[HN Gopher] Researchers' tests of lab-made version of Covid viru... ___________________________________________________________________ Researchers' tests of lab-made version of Covid virus draw scrutiny Author : russfink Score : 171 points Date : 2022-10-18 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.statnews.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com) | derstander wrote: | The linked article mentions a BU response via email. There's also | one via the web [0]. The preprint is way outside of my field of | expertise so I can't confidently evaluate the news stories | against the preprint. But if journalists misinterpreted | scientific research it would certainly not be the first time. | | [0] https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/neidl-researchers-refute- | uk... | tripletao wrote: | That response is an exercise in obfuscation. For example: | | > Corley says the line pulled out of context actually had | nothing to do with the virus' effect on humans. The study began | in a tissue culture, then moved to an animal model. | | So they're saying we don't know if their lab-created chimera is | actually more dangerous in live humans, because they | (fortunately!) haven't tested in live humans. That completely | misses the point of those models, though--the reason why tissue | cultures and animals are used is that they're often predictive | of the effect in humans. | | By that standard in their mice, their chimera is possibly less | deadly than the original Wuhan wild type, but definitely more | deadly than omicron. They didn't study the effect on | transmissibility, but we know that's determined mostly by the | spike. | | So their chimera may combine most of the deadliness of the | Wuhan wild type with the transmissibility of omicron. We can't | prove that without experiments in live humans that I hope will | never be conducted, but that sure sounds like a gain of | function research of concern to me. | SSJPython wrote: | Why are we fucking with nature? Like literally what is the point | of this? To show that we can? Some fucked up biological arms race | with the other great powers? | | When you fuck with nature, nature wins. Always. | shadowgovt wrote: | > When you fuck with nature, nature wins. Always. | | There's, like, an entire human civilization on this planet | right now that begs to differ. | | Ever been to Vegas? Not a single thing natural about that | place; it's been there over 100 years. | salawat wrote: | Do you not understand Nature does not operate on the same | timescales as humanity? | | Do you realize that place's entire existence is predicated on | a _massive_ logistical network that if left untrnded for a | week would likely result in a completely inhospitable | environment for the residents? | | Civilization as we know it is excruciatingly fragile, and | maintained by active expenditure of human energy. Nature, is | self'sustaining, closed loop, enthalpy decreasing and Just | Frigging Works. It just may take a while for us to | see/realize something that makes it click that, wow, nature | finds a way. | | I'd think the modern hiccups in the supply chain recently | would have provided sufficient examples of how fragile the | entire artifice is... | shadowgovt wrote: | Nature isn't magic, and our species has exterminated enough | species and ecosystems to respect how fragile it is. | | And while you speak of nature at large, we tend to care | more about subsets of it. Life, in the large, survived the | extinction of the dinosaurs, but a rock from space could | easily fuck with nature in a way that it wouldn't "bounce | back" in any way relevant to us. | rhacker wrote: | But that's also a major problem. We have deemed life so | unimportant, that if Russia wants San Francisco | obliterated tomorrow, they have the power to do that. | Literally nothing can stop them if they are hell-bent on | that, damn the consequences. | | I think the only people that realize things like this are | those that have lost others. Perhaps by mistake even- | perhaps especially - his hand slipped and he is dead now. | Someone's wife out there is thinking that ALL the time. | Perhaps in a year we'll be mourning permanently for New | York like that. | obert wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244592 | mgamache wrote: | "There is a lot of evidence that points to the virus spreading | from a wet market in the city" | | Spreading, yes. Originating no. Note: | | This article uses two preprint papers one of which was changed | before publication and the other doesn't support zoonotic origin: | | https://www.science.org/content/article/do-three-new-studies... | giantg2 wrote: | Whether natural or escaping from a lab, I fully expect a mass | casualty disease in my lifetime. We saw what a shitshow covid | was, and it wasn't even _that_ bad. | | Fast global travel is spreading the endemic ranges of many | diseases and make it essentially impossible to stop many diseases | depending on the traits of the disease. | | A potential lab leak of many types of diseases is more of a | threat and will likely kill more people than a limited nuclear | deployment. At least with the nuclear issue someone has to push | the button. With the lab leak it's almost a certainty that | equipment will fail in some unprecedented way, or someone will | absent-mindedly violate protocol. It's a lot harder to keep track | of a microbe than a warhead. | bigdollopenergy wrote: | I don't think so. I think Covid was unique in that it occupied | a sweet-spot in it's severity. A more severe virus would play | out very differently. I don't think we'd see such a huge | conspiracy movement around it and much greater compliance from | the population. | | The danger of the covid virus was concentrated in specific | demographics such that a lot of people didn't directly see how | dangerous it was. This created a disconnect between what was | being reported vs what people saw with their own eyes, creating | the perfect environment for conspiracy theories to run rampant. | For example, I don't know anyone that died or had a bad time | with it, nor does anyone else in my family/close circle. But | that's because I don't really know any old or medically | vulnerable people, but with our aging populations in the | western world this group is actually huge. We had people | dropping like flies in certain sub-groups while in others | nothing much happened and only where the groups intersected was | it visible how bad it really was (healthcare workers, people | with old grandparents not taking it seriously). It also doesn't | help that older demographics almost always have something else | wrong with them and Covid a lot of the time was one | contributing factor that pushed them over the edge, this really | fueled the conspiracy theorists narrative of falsely | attributing causes of death to "inflate" numbers. | | I also think the media took a wrong turn in it's messaging and | told too many noble lies. It was really important that the | young and healthy also thought that this might be real threat | to them personally so they'd actually take it seriously and | stop spreading it. But young people would lookup the statistics | for their own risk and would see fatality/complication rates of | sub 1%, and also note that those affected were primarily the | morbidly obese and immuno-compromised. I recall seeing a lot of | articles indicating that there was a surge of young people in | ER and articles showing obituaries of young people in order to | hammer home the message that it was a real danger to them too. | The problem is the official statistics didn't back that message | up to the degree that it needed to, so you had this big | disconnect that was exploited heavily by conspiracy theorists. | IMO this was likely a misguided effort directed towards | reducing spread, because it was determined that quarantining to | save other people wasn't a strong enough incentive to curb | risky behavior (which is depressing), but backfired heavily and | likely caused more harm than good. | | If a more serious virus came around that had fatality rates in | the double digits, I don't think conspiracy theories would be | able to form. Because very quickly people would see people they | know in their lives dying/becoming extremely sick. There's no | uncertainly/disconnect to exploit in that scenario like there | was with covid. | [deleted] | spookthesunset wrote: | > IMO this was likely a misguided effort directed towards | reducing spread, because it was determined that quarantining | to save other people wasn't a strong enough incentive to curb | risky behavior (which is depressing), but backfired heavily | and likely caused more harm than good. | | Perhaps a large set of people have a different set of values | and consider the tradeoff between endless (and mostly | useless) lockdowns and restrictions not worth it compared to | taking their risks of getting covid. | | Perhaps they have decided that the costs to society far | outweigh any benefits from these mitigations. These are a | perfectly valid set of values, just different than your own-- | it requires absolutely no "conspiracy theories" to think | this. | | > conspiracy theorists | | There is not many conspiracy theories about covid and a very | small set of people peddle them. Most of the "conspiracy | theories" turned out to be perfectly true. For example | requiring proof of vaccination to sit down at a starbucks | turned out to be true. Vaccines turned out to do very little | to stop infection or transmission. Masks not working as well | as some people would like to believe. Lockdowns and school | closures hurt children--especially those who are low-income. | | Writing off everything you disagree with as "conspiracy | theory" is poor intellectual thinking. Maybe if you put aside | your preconceived notions and dug harder into the arguments | people have against everything society has done for covid, | you'd discover that they have very valid points. | giantg2 wrote: | "A more severe virus would play out very differently." | | It wouldn't necessarily. It could still be nearly impossible | to contain given the right characteristics, like asymptomatic | carriers, a latency period, or benign early onset symptoms. | With the right parameters and fast global travel, it would be | global before any measures could even be implemented (theory | is this was the case with Covid). | | "I don't think we'd see such a huge conspiracy movement | around it and much greater compliance from the population." | | There might be better compliance, but not likely enough to | make a difference. Many of the things that they're supposed | to be complying with were misunderstood, ineffective (maybe | marginally effective), and wouldn't prevent transmission. | Even if you were to lock almost everyone in their homes, you | still have some essential personnel who must travel/work/etc. | Most lack the training necessary for _consistently_ complying | with prevention protocols. | | Just look at the number of people dying of drugs every year. | They know it's bad. Some think it won't happen to them. | Others don't care. There's no reason to believe that a non- | zero portion of the population would share these two thought | processes in this sort of situation and still cause | significant damage. Including the people who see no/limited | risk for themselves. | muaytimbo wrote: | This is an interesting case, making chimeras can always be | thought of as "gain-of-function" research because you really only | know if you succeeded after you've created and tested the new | organism, and there might be failures along the way if indeed | creating a more lethal organism is your goal. | | In this case there is some handwaving about 80% mortality vs 100% | mortality in a mouse host about it technically not being more | lethal than the original. But what if the testing revealed 100% | mortality plus some other metric of increased transmissibility or | something similar after the fact. It would've been unknown to the | researchers at the time of synthesis and fit every definition of | "gain-of-function" research. | | I think in light of this inability to know apriori if a virus is | going to be more/less lethal we're splitting hairs when we say | this is not technically "gain-of-function" research. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Exactly. Lowe is using a really horrible argument, he is trying | to use the results to justify the experiment, but the entire | point is it was an experiment and they had no idea how it would | turn out. It's entirely possible it could have been 100% as the | result and that somehow this chimera found a spike mutation | that provided human immune escape and a lab worker was | accidentally infected as patient zero. It's not what happened | obviously but the idea he can use the experiments results to | justify the experiment is absurd. He is a dangerous apologist, | "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his | salary depends on his not understanding it". | muaytimbo wrote: | It's unfortunate because I like reading Lowe usually, but | these pieces that obfuscate and explain to us how we should | feel about something so obvious is telling. | nsxwolf wrote: | How there isn't a full on worldwide ban on this now is just | beyond me. Our hubris and overconfidence could kill millions | more. | thrown_22 wrote: | Biology research gives me nightmares. For the low price a an | undergraduate degree and a few tens of thousands of dollars you | can build a garage lab which can make something like covid in | your spare time. | | In physics and chemistry you at least have to work hard for | your WMD. In biology you get them for free because you're not | careful enough. | shadowgovt wrote: | It may very well be riskier than not to ban research like that | on an endemic airborne virus that has shown a proclivity to | mutate. | | If no humans are running controlled experiments on the virus, | there is still an experiment currently being run as a massive, | randomized trial in the form of the natural mutative processes | the virus undergoes in the infected human population. How much | do we want to trust that it won't hit upon an HIV-category | combinatoric mutation before we're aware it has the potential | to do that? | | The risk tradeoff is difficult here, but we should keep in mind | that the risk of doing no such research is way, way higher than | zero. | AbrahamParangi wrote: | The current pandemic was probably caused by such research. | But even if you don't believe that it was _probably_ caused | by it, a reasonable person and can admit it was _possibly_ by | it. Multiply that "possibly" out by 6.5M deaths or so and | that's your research death toll. | | So 1% chance of lab escape? 65,000 deaths. Weigh that against | your hypothetical benefits of performing the research and I | think it's hard to conclude that such research is wise. | shadowgovt wrote: | The 1918 flu involved no lab leak and killed [edit]: 50 | million people. | | I don't care for the game of fatality calculus, but if one | is going to play it, that's the enemy humanity is up | against. | AbrahamParangi wrote: | Your counterexample would need to be a positive instance, | not "other bad things also happen" and that evidence | would also need to be strong! Chemotherapy has many | terrible side effects but it helps kill cancer! With high | certainty! | | You wouldn't subject people to chemotherapy if you lacked | _any_ evidence that it was helpful. | baja_blast wrote: | Yes, but how has the millions we have spent on collecting | and modifying wild coronaviruses helped us with this | pandemic. Despite over 100 years of technological | advancements and the virus is still impossible to stop! | So why do we want to risk creating new viruses when the | decades of research has proven to be such a colossal | failure? | shadowgovt wrote: | > impossible to stop | | I don't think one stops a pandemic; IIUC, one gets out in | front of it with vaccination. Which we did, thanks to | previous mRNA research conducted on other viruses. GOF | research is one of the few ways we're aware of to get out | in front of vaccinating viruses that don't yet exist but | are probable to exist. | | This argument treads suspiciously close to "Sometimes | people use fire to burn a house down, so why do we allow | cooking? People should only be allowed to use naturally- | occurring fires and not create new ones." | tsimionescu wrote: | mRNA research was mainly developed to fight cancers, not | viruses. To the extent that it was already being | researched to stop viruses, it was being tested on | existing viruses, not GOF-modified ones. | baja_blast wrote: | And what is the probability that out of the thousands of | viruses we identify the exact one that mutates in the | exact manner as researches induce in the lab? The | possible mutations a virus could take are astronomical, | and conditions in a lab using humanized mice models are | not something that would ever happen in the wild. Efforts | are better spent on surveillance not prediction! | https://media.nature.com/original/magazine- | assets/d41586-018... | jpeloquin wrote: | Your article actually argues in favor of the type of | research BU was doing because it's being done post- | outbreak: "Once an emerging outbreak virus has been | identified, it needs to be analysed quickly to establish | what type it is; which molecular mechanisms (such as | receptor type) enable it to jump between individuals; how | it spreads through human populations; and how it affects | those infected In other words, at least four kinds of | analysis are needed: genomic, virological, | epidemiological and clinical.". BU's work is in the | genomic and virological categories and addresses the kind | of questions the article wants addressed as part of a | surveillance strategy. | | The article strongly opposes making predictions of | whether a pathogen will be pandemic because predictions | are a rigged game. There are enough factors that you are | very unlikely to be correct, and even then a true | positive combined with successful mitigations erodes | public trust because "the severity of the virus had been | overblown". Geologists avoid making predictions of | volcanic eruptions or earthquakes for similar reasons. | | It is not directly opposed to study of pre-pandemic | animal pathogens: "Surveys of animals will undoubtedly | result in the discovery of many thousands of new viruses. | These data will benefit studies of diversity and | evolution, and could tell us whether and why some | pathogens might jump species boundaries more frequently | than others." This makes sense, because study of pre- | pandemic pathogens is needed to set a foundation such | that the post-outbreak analysis the article wants us to | focus on can be completed in a reasonable time frame. | | The article is arguing for rapid response and against | predictions. It's not opposed to basic research of | pathogens, and actually supports this specific type of | research. | [deleted] | giantg2 wrote: | I thought it was more like 50 million? | shadowgovt wrote: | Thank you and good catch; I quoted the infection number | where I meant to quote the estimated fatalities. | rhacker wrote: | Well you have to include excess deaths which is at 15M or | higher. The reason is that even if you are including drug | overdoses, the pandemic was still a catalyst for | homelessness and... excess deaths. Covid is still | responsible. | giantg2 wrote: | I think there's a difference between studying existing | viruses, or even their natural mutations, and _engineering_ a | virus to be more potent (and not in the highest level lab | even). | nsxwolf wrote: | I find this very frustrating. If COVID-19 was a lab leak - | wether it had involved gain of function related or just | unwisely moving viruses from the animal kingdom into human | spaces - what good did any of it do? | | Apparently our ability to create vaccines doesn't hinge on | messing around with the viruses before they infect humans. | COVID-19 vaccine was created after the fact, and it hardly | prevented a major global catastrophe. | | I just don't see the argument. It sounds like pure | imagination - by making viruses more dangerous or increasing | the odds we'll expose ourselves to novel ones, someday we'll | have the technology to prevent any pandemic. How many | millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted before | that happens? When is it just not worth it? It seems not | worth it to me now. | | If it's a bioweapons program, I don't see why we need to be | playing along. It's not like nuclear deterrence - someone | releases a weaponized virus, the whole world gets infected. | It's like a nuke that blows up the entire world. | brippalcharrid wrote: | The treaties in place to restrict biological weapons have | exclusions that permit the development (and use) of | incapacitating agents. The DoD/NIAID/Daszak/Fauci model has | been that a hostile nation would release a biological | weapon that would compromise the ability of members of the | Armed Forces to engage in combat operations over a period | of months or years, and to address this they had planned to | be able to quickly marshal a new transfection to induce | neutralising antibodies [in the relevant groups before they | were deployed to combat zones], hence the focus of research | into these particular areas from the defence establishment | and its partners over the last few decades. | CamperBob2 wrote: | _I find this very frustrating. If COVID-19 was a lab leak - | wether it had involved gain of function related or just | unwisely moving viruses from the animal kingdom into human | spaces - what good did any of it do?_ | | If the increased focus on mRNA vaccine research due to the | COVID outbreak leads to successful new anticancer | therapies, we could make up for the COVID death toll in a | hurry, and benefit enormously from subsequent availability. | | In no event is "don't research this, it's too scary" ever | the right answer. The question is how to do it safely. For | instance, I don't understand why gain-of-function research | is less regulated than, say, nuclear research. The work | needs to happen, but our risk assessments are hopelessly | out of whack. | nsxwolf wrote: | The pandemic forever cured me of my willingness to | participate in Trolley Problems. I would say harming | people over some vague future promise of helping them is, | from this point forward, always the wrong decision. | darkarmani wrote: | > COVID-19 vaccine was created after the fact, and it | hardly prevented a major global catastrophe. | | What? It immediately dropped the death rate. How many more | millions of lives would it have to have saved to get | notice? | creato wrote: | Knowing about the virus ahead of time wouldn't help much. | By far the most expensive (in time and money) part of a | publicly available vaccine is testing it. It is | _impossible_ to test a vaccine under any reasonable | procedure we have today before the virus is a full blown | pandemic. | | The best case scenario for putting this kind of research | into practice is saving two weeks off a months or years | long development schedule. It might not even work. | Frankly the risk reward trade off here is so laughably | bad that I can't understand why it's even a debate. | hotpotamus wrote: | I would say that viruses, like a lot of other aspects of | life, are chaotic and capricious both in their evolution | and their affects on an individual humans (COVID really | drove that home for me in that it killed some and was | asymptotically carried by others). | | But we demand explanations where there are none, and so we | create them ourselves or accept them from others. | baja_blast wrote: | Additionally, in the same way a banana would never occur in | nature, many of these experiments researchers conduct are | extremely unlikely or out right impossible. For wild | viruses crossing over to humans it needs to go through many | mutations and people before becoming adapted and highly | infectious towards humans. But in a lab you can insert the | exact mutation to make it highly infectious towards humans | without having to mutate. For example right now the bird | flu which can infect humans who have ingested bird | droppings, but it can't spread human to human. | | The conditions in the lab are just so artificial the | predictive power is practically worthless, especially when | you consider the massive possibility space. Just like you'd | never find something like a banana evolve to it's current | state in the wild, you would won't find these viral | chimeras just popping up out of no where. | rhacker wrote: | The other thing too is that were just going to do ACE2 | receptor research from now til the next pandemic, which | I'm sure will have NOTHING to do with ACE2. | throwaway4aday wrote: | Remember this? | | "H5N1 is a type of avian flu virus that occurs naturally | in various types of birds but has surfaced in humans in | the last ten years. Although human cases of H5N1 are | rare, the virus has a 60% mortality rate." | | "They reasoned that it'd be better to tinker with H5N1 in | the lab and gain knowledge for its prevention than sit | back and wait for mother nature to concoct a human- | friendly strain. Both teams of researchers artificially | mutated H5N1 to spread easily amongst ferrets. Ferrets | are commonly used as stand ins for humans in influenza | studies. To clarify what I mean by "easily" spread, at | the end of Fouchier's study the strain had gained the | ability to transmit through the air- an unprecedented | feat!" | | https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/avian/ | shadowgovt wrote: | > Apparently our ability to create vaccines doesn't hinge | on messing around with the viruses before they infect | humans. | | The COVID vaccine built heavily on previous research with | flu,. Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > The COVID vaccine built heavily on previous research | with flu,. Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus. | | All viruses that are already around. Agree that creating | novel viruses is not with the risk. | matthewdgreen wrote: | These "convergent mutation" variants seem to be arriving at a | rapid pace, all by themselves without researchers helping (some | hypothesize this is due to virus replication in | immunocompromised patients.) [1] Since these mutations seem | capable of repeatedly emerging, we should understand what they | do, both alone and in combination. The cost here is that yes, | researchers could make and release a new deadly variant. On the | other hand it's just as likely that something very similar will | pop up through natural evolution in the next few months. When | that happens we can be clueless or we can be armed with | knowledge. | | [1] https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/preliminary-data- | poi... | baja_blast wrote: | And how did our decades of Coronavirus research help us | prevent/fight this last pandemic? Given the fact it was | already known at the time that the spike protein on SARS2 was | what researchers have been using to attach to wild viruses so | infect humanized mice/cell cultures via the ACE2 receptor we | should have already known that Airborne H2H transmission was | possible! | shadowgovt wrote: | > And how did our decades of Coronavirus research help us | prevent/fight this last pandemic? | | IIUC, the vaccine was synthesized in record time, was it | not? | baja_blast wrote: | the MRNA vaccine had nothing to do with the research | involving modifying wild coronaviruses. The technology | was originally built independently and for different | reasons, but there was a MERS vaccine they developed and | modified for SARS2, but again that was for an existing | known virus. The type of research Ecohealth conducted | contributed absolutely nothing to the development of the | vaccine. | | In fact Ecohealth didn't even share their research of any | data with anyone since the pandemic began. So the value | of the risky research is dubious. | matthewdgreen wrote: | We've had very little GoF research, in large part because | it's controversial. There have been several outright bans, | and the issue is so emotional that many scientists probably | avoid it just because the costs are high. | | I am not necessarily in favor of GoF research, but I | recognize a broken argument when I see one. In the face of | a clear policy preference to dissuade GoF work, the | question "why didn't [the very limited GoF work that we | allowed to take place] produce huge numbers of beneficial | results" isn't really an interesting question about the | usefulness of the research, since it might just as easily | reflect a (known) pre-existing policy bias. | | We're in a rapidly-developing new era and have just seen | clear evidence of how devastating a pandemic can be. The | question we should be asking is whether we're using every | tool at our disposal to defend ourselves from the next one, | and that requires some careful and dispassionate weighing | of risks/rewards. The arguments I see don't meet that | standard _at all_. | Loughla wrote: | On what? Virus research? | nsxwolf wrote: | Yes. Fucking around with viruses and deliberately making them | more dangerous. This isn't like math research. | Loughla wrote: | So how do you suggest we plan for the future and try to | solve problems with viruses before they occur without | research? | [deleted] | tsimionescu wrote: | By doing what we did with the Covid vaccine: fucking | around with treatments against existing wild viruses. | There's plenty of viruses out there, there is 0 reason to | engineer our own to try to fight (there are reasons to | engineer our own viruses for other kinds of genetic | research, but that's a different discussion). | [deleted] | [deleted] | jacknews wrote: | 'Ask for forgiveness, not permission' is really not something we | want in biotech. | dirtyid wrote: | Seems like this kind of work, if deemed neccessary, should at | least be done somewhere remote. | marshray wrote: | It's not the possibility that a simple lab accident could kill a | billion people, the headline is that it "draws scrutiny". | snshn wrote: | Humanity has peaked sometime around 1960s-1980s, it's all been | downhill since then. My theory is that we're in a self- | destructive mode now. The technology we possess keeps advancing | while our control over it and intellectual abilities are | diminishing, partially because we rely on tech so much | (smartphones, automation, "AI"). So in retrospect, we were meant | to go (mostly) extinct during the cold war, by some miracle it | was narrowly avoided, so we survived past our peak, and now we're | just existing on borrowed time, the whole planet is a ticking | time bomb, and the question is if we manage to become multi- | planetary species before then or go (mostly) extinct. I think | Elon has the same view on things, that would explain Neuralink, | Starlink, SpaceX. | mikkergp wrote: | > Humanity has peaked sometime around 1960s-1980s | | I'm 99% certain they would have said the same things in the | 60's to 80's about the 20's to 40's (maybe stopping somewhere | around 1939) and in the 20's they would certainly be | reminiscing about the industrial revolution and gilded age. | simple-thoughts wrote: | If by "humanity" you mean the United States' population, | possibly. But for most people in most countries, life is much | better today than in the 1980s. | seattle_spring wrote: | photochemsyn wrote: | In this snippet from the abstract, S stands for spike protein: | | > "We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S | gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 | isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating | Omicron variant. The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes | vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the | receptor-binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring | Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like | distal lung cells. _In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, | non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe | disease with a mortality rate of 80%._ This indicates that while | the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major | determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S. " | | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.13.512134v1.... | | See russfink comment above for the relative mortality compared to | the original Wuhan strain (100% for Wuhan compared to 80% for | this hybrid). So this researcher-generated strain appears to be | intermediate in mortality between the original Wuhan strain and | Omicron, BUT _it escapes vaccination relative to the Wuhan | strain, making it more dangerous in that regard and more likely | to spread through a vaccinated population causing significant | mortality._ I 'd classify this as reckless and irresponsible | research. | | As far as the original Wuhan strain, we have about four theories | of origin. (1) natural wild type with no lab research | involvement, (2) natural wild type collected by a lab and | accidentally released from that lab, (3) wild type 'heated up' by | serial passage through mice and cloned human-type cells without | explicit genetic engineering, and (4) deliberate engineering | using a CRISPR system to insert a furan cleavage site in a | collected wild-type virus, which allowed a bat virus to leap to a | human host. | | Really (4) has the most evidence at this point, and note that | this is not entirely the fault of the Chinese Wuhan Institute of | Virology as the research concept was partially developed in the | USA and continued (despite an Obama-era ban on gain-of-function | research) in China with Ecohealth Alliance funding. | | As far as why doing gain-of-function research to predict | 'emerging disease outbreaks' is a godawfully stupid idea, it's | that it appears that almost any infectious animal virus can be | converted to a human pathogen by selective transfer of human- | receptor-binding motifs, even though such transfer would never | take place under natural conditions. An immediate global ban on | this kind of research (under the Biological Warfare Convention) | is needed. | lamontcg wrote: | > Really (4) has the most evidence at this point | | No, there is literally zero evidence of this. | | The BANAL viruses are a couple of mutations away from a | workable furin cleavage site, nature can engineer them just as | easily as we do, and has done so multiple different times that | we know of across beta-coronaviruses. | tripletao wrote: | > The BANAL viruses are a couple of mutations away from a | workable furin cleavage site, | | That's true, but you can argue it in either direction. It | proves the mutations to create that FCS are possible and | indeed likely; but it also proves they're selected against in | their usual hosts, or else we'd have observed the complete | FCS. So you need the mutation to happen concurrently with the | species jump (or in a yet-undiscovered intermediate host), | which gets less likely. | lamontcg wrote: | > it also proves they're selected against in their usual | hosts | | No it doesn't. They can be neutral. And BtCoV-HKU5 is a | MERS-like bat coronavirus with a functional FCS and | BtHpCoV-ZJ13 is even closer to sarbecoviruses than MERS and | is another bat coronavirus with an FCS. It is more likely | that the absence of an FCS in BANAL-like viruses is due to | us not having found them yet, our surveillance coverage is | immeasurably poor. | | And a species jump involving coinfection with proto-SARS- | CoV-2 and some other coronavirus and a recombination event | is actually a likely way to start a pandemic. The 2009 H1N1 | pandemic was started by a triple reassortment with three | viruses in a pig. Pandemics are very uncommon infection | events so the conditions that create them are necessarily | highly unlikely. | shadowgovt wrote: | > such transfer would never take place under natural conditions | | How confident are we that is the case? | | HIV resulted from the fusion of, IIRC, three virii in a host | animal. | | The odds of any single such event are vanishingly small, but | that stacks against how many cells per second a virus can | infect, worldwide. Life is a _frightening_ goodness-of-fit | optimizer at the scale of microorganization. | mgamache wrote: | It would never take place between animals that don't | naturally cohabitate. | photochemsyn wrote: | Studying rare historical accidents of evolution that resulted | in pandemics to see how they took place is one thing, but | creating hundreds of such accidents of evolution deliberately | to see how many novel deadly pathogens one can create is | quite another. | | In the case of HIV: | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/ | | Now, should we start taking all the viruses known to infect | every species of squirrel, rat, monkey, gorilla and | chimpanzee and start splicing in motifs that bind, say, the | top 100 most common human cell-surface receptors in order to | see what's the most dangerous virus - with the optimal mix of | mortality and transmissibility (R factor) - we can create, | the one best able to cause a global human pandemic? That's | insane, and there's no justification for it. | shadowgovt wrote: | Is that research done? I don't think that's an accurate | description of gain-of-function research; I thought it was | more focused than "just throw everything in a beaker and | see what happens." I agree that's a bad idea. | tsimionescu wrote: | It's more focused exactly in the sense that it is | specifically targeting known-dangerous characteristics - | hence _gain_ of function: they 're aiming to increase the | virus' ability to do something. | throwaway43903 wrote: | alfiedotwtf wrote: | Why have one pandemic when you can have two pandemics for twice | the price | flobosg wrote: | See also Derek Lowe's article about the preprint: | https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/gain-function-not-... | russfink wrote: | Some snippets: | | The spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a | virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from | China in 2020. The goal was to determine if the mutations in the | Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's | increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans | have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower | rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the | chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron | itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the | original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The | conclusion is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron | variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade | immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or | both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in | severity of the Omicron viruses. | cstejerean wrote: | If it went from 100% IFR (original strain) to 80% IFR (Original | + Omicron spike) how did it not reduce the severity? Sure it's | more severe than Omicron by itself so there were other factors | as well, but it does seem like a decrease in severity to me. | xyzzy123 wrote: | The researchers could not be sure of this result before they | did it, which is why I believe there's a reasonable case this | should be considered GOF work even if the lethality of their | chimera (in hu mice) was ultimately less than that of | original strain. | | Furthermore, strictly speaking I don't believe we know the | actual severity of this in humans. While it's possible to | make a fairly confident guess, surprises are still possible. | algon33 wrote: | Because it has Omicron's increased ability to avoid people's | immunity. That would result in higher infectivity than just a | copy of the wuhan strain, with near the same severity. Note | that earlier Sars viruses had even higher severity than Sars | Covid 2 (Wuhan strain), but weren't as infective and killed | far fewer people. Which implies that a slight reduction in | severity for a gain in infectivity is not a worthwhile | tradeoff. | baja_blast wrote: | Exactly, for example Ebola has a mortality rate of around | 50% but has only killed around 11 thousand people, SARS- | CoV2 has less than 1% can has killed 20 million or more. | Wild viruses like SARS1 and MERS are poorly adapted towards | humans when the spillover happened making it possible to be | contained. But SARS2 a which is a Sarbecovirus a family of | gastrointestinal viruses some how was able to bind towards | human airways with a binding affinity 20 times that for | humans than for bats, all while leaving no traceable trail | of mutations that researchers could trace back to the | intermediate host. | | For context with SARS1 and MERS researchers were able to | find the spill over animal within a few months. But after | 3+ years we have yet to find an intermediate animal host. | Also before anyone says "It took years to find the source | for SARS1", but that is for the original bat virus, the | intermediate animal where the cross over to humans happened | was found within months. Additionally SARS1 and MERS had a | rapid period of mutations as it adapted towards humans | which allowed researchers to trace back to the source. | thehappypm wrote: | Errorbars, probably. 80% and 100% might be samples of a true | death rate of 90%. | Izkata wrote: | Indeed, beware of round numbers, they tend to indicate very | low sample size and very large error range. | rossdavidh wrote: | 1) talk about failure to read a room | | 2) even the alleged learning from the experiment: "The conclusion | of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the | Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade | immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or | both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in | severity of the Omicron viruses." | | ...does not hold up, because this was in mice. Ordinary lab rats | were immune to the original strain of covid-19, but not to | Omicron, which shows that it is not at all unlikely for there to | be significant differences in the resistance of rodents to one | strain or the other, compared to humans. | | So, they made a hybrid covid-19 strain, that could conceivably | have been as contagious as Omicron but as lethal as the original | strain. Nice work, folks. | brundolf wrote: | stuckinhell wrote: | This alone has convinced me, these scientists need to be | investigated and punished for biological terrorism. This | represents an insane lack of ethics. Did they forget, we've | been in a multi-year pandemic lockdown. | saiya-jin wrote: | Lets not forget some estimated 16 million dead, that puts one | among such peers like Mao, Stalin and Hitler | bayesian_horse wrote: | The result of the research is very valuable. It helps predict | the attributes of future novel strains. | | In reality, infectious success and malignancy are highly anti- | correlated, strongly. The combined Virus (which probably has | existed in a very similar form in the wild somewhere!!) is | actually a lot less dangerous than the two sources. | | Also: Both Viruses have become a lot less dangerous to the | world population because of immunity. | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _It helps predict the attributes of future novel strains._ | | Prove it. | creato wrote: | Why is that valuable? It takes weeks if not days to | synthesize a vaccine for a new strain. It then takes months | if not years, and massive investment, to test it for safety | and efficacy. How the hell does shortening the weeks part of | this at the expense of potentially requiring a new expensive | test, in case the experiment leaks, make any sense? | bayesian_horse wrote: | Creating a vaccine was not the purpose of this research. | | The problem with new variants is that it takes months to | know how virulent and how transmissible it is. Such | research enables better prediction from the point of | detecting and sequencing such variants. | | We know now that Omicron's spike protein is responsible for | the better transmission and better immunological evasion. | If we see a new variant with Omicron's spike protein, but | modified, we can first of all tell it's going to be better | at evasion. If there are changes in parts that are highly | selected, it's probably more transmissive. If that part is | less selected-for (there are ways to tell from the | sequence) we have a clue that it is probably a little less | transmissive. We also know that the spike protein is less | associated with the virulence. Which means researchers have | to keep looking for what makes the Virus deadly. This could | lead to more effective vaccines and antibody treatments or | even antiviral agents. Knowing which protein to target is | half the game. | thrown_22 wrote: | > 1) talk about failure to read a room | | The people most upset in the room are the same people who have | been screaming that Covid was not a lab accident. I wonder why | they would be upset at someone showing how easy it is to | weaponize a coronavirus? | alexfromapex wrote: | I think the other part that is appalling is they did this in | Biosafety Level 3 labs instead of 4 when COVID has basically | brought the entire world to its knees for 3 years. What is | wrong with the biosafety review committee? | | Also, they completely skirted the NIAID approval process, | putting the public at risk, will anyone see jail time for that? | baja_blast wrote: | Well the mice the researchers used were genetically modified | mice to have human ACE2 receptors which is standard practice in | Virology. But! I will say it 100% is not worth the risk, just | last year a researcher in Taiwan got infected with the delta | variant in the same level lab BSL3, so any dangerous or novel | virus they create has a real possibility of escaping. | | Also it's not like this type of research helped us predict or | even fight the pandemic. Millions have been spent on studying | and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to | predict this pandemic, but none of the research helped in | anyway combating it. For example the Ecohealth Alliance the | main collaborators with the WIV has still to this day refused | to share research and data they have collected over the years. | So either the research is worthless and thus why are we funding | it despite the dangers, or they have something they want to | hide. | heavyset_go wrote: | > _Also it 's not like this type of research helped us | predict or even fight the pandemic. Millions have been spent | on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only | failed to predict this pandemic, but none of the research | helped in anyway combating it._ | | I was under the impression this research was partly | responsible for quickly identifying parts of the virus that | are conserved in evolution, thus making them good targets for | mRNA vaccines. If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins | that have high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to | evade vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines | useless by the time they were actually rolled out. | Izkata wrote: | The spike protein was selected because the virus was | already well-adapted to humans and they _assumed_ changes | to the spike protein would make it less-fit and not able to | infect as readily. They were wrong. | | > If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins that have | high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to evade | vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines | useless by the time they were actually rolled out. | | This is what happened - the variant later named Delta was | first identified in Oct 2020, long before the vaccines were | released. If anything the vaccines helped it become the | dominant one. | bayesian_horse wrote: | This particular research helps to understand how important | this particular variant of the spike protein is. | | When future virus variants are discovered and sequenced, this | information helps understand what to expect. Because the | virulence of new Variants can't be estimated for months after | their first detection. | rossdavidh wrote: | If this research does help us to understand that, it should | be done in the highest level safety protocol labs, which | this was not. | | If it is not able to get funding for being done in such a | lab, that's probably because the potential learning does | not justify such $$ cost. Which means it's also not worth | the risk. | | You are correct that the virulence of new variants is hard | to predict. That very fact means you shouldn't be making | new ones, and assuming you can predict how virulent your | new one is going to be (and thus how hard it will be to | contain). | TechBro8615 wrote: | This particular variant that didn't exist until humans | combined two variants into a new one? | clint wrote: | Which is simulating what could and probably will happen | in nature, before it really happens | JamesBarney wrote: | Or could cause it to happen. There's still a decent | chance the original covid wouldn't have happened if | people weren't doing this type of research. | bayesian_horse wrote: | There is zero indication of the Virus having originated | in a lab. Some hand-waving, no actual evidence. No | genomic signature. No merging of known lineages (which | would happen). No plausible mechanism (to those who know | the subject). | | Much more likely: This Virus originated just like the | thousands before it. From ordinary Human-to-animal | contact. Virus particles pass from animals to Humans | trillions of times a year. Most of the time exactly | nothing happens at all. Even rarer are actual | transmissions. Still rarer are chains of transmission | that allow the Virus to evolve into an actual threat. | JamesBarney wrote: | How would we know if there would be a genomic signature | if the database of viruses Wuhan worked with wasn't | opened up? | | There is not plausible mechanism for anyone from the | Wuhan laboratory to get sick with a virus they are | studying? This happened several times, and happens 100's | of times a year (not Wuhan specifically but labs). | | There is some circumstantial evidence it was a lab leak. | Like the virus doesn't naturally occur in the Wuhan | district, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of | the few in the world that study coronaviruses and do gain | of function research. Unlike SARS and MERS where we | discovered the origins quickly, we still don't know the | origins of covid-19. I don't know how you leap to the | conclusion it was of natural origins when we don't even | know what those natural origins are. | | We don't know if it's a lab leak or not, but they do | happen and they've fairly common. (10's-100's per year) | buscoquadnary wrote: | I love how everyone involved always jumps on the most | extreme version of the lab leak hypothesis "Chinese | government made COVID super weapon" and then use that to | discount everything else instead of admitting the much | more nuanced reality of the situation. | | The lab leak hypothesis has a range from "This virus was | created and released by the Chinese government as a bio- | weapon against the US and to kill off their own aging | population" at the extreme. To the "The virus was being | studied at the Wuhan Virology Institute and someone one | got lax on safety protocols got exposed accidentally and | then took the train home." | | Most people that seem to argue against lab leak, seem to | assume everyone ascribes to the first position, whereas | the majority of the people that believe in the lab leak | subscribe to the later position, including myself. | dTal wrote: | Except it's not a simulation, it is _causing_ it to | "really happen". The _only_ difference hinges on the | ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which | at the very least we have reason to be concerned about. | bayesian_horse wrote: | A pandemic virus circulating in the wild is an incredibly | fine-tuned machine. Just mashing together integral parts | from two quite different genomes is not going to result | in a Variant that is tuned enough. In order to make a | Virus virulent and transmissive, it needs to evolve | through multiple, probably dozens of hosts, and only if | that is on a broad scale, like thousands of such | lineages, does it have a chance of success. | | Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most | likely die out on its own, if not it would get | outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of | a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete | natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural | variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth | mentioning. | reuben_scratton wrote: | You must know that virologists routinely "serial passage" | viruses through animal hosts? Evolving a candidate virus | "through multiple, probably dozens of hosts" is what | virology labs _do_. | | And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on | six separate occasions. | d0mine wrote: | Do we have definite proof that the original SARS-CoV-2 | hasn't escaped the lab? | bayesian_horse wrote: | To what standard? It's the same game with climate change. | When only 1% of the scientists dissent, that gives | certain people enough confidence to believe the opposite | of what the 99% believe. | xupybd wrote: | I'm always skeptical when people say x% of scientists | agree or disagree with a given hypothesis. Most of the | time these numbers are flat out wrong or misleading. Most | scientists have very complex views on their own domain. | Those complexities lead to a very nuanced understanding | of topics that we lay people don't fully understand. Most | have subtle disagreements on most topics. | TechBro8615 wrote: | In fact it seems like a reasonable assumption that on | many days at a BSL-3+ lab, we're trusting at least one | hungover graduate student who is operating on two hours | of sleep at 9 in the morning, not to commit human error | while implementing biosafety protocols to protect against | the accidental release of a synthetic pathogen to the | local urban population. | | Another comment in this thread suggested building these | labs in a desert or some other extreme environment where | scientists can be isolated for months at a time. This | seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the | unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that | haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. | And yet, the secretive groups funding and regulating this | research instead choose to build their labs in urban | centers. Why? | heavyset_go wrote: | Bioweapon labs have a history of being built on small | islands for this reason. | | > _This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation | against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic | pathogens that haven 't been created in billions of years | of evolution._ | | I'd wager that it's likely that the COVID variant that | was made in a lab was also created through evolution at | some point. Every infected person with the virus has | billions of viral replications taking place in their | body, and each virus itself will have its own mutations. | There's a high chance such mutations already took place, | somewhere and in someone/something, but those mutants | never created their own worldwide outbreaks. | | I think it's worthwhile to understand how mutations can | affect a virus at the heart of a pandemic. Finding such | mutations in the wild is a roll of the dice, and the | chances of encountering something like it rise the longer | and more widespread the epidemic is. | inkcapmushroom wrote: | An obvious answer is it's expensive to build and hard to | staff and maintain labs in extreme environments. | sampo wrote: | > This particular variant that didn't exist until humans | combined two variants into a new one? | | Nature created a very similar hybrid earlier: "Deltacron" | was in the news in March 2022. | | _The gene that encodes the virus's surface protein -- | known as spike -- comes almost entirely from Omicron. The | rest of the genome is Delta._ | | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/deltacron- | coronav... | | _His team described three patients in France infected | with a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines the spike | protein from an Omicron variant with the "body" of a | Delta variant._ | | https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare- | pharmaceuticals/... | foobarian wrote: | I read this and dream of the day where the common cold is | cured. And it makes it all seem worth it. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | There is no common cold. There are over 200 distinct | viruses that cause the illness we call "a cold." | foobarian wrote: | s/common cold/over 200 distinct viruses that cause the | illness we call "a cold."/ | echelon wrote: | Sure, but investigators need to treat this subject with | reverence. Unlike pretty much every other discipline on | earth, this one has the potential to disrupt billions of | lives from a single mistake. | | Virologists were the first ones that jumped to say Covid | wasn't a lab leak, yet what they should have been saying | was, "we'll get to the bottom of this and then, even if | wasn't a lab leak, work to make sure that outcome never | comes to pass." | | Instead we got a blame game, accusations of racism, and | everyone not in their field was called stupid or | incapable of understanding the situation if we asked for | more light to be shed in the subject. | | Also, what happened to the scientific method? There was a | whole lot of certainty being prematurely thrown around. | | This hubris won't do. | | I don't know how Covid came about, and at this point the | only reason to know is to prevent the next one. But no | matter the case, whatever is next better not be from a | lab. | varelse wrote: | John23832 wrote: | You want a global replace, so the end is "/g"... but I | feel you lol. | spookthesunset wrote: | > There are over 200 distinct viruses that cause the | illness we call "a cold." | | Probably far, far more than that if you count the | inevitable mutations that occur during replication. | echelon wrote: | It's a feature of how our language, labeling systems, and | brains can only grapple with so many things. We rarely | need to be so precise. | | There are millions of human cells in your body right now | that don't share "your" DNA [1] due to mutation or | specialization (somatic recombination, Barr bodies, etc.) | | We've known this since trying to apply species | categories. | | [1] "your" DNA becomes a population average sometime | after fertilization. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Discrete classification of continuous phenomena is always | going to be messy. Humans create discrete categories | because they are useful to humans, but it's always | important to remember the map is not the terrain. | [deleted] | sterlind wrote: | what? nearly nobody's dying from the common cold. covid | kills hundreds of people every day. how is fucking around | with covid worth a common cold cure?! | [deleted] | MichaelCollins wrote: | Common colds push many people on the brink of death over | the edge. But to your point, the years of potential life | lost (YPLL) when that happens is minimal. | zasdffaa wrote: | > Common colds push many people on the brink of death | over the edge | | Be nice if you could provide some backup cos I've not | heard of this, or any idea how bad it is. | dilap wrote: | > or they have something they want to hide. | | Indeed. I recommend this interview with Jeffrey Sachs, who | headed _Lancet 's_ commision to investigate Covid-19. | | https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/jeffrey-sachs- | lessons-... | | You may find your eyebrows a couple inches higher after | listening :-) | beebmam wrote: | No thanks, I'd rather trust virologists and the people who | are doing the actual engineering. I don't trust | directors/executives, by definition. They have ZERO idea | about nearly anything, other than sounding confident. | throwaway1248 wrote: | AnnoyedComment wrote: | somenameforme wrote: | Many people seem to believe that lab leaks are exceptionally | rare: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... | | That page offers "only" dozens of examples in recent times, but | that is certainly going to be non-exhaustive and the potential | magnitude of impact of a single of these incidents is difficult | to overstate. Notably while the biosafety levels for each leak | are not stated, at least two came from BSL-4 labs - the highest | safety standard there is. | justinpombrio wrote: | Covid has killed something like 20 million people (taken from | Wikipedia, estimated based on excess deaths). It's plausible | that it came from a lab leak. How _bloody fucking valuable_ do | you have to think "making viruses more deadly and studying | them" is for this to be worthwhile? | | Oh, actually you can calculate this, assuming you're | utilitarian and think risking innocent lives is OK as long as | it saves that many lives in expectation. If you think there's a | 10% chance that Covid came from a lab leak, then the "making | viruses more deadly" research that we've done _so far_ ought to | have saved more than 10% * 20 million = 2 million people. Did | it? From what I 've heard it's done fuck-all. | | I stand by my pissed off voice here. I think it's appropriate | to be pissed off about risking _millions of lives_ for | hypothetical benefits. | | (To be clear, I'm only talking about research that studies | deadly extinct viruses and deadly lab-created viruses. We | should absolutely continue to study viruses in general.) | alchemist1e9 wrote: | It's taken 2 years for logic to finally overcome political | polarization and you can now express a logical opinion | without being removed from the internet! Progress. | president wrote: | I don't think it ever went away. You see people getting | massively flagged or downvoted and called "Republican" for | going against the grain everyday here on HN. | wwweston wrote: | What makes you think it's _easy_ to distinguish "studying | viruses in general" from "making viruses more deadly"? | | I'm happy to listen to expert virologists tell me about how | they could advance the field without modifying/running viral | code. Maybe they're a hell of a lot better at their job than | most software types who rely on that. I suspect that's not | how it works, though. | | And hey, let's do more arbitrary probability space | exploration! The Lancet says almost 20 million people have | probably been saved by covid vaccinations[0]. If toying with | viral DNA|RNA helped produce 10% of the research contributing | to that, and/or any additional margin supporting other | interventions, then I guess it fits your people-saved | profile. | | [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS147 | 3-3... | timbo1642 wrote: | kbos87 wrote: | I live right around the corner from here and pass this place | daily. There was a lot of concern when this place was built in | the heart of a major city and I understand the concern (though | I'm guessing the risk a place like this poses is really in that | an individual who works there gets infected with something and | goes out into society - which means the location doesn't matter | much.) | | On the flipside, I also understand that research like this needs | to happen for us to learn and make progress. All that being said, | this just comes off as sloppy, which is exactly the feeling I | don't want to have about a BSL-3 lab in my neighborhood. | bayesian_horse wrote: | Lab-made viruses like that have a close to zero chance of being | more successful in the wild, even if the researchers had | attempted that goal. | | Evolution can try gazillions of variations. Humans can't. No, | computer simulation doesn't help that much. No, drawing | conclusions from differences in natural strains also doesn't | help. | achr2 wrote: | This isn't a random 'lab made virus' this is a virus made by | taking the specifically deadly aspects of one strain and adding | the specifically infectious aspects of another. There is a | _very_ high likelihood of it being successful, because it | already _is_. What is unlikely are these mutations happening | naturally, which is why this should never be researched in sub- | BSL-4 environments. | ARandomerDude wrote: | Because...? | | I'm not saying you're wrong, just that most of us aren't | virologists. | bayesian_horse wrote: | I'm neither. But basically designing a Virus would mean | composing a 30k long string of RNA (in this case) which | creates the proteins and RNA molecules which do all the | things a Virus does. And it does more than you'd think. It | makes the cell copy the Virus, make the proteins, often | interferes with other processes in the cell. | | Copying the genome is easy. Making specific modifications | isn't even that hard, as long as you don't have the illusion | to know the result beforehand. But for the Virus to change | its behavior in a meaningful/useful way requires multiple | changes. The best someone could do is recombine changed parts | from multiple variants. But they don't necessarily fit | together. And the recombination also happens in nature, | probably a lot more often than in the lab. | baja_blast wrote: | And yet H5N1 virus has yet to spread between mammals, but | an airborne version of H5N1 that can spread between | ferrets(and by extension humans) was achieved in a lab: htt | ps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1213362?cookieSe.. | .. | bayesian_horse wrote: | Yes. It has spread. And was very non-virulent. And they | got valuable data on what to do when H5N1 does become | transmissible in Humans. | | However, had this Virus escaped, it would have fizzled. | Showing airborne transmission does not mean the Virus | would spread among ferrets and Humans under normal | conditions. Mammalian H5N1 viruses might have already | existed but failed to survive subsequent passage and thus | did not evolve to become transmissible enough. Such lab | experiments only add a minuscule risk to the much bigger | risk of such a Virus occurring naturally. | lamontcg wrote: | This involves testing the Omicron spike on a Wuhan-Hu-1 backbone. | | Damn near every single person in this comment thread has | antibodies and T-cells to Omicron spike and everyone naturally | infected has T-cells for the original strain as well because | T-cell epitopes aren't immune escape targets. | | Chances of this "escaping" the lab and producing another | coronavirus wave are zero because that already happened. | | Like Derek Lowe pointed out nature already did a similar | experiment with an Omicron spike and a Delta backbone because | coronaviruses undergo recombination naturally: | | https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/gain-function-not-... | | Nobody has heard of the XD strain because there was so much | immunity to it that it never really went anywhere. | Terr_ wrote: | > Damn near every single person in this comment thread has | antibodies and T-cells to Omicron spike and everyone naturally | infected has T-cells for the original strain as well because | T-cell epitopes aren't immune escape targets. | | Checking my layperson understanding by trying to make a dumbed- | down version: | | "The outside of the new virus is stuff almost everybody's | immune system should already be primed to seek and destroy, | preferably before it hits a human cell. Even if it _does_ hit a | human cell, the inside stuff is old /simple enough that your | immune system should easily recognize that the cell is infected | and swollen, and kill it quickly too, there are no false | everything-is-fine-here tricks." | lamontcg wrote: | Correct. | | See for example: | | https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.03617-21 | | "These data suggest that virtually all individuals with | existing anti-SARS-CoV-2 CD8+ T-cell responses should | recognize the Omicron VOC and that SARS-CoV-2 has not evolved | extensive T-cell escape mutations at this time." | | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-022-00838-5 | | "Although the Omicron variant escapes neutralizing antibodies | induced by COVID-19 vaccination or natural infection [1,2,3], | our current analysis demonstrates that T cell epitopes are | considerably conserved in the Omicron variant and that | substantial proportions of memory T cells elicited by | COVID-19 vaccination or natural infection respond to the | Omicron spike. These results indicate that memory T cells may | provide protective immunity during reinfection or | breakthrough infection with the Omicron variant." | | Here's a review of all the SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes: | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S193131282. | .. | | "Here, we focus on a specific topic: our current knowledge | concerning the definition and recognition of SARS- | CoV-2-derived T cell epitopes in humans. While the data | related to this topic was initially sparse, 25 different | studies have now been published as of March 15, 2021 [...], | which collectively report data from 1,197 human subjects (870 | COVID-19 and 327 unexposed controls), leading to the | identification of over 1,400 different CD4 (n = 382) and CD8 | (n = 1052) T cell epitopes." | | And I'd highly recommend this video on the adaptive immune | system, along with the whole rest of the series: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXL2TvhNqZI&list=PLGhmZX2NKi. | .. | | (I think that covers how proteins get chopped up by proteases | and then those short epitopes are displayed on MHC receptors | and undifferentiated T-cells learn to identify them) | tripletao wrote: | > Chances of this "escaping" the lab and producing another | coronavirus wave are zero because that already happened. | | Are you aware of any situation where the omicron spike and | Wuhan backbone could have recombined naturally? As far as I | know, the latter was extinct in the wild by the time the former | emerged. | | It's good that the omicron/delta variant didn't blow up in | humans. The omicron/Wuhan variant seems like another throw of | the dice, though, and even a very small probability times | millions of potential deaths is significant. | lamontcg wrote: | You didn't read carefully what I wrote. | | The T-cell epitopes in all strains of SARS-CoV-2 are not | subject to immune escape and there are thousands of them. | Even the neutralizing antibodies to Wu-Hu-1 spike will cross | react with omicron still. | | Nobody at this point is immune naive to this combination. | | And the most recent pandemic strain of SARS-CoV-2 was | Omicron. If this Omicron spike containing virus escaped into | the wild then it will encounter a human race with substantial | neutralizing antibody activity to this exact spike protein | sequence. | | And there isn't any "but maybe by splicing them together it | literally changes everything, you can't possibly prove that | isn't true" argument. This isn't science fiction. Inside the | cell all of these proteins are diced up into small hexamers | and displayed on MHC and it doesn't matter what the | combination of the spike and the backbone are, the T-cell | epitopes are going to be the same. Omicron spike will have | Omicron antibody epitopes and Omicron T-cell epitopes, doen't | matter what backbone you splice it onto. If you want to | create a new pandemic, particularly one with "millions of | potential deaths" you need to change this virus sufficiently | that it is no longer identified as SARS-CoV-2 by our T-cells | and you don't get that just by combining two different | variants. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | You and Derek Lowe are at best apologists who due to your | myopic perspective can't see the obvious risks that many of | us outsiders can imagine. At worst you're part of a group | for which "it is difficult to get a man to understand | something, when his salary depends on his not understanding | it" | lamontcg wrote: | If I wind up rotting in hell with Derek Lowe that'll be | pretty good company, I think I'll take that. | tripletao wrote: | If that's your argument, then what do you even need the XD | strain for? You could simply assert that because natural | omicron has spread widely, any lab chimera with the omicron | spike must be safe. That seems remarkably cavalier though, | considering that (a) natural omicron continues to spread, | and kill people every day; and (b) while China's reported | case counts are probably inaccurate, they probably do still | have a large population that's completely omicron-naive. | lamontcg wrote: | I clearly didn't need the XD strain, I thought that would | be read as supplementary. | | I routinely forget that no matter how clear your argument | sounds to you that someone on the Internet will always | misunderstand it (and pick apart a detail that has no | central relevance). | tripletao wrote: | Except that natural omicron continues to kill people now? | So it's empirically true that at least one backbone | (i.e., the natural omicron backbone) plus the omicron | spike remains able to cause significant sickness and | death, despite the immunity we've built up, even outside | China. So what's your argument that the risk from a | different backbone is "zero"? | buscoquadnary wrote: | Sweet maybe after this we can go ahead and extract DNA from a | mosquito in amber and use that to make dinosaurs and open a theme | park with them. Sounds like that is the next Chriton movie on the | list now that we are checking of "The Andromeda Strain". | dqpb wrote: | I'm totally in favor of bringing back dinosaurs. I'm also in | favor of modifying animals to have more human-like brains. | | I understand that many/most people would oppose this on ethical | grounds. I could probably even articulate those positions if I | tried. | | But, deep down in my inner child, I think the world would be | much more interesting if these things existed. | buscoquadnary wrote: | I will consent to your argument on the grounds that we | provide equal funding and research to the construction of | giant robots to fight the dinosaurs when they escape. | dqpb wrote: | Sounds like a win-win! | AzzieElbab wrote: | IMHO the real question is why would we do this? Just because we | can? Is there a hidden bio arms race we can't stay away from? | hotpotamus wrote: | Some people get a kick out of 3D printing guns in their garage. | Why not apply that to other weapons? | AzzieElbab wrote: | No one is 3d printing ballistic nuclear weapons. Scale | matter? | AnimalMuppet wrote: | If you use weapons-grade plutonium as the feed stock for | your 3D printer, you won't live long enough for the scale | issues to stop you. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Unlike those who print guns, I don't think virologists are | motivated by spite for politicians. | hotpotamus wrote: | I don't see any reason there would be correlation in those | qualities. But it's more that I think that advances in | technology will eventually democratize biological weapons | in ways that 3d printing have democratized the production | of small arms. | muaytimbo wrote: | Virologists at academic centers like BU are beholden to | their paymasters. Grant-writing and groveling day in and | day out. I'm not sure what feelings develop in that endless | loop of futility. | stiiv wrote: | > The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in | the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's | increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans | have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower | rate of severity. | arminiusreturns wrote: | Yes, there is an arms race, an all-arms race of which bio is | only a part. I reccomend the following two books, _The Sheild | of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History_ , and _The | Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade_. | | The revolution in technology has shifted the global array of | national security threat models away from _just_ the nation- | state. The low barrier to entry to tech like the latest in bio | or cyber research means now a single actor with no grouo or | state affiliations is now capable of producing some destructive | event on a national or even global scale. | | On the backend, this is one of the quiet whispers in the halls | of power in DC as a justification for the surveillance systems | being enabled. You ask if there is an arms race. No, there are | many arms races going on right now. | | Just like nuclear, if its possible they will consider building | it, potential side effects be damned, as long as we have some | force multiplier the "enemy" doesn't. | shadowgovt wrote: | Yes, but it's not hidden. | | On the one side of it: humanity, and our ability to explore, | comprehend, and modify the reality around us. | | On the other side of it: naturally-evolved viruses. They have a | couple billion years' practice overriding biological | countermeasures and massive territory advantage. If we do | nothing, odds are they will eventually mutate into something | that drops us dead in our tracks or wrecks us slowly, as they | have before (smallpox, 1918 flu, HIV). And in our modern, | deeply-interconnected world, geographic defenses and population | isolation no longer protect us as they did our ancestors. | | The main tools we have to avoid this are our ability to | explore, comprehend, and modify. The capacity to change | something and observe how the change affects it is something | the viruses cannot do, and arguably our best chance of | "outsmarting" them so that when they naturally mutate into a | dangerous form, we already have the tools in place to mitigate | or disassemble the danger. | throwaway4aday wrote: | Exactly how does modifying the virus help create prevention | measures or treatments for it? Please provide real world | examples. | photochemsyn wrote: | The most banal reason is that groups of researchers generally | coordinate to set up little bureaucratic power centers within | the national research agencies to ensure themselves a steady | stream of grants; this in turn allows them to get tenure at | their universities (under 'publish or perish' which more | practically means 'get your grant renewed or perish' and grant | renewal relies on (1) a steady stream of publications and (2) | ensuring the federal agency keeps earmarking funds for your | area of research). | | This is all perhaps well and good if you're fighting for funds | for studying, say, childhood leukemia, but in this case it's | been a major disaster and has almost certainly played a central | role in this recent global pandemic. Oops. | MichaelCollins wrote: | _87. Science and technology provide the most important examples | of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are | motivated by "curiosity" or by a desire to "benefit humanity." | But it is easy to see that neither of these can be the | principal motive of most scientists. As for "curiosity," that | notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly | specialized problems that are not the object of any normal | curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an | entomologist curious about the properties of | isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is | curious about such a thing, and he is curious about it only | because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist | curious about the appropriate classification of a new species | of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the | entomologist, and he is interested in it only because | entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the | entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the | physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their | abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific | pursuit, then they wouldn't give a damn about | isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. | Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led | the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. | In that case he would have been very interested in insurance | matters but would have cared nothing about | isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put | into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and | effort that scientists put into their work. The "curiosity" | explanation for the scientists' motive just doesn't stand up._ | | _88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any | better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the | welfare of the human racesmost of archaeology or comparative | linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present | obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these | areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who | develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of | Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in | promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from | a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr. Teller | get emotional about other "humanitarian" causes? If he was such | a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As | with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open | to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit | humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating | waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side | of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear | power arose not from a desire to "benefit humanity" but from a | personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it | put to practical use._ | | _89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible | rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire | to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power | process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve), to | make an effort (research) and to attain the goal (solution of | the problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because | scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the | work itself._ | | _90. Of course, it 's not that simple. Other motives do play a | role for many scientists. Money and status for example. Some | scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable | drive for status (see paragraph 79) and this may provide much | of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of | scientists, like the majority of the general population, are | more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing | techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods | and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. | But it is in large part a surrogate activity._ | | _91. Also, science and technology constitute a power mass | movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power | through identification with this mass movement (see paragraph | 83)._ | | _92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the | real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, | obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and | of the government officials and corporation executives who | provide the funds for research._ | sterlind wrote: | I read Industrial Society to my parents, and we were all | shocked how cogent it came across as. the bits about AI were | especially chilling, very ahead of his time. I disagree with | his conclusions about leftists (I am one), but I have to hand | it to him for an excellent take. | photochemsyn wrote: | This viewpoint is pretty modern (mid-20th century onwards) - | historically, many 'pure science' pursuits were the hobbies | or obsessions of the relatively wealthy aristrocrat classes, | and they really were motivated by curiousity (as their basic | physical needs were already well-provided for), with the | exception of rather small groups that found funding in other | ways (Royal Society of Britain), who even then tended to rely | heavily on things like royal patronage (see Euler, Kepler, | etc. for example). | | Even now, in the era of federal grants provinding the meat & | potatoes, a lot of scientists have multiple motivations, as | in 'this line of research really is quite useful to | industrial progress/understanding nature/fighting disease/etc | and thus human civilization' as well as 'hey, I can make a | decent living and get a fair amount of social prestige by | doing this'. | | The internal bureaucratic politics of the modern science | world are pretty nasty though, it's like bad office politics | on steroids. Possibly the most extreme example of how it call | all go wrong is seen in the legacy of Trofim Lysenko in the | Soviet Union. Comparing Anthony Fauci to Lysenko might seem a | bit extreme but recent events show how these types can | utilize their power to protect their position, even if the | kind of 'science' they're promoting is either reckless and | dishonest or just manufactured ideological nonsense. | MichaelCollins wrote: | If you follow Ted's arguments, the hobbies of wealthy | aristocrat classes are perhaps the purest example of | surrogate activities. He explains the concept of surrogate | activities using leisured aristocrats as his prime example: | | _38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and | demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of | sinking into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine | biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When | people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their | physical needs they often set up artificial goals for | themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with | the same energy and emotional involvement that they | otherwise would have put into the search for physical | necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had | their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few | centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in | hunting, though they certainly didn 't need the meat; other | aristocracies have competed for status through elaborate | displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hirohito, | have turned to science._ | | _39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an | activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that | people set up for themselves merely in order to have some | goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of | the "fulfillment" that they get from pursuing the goal. | Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate | activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy | to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to | devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his | biological needs, and if that effort required him to use | his physical and mental faculties in a varied and | interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because | he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the | person's pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. | Hirohito's studies in marine biology clearly constituted a | surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if | Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting | non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of | life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't | know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine | animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for | example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, | even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would | feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever | having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. | (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one | really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)_ | photochemsyn wrote: | This viewpoint seems to imply that anything not directly | related to biological survival and procreation is a | 'surrogate activity' which then includes all of art, | science, literature, etc. Would this author also classify | some of the earliest human technologies (controlling | fire, making tools, propagating plants from seeds) as | 'surrogate activities' as well? | | It seems like a logical quandry. If the only measure of | non-surrogate activity is something like 'does this | activity contribute to the survival of the individual, | the family, the society, the species', and if science is | a surrogate activity, then why isn't learning how to | control fire also an unnecessary and frivolous activity? | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _This viewpoint seems to imply that anything not | directly related to biological survival and procreation | is a 'surrogate activity' which then includes all of art, | science, literature, etc._ | | Pretty much yeah. I don't think he's implying it as much | as saying that outright. He doesn't condemn all surrogate | activities equally though. He has ire specifically for | those surrogate activities he believes inevitably | restrict the freedom of individuals to go through their | own power process, specifically science and | industrialization. I'll not dump more large quotations in | this thread, but read the section _" Restriction of | Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society"_ if you | want to hear his reasoning for this. | | I am not an anarcho-primitivist so the above is not the | point _I_ am trying to make. I provided the quotations in | my previous comments to answer the question _" why would | we do this? Just because we can?"_ I believe the answer | is this: _" scientists work mainly for the fulfillment | they get out of the work itself."_ | thrown_22 wrote: | > But it is easy to see that neither of these can be the | principal motive of most scientists. As for "curiosity," that | notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly | specialized problems that are not the object of any normal | curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or | an entomologist curious about the properties of | isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is | curious about such a thing, and he is curious about it only | because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist | curious about the appropriate classification of a new species | of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the | entomologist, and he is interested in it only because | entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the | entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the | physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their | abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific | pursuit, then they wouldn't give a damn about | isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. | | What rubbish. One need only look at Euclid's Elements to see | that a small portion of humanity has always been interested | in completely irrelevant but highly specialized formal | knowledge manipulation. That a single book about math has | survived for longer than the Bible and been translated to a | few dozen languages, across a dozen civilizations tells you | all you need to know about the universality of curiosity. | | Yes, if you're starving you won't be spending your time on | curiosity, but you also won't be doing much of anything but | looking for food. You might as well say that sex is a | surrogate activity that we'd give up if we found something | better to do. | null_object wrote: | > There is a lot of evidence that points to the virus spreading | from a wet market in the city, not the Wuhan lab. But proving | something didn't happen three years after the fact is a challenge | that may be impossible to meet. | | I find the anxious disclaimer about the Wuhan lab interesting, | because of course there were a lot of things the lab itself could | have done to clear any doubt at the time, including not muzzling | researchers who worked there, and even releasing their virus | database (which had been taken offline a couple months earlier, | under the pretext that 'someone' had attempted to 'hack' it _and | has still not been made available three years later_ ). | tlear wrote: | jimcavel888 wrote: | soco wrote: | Important underline: the lab database is not available _to us_. | null_object wrote: | > Important underline: the lab database is not available to | us | | Genuine question, as I'm not aware that it's been made | externally available to anyone - do you mean it's available | to _researchers around the world_ but not the general public? | Or do you mean it 's available to Chinese labs? | mikeyouse wrote: | It's a dumb conspiracy theory about a rarely-used database | that "went down" in September 2019 which was a smoking gun | about how the Chinese knew about Covid. Except it turns out | that it only came online in June 2019, it went down all the | time from the view of the tracking website, was available | into 2020, and has absolutely nothing useful to say about | SarsCov2; | | https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1577401140345507859 | | I'm certain that everyone who used this as a prominent | 'datapoint' for the LL hypothesis will immediately | reconsider and update their priors. | pc86 wrote: | I think the GP's point is that it's a dumb conspiracy | theory data-point that would be incredibly easy to | eliminate, and it's frustrating that it's not. | tripletao wrote: | The thread you've linked is deliberately misleading, | refuting a strawman version of the "conspiracy theory". | Everyone has always agreed that the server was | intermittently available until Feb 2020. It's a | particular database that went unavailable in Sep 2019, | not the whole server. Quoting from a document written by | the "conspiracy theorists" more than a year before that | thread: | | > Batvirus.whiov.ac.cn had been online for a few years, | saw a version 2 released in June 2019, went inactive for | a week during the second half of August 19, before | becoming definitely inaccessible (out of the WIV at | least) on the 12th Sep 19. It was online intermittently | after this date from mid-December 2019, and occasionally | until February 2020, but was not accessed from outside of | the WIV after 12 September 2019. | | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_inv | est... | | Were you aware of that? If not, then you might update | your priors yourself. | | The disappearance of that database obviously isn't proof | that the WIV did anything nefarious. It continues their | pattern of zero transparency, though. That might just be | the reflexive secrecy of an authoritarian state; but the | nature of zero transparency is that we don't know. | Izkata wrote: | Their own evidence shows the September 2019 date is | correct, and that it wasn't just flakiness like | previously, it stayed down for months. | eli wrote: | That's probably true, but so is what's written in the article. | A much bigger factor in the lab leak theory is that it played | into various conspiracy theories and, for some people, was | convenient politically. It's much easier to believe that | someone you don't like created covid maliciously than that it | evolved naturally thanks to a huge number of factors no one | person can control. | buscoquadnary wrote: | In the voice of superintendent Chalmers: A rare novel bat | Coronavirus | | Emerged in Wuhan. | | Down the street from a virology institute | | That was studying coronaviruses | | That was studying novel bat Coronaviruses | | That had multiple breaches of safety protocol in the years | leading up to it | | Is not where the virus originated? | | Skinner: Um yes | | "Can we inspect the site freely?" | | "No" | | "CCP a global pandemic is destroying the world." | | "That's just misinformation mother" | afiori wrote: | Also animal-to-human viruses usually go over two phases: | first animal to human contagion is possible but human to | human is hard, then human to human gets easier as the virus | evolves. | | If Covid-19 started in the wet market it went over the | first phase very quickly. | | Part of fighting disinformation and conspiracy theories is | also learning to distinguish when things are just lies (eg. | sandy hook was an hoax) or truish but misused (eg. chemical | waste in river does affect the sex of frogs). | | It is also important not o make a strawman of the opponent. | For some people the "Lab Theory" is "The CCP was trying to | exterminate the US but failed" for others it is "A | researcher got bit by a bat in a lab". The former is | paranoid, the latter is completely plausible. | | Overall there is good circumstantial evidence for both, and | reasonable people can disagree. | jacobolus wrote: | Except substitute "down the street" with "30 km away on the | other side of a river", and notice that everybody who got | sick initially was next to the market, none of them | anywhere near the lab. | | So the lab-leak hypothesis is: this virus created at the | lab accidentally escaped to someone who subsequently only | infected people on the other side of town. | | It's certainly a possibility (viral transmission is | irregular with high variance, and people can easily travel | that distance), and the lack of transparency by the | government is alarming (though not particularly surprising | to folks studying China), but most of the experts who have | studied it still think it's relatively unlikely. | cloutchaser wrote: | luckylion wrote: | Your understanding is that a large conspiracy of various | Western and Chinese (and others?) federal institutes have | conspired to uphold a fake story because the Western | officials funding the Chinese research don't want the | world to know that their money was somehow involved? | cloutchaser wrote: | It doesn't take too many data points to at least make you | suspicious. It's not a conspiracy theory. | | We know Peter Daszak lied about his involvement in this | research. We know Fauci made decisions about coronavirus | research. We know the NIH funded coronavirus research in | wuhan. The chinese took their virus database offline. | They refused any serious investigation. The batwoman has | disappeared. All these organisations have a lot to lose | if it was partly their fault for this pandemic. Yet at | they same time they hold the keys to any serious | investigation. | | This does NOT mean that this is proof that it was a lab | leak. But it is extremely suspicious behaviour and | circumstances. At a minimum it should warrant serious | pressure to investigate what happened. | null_object wrote: | > Except substitute "down the street" with "30 km away on | the other side of a river", and notice that everybody who | got sick initially was next to the market, none of them | anywhere near the lab. > So the lab-leak hypothesis is: | this virus created at the lab accidentally escaped to | someone who subsequently only infected people on the | other side of town. | | But this isn't necessarily how it works, at all. | | The Wuhan market is one of Wuhan's most population-dense | areas, in close proximity to three hospitals where the | first cases were identified, and was therefore the | concentration for infection-tracing. | | In other words, the dataset for early cases was based on | a belief that the market was where the infection was | spreading, rather than the location of a spreading event | that came from elsewhere in the city. Even pneumonia | cases that were reported were only post-hoc assigned as | probably covid _if they were in close proximity to the | market_. | jacobolus wrote: | Again, it's not impossible or even implausible that the | spread could have happened like that, or that there were | cases elsewhere that went unrecognized. But that's not | nearly the same as flippantly describing this as the lab | just "down the street" from the market. | | The possibility hasn't been incontrovertibly ruled out | (and maybe never can be at this point), and it's | important to do independent investigations and examine | the lab's research, etc. It's just not considered by most | experts to be the most likely possibility. | | As a geographical comparison, it would be like having a | new disease outbreak where all of the known cases for the | first several weeks were in Brooklyn, NY and concluding | that the source could have been a lab in Newark, NJ. It's | possible, but not the first place to look. | waffleiron wrote: | But you can do this too for the Chinese version of the | conspiracy too. | | ---- | | Emerged after military games in Wuhan. | | Where the US competed. | | Who is a geopolitical rival of China. | | With soldiers that work at a military biolab. | | That had a major biosafety breach the same year. | | And the US doesn't let the site be inspected freely. | | ---- | | Each of these are true on their own, that doesn't mean we | can conclude the implied conclusion is true. | baja_blast wrote: | But the military games happened in October, the | previously public database of the WIV was taken down in | September a month prior due to "hacking" which why would | someone hack a publicly available database is hard to | imagine. And why has the database not been shared via | database dumps or uploaded somewhere else since? Also if | the outbreak occurred in the US there would have been | major spikes in hospitalizations months earlier in the US | than what happened in Wuhan. | colpabar wrote: | It's frustrating that people make the argument that the lab | leak theory is "politically convenient" and that it "played | into various conspiracy theories" and then go on to list | ridiculous things that no one here is arguing. A lot of | people look at covid, which was first seen in wuhan, and | think "hmm, it seems like there's a good chance it came from | the lab in wuhan that studies coronaviruses." You don't have | to involve politics at all for it to be easy to believe. | bayesian_horse wrote: | You have to ignore all the evidence and data that makes | this extremely unlikely. | | Just as someone might want to believe the moon is made from | cheese. It looks a bit like it, after all. But to believe | that, you have to ignore all that scientists have uncovered | about the moon. | noptd wrote: | >all the evidence and data that makes this extremely | unlikely. | | Please, do share. | themoonisachees wrote: | xyzzy123 wrote: | What data makes this extremely unlikely? Worobey and | Pekar are hardly convincing. | bayesian_horse wrote: | Just google it. There's enough out there, but you don't | want to believe the experts even though you don't know | the science. There is no signature of manipulation in the | Genome. Zero sign of it being "recombined". Experts just | don't see a clear way it could have happened. Just the | inability to say it's impossible and will never happen is | seen as confirmation of the hypothesis. | | Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis often believe the | researchers have somehow enhanced the virus. The only way | we actually know to do this is through evolution in lab | animals. And even then it's pretty damn hard. Maybe | multiple industrial-scale facilities could evolve a | threatening Virus. At horrendous cost. Maybe. And even | China couldn't hide that. | tripletao wrote: | The most likely research-origin scenario is either a | naturally-evolved novel virus collected and accidentally | released by the WIV, or a chimera of multiple such | viruses. No genomic evidence could distinguish that from | natural spillover. For example, here's David Relman back | in 2020: | | > This argument [that SARS-CoV-2 must be natural since it | doesn't use a known backbone] fails to acknowledge the | possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors | (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) | had already been discovered and were being studied in a | laboratory--for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone | and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other | with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It | would have been a logical next step to wonder about the | properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in | the laboratory. | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2021133117 | | The WIV had the world's largest effort to collect novel | sarbecoviruses from nature, often from remote caves that | no other humans would routinely visit; so I don't see any | reason to discount that possibility. | somewhereoutth wrote: | Unfortunately the politics makes it _comforting_ to believe | (even though all the evidence points to natural origin - | explained at length here and elsewhere). | | It is so much easier to believe that the bad thing was made | by bad people somewhere else, instead of confronting the | reality that in fact _we_ did it with our ever greater | encroachment on the last remaining natural reservoirs - and | will do it again, probably soon. | hotpotamus wrote: | Why did the lab in Wuhan study coronaviruses? Is it that | there are convenient natural reservoirs nearby? | Jtype wrote: | nope. hundreds of miles away actually. | tripletao wrote: | It is not. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: | | > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province | for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or | even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses | that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the | spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in | Hubei Province. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.sc | ien... | | Coronaviruses are basically everywhere, as are bats. The | greatest abundance of sarbecoviruses is far from Wuhan, | though. The closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were found in | Yunnan and surroundings, near Kunming or Pu'er, and now | in Laos. | hotpotamus wrote: | I'm not really familiar with Dr Shi or your source (seems | a bit obfuscated via archive.org), but it does seem like | a very sober and careful analysis from an expert. | | Also, she says what I always assumed was the case: | | > Scientists from around the world have overwhelmingly | concluded that SARS-CoV-2 originated naturally rather | than from any institution. | tripletao wrote: | An expert indeed; Dr. Shi discovered the bat virus | ancestors of SARS-1. Her subsequent research at the WIV | is the matter of controversy here, as to whether that | could have caused the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The interview | is with Science, the well-known academic journal. That | journal seems to have reorganized their website recently | and broken my old link, so I used archive.org instead of | hunting down the new URL. | | So Dr. Shi is obviously going to say the pandemic is of | natural origin. Even if she personally believes | otherwise, she's under the physical control of the PRC | government, and would suffer grave consequences if she | went against their official story. My point is that not | even she thinks spillover in Wuhan is likely, though. The | idea that the WIV was situated in Wuhan because of an | abundance of nearby sarbecoviruses is bizarrely common, | but it's neither anti-lab-origin nor pro-lab-origin, just | wrong. | hotpotamus wrote: | Indeed, I really don't know why there is a virology lab | in Wuhan, or why they would be located in any given part | of the world. | | I tend to assume that covid-19 came about like | (presumably) every other virus since time eternal; | through random mutation in the wild. What I don't really | understand is any sort of singular alternative theory of | how it arose - it seems that every alternative is anomaly | hunting or god of the gaps type arguments in search of | some greater meaning behind it. | tripletao wrote: | I agree there's no conclusive evidence for any specific | origin of SARS-CoV-2, unnatural, natural, or otherwise. I | don't see the "god of the gaps" analogy, though. There's | no evidence that god exists, and attributing actions to | god has no predictive or practical benefit. But there's | certainly evidence that virologists exist, and were | collecting and manipulating novel SARS-like viruses near | the origin of a novel SARS-like pandemic. (Are you | familiar with the DEFUSE grant proposal?) | | So with millions dead, shouldn't we investigate? There | are many paths unexplored within reach of American or | European subpoena, both in the WIV's collaborators and in | sequencer reads from unrelated work that may contain | early viral genomes as contamination. | hotpotamus wrote: | What would you like to investigate? This is what I don't | understand - what is the alternative to a natural origin? | tripletao wrote: | That researchers at the WIV collected two novel viruses | from nature, built a chimera with a synthetic FCS, | infected themselves by accident, and spread the virus | into the world? The first two steps are exactly what they | proposed in DEFUSE; that proposal got rejected, but it's | still an indication of the work they might have continued | with other funders. | | Or that they collected one naturally-evolved virus, got | infected in the field, and spread it from there? The WIV | sent grad students into remote caves that no other humans | routinely entered, specifically selected for their | abundance of novel potential pandemic pathogens, with | nothing more than nitrile gloves and a surgical mask. So | while there are far more farmers and guano collectors | (and others creating risk of natural spillover) than WIV | grad students, the risk per WIV grad student seems orders | of magnitude higher. | hotpotamus wrote: | I'm not really familiar with the acronyms, but I wonder | if it would be possible to prove that the virus is _not_ | artificially constructed? The other theory just sounds | like natural origin with an extra step. | | But what I wonder most would be, say that it was proven | that covid-19 was artificially constructed through some | method or other - what would it matter? I wonder if more | people would get vaccines? Would China now know that they | can unleash something like this on the world with | relative impunity? Would it incentivize further research | into biological weapons? | null_object wrote: | > It's much easier to believe that someone you don't like | created covid maliciously than that it evolved naturally | | Ah! and there you did _that thing_ to make an accidental lab- | leak a crazy nut job conspiracy theory. | bayesian_horse wrote: | The problem with the lab hypothesis is not that it is extremely | unlikely or "forbidden". | | The problem is that any suggestion that remotely sounds like it | is possible attracts and inflames a large community of nutjobs. | Just like it is hard to discuss problems around the Israeli | government's actions without attracting anti-semites. | wara23arish wrote: | The damage done from the unchecked israeli government is | objectively way worse than being called an anti-semite | unfoundedly. Some western journalists like Robert Fisk lives | by those values. | | I understand that it's complicated to the uninvolved, but | coming from the receiving side of israeli missiles, Ill wear | the anti-semite badge proudly if it comes to it. | | People who have no real skin in the game will understandably | avoid being called anti-semite even if it's against their | moral compass. I imagine i'd be one of them too if I were | born in a different location. | | So in regards to the virus, I just wish people would stop | caring about fear of association with nutjobs. I believe this | causes a type of self-censorship worse than any other tech | platform can do. | bayesian_horse wrote: | You don't understand my point. It's not about equating | criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. The point is, once | you do criticize Israel, you'll attract actual nut jobs who | actually hate Jews. And criticizing Israel without | acknowledging the other side's culpability can quickly | cross over into actual anti-semitism. | defen wrote: | That suggests an easy strategy for anyone who wants to shut | down lab-leak discussion: just post maximally-unhinged | support for it. See also "cognitive infiltration". | [deleted] | [deleted] | bayesian_horse wrote: | You need a critical mass of nutters to achieve any | traction. I don't know of any case where someone | successfully did that in reality. | neilv wrote: | Around a decade ago, when Boston University was trying | (successfully) to have its campus be the site of a BSL-4 lab, | there were protests (articles, even outdoor demonstrations) -- | over the risks of a lab leak of the world's nastiest pathogens, | in an dense urban area. | | In that dialogue, the public heard a lot about histories of | safety incidents at other BSL-4 labs, which generally seemed due | to negligence. | | Today, given all the presumed awareness of lab leak risks, from | the BU BSL-4 protests, and from the subsequent Covid pandemic-- I | don't know why anyone at BU would risk modifying Covid without | the utmost precautions, including at least using BSL-4 rather | than BSL-3. | giantg2 wrote: | It seems stupid to have these sites in urban areas. If we want | to do this sort of stuff, build the facility in the desert, | with little population, little wildlife population, and | environmental factors inhospitable to long lifetime if there is | escape. | | But I guess safety measures like that are too inconvenient. | jbandela1 wrote: | When I was in medical school, I heard mentioned that | Galveston, TX was chosen for a BSL4 laboratory in part | because it was an island, and if something bad happened the | US could blow up the bridges and quarantine the island. | ccrush wrote: | The same reason was used to host the bioresearch lab at | Plum Island, NY. However, they dont have a BSL-4 lab there | and testing animals on the island outside the labs revealed | that the animals had become infected with various zoonotic | pathogens under research at the facility. Citing its | proximity to NYC, the decision to shut down the laboratory | was made, and a new lab was built in Manhattan. Thankfully, | they meant Manhattan, KS, and despite repeated testing, no | intelligent life worth protecting was found anywhere in | Kansas. | stonemetal12 wrote: | No worries about Hurricane induced lab leak? | kosievdmerwe wrote: | Yeah frankly I can't think of a more dangerous thing humanity | could be doing than biological research on infectious | diseases in population centers. | | Even doing chemical processing in cities is safer since | you're only risking the immediate area. | barbazoo wrote: | Might be difficult to get people to work there. | buscoquadnary wrote: | It's really not and is quite common. You keep the site out | a ways have workers show up and then bus them out to the | site. You only have to keep the site where you are doing | the work way out there and so people can do their regular | non lab related work closer to home. | | It's a really common practice. I live near a national | nuclear research lab and they do that. I also grew up near | an ICBM building and designing facility and when they | needed to run tests they drive several hours out to the | west desert to do things just to be safe. | | It's not that uncommon or inconvenient, and makes a hell of | a lot more sense then just slapping it in the middle of a | major metro area. | | Seriously we've got tons of land out west that is about a | million miles from everything let's use some of that. | giantg2 wrote: | One difference is the bussing may need to be combined | with a quarantine period which wouldn't be necessary with | nuclear or chemical research. | buscoquadnary wrote: | Would it though? I mean, I am assuming there aren't | quarantine procedures right now. You'd just have to make | sure you have appropriate disinfectant/decontamination | guidelines. | | Heck just require decontamination as you leave the lab | and as you get off the bus, two times makes it more safe, | and I'd imagine a 40 minute bus ride through the | sweltering west desert heat in direct isn't an | environment that microorganisms my flourish in. | | Plus that's easy to do to if there is a quarantine | period, out people on shifts of 5-7 days on site, one | week off. That's what they do for the oil rigs, plenty of | people live like that, it isn't easy, or cheap for the | company but a global pandemic that locked down countries | shattered supply chains and wreaked havoc with the global | economy was a hell of a lot more expensive. | giantg2 wrote: | "Plus that's easy to do to if there is a quarantine | period, out people on shifts of 5-7 days on site, one | week off." | | Exactly. | | "have appropriate disinfectant/decontamination | guidelines." | | Yeah... it seems there have been some issues with people | consistently following them. At least with the quarantine | you have some defense in depth in case the procedures in | the lab failed. (I think a woman in Fance died doing | prion research. Why? Because she violated multiple | protocols. I want to say she didn't even report it at | first, but I could be wrong. And this isnt even a true | infectious disease) | giantg2 wrote: | Somehow they make this sort of model work for various | classified work in places like NM (although population | centers have grown around them due to their size and | support requirements). I don't see why something similar | can't be done for this. Plenty of Government land in those | desert areas out west too. | godelski wrote: | A significant number of military bases operate like this. | Edwards and China Lake are great examples. Los Alamos. Even | Fermi. Cities developed around these areas over time, but | they once were only military/gov projects. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Endangering billions of people because virologists prefer | to be urbanite yuppies. Research so important that such a | risk is accepted, but not so important that it would make | sense to simply pay virologists 5x more to live somewhere | remote. | | This is _madness._ | rhacker wrote: | I don't like the idea of paying virologists more money, | they shouldn't even exist. | MichaelCollins wrote: | _Dune_ has been on my mind recently. In the universe of | Dune, AI research brings humanity to the brink of ruin. | After the rebellion against this, a commandment against | creating AIs is added to the major religions. Those found | guilty of creating or possessing thinking machines should | be sentenced to immediate death. The demonstrable peril | of such research is severe enough to justify that | punishment. | | If virologists create and lose control of something that | kills billions of people, wouldn't that justify an | ultimate taboo against that kind of research? Maybe | that's why virologists all clam up and circle the wagons | when something sketchy happens. They say nobody but other | virologists are qualified to question virology, but how | can they be trusted to regulate themselves? | giantg2 wrote: | The funny thing is, there are some virologists/scientists | questioning if the lab was involved (just a minority | though). | lukeschlather wrote: | On the other hand, it's easy to imagine that this sort of | research is the only path to permanently curing | Coronaviruses (and not just Coronaviruses but also | Influenza.) As bad as this pandemic was if it was a | required step on the road to permanently curing both | Coronaviruses and Influenza... that's a no-brainer, it's | well worth the pain, it will save billions of lives. | | Also if delaying this research delays such a hypothetical | Influenza cure by 30 years, that will cost more lives | than this pandemic did too. | notahacker wrote: | I'm reasonably confident that there's a more obvious | explanation for virologists tending to back other | virologists over homeopaths, politicians and contrarians | frantically Googling basic virology knowledge in debates | about viral transmission and protein structures than fear | of Dune-inspired death sentences for every practitioner | of their profession. | | Sure, and programmers all circle the wagons every time | someone suggests that if the company recruits twice as | many people to the team it'll get the project done _at | least_ twice as quickly. Maybe it 's because they're | scared of the employment implications of senior | management knowing best :D | | Back in reality, half the evidence presented in favour of | the 'lab leak' hypothesis is in fact the long list of | actual lab leaks virologists have identified and blamed | virologists for... | JPLeRouzic wrote: | Can't a lot of things automated and operated at distance? | | After all we can do lab experiences on Mars, why not at 200 | miles (300km) ? | hallway_monitor wrote: | So pay them a little more - enough that you can ask them to | live there for 6 months at a time to reduce risk of | pathogen escape as much as possible. If this type of | dangerous research is actually valuable enough to keep | doing, then it is valuable enough to implement protocols | like this. | baja_blast wrote: | Worse yet, before the pandemic there was more political | pressure to regulate and discuss the risks of such research. | Now it feels like politicians are afraid to even discuss it. | Places like NYT used to occasionally post articles like | https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/the-truth-... | and https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/health/h5n1-bird-flu- | rese... but now you will never seem anything like this | published. It is as if the concerns over lab accidents has all | but disappeared! | brippalcharrid wrote: | Yes, but if we can't attract the world's foremost virologists | to programs that we have some degree of control over in the | middle of international cities where they can engage in serial | passaging of airborne HIV in the morning, and then get lunch at | places that are trending, authentic and cutting-edge, then | they'll just go to a program in another country that doesn't | have these restrictions. | | No-one wants to live in an underground facility for weeks or | months at a time when they could be making the most of living | in a major city, not even virologists working on pathogens that | are being modified to see what would happen if there was a | pathogen whose evolution was guided in a particularly | interesting direction and compressed from decades to weeks or | even days. | | Anyway, if we were to ask the world's foremost experts in the | virological community whether we should restrict such research | to carefully-controlled remote locations subject to stringent | controls, long quarantines and strict oversight, then we might | find that the answer was similar to when we asked "is if likely | or even within the realm of possibility that SARS-CoV-2 | originated from a lab in Wuhan as result of Gain-of-Function | research". And they might insist that we listen to them because | they were the experts, and they would probably find a lot of | support in the government and the media. | neilv wrote: | For one itemization of a lot of the concerns at the time, | here's a Massachusetts Nurses Association statement, dated | 2005, from their perspective: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20101125034813/https://www.massn... | VyseofArcadia wrote: | > I don't know why anyone at BU would risk modifying Covid | without the utmost precautions | | My wife was a laboratory inspector for a while. She'd come home | with the craziest stories about how such-and-such lab tried to | get away with this or that. I'd have the same question every | time. "Why?!" Protocols only work if they're followed. We have | such a long history of disasters, major or minor, because of | negligence[0]. Cutting corners, operating outside the envelope, | etc. | | She'd always just shrug and say, "familiarity breeds | contempt".[1] | | [0] My favorite is Chernobyl. | | [1] Also, a lot of scientists have this, "I know what I'm | doing" attitude and see safety precautions as holding them | back. It doesn't help that most of them see grad students as | expendable. | thrown_22 wrote: | >[0] My favorite is Chernobyl. | | Biology is different to physics or chemistry. The worst | nuclear accident can kill a few million people. The worst | chemistry accident can kill a few hundreds of thousands of | people. The worst biology accident can kill _everyone_. | dinvlad wrote: | Considering all the negative comments here, I'd say we should be | just as careful trusting "science" news reporting as we think | science itself should be (which it is). The official statement | from BU makes a good point on that [0]. | | The sensationalism perpetuated by far right-wing news outlets is | in fact the main danger here. Yes, there's always room for | improvement, but if we are not experts able to understand the | research as it was actually conducted, imho we should not jump to | conclusions and blame the scientists etc. This only serves one | goal (of those far-right orgs) to further diminish trust in | science among the general public. | | [0] https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/neidl-researchers-refute- | uk... | TMWNN wrote: | First, Statnews is not a "far right-wing news outlet". | | Second, quoting from said Statnews article: | | >But it has become apparent that the research team did not | clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and | Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the | project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for | some answers as to why it first learned of the work through | media reports. | | >Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology | and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant | applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do | this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was | doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of | pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to | NIAID. | | >"I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming | days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. | | The BU press release does not address this at all. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-18 23:00 UTC)