[HN Gopher] Scientist finds early virus sequences that had been ... ___________________________________________________________________ Scientist finds early virus sequences that had been mysteriously deleted Author : gumby Score : 118 points Date : 2021-06-23 20:32 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | Bayesian_bro wrote: | I don't see good enough evidence to show the zoological origin | yet. I don't see good enough evidence of a lab leak origin yet | either. I do see good enough evidence for a Chinese coverup. I | can say for 100% certainly the Chinese are not being upfront with | their data. What scenario would hiding data benefit? Cui bono? | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | I think China is the only major country to grow their GDP for | 2020. Does that answer your question sufficiently? | AdamN wrote: | They might just want to protect other secrets about the lab and | keep everyone at arms length. | | My bet is that even in China (which is not monolithic) | different stakeholders are not so sure and there's major CYA | between the scientists, the local managers, the Beijing-based | leadership, senior leadership at all levels. Nothing good can | come for any of these people if they allow the investigation to | proceed smoothly. What if it's discovered that some totally | unrelated incident happened years ago or that somebody was | embezzling or did shady land deals with Wuhan lab accounts? The | truth only helps people who are not involved. Everybody | involved is best served by keeping their mouth shut and | blocking any investigation. | plank_time wrote: | Sorry but China is about as monolithic as you can get. The | CCP had an incredibly tight control over the entire country. | It doesn't allow anything except for a monolithic view. | S_A_P wrote: | Can someone explain in non charged terms why its 'bad' to | investigate and or ask the right questions regarding whether or | not the virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab? Im genuinely curious | here. Thinking hypothetically here, _if_ it were leaked wouldnt | we all want to do a post mortem and figure out how to prevent it | from happening again? | Splendor wrote: | This is a charged topic, but I'll try to answer objectively | without trying to argue whether the reasons are good or bad. | | I can think of two reasonable reasons why someone wouldn't want | to investigate the matter: | | 1. It would be embarrassing for China. | | 2. It may be hard to properly communicate or convince people of | the difference between an accidental lab leak vs. an | intentional lab leak which could add fuel to a fire of | jingoism/nationalism in other countries. | | Again, I'm trying hard not to make a judgement here. Hopefully | I did a decent job. | fairpoints777 wrote: | It's not your problem if people take it the wrong way, points | are valid, you don't need to dedicate half your message to | disclaimers to appease the hyperoffended crowd - what should | I get upset about today people | Leary wrote: | Strawman. Nobody, even China, argues it's bad to investigate. | Everyone just wants the investigation to be free from political | interference. | justinpombrio wrote: | If it leaked from the lab, preventing that is very easy. We | just need to _stop doing gain of function research_. | | Whether or not Covid came from a lab, it's at least plausible | that it did, and a virus just as bad could get accidentally | released in the future. So our options are: | | - Continue gain of function research, and risk killing | literally millions of people | | - Stop gain of function research, and lose any knowledge we | would gain from it. | | Honestly, I don't know the first thing about gain of function | research, but that's one _hell_ of a risk we 're taking with | it. Can we maybe not try to make the viruses deadlier? | notJim wrote: | Is it a certainty that the lab was doing gain of function | research? Haven't followed this closely. | lamontcg wrote: | There's no indication WIV was doing any gain of function | research. | | WIV did collaborate with UNC Chapel Hill to do GOF research | in America, in mice using a SARS-CoV-1 backbone. | | The US government send funds to WIV to study SADS-CoV in | pigs. | | Circular logic is invoked to "prove" that those funds led | to secret GoF research which has never been published or | talked about on the basis that the pandemic arising in | Wuhan is too much of a coincidence (and coincidences | logically can never happen). | AdamN wrote: | Some/many people can't separate the accusation from it being | shown to be true. During that period of time (years??), it's a | distraction for those people from the other problems like | handling vaccine distribution, relations with China independent | of COVID19, etc... | | Yes, if this were a narrow academic research project looking | into the origin that was left de-politicized until there was an | outcome that would be great. Unfortunately this whole thing was | born political and China hasn't done itself any favors by | always being so hush hush. | soperj wrote: | It's not bad, it's just the reason people are doing it have | nothing to do with preventing it form happening again. | FriendlyNormie wrote: | The fucking fact that you felt the need to even ask this. Jesus | christ. | legostormtroopr wrote: | There are only 2 reasons I can think of: | | 1. Because Trump called for an investigation into the Lab Leak | Theory. Since Trump is bad, everything he says and does is | always bad. This meant that everyone who was anti-Trump said | that the lab leak theory was 100% false, definitely a | consipracy theory and hence.... _bad_. | | 2. Because the Chinese government have used the modern | political environment to deflect all critism as racism. Because | people often shorten "Chinese Government" to "China" in news | (much like the US), they take it that attacks against "China" | aren't really attacks against the country but instead racist | attacks against the people. Since racism is bad, criticism of | China is racism, and investigating the Lab Leak leak is | criticism of China - it stans to reason that the Lab Leak | theory is racism, and hence.... _bad_. | fairpoints777 wrote: | Well reasoned points, not sure why you are getting downvoted, | probably the left/liberal censorship crew (my way of thinking | or the highway, insert random accusations of racism/sexism) | McTossOut wrote: | No, investigation or questions are probably merited given the | scale of this thing. | | Random fragments of what sounds like an investigation getting | immediately published is the problem. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/kbqdB | femto113 wrote: | There's no obvious reason to believe this is nefarious or even | "mysterious". From the WaPo article[1] on the subject here's the | statement from the NIH (which maintains the database) | | "These SARS-CoV-2 sequences were submitted for posting in SRA in | March 2020 and subsequently requested to be withdrawn by the | submitting investigator in June 2020. The requestor indicated the | sequence information had been updated, was being submitted to | another database, and wanted the data removed from SRA to avoid | version control issues" | | [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-origin- | nih... | pitched wrote: | https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/hGqAvT | codeulike wrote: | Article is Paywalled but its basically about this twitter thread | from Bloom Labs: | | https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445604029009923 | | This technical bit is interesting - although the data had been | 'deleted' from the Sequence Read Archive* web app by the original | submitter, this tweet explains that they were able to recover the | data via storage.googleapis.com: | | https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445615248691201 | | _I discovered that even though the files were deleted from | archive itself, they could be recovered from the Google Cloud at | links likehttps://storage.googleapis.com/nih-sequence-read- | archive/run... (5/n) ..._ | | So technical question for HNers - what lives at | storage.googleapis.com usually? Was that like a cloud mirror or | was it more like the 'delete' function in the web app was only | removing things from the index but leaving the deleted stuff | accessible? | | * Sequence Read Archive seems to live at | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra | colechristensen wrote: | They were supposedly storing artifacts publicly available on | GCP's object store, an efficient way to do things for | distribution of non-secure large pieces of data. | | "delete" deleted the reference to these objects but the objects | were kept around. (This is a not-so-bad practice, if you're | hacked and somebody tries to wipe everything, or some bug or | fat finger deletes everything, you've deleted references to | data not actual data) | ve55 wrote: | Most likely the latter: the server-side code in charge of | deleting data did not make a call to their storage api to also | remove the object itself. There's a good chance that is | intentional and serves as a soft-deletion function, such that | it could be reverted (or the data otherwise used) if needed. | pitched wrote: | That was my read on this too and Dr. Bloom accidentally | hacked the NIH. The next question though is whether they'll | change this or not? Is the guarantee that anyone can retract | at any time important enough to make the db useful? Will the | Chinese government mandate no one there ever use it again | now? | nitrogen wrote: | _Dr. Bloom accidentally hacked the NIH._ | | In case this is why this comment was downvoted, it's worth | remembering that others have been charged with CFAA | violation for basically the same thing. | bgentry wrote: | There was some prior discussion on this submission from | yesterday, though it fell just short of the front page: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598222 | | The source paper | (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v1) or | Twitter thread | (https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445604029009923) are | probably better sources than the New York Times article based on | them. | bigpumpkin wrote: | "Dr. Goldstein noted that the testing paper listed the individual | mutations the Wuhan researchers found in their tests. Although | the full sequences are no longer in the archive, the key | information has been public for over a year, he said." | wallacoloo wrote: | Not to mention it was deleted in June 2020. I have to imagine | many researchers had already downloaded the data by then and | that there are a number of local copies that could be shared | out if there was compelling reason to do so. | | If it was a coverup it was a rather poor one. It's hard for me | to think this was nefarious, unless the intention was just to | delay (in a plausibly deniable manner). | mrkstu wrote: | It isn't, by itself, conclusive at all, but the amount of | smoke China generates around this whole thing, vs | transparency, screams that there is fire in the middle of the | smoke. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Is this amount of smoke uncharacteristic for China? | tux3 wrote: | Establishing a pattern of shiftiness would not make the | actions in question less questionnable. | | If I hear a surprising claim from a pathological liar, | I'm also less likely to believe it, not more! | joejerryronnie wrote: | No, but neither is fire | 0-_-0 wrote: | If I remember correctly, the disappearance of these sequences was | discussed more than a year ago in Bret Weinstein's podcast, among | many other indicators of a lab leak: | | https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug?t=1843 | | He's been the canary in the coal mine on numerous issues | surrounding COVID. | | edit: listen from 30:43, also from 25:11: | https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug?t=1511 | cma wrote: | >He's been the canary in the coal mine on numerous issues | surrounding COVID. | | He's also been the carbon monoxide in the coal mine, steering | people away from vaccines | eloff wrote: | Yeah, I don't agree with this assessment of the risks there. | | The more people that are vaccinated, the shakier his argument | becomes. | | Covid19 has very real, well documented risks. The common | vaccines have very low known risks by comparison. The space | for unknown risks shrinks by the day. | | That's the danger inherit with being a contrarian. Mostly you | end up being wrong. It's a very important role though, to | challenge accepted beliefs and create a dialog around them. | DiffEq wrote: | Not all vaccines are created equal. | peter4123 wrote: | Great point - The COVID19 Vaccines, particularly the mRNA | ones are some of the best ever made, ~90% effective at | preventing disease and ~100% effective at preventing death. | xyzzy123 wrote: | You're thinking of the WIV database that was offlined 12 | September. | | This is new. We don't know why the sequence was deleted; the | submitter cited "version control" reasons (data was being | submitted somewhere else) but then deleted both known copies. | lamontcg wrote: | > among many other indicators of a lab leak: | | literally nothing in this article or in the sequences is | indication of a lab leak. | | it isn't even particularly clear there is any cover up here, | particularly since an article on the sequences was published. | | if there's any deliberate suppression it would seem to be to | hide the fact that scientists were studying the virus sooner | than previously admitted and that they should have raised the | alarm earlier. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-23 23:00 UTC)