respirator | y_syndr... | bigpumpkin wrote: | In 2003, it was hypothesized that civets were the source. | However, this was not conclusively proved until 2017. | adrianb wrote: | Infected animals were found in the market where the | outbreak began 4 months after it started. We have nothing | comparable a year and a half after COVID. | checker wrote: | Thanks. Pretty legit sources from 2005. | tshaddox wrote: | Hasn't the exact same amount of time elapsed without finding | any evidence of a lab leak? | gnicholas wrote: | Nature leaves a trail, so if you don't find a trail then it | becomes increasingly implausible that COVID resulted from a | natural process. There are currently several intermediate | steps that have not been uncovered anywhere, and which would | have to have happened in order for this to be a natural | process. | tshaddox wrote: | This just sounds like the "lack of evidence is evidence of | a conspiracy" epistemology so often resorted to by | conspiracy theorists. The problem with the epistemology is | that it applies equally well to all conceivable | conspiracies. | ChemSpider wrote: | Nope - no investigation for _that_ theory allowed by Beijing. | tomjen3 wrote: | You only need a handful of people working on this to have | knowledge of it. The PRC is really good at locking up people | to keep them quiet. | Dah00n wrote: | I'm not sure I follow the logic. If China is so good at | keeping people quiet, how do you know? Sounds to me that | for us to know they have to be less than good at it? | t8e56vd4ih wrote: | there is footage of Fauci in a public congressional questioning | where he first denies a financial tie to that lab and then admits | it reluctantly. | | can somebody shed light on what's going on there? | LetThereBeLight wrote: | For those interested in understanding more detailed discussions | there is an article by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: | https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... | | Perhaps the most interesting point is the discussion of the furin | cleavage site. | jrochkind1 wrote: | If scientists believe a leak like this is plausible, then I don't | think we need to wait for proof to push for international | treaties against doing this kind of research that can have these | disastrous accidental consequences. Developing super-viruses | should not be allowed by the international community, including | in the USA. It is too dangerous. | actuator wrote: | How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to | the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of | propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is | going to be difficult. | [deleted] | fullshark wrote: | Even if the west simply refuses to 100% accept the natural | origin story it will have geopolitical consequences. | tomjen3 wrote: | If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is | the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us | have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated | accordingly. | actuator wrote: | You don't believe data can be manufactured/erased to tell a | story if someone is willing to? There is enough time as well | to generate a new trail of breadcrumbs. | | I don't think we will get the true answer or an answer that | is going to satisfy everyone, just a lot of geopolitical | posturing. | calotow wrote: | I read on a bumper sticker though that "science doesn't | lie". | slowmovintarget wrote: | No, all the choices have already been made. | | The data have already been destroyed. The Wuhan lab where | this research was taking place also had a leadership change, | and is now run by someone in the military. That happened in | March or April of 2020, IIRC. | | Chinese researchers and journalists disappeared in that time | frame (their work was deleted from online archives, their | names removed from public employment listings... etc.). | | I have family in China, and we watched all this happen. These | are the things that happened in public. The Western press was | too busy with "oh my gosh, we should probably stop flights | now" to take serious notice. Then the whole thing became | politicized (in the U.S., at least) and if you made | statements like "this started in Wuhan, in the lab there, not | in the animal market next to it," you were called racist, | even though race had nothing to do with it. | | We can ask until the cows come hom. The evidence is gone, | disposed of by a series of decisions made more than a year | ago. | adrianb wrote: | > if you made statements like "this started in Wuhan, in | the lab there, not in the animal market next to it," you | were called racist, even though race had nothing to do with | it. | | Honestly I always felt like "a scientist working with | dangerous pathogens had an accident" is way less racist | than "someone ate a weird animal from a wet market"... And | yet the backlash was stronger for the lab leak scenario, | almost as if the opinions were influenced by someone. | astrobe_ wrote: | To be fair the lab escape scenario looks a lot like a | conspiracy theory. One should remember that around that | time the "flat earth" theory was still going on (IIRC), | and there are similar lab escape theories about AIDS. | smolder wrote: | No, a lab escape scenario is an accident theory. The | Chinese military sending infectious people to our country | on purpose sounds like a conspiracy theory. | fumbly wrote: | It doesn't at all look "like a conspiracy theory". Many | past lab leaks have been documented (edit: | https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1394327678136852488), | there had been widespread debate among virologists for | years about whether the risk of a lab leak was too high | to fund such research, the Obama administration banned it | for a while for that reason, the State Department had | expressed concerns about lax safety at the Wuhan lab, and | so on. It's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. If | anything "looks like a conspiracy theory" it's the way | that the topic was so harshly suppressed for the last | year. I don't think that was a conspiracy either, though, | I think it was just political polarization. Hopefully the | winds are shifting now to reduce that, on this particular | issue. | munk-a wrote: | There have always been conspiracy theories but I think | it's more relevant to note how quickly this theory was | co-opted by anti-asian racism and converted into a | version where that lab escape was interpreted to be an | intention action to cause a world wide pandemic. | | I really sympathize with both sides here - I think it's | quite possible a lab accident was involved with the virus | escaping into the world... but the benefit we'd get from | knowing that would mostly involve labs being a lot more | careful with PPE and I think we've seen PPE usage tick | way up and the dangerous involved with disease handling | get a lot larger of a spotlight. And, I also think that | beating up or harassing Asian-Americans is wrong and if | we need to tell a big societal level lie to people to get | them to stop then I'm okay with that. | stirfish wrote: | We went pretty quickly from "it started somewhere in | China" to beating elderly asian people to death in the | streets. I think the backlash was more against the | justifications people use to be awful. | tomp wrote: | Didn't it only start happening, like, a year after people | daring to _wrongthink_ (that the virus wasn 't of | entirely natural origin) were persistently being called | Trump-supporting Nazi conspiracy theorists? | stirfish wrote: | The hate crimes started accelerating in March of 2020, | around the time #ChineseVirus was trending on twitter. | 8ytecoder wrote: | I don't think a lot of people dismissed the "lab theory" | per se. The people who were coopting the theory were also | the folks who called in intentional/by design. We had | evidence for neither and yet suddenly it had become an | excuse to yell epithets at random people on the street. | fumbly wrote: | > No, all the choices have already been made. The data have | already been destroyed | | You don't know that. You'd need an investigation to | conclude that. Using it as an excuse not to investigate | seems like assuming the conclusion. | | Even if some data have been destroyed, it doesn't follow | that every last piece of data everywhere has. Who knows | what might turn out to be significant? There may well be | relevant data in many countries, too, since the research | was international. | jollybean wrote: | As we learned in the last election cycle, the Truth is a | matter of populism. | | If Wuhan lab leak were 'truth' - without hard evidence and a | bold international campaign to forcefully make people aware | ... then China would be able to hide behind a cloud of | whataboutery and changing the subject. | | Unless there is some kind of genetic linkage etc.. | | I also feel that some US authorities wouldn't want the truth | to be fully known lest there be unpredictable repercussions | and 'worries about Anti Asian Hate Crime' and those kinds of | things, preferring to handle it 'behind closed doors'. | | It would be great if we could arrive at some kind of | objective truth, not holding my breath. | Dah00n wrote: | So guilty unless proven innocent? | option wrote: | if they are indeed innocent isn't fair and unbiased | investigation in their best interest? | thereare5lights wrote: | No because there's no such thing as a fair and unbiased | investigation. | | Politics will be inexorably intertwined in such an | investigation. | Dah00n wrote: | Yes, by Chinese citizens. _Not_ by foreigners. | tomjen3 wrote: | For anybody who has power, absolutely. I am beyond tired of | police, countries and politicians getting away with | horrible crimes. | | For ordinary citizens, of course not. | 99_00 wrote: | I'm convinced that it's a lab leak. I'm also convinced the slow | reveal is a psyop and I don't disagree with it's objectives. | | The sudden revelation that China screwed up and lied to the world | is too shocking for the vast majority of people. The global | public's response would not be optimal. | | The slow reveal gives societies around the world time to adjust | to the new reality. | | If we were all thrown into that reality overnight it would get | messy. | ObserverNeutral wrote: | Screw that, I don't want to live in a new cold war. Even if it | came from a lab people should be told it's natural | | Besides after Snowden whistleblowers learned that their life is | basically over after they speak out. | | Very low recognition and potentially jail time or worse | dataflow wrote: | Related (long) article in case you missed it: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 | captaincurrie wrote: | https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... | [deleted] | Dah00n wrote: | Any actual scientist (and not an "expert") know how long these | things take. It took from 2002 to 2020 to find a closely related | SARS host (as in "not a match but close enough to point to a | likely cause"). I find it very telling that we get lots of | articles stating lots of stuff but not really any real scientific | research papers on the source. I'm also not seeing any of these | scientists volunteer to live for years in remote locations taking | anal swaps of animals to actually find the cause. I believe what | we are seeing are the science equivalent to armchair generals. | marcell wrote: | What do you make of the claim in this article [1], which says | that intermediate host species were found within 4 months of | SARS1 outbreak, and within 9 months of MERS outbreak? | Admittedly I can't find the underlying source for his claims. | | [1] https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following- | th... | Dah00n wrote: | I haven't read it but an intermediate host is a link between | humans and the original host. The intermediate host was | quickly found. I linked this elsewhere in the thread: | | > _" As no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat | populations despite 15 years of searching and as RNA | recombination is frequent within coronaviruses, it is highly | likely that SARS-CoV newly emerged through recombination of | bat SARSr-CoVs in this or other yet-to-be-identified bat | caves."_ | | They also write... | | > _" After the causative agent of SARS was identified, SARS- | CoV and/or anti-SARS-CoV antibodies were found in masked palm | civets (Paguma larvata) and animal handlers in a market | place1. However, later, wide-reaching investigations of | farmed and wild-caught civets revealed that the SARS-CoV | strains found in market civets were transmitted to them by | other animals."_ | | Sorry if I made a mess of this as I'm on my phone and | commented on more than on post too quickly really.. | rossdavidh wrote: | I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it | matters, as far as what we need to do next, and more pressure on | this point may just make that harder. | | 1) Regardless of whether or not this virus came from a lab, could | such a thing plausibly happen in the future? Unquestionably yes. | | 2) Do we have international bodies to do inspection of the safety | standards of any lab doing this kind of work? Ones that have the | authority to require changes, or even shut down a lab, if those | safety standards are not met? Unquestionably no, we have no such | international body. | | 3) Could we make one? Yes, if China and Russia and the USA all | agree to make one, it could be made binding on the rest of the | world. | | So, let's get on with that. I fear that the discussion of the | origin of covid-19, while it has certainly been useful in showing | what the potential future problems are, may get in the way of | setting up something to prevent it happening (again?) in the | future. | daenz wrote: | >I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it | matters | | I know the quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a | statistic" and all, but if we deem it important to get to the | bottom of individual deaths, accidental or not, than it is | important to get to the bottom of millions of deaths. | mirekrusin wrote: | What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we | have to prepare for the future the same way. | dxuh wrote: | If the lab leak is real, then we should absolutely use this as | a reason to stop Gain of Function research or at least | establish institutions that ensure the safety of such research, | preferably across international borders. The point being that | you want to avoid something like this ever happening again. | tomjen3 wrote: | If it leaked from a lap we need to hold China responsible and | ensure that no scientists ever do similar research, under pain | of life in any country on earth. | | Whomever leaked this murdered over 1/2 the holocaust, and the | total death count is only going to keep going up. The leak is a | crime against humanity and should be prosecuted as one. | dang wrote: | Please stop posting flamewar comments. You've done it | repeatedly in this thread already--that's seriously not cool. | | If you're posting inflamed, denunciatory rhetoric about a | divisive topic, you're not using HN as intended. | | " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not | less, as a topic gets more divisive._ " | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | jjtheblunt wrote: | I've asked myself the same, and can only think of two reasons | why they focus on if it came from a lab. | | (1) people like dramatic scandalous stories, in general. (2) | knowing such might drive some prevention of whatever mistake | lead to such from recurring. | lovemenot wrote: | It is certain that _some_ series of events led to the | pandemic. | | There exists a class of people who, without necessarily being | driven by other motivations, generally try to find out what | is really going on. We call such people scientists. | | No need to focus on motivation. Curiosity should be enough. | jjtheblunt wrote: | well said: i'm one of the class you mentioned! | johncena33 wrote: | I see this argument pop up quite frequently on HN with good | amount of upvotes. I am guessing this type of arguments are | motivated by and upvoted because of poltical and ideological | ulterior motives. | | I think there's also something more insidious at play. In | western countries lot of people have become rich by exporting | manufacturing to China. If somehow it is found that COVID was a | lab-leak, there'd be a huge amount of backlash against China. | It will harm the business, who are doing their manufacturing in | China. There's a lot of money involved if lab-leak hypothesis | turned out true. | [deleted] | btilly wrote: | The question is whether the type of research that might have | lead to this result should be shut down to prevent similar | accidents in the future. | | If COVID-19 was, in fact, a lab release then that's a strong | argument for shutting the research down. | bryanlarsen wrote: | Even if it was a lab release, it's still a natural virus and | could have happened without the lab release. Without previous | studies of related viruses, it would have taken multiple | years to produce a vaccine. | dataflow wrote: | > Even if it was a lab release, it's still a natural virus | and could have happened without the lab release. | | This is disputed. | saas_sam wrote: | >Even if it was a lab release, it's still a natural virus | and could have happened without the lab release. | | That is not the assertion being made by the scientists | pushing for the investigation. The assertion is that this | is a chimeric virus that very much does NOT show up in | nature and its lab-made qualities are precisely why it | became a global pandemic. | | Or would you take it as pure coincidence that the first | truly global pandemic in however many decades you'd like | just happened to be lab made? | feanaro wrote: | Was the Spanish flu also manufactured? Clearly there is | such a thing as natural pandemics. | saas_sam wrote: | OP: "This virus was natural therefore any investigations | into its artificiality are moot." | | Me: "This virus has unique qualities that made it | especially contagious, so its artificiality is not moot." | | You: "Other viruses in the past were also bad." | | Me, now: Yes, other viruses in the past were also bad. If | you meant that to relate to the previous comments I think | you left out the important bits. | | It's like if we were discussing whether we should | investigate if someone caused a deadly landslide. Why | would you argue that we shouldn't look into it simply | because landslides also happen naturally? If there are | empty crates of TNT on the top of the hill, shouldn't we | look into it? | mirekrusin wrote: | It still doesn't change anything, this type of research | is getting too easy/too cheap to say that policy can save | us from it. Somewhere someone will be doing it knowing | the goal is to invoke genocide like final solution. | juancampa wrote: | Not exactly. "gain of function" [0] research, if I | understand correctly, tries to understand how to make a | virus more virulent. Or make it affect hosts it wouldn't | normally affect. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_of_function_research | slenk wrote: | Depends on what you view as natural. They have been doing | "Gain of Function" research which is designed to enhance | viruses. | | https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab- | experiments... | johncena33 wrote: | By that logic there shouldn't be any murder trials. | Eventually everyone will die. | | It is sickening that millions of people died, more will | die, hundreds of millions of people have been pushed below | poverty line, almost every single person's life on the | planet is affected in some way and some people think it's | unnecessary to investigate. | mirekrusin wrote: | Adorable and naive, it's becoming too easy to do it, | regardless of policies there will be somebody somewhere | working on it as a weapon. [0] gives a good perspective. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY | dang wrote: | Please don't post snarky putdowns to HN, especially not on | flamewar topics. Your comment would be fine without that | opening swipe. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | bko wrote: | And maybe liability on the offending party? | JohnWhigham wrote: | I agree. We should start looking at Anthony Fauci himself, | who most likely pushed for this type of research via his | influence at the NIAID/NIH [0]. | | [0] https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid- | did-peop... | CamouflagedKiwi wrote: | There's no possibility to get that kind of money paid back | if a party was found responsible. At this point it must be | trillions. | noofen wrote: | Liable in the hundreds of billions? Too big to fail. | | Liable in the trillions? Too big to speak about. | loudmax wrote: | I tend to sympathize with this attitude, and while it is | absolutely true that the world needs to be better prepared for | pandemics regardless of origin, I don't think it's correct that | the origin of the disease doesn't matter. | | Just from a scientific perspective, we should know where | covid-19 came from. If it hopped from bats to people in a wet | market, that tells us something about the likelihood of this | type of virus spreading from contact with wild animals. If it | was accidentally released from a lab, that tells us something | different. | | In a healthy geopolitical environment, an impartial | investigative team that's able to pinpoint the source of the | original transmission could make this information public so | that everyone can learn how to avoid this happening again. If | the pandemic happened because policy enforcement at the virus | lab in Wuhan was weak, this is worth knowing. Not to to lay | blame and point fingers, but to help labs worldwide identify | potential weak points in their own procedures. | | The danger is that if evidence points to an accidental lab | release, some Western politicians will seize on the opportunity | to shame China just for the sake of national chauvinism. This | will accomplish nothing positive. The Chinese Communist Party | is very thin skinned and essentially amoral so they'll have no | compunctions about covering up any evidence of a lab leak in | order to save face. All of this political stuff risks getting | in the way of helping the scientific community understand where | covid-19 came from so we'll have a better understanding of how | to reduce the chances of this happening again. | AndrewBissell wrote: | If this virus indeed came from a lab, then: | | a.) It was covered up, | | b.) The people responsible hid crucial information which could | have helped contain the spread in the early days and find | treatments, | | c.) The people assuring us that lab creation was an impossible | "conspiracy theory" at the very least have egg on their face, | and at worst have no credibility or were engaged in a campaign | of mis/disinformation. | | And that's without getting into questions of whether the "leak" | story is being used to cover for "intentional release." | marcosdumay wrote: | Ok, those are 3 very different points, so: | | > It was covered up | | This is not actionable. | | > The people responsible hid crucial information which could | have helped contain the spread in the early days and find | treatments | | You imply in punishing those people? In the case it was a | leak, the people interested in punishing them don't have that | power, the people with that power were the same suppressing | the information, so no, that won't happen. | | > The people assuring us that lab creation was an impossible | "conspiracy theory" at the very least have egg on their face, | and at worst have no credibility or were engaged in a | campaign of mis/disinformation | | You should already remove any credibility from anybody | claiming it was impossible, as well as from anybody claiming | any other kind of certainty. What actually happened won't | change that. | | What we should do is take a good new look at the containment | procedures of those labs, reevaluate them, verify if they are | followed and fix what is not. We should also press | uncooperative countries, like China, to open those up for | inspection. Again, whether this one virus came from a lab | leak or not is not relevant, we know that best practices are | still leaky, and we have seen how problematic a leak would | be. | | All this politics game of "did | did not" is very | counterproductive. | AndrewBissell wrote: | > _What we should do is take a good new look at the | containment procedures of those labs, reevaluate them, | verify if they are followed and fix what is not._ | | Who should do that, exactly? The same people you seem to | think we should not to attempt to investigate or hold | accountable in any way? | | > _We should also press uncooperative countries, like | China, to open those up for inspection._ | | If China was demanding to have a bunch of their inspectors | let into Fort Detrick to poke around, we wouldn't be any | more welcoming than they have been. It's silly to allow | imperial powers to engage in bioweapons research and then | expect them to show each other all their cards. | marcosdumay wrote: | Why are you assuming this is bioweapons research? There | is more to virus research than bioweapons. | | It is much easier to get China to complain with "we | developed those standards for virus research, and would | like you to comply too, like any other serious country" | than "we believe you made an incredibly large fuck-up and | want your help to prove it". | fullshark wrote: | I see a lot of these appeals for ignorance in these | conversations. There's so many obvious reasons why we'd want to | learn to truth, such as learning how to prevent it from | happening again and to determine if gain of function research | is too risky. | | The only reason I see why we should want to remain ignorant is | it will possibly embarrass China. | AndrewBissell wrote: | The discussion around this issue is always implicitly framed as | though "Covid came from a lab" implies "created by CCP | researchers." The GoF ties to US institutions including the | Pentagon are always assiduously avoided (the NY Mag article being | one notable exception: | https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...) | | Very interesting to see this idea bubbling to the surface at the | same time that Bill Gates's Epstein ties are being re-broadcast, | the CDC is rapidly reversing guidance and relaxing protocols, the | WEF cancelling its summer meeting, Elon Musk suddenly sticking | the knife in crypto's back .... | screye wrote: | Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media | people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering | who the _cast members_ are and how this ties back into various | stories from the last year. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY | | So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has | the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a | thing, but is not like the PRC would ever agree to a fair trial. | Florin_Andrei wrote: | > _the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the | least holes in it_ | | You seem to ignore the fact that there's exactly zero evidence | either pro or contra. The fame of the "media person" is the | kind of argument you typically see invoked in Facebook and | Youtube comments. | jostmey wrote: | How is this the lab origin story more plausible than the | original hypothesis that sars-cov2 originated from the wet- | markets? Both are places where human and exotic animals closely | interact, where sars-cov2 could have jumped. Why do you think | the odds of the virus jumping are higher in one place than | another? | alisonatwork wrote: | I don't know anything about virology, but I do know about wet | markets. Every working class neighborhood in every city in | China has at least one wet market. I would guess that | hundreds of millions of people in China shop at wet markets | every day. Even if you filter out all the wet markets that do | not sell exotic animals like bats and pangolins, it still | seems suspicious that this outbreak appears to have been | centered around one of the few wet markets in China that | happens to be situated in the vicinity of a major virus lab. | splithalf wrote: | Not one single infected animal. No serious honest person | believes the wet market nonesense. It's not _supposed_ to be | believable. | dang wrote: | Please stop posting flamewar comments. You've done it more | than once in this thread already. That's basically | vandalism, if not arson, when the topic is this | inflammatory. No more of this please. | | If you wouldn't mind reviewing | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and | sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. | Note this one: " _Comments should get more thoughtful and | substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ " | chrisbrandow wrote: | I'm not in a position to say one way or the other, but the | articles detail a number of suggestive evidence that in my | mind makes the wild animal spread less likely. But as has | been pointed out, it is NOT definitive one way or the other. | prewett wrote: | There was an article posted recently on HN with no discussion | that outlined the evidence for the various theories, and had | pretty solid evidence for the leak theory (assuming they didn't | omit evidence for the other theories): | | https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... | dang wrote: | There was a large discussion about that article: | | _The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora's | box?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 - May | 2021 (536 comments) | elliekelly wrote: | Since there isn't any evidence for either scenario I don't | think it's at all accurate to say one possible origin is "the | most plausible". A lack of evidence for one does not give | credence to the other and vice versa. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | To say that "there isn't any evidence for either scenario" is | willful ignorance. | dang wrote: | Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | fallingknife wrote: | If I can't find my phone and I either left it somewhere in | the house or on the Uber I took home last night, the longer I | search my house and don't find it, the more likely it is that | I left it on the Uber. | adolph wrote: | By observation of the night sky would you believe Copernicus | or Ptolemy? Would you need to have evidence of the solar | system's origins or is the decreased computation required for | Copernicus enough to indicate it to be a superior | explanation? | | https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4.. | .. | Bayesian_bro wrote: | The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news | stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to | take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think | everyone had the best of intentions and either they found | something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone | down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting | links | https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... | is the papers done by a NIH grant to Eco Health Alliance. This | shows they were looking for new variants of Coronavirus at the | Wuhan Institute of Virology. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114... | This shows they were artificially synthesizing Coronaviruses and | incubating them in monkey cells. Dr. Peter Daszak seems to be in | the center of a lot of this and IMO had a conflict of interest | being on the WHO COVID-19 origins report. | dang wrote: | Please don't copy-paste comments. It strictly lowers the | signal/noise ratio, and it contradicts the principle that HN | threads are supposed to be conversations. People don't repeat | long pre-written statements in conversation. | | If you want to refer to something you said in a previous | context, that's fine and is what links are for. | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... | varispeed wrote: | > China's global reputation is going to take a hit. | | If having openly racist culture and running concentration camps | has done nothing to their reputation, I don't think anything | will. | | > I don't think they did this intentionally. | | Regardless if this was intentional or not, they should take | responsibility. Imagine if Russia dropped a nuclear bomb on | Europe by mistake. This is the same calibre of "oops my bad.". | It's not a secret that these viruses were researched as a | potential bio-weapon. In that sense whether it was intentional | or not, it has done immense damage to worldwide economy, which | is exactly the goal of such bio-weapon. | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. | Nationalistic flamewar is particularly not welcome here. | | If we're to have a thoughtful, substantive conversation about | a topic as sensitive as the OP, not jumping straight into the | flames of hell is...rather a precondition. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | wedn3sday wrote: | Claiming that COVID came from a lab is pretty close to non- | falsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove. I assume that if it was an | accidental or intentional release of a bioweapon, all evidence | would have long since been wiped clean. Making the claim that the | CCP secretly created COVID is backed by zero evidence, and | assuming they're even vaguely competent, all evidence to prove it | would have been long since destroyed. This is a very unproductive | path of inquiry, | prewett wrote: | There was an article posted to HN recently that went into | detail on the evidence contained within the virus itself, that | it has features not consistent with natural processes. However, | it wasn't secretly created, it was created (in part) with | grants from the US, which are public. | | https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... | dicroce wrote: | It's also possible that it was an accidental lab leak. But yes, | its going to be next to impossible to prove. | kossTKR wrote: | What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression | among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered | in a lab, please unfollow me. " | https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 | | Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is | certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at | Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be | multiple explanations. | | I know the issue is politicised and that's wrong as Ecohealth | alliance from the US sponsored this research so there is no | "single country at fault" - no need to avoid topics. | | It's not "chinas fault" it's more like, what on earth was the US | based Ecohealth alliance doing with this research, why so many | previous lab leaks with little attention, what is the history if | the Wuhan lab, whats the actual facts about Gain of Function | research etc. All topics that the press is not looking into for | some reason. | | On Ecohealth alliance: | | " It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized | and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance | of New York. Daszak's organization funded coronavirus research at | the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed | escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially | culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the | Lancet's readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, "We | declare no competing interests."" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 | syshum wrote: | >>I know the issue is politicized | | This is becoming more and more common, Pure Science is almost | never practiced anymore. The Hard sciences like Immunology, | virology, general medicine used to be some what insulated from | politics however in the last few years all sciences are no | longer data driven. | | You form a conclusion then find the facts that fit your | narrative, and if your narrative is not the "correct" one you | better not release your facts... | franciscop wrote: | Is it? Since the beginning the science has been in conflict | with politics (or the Church, or the Kings/Emperors before | democracy). Notable political/social opposition to the | sciences are well documented. Couple of examples: doctors | washing their hands was a controversial issue [2] and how | being able to eat "higher-class" food killed thousands of | Japanese, who rejected eating other food even when it was | known it was killing them [3]. | | [1] https://www.americamagazine.org/arts- | culture/2020/09/18/what... | | [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwa | shi... | | [3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rice-disease- | mystery-e... | 908B64B197 wrote: | > What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific | agression among certain virologist | | Would be interesting to dig further into who is funding their | research. | jrockway wrote: | That sounds like the worst of the Internet in action. You | disagree with someone's off-handed remark on social media, so | you want to remove their funding source? | | I guess that's pretty popular, but I have to say I don't care | for it. | | Many people are still in the bargaining stage of COVID | response -- if we find that some person made this virus and | released it into the wild, we just send them to prison and | the problem goes away. That's a very human reaction to the | problem, but unfortunately it doesn't actually work. We have | to clean up this colossal mess regardless of whether it was | man-made or not, and we have to reckon with the millions that | died and will never come back. | | Finding someone to blame is just a distraction, and I imagine | that many people want to move past that distraction and | eradicate the disease. The learning can come later when we're | collectively more calm. | | I doubt that anyone was funded to create SARS-CoV-2 and then | try to suppress discussion about it on Twitter. I think the | "unfollow me if you think it's man-made" is just a short- | circuit to avoid flamewars and distraction. It probably isn't | a belief against doing a blameless postmortem so that we can | handle things like this better in the future. | 908B64B197 wrote: | > You disagree with someone's off-handed remark on social | media, so you want to remove their funding source? | | No, what I was getting at is that they might have a | financial incentive to discredit the lab escape theory. For | instance, some of this researcher's funding or his | institution's funding might be from CCP-backed entities. | | > We have to clean up this colossal mess regardless of | whether it was man-made or not, and we have to reckon with | the millions that died and will never come back. Finding | someone to blame is just a distraction, and I imagine that | many people want to move past that distraction and | eradicate the disease. The learning can come later when | we're collectively more calm. | | This, trying to push the idea that fighting the virus or | investigating the outbreak theory are mutually exclusive, | is also a rhetoric I would expect to be pushed from the | party responsible for the outbreak. | | Truth is, why obstruct investigation efforts and try to | hide the facts if the origin of the virus is natural? | TacticalCoder wrote: | I'm no virologist but of all the places on earth we are | supposed to believe that, by cheer coincidence, the outbreak | happened in that one city that happens to do research and have | patents on lab-modified bat viruses and that it doesn't have | anything to do with that lab. | | I mean: you seriously cannot make that up. | Pepe1vo wrote: | To be fair, the reason the lab is in that place is precisely | because it's close to a place where zoonoses has occurred | multiple times. Kind of like how we don't blame lighthouses | for shipwrecks. | | That being said, from what I've read it appears that a lab | escape is a very real possibility. Though I doubt that we'll | ever find out | AbrahamParangi wrote: | I've heard this a number of times now, but is it actually | true? | | I find that argument hard to corroborate and there are | other parsimonious explanations, like WIV was located in | Wuhan because Wuhan is a major world city with high quality | institutions of higher education. | lumost wrote: | There doesn't appear to be any relation between the labs | founding and zoonoses in the local region. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology | sharken wrote: | Your point about the lab is great, it's just very hard to | dismiss the idea that a lab error was at fault. | | But i too think it all too likely that we won't be any | wiser about the origins. | | Though it would be great if a timeline could be | established, i don't remember seeing a good explanation on | Covid in Italy being discovered in 2019. | | https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy- | tim... | prox wrote: | I believe that Italy origin story was not credible. | Snopes goes with Wuhan as the origin. | amayne wrote: | "Wuhan is ~1000km away from SARS spillover zones. Its human | population was even used as a negative (no SARS) control | group." | | Via @Ayjchan on Twitter: | https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=20 | [deleted] | [deleted] | kossTKR wrote: | That fact alone is what makes this even more absurd to me. I | know about probability math, - the fact the these virologists | seemingly just discard that factor is twilight-zone territory | to me. | johncena33 wrote: | Of course certain virologists would be eager to dismiss lab | leak hypothesis. Just think about the implication of this | hypothesis turns out to be true. Virologists have very strong | conflict of interests. If these people have any integrity | they'd refrain from commenting. | fumbly wrote: | What's particularly significant and hasn't much been | commented on yet is that Ralph Baric, the leading American | collaborator of the bat coronavirus research at Wuhan, has | signed the letter. He also (according to the OP) declined to | comment further. That seems more like integrity. | bbatha wrote: | Lab leak does not necessarily imply the virus was engineered. | Indeed there is reasonable evidence for the former and | little, but not none, for the later. | tristanj wrote: | Not surprising at all considering Wuhan Lab scientists admitted | on video they were bitten by bats and they had lax to no safety | standards. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 | | > _A video released two years before the start of the Wuhan | coronavirus pandemic shows Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) | scientists being cavalier toward protective equipment and being | bitten by bats that carry deadly viruses such as SARS, | demonstrating a lax safety culture in the lab._ | | > _On Dec. 29, 2017, Chinese state-run TV released a video | designed to showcase Shi Zhengli, (Shi Zheng Li ), also known as | "Bat Woman," and her team of scientists at the WIV in their quest | to find the origin of SARS. Despite the fact that the scientists | work in a biosafety level 4 lab, they show a shocking disregard | for safety when handling potentially infectious bats both in the | wild and in the lab._ | | > _From 4:45 to 4:56, a scientist can be seen holding a bat with | his bare hands. Team members from 7:44 to 7:50 can be seen | collecting potentially highly infectious bat feces while wearing | short sleeves and shorts and with no noticeable personal | protective equipment (PPE) other than gloves._ | | > _Virus researcher Cui Jie (Cui Jie ) relates his experiences of | being bitten from 8:47 to 8:50. He said that the bat 's fangs | went right through his glove, which was likely nitrile. He | described the feeling as "like being jabbed with a needle." The | video then cuts to a person's limb showing swelling after a bat | bite._ | | That provides a plausible origin scenario of the pandemic: In | October 2019, a researcher at the Wuhan Lab was bitten by a bat, | got infected (asymptomatically), went home and unknowingly | infected other people in the community, and the virus spread from | there. | | Sadly, I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Those who | were directly involved with the early stage of the outbreak will | never speak up, because Beijing issued a complete gag order on | what happened. Anyone that speaks about the early stages of the | pandemic be charged with espionage, and if found guilty, they can | receive the death penalty. | https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chin... | yabones wrote: | Indeed, this type of carelessness adds to the inherent danger | of researching highly infectious diseases. Labs leak _all the | time_ , for example the original SARS escaped from labs at | least three times [1]: | | > The recent announcement of nine cases of severe acute | respiratory syndrome linked to China's National Institute of | Virology brings to three the number of lab outbreaks of the | disease in the past eight months. | | It's also happened dozens of times in the US, UK, and former | Soviet Union. Tuberculosis, Smallpox, various flu viruses have | all escaped from "secure" labs. [2] [3] | | Maybe studying viruses isn't as safe as we thought. | | --- | | [1] | https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/s... | | [2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center- | hit... | | [3] https://www.bmj.com/rapid- | response/2011/10/29/1978-accidenta... | Florin_Andrei wrote: | > _Not surprising at all_ | | Given that the amount of evidence is exactly zero, anyone can | spin their favorite "unsurprising" theories all day long. | searine wrote: | >That provides a plausible origin scenario of the pandemic | | Plausible but it gets us no closer to the truth unfortunately. | There are many plausible origins, but it is important we do not | mistake plausible for the most likely. | | I agree though, the CCP has massively hindered this search for | truth and will likely continue to do so, all to save face. | splithalf wrote: | The innocent have nothing to hide. | pishpash wrote: | You'd need to find that bat that you imagine bit someone in | October 2019, swab its nose or anus and sequence for SARS- | CoV-2, because the closest known bat virus relative to SARS- | CoV-2 has a decades-long evolutionary gap to it. | | Oh, also viruses don't get virulent in the new host the moment | the zoonotic transfer occurs. It takes a bit of time to evolve | and adapt. | _wldu wrote: | This answers the Fermi paradox. | pishpash wrote: | Suppose for a moment this was not a lab leak. What kind of | evidence would be sufficient to be convincing? Or are we looking | for investigation after investigation until the end of time? | | What this letter fails to establish is a success criterion. | Nobody is going to invest in a "proper investigation", much less | one tinged with politics, without even knowing something will | come out of it. | ping_pong wrote: | What's the point? After reading all the evidence, people such as | myself firmly believe that it came from the Wuhan lab. Nothing | the inquiry will come up with convince me otherwise. It's pretty | obvious once you read all of the unbiased articles that show that | months earlier, the same research facilities and scientists were | touting their research in gain-of-function in bat coronaviruses. | I mean come on! | | Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a | Chinese lab. The "inquiry" will say that it's unlikely and try to | bury the issue, and then it will just keep popping its head out | in news articles that get ultimately ignored. | pessimizer wrote: | > Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a | Chinese lab. | | Why do you care if you will NEVER EVER believe it didn't? | Dah00n wrote: | You haven't read enough evidence to know the cause no matter | how much you follow the case as we have hardly started | collecting evidence. It's still in early preliminary stages. | | To find a source we need a host. We haven't even found a host | from SARS yet even though that happened back in 2002. All we | have is a very closely related one (96% match?) and that was | found in 2020. It takes _a lot_ of work by scientists living | among wild animals for years in often very remote locations. | Stating it was from a lab after so little time has past and so | little work has been done is at a minimum jumping to | conclusions. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Part of me thinks that we should almost not waste the time to | find out. Spend the effort on preparing for the next one, by | improving air filtration etc. | | Politics is too deeply entrenched, it will be an impossibility to | uncover the truth. | giantg2 wrote: | Sort of agree. But if it was from a lab, that might make people | and governments more careful in the future | | Also, what do you mean by "improving air filtration"? | google234123 wrote: | What is sad is that these ideas were dismissed as crackpotish | or racist until now. | [deleted] | 908B64B197 wrote: | I wonder in who's best interest it was to dismiss these | theories as racist. | google234123 wrote: | China? This seems pretty obvious. The far left also enjoys | calling things racist so they probably pushed it too. | 908B64B197 wrote: | I wonder if that's why the comment was downvoted so | heavily and flagged. | Judgmentality wrote: | Are you saying Trump was complicit in calling it the | Chinese virus as part of their propaganda campaign? | Sometimes things can just be explained by stupidity. | ska wrote: | Most of what I recalling at the time doesn't match that | description. It was more disparaged as pointless speculation | mostly being used to fuel political finger pointing when | people had far more important things to figure out. | | Sampling bias acknowledged. | tshaddox wrote: | Was the idea that we should inquire about the virus' origin | dismissed as such, or just the idea that there is already | strong evidence of any particular origin story? | baryphonic wrote: | How do we know the next one will involve air filtration at all? | Perhaps it will thrive on surfaces for long periods and will | react negatively to air. How should we prepare for this or any | other etiology that might be significantly different than this | one? If we're constantly preparing for the last pandemic, and | the next one is surprisingly different, wouldn't that be bad as | well, as those resources could have been used better in the | intervening time? | | But, also, wouldn't it be better to determine the cause of this | one so we know not to do whatever it was that caused this? For | example, try to discourage exotic meats that might be host to | the virus and/or eliminate or strictly control gain of function | research, depending on the actual cause (or some other cause | that isn't actually either of these)? | johncena33 wrote: | Yes. By that logic, why start punishing people for vehicular | manslaughter? Just spend the effort on educating perpretrators | so that they don't kill someone next time. | dougmwne wrote: | That viewpoint basically amounts to head in the sand. There is | a plausible pathway to determine the origin. The lab could be | openly investigated and the natural environment could be combed | for an ancestor. If this was an unintentional release, it would | vastly change the public perception and oversight protocols | around pathogen research. Think what Chernobyl, Three Mile | Island and Fukushima did to nuclear energy. | | If we don't get open cooperation from China, it's also | extremely useful information and helps all other nations | recalibrate their levels of trust and ties. | | Because if a future lab release happens, it could be so, so | much worse. If it seems impossible, disease was a contributing | factor in 31 species' extinctions that we know of, and those | diseases were of natural origin.[1] The Plague of Justinian, | also of natural origin, is estimated to have killed up to half | the world's population at the time. After the last year, can we | really afford to take these risks lightly anymore? | | [1] | https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... | mensetmanusman wrote: | This is actually a good point. I think you changed my mind :) | | Thanks for the thoughtful post | dougmwne wrote: | I think that may be a first for me in 25 years on the | internet. Thanks for being so open minded! | tomjen3 wrote: | We need to make the penalty for this so insanely high that | nobody, absolutely nobody ever even thinks of doing research | that might lead to this ever again. | actually_a_dog wrote: | Why is it an either/or? It seems like it would be possible to | improve air filtration _and_ have an inquiry. | ramraj07 wrote: | No this needs more investigation. Even if the Chinese side | might be hard to crack, the American angle needs to be fully | evaluated. Which American scientists were at least aware if not | complicit (including Fauci) in this entire misguided attempt at | proactively finding the next virus? Did they actively try to | suppress their involvement once everything hit the fan? | fumbly wrote: | The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function | research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of | pandemic prevention. That's one serious reason for wanting to | investigate whether gain-of-function research may have caused | the current one. | | The risks of such research have been in open debate for years, | and the Obama administration even banned it for a while. It's | not a far-fetched possibility, and it's a shame that the | discussion about it became such a political casualty for the | first year or so. The fact that heads are cooling a little now | is clearly the precondition for scientists to be able to start | writing letters like the OP. | baja_blast wrote: | > The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function | research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of | pandemic prevention. | | Do you have a source for this? Because if true this would be | extremely frightening, even if Covid is natural the research | is just too risky. GoF research should be banned, I mean it's | entire justification for conducting this research in the | first place is that it "helps predict new emergent diseases | and develop vaccines" but it failed to predict this pandemic | and did nothing towards vaccine development. | fumbly wrote: | "Also, current plans are to expand worldwide collaboration | on risky virus research sixfold, through the $1.2 billion | Global Virome Project. Shouldn't we figure out if this | research sparked the pandemic before drastically expanding | it?" | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- | opinions/cong... | monday_ wrote: | If a containment breach of a relatively harmless virus can lead | to worldwide catastrophic consequences, you may want to know | what procedures were breached and what institutional incentives | are required to make sure the risks are constrained. | | In software terms, if you have a bug that breaks the production | and the response is messy and slow, you absolutely need to | spend time and effort to change your response process. But you | also need to know how this type of a bug became possible in the | first place. | eplanit wrote: | Preparation for the next event _requires_ understanding the | origin of this one to the greatest extent possible. | | I think it's very wrong to shy away from inquiry of the truth | out of fear of politics. | ska wrote: | I'm sympathetic to this view, but the flip side of it is we | don't do much about currently identified pandemic vector | risks such as swine CAFO operations; why would we expect new | information (if any) affect our behavior any more than that? | | If it's expensive to mitigate and hard to quantify, it's | always going to be an uphill battle. | dasudasu wrote: | Besides, forgoing any investigation is a political statement | and indeed the preferred outcome by one major political | player. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-17 23:00 UTC)