[HN Gopher] Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus ...
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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research
Author : BellLabradors
Score : 134 points
Date : 2021-09-24 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| My hypothesis on this whole mess.
|
| China was going to do bioweapon research and there was nothing we
| or anyone else could do about it.
|
| Quietly funding research in Wuhan was a way for the US IC to keep
| an eye on what China was doing.
|
| Something from that lab escaped. It's not clear or particularly
| relevant to me whether what escaped was directly involved in the
| particular experiments we funded. In my mind if the US funded 50
| experiments and China funded 50 other experiments of
| categorically the same type, and one of those 100 escaped, both
| are culpable regardless of whether it was on of our 50 or their
| 50.
|
| Fauci and other officials can't just come out and say "This is
| part of a top secret weapons/intelligence program where we were
| using this funding to spy on China." And so they will lie in
| public. They will lie under oath. And there will be no
| consequence because the people (Congress/Presidents/etc) with the
| classified truth are all similarly culpable (they probably
| okayed/funded it).
| dosman33 wrote:
| This train of thought is entirely too charitable. The US has
| the NSA, CIA, NRO, etc. for a reason and it's not to combat
| domestic terrorism. We don't have to be sponsoring their work
| to find out what they were doing. But I can understand the need
| to rationalize this somehow.
| ryeights wrote:
| Why is this being flagged? Genuinely asking.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| HN has lots of quiet pro-China readers
| meibo wrote:
| Every anti-chinese story on here usually gets flagged into
| oblivion(or page 2, even with plenty of upvotes), be it by bots
| or Chinese tech workers.
| president wrote:
| HN (Y Combinator) has an incentive to curb posts that could
| potentially make China angry. Being a forefront Silicon
| Valley investment company, they have to play the globalist
| game. Therefore, I suspect there may be policies in place,
| whether spoken or unspoken to suppress these types of posts.
| I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that
| also downvote/flag these posts as well.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I've flagged it. Article is ok. But the title on HN is a cheap
| clickbait.
|
| Someone, in USA, asking for a grant in the past doesn't point
| to anything about origins of SARS-CoV-2.
| Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
| Unless the Intercept changed the page the submission also
| breaks the guidelines about editorializing submission titles.
| TFA headline reads: Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk
| Coronavirus Research (I didn't flag it, just voicing a
| possible reason for the submission to be flagged)
| BellLabradors wrote:
| What do you think of these quotes?:
|
| ""Some kind of threshold has been crossed," said Alina Chan,
| a Boston-based scientist and co-author of the upcoming book
| "Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19." Chan has been
| vocal about the need to thoroughly investigate the
| possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab while
| remaining open to both possible theories of its development.
| For Chan, the revelation from the proposal was the
| description of the insertion of a novel furin cleavage site
| into bat coronaviruses -- something people previously
| speculated, but had no evidence, may have happened.
|
| Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University
| who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have
| originated in a lab, agreed. "The relevance of this is that
| SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its
| entire genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a
| fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction," said
| Ebright, referring to the place where two subunits of the
| spike protein meet. "And here is a proposal from the
| beginning of 2018, proposing explicitly to engineer that
| sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated
| coronaviruses."
|
| Martin Wikelski, a director at the Max Planck Institute of
| Animal Behavior in Germany, whose work tracking bats and
| other animals was referenced in the grant application without
| his knowledge, also said it made him more open to the idea
| that the pandemic may have its roots in a lab. "The
| information in the proposal certainly changes my thoughts
| about a possible origin of SARS-CoV-2," Wikelski told The
| Intercept. "In fact, a possible transmission chain is now
| logically consistent -- which it was not before I read the
| proposal."
|
| But others insisted that the research posed little or no
| threat and pointed out that the proposal called for most of
| the genetic engineering work to be done in North Carolina
| rather than China. "Given that the work wasn't funded and
| wasn't proposed to take place in Wuhan anyway it's hard to
| assess any bearing on the origin of SARS-CoV-2," Stephen
| Goldstein, a scientist who studies the evolution of viral
| genes at the University of Utah, and an author of the recent
| Cell article, wrote in an email to The Intercept."
| jayd16 wrote:
| When someone is hawking a book and playing up the subject
| of that book, take it with a grain of salt.
| dekhn wrote:
| Are you a scientist?
|
| I was. I can tell you that all of those quotes require a
| great deal of inspection and you cannot take them at face
| value.
|
| At the very least, most scientists speak ultra-confidently
| about this beliefs (beyond their own internal level of
| confidence) because they've learned to use narrative
| techniques to make their beliefs sound true.
|
| Any scientist who is actively speculating that this funding
| is "strong evidence" rather than saying "it's logically
| consistent and seems more than coincidental" is just wrong.
| That's a big mistake a lot of the early folks who claiimed
| it was human engineered made. The evidence is not strong,
| but not strong enough to convince a rational person.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There is a thing that you are full of. I'mma be polite
| but you are full to the brim of it.
|
| edit: Wow, flagged within one minute. That's not weird at
| all /s
|
| So I'll expand: The comment above is ridiculous for 7
| reasons. Try to find them all.
| titzer wrote:
| > in USA
|
| The first page of the document listed collaborators from the
| Wuhan Institute of Virology.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| There is a live stream right now by Dr. Kevin McCairn
| (neuroscientist) commenting on this paper, a grant application
| from EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak) detailing what they were
| going to do in Wuhan: https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE
| taurusnoises wrote:
| "Video removed by uploader." Is there anything about this virus
| that isn't suspicious!? Like, can't even a YouTube video stay
| up when it's supposed to?
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| Some people:
|
| >> Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology
| at Columbia University, was adamant that the proposal did not
| change his opinion that the pandemic was caused by a natural
| spillover from animals to humans. "There are zero data to support
| a lab origin 'notion,'" Racaniello wrote in an email.
|
| There seems to be zero data to support his spillover idea too.
| But now we have documentation of people wanting to do the exact
| experiments that could lead to this, and he's still sticking to
| his fantasy.
|
| I dont think the point here is to definitively determine the
| origin of this virus, it's to point to the fact that unchecked
| scientists are wanting to do exactly the kind of experiments that
| could kill us all. IIRC an Ebola gene was successfully put in a
| flu virus years ago but contained - hemorrhagic influenza anyone?
|
| This stuff needs to stop.
| chrsw wrote:
| I could be missing something but this isn't exactly the smoking
| gun the title makes it seem. I'm sure there are proposals, plans
| and applications for all types of things. What I'm waiting for,
| perhaps naively, is strong evidence, revelated an independent
| investigation, that there was some foul business going on here.
| Until I see that, I'm more inclined to rely on the word of
| experts who have no connection to any of this. A novel aspect of
| a viral genome isn't enough for me to leap to the conclusion that
| it's human made.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think the chain of evidence is suspicious to say the least.
|
| 1. In 2018 EcoHealth Alliance(Peter Dazsak and team) apply to a
| grant to darpa for viral modification research and highlight a
| change in "furin cleavage site" at the same location as
| covid-19's change, this change has never been seen before in
| nature.
|
| 2. In the darpa proposal is listed "Wuhan institute of
| virology" as a team member, this was a year before the covid-19
| outbreak in wuhan in 2019.
|
| 3. Rather damning for Peter Dazsak is he publicly denied any
| plausibility in the idea of a lab created source for covid-19,
| while behind the scenes at the same time telling his two
| students to distance themselves from this darpa proposal as the
| virus was rapidly spreading through cities in the world.
|
| 4. Even more unusual is that Peter Daszak and Linfa Wang, two
| of the researchers who submitted the proposal, did not
| previously acknowledge it until now.
| BioResearcher2 wrote:
| This is rather damning for other reasons that people may not
| even realize. DARPA is a rather fast moving agency, and DARPA
| grants can be fairly short term with a fast turnaround in
| comparison to say NIH or NSF. Thus for DARPA grants (and
| others, but especially DARPA), it's extremely common have
| already started some aspects of the research in order to make
| the timelines in the grant achievable. Thus as someone in a
| nearby field (not something with such hefty security issues,
| but bio-related), when I see it say that they wrote down they
| wanted to insert this site into the virus, that is a public
| admission that someone in some lab has already started
| gathering preliminary data showing that it could work.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
| derbOac wrote:
| There must have been something about the title that changed, so
| I'm responding to something that's maybe a bit different with
| context. However...
|
| Some other sites' coverage of this highlighted some of the
| grant content a bit more prominently. I agree it's not quite a
| smoking gun, but the content of the grant that was discussed
| was eerily similar to what's been put together by investigating
| organizations. It's akin to if you were trying to solve a
| burglary and concluded "if this happened, the suspects would
| have done A, B, D, and H", and then later you found some emails
| sent back and forth by the suspects saying "hey how about we do
| A, B, D, and H?" It's not proof they actually did it but it's
| about as close as you can get to a smoking gun without it being
| a smoking gun.
|
| The timing is also uncanny.
|
| I don't want to miscommunicate the extent to which I think the
| grant proposal proves anything, as I don't think it does, but
| it blurs the moral difference so much that I start to find
| myself wondering why as a society we shouldn't react with
| _some_ things as if it did. That is, I don 't think it rises to
| some level where I would say it definitely proves beyond a
| reasonable doubt that anyone did anything, but I do think it
| compels some deep reflection about the scientific-media-
| authority-academic-funding complex.
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title ("New Leaked Documents Point to Engineered
| Lab Origin for SARS-CoV-2") broke the site guidelines badly by
| editorializing. Submitters: please don't do that--it will
| eventually cause you to lose submission privileges on HN.
| Instead, follow the site guidelines, which include: " _Please
| use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait;
| don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (I'm assuming, of course, that it wasn't the article title that
| got subsequently changed. If that was the case, ignore the
| above.)
| klyrs wrote:
| > (I'm assuming, of course, that it wasn't the article title
| that got subsequently changed. If that was the case, ignore
| the above.)
|
| Not the first time I've seen you say this. Would it be
| worthwhile to fetch articles when they're submitted, if only
| for your own sanity?
| dang wrote:
| Fetching them in a way that information (like titles) can
| be meaningfully extracted from is a lot harder than it
| sounds - we've worked on it in the past and got bogged down
| in lots of details and corner cases etc. An easier way
| might be to rely on one of the archiving services, e.g.
| archive.org. If a snapshot could be taken at submission
| time than it would be there to refer to later.
|
| On the other hand, titles changing on the fly isn't _that_
| big a headache, as far as the chain of sanity-affecting
| headaches goes. NYT does it all the time, or used to. The
| main thing I don 't like to do is scold someone for
| breaking the title guideline and then finding out later
| that it was the site, not the submitter, that changed it.
| xoa wrote:
| The truly irritating thing is that even that wouldn't
| necessarily be enough, because so many sites actually do
| live A/B/C/[n] title tests simultaneously to randomized
| sets of users then choose whichever one gets the most
| clicks or whatever metric first. Even without any manual
| shenanigans. So there's a window where merely refreshing or
| browsing from a different IP will yield a different title.
| Sometimes evidence is left in the URL or interactions with
| older systems on the a site but that's all baroque.
|
| Probably not worth the effort on HN to try to automate vs
| just treating it case by case. It doesn't usually seem to
| be a problem. "Pre-optimization is the root of all evil"
| and all that.
| fredgrott wrote:
| short biology explanation as I do not know how much the HN
| readers has.
|
| We did not have the tools to do genetic manipulation as far s
| the physical techniques until recently...ie they were not
| around when I took biochem in 1990s.
|
| HOWEVER, we still do not have enough concrete knowledge about
| this domain to reliably design anything on purpose including
| viruses organs ,etc.
|
| Anybody that states otherwise is a danger to themselves and
| others. Blunt as I can put that.
| JPKab wrote:
| There is a long chain of improbable coincidences required to
| believe that the virus came directly to humans from animal
| reservoirs in nature.
|
| Coincidence 1.) Wuhan is roughly 1800 KM away from the caves in
| Yunnan province where previous bat-borne coronaviruses jumped
| to humans harvesting bat guano in earlier SARS outbreaks. It is
| a massive metropolitan area, and far more cosmopolitan than
| many westerners believe. They don't eat bats in Wuhan, and bats
| were never present at wet markets. Possible for a virus to jump
| from bats to humans here, but unlikely based on priors and the
| realities of horseshoe bats being highly unlikely to come into
| contact with urbanized humans at a level to transmit a virus
| that isn't adapted to human lung receptors.
|
| Coincidence 2.) Wuhan has 2 different facilities where bat-
| borne coronavirus research took place. There are only a few of
| these labs in the entire world, and none others in all of
| China.
|
| Coincidence 3. ) Unlike both SARS-1 and MERS, where animal
| reservoirs for both were found within months, almost 2 years
| later, no animal reservoir has been identified for SARS-2.
| Unlike both MERS and SARS-1, SARS-2 has never been particularly
| infectious to other animal species. SARS-1 in its early stages
| was still highly transmissible between bats. SARS-2 never
| exhibited this characteristic.
|
| Coincidence 4. ) The evidence that would have easily exonerated
| the labs was deliberately destroyed by the CCP early in the
| pandemic, with extensive blocking of access to any and all
| foreign investigators.
|
| Coincidence 5.) The same city where this outbreak occurred was
| a known location, based on other grants to EcoHealth Alliance,
| of researching bat coronavirus experiments involving the use of
| "humanized mice". No, "humanized" isn't some novel, sci-fi or
| conspiracy theory idea. They are genetically modified mice
| which are routinely used in research. The variety used in the
| lab were engineered to have human ACE-2 receptors lining their
| respiratory tissue. Sounds crazy, I know, but here's the grant
| summary (it was awarded) for the research, and notice the
| "humanized mice" at the very end of the text:
| https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje...
|
| All of this evidence is circumstantial, but every day that goes
| by where no zoonotic reservoir is identified (the CCP isn't
| looking at all, because they know the answer) increasingly
| points to this being a lab accident and a subsequent coverup by
| a paranoid authoritarian regime, along with a scientific
| community desperate to prevent virology from being impacted the
| way nuclear energy research was by Chernobyl.
| baja_blast wrote:
| there will never be an independent investigation
| chrsw wrote:
| If this is true, then I think we have a bigger problem on our
| hands. Even if there's no lab connection to the COVID-19
| outbreak.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Is China a bigger problem than the pandemic? Hmmmm....
| imbnwa wrote:
| I mean, even in the case that occurs, what is the endgame?
| _Fine_ China? _Sanction_ China? _Demand_ accountability from
| China? Not happening, not when they make everyone 's chips
| among other things.
|
| Can someone enlighten me about the value of this theory? It
| just seems like another vector of anti-establishment distrust
| discourse with a more intelligent veneer; easy to profit off of
| (clicks, book sales, etc) and doesn't require a conclusion.
| api wrote:
| If this were true, the US is also involved. That would mean
| both countries are responsible.
| jtdev wrote:
| They don't "make everyone's chip's"... that would be Taiwan.
|
| Regarding what should be done: stop giving money to China for
| GoF research would be a great start...
| speed_spread wrote:
| GoF? Is China still caught in the OO Design Pattern trap?
| burnished wrote:
| Gain of Function.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Fine China? Sanction China? Demand accountability from
| China?_
|
| If China caused this and then lied about it, there would
| absolutely be geopolitical will to organize and extract
| concessions.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Perhaps if we have zero recourse against China in this sort
| of situation, then the first step would be to work to remove
| the conditions that lead to that lack of recourse.
| majormajor wrote:
| This was a proposal to DARPA from a US-based group so the "if
| it came from the Wuhan lab we need to deal with China" part
| of the common reaction to the lab-origins idea seems wildly
| unfounded.
|
| If it came from a lab - hell, even if it DIDN'T come from a
| lab, but _could have_ - then we need to globally think about
| what sort of things we 're doing and how safely we can do
| them.
| [deleted]
| gmkiv wrote:
| The value is to inform the larger discussion of the risks and
| benefits of gain of function research.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
| iammisc wrote:
| The value is that it shows the American media for what it
| is... CCP apologists more willing to believe the communist
| government of China than a sitting American president with
| access to classified evidence. And also their use of 'woke'
| language to hide truth.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm following: are you saying that the current
| president should be believed, or the former one? Similarly,
| are you saying that either president has cited classified
| information that directly contradicts the media's reporting
| on COVID-19?
|
| To my recollection, neither president has forcefully
| declassified _any_ evidence that supports the more
| egregious claims made about COVID (that it was
| intentionally leaked). In the mean time, there seems to be
| ample & bipartisan willingness among the general public to
| at least entertain more benign "accidental leak" theories.
| iammisc wrote:
| Robert Redfield former CDC director said trump had access
| to intelligence implicating the lab. Biden presumay does
| as well.
|
| Also, nowhere here is any claim it was intentional.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| I agree with your characterisation of the evidence, except I
| think "Points to" is not synonymous with "smoking gun" so I
| don't think the criticism of the title is valid. In terms of
| how important this evidence is, it isn't just "a novel aspect
| of a viral genome", it is the aspect of the genome which is
| hardest to square with a natural origin. And it is an aspect
| that scientists involved in this research explicitly proposed
| inserting into coronaviruses. From the article:
|
| "Let's look at the big picture: A novel SARS coronavirus
| emerges in Wuhan with a novel cleavage site in it. We now have
| evidence that, in early 2018, they had pitched inserting novel
| cleavage sites into novel SARS-related viruses in their lab,"
| said Chan. "This definitely tips the scales for me. And I think
| it should do that for many other scientists too."
|
| Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University
| who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have
| originated in a lab, agreed. "The relevance of this is that
| SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its entire
| genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully
| functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction," said Ebright,
| referring to the place where two subunits of the spike protein
| meet. "And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018,
| proposing explicitly to engineer that sequence at that position
| in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses."
|
| And then what's more, they sat on the fact that they had
| requested funding for this research for the last 18 months,
| when the world has been desperately trying to find any relevant
| information on the virus' origins. The fact that they did not
| put this forward themselves in in and of itself suspect.
| bb88 wrote:
| To me the title of the article should have been:
|
| "Leaked DARPA proposals adds weight to lab-engineered sars-
| cov-2 hypothesis"
|
| ...or something along those lines. The problem is that
| "points to" is a pretty strong direct relationship. But these
| docs aren't directly related apparently (since the research
| was rejected by DARPA). It just shows that labs were
| potentially interested in creating such viruses. But that
| does hint that such a scenario could have been possible.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This
| information contradicts those previous statements. It
| appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need
| more investigation.
| chrsw wrote:
| I guess "smoking gun" is too strong. Maybe what I should have
| said is something like "there's been a new development which
| completely changes the characterization of the sequence of
| events leading up to the pandemic."
|
| What you're saying is worth looking deeper into, but it's not
| enough to start making claims yet, imo. There are probably
| hundreds or thousands of proposals and papers floating around
| now that talk about different things one can do with genetic
| engineering. If something should arise that is related to the
| concepts in some of those papers you wouldn't necessarily
| jump to the conclusion that there's a causal connection. Not
| without more information, anyway.
|
| "it is the aspect of the genome which is hardest to square
| with a natural origin" This doesn't tell me it's artificially
| created. The most this tells me is it's not well understood.
|
| "The fact that they did not put this forward themselves in in
| and of itself suspect." It could be related. Or it could be
| unrelated and there maybe some other explanation. My point
| is, when you want to charge someone with a serious crime,
| which I think this falls under, you need to come with some
| pretty strong evidence that directly ties whoever is involved
| to the events of the crime. This evidence may very well exist
| and it's not been shared publicly.
| roca wrote:
| Daszak should be compelled to reveal everything he knows and all
| relevant evidence --- all proposals, all emails, all files, any
| other documentation.
|
| I'm mystified why this hasn't already happened. I mean, his
| career depends on government largesse so it shouldn't even
| require coercion. Full cooperation or no cash.
| pishpash wrote:
| You're assuming the government has a different interest than
| him.
| someguydave wrote:
| what he knows might embarrass or reveal dishonesty from others
| in the government or those seeking positions in the government
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I've been _extremely_ wary of how some of the evidence of
| Covid-19 origins have come about, particular because so much of
| it has been presented as "Well, we've never seen this before,
| so it must have lab origins."
|
| That said, I think the context around this is _extremely_
| damning for Daszak. I didn 't realize this until reading the
| Wikipedia article on Daszak, but _he_ was the one that
| organized the Feb 2020 letter in the Lancet condemning
| suggestions of a lab origin for Covid-19 as conspiracy
| theories. But how could he do this while conveniently leaving
| out that his own organization _was_ involved in highly risky
| coronavirus research?
|
| Again, I don't think this news puts us much closer to
| uncovering the origins of Covid-19, but it _does_ show how some
| of these folks leading the charge of "it had to be natural"
| were at the very least being duplicitous in their
| communications.
| lamontcg wrote:
| 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have
| been used in this research
|
| 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have
| been used in this research
|
| 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have
| tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in
| coronaviruses
|
| 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have
| been found with furin cleavage sites
|
| 5. Furin cleavage sites have independently evolved in multiple
| different branches of coronaviruses, probably a dozen times that
| we know of now.
|
| 6. The furin cleavage site is short and can easily happen through
| recombination with another virus due to coinfection.
|
| 7. This is very likely what happened due to infection with the
| SARS-CoV-2 ancestor and an HKU9-like virus.
|
| It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were
| worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is
| the thing which actually happened.
| createdapril24 wrote:
| These are all very compelling claims. I am wondering if you can
| provide at least one reference for each. E.g. "There are now
| many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with
| furin cleavage sites" is a claim that can be referenced pretty
| easily with a link to papers reporting said sarbecoviruses.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as
| a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It is reasonable & responsible to downplay theories that get
| constructed in absence of sufficient and meaningfully qualified
| evidence.
| dabbledash wrote:
| GP didn't say "if you thought there was insufficient evidence
| before, you have some reflecting to do!"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm advocating a principle that applies well to the OP.
| dabbledash wrote:
| Then your comment would make more sense as a response to
| the OP.
|
| If anything it seems like you would agree that in the
| absence of evidence humility is appropriate. People who
| acted like only fringe conspiracy theorists would even
| consider lab origins should reflect on their
| overconfidence and arrogance. It's not a slam dunk either
| way and probably never will be, if i had to guess.
| jtdev wrote:
| Animal origin theory/wet market/etc. have zero "meaningfully
| qualified evidence", are you as skeptical about those
| theories?
| iammisc wrote:
| Such as the theory, presented often without evidence, that
| Sars-Cov-2 came from an imaginary population of bats in
| Wuhan?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its fine to call someone crazy if they're posting about
| some coverup about bats without any evidence too, no?
| iammisc wrote:
| Except there was no bat coverup. The american media
| bought into that theory without any evidence while
| simultaneously castigating and ridiculing the lab leak
| one. The coverup of the lab leak theory in the press was
| thus in plain sight.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I mean, if it's a random comment on the Internet that makes
| a claim without presenting evidence, yet evidence does
| exist and is readily available, I don't have much of a
| problem with that. After all, you just made the claim that
| the theory is often present without evidence without
| actually presenting evidence of _that_ claim. The real
| question is what evidence exists, not what evidence may or
| may not be presented with every online comment you may come
| across.
| andyxor wrote:
| there is a lab called "Wuhan Coronavirus Research Lab" in
| the epicenter of coronavirus pandemic ground zero, and
| there is evidence of lab members seeking (and getting)
| grants in the US for dangerous gain-of-function research in
| the last few years, doesn't it make you stop and think?
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I've asked people to explain to me why I should care one way or
| another, beyond curiosity, and no one has been able to answer
| yet.
|
| That is to say, is there an actual person who is perfectly fine
| with all the terrible things the CCP plainly does, but finding
| out that they've been incompetently handling research will
| suddenly make them change their views?
| iammisc wrote:
| Yes... Many people claim 'global warming' or 'globalization'
| make pandemics more frequent and more likely and want us to
| spend lots of money preparing for pandemics. However, if this
| pandemic turned out to be engineered or modified, then there
| is a political solution to this enhanced likelihood of
| pandemics from rogue nations.
| tshaddox wrote:
| "Suggesting this as a possibility" is a pretty weak statement.
| But it's actually good to criticize someone for claiming _that
| it happened_ without having any evidence, even if there happens
| to later be evidence that it happened.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Depends on whether your criticism was "we don't know for sure
| whether it happened" or "it did not happen".
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| You're assuming that because you were unaware of that
| evidence, that others were as well.
|
| But we've known since the COVID outbreak that there was
| experiments making novel corona viruses infect humanized mice
| in Wuhan just before two of the WIV researchers got sick and
| a nearby military event also got sick. We've further known
| that COVID-19 has a DNA structure unlike natural viruses --
| matching a bat virus except for a single protein that appears
| to be from a pangolin virus.
|
| It was always clear the preponderance of evidence pointed
| towards a lab leak -- and that claims of a natural virus were
| special pleading by interested parties or a political stunt
| by media parties.
|
| You were always irrational and acting based on propaganda to
| question a lab leak -- it was the only reasonable and
| supported-by-evidence hypothesis the entire time.
| [deleted]
| speed_spread wrote:
| My problem with people saying "but it was engineered!" is that
| it the origin does not change what our reaction should be. The
| virus is here and now we have to face it. Whether it's a
| natural mutation, part of a big masterplan, or an accidental
| release is a matter of international politics, in which most of
| us have very little, if anything to contribute.
| baja_blast wrote:
| yes, but if this research continues we are all at risk of
| another highly contagious human adapted virus escaping again.
| The goal should be to try and ban this type of research
| worldwide. While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are
| far easier to contain due to the time it takes for a virus to
| gain enough mutations to be easily infectious to other humans
| such as what happened with SARs1 and MERS. Researchers
| developing viruses to be highly adapted for humans just
| creates viruses that are impossible to contain like COVID.
| angelzen wrote:
| If we go back to business as usual, covid will be far from
| the last allegedly engineered virus to kill millions. The
| health sciences establishment is in dire need of a reality
| check, their actions have consequences reaching well beyond
| petty grant politicking.
| Factorium wrote:
| Its unlikely the virus was engineered expressly to kill
| millions - it seems increasingly likely that the virus was
| engineered to drive mRNA vaccine sales, as well as to
| disrupt the 2020 American election (by forcing an
| unprecedent switch to mail-in paper ballots and upending a
| vibrant US economy - at the same time as China was
| struggling under international tariffs).
|
| Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done
| if you bought in October 2019:
|
| https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y
|
| You'd be 25x in less than 2 years.
|
| How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55
| million in September 2019!
| https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-
| det...
|
| The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of
| using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral
| proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This
| presumably means much cheaper manufacturing.
|
| Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since
| antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more
| likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete
| protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the
| 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by
| these leaky vaccines.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus origins,
| but this did not get mentioned in any reports. Instead he warns
| other not to discuss it. He does not include notes that research
| was done on modifying bat viruses to make them infectious to
| human cells. These behaviors look like a guilty person, do they
| not?
|
| The wuhan and eco-health researchers had already started work on
| the furin cleavage sites and why would they stop when DARPA
| blocked it? Funding can't only come from the US. Did CCP also
| block this research?
|
| > there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering
| work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North
| Carolina could easily be used in China.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Even with this one bit of evidence (assuming it actually
| indicates what we think it might) we aren't there yet. We might
| be eventually but not today.
| andyxor wrote:
| If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a
| duck, then it probably is a duck
| jtdev wrote:
| Go back and listen to the exchanges between Rand Paul and Dr.
| Fauci... Fauci repeatedly lied before Congress regarding funding
| for this GoF research which now appears to have been the source
| of the virus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue... trust the
| science.
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| Was EcoHealth Alliance, the group referenced in the article,
| working in Wuhan?
| jtdev wrote:
| Yes, they funded GoF research at WIV. And it's founder Peter
| Daszak worked to undermine the lab leak theory as a member of
| the WHO COVID19 origins investigation team... can you say
| "conflict of interest"?
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Yes they were, in particular with the Wuhan Institute of
| Virology, and Peter Daszak himself was in Wuhan in October
| 2019.
|
| EcoHealth just got defunded by the US Congress with bipartisan
| support:
| https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/144122144752803020...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| In addition there was some controversy as they were behind
| the Lancet open letter that first renounced the idea of a lab
| origin. They got a bunch of scientists associated with their
| organisation to sign it, without mentioning EcoHealth by name
| or stating competing interest.
|
| My spidey sense is certainly tingling, though of course no
| smoking guns. But the jigsaw pieces fit. Can't get the
| funding in North Carolina? Let's try Wuhan.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| This grant proposal, in particular, however, was to do work
| in North Carolina.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Citing from the grant application, page 12:
|
| > We will conduct in vitro pseudovirus binding assays,
| using established techniques, and live virus binding assays
| (at WIV _[Wuhan Institute of Virology]_ to prevent delays
| and unnecessary dissemination of viral cultures)
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-
| prop...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I agree with the comment from justapassenger. The title has been
| altered from the headline into inflammatory clickbait.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| The article has been previously submitted with and has
| languished without interest, I think that the Intercept's
| headline alone is underplaying it a little and is not suited to
| this forum. I think if you read the article, the HN headline
| above is accurate. What specifically do you think is
| inaccurate? Even in tone?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| That's a reasonable question. First - my understanding is
| that we're expected to repost headlines verbatim, even if
| they kind of suck. It's not some unbreakable rule but it's an
| objective we should commit to.
|
| Past that, I offer that headlines that will lead _the public
| we have_ toward thoughtful, measured, conclusions (that
| reflect where we actually are) - this would seem to be our
| best goal.
| BellLabradors wrote:
| Fair enough, it seems I can't edit it now, Dang obviously
| feel free to do so.
| willupowers wrote:
| The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to
| accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his
| associates have been aggressively refuting. This information
| contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may
| have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.
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