[HN Gopher] The risky bat-virus engineering that links America t...
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The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan
Author : apsec112
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-07-02 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| dang wrote:
| All: please don't post generic comments [1], and definitely not
| generic flamebait comments [2], in threads like this. Those are
| repetitive, tedious, and therefore off topic here
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Edit: we
| don't want to just repeat the same argument over and over,
| because there's no curiosity in that [5], and because it always
| turns nasty [6].
|
| The value of the article and thread, on a major ongoing topic
| like this one, is in the specifics of what the article discusses
| --in other words, the _diff_ relative to previous articles and
| threads [3]. If there aren 't any new specifics, then the article
| itself would count as off topic [4], but in this case there do
| seem to be.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| [2]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| [3]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| [4]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| [5]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| [6]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/sffuO
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| To think that a few months ago, sharing this article would have
| gotten someone banned from Facebook for sharing "conspiracy
| theories".
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep... we should really have a debate about platform-vs-
| publisher status of media.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Platform/publisher isn't a thing. https://www.techdirt.com/ar
| ticles/20201017/13051145526/secti...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But it should be.
| bumbada wrote:
| Actually I knew about Shi's work early on because I talked with
| experts on the field and I shared all this info without
| problems.
|
| The urge to ban that info in social sites came much later, when
| politicians got the message and considered that info
| dangerous(and because the West depended on Chinese supplies).
|
| Most politicians are so dumb from the scientific and technical
| side that it took a long time for them to understand.
|
| But it gives us and important lesson: If we want to inform
| ourselves, we should use alternatives to centralized social
| media.
| armada651 wrote:
| I don't think you need to make conspiratorial allegations
| about the info being judged "dangerous" to explain it.
|
| It simply got politicized just as masks got politicized. The
| more one side advocates it the more the other side discredits
| it.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Except in this case, the left tried to discredit it.
|
| If Trump kept his mouth shut, it may have gone down
| differently (that is, less politicized).
| api wrote:
| That's because Facebook is full of bad actors sharing actual
| complete bullshit conspiracy theories, and the only thing a
| company like Facebook can possibly do is a make a "nothing that
| deviates too hard from the Official Line(tm) rule." Otherwise
| they have to get into the business of being some kind of
| scientific review board, which they are in no way equipped to
| do.
|
| Bad faith propaganda at the scale we have seen recently is
| abuse of free speech, and widespread abuse of a freedom often
| leads to the curtailment of that freedom.
| nradov wrote:
| Official line in which country? And what happens when the WHO
| says one thing, the CDC says something else, and the
| President contradicts both?
| api wrote:
| What happens? Facebook eats it from all sides.
|
| I didn't say they were doing a good job, just that the
| alternative would have been to let the platform turn into a
| complete cesspool of bullshit and hate.
|
| This scenario is a curse you get when you are operating a
| gigantic Internet forum at that kind of scale.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| > Otherwise they have to get into the business of being some
| kind of scientific review board, which they are in no way
| equipped to do.
|
| They're not that far off that to be honest -
| https://oversightboard.com/
| secondcoming wrote:
| Indeed. The whole thing needs to be looked at. Someone
| somewhere decided that the topic was taboo and needed to be
| purged from the internet, and then someone somewhere decided
| that it was ok that the tpoic gets to see the light of day.
|
| It's all quite sinister.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Those someones were CNN/MSNBC producers that decided not to
| give it the light of day because Trump talked about it first
| and that means it's unequivocally Bad(tm) and racist. All
| 24/7 news networks should be dissolved immediately. They are
| aggressive cancers that have been ruinous to society.
|
| And I still get downvoted. Lol. This community is no better
| than the social media sites it trashes.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Don't use Facebook
| bumbada wrote:
| We should develop open source decentralized alternatives to
| it that are easy to use.
| kwthrows wrote:
| It won't change anything. This isn't to do with facebook
| per-se, you'd just get "unlinked" from whatever
| arbitrators or aggreggators of a decentralized
| alternative exist, and still be labeled a social outcast
| and a conspiracy theorist. It's not a technology problem,
| rather it's one of imbeciles.
|
| It also exists on HN. There is a bevvy of topics we are
| not allowed to discuss here because dang will point to
| some arbitrary guidelines saying how "that's not allowed
| here" and ban you. It's the same shit everywhere.
|
| Basically, the moment you step outside of the given
| narrative and what is and isn't allowed to be questioned,
| you should have zero (or less than zero, actually)
| expectation of having a platform where you can voice your
| concerns, and heaven forbid that your online persona be
| linked with your personal details, because if it is, you
| are in so much deep shit it's not even worth it for most
| people to utter certain words.
| gloriousternary wrote:
| Honestly I think Mastodon is already about as easy to use
| as possible. The real problem is the network effect, and
| the fact that the average person really just doesn't care
| enough about the benefits you get from it. What we really
| need is a libre, decentralized social network that's
| "cool" enough that non-tech people would have FOMO if
| they don't join. That's a much harder problem, one that I
| certainly won't be able to solve any time soon.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Honestly I think Mastodon is already about as easy to
| use as possible. The real problem is the network effect,
| and the fact that the average person really just doesn't
| care enough about the benefits you get from it.
|
| I care a great deal about the benefits of Mastodon! For
| me, the benefit is that anyone who is obsessive about
| conspiracy theories, racism, etc have a quarantined
| social space where they can converse without me having to
| listen.
| Tenoke wrote:
| YouTube among with many other places are even now censoring
| it so acting like it's a Facebook problem is counter-
| productive.
| api wrote:
| So use Vimeo, Peertube, your own web site, ...
| devwastaken wrote:
| Because people are sharing actual conspiracy theories and
| killing others. So it's a blanket ban. How many people are so
| crazed and convinced that the vaccine makes you
| magnetic/sterile/whatever?
| swiley wrote:
| Lots of things killed people last year, including the lock
| down. Being allowed to criticize things like that is what
| separates us from countries that lack democracy.
| kent13304 wrote:
| Not very many
| ipaddr wrote:
| Conspiracy theories are not harmful that kill people. This is
| an idea the media spread in the last little while to label
| non-approved opinions as harmful.
|
| Facebook decides to blank ban anything that hasn't been
| approved by gatekeepers and you approved because you are
| worried that people might hear on facebook that vaccines
| cause people to go sterile and not get one?
|
| Which one of these things is actually causing harm? Shutting
| down all discussion or the worry that someone might post and
| might think the vaccine causes you to be magnetic?
|
| It's crazy people are falling for this.
| [deleted]
| runawaybottle wrote:
| People will hate this source, but this is the most info I've seen
| revealed about the actual conditions in the Wuhan lab(s):
|
| https://www.the-sun.com/news/3174242/wuhan-labs-leak-covid-c...
| aplummer wrote:
| That's because the source regularly deliberately misinforms. So
| it's impossible to know if literally any of the claims here are
| completely made up.
|
| For example:
|
| _In December 2019, The Sun's political editor, Tom Newton Dunn,
| wrote an article for the paper titled "Hijacked Labour",
| alleging that "Jeremy Corbyn is at the centre of an
| extraordinary network of hard-left extremists pieced together
| by former British intelligence officers", a network ranging
| from Novara Media contributor Ash Sarkar to French philosopher
| Michel Foucault, who has been dead since 1984, that is alleged
| to be pulling Corbyn's strings.[204] It was later found that
| the ultimate sources for this claim included the antisemitic,
| far-right websites The Millennium Report and Aryan Unity._ [1]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_(United_Kingdom)#Far-r...
| nytyellow wrote:
| Look up NYTimes and yellow cake.
|
| Oh wait that doesn't fit your narrative. Oh well. I'm sure
| you have some explanation for why one is better then the
| other and it's a totally valid non partisan, non bias,
| totally fair minded reason.
|
| hN is just full of highly propagandized group thinkers.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I'm not understanding the case you're making. The most
| notable action by the NYT on yellowcake (the main citation
| in the Wikipedia article) was publishing the op-ed by Joe
| Wilson indicating that the evidence that Iraq was trying to
| buy yellowcake was forged. To me, that story has
| considerable resonance with the lab leak theory, in both
| cases certain factions within US intelligence trying to
| push the theory hard, and releasing "evidence" through
| indirect sources that cannot readily be verified. In the
| lab leak case, a major part of that role was played by the
| Wall Street Journal, which published the account of 3 Wuhan
| lab workers hospitalized in November 2019[1]. The part of
| Joe Wilson basically being played by Christopher Ashley
| Ford, in a letter cited elsewhere in this thread.
|
| [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-
| staff-at-w...
| yskchu wrote:
| If you want to know the actual conditions, there is a recent
| article from a much better source
|
| Bloomberg: The Last-And Only-Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab
| Speaks Out
|
| She is an Australian virologist, now working in Melbourne's
| Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, previously
| scientific director of the biosafety lab at Singapore's Duke-
| NUS Medical School in 2016.
|
| Archive link:
|
| https://archive.is/IFDZY
| devwastaken wrote:
| The 60 page report that's listed halfway through isn't peer
| reviewed, and the main author only submits papers about the
| wuhan lab. It's also on researchgate, which is about the same
| as saying someone publishing a study on twitter.
| ralph84 wrote:
| This is progress. Maybe soon we can finally admit that "gain of
| function" is the politically correct way to say "bioweapon".
| echelon wrote:
| This wasn't a biological weapon.
|
| Gain of function research was being carried out for the benefit
| of society (or resume padding). However, it wasn't subject to
| oversight (to put it mildly) and was being handled by a lab
| ill-equipped to do so safely.
|
| China has massive zoonotic reservoirs. The US researchers that
| led the world in Coronavirus study wanted to do gain of
| function, but couldn't do it domestically and didn't have
| access to the wild novel coronaviruses.
|
| Money and notes changed hands, and the Wuhan lab went about
| gain of function research. The lab was sloppy, the modified
| virus leaked, and the rest is history.
|
| There are probably only a handful of people ultimately
| responsible for this. The individuals from the US writing the
| proposals and pushing for it despite lack of safety, and those
| in China that knew the risks but went ahead. (The coverup and
| slow responses are also to blame for the spread.)
|
| Millions of deaths out of lack of oversight and desire for
| personal prestige. That's the story.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It really doesn't make a difference if covid came from a lab or
| not, or even whether it was released on purpose or not. No one
| will stand up to China whether they did this on purpose or by
| gross negligence. So no one will stand up to China. So nothing
| will change...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If it makes no difference, why obstruct investigations and
| attempt to conceal data? [0] [1]
|
| Why not simply collaborate and cooperate with the authorities
| in finding the truth? After all, they are 100% convinced the
| origin of the virus is natural...
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/china-calls-us-investigation-
| covid-...
|
| [1] https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/chinese-virologist-says-
| fauci-...
| GordonS wrote:
| Could China have handled this better? Hell yes.
|
| The thing is though, I seriously doubt the end result would
| have been any different if the virus has first come about in
| any other country.
|
| Imagine that the virus has first been discovered in Atlanta
| (first US city that came to mind) - would officials _really_ be
| brave enough to have a hard, immediate lockdown, with all the
| economic hardships that would entail, and with all the problems
| of getting a doubting populace on onboard? (keeping in mind
| that Trump 's initial reaction was to denounce the very notion
| of a serious virus as a "hoax")
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I wasn't really referring to their reaction to covid, rather
| their creation of covid.
|
| Leaving aside the Lab origin theories, Covid 19 never would
| have happened if China had hygienic food supply-chains and
| banned wet markets.
|
| That's where other zoonotic diseases have come from in recent
| years from China (SARS is the biggest example). They closed
| the markets, new viruses stopped happening and everything was
| fine. Then they opened the markets again and we got covid 19.
|
| China is like a drink driver who already hit someone and
| refused to stop drunk driving and hit another person. Right
| now no one wants to make them stop driving. So I guess we'll
| just keep getting pandemics?
|
| Covid 19 is really just SARS 2.0.
|
| That's what really gets me here (sorry, I'm ranting now).
| China knew this would happen. Everyone did. And they did it
| anyway. And now everyone is pretending like it was bad luck
| or something!? This is literally why every other major,
| industrial country has food hygiene laws and minimal "Bush
| meat".
|
| Thanks for listening to me shout into the wind.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr.
| ..
|
| Edit: I wonder if one of the reasons china is so unwilling to
| engage is to encourage people to think it was a bio-weapon
| accident (we'll never stop that happening) rather than just
| "the CCP is too weak and lazy to say no to old people who
| want bat soup". Conspiracy within the conspiracy! But I'm an
| idiot so probably not...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > would officials _really_ be brave enough to have a hard,
| immediate lockdown
|
| To ask the question is to know the answer. Just imagine a
| public health official trying to convince the mayor or
| governor to quarantine a city of millions of people, based on
| a small number of pneumonia cases.
| deelowe wrote:
| The article is specifically discussing concerns with us funding
| of this sort of research. That is something that can change.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Better yet, it doesn't matter because supposedly we're spending
| billions of DoD to actually have plans to defend against a bio
| weapon attack.
|
| Where is the RoI on that? We failed miserably.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Like the majority of DOD spending, all promise and no
| delivery. We're still building aircraft carriers while
| hackers cut off the utilities...
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Not to miss the 2nd part of the video. Chinese threat is not
| about china. But the censorship of deliberation. May be the lab
| theory is wrong. But not allow to talk and discuss about it ...
| that is how learn from the current 7 million social experiment of
| transforming a liberal society here in Hong Kong to one
| sanctioned. Good luck USA. It is so ingrained in USA can you save
| yourselves. Good luck humanity.
|
| It is not just about a lab leak. It is the deliberation and
| freedom of expression that is more than important. Good luck.
|
| Humanity has lost. It might come back. After losing hundred years
| perhaps. But why we do not wake up and start to rebuild a better
| open environment ... so we can be safe later.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Youtube is still censoring this topic. Two well known scientists
| testified before congress on GoF testing and the Corona Virus
| characteristics. That was pulled down within a few hours. I save
| all these videos but no idea what to do with them.
|
| _[Edit]_ I found a copy of the coverage posted by Forbes [1] and
| as a matter of correction it is the _GOP House Oversight and
| Reform Subcommittee on Select Coronavirus Crisis hearing_
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Stephen Quay is a "well known scientist" in a field completely
| unrelated to virology. He's a medical doctor who also does
| oncology research. Despite admitting to having no experience
| with Bayesian inference, he produced a "Bayesian analysis" of
| the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Another person who testified at that
| hearing, David Asher (also not a virologist, or even a
| scientist, but rather a former State Department bureaucrat),
| has been trying to argue for a year that SARS-CoV-2 is a
| biological weapon designed by the Chinese military.
|
| The connection between Asher and Quay is that during the Trump
| administration, Asher led a group trying to prove that SARS-
| CoV-2 was a bioweapon. Asher refused to go to actual subject-
| matter experts, and instead had Quay do his "Bayesian
| analysis." When Asher was finally forced by another official to
| bring scientists with relevant expertise in to go over his
| evidence, they tore it to shreds.[1]
|
| These are simply not credible people to be getting your
| scientific information on SARS-CoV-2 from.
|
| 1. https://christopherashleyford.medium.com/the-lab-leak-
| inquir...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I stand corrected. Is any of what they said accurate?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I haven't watched their Congressional testimony, but I've
| read Quay's "analysis" and heard Asher propound on his
| bioweapon theory elsewhere.
|
| Quay's analysis is not a rigorous Bayesian analysis in any
| sense. It's a series of subjective judgments about
| likelihoods of various scenarios. It's classic garbage-in,
| garbage-out, dressed up as science by using the word
| "Bayesian." The thing is, Bayesian inference is only as
| good as the information and knowledge you put into it. Quay
| treats cancer patients and invents medical devices. He has
| no idea what he's talking about when it comes to virology.
| It's incredibly telling that he's the guy that pro-lab-leak
| congresspeople invite to talk, instead of an actual
| virologist.
|
| Asher is just a career political hack with no scientific
| background.
|
| Edit: Right off the bat, Quay's first claim in his
| testimony is highly dubious. He claims that the Huanan
| Seafood market was not where the virus spilled over,
| because supposedly the earliest version of the virus wasn't
| found in patients who were at the market. Two problems: 1.
| We don't actually know which is the oldest lineage of the
| virus. 2. Only a tiny fraction of people who got sick at
| the market have had samples taken. Probably hundreds of
| people at the market caught the virus and had mild or
| asymptomatic cases. We only have a few samples, from people
| who fell seriously ill. By the way, mortality evidence
| independently supports the Huanan market as the area of the
| first major outbreak.
| api wrote:
| There are actual virologists who support the lab leak
| theory, but my guess is that Congress is calling him
| because he is pushing it as an _intentional_ lab leak.
| There is so far no evidence at all for that, and it doesn
| 't make a whole lot of sense. Biological warfare is like
| trying to use a grenade as a handgun. Yes it does hurt
| your opponent, but...
|
| Yes China did seem to contain COVID well, but if it were
| (hypothetically) a bio-weapon there's no way they could
| have known ahead of time they'd be this successful or
| that the virus wouldn't mutate into something far more
| dangerous. The CCP can be evil but they're not reckless.
| They prefer a very measured, calculated, incremental
| approach, not high-risk gambits like releasing a
| bioweapon. If that backfired it could decimate their
| population, drag them into WWIII, or both, and none of
| that would be a win.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > There are actual virologists who support the lab leak
| theory
|
| Very few. I don't know of any major virologist who
| actually says it's more likely, and the overwhelming
| majority say it's highly unlikely.
|
| Right now, everything points to the outbreak being
| associated with animal markets, just like SARS.
| briefcomment wrote:
| This is hilarious and ridiculous. How can they justify
| censoring testimony in Congress?
| echelon wrote:
| Well, they recently did this too:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646686
|
| I don't know if it's following their policies to the legal
| letter or if there's something else going on, but it's
| clearly bad in both of these cases.
| [deleted]
| kevingadd wrote:
| It depends on what you believe the purpose of YouTube is.
| Just because it's congressional testimony that doesn't mean
| it's actually credible or vetted information. We have elected
| officials in the US regularly spouting absolute nonsense, so
| it's not implausible that the same people would also bring
| witnesses in to spout the same absolute nonsense, whether
| it's vaccines causing autism or something else.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Supposedly it is not in alignment with the Trusted News
| Initiative (TNI) [1] or so people say. No idea if that is the
| real reason.
|
| [Edit] In this case I am thinking maybe Forbes had exclusive
| coverage and the other videos were pulled down for not having
| the rights to coverage. Just guessing because their upload is
| 3 days old.
|
| [1] - https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2020/trusted-news-
| initiative...
| devwastaken wrote:
| That's like saying a civil engineer gave testimony before
| congress about the Boeing MAX planes. Witness's before congress
| are chosen for political function, it doesn't give them any
| sort of automatic credibility.
| beaner wrote:
| Okay. But this is still an actual congressional testimony for
| public consumption by our elected officials. By what
| reasoning should we not be allowed to see it?
| devwastaken wrote:
| Blanket ban. Even mentioning coronavirus can get your video
| demonitized. YouTube and Facebook have a significant
| problem of actual artificial conspiracy theories that have
| contributed to real death.
| Leary wrote:
| "The Last And Only Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out"
| [1]
|
| [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-
| covid...
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