[HN Gopher] Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.... ___________________________________________________________________ Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says Author : cainxinth Score : 485 points Date : 2023-02-26 12:41 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com) | timcavel wrote: | [dead] | lsdflkwe wrote: | [dead] | somewhereoutth wrote: | Watering Can appositionist denies Cloud Theory. | h2odragon wrote: | [flagged] | IngvarLynn wrote: | My tangential hypothesis is: the virus was intentionally leaked | prematurely to vaccinate humanity from real bio-weapon it would | be developed into. | h2odragon wrote: | I like that one. | | I kinda figure Omicron was a developed "vaccination version" | of COVID. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | It's not such a crazy idea because it had a large | unexplained evolutionary gab in generic sequences from | other variants that I believe is still pretty unexplained. | The "conventional" theory is an immune suppressed HIV | patient, but I've read that idea has a lot of holes in it. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | [flagged] | hotpotamus wrote: | And given the path of technology, what's to stop one future | Harvard PhD virologist from developing his own viruses in an | off-grid shack in the woods? | ttul wrote: | That may be a neat concept for a science fiction novel, but it | seems more likely that someone at the Wuhan BSL4 was working | with coronaviruses (as they do) and somehow contracted the | virus themselves. They may have been working with lab animals, | such as bats. The virus didn't have to come with a sinister | intention. | | Looking at this another way, until today, the most common | hypothesis was that the virus crossed into humans because of | contact with wild animals. A lab leak probably also involved | contact with wild animals. It's just now the Energy Dept. has | gotten their hands on intelligence supporting this notion in | particular. | pelasaco wrote: | I wonder how embarrassing should be to all media and people | calling other names because they supported this theory since the | day one.. | boeingUH60 wrote: | Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let's say the pandemic | was actually caused by a lab leak. That'll mean the world was | brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died | because of the errors and carelessness of some people...will | there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such | deadly mistake won't occur again? | | If it was actually a lab leak, then it'll definitely rank as the | most costly and fatal mistake in the 21st Century. I can hardly | wrap my head around it; human error causing damage on a mythical | scale. Scary stuff. | lsdflkwe wrote: | [dead] | BurningFrog wrote: | I'd still say the Iraq War was most costly and fatal mistake in | the 21st Century. | | Hard to compare, admittedly. | dalemyers wrote: | Based on what exactly? According to Wikipedia, the Iraq War | produced a total death count of 25,071 and a total wounded | count of 117,961. Also according to Wikipedia COVID-19 has | produced a death count of 6,868,964 and an infection count of | 674,809,997. | | I'm all for complaining about US tactics, but it's 100% | incorrect to try and claim that the Iraq War was "worse" than | COVID-19. | r00fus wrote: | Iraq only produced a death count of 25k? Do Iraqis not | count? | | Also almost all of the violence post war should be somewhat | attributable to the invasion; we broke the basket to secure | oil rights (and some argue to also keep the petrodollar as | the world reserve currency) | | The cost was way more than the cherry-picked stats you | present | glofish wrote: | When it comes to the Iraq War, according to the Wikipedia, | and let me quote it | | > "An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis died in the | first three to five years of conflict." | | Then that famous video of "Madeleine Albright Saying Iraqi | Kids' Deaths 'Worth It'" talked about half million | children. | | https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying- | ira... | rngname22 wrote: | There's a reasonably high chance that SARS-2 covid virus | leads to a minor or moderate decrease in average lifespan | (due to the effects on the vascular system and wreacking | havoc on all sorts of organs) and that it will continue to | circulate in humanity forever. | | If that's the case it'll just slowly outscale any singular | event like the Iraq War over multiple human generations of | deaths and damage. | tkiolp4 wrote: | Let me play the game. If covid was caused by a lab leak, I | think the right question to ask is: who benefits (did benefit) | by the leak? And remember that number of dead people is | something that governments don't care about (i.e., governments | easily go into war every now and then: it's clear they couldn't | care less about civilians). | imnotreallynew wrote: | > who benefits (did benefit) by the leak | | The worlds billionaires, combined, made more money in | 2020-2022 than the previous 20 years _combined_. When there's | that much money involved, one must be a little suspicious. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | Another question you should ask: Who insisted it almost | certainly wasn't a lab leak, and who possibly had motives to | deny it? | bee_rider wrote: | I dunno actually, who has actually been arguing that it | couldn't be a lab leak? I've generally seen people arguing | the position: there's no evidence _for_ it having been a | leak. This second hand story about a low-confidence | classified report doesn't push me much in either direction. | It is possible, though. | | What do we do if it leaked? Dangerous thing are handled in | labs. We _should_ double check the handling protocols based | on the unknown possibility that it was a leak, just to be | safe. I bet there are more dangerous things than COVID in | all sorts of labs. | dmix wrote: | Both the FBI and Energy Dept are saying it was an unintended | leak. | lmiao wrote: | Even if we accepted the idea that "governments don't care", | it's still made up of people that act out of self interest. | How would they protect themselves and their loved ones from | the same fate that they so callously cast upon the rest of | us? I think Hanlon's Razor applies: "Never attribute to | malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect" | VagueMag wrote: | > _How would they protect themselves and their loved ones | from the same fate that they so callously cast upon the | rest of us?_ | | A good question, but worth noting that they do seem to have | in fact done so. I struggle to think of a single-higher up | of any significance who was felled by SARS-CoV-2, despite | the fact so many of them are octogenarians. Colin Powell | maybe, but his blood cancer was clearly the more proximate | cause of his death. A few in Iran, but, well. | aquarium87 wrote: | It's simpler. Tools x labs x pathogens and funding x risk of | escape = risk. | | ALL categories are going up. Ergo, risk is going up | exponentially. | | No need for conspiracies. Just a proper parsing of the words | "lab leak" | VagueMag wrote: | How do you embrace "lab leak" without also embracing a | conspiracy to conceal the virus's origins after it escaped | into the wild? | | Or has the term "conspiracy" just been fully redefined to | mean "a thing that can't happen" at this point? | vkou wrote: | > That'll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill | and millions of people died because of the errors and | carelessness of some people...will there be consequences? What | will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won't occur | again? | | If history is any indicator, no, and there isn't any. | | But if you're interested in establishing precedent for reckless | behaviour damaging the world economy, and the health of | millions of people, I understand that would open the developed | world to a mountain of liability in the arena of climate | change. | roarcher wrote: | > it'll definitely rank as the most costly and fatal mistake in | the 21st Century | | Ah, but the century is still young. | aquarium87 wrote: | Very astute! The First! Lab escape happened in 2021. CRISPr | was invented in 2000-2005ish. CRISPr cas9 around 2014. | | BSL-4 labs have gone from 40 to 60ish in the last 25 years | with another coming online almost every year. | | BSL-3 labs are virtually uncountable and are in the 13000ish | range in the USA alone (sorry, can't Remeber source) | | Put it all together, and only an idiot STARTS with natural | origin. | | Also, there will be many many more. | giardini wrote: | So the only solution is to build my own BSL-4 lab and live | inside it. We now have a "BSL-4 lab gap": | | "We must not allow a mine-shaft gap!: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y | | [I miss Peter Sellers!] | psychlops wrote: | Based on what you suggest, there is every incentive for things | to remain uncertain permanently. Any smoking gun will be hidden | away and discredited. | credit_guy wrote: | The only reason to not say it was a lab leak is to avoid | embarrassing those responsible, China first and America second. | | But little by little people will start accepting that. | | What should the consequences be? At the very least a tightening | of the controls around labs doing bio research. Of course, this | amounts to nothing if someone is allowed to outsource research | to labs in countries that don't follow the stringent | procedures. So, anybody who does such outsourcing shares the | full responsibility if things go wrong. | | What about Covid itself? China and America need to provide | reparations. How much? Clearly in the trillions, maybe double | digit trillions. | | How about those who obstructed the investigations? I think they | should face justice, and it's not unreasonable to expect that | some would go to prison for their obstructions. | | Both in China and America? For sure in America, where the arm | of justice has a long reach. In China, if Xi wants a well | functioning Party, yes, he should sent those who obstructed to | jail, for if he tolerates that, his Party will go in decay. | survirtual wrote: | This is what diplomacy is for. | | We need treaties tightly regulating all biolabs around the | world. Any countries not agreeing with the treaties should be | blacklisted from entering entering or exiting countries that | are part of the treaty, perhaps even restricting trade as | well. | | The decontamination protocols and entry / exit procedures for | every biolab should be unified, worldwide, with strict and | regular third-party circular auditing around the world. This | allows labs to maintain their secrets; only the perimeter / | filter are subject to this. | | That would be the sensible course of action as a matter of | Earth defense. | frankharv wrote: | Why exactly would USA need to pay anybody anything. | | This thing slipped from a PLA Lab. | | Reparations? You must be from california. | | Sorry USA is not responsible for shit. | | Our public health system is now considered a pariah. | | Now when the real virus comes we will all scoff at the shot. | | CDC now is questionable to many people. | bmikaili wrote: | AND america? nah man China should pay reparations or face | heavy sanctions and geopolitical isolation. | credit_guy wrote: | America founded research at the Wuhan lab [1], and more | precisely exactly the research that lead to the virus | outbreak. EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak | have been working with Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the WIV | [Wuhan Institute of Virology], for more than 15 years. | Since 2014, an NIH grant has funded EcoHealth's research in | China, which involves collecting faeces and other samples | from bats, and blood samples from people at risk of | infection from bat-origin viruses. Scientific studies | suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus most likely | originated in bats, and research on the topic could be | crucial to identifying other viruses that might cause | future pandemics. The WIV is a subrecipient on the grant. | | [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4 | cld8483 wrote: | > _What should the consequences be?_ | | The abolition of modern virology, roll the clock back on them | a hundred years. Allow the development of vaccines for extant | viruses, but completely ban all Dr Frankenstein activities | with viruses. No more _" invent a virus in a lab to beat | nature to the punch"_ horse shit, with is flagrant weapons | development under the cover of civilian research. As soon as | the virus started circulating through the population, did | these researchers share their knowledge and help develop a | vaccine? No, they buried their involvement and covered up | everything they knew. They were no help at all, and never | intended to be. Burn their books which describe how it is | done, and silence the people who already understand it with | the threat of criminal imprisonment for sharing their | knowledge. Encourage major religions to amend their rules | with strong taboos against this research, and institute harsh | economic sanctions against any nation that doesn't | participate in this ban. | | Does this seem extreme? It shouldn't. This field of research | has the power to kill billions _and no demonstrable upside_. | It is even more dangerous than nuclear weapons; because at | least a technician at a nuclear weapon production facility | would be hard pressed to release his work on the global | public of his own initiative. Smuggling a virus out of any | lab is trivial, all it takes is a single madman 's | willingness to sacrifice himself as patient zero. | | We're the villagers in an "evil wizard" scenario. The wizards | have been meddling in dangerous forces beyond the | understanding of common people, and it's getting people | killed. The solution is to storm the wizard's tower and throw | the wizards off the top of it. | tripletao wrote: | > The abolition of modern virology, roll the clock back on | them a hundred years. | | This kind of sloppy hyperbole is tremendously damaging, | feeding the false narrative that we must choose between the | benefits of modern virology--smallpox wasn't eradicated | until 1977!--and the catastrophic risks of experiments on | novel potential pandemic pathogens. | | Almost all modern virological research involves either | existing pathogens already present in humans, or novel | pathogens in systems incapable of replicating in humans. | The WIV's research was a narrow exception, and one that was | controversial long before this pandemic. For example, | here's David Relman asking Ralph Baric a question about | those risks, back in 2014: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s | | That narrow area carries almost all the risk of a | catastrophic research accident, and has yet to deliver any | significant benefit. It could be banned with minimal impact | on almost all modern virological research. That narrow | regulation is what we need, and there are people (like the | new NGO Protect Our Future) working to draft and enact it. | Your conflation between modern virology in aggregate and | that narrow area doesn't help them, and I hope you will | stop. | che_shirecat wrote: | Hackernews now advocating for burning books, wow. This is | the end result in allowing political ragebait threads | instead of focusing on tech and startups. | educaysean wrote: | That's as dense as claiming we should punish the Cambridge | Analytica incident by reverting the entire humanity's | computing technology by a century. There are numerous | perspectives in which you and I are the evil wizards simply | because we're in this move-fast-and-break-things industry. | Don't burn the field just to punish a few. | tzs wrote: | No one is going to pay any significant reparations for a | couple. | | 1. Too many first world countries do not want to open up that | can of worms because it might come back to bite them in the | ass over the various things they have inflicted | environmentally on the rest of the world. | | The US and Europe for example are responsible for the | overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases currently in the | atmosphere--yes some other countries are now emitting | comparable amounts to current US/EU emissions, but because | CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years the US/EU | emissions from the past 200 years still massively dominate | and will for a long time. | | 2. Calculating the reparations amount due to a given country | would require an analysis of how much of their losses were | due to their poor handling of COVID. There's too much risk | that such analysis could conclude for many countries that | their net losses were way higher than they would have been | had the country handled it better. | | If you suffer $X loss but then only get say 1/10 $X in | reparations because that analysis concluded that 90% of your | loss could have been avoided if you'd handled it better, your | citizens aren't going to be happy their government got the | 1/10 $X in reparations. No, your citizens are going to be | annoyed their government botched things making COVID 10 times | worse than it had to be. | heywhatupboys wrote: | > China first and America second. | | wtf????????????? I have no idea what you are on about | credit_guy wrote: | The US was paying for the research that lead to the virus | outbreak. Simple as that. | | [1] | https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 | mrwnmonm wrote: | "U.S. agency's revised assessment is based on new intelligence" | | What is that intel? | fswd wrote: | This appears to be the most censored hacker news comments section | year to date. | dang wrote: | Not sure what you mean but it seems par for the course to me. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | What justification is dang using to censor? | fswd wrote: | I should clarify, I'm not suggesting you are censoring, or | "site sponsored censorship", rather censorship from users via | downvotes. They both accomplish the same thing I could | understand why somebody might misunderstand me that you are | censoring. | | The Nordstream 2 thread was also interesting, with tons of | users trying to appeal to you specifically to do site censor | the story, or tone policing. I remember you stuck to your | guns. | rocketbop wrote: | It seems like more than a stretch to say downvoting is | censoring, as the comments are still visible. Flagging, | perhaps. | joenot443 wrote: | [flagged] | mindslight wrote: | The source of the problem is _all_ the terrible leaders, | whether they be the media, politicians, etc. You 've focused | solely on the "media", but a large part of the anti-science | tribalism flowed from the infantile president trying to point | the finger at anyone else, rather than accepting the existence | of and dealing with the problem. When that much nonsense is | being pumped into the zeitgeist, priors get massively screwed | up - anything resembling the nonsense is dubious, so anything | opposing the nonsense is duvious, and so on. | | Also it's not particularly appropriate to use the label | "conservative" for those trying to buck societal institutions. | The actually conservative position was to follow public health | advice. | hairofadog wrote: | As an American progressive, here's how I feel about it. I have | no doubt that others will have a different take. | | I don't think it was tribalized by _American media_ ; I think | covid hit when much of the world, not least the US, was | embroiled in tribalism. I wanted to know whether it had come | from a lab leak, but at the time a lot of the lab-leak rhetoric | was packaged along with racist and nationalist vitriol, to the | point where people who appeared to be of Asian descent were | being attacked in the street. | | So sensible people who suggested the virus may have come from a | lab were out-shouted by people saying things like _The election | was stolen, Jews will not replace us, China virus, execute | Fauci, being asked to wear a mask in Starbucks is like the | Holocaust_. I can forgive people for not wanting to try to pick | out valid points from that particular torrent of bullshit. I | think the resistance to the lab leak theory was less that | people were dismissing science and more that the zone had been | flooded and they were up to their neck in it. | puffoflogic wrote: | > anti-science tribalism | | I don't know what you mean by this. The Science said it wasn't | a lab-leak, and we trust The Science, so it couldn't have been | anti-science. | michaelgrosner2 wrote: | > American media | | Huh? The previous President of the US frequently called it the | "China Virus". | | > GOP conspiracy to bring down Biden | | Biden wasn't President for the first year of the pandemic, not | sure how that works out. | | > Are American progressives so fragile in their identity that | they avoid agreeing with conservatives for fear of guilt by | association? | | I personally don't care whether the virus was man-made or | natural. It bares next to zero importance on my life. At the | end of the day what are we really arguing about? Lab practices | in China? The Chinese should be better about lab safety and wet | markets. But there was a pandemic which has killed millions of | people. It seems like the people most invested in this question | are also the ones most invested in downplaying the pandemic, | which is just evil. | joenot443 wrote: | >I personally don't care whether the virus was man-made or | natural | | That's really surprising to me, because in my opinion the | answer truly does matter, and sticking my head in the sand | feels defeatist. I suppose that's a difference of opinions, | though. | kelipso wrote: | I guess it's a natural human reaction when something | reflects badly on you. I never cared about it anyway, it | doesn't really matter, etc. | gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: | How does it really matter though? What are in the Western | world going to do in retaliation? Are we going to start a | war with China over their bio-lab programs? | alchemist1e9 wrote: | > How does it really matter though? | | I'm seriously baffled how people say this. | | It's it obvious that if true then BSL4 virology and gain | of function work needs international supervision and | agreement for humanity. | crayboff wrote: | To be fair in this instance, this is a wild story that does | have all the hallmarks of a wacky conspiracy theory straight | out of a Bond film. Some secret Chinese laboratory is doing | some secret stuff with some super spreading disease and then | whoops it gets leaked and shuts the entire world down. | | Also keep in mind where the info was coming from in the US: it | was being introduced by Trump. This is someone who regularly | spouses countless baseless conspiracies whenever he needs some | sort of ammunition to blame a group he doesn't like. There is | plenty of fair reasons to not have believed this story. | ithkuil wrote: | It's not some secret Chinese laboratory. It's a well known | institute, a pretty famouse one in fact. It's the place that | identified the source of the 2003 sars pandemic. | zzzeek wrote: | perhaps this is to pressure China into allowing the WHO | investigation, which they have blocked [1], to proceed. | | [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y | imiric wrote: | Why does it even matter at this point? | | The WHO investigation in 2020, and subsequent report, was a | complete sham. The CCP has the WHO in their back pocket. | Nothing they say has any relevance in the matter. | Overtonwindow wrote: | I thought it was xenophobic and dangerous to suggest that it was | a lab leak? does this mean it's OK to talk about it? | | Sarcasm aside, this is ridiculously overdue. It was never | xenophobic to want inquiry into Covid being a lab leak. The | outrageous politicization of finding the source of the outbreak | is shameful. | imnotreallynew wrote: | [flagged] | puffoflogic wrote: | The state religion reveres experts, who are by definition the | people with conflicts of interest. It's normal. | ethanbond wrote: | You think it's weird that one of the top virologists in the | world was responsible for finding virus research and for | planning virus outbreak response? | aquarium87 wrote: | I find it wierd that he took money to STOP the next pandemic | and ended up creating it. | Zetice wrote: | It would be weird, but that's not what happened at all! | aquarium87 wrote: | Incorrect. Lab leak is de facto default from now on in | the world we live in. Even if you disagree, it will be in | 5 years. The tech, the databases, the labs, the money. | It's all increasing. Every single year the risk of a lab | leak goes up, to the point where we are expecting a covid | per decade out of the labs. But hopefully the rest of the | world is more ethical than the chinese and their new and | novel virus creation strategy and we get relatively | harmless versions of the flu etc. Rather than pathogens | with zero prior human cohabitation. | | Funny how all the datapoints, including new and novel to | humans get ignored....... | ethanbond wrote: | 1) That's a big assumption you're making, _even if_ it was | a lab leak (which is itself a big leap from what's known | today) | | 2) It also wouldn't be "weird" at all. That's like saying | you find it weird that a firefighter got burned or a | nuclear safety researcher caused a nuclear safety incident. | aquarium87 wrote: | No it's not. Not at all. Everything risk is increasing | exponentially. BSL-4 labs are expanding 1 per year, or | around 2% extra risk. CRISPr and CRISPr cas9 are only 10 | and 20 years old. How much added risk is that per year? | 10,000%? | | Then to send money to actively seek out bat viruses in | the place thought to harbor the worse or most diverse | viruses? | | And to do all that in partnership with a hostile enemy | who most certainly isn't going to tell you all the extras | they have planned above and beyond the controllable. | | No, I think you are dead wrong. The default assumption | from now on is lab leak unless proven otherwise, because | that's the risky world we live in. Period. No getting | around it. And the risk gets higher every year. | | There are literally tens of thousands of BSL-3 labs in | the world. They aren't sitting empty doing nothing. They | are busy trying to "save us". | ethanbond wrote: | I can't really tell what position you're arguing against | here. I personally find the risk of GoF research to | probably net out to "not worth it," but that's an | entirely different conversation than "did Fauci cause | this." | | And no, it's nowhere near acceptable to just assume that | every new virus is a lab leak. Especially when the | subtext of this line of inquiry is usually that we're | going to "hold 'them' accountable" somehow. Combine those | two thoughts and you get something like, "anywhere that a | novel virus appears in suddenly gets smacked by the | international community," and I'm not sure you could | create a stronger _disincentive_ to early pathogen | detection and alerting if you tried. | | P.S. There's almost certainly not anywhere close to "tens | of thousands" of BSL-3 labs. Probably in the few hundreds | to _maybe_ thousand or two, but that 'd be a stretch, and | "tens of thousands" is not supported by any data I can | find: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/mapping- | biosafety-le... | carlivar wrote: | How is "top" virologist measured? If it's simply by years of | power, this is accurate I suppose. However I think "most | powerful" is a better term than "top". | ethanbond wrote: | Like it or not this is how scientific output is usually | measured. He is a prolific scientist in his field and has | been for decades, well before COVID happened. | | > In a 2022 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci | ranked as the 44th most-cited living researcher. According | to the Web of Science, Dr. Fauci ranked 9th out of 3.3 | million authors in the field of immunology by total | citation count between 1980 and April 2022. During the same | period, he ranked 22th out of 3.3 million authors in the | field of research & experimental medicine, and 715th out of | 1.4 million authors in the field of general & internal | medicine. | | 2019 and _prior_ Google Scholar shows him cited about 8,000 | times per year. In 2020+ that only jumped to 10,000, so his | ridiculous statistics here are not entirely (or even | mostly) due to COVID related stardom. | denotational wrote: | Without meaning to take a position either way, as a non-American, | why does the Energy Department have a position on this? | | I'm aware that the Energy Department has sone degree of | responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal, but even taking that | into account, it seems out of scope. | porcoda wrote: | The placement of the national labs in DOE is mostly a | historical artifact of the time they were born. They cover most | sciences these days and it isn't uncommon to hear people with | DOE jokingly refer to it as the "department of everything". | fidgewidge wrote: | The US government is so large and sprawling that essentially | every agency concerns itself with every possible topic. | ttul wrote: | Firstly, the DOE has expertise in areas such as biosecurity, | biodefense, and biological threat reduction, and is responsible | for managing national laboratories and supporting research in | various scientific fields. | | Just one example of this is the HAMMER facility at Hanford, WA, | where DOE can train people to deal with all manner of | disasters. https://hammer.hanford.gov/ | | Given the potential for a laboratory-originating virus to pose | a significant threat to national security, the DOE may be | interested in studying the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to better | understand the risks associated with biosecurity and to inform | its efforts to prevent and respond to biological threats. | | Secondly, the DOE has collaborated with other agencies, such as | the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for | Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conducting research | related to COVID-19. The origins of SARS-CoV-2 are an important | aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic and understanding its origins | can inform public health responses and the development of | treatments and vaccines. | | Finally, the DOE has a stake in global scientific cooperation | and the international research community. The origins of SARS- | CoV-2 are an area of intense global interest, and understanding | the virus's origins is important for future pandemic prevention | efforts. By contributing to the scientific understanding of the | virus's origins, the DOE can help to advance international | collaboration and cooperation in addressing global health | threats. | wizofaus wrote: | It's still not obvious why any of those functions are the | remit of the Department of _Energy_ though. Defence I could | understand. | saboot wrote: | If your point is that the department of energy is badly | named, you are 100% correct. It's more like the "department | of applied science towards security, energy, and nuclear | bombs" | photochemsyn wrote: | DOE and the national labs have done extensive work with | biological weapon detection systems and various forms of | analysis related to delivery systems. E.g. | | https://web.ornl.gov/info/news/pulse/pulse_v270_08.html | | >"A team of scientists at DOE's Sandia National Laboratories | recently revealed their involvement in the more than six-year | investigation led by the FBI surrounding anthrax spores that | killed five people in the fall of 2001. Their work, using | transmission electron microscopy, was the first to link the | spores from several of the letters as coming from the same | source." | bee_rider wrote: | Actually as a side question, why does the reporting on this | story in particular use the somewhat unusual phrase "US Energy | Department?" It is the Department of Energy, right? | | I seems like a little nitpick, but there are lots of agencies | in the US, sometimes there's a little nobody agency with a name | similar to a big deal one... as a style thing, reporters should | stick to the common names for big agencies, so we can be sure | they aren't mixing things up. | dekhn wrote: | I wondered if WSJ must have a style guide that tells their | writers to use this construction but there seems to be a mix | of both (Energy Department and Department of Energy). Yes, | DoE is the correct name, but I see ED used commonly in | journalism. | bink wrote: | I think in cases where there are two large agencies that can | be abbreviated to the same acronym people who work for those | agencies tend to use names that don't lend themselves to that | abbreviation. So in this case it's the Energy Dept and | Education Dept rather than something that might be turned | into the ambiguous DoE. | bee_rider wrote: | Interesting! I assumed the Department of Energy just got | the initialism because they got there first. | vitus wrote: | Per the article, it looks like a supporting report came out of | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is funded by the | DoE. | | While LLNL is primarily known for nuclear research, biosecurity | is also apparently part of its mission: | https://www.llnl.gov/missions/biosecurity | nubinetwork wrote: | They're also one of the few people with a massive | "supercomputer cluster" to do simulations. (and part of the | reason we have zfs on Linux now) | lopkeny12ko wrote: | > Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, | still judge that it was likely the result of a natural | transmission, and two are undecided. | | So each US government agency independently publishes their own | conclusions...? | fakethenews2022 wrote: | [flagged] | cainxinth wrote: | https://archive.is/knkjg | hilbert42 wrote: | Thanks. | lapcat wrote: | > The Energy Department made its judgment with "low confidence," | according to people who have read the classified report. | lsdflkwe wrote: | [dead] | charles_f wrote: | This is such a politically loaded question that I doubt we'll | ever know. Chinese government won't ever admit to it - even claim | it came from somewhere else per the article - and other | governments want to be able to pin it | cookiengineer wrote: | No idea if it's possible to still find the source, but the doctor | of patient zero also got infected (and died/"disappeared" | afterwards like her boss at the wuhan hospital). | | Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored | off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links | anymore :-/ | | In the beginning of sars-cov-2 breakout there was an article | shared on wechat that later got censored in varying degrees of | translations/"hacks" to avoid censorships, they wrote it in | emojis and stuff to trick the censorship algorithm. All of them | were referencing Ai Fen's video and photo of the diagnostics | report of patient zero that she recorded and spread on WeChat to | warn others. | | Maybe someone else has an archive link or screenshots or | anything. Impossible to google the source due to the apparent | emoji noise. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Fen | mherdeg wrote: | Hmmm -- do you mean Li Wenliang? | mbgerring wrote: | Why is this story referring to the Department of Energy as the | "Energy Department"? And why is that agency performing this | investigation? This doesn't make a lot of sense. | yazzku wrote: | Where is the link to the DOE's publication? You'd think the | goddamn newspapers would list their references. | alphabetting wrote: | The latest Sam Harris podcast with Alina Chan who wrote a book on | the lab theory is fantastic. | cosmotic wrote: | Link: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense- | episodes/311... | fakethenews2022 wrote: | The big story is that Big Tech censored this analysis. Google and | Facebook are censorship organs of US institutional power. It | isn't an accident that their Trust & Safety orgs are filled with | ex US security state and Democratic staffers. | someuser54541 wrote: | I'm fairly confident posts like these are artificially weighted | to fall off the front page..that seems to happen when a COVID | related post gets popular on HN. This post has more points and | comments than the majority of stuff on the front page but it's | currently on page 3. | | I've casually noticed something similar over the past ~18 months | with posts related to COVID. | lsdflkwe wrote: | [dead] | leereeves wrote: | AIUI, comments count against a post's ranking on HN, in an | attempt to cool the discussion of controversial topics. | boeingUH60 wrote: | Many people flag these types of posts (including myself) | because they get too toxic. I even flagged this one despite | commenting on it. | tanseydavid wrote: | >> flag these types of posts (including myself) because they | get too toxic | | Please do not do this. | | When you do this, it potentially prevents others from being | able to to analyze it and form their own judgement. | | "Too toxic" is an opinion. | Zetice wrote: | Yeah, an opinion I share, and if enough people share that | opinion, HN is designed to react. | | I'm not going to stop flagging this kind of content, and | dang is here to overrule me/others when he feels the need | to, which is also how HN is designed. | | The post is up, the system is working as intended. We all | have roles to play here, no need to worry! | alanfranz wrote: | Is "because I think they become too toxic" a good reason to | flag a post? I flag spam, shitposts, unsubstantiated or | patently false articles. You, like other people, are abusing | your flagging powers. | tanseydavid wrote: | ^^^ This summarizes the problem perfectly. | 323 wrote: | Toxic to whom? The scientists which are trying to bury this | because it's putting their careers in danger? | ttul wrote: | I find it interesting that this story was picked up by the WSJ | and has not yet hit the NYTimes. The WSJ editorial staff is | well known to have a conservative bias, but their newsroom | editors are considered to be quite centrist. | | That NYT doesn't think this story is newsworthy is itself | newsworthy. | hammock wrote: | It's a WSJ exclusive, negotiated by the journal. You can read | that fact in red above the headline. What it gave the deep | state in return for the exclusive is unknown | dang wrote: | It was flagged by users. We sometimes reverse that and I've | done so in this case. | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | Why? What's the thinking in that decision? This kind of post | draws out the lowest quality comments and attracts accounts | that comment only on this kind of post. | dang wrote: | It seems like significant new information on a major | ongoing topic. | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&s | o... | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | Thank you for the clarification. | khazhoux wrote: | Time once again to post Jon Stewart: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 | | I still don't understand how in 2020 people were branded as | racist sinophobes for saying that the coronavirus that originated | in Wuhan, _probably originated from the coronavirus research lab | in Wuhan_. I know suspicion isn 't fact, but that should have | always been the leading theory to be disproved. Instead, IIRC | Twitter and FB were flagging any post that said "lab leak." | ss108 wrote: | Because we had a racist president who said stuff like "China | virus" in a stupid and demeaning way--i.e. what may have been a | valid and reasonable argument or position had its credibility | ruined by being taken up by Trump and his ilk for their own | ends. | tzs wrote: | > I know suspicion isn't fact, but that should have always been | the leading theory to be disproved | | The leading theory should be the thing that has never happened | before (lab leak causes epidemic or pandemic) instead of the | thing that has happened dozens of times before (animal virus | jumps to humans and causes epidemic or pandemic)? | juve1996 wrote: | This isn't consistent. | | We have several agencies in the US with differing POVs and | varying confidence. To suggest this is settled truth is a | fallacy. In any case, even if it is true, it wasn't ascertained | to be true at the height of the pandemic. | | but the principal problem is that it became political. | Eventually one side will be right. But people saying it was a | lab leak said so for non-impactful reasons. they just wanted to | blame China to help their election chances. The left, of | course, couldn't agree with that as that would enable the other | side. It's simply politics. | csours wrote: | That is the nature of a "dog whistle" - it has a legitimate | meaning, and some people use the legitimate meaning. That | legitimacy gives malicious people plausible deniability. Social | media sites cannot tell the difference, and quite often it's | very hard for people to tell the difference as well. Social | media sprays weed killer on all the discussions because they | don't want their app covered in weeds; not having flowers is | too bad, but weeds are worse (not my personal view). | snird wrote: | As a non-American, the whole thing seems crazy to me. | | It seems like Trump said it from the start, and the media negated | him based on political views, not facts. And now, only years | later, there is a reconciliation with the facts. | | Now, I'm not that aware of the politics or the media in the US. | But I think the way I see it may be the way many others saw this | story roll. | | Whether or not it's true - it is a big reason that many people | don't trust the media. And this may be the bigger story for us | all going forward. | CurtHagenlocher wrote: | My impression is that Trump started calling it the "China | virus" and then there was an increase in physical attacks on | people of Asian-appearing ancestry in the United States and | that's when and why the pushback started. | Centigonal wrote: | When Trump made accusations of a lab leak, there were few facts | pointing to that conclusion. Furthermore, the statements he | made were dangerous to Asian Americans in the US. Later, as | more facts came to light, the lab-leak theory became more | plausible. | | Guessing right in the absence of evidence shouldn't grant a | person any kind of vindication in retrospect | corbulo wrote: | Where do you people get briefed? The guy was fucking | President | Zetice wrote: | I love this reaction, because Trump, of all people, was | getting some of the least useful briefings of any modern US | president, due to his inability to pay attention.[0][1][2] | | So it's entirely possible that just watching the news | casually would leave you better informed than the US | president during the years of 2017 to 2021. | | [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/politics/trump- | intelligence-b... | | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/29/donald- | trump... | | [2] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics- | news/trump-fa... | corbulo wrote: | I'm always fascinated by the dichotomy of the evil hitler | hyper-competent sub 100IQ billionaire who became | president illustrated in every one of these types of | comments. | | You could literally just read his executive orders to | figure out what you said is false. | 7speter wrote: | Or someone at the briefings said there was a possibility | that the origin of the virus was a lab leak and that was | the only thing he actually heard and just said that the | origin of the virus was a lab leak. | philippejara wrote: | No, it isn't entirely possible(any more than anything | else is _technically_ possible). In the rolling stone | article: | | > "Clapper agreed with Gistaro, telling Helgerson, "Trump | doesn't read much; he likes bullets." Instead, during the | Trump administration, the briefer would summarize aloud | key points since the last briefing and provide three | documents (none more than a page) about new developments | abroad. This was all part of an effort to make the PDB | "shorter and tighter, with declarative sentences and no | feature-length pieces." | | > "Trump had his own way of receiving intelligence | information--and a uniquely rough way of dealing publicly | with the IC," Helgerson wrote, "but it was a system in | which he digested the key points offered by the briefers, | asked questions, engaged in discussion, made his own | priority interests known, and used the information as a | basis for discussions with his policy advisers."" | | > "These and other difficulties agencies encountered | under Trump led Helgerson to conclude that, "The system | worked, but it struggled."" | | He clearly had access to more information than any | civilian, and was engaging with it. | Centigonal wrote: | As president, the guy said a lot of things that were | outright untrue [1]. By 2020, he had lost any expectation | of credulity just on the virtue of his being president in | my eyes, and in those of many other Americans. | | Now, if he had claimed the virus originated as a Chinese | lab leak, and the intelligence community came out | supporting that contribution, then that would have been a | different story. Information from these sources didn't | start becoming public until 2021, and was still mixed at | that point[2]. | | [1] | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps- | fa... | | [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/politics/covid- | origin-... | corbulo wrote: | Not everything a politician said was true, therefore if | you read NYT and WaPo you're more well informed than the | President. Amazing. | vore wrote: | lol isn't this the same guy who said injecting | disinfectant was a good treatment for covid-19 | remarkEon wrote: | I'll never understand this take. | | "The virus accidentally leaked from a highly sophisticated | lab in China" is somehow racist and dangerous, but "Chinese | people can't stop eating weird stuff at a wet market and the | virus jumped to humans from there" isn't. | wizofaus wrote: | To be fair the lab leak theory implies those working at the | lab knew what they were doing, had a decent idea of the | risks, continued to do so anyway, then were incompetent | enough to allow the leak to occur. Or worse, deliberately | released it. Viruses spread from animals to humans with | some regularity all over the world and such an occurrence | doesn't imply incompetence among those who should know | better etc. | Centigonal wrote: | Just clarifying my take (can't comment on what others | think): I think the "Chinese people eat weird stuff" | narrative is also racist and dangerous. It's not a | dichotomy, and in the absence of evidence, I would rather | avoid both. | | My personal belief over the last few years has been "it | could be zoonotic transmission through food, it could be a | lab leak, it could be something else. I don't know, so | let's wait and see." | | Also, as a side note: non-Chinese people eat weird things | too (and even worse - sometimes live with animals _inside | their homes_ ). For example, the Black Death in Europe and | the 1918 Flu pandemic which likely started in the US both | had a significant zoonotic component. | 7speter wrote: | "People eating weird things" isn't the only alternative | theory to "lab leak!!!" | | A farmer handling infected guano (which is used for | fertilizer) could've been patient zero. A scientist | studying bats in a cave could've been exposed, and I guess | that could count as a lab leak, I guess, but it's not as | sexy as "mad scientists were manually recombinating viruses | for the interest of authoritarian regimes!" | giantrobot wrote: | > It seems like Trump said it from the start, and the media | negated him based on political views, not facts. | | Trump's insinuations were that the virus was engineered as a | bioweapon and _intentionally_ leaked from the lab in Wuhan. | This is not the same as the virus being studied in the lab and | leaking. Just because the statements involved the work "leak" | doesn't make them equivalent. | 323 wrote: | > the media negated him based on political views | | No, the media negated it because all the notable scientists and | publications (Nature, Lancet, ..) said it was a crazy | conspiracy theory. | locustous wrote: | And all those with different opinions were cancelled... | Doctors quickly learned to tow the line or you lost your job | and license while the masses cheered. Hard to find "valid | dissent" when you punish and disqualify everyone who tries. | Zetice wrote: | And yet, these people seemed to have conducted their | research without trouble. Weird, how approaching a problem | scientifically and not bombastically elicits a more | measured response... | friend_and_foe wrote: | The fact that these science journals needlessly weighed in on | something not falsifiable says more about the journals than | anything. | Paradigma11 wrote: | Trump presented it as an intentional biological attack from | China. This is why everyone was running as fast as possible | from "lab leak". Nobody wanted to add WW3 to our problems with | an unknown pandemic looming at the horizon. | belltaco wrote: | Trump said that not because he had some particular insight, but | it was just a way to deflect blame, and that's why it was super | amplified across the right wing, but lacking any sort of | evidence or proof. Also back then there was a strong suggestion | that it was bioengineered at Wuhan on purpose to tank the | western economies. | | Note that he also said covid wasn't a serious thing several | times. If that's the case even if there was a lab leak it | wasn't a big deal? Note that both of those were to benefit his | administration and deflect blame from his admin's response in | Feb 2020 to not take covid seriously. | trappist wrote: | Trump was a stopped clock on this. I don't think that's | paren't point. The point, to me, is that the entire | establishment treated the lab leak hypothesis as | misinformation for no better reason than that Trump had | endorsed it. That is, on no better evidence. And then | aggressively censored it. | belltaco wrote: | >The point, to me, is that the entire establishment | | And the Energy Department that the sole source behind this | story isn't part of the so called establishment? Especially | under the Biden admin which people who use words like 'the | establishment' and 'deep state' consider the establishment. | | Looks like 'the establishment' wants to blame China now, | hence the story must be fake and there was no lab leak? | | Where is actual evidence of the lab leak? | snird wrote: | This sounds reasonable. I'm not that into US politics and | media, so it makes sense I got this "rough" image from social | media. | | Unfortunately, it doesn't matter. | | It will lead to more people losing trust in the media and | flocking into extreme social media silos. | | The problem is still here, even if the cause of the problem | makes no sense. | MKais wrote: | I still don't understand why the expert's opinions are ignored on | this issue. This one for example is a professor in virology, | working in BSL-3 lab. | | Politics? | | https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/16299562794466918... | | https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... | | I mean, if you have a toothache, you probably do see a dentist, | not your butcher right? | | If we take a plane, we won't choose one of us to fly it, right? | SvenGPo wrote: | If you read the report, the statement was released with low | confidence, meaning it's a possibility that it happened! | anigbrowl wrote: | It's a little perplexing to me that we're getting evaluations | from spy agencies and the Department of Energy. I know the latter | specializes in nuclear energy in particular, and this has | experience with proliferation and adversarial information- | gathering. | | They also supervise biological weapons laboratories (presumably | for the same reason), but what they're being asked to do here is | to validate a premise (natural or engineered?) whereas their | actual expertise is in tracking pathogens already _known_ to be | weaponized. This may be why they expressed their findings with | "low confidence", which is mentioned in the WSJ report but given | less weight than it deserves. | | A big problem in the pandemic response is that there are powerful | strategic incentives for people to express a false degree of very | high confidence about this , and indeed many other topics, so as | to maximize insecurity and anxiety across a large population, | which makes it easier to herd. This was an issue prior to the | emergence of COVID-19, and strongly correlated with a drop in | vaccine uptake and localized outbreaks of infectious diseases | like measles that were previously considered easily managed under | existing public health regimes. | | See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30138075/ for a quantitative | treatment of this issue. | extheat wrote: | The DOE (as a research agency) does a lot of biological and | genomic research and is well qualified to do this kind of | research, as other comments here have pointed out. It's not | uncommon for researchers in different agencies to collaborate | with each other, all labs have different areas of expertise and | it would be naive to say any one from one agency is more | "qualified" than another. The moniker at the top is not so | meaningful. | | The "low confidence" has a particular meaning in the world | intelligence, and the DOE is also apart of the intelligence | community given they run most of the US national research | laboratories. | educaysean wrote: | Appreciate the context. There's so much jargons and different | branches of departments that it's hard for a layperson to | understand the significance of assessments such as these. I | would have been in agreement with OP's reasoning had I not | come across this. | fithisux wrote: | [flagged] | kossTKR wrote: | https://theintercept.com/2021/11/03/coronavirus-research-eco... | | Isn't this a very important part of the context? And shouldn't we | be sceptical when it comes sources directly from the state or | industrial complexes? | | We live in a realpolitical but PR narrated world. | beaned wrote: | Considering everything in the current US regime would be pushing | against this to be the conclusion and it is still the finding, I | suspect the "low confidence" is a managerial stamp based on high | level skepticism of likely inscrutable work from lower analysts. | nzealand wrote: | I wonder how the classified intelligence report responds to the | fact that the early cases clustered around the Huanan Market not | the Wahun Institute of Virology... | | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 | | https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751... | Vecr wrote: | The market was an early superspreading event (or actually | multiple superspreading events), I don't know why people | conflate spread at the market with a spillover at the market. I | guess it made more sense when the virus was thought not to be | airborne. | hackinthebochs wrote: | Do people typically gather in the parking lot of the WIV in | large numbers? What was the reproductive rate of the initial | version? What was the probability of an infection turning into | a severe enough case to register to epidemiologists months | later? For a relatively low reproductive rate or severity, you | will need a lot of human contact to have detectable cases. The | fact that the initial detectable cases are clustered within a | nearby population center that manifests many close contacts | should be expected. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | The market is not near the WIV. They're on opposite sides of | a very large city. | adrianb wrote: | It's widely accepted that the Huanan market cases are an early | super-spreader event and not the first human infections. | Basically we don't know who and where the first infected humans | were. We do know lots of people got infected at the market and | that became the first time a new pneumonia was noticed in | hospitals. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | Just waiting to get censored on Hacker News. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | The big story is that Big Tech censored this analysis. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | Google and Facebook are censorship organs of US institutional | power. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | It isn't an accident that Google's and Facebook's Trust & | Safety orgs are filled with ex US security state. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | It isn't an accident that Google's and Facebook's Trust & | Safety orgs are filled with Democratic staffers. | fullshark wrote: | Next step: proving it was created via gain of function research. | throwawaylinux wrote: | Sadly I doubt this will lead to any contrition, apologies, | humility, self-reflection, or change among certain "experts", | government officials, or the throngs of sheep and parrots who | were led along by them. | wnevets wrote: | Why does the HN title say "US agency" but the NY Times headline | says "Energy Department"? Did the NY Times change their title or | was the OP trying to obscure the Energy Department part? | [deleted] | chmod600 wrote: | Labeling something as "misinformation" is asymmetric: being right | 90% or even 99% isn't good enough. | | Being wrong about a misinformation label, even if there's nuance | about confidence levels, or even moving from "misinformation" to | "probably wrong, but maybe" does more damage than all help done | by all of the other correct labelings. | Fabeltjeskrant wrote: | So much fake news and propaganda out there, who knows what to | believe. | bayesian_horse wrote: | Lab leak of what even? There is nothing magical about virological | labs. They don't create new virus out of nothing. Most of the | time there is a "lab leak" the virus already had all the | potential it had before. In all the cases I can remember, the | only reason the "lab leak" was even a significant event (as | opposed to a bucket spilling into the ocean) is when the lab was | geographically distinct from the endemic occurrence or the virus | had been largely eradicated before. | | The main problem with "lab leak hypotheses" is that they aren't | clear about what went into that supposed lab and what came out of | it. Was there an obscure bat virus? Was there something already | infectious to Humans (but somehow undetected by other | scientists)? Are we alleging genetic editing? "Gain of Function" | (which is easier said then done)? That Sars-CoV-2 genome which | first hit Wuhan was already a finely tuned killing machine, much | more finely tuned than anything a lab could produce | intentionally. All of this makes speculation about the Virus | having passed through a laboratory somewhere incredibly | pointless, except for trying to undermine scientific consensus. | rleigh wrote: | What do you exactly mean that Gain of Function is "easier said | than done"? We routinely engineer changes in viruses for all | sorts of purposes. Even I can do it [baculovirus expression | cassette vectors--takes less than a day from engineering the | cassette to getting expression products]. The tools to do this | can be ordered from a catalogue, and it's never been easier to | manipulate genomes. You design and order the primers you need | and get them a couple of days later. | | Just take a look through the first few links here: | https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lentivirus+expression | | That's just one type of technology that can be used with ease. | There are many others. Baculovirus and adenovirus systems are | in common use. Making a custom system for a different virus | isn't hard, it just takes a bit more time and effort. I was | taught multiple techniques to do this in the late '90s and they | weren't new even then. Genetic modification started in viruses | --the M13 bacteriophage. It's only got easier and more | sophisticated since then. The Wuhan researchers already have | multiple papers published which involved making modified | viruses, and were specifically funded to perform Gain of | Function research. You seem to be claiming this is out of the | question, but this seems counter to what is possible, their | existing track record, and the grants they were working under | at the time. | | Why are you underplaying what went on here, and maybe wilfully | misdirecting? A lot of this stuff is already well documented, | since it's been going on for many years. You can find their | papers with a few searches, and they have already been reported | on multiple times over the last couple of years. | raitchev1 wrote: | [flagged] | sourcecodeplz wrote: | There has been SO much lost faith in media and authorities | because of the coverage, laws and regulations re this, it's so so | bad... People not vaccinating their young children with vaccines | we know to work and have no side effects for 30+ years. | | Locking young children inside for years and stumping their social | growth. Or teenagers and adults too, leading to unmeasurable | mental health problems. | philistine wrote: | Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy | action. | | If a novel virus once again originates in China from a city with | a BSL4 lab, I think we ought to skip the twice is coincidence. | dang wrote: | Please don't do this here. | brucethemoose2 wrote: | I would like to see that evidence. | | I'm not particularly surprised by the accusation, but I am a | surprised they dug up more evidence so long after the fact. | jrm4 wrote: | Don't get me started on how stupid and racist "wet market" ALWAYS | was. | | The question would be "why now?" There have been markets like | this for, what, thousands of years? Why was this one special | (unless, you know, it was near the lab where they made the | viruses) | | 100% percent plays on "lololol look at the backwards bat eaters." | So _dumb._ | padjo wrote: | While I agree with the sentiment that the term wet market is | quite pejorative, the sequence of events is very common and is | what happened with the first SARS. New viruses make the leap to | humans all the time. It's evolution baby. | skissane wrote: | I don't know what the truth is here, and I don't know if I'll | ever know. Ultimately, I don't think it is that important. | | What concerns me much more, is that this issue has become overly | politicised - not just out of concern for the possible | geopolitical implications, or a desire to not offend Beijing, but | also by being tied up with US domestic political divides. | ttul wrote: | The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab | leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various | experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses | how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it's most likely a | naturally created virus. | | However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the | BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good | science from this work. But because this is China, if a lab | accident happened, it won't be getting reported in the media. | It's a state secret. | | The Energy Department gave a low probability to their assessment, | but this is still a bombshell. Imagine the legal liability for | China in international courts if the evidence is solid enough for | litigation. | | 1. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/tag/lab-leak-hypothesis/ | lamontcg wrote: | > However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at | the BSL4 lab in Wuhan | | No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. | | They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 | with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's | no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from | RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between | sequencing a virus and culturing it. | | We also know about their SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1 work because they | published it. Before the pandemic they had no reason to keep | work on RaTG13 secret. | | This is a case of Schrodinger's BSL4 lab. We know they built | chimeras of other viruses because they told the world about | that, we know they sequenced RaTG13 because they published that | sequence, but there's a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor backbone that | they found, which for some reason they picked to be the | backbone in a new set of experiments, which they had perfect | secrecy over and nobody has ever found any evidence of it. | kevinpet wrote: | If you are not a native English speaker, you may want to know | that you are pretty drastically misreading parents comment. | He is not saying "I know this specific virus is present" but | "the lab studied SARS related coronaviruses" which you in | fact seem to agree with. | lamontcg wrote: | They're not related enough to matter. | | I've lived in the United States all my life, you're just | missing the point. | kranke155 wrote: | What about the request to use gain of function research to | add furin sites to coronaviruses? That seems to me the | smoking gun, since this lab asked for funding to do exactly | that. | | It's a bit like Jaime Meitzl (sp?) said - for the first time | in history you find a unicorn (furin binding site in a | coronavirus) next to a lab that asked for funding to make | regular horses into unicorns. But the lab says it's "natural | origin". | lamontcg wrote: | The PRRAR FCS not a known FCS prior to the pandemic so it | is unlikely the lab would have genetically engineered it | and they would have used something like RRXRR instead. | | Other coronaviruses have an FCS and they have evolved | multiple different times, independently: | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S18735061 | 2... | | The fact that we knew that adding an FCS to a virus would | likely enhance its ability to produce a pandemic really | isn't a smoking gun that we actually did it, because we're | just studying and copying what nature is already doing (who | is actually a much better geneticist than we are, with | vastly greater tools). | | And since you want to talk about suspicious "unicorns" how | about the idea that a lab worker was infected in the lab, | and then the only thing that they did was visit the wet | market. They didn't infect anyone they lived with, or go to | any restaurants, or go visit grandma and this Typhoid | Mary/Mike has no existence outside of working in the lab | and visiting the wet market. And this idea gets worse if | you include more workers in WIV having supposedly been | exposed. | | What fits with the facts better is that they genetically | engineered the virus in perfect secrecy and deliberately | let it loose in the wet market, which is just insanity-- | nobody gains anything from doing that, but it is also | impossible to argue against. | Natsu wrote: | See also: | | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834 | 8... | xyzzy123 wrote: | The argument "they would have used a published backbone and | reverse genetics system" is wishful thinking. | | You might interested in this paper: | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v2 | | "Discovery of a novel merbecovirus DNA clone contaminating | agricultural rice sequencing datasets from Wuhan, China" | | MERS is really nasty, this is clearly evidence of | engineering, and guess what the system is unpublished. | | Personally I suspect this paper (which came out a while ago | but got "boosted" recently) could be the reason for DOE | "confidence update". | | Media have not reported on this and "the usual" zoonosis | advocates have been remarkably silent about it. | lamontcg wrote: | HKU4 contamination in agricultural samples in the Country | that HKU4 was discovered in does not pose a particularly | controversial question as to how it got there. | | While it is in the same group of beta coronaviruses that | MERS is in, the HKU4 virus was first found in Kowloon and | the "HK" stands for "Hong Kong" (although it would be a | mistake to assume that says much more than where it was | found and not what its range is throughout China) | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111821/ | | And coronaviruses undergo recombination (XBB.1.5 is a | recombinant which is all over the news) and that produces | "Chimeric" viruses in nature. Finding evidence of "gene | splicing" in samples and determining it must be humans | ignores the fact that nature does it better than we do, and | really points at how politically biased that article is. | | They want you to believe that WIV imported MERS-like | viruses from Saudi Arabia and were fucking around with them | in the lab, and not that those viruses are found all over | China naturally and nature fucks around them constantly in | much higher volume than we can. | audunw wrote: | Earlier in the pandemic I read a report talking about the | possibility of the virus being something they sampled, and | that it leaked when they accessed the sample presumably to | start sequencing/analyzing it. | | The theory was that it was a virus they'd have sampled from | immunocompromised miners working in the same caves that the | bats with the most closely related viruses inhabit. They had | some references to a report with something like that | happening some time prior. | | It's so far the only theory I've read that seems to match the | evidence. | | The evidence doesn't seem to indicate that it was engineered, | or that it was a product of gain of function research on | animals. I think there would have been more solid evidence | pointing in that direction by now, if that was the case. They | would have published something related to it, or non-Chinese | researchers connected to the lab would have known something. | | Yet there's no evidence of any related animal resorvoir, and | the virus was very well adapted to humans from the very | start. And everything points to the virus passing through the | lab _somehow_. Those things put together seems to point at | them having sampled a virus that already made the jump to | humans, and that somehow during the sampling, or retrieving | the sample from storage, the virus escaped. | lamontcg wrote: | There's many thousands more contact between bats and humans | involved in mining (literally how RaTG13 and the Mojiang | mine, bat guano collection for farming and just tourism: | | https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/33905/20211012/china- | r... | | There's a lot of economic activity in China that is close | to bat habitats and there's evidence that cross reactivity | to sarbecoviruses exists in a significant amount in rural | china. | | The researchers collecting samples were a very tiny slice | of the human-to-bat-virus exposure that is going on in | China all the time. | | And we know that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't last very long on | surfaces, it isn't transmitted by fomites. It needs to be | aerosolized and breathed in. It isn't likely that the | researchers were collecting live viable virus in the | samples that they brought back to the lab. What they were | sequencing was overwhelmingly going to be "dead" mRNA. | | The idea that the lab researchers were the initial Typhoid | Mary of the pandemic is also simply not believable because | it requires one to believe that they lived within a bubble | EXCEPT for one trip to the wet market where the outbreak | happened. They didn't start spreading it around their | apartment building, they didn't infect people in | restaurants, didn't infect elderly relatives who wound up | in the hospital, etc. | | It makes "more" sense that they deliberately genetically | engineered the virus and released it in the wet market | entirely on purpose. | tripletao wrote: | > The idea that the lab researchers were the initial | Typhoid Mary of the pandemic is also simply not | believable because it requires one to believe that they | lived within a bubble EXCEPT for one trip to the wet | market where the outbreak happened. | | Except that SARS-CoV-2's epidemiological dynamics are | well-known to be overdispersed? Almost all lineages die | out, and a few explode due to repeated super-spreader | events. It's therefore unlikely that the first cluster | will be discovered at the site of introduction. For | example, SARS-CoV-2 was presumably first introduced to | other continents at airports and seaports; but that's not | where the first clusters were found. | lamontcg wrote: | Explain the coincidence of why it happened to be in a wet | market and not a restaurant or other gathering where | people congregate. Just happened to be the one place to | make it look exactly like zoonosis and extraordinarily | similar to SARS-1. | smsm42 wrote: | The obvious solution for this conundrum is that they did | study it, but didn't publish it because the screw-up happened | and all evidence was promptly destroyed. In a totalitarian | state, the secrecy is the default mode. You can get | exceptions and publish stuff, sure, but only once you asked | and received permission. If you didn't - or in the period | between you asking and permission being issued something | happened - no evidence will be seen by anybody. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable. | smsm42 wrote: | Unfortunately, unless whoever destroyed evidence screwed | up (happens all the time, security services have enough | idiots and slackers), or somebody kept some evidence and | then will defect, yes, it is likely we'll never have the | proof. That's why they do it. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Well then we don't need to look anymore - its 100% solved | regardless of any new evidence to the contrary. | lamontcg wrote: | The effort required to culture virus like this is fairly | large, and it requires them to keep it secret in 2019 | before there was any need to keep it secret. Nobody talked | about it to collaborators, no sequences were leaked out, | etc. | | They somehow had tighter controls than Apple developing a | new iPhone, before they had any reason to. | smsm42 wrote: | Again, you think keeping something secret needs a reason. | That's not how totalitarian state works. In such state, | not keeping something secret needs a reason. Everything | else is secret by default. And the standard mode of | action on any disaster is to deny it, lie and hide the | evidence. It's not special for pandemic, it happens every | time. Yes they absolutely have tighter controls than | Apple, and the reason is they live in a totalitarian | state and Apple doesn't. | gregw2 wrote: | It's weird you mention BSL4 and use present tense about Wuhan | when discussing covid origins. | | The Coronavirus work at Wuhan was done in BSL2 environment; the | BSL4 lab was still being built at that time. | [deleted] | 2-718-281-828 wrote: | the interesting question isn't why China would try to cover up | a lab leak because that is obvious. the questions is - why does | the US actively support this cover up? | swatcoder wrote: | > why does the US actively support this cover up? | | Sometimes, answers are more clear when questions are more | clear. | | "Why is the US waiting to secure a convincing case that | produces useful diplomatic leverage instead of indulging | public speculation by making an early call that wastes the | opportunity?" | | There's a lot to lose by making a case that other nations can | dismiss, and a lot to gain by having a case that they can't. | If there was a culpable lab leak, the game comes down to | China making it easy for its partners to plausibly deny while | others try to collect thorough enough evidence that they | can't. The tidbits that feed conspiracy circles might be 100% | right and very convincing to individuals, but are too thin to | put world leaders on the spot. For now. | mwbajor wrote: | In my opinion, its more likely wallstreet that doesn't want | to loose their cheap Chinese sweatshop labor. | petre wrote: | Maybe they don't have enough evidence to support the lab leak | hypothesis. Or maybe they want to prevent China from | supplying weapons to Russia for the time being and they're | playing the cautios stance while they don't have enough | evidence. We will find out eventually in five to ten years or | so. The lab leak hypothesis is quite probable. | jimbob45 wrote: | Didn't Trump literally call it the "China virus" for over a | year? Almost from the start? I know he got a lot of pushback | from the DNC over that. | barbazoo wrote: | It didn't seem to be based on evidence at the time rather | than a simple minded and racist bit to cover up that he had | no idea what he was doing. | jimbob45 wrote: | As a thought experiment, who would have access to the | most information in the world outside of the sitting | POTUS? The richest man in the world? Surely Trump of all | people would be the most qualified to make such a claim. | sampo wrote: | > why does the US actively support this cover up? | | If it was a lab leak from Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), | it was likely from a research program partially funded by | USA. | | https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak- | theory-... | | _" a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. | government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting | gain-of-function research--among them the WIV itself."_ | wrycoder wrote: | Here's a 2015 paper on successful gain of function work done | at the University of North Carolina under the leadership of | Ralph Baric. The work involved characterizing a synthetically | constructed chimeric virus comprising a SARS-CoV backbone and | a bat SARS virus spike. | | It received special permission to continue despite a | prohibition on gain-of-function research (Refer to the | section: Biosafety and Security).[0] | | Quoting: | | _Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, | SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese | horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse | genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric | virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a | mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone._ | | And from the footnote describing author contributions: | | _[SHI Zhengli] provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids_ | | As everyone knows by now, Shi is the director of the Center | for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of | Virology.[1] | | It's pretty clear that Shi subsequently continued that gain- | of-function work at Wuhan. | | My question is, what is the correlation between the spike | sequence Shi supplied for the 2015 paper and that of the | early variants of SARS-CoV-2? | | [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengli | | There is also a 2013 paper, written by Peter Dazak and Shi | Zhengli, "Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like | coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor".[2] Peter Daszak has | been centrally involved in the US funding of the Wuhan | Institute, in his capacity as president of the EcoHealth | Alliance of New York.[3] | | [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24172901/ | | [3] https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid- | following-th... | GreedClarifies wrote: | [flagged] | Zetice wrote: | You're commenting on a report that the (US Government's) DoE | is saying it _was_ lab _leaked_ , so... the US isn't actively | supporting any cover up, or they're doing a profoundly | terrible job. | drewrv wrote: | Just to clarify, because the nuance is getting lost, they | are not suggesting it was lab made. A naturally occurring | virus can be studied and then accidentally leaked from a | lab. | | But yes, there's no indication that the US is trying to | cover anything up. And China is secretive about all sorts | of things, they're an authoritarian government. | Zetice wrote: | Good point I will edit. | pgodzin wrote: | not lab made, leaked from a lab | r053bud wrote: | Because what good does it do to actually dealing with the | outbreak? I assume the government just made a decision that | it was politically less desirable to do for a number of | reasons. Mainly, probably the continuing attempts at thawing | of relations with China. | 2-718-281-828 wrote: | that's not all there is to it. there are deeper relations | between the NIH and Wuhan. | TearsInTheRain wrote: | If China is engaged in a behavior that lead to a global | pandemic, we have to know everything about what they were | doing so that we can stop this from ever happening again. | Who gives a crap about thawed relations after the | extraordinary amount of damage this pandemic has done to | the world | ElectricalUnion wrote: | If USA is engaged in a behavior that lead to a global | pandemic, we have to know everything about what they were | doing so that we can stop this from ever happening again. | Who gives a crap about thawed relations after the | extraordinary amount of damage this pandemic has done to | the world | | The money for WIV risky reasearch mostly came from the | USA. | celticninja wrote: | What they were doing was downplaying the severity of the | problem until it was sufficiently widespread that it was | not just a China problem. I'm not saying that was the | plan from the start, but it definitely morphed into that. | Joeri wrote: | The genie is more or less out of the bottle on that one. | If it is a lab leak there is no stopping it from | happening again and China is not doing anything special. | There are hundreds of these labs all over the world, they | have containment breaches all the time [1], and given the | way of international politics it is effectively | impossible to shut them all down. Probably undesirable as | well given that labs like those are the reason we had the | medical knowledge to create a vaccine. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_bi | osecuri... | wrycoder wrote: | "At this point, what difference does it make?" | | -- famous politician, responding to a question on a | different issue | smsm42 wrote: | That lying about pandemic origins is the best course of | dealing with the pandemic is an exceptionally bold | statement. | cld8483 wrote: | America funded it, and it was probably the idea of American | researchers in the first place. China got used, and is now | embarrassed about that so they're participating in the | coverup. | smsm42 wrote: | [flagged] | GenerocUsername wrote: | You are being downvoted... Bit this is too important to let | skip. | | I distinctly remember long stretches of time where it was a | platform bannable offense and socially unacceptable to 'go | against the science' and suggest this theory was feasible. | | For too long bad, politically motivated 'science', drove | narratives, and our society needs to be more open in | discussing this so we can not fall for the same tricks next | time | smsm42 wrote: | Everybody remembers it. Some try to crimestop it, but | everybody knows it happened. The right thing would be to | admit the screw up, apologize to people who were | unjustifiably accused and suppressed, and try to do | better next time. But I don't see much readiness to do | this, unfortunately. | xyzzy123 wrote: | > However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at | the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately | | Bat coronavirus work including chimera creation was done at WIV | at BSL-2, not BSL-4. | KarlKemp wrote: | Governments cannot be sued in foreign courts, so there's no | liability. | tiahura wrote: | _they produce good science from this work._ | | Other than securing more funding for more research, and trivia | for virologists, what good science has come from this lab? | ttul wrote: | I'd have to re-listen to numerous TWiV podcasts, but here is | a WaPo article discussing the quality of research at WIV: htt | ps://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonp... | | The Wuhan institute was celebrated as an improvement over the | facilities at which dangerous viruses had previously been | studied in China. The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ | fidgewidge wrote: | That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at | the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the | "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has | nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps | because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its | time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so | will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem | to have contributed to any vaccine development. | j_crick wrote: | > their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any | vaccine development. | | On the contrary, look at covid aftermath -- it quite did! | /s | fidgewidge wrote: | Touche! | cld8483 wrote: | [flagged] | [deleted] | mikem170 wrote: | > The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab | | This is news to me. The article you referenced opens by | saying [0]: | | > The World Health Organization has confirmed that breaches | of safety procedures on at least two occasions at one of | Beijing's top virology laboratories were the probable cause | of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) | there last month, which infected nine people, one of whom | died. | | This seems to be saying they traced the illness in nine | people there at the lab back to two leaks at the lab, not | that the entire disease outbreak originated in a lab. | | There a lot of other studies, referenced in this wikipedia | article [1], which explain that the first SARS virus | originated in bats: | | > Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high | probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and | spread to humans either directly or through animals held in | Chinese markets. | | > In 2004, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease | Control and Prevention of the University of Hong Kong and | the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention | established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus | appearing in civets and humans, confirming claims that the | virus might have transmitted from the animal species to | humans. | | In the last 15 years people have fallen ill of the plague, | cowpox, meningococcus, h5n1, anthrax, and zika due to lab | leaks in the Unites States [2]. These are just the leaks | where people got sick and/or died, all lab workers I | believe. There were others affecting animals, and others | where nobody got sick. None of that means these labs | originated these diseases. The origin of a disease is | separate from a localized outbreak. | | [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS- | CoV-1#Origin_and_evolutio... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosec | urity... | csours wrote: | I have extremely low confidence that we will ever be satisfied | about the pathway that led to the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. | | I feel strongly that it was not tied to malicious intent, but | other than that, I don't have strong feelings. Malicious intent | would require significant actual evidence to convince me. | EGreg wrote: | Publishing this with "low confidence". | | Glad our official experts are on the case! Next we will find out | whether Assad gassed his own people, and who blew up the | Nordstream pipelines. | | (Just kidding. Maybe years later we finally find things out after | they get declassified: | https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-...) | bediger4000 wrote: | How is this lab leak theory anything more than an attempt to | excuse Trump from any blame for his pandemic response failure? | lsdflkwe wrote: | [dead] | ttul wrote: | The Energy Department is no longer a Trump organ. I don't see | why the senior bureaucrat who oversees it - who is a Biden | appointee - would be doing anything to help out Trump here. | | "Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as the 16th Secretary of | Energy on February 25, 2021." | | https://www.energy.gov/leadership | bediger4000 wrote: | Biden admin might strategically decide to do the lab leak | investigation as part of their anti-China plan. That would be | a balance decision, but I could see it coming down on lab | leak investigation. | jokoon wrote: | I've read that some american scientists were working or were | distantly involved in research projects at this lab. | | I still entertain the conspiracy theory that Trump, since he | hated China, could have had the capacity to ask the CIA to "cause | problems in China", and this lab would have been one way to do | harm. | | Of course the US would not be really held responsible as long as | chinese lab workers were pushed to be negligent, for example to | manipulate virus in lower security lab settings, and no scientist | was really able to know it would cause a pandemic. | | Of course it's impossible to prove, which is why it's a | conspiracy theory. Of course the cause was negligence. I'm just | ashamed to have this theory in my head, but there are still | legitimate scientists who have unanswered questions. It is still | quite puzzling, when you read about the subject, to read that | they searched for "gain of function", because there was nothing | really good to learn, and it was always a pandora box which was | very risky to explore. | | I guess governments could ask China for financial reparations for | this negligence, but I don't think it is worth the drama. | rejectfinite wrote: | Not unplausible at all. | | Has happened before | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... | ttul wrote: | And this is precisely why BSL4 labs exist. And accidents also | happen at BSL4 labs. But in the west, at least we have | reasonably transparent and trustworthy governments, with some | notion of accountability for enforcing rules. | tjpnz wrote: | Some accounts I've read suggest the Wuhan lab was operated | under conditions more akin to BSL1. Think your High School | biology lab or your dentist. | ttul wrote: | My source of information is the hundreds of hours of This | Week in Virology episodes I have listened to since March | 2020, so with that in mind as my bias: Reputable western | scientists who have worked with Wuhan virologists | professionally have a lot of respect for the Chinese | scientists and the Wuhan lab generally. | | But the fact that many virologists have professional | friends at the Wuhan lab does not rule out that the lab was | being poorly managed or that an error might have been swept | under the rug by the CCP. | | My personal opinion synthesizing all that I have read and | heard on this topic for three years is that the lab leak is | plausible because China is an autocracy and does not have | the rule of law. It's in the CCP's interests and within | their capabilities to hide a lab leak quite successfully. | notahacker wrote: | > It's in the CCP's interests and within their | capabilities to hide a lab leak quite successfully. | | tbh the general impression given by China's known | attempts to cover anything up tend to give the opposite | impression, precisely because of their default to | autocracy. This is a government party that generally | covers up stuff by banning it from being talked about, | regards "she regrets making that comment and wants to | stay at her home and not play tennis or talk to the media | any more" as a reasonable coverup, and made such a clumsy | attempt to silence the doctor first raising the alarm | COVID symptoms that be became a hero inside China and the | officials responsible got their wrists slapped. Allowing | lab staff to communicate with the outside world and | release papers on COVID origins considered plausible by | uninvolved overseas virologists would be an | uncharacteristic way for the Chinese government to act if | they suspected there was something to be uncovered... | rleigh wrote: | Forget the government. Do we have transparent and trustworthy | lab staff? | | After working in a BSL3 lab, I've seen some fairly poor | working practices including someone infecting themselves, | presumably due to sloppy working practices. There is a reason | why lab leaks are common, if not vastly less consequential | than the lab leak under discussion. It's because people are | people, and they make mistakes, whether that's accidental or | deliberately breaking the rules. It does make one question | whether we can work on dangerous pathogens safely. I'd have | to say, after direct experience of work on multiple diseases | of varying types, that for many of them I have serious | doubts. When it comes to Gain of Function, I think it should | be banned worldwide. We aren't capable of working to the | required level of stringency to guarantee safety. | | To provide a concrete example, look at the German researcher | who infected herself with Ebola. In a BSL4 facility. Not even | involving GoF research, just the regular virus. Even top | researchers slip up. This one made the news due to the | severity, but how many are quietly buried, or not even | reported within the organisation at all for fear of the | consequences. It happens, and I've seen it first-hand. | kklisura wrote: | Nothing will breed more conspiracy theorists than the way how the | scientific community dealt with Covid-19 pandemic. | seydor wrote: | They did act like a global cabal in a bubble and told people of | power what they wanted to be told | photochemsyn wrote: | This is not a surprising conclusion given the way things have | gone. The collapse of the natural origin theory (which was based | on various schemes involving co-infection of bats, pangolins, | civets with various wild-type viruses which didn't pan out) and | the refusal of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to have an open | investigation, along with the fairly shady behavior of the | Ecohealth Alliance partnership that was partially funding the WIV | (not disclosing conflicts of interests in those early Nature and | Lancet letters claiming a natural origin), all result in a 'so | what else could it be but a lab leak' circumstantial conclusion, | even if positive evidence remains hidden. | | What kind of lab leak is an interesting and important question, | however. There may be four scenarios: | | 1) Collection of a wild-type virus that somehow evolved in a bat | species, followed by accidental infection of a lab worker. This | seems the least likely, as the viral lineages of the | betacoronaviruses that would have had to fuse in the wild to form | Sars-CoV-2 (sarbecovirus w/o furin site and marbecovirus w/ furin | site) infect different bat species from different regions; | | 2) Collection of a multitude of wild-type viruses as well as a | variety of bat species, then having accidental genetic fusions | due to coinfection of the laboratory bats with a variety of | different viruses (like what seems to happen on pig farms with | avian / human / swine flu), which might be more plausible, though | would indicate incredibly sloppy lab management; | | 3) 'Natural' mutational pressure via deliberately cultivating | wild-type bat viruses in human cell cultures or in mice etc. | expressing human genes, and looking for rare mutations that arose | and gained the ability to infect human cells (things like this | were done in the Soviet bioweapons program according to defector | Kanatjan Alibekov, see "Biohazard") or to become more infectious | than it already was; | | 4) Direct gene manipulation of wild-type (or possibly mutated) | viruses using CRISPR technology, in which parts of the wild-type | template virus are excised and replaced with specifically | synthesized new sequences designed to bind to human receptor | sites to facilitate entry to human cells by the virus. It'd be | likely they synthesized a variety of such chimeric viruses and | then ran them through human cell cultures to see which were the | most infectious. They were doing this kind of work at Wuhan, | based on prior CRISPR-based work done in the USA c.2015, and it | seems most likely that a lab worker got infected then passed it | to the local community, then onto the trains and airplanes. | | Notably, 2-4 all could be called 'gain of function' research, | which is a sloppy term that nobody in the field seems to use. | It's all pretty reckless and poorly justified research, and | people have been warning for about a decade since these precise | gene swapping technologies became widely available that this kind | of outcome was likely if not inevitable. It's also basically | indistinguishable from offensive biowarfare research, even if | that wasn't the goal (claims that this was deliberate are | nonsensical, it looks like a "oopsie, we caused > $10 trillion in | economic damage and killed millions of people by accident" | event). | | International collaborations to fight infectious disease should | still be supported however, that's how smallpox was eradicated. | Just not this kind of thing, please. | nostromo wrote: | The timing of this is interesting, given that China is now | considering giving weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine. | | It seemed that from 2020 until recently, the intelligence | community was trying to lower tensions with China. That's shifted | now with China's increasing support Russia's war in Ukraine and | China's increasing pressure in Taiwan. | | It's now in the US's interests to try and isolate China | geopolitically. So, we're shooting down balloons and blaming them | for Covid, rather than turning a blind eye. | bmer wrote: | I don't think it's against US interests for China to sell | weapons to Russia. | | Post-WW2, the traditional way in which powerful nation states | test their conventional (non-nuclear) capabilities has been | through proxy warfare. The US would probably love it if China | sold some of their weapons to Russia, so that US/NATO equipment | can be tested against it. Conversely, the Chinese would | probably not mind testing their "on paper" capabilities "in the | field". The caveat here being that the US can probably | upgrade/adapt to whatever is learned about Chinese equipment. | | In other words, there is no substitute for actual operational | experience, and both sides benefit from selling weapons to the | various parties in Ukraine, in order to get said experience. | dilap wrote: | How would the US fare if China cut off exports? Seems like it | would at best be extremely disruptive. So how much leverage | does US really have to "isolate" China? | acheron wrote: | [flagged] | ttul wrote: | What will make this information dangerous is if people | misconstrue "lab leak" to mean "human designed". The report | specifically says it was not from a bioweapons program. I'm | sure they took pains to verify that because the implications of | THAT conclusion would be explosive. | fidgewidge wrote: | No, that's not the most dangerous interpretation. | | The most dangerous interpretation of "lab leak" is the one | backed by the most evidence - that they were artificially | enhancing viruses so they could develop vaccines against | them. The Pfizer guy who got caught on camera by Project | Veritas said they were considering doing the same thing. | | Selling people vaccines for viruses the scientists created | specifically to create vaccines for, is about the worst | conflict of interest you can imagine and one with global | implications, not just for US/China relations. | ttul wrote: | Gain-of-function research serves a legitimate purpose, but | if this lean stemmed from GoF work, that is not apparent | from the SARA CoV-2 genome. See my link elsewhere in the | comments to a TWiV podcast episode that discusses the lab | leak hypothesis, and the analysis of the genome sequence | suggesting it is not the result of human engineering work. | xiphias2 wrote: | ,, Gain-of-function research serves a legitimate | purpose'' | | While this is true, at this point we have evidence that | even the highest level security lab can have lab leak | with devastating results. | | The main problem is not that, but that people can't | really talk about it publicly, as the rules should be | stricter (for example an international body should be | checking the procedures of other countries...the problem | is not with the rules, but not enough verification of | keeping the rules). | fidgewidge wrote: | Lots of very well informed people disagree with you; | you'd also have to consider all the other evidence beyond | the genome. | ethanbond wrote: | You're already seeing that exact type of confusion strewn | about this comment section. | | Some people interpreting "lab leak" to mean deliberately | designed, others to mean deliberately _released_ , others to | mean an accident involving a natural research virus. | | So yeah this whole conversation will continue to go nowhere | because in reality it _is_ full of conspiracy theorists who | make the conversation impossible to have. | cld8483 wrote: | The research out of this lab didn't help develop the | vaccine, so what were they doing in the first place? | Weapons research, it's as simple as that. As soon as the | virus started circulating through the public, that was | their chance to shine! They could have released everything | they knew and jump-started vaccine development.. but they | didn't. They covered it up, because _fighting_ bugs was | never their interest in the first place. | | Why should anybody believe otherwise? Principle of charity? | Please. | ethanbond wrote: | Even if I were to accept the (ridiculous) premise, it's | still wrong. | | Wuhan Institute of Virology did actively contribute to | the development of the Vero vaccine by Sinopharm. | | Regarding the premise, there's no reason to believe that | a lab working on coronaviruses (quite common) that did | not happen to contribute directly to a successful vaccine | development effort (profoundly uncommon) was necessarily | working on a bioweapon. | | FWIW, there are ~59 operational BSL-4 labs in the world, | and only a BSL-3 is necessary to work on potentially | airborne diseases like coronaviruses. According to this | study[1] of published research papers, there are probably | about 150 BSL-3 labs _in the United States alone_. Are | those all bioweapon programs because they didn 't | contribute to the vax development programs? | | [1]: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/mapping- | biosafety-le... | groot2581 wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man | emj wrote: | The discussion during the pandemic only lead to the "human | designed" blame game, so the similarities are striking. It | is a view that everyone can share, regardless of political | affiliations, a perfect way to get a mob going. It is | interesting to discuss how the views on this has changed | though. | groot2581 wrote: | The human designed blame game is different from the "bio | weapons" blame game mentioned in the parent. I get people | are discussing human designed but that's different from | bioweapon. | emj wrote: | I am not very good at bio, so I equate the three to some | part. The lab leak story is really bad in itself on a | political level, I do not know how we can have a sane | discussion about it. | drusepth wrote: | As an off-topic side note, I saw this trending on Twitter and | just assumed it was the latest conspiracy on the site. Seeing it | on HN lends it a lot more credibility. | | I used to watch Twitter for a source of breaking news. It's a | shame that it seems like 90% of trending stories there need | verified with a second source now, and that the nuance you get | from doing so (for example, the "low confidence" expressed by the | US) seem to still be entirely missing from Twitter's trending | discourse. | Zetice wrote: | Why is this a WSJ exclusive, why was it leaked, why is this only | coming out now, why are various government agencies disagreeing | with one another, why "low" confidence... | | This ratchets up the credibility of the claim for me, but there | are a lot of strangely unanswered questions that leave me | skeptical, still. | bayesian_horse wrote: | It's credible to you because you want it to believe. The | article doesn't say what the department of energy thinks went | into that supposed lab and what came out of it. Which is a | major piece of the puzzle I'd say. | Zetice wrote: | Er, it's credible to me because it's the Department of | Energy. | | I don't "want" to believe it, and generally believe folks who | were touting it as fact up to this point were cranks. Even | now it's still extremely murky, and as I said, there are a | lot of unanswered questions. | wahnfrieden wrote: | why is it credible to you when you can as easily find | contrary positions from other us govt agencies? what makes | a "low confidence" doe take more credible than the other | agencies to you | Zetice wrote: | Hm, so the way I'm using "credible" here is as, "able to | be believed". So I find the DoE and therefore the _idea_ | credible. It doesn 't mean I _do_ believe it, or that I | find other, contradicting positions "uncredible" | (incredible? lol). | | The DoE is just an institution I trust, and if they're | willing to publish this, I'm willing to listen to what | they have to say. | djkivi wrote: | Huh. I thought that theory was debunked a long time ago. | | https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-post-corrects... | goolulusaurs wrote: | IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government | that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then | presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in | China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found | it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, | then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to | work? A lockdown on travel would only really prevent the virus | spreading from people bringing it into the country but obviously | wild animals would still be spreading it. Yet the Chinese | government claimed that their lockdowns did work. How is that at | all compatible with the virus being from wild animals and not | being a lab leak? It doesn't make any sense. | unicornmama wrote: | Lockdowns serve a purpose: to slow the spread of the virus. | jcadam wrote: | I will never comply with any sort of lockdown ever again. I | regret taking this COVID BS seriously the first couple of | months back in 2020. | psychlops wrote: | Lockdowns serve many purposes, not simply the stated one. | They also have many side effects. | Gigachad wrote: | That's not what china was doing though. They were attempting | total elimination. | boxed wrote: | Of course there's a reservoir. That's why there was a lab in | the first place. There are many more viruses in those caves. | Many many. And tourists literally pay money to go into such | caves, and look up to the ceiling to look at the bats. Bats | that may at any time shit into their eye with one of these new | viruses. And then on top of that people catch them and sell | them live to slaughter them at home to eat. | | Again, this is all well known and the reason the lab was there | in the first place. That's why the techs go into these caves | wearing full haz mat. Unlike the tourists who are oblivious. | | Not saying it's not a lab leak. But you seem confused about | some basics facts... | mwbajor wrote: | So if a tech from the Wuhan lab on one of these expeditions, | does that count as a leak? | skellington wrote: | No there isn't. More than 50K animals tested an no animal | reservoir for C19. | | Are there really reddit-ors who still think C19 was natural | when ALL of the current evidence including genetic markers | points to lab leak? | | Yes, we can't say with absolute certainty, but the case for | lab leak is MUCH stronger than for natural. Plus, why has | China still not released the nature and details of the | experiments that were conducted in that lab? You know why. | | Anyone who doesn't see that lab leak is the most likely | source is just being contrarian for their own ego or | political reasons. | alevskaya wrote: | This is a dumb argument. Sick animals were probably culled | immediately by the farms to avoid getting blamed. | | As a 2-decade genetic engineer: there are no genetic | "markers" pointing to a lab leak, there's really no sign of | unnatural manipulation in the sequence. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | Indeed, the government cracked down on wild animal | farming at the beginning of the pandemic. | | When you hear that "X thousand animals were tested," it's | not the types of wild animals that are the likely | culprit. It's cows, pigs, sheep and the like. It's a | complete red herring. | naasking wrote: | Passage through humanized mice wouldn't leave signs of | unnatural manipulation. It's still pretty suspicious that | COVID was so transmissible between people from the | outset, and no evidence of it circulating in local | populations was found. | seizethecheese wrote: | You are arguing different things. There's a reservoir of | coronaviruses, but not exactly c19. | Consultant32452 wrote: | Evolutionary theory SUGGESTS it is a lab leak. When a virus | "makes the jump" from animals to humans, it tends not to be | very good at first. Then, over time, the virus would evolve | to get better and better at spreading among humans. You'd | have likely years of the virus spreading fairly slowly. You | know how each progressive strain has become more capable of | spreading but less deadly compared to the generation before | it? One would expect to have seen strains prior to alpha | which would have been significantly less infectious. | | Covid, conversely, was EXTREMELY good at spreading among | humans right from the start. This experience coincides with | the exact category of experiments we know were funded in | Wuhan, which include using directed evolution to get bat | corona viruses to be able to infect human cells. They | literally trained these corona viruses to be able to infect | human cells. | | Is this definitive? Of course not, nothing is definitive. | | If you're interested in how these types of coverups play out | in the real world, I recommend investigating the 1977 | influenza pandemic. 700,00 people died due to a Russian lab | leak and the entire scientific community kept it a secret | from the public because they didn't want to embarrass Russia | during the cold war. It took 30 years for the scientific | community to come clean. | [deleted] | goolulusaurs wrote: | Well its been years, why haven't they found the reservoir yet | then? They would obviously want to since it would prove that | it wasn't a lab leak, yet as far as I know they haven't | claimed to have found it yet. | crazygringo wrote: | From a quick Google search, it seems that with highly | mutating viruses like Covid, it's generally difficult to | find a reservoir -- that waves of infections are highly | transitory and you really need to get lucky to find the | right animal in the right group of animals in the right | species at the right time. | crazygringo wrote: | > _But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, | then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to | work?_ | | Because if people avoid contact with the animals and it's a | rare type of human-animal interaction to begin with, then it | doesn't spread. And if you catch it again, you lock down | instantly locally again. | | I'm not taking any side on the source of the virus, but I don't | think the Chinese government behavior makes either option more | likely. Once vaccines had been developed, the Chinese lockdown | went on for way longer than reason could ever have dictated, | since Covid had turned endemic in the rest of the world. The | extreme lockdown was never a good example of rational health | policy in _any_ scenario, post-vaccine. | monetus wrote: | > _...then it doesn 't spread. And if you catch it again, you | lock down instantly locally again._ | | I dont know much about Ebola, but that is essentially what | has been happening right? | Glyptodon wrote: | What annoys me is how many people seem to think "lab leak" is the | same as "man made virus." Though maybe I'm reading too much into | things people say on social media. | macinjosh wrote: | Why? It's a distinction without a difference. It is a man made | pandemic whether they "made" the virus themselves or not. It is | of very little consequence at this point if it was engineered | or not. | unity1001 wrote: | Speaking of lab leaks... | | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick... | chewbacha wrote: | The US agency making the assertion is the department of energy. | Obviously the foremost thought leaders in virology and | epidemiology. | dekhn wrote: | The DOE runs national labs with research into biology. In fact, | they funded the human genome project earlier than the NIH (who | later swooped in after realizing they were missing out). They | also have labs that work on biosafety. Lots of scientists. | paganel wrote: | This was considered "fake news" and heavily reprimanded all | throughout the pandemic in the media attached to the Western | consensus, hilarious how they're starting to do a 180 on it (next | is doing a 360, I guess). | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | It's always been a possibility although other explanations are | more likely. I'd be interested in the evidence. | UKR_anon wrote: | [flagged] | lockhouse wrote: | Why are other explanations _more_ likely? I 'd be interested | in your evidence for that. | [deleted] | zzzeek wrote: | citation needed | UKR_anon wrote: | Genuine question. Why this gaslighting? Have you been living | under a rock in 2020? You don't care at all about a source, | the only thing you want to to spread confusion. | fasteddie31003 wrote: | Someone linked me this website last year https://peterdaszak.com/ | . I thought it must have been run by a crazy person at first, but | it's turning out to be more and more correct. I'm not sure of the | whole Nazi angle, however. | b3nji wrote: | To think, numerous respected scientists we mocked, ridiculed and | canceled when they pointed this out this was likely, years ago. | nibbleshifter wrote: | The fucking article says the DoE has low confidence in the | report. | extheat wrote: | Look at the other intelligence community reports are rated as | and what "low confidence" means in intelligence community | assessments. The fact that the DOE is taking the time to revise | their previous stance is a very big deal in our quest to | understand the origins of the new coronavirus. | ironyman wrote: | I strongly suspect that the three-letter agencies have good intel | to conclusively show that this is the case, but they have decided | to hold back on it for the sake of US-China relations. | | https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-releases-repor... | 2-718-281-828 wrote: | considering the Snowden leaks, the 3 letter agencies probably | have enough intel to solve about 90% of every unsolved felony | in the US and Europe. | ttul wrote: | One of those agencies - the FBI - has long held that Covid-19 | is the result of a lab leak: "The FBI previously came to the | conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab | leak in 2021 with "moderate confi-dence" and still holds to | this view." (from the WSJ article) | michaelgrosner2 wrote: | I'm not sure what world you're living in but we've been | shooting missiles at Chinese military objects and restricting | their access to semiconductors. I have little doubt that if the | CIA or FBI had information it was actually a Chinese plot they | would have released it by now. | cld8483 wrote: | > _I 'm not sure what world you're living in but we've been | shooting missiles at Chinese military objects_ | | Only after several days of failing to resolve the balloon | matter diplomatically. Shooting it down was not their first | resort, and that's probably because diplomatic considerations | with China were being weighed against the domestic political | situation. When the diplomatic situation can be kept | relatively smooth and normal by keeping the public in the | dark, that's the 'rational' choice. | aquarium87 wrote: | Naw. Nobody wins from increased instability. Seems to me the | playbook is obvious. You see in politics all the time. | Everyone knows the truth but pretends otherwise until the | proper time when things have settled down and the truth can | be allowed to be free. | | We are coming to the time when people are forgetting what | lockdown were like and just want to move on with live. The | near future is when the lab leak hypothesis can become the de | facto default of scientists and intel agencies. | | Same applies for the vaccines. 4 months of study for top | level review of vaccines as a metastudy. 6 months of journal | review for meta analysis of existing papers. 6 months of | journal review, 4 months to parse the data. | | Already, before the narrative can change, 20 months need to | pass since the end of the dataset. If you want relevent data | on covid and vaccine outcomes, then it's Jan 2021-Dec 2022. | | First two years of preliminary data won't be finalized and | combined and analyzed to a sufficient degree to potentially | flip the narrative until about September 2024. | | Want real data on covid and the vaccine? 5 years worth? You | can have it in September 2027. | | Why bother having the CIA release shit when you can just have | the scientists do your dirty for you and time slide relevent | information into 2024+? | | Its all coming out. Just a matter of timing. | idopmstuff wrote: | How would that improve anything for the US, though? Shooting | down balloons helps us because it gets rid of spy equipment | in our skies (and lets us get our hands on it). Restricting | access to semiconductors keeps us on better technological | footing than China. | | If they release evidence of a lab leak, China will deny it | and relations will deteriorate. How do either of those things | help the US? It's not going to make China a pariah in the | world (and even if it did, that may or may not be a good | thing) - the world is already very clear on their profound | human rights abuses of Uyghurs, but nothing happens because | they're too economically important. | | We'd maybe gain some theoretical moral high ground, but that | doesn't make the world safer or better. | ChatGTP wrote: | Not unless you were using it for leverage ? | 323 wrote: | And now that China is thinking of helping Russia militarily it | suddenly surfaces... | cc101 wrote: | How can they tell the difference between a lab leak and a | deliberate release to explore the world's reaction to a viral | weapon? | cld8483 wrote: | You can tell the difference by looking to see if any of their | research helped in developing the vaccine (it did not.) | friend_and_foe wrote: | That's not definitive because you're assuming motivation, it | could be that someone didn't want a vaccine, and you're | assuming all research was publicized to us. This was the | fastest vaccine ever developed in human history, it's worth | noting. | this_user wrote: | Because deliberately releasing a virus that is so infectious | that it will cause a global pandemic and will inevitably hit | your own country is a bloody stupid thing to do. Everyone | loses, unless you already have a vaccine that you can sell. | | And if you are trying to insinuate that it might have been the | Chinese that released it, it becomes even more bloody stupid, | because you would obviously never release it on your own soil | right outside your own biolab which would immediately be under | suspicion of being the source. You'd release it at NY Grand | Central Station or the Atlanta International, and no one will | be able to figure out what happened. | friend_and_foe wrote: | Its not a stupid thing to do when: | | 1) You're facing a demographic crisis due to your aging | population and your next closest rival has a population of | which half are under 30, | | 2) the virus primarily kills the elderly, | | 3) your approach to increasing influence and power is to | increase your relative position and your relative position is | decreasing after decades of increasing, and | | 4) you can cause an economic crisis for your rivals when they | shut public life, and consequently their economies, down, and | thus increase your relative position in the world. | | I won't comment on any western motivations for going along | with it. | gadders wrote: | Alina Chan and Matt Ridley feeling vindicated right now. | ThePhantom wrote: | The lab leak hypothesis makes the most sense. The lab in Wuhan | which researches coronaviruses conducts experiences on animals, | including bats. Like other labs, there are dedicated personnel | for hydrating and feeding the experimental animals. Notably, | there are "wet markets" in Wuhan where live animals are sold, | including bats, which harbor coronaviruses. Someone who is | working in the facility in charge of maintenance of experimental | animals has a choice of either sacrificing the animals as per | protocol, or selling them to a wet market to make extra money. | The most likely scenario was that someone sold the animal, most | likely a bat, to a wet market, which happened to contain a | virulent coronavirus strain that then infected humans. | mwbajor wrote: | I don't understand the mental gymnastics to discredit the lab | leak hypothesis. The fact that the lab and epicenter of the | virus are in the same geographic area make it the likely | scenario and warrants the most investigation. The efforts to | look past this seem artificial. | actually_a_dog wrote: | You don't need to "discredit" the hypothesis very much, | because it shouldn't have any real "credit" to begin with. | The only evidence for it at all seems to be the proximity of | the Wuhan lab to the first known outbreak, plus the fact that | 3 researchers got sick in November ( _i.e._ flu season) with | some unknown virus. If you ask me, that plus $5 might buy you | a cup of coffee. | ecf wrote: | It's really the most likely hypothesis and why the true | origin of Covid-19 has been kept a secret. Humanity hasn't | been hit with something like this in over a century and it's | unreasonable to assume it's all because a freak mutation with | some bats. | | Covid-19 was bred in a Chinese lab. It escaped. And the world | shut down for years. | | This would cause a world war if it came to light so our | "leaders" are doing everything they can to obfuscate the | origin. | [deleted] | cycrutchfield wrote: | There were no bats being sold in the Wuhan wet markets. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 | dqpb wrote: | This is the stupidest theory I've ever heard. | stubybubs wrote: | I don't know if it does make the most sense. Some context: | | https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html | | 75% of all new infectious diseases come from animals. How many | of those do we have start to finish routes from animals to | humans? And if we don't have that route, how many of those are | we suspecting of being lab leaks? | | If they wrote in their conclusion that it was "low confidence" | I think they have good reason for saying that. | actually_a_dog wrote: | > 75% of all new infectious diseases come from animals. How | many of those do we have start to finish routes from animals | to humans? And if we don't have that route, how many of those | are we suspecting of being lab leaks? | | None, as far as I know. Nor should it be particularly | surprising that no animal origin for COVID-19 has yet been | found. The animal origin for SARS was only discovered in | 2017: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 The | first outbreak was in 2002. We're less than 4 years away from | the first known outbreak of COVID-19, so dismissing a wild | animal origin at this point is extremely premature at best. | lvl102 wrote: | Deleted | swatcoder wrote: | Release a plague you can't control through the wet market | next to your virology lab, knowing that it will spread among | your own people and those of your allies first, and then also | probably circle back, hoping that it will be worse for the | other guys, sure (somehow) that the war that you started out | of nowhere is to your own net benefit. | | Interesting strategy! | ineedasername wrote: | I doubt it. It was almost immediately clear that the world's | reliance on China for some things was a problem. I think this | was a pretty clear outcome, because before COVID there were | people already harping on that single point of failure. | | This is going to hurt China's long term influence. Countries | are diversifying their strategic supply chains, on shoring | capacity for thinks like chip fabs. This weakens China's | geopolitical clout because they won't be able to control the | bottleneck. | ss108 wrote: | Well, as the poster said, it backfired on them lol | | (I do not believe in the intentional malicious leak theory, | to be clear) | theRealMe wrote: | It's so fascinating to me to see someone formulate a | hypothesis based on nothing "I think they did[purposely leak | a global pandemic-causing virus]", and then immediately turn | around and relish in China's failure at the thing you claimed | they did. Like, do I do this too, and I'm just not aware of | it? | mistermann wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34927481 | rocketbop wrote: | > I think they did thinking the West wouldn't have developed | a vaccine so fast. | | I'm curious. What motivation for purposefully leaking such a | virus would 'they' have? | salawat wrote: | Note: Wuhan was closed to interprovincial traffic very early | on. The International Airport, however, was left open. | | There's a hanful of ways you can look at that: | | Wuhan International couldn't be closed without consent from | Beijing. | | Beijing didn't grant it because | | A) Poor information propagation Or B) Someone made a weighty | geopolitical decision that in order to best serve China's | interests, it was time to make this everyone's problem, | leaving the International Airport open as a result. Or C) | some combo of the two. | | I don't know your particular balance in regards to the actual | Overton Window as extended to humanity as a whole, but I damn | well know where it registers on mine. | seadan83 wrote: | > Beijing didn't grant it | | If we recall, initially China downplayed how widespread the | virus was and made it out as if it were contained. Perhaps | they did not know how widespread the issue was either. | Further, at that time there was complete uncertainty | regarding Covid-19's virulence (it was after all, a | completely brand new virus; and there was a ton of | uncertainty around in January 2020). | | Regarding to the communication from the US government of | how contained the issue was, as a reference, the president | at the time wrote: | | "Jan. 24, Twitter: | | "China has been working very hard to contain the | Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their | efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In | particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to | thank President Xi!"" | | - https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china- | coronav... | | Basically, the entire world needed to start quarantine in | early January of 2020 to effectively nip this in the bud | (shutting down international travel, regional travel, etc). | Perhaps that needed to have even started in December. I | would suggest then that Beijing didn't shut down | international travel at that time for the same reasons that | the rest of the international community did not. In part | they were still downplaying it as was the public oration | from the US government was downplaying it as well. It | wasn't until late February and into March that it became | well known publicly that this was a new pandemic. | | Hence, by March China was fully shut down, and at that | point there is no hiding the issue (why is all of China | locked down?), and at that time it was everyone's problem. | | > A) Poor information propagation | | There was some info released that the CIA assessed the | virulence opportunity to easily be a pandemic as early as | November 2019. That poor information propagation wasn't | necessarily just a problem with the Chinese government. | | Citation: "Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis | as early as November: Sources" - | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report- | warned-c... | NegativeK wrote: | > It spectacularly backfired on them. | | Because it's a virus that doesn't discriminate based on race | or geography? Yeah, I have doubts (to put it mildly.) | cdolan wrote: | Did I just read this correctly? "janitor steals a highly | modified and virulent bat and sells it for $10 in a wet market" | | Why reach so hard to link this to a Wuhan wet market vs a | generic leak? They didn't sell bats at the market as far as I | have read, and what's the difference? Lab leak is a lab leak. | awb wrote: | > Lab leak is a lab leak. | | It's an interesting question though. Working off of a lab | leak theory, how did the first known cases all come from the | wet market? | | Is it just coincidence that an infected scientist traveled to | the outdoor market and infected others? | | With human to human transmission, you'd think it would have | spread more rapidly among a scientist's friends & family in | an indoor setting. | | When the US was doing contact tracing early on, I think the | number of outdoor transmissions was extremely low. | dmix wrote: | Indeed, you don't need such a complicated theory. 3 doctors | researching a coronavirus end up in a regional hospital, but | before they get ID'd with a virus they interact with others | in the local community helping it quietly spread among people | with stronger immune systems. | | It's a 45min drive between the Hunan market <> WIV building: | | https://www.google.com/maps/dir/30%C2%B022%E2%80%B235%E2%80%. | .. | awb wrote: | It's definitely plausible, but then wouldn't you expect | multiple outbreak sites? | | * In and around WIV | | * In and around the scientist's homes, families and | neighborhoods | | From the news I've seen all of the initial known cases were | traced back to the market. | MarcoZavala wrote: | [dead] | aaronbrethorst wrote: | There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. | | Here's the NYT's headline: _Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, | Energy Dept. Says_ | | And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're | in the know): _The conclusion, which was made with "low | confidence," came as America's intelligence agencies remained | divided over the origins of the coronavirus._ | | So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a | confidence score: 'low'. | | The NYT goes on to say: | | _Some officials briefed on the intelligence said that it was | relatively weak and that the Energy Department's conclusion was | made with "low confidence," suggesting its level of certainty was | not high. While the department shared the information with other | agencies, none of them changed their conclusions, officials | said._ | | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-lea... | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Also article mentions FBI has "moderate" confidence it was lab | leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn't be so much | based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection | the FBI has. | teawrecks wrote: | Science is the collecting and processing of empirical data | using peer reviewed methods to reach a conclusion. Which part | do you think the FBI is not doing which separates their | process from science? | kranke155 wrote: | Doesn't the FBI also have a large biological analysis team? | For bio terror ? | orlp wrote: | I think if anything COVID has shown us that biological | warfare makes as much sense as nuclear: none. In our | globally connected world it's mutually assured destruction, | and that's without even the need for your enemy to maintain | stockpiles of weapons. The virus will find itself within | your own borders soon enough. | tomp wrote: | Only bad viruses. Good viruses will be genetically coded | to only harm a particular subgroup. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | I was thinking that actually gives the United States a | distinct advantage in such (hypothetical) biological | warfare, it has the most diverse gene pool on the planet. | scotteric wrote: | It still makes sense for things like anthrax that aren't | easily communicable. Or botulinum toxin. | orlp wrote: | Fair enough, I meant viral biowarfare. | cjbgkagh wrote: | I should point out that some viruses are not easily | transmissible either. | nradov wrote: | Terrorists motivated by religion or ideology sometimes | use tactics and weapons that make no sense to rational | people. The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological | weapons. | jcranmer wrote: | > The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological | weapons. | | Sarin would be classed as chemical, not biological. | | It's also worth illustrating that their primary terrorist | act killed 15 people, after releasing sarin on 5 | different trains during Tokyo's busy rush hour. You would | have been more effective just lobbing a single grenade. | nradov wrote: | The cult used a chemical weapon. They were also | developing biological weapons based on botulism and | anthrax at the same time but fortunately didn't get a | chance to use those. | ffssffss wrote: | And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what | explains the different assessments. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Probably they still aren't sharing all the information they | have with each other. I had thought that was supposed to be | much improved post 9-11. | ineedasername wrote: | Or they are coming to different conclusions given the | same ambiguous/incomplete information. It could simply be | disagreement, or just lack of a standard metric here to | compare notes easily. | bandyaboot wrote: | It probably just means the correct aggregate conclusion | is "we don't know, go ask China". | jasonladuke0311 wrote: | They improved the _ability_ to share info (fusion centers | and whatnot), but the _desire_ to do so remains under the | auspices of humans. | kashunstva wrote: | Or there aren't objective standards for what "low, | medium, and high confidence" actually mean, thereby | allowing one agency to look at the evidence and say it's | of low confidence and another to look at the same data | and say it's moderate confidence. | Bjartr wrote: | Interestingly, the CIA has published a paper on exactly | this subject: | | Words of Estimative Probability (PDF) | https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in- | intelligence/ar... | cameldrv wrote: | Moderate and Low are Words of Analytic Confidence [1]. | This has more to do with the quality of the sourcing than | a numeric probability number. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence | tzs wrote: | I read that they did massively increase sharing after | 9/11, but there was a reassessment after the Manning | leaks. Manning had access to way more information than | someone at their level needed for their job, and they | concluded this came about from going a bit too far on the | post 9/11 sharing and so they dialed it back a bit. | atoav wrote: | I have not been inside the CIA, but that could just mean | they haven't done any research on that or that their | research is ongoing. | | An _institution_ will not have assessments on _everything_ | at any point in time. Two different institutions might have | didferent assessments for a billion reasons, e.g. they | could have done the research at different points in time, | the underlying evisence could differ, the interviewed | experts could have said different things and so on. | | Two different instutions reaching different conclusions is | not as surprising as it seems. | Consultant32452 wrote: | Organizations like the CIA don't make factual statements, | they make strategic statements. Any connection with reality | is purely coincidental. | | If the CIA came out tomorrow and said they were 100% | confident it was a lab leak from China we would have no way | of knowing if that's based on facts or political | propaganda. | | Maybe, in 40-50 years we'll get an answer. Until then, it's | too politically and strategically useful to keep it up in | the air. At least one goal is for people to be arguing | about it. | actually_a_dog wrote: | This is exactly why I can't give this article, or any of | those multiple intelligence agency assessments any real | credence. I don't have access to any of the data that went | into those assessments. What I do have access to doesn't | point very strongly at a lab leak origin, despite its | plausibility. | colechristensen wrote: | What the CIA says publicly and what is happening internally | are often very different things. The FBI has less of a | global political agenda. | Silverback_VII wrote: | I'm sure that the undecidedness is not about the origin but | about the geopolitical impact such an official statement | would have. | djkivi wrote: | Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, | you know they must be right then. | seizethecheese wrote: | I don't know... I think when they all agree it's also | likely that they are wrong. (It indicates some | possibility of motivated reasoning.) | matwood wrote: | > Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on | something, you know they must be right then. | | Then you _know_ they are lying. | ashwagary wrote: | If you repeat a lie often enough, even the at first reluctant | will start to believe it. That's how the propaganda machine | typically works. | | The more these claims based on minimal new evidence are | repeated, the more it seems the virus may have potentially | been released by nefarious actors as an attack on the | population. | | It's not implausable for an entity with knowledge and access | to a virus being studied, to release a copy of it in the | environment surrounding the lab while maintaining a high | degree of deniability. | | If it is so, then the question that remains is, much like in | the case of Nordstream, which nation state has the most | incentive to carry it out? | baja_blast wrote: | While I won't discount the possibility that the outbreak | could be a nefarious plot to plant a virus.I feel the US's | response to the pandemic and the massive mistakes made make | it less likely. The most likely would be just an accident | where a researcher unknowingly got infected while | conducting research in a BSL2 lab where they were testing | wild SARS like viruses and inserting FCS to gauge the | viruses potential threat level | taw567890 wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | bigfudge wrote: | I'm wary of engaging, but this just makes no sense to me. | Perhaps you can explain and actually make explicit some of | the implied connections. | | Previously the 'big lie' was that it was not from a lab. | Now that it's assessed to be likely from a lab the new lie | is the contention that it was done deliberately? Whose | propaganda machine is at work here anyway? The Chinese govt | or the US one? Or are they in cahoots now? | taw567890 wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | belorn wrote: | If all the other origin theories has "very low" as confidence | score, then a lab leak is still the most likely origin with a | "low" confidence score. | | It would be nice to see the confidence score as a numerical | number in order to understand how much lead this theory has to | the second most likely origin theory. | nradov wrote: | There is way to actually quantify such estimates. Any numbers | would just be made up. A qualitative confidence rating like | "low" really is the best way to convey intelligence | information to policy makers. | MilnerRoute wrote: | Four U.S. agencies say "market origins" - as does the U.S. | National Intelligence Council. Two more agencies -- including | the CIA -- are undecided. And then there's the "low | confidence" Energy Department opinion, and one from the FBI. | | So it ultimately depends on how you weight the 75% of groups | that don't think there's evidence that it leaked from a lab. | boopmaster wrote: | This. Low confidence still significant in that it could have | been "low confidence transmission from wet market game", but | that's not the direction this landed on. It's likely a lab | leak, says the report, but there's too many gaps to support | higher certainty. | abduhl wrote: | What is the substantive difference between "Lab leak most | likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says" and | "Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says"? The | only difference I see is that one notes the pandemic | ("Covid-19") while the other notes the agency ("Energy Dept."). | | Or is your comment more broadly that both headlines are bad? If | so, then I'd disagree. Both headlines give the most important | part of the story: a US agency currently believes that the | pandemic was caused by a lab leak. | jonplackett wrote: | I think the criticism is that saying something is 'most | likely' implies a sense of it being pretty likely. When the | reality is that they are very uncertain. | | Both headlines are clickbait compared to the content of the | article. | ghaff wrote: | I'm not sure what the better headline would be. "Lab leak | possible origin?" Well, yes, in that they haven't ruled it | out. But that's not really the same thing as saying that | something is "most likely" even if, as the subhead notes, | they wouldn't bet the farm on it. | stevehawk wrote: | > Both headlines give the most important part of the story: a | US agency currently believes that the pandemic was caused by | a lab leak. | | seems to me you're still leaving out a very important part of | the news, which is that the confidence level is "low". | | so right now the US government has multiple theories, none of | which it is confident. it's just that of the reports that is | not confident in, it might be the least not confident in the | lab leak idea. | | but the WSJ has decided to throw integrity aside and ignore | that part in their headline. | abduhl wrote: | The confidence level for the Covid-19 vaccine being | sterilizing was low, but we still ran headlines saying as | much. The confidence level for cloth masks being effective | was low, but we still ran headlines saying as much. The | confidence level for everything when it comes to Covid-19 | is low. | | The media gave up on integrity a long time ago, especially | with respect to the pandemic. You're just noticing it now? | mwbajor wrote: | You know you're right. Remember when Saddam closed his labs | to us? The ones that never had WMDs? What was the | "confidence" threshold for invading iraq? I also bet its | the same exact people now telling us about more | "confidence" levels. | | Confidence, high, low, whatever, it means nothing. No one | trusts the govt. or media anymore and no one should. | sheepscreek wrote: | For what it's worth - FBI arrived at the same conclusion in | 2021 with "moderate confidence." | | Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab- | leak-807... | another_story wrote: | Feels like we should assume it's a lab leak and push for | caution anyways. If it wasn't a lab leak then all we've done is | help better prevent that from happening in the future. | tomComb wrote: | It's hard enough to get a good objective analysis done | without saying it should be bent to political considerations. | fakethenews2022 wrote: | [flagged] | dqpb wrote: | Sure, but the real news is it used to be taboo to say this - | Sinophobic even. A lot of people are owed a serious apology. | aaronbrethorst wrote: | Context, as always, is key: | https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate- | cr... | | Are these people who are owed a serious apology the ones who | actually attacked Asian-Americans? Or simply the ones who | stoked racial animus prompting others to attack them? | dqpb wrote: | The people who are owed an apology are the people who did | nothing more than to believe that the wuhan coronavirus | outbreak originated from the wuhan coronavirus research | lab. | somewhereoutth wrote: | That was situated in a region known for coronaviruses | peoplefromibiza wrote: | I wonder if the timing of these _" bad headlines"_ is connected | to this | | https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-ne... | ramraj07 wrote: | They always softball these bombshells like this so any | confidence in official terms is something that pretty much | solidifies this as the source of the virus for me. | | I'm trying to think of anyone involved had a conscience if they | would be tallying themselves to be one of the most prolific | murderers in history but then that likely wouldn't happen since | first unofficial hazing ritual you do when entering academia is | to develop an air of "that's not me" attitude about things like | this. | andai wrote: | > In 2015, an international team including two scientists from | the institute published successful research on whether a bat | coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line (HeLa). | The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus | with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and | mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human | cells. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#SA... | | Do we have the genetic sequences from these experiments? Has | anyone compared them to the sequences from the pandemic? | | I'm not entirely up to speed but I recall hearing something | about the US government funding them (without its own | knowledge..?), so perhaps that info is not only in China's | hands. | | (And while we're on the subject, did anything come of the thing | about Pfizer engineering the virus, ostensibly for vaccine | research purposes?) | Izkata wrote: | > Do we have the genetic sequences from these experiments? | Has anyone compared them to the sequences from the pandemic? | | I don't know about those specifically, but one of the | earliest genetic matches we had is a natural virus called | RaTG13 and was studied in the Wuhan lab. I think a closer | match has since been found though. | | > I'm not entirely up to speed but I recall hearing something | about the US government funding them (without its own | knowledge..?), so perhaps that info is not only in China's | hands. | | Yes, indirectly through EcoHealth Alliance, hence the | "without its own knowledge" part. | mikeyouse wrote: | Yes we have the sequences and no they're nothing like | SarsCov2 | chitowneats wrote: | True. And yet, it shows that there is a large scientific | community & apparatus willing to experiment with this. | | Circumstantial evidence is not proof of wrongdoing, but it | is reason to ask more questions. Why were those questions | censored? Why were they ruled unacceptable | "misinformation"? It seems to me that we were asleep at the | switch. | mikeyouse wrote: | The counter to that is that the experts in coronaviruses | knew they were the likely next epidemic and that they | were doing their best to characterize the threat as best | possible but unfortunately failed before the spillover | came. The scientific community knew how close we came | between SARS and MERS, a small mutation of either | could've been much more virulent and pathogenic, so of | course they were trying to research. | chitowneats wrote: | The question is not whether the research was worth it | overall. They denied there was even a possibility that | lab leak was the cause of the pandemic. | | I'm more than happy to entertain the idea that the | research is and was worth it. But we need to have an | accurate accounting of recent events. They tried to | completely shut that down. Thankfully, lately it seems | that they failed. | dmix wrote: | > Thankfully, lately it seems that they failed. | | I still get the impression the 'selectively silence | misinformation' crowd is still as emboldened as ever, | even in the pursuit of science. Despite it repeatedly | failing and backfiring. | | COVID helped give Reddit-style control of discourse a | glean of urgency/respectability and "it's okay because we | had good-intentions" continues to be the go-to | justification. | mikeyouse wrote: | There's an immense benefit to being specific with both | what you mean by lab leak (natural virus leaked or | modified one did) and by "they" when you're talking about | coverups because it gets weirdly racist and | conspiratorial in a hurry otherwise. | chitowneats wrote: | Unfortunately, you seem fundamentally confused about the | position of people who are skeptical of zoonotic origin. | | Please explain to me how position A) is more racist than | position B) | | A) Scientists all over the world, including Chinese, | Americans, and others, made a fundamental misjudgement | about the safety of the Wuhan virology lab, or perhaps | viral experimentation generally, and the result was a | global pandemic | | Versus | | B) Chinese people eating & trading wild and exotic meat | unintentionally caused a global pandemic due to their | consumption | | Of course, neither theory is racist. That's a word that | used to mean something (and I wish it still did!), but is | mostly used today to shut down debate in Western | countries. | mikeyouse wrote: | I'd rather just leave you to your false dichotomy. Thanks | though. | baja_blast wrote: | No we do not have the sequences, the lab has so far refused | to share the sequences in their public database taken down | down September of 2019. Plus recently people have | discovered through BLAST searches an unreported Chimera | virus that got accidentally got sequenced via contaminated | agricultural rice sequencing dataset. Which means they had | viruses that have not been previously reported. And this | makes sense researchers do not publish viruses until they | themselves can publish them in a journal. https://www.biorx | iv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v2.... | mikeyouse wrote: | It was available well into 2020 if you read past the | shitty early headlines. | tripletao wrote: | I guess you're referring here to Flo Debarre's misleading | tweet, which you linked to four months ago: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247997 | | As I noted in my reply at that time, everyone has always | agreed that the overall server remained intermittently | accessible until Feb 2020. The particular database "was | not accessed from outside of the WIV after 12 September | 2019", though. | colechristensen wrote: | The evidence there is not that that particular group created | covid, but that there is a clear history of engineering | viruses in exactly the way a lab leak scenario would play | out. | gremlinsinc wrote: | I don't pretend to know, as I can't, it's impossible to know | for sure one way or the other, without trusting one entity over | another, or going with my 'gut'. | | However, a thought experiment, what if their zero-covid program | was a test pilot to see a pandemic could be averted on a local | scale through govt intervention, so if they unleashed something | much more deadly, it'd be contained in the country, but hit | other countries worse. | | I mean it seems reasonable that if you wanted to launch | biological warfare you'd want to be sure there was either a | cure, or you could contain it outside the country, from getting | into the population. I could also see some despot thinking he | was doing a good thing for humanity by unleashing a virus with | a 50% kill rate, because of the impact on global warming alone. | Scary, that one person could decide to do that, and nobody | could stop it, if they did. | colechristensen wrote: | This supposes way too much intention that can much more | easily be explained by incompetence. | | A lab doing questionable work with inadequate safety measures | hiding a major leak to save face makes way more sense than a | supervillain story. | baja_blast wrote: | And when you add in the fact that virology work on unknown | wild SARS like viruses were scheduled for only BSL2. And | the vast majority of research published on sampled SARS | like viruses was conducted in BSL2 labs it very easy to | imagine a researcher unwittingly getting infected from a | human mice model carrying a wild virus with a human | optimized FCS inserted. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Good luck getting 95% of the American populace to understand | any of that nuance. | | After seeing lots of Twitter threads about Nate Silver, | condemning his lack of "certainty" in his predictions ("It's | such a cop out! Since he never says yes or no one way or the | other he always has an out when he's wrong!"), I'm even more | convinced not just that people don't understand statistics, but | they willfully don't want to. | tharne wrote: | > After seeing lots of Twitter threads about Nate Silver, | condemning his lack of "certainty" in his predictions ("It's | such a cop out! Since he never says yes or no one way or the | other he always has an out when he's wrong!"), I'm even more | convinced not just that people don't understand statistics, | but they willfully don't want to. | | As someone who does understand statistics, it's made me | dislike Nate Silver even more than if I didn't. It's been sad | to watch his metamorphoses over the years from an interesting | numbers guy with nuanced discussions on polling and models, | to becoming the exact kind of pundit and talking head he used | to make fun of. There's still a little bit of statistics on | his site, but the overwhelming majority of content is the | same trite punditry you'll find on pretty much any political | blog. | mrangle wrote: | Part of the problem might be that commentators are going to | want to willfully conflate intelligence "confidence" with a | more pseudo science-y sounding "confidence score" that sounds | like a bastard hybrid of research critique and statistics. | | One wouldn't predict that to be the case with all of the | scientists here. But given that it is, perhaps we can't fault | the American people if they don't understand the nuance. | | The truth is that "low confidence" is only meaningful in the | context of COVID's origin if it is possible that a conclusion | can be made with "high confidence". That doesn't seem to be | possible. | | Certainly not in the other direction if some agencies are | concluding at this stage, even with "low confidence", that | COVID was lab leaked. Further, certainly "low confidence" | doesn't imply that the inverse conclusion is likely true. | | The NYT's choice to over-emphasize the relatively meaningless | "confidence score" is understandable given its prior | investment in other views. | | Rigid historical narratives have been built on less than low | confidence intelligence conclusions. A conclusion is the | conclusion when one has to be made regardless. | | In the case of COVID, a conclusion as to its origin has to be | made and yet the scientific evidence isn't likely to get | better for either possibility. Short of confessions. | mwbajor wrote: | Doesn't matter if they understand the nuance. The lab leak | theory takes a back seat for the following reason: | | Lets say it is found out with definite proof that it was a | lab leak. Then what? Grandma's dead, china killed her and | there is nothing you can do. We are not going to let this | ruin trade relations even more ($$$ LOL) so you're just going | to have to forget about it. | | Every American touched by covid knows this in the back of | their head. | | The first stage of grief is denial. | brookst wrote: | Are you suggesting that a more correct course of action | would be some kind of punitive retribution so those of us | who survived suffer in the hopes that those most | responsible suffer a little more than we do? | | The idea that we would hurt our own economic future out of | grief/vengeance is bizarre. So yes, everyone does know what | you suggest, and we're all OK with it. | peoplefromibiza wrote: | > Every American touched by covid knows this in the back of | their head. | | only Americans were touched by covid I guess... | | > The first stage of grief is denial. | | At least a leak is not intentional like killing hundreds of | thousand of innocent people by bombing their homes. | | Leak doesn't mean engineering a disease to kill some | specific target, anyway, if China did it to kill Americans, | it wouldn't be as bad as the Opium wars and the American | invasion of China in 1900 | | _The first U.S. multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor, made | part of his fortune smuggling opium into China._ | mwbajor wrote: | no one is going to care if the deaths were "intentional" | or negligent. | B8MGHCBekDuRi wrote: | not Americans. | | They always need someone to blame. | | Remember when they went to war with Iraq on fabricated | evidence? | | Remember when they wen to war with Afghanistan after | 9/11, but Afghanistan had no responsibility whatsoever | (again!) and 10 years later they handed the country back | to Talibans? | | Can we consider 9/11 an accident? | | Would it be the same to you? | | You know when really nobody talks about it? | | When it's the US killing people out of negligence and | incompetence and sheer arrogance. | | Are you aware of this? | | Do they talk about it in USA? | | They never apologized. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 | | *** | | can we also talk about this? | | I'm quite sure how these poor people died makes a lot of | difference for the families of the victims. | | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstri | kes... | | *** | | It's not China fault if during covid in USA Trump was | President and people really believed that covid wasn't | real and a lot of Americans died with a rate double than | my Country which was already hit very hard BTW. | | China handled it much better anyway. | chitowneats wrote: | How about ethnic genocide? I guess we won't let that end | the relationship either? We totally should though. I'm | ready to vote for any candidate that furthers this goal. | peoplefromibiza wrote: | then nobody should talk to US | conception wrote: | The world has always been joyfully ok with a country | killing its own people. | chitowneats wrote: | Muslims in Xinjiang are not Han Chinese. You're buying | into the propaganda. In any case, the world should not be | okay with this. | hotpotamus wrote: | If you want the US to care, it's probably better not to | mention that they're Muslims though. I've noticed they | just call them Uyghurs and suspect that's the reason. | trilbyglens wrote: | Right since covid only effected western countries. If it | were "ethnic genocide" it was a pretty shitty one. | tharne wrote: | I'm pretty sure the person referencing "ethnic genocide" | was referring to China's internment and genocide of their | Muslim population in western China, not COVID. | | I think their point is that if genocide wasn't enough to | motivate us to change our relationship with China, then a | revelation about COVID originating from a Chinese lab | probably isn't going to do much to move the needle | either. | Glyptodon wrote: | A lot of people seem to think the lab leak premise is the | same as the "engineered biological weapon" premise so if | that become popular it'll probably only drive a perception | of "weak government that betrays the citizens" even more | than we've already got... | kodah wrote: | Lab leak involves bio-engineering because it involves | gain of function research. Bio-engineering can be used in | a testing setting but it could also be used to make a | weapon. I highly doubt China was stupid enough to make a | bioweapon and not immunize its citizens first. | | The significance of getting people to investigate, and if | all things are true, confirm lab leak is that it puts an | impetus on the importance of controls and second is a | corrective measure for all the people who colluded to | suppress lab leak being discussed. I am _very_ interested | in seeing those people held accountable in very direct | ways, even if they were under false impressions at the | time. That starts with all the names on that infamous | open letter. | BearOso wrote: | Yeah, instead it was sheer incompetence and arrogance. | They screwed up because they poorly handled the virus | while doing something they should never have been doing: | gain-of-function research. We need to stop that research, | and we can't let them defend it with any nonsense | excuses. | peoplefromibiza wrote: | > Yeah, instead it was sheer incompetence and arrogance. | They screwed up because they poorly handled the virus | | allegedly, with a very low confidence. | | now let's check how Americans handle their military | bases. | | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/06/military- | bas... | | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/23/us- | soldiers-... | | https://gijn.org/2022/08/22/investigating-toxic-military- | bas... | | https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/11/09/cdc- | conduct-h... | | https://www.eenews.net/articles/high-levels-of-forever- | chemi... | officialjunk wrote: | let's remember that the US helped fund this research too | https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain- | of-... | TheAceOfHearts wrote: | If lab leak is confirmed the correct course of action is to | design new systems and protocols to prevent such a thing | from happening again in the future. Failure to do so will | result in more issues down the line. It's basic | engineering. | | If this kind of research is so important then maybe the | nations of the world should buy a cruise ship and implement | extreme isolation protocols between interactions, if that's | the only way to safely perform that kind of research. Just | as an example. | hotpotamus wrote: | The US isn't capable of preventing its own citizens from | acquiring weapons and performing terrorist attacks with | them. The idea that we'll be able to enforce controls on | labs in foreign countries seems pretty far fetched given | that. And as the tech advances, I suspect it will | democratize like any other technology so that a lone | enthusiast can design their own viruses in a home lab. | I'm not particularly an optimist about what it portends. | baja_blast wrote: | But it is in the best interest of all countries. Unlike | nuclear weapons where the damage can be isolated to one | area, highly contagious weapons are impossible to control | and will end up hurting themselves as well. | monetus wrote: | When it scales down to individual bio-hackers though, I | feel like that virus is bound to be made. | somewhereoutth wrote: | And this is (one reason) why so many are keen to believe | Lab Leak - because then it was done by 'bad humans' and | so can be fixed, instead of being (another) consequence | of our encroachment on the natural world and indeed | something that often just happens. Much easier to believe | the 'baddies' have been found and 'brought to justice' | than having to face up to the world we live in and our | effect on it. | mwbajor wrote: | I agree but also disagree. There are too many conflicting | interests and I don't think you will ever get a straight | answer. People also can't look at the lab leak with a | critical eye because they think it makes them look like | trump lovers. I standby my original assertion that a | country in grief will collectively go through the stages | of grief of which denial is the first. Similar to 9/11 | when we convinced ourselves that our foreign policy had | nothing to do with terrorist attacks and 2008 when we | convinced ourselves bailing out failing industries was a | good idea. 20 and 10 years later and we changed our tunes | on those things. In 2033 we will finally accept that a | lab-leak was most likely but only after the other 6 | stages... | somewhereoutth wrote: | In 2008 we _had_ to bail out the banks, otherwise | everything would have gone under. Indeed, I believe that | a defining moment of the GW Bush presidency was when he | told the head of the Federal Reserve (I think?) to do | whatever was necessary, with GWB providing political | cover, and thus 'saved the world'. Where we screwed up | was in not bringing to account (i.e. prison) many of the | people responsible for letting things get as far as they | did. We also used monetary policy too much when fiscal | policy (i.e. bailing out Main Street) would have been | better. | | My understanding is that it took a while before the | (natural) emergence of SARS and MERS was understood, and | so for COVID most probably. | Supermancho wrote: | >> We are not going to let this ruin trade relations even | more ($$$ LOL) so you're just going to have to forget | about it. | | > If lab leak is confirmed the correct course of action | is to design new systems and protocols to prevent such a | thing from happening again in the future | | I'm not sure why people choose to assume their simple | solutions are somehow insightful. You aren't going to be | able to reach into most countries to intervene in any | other way than simple sanctions _at best_. The protocol | of "asking country X please knock it off" is not | productive, as it's not going to result in any specific | change, it hurts trade, and every country is doing it to | some degree despite previous agreements on the world | stage (basic Game Theory). | | This is what the GP described, yet someone still thinks | that nobody involved, understands "basic engineering". | Very smart people do this kind of work with money and | lives at stake. Let's give a little rope to people with | big responsibilities, to try to understand the | motivations rather than assume they are ignorant. | mwbajor wrote: | I know, basic engineering, so simple and straightforward | right? And when a country says "no", I assume we issue a | series of stronger and stronger worded warning letters to | them right? | ss108 wrote: | Yeah. In 2016 when people were like "hurr durr experts suck, | they predicted Hillary would win and she lost", it was | exasperating. If a model predicted an outcome with 60-70% | certainty, and the less likely scenario happens, model wasn't | necessarily bad. That'd be true even if it was a 90/10 split. | nradov wrote: | The model wasn't _bad_ , just useless. | ss108 wrote: | Why useless? People have to attempt to predict the | outcomes of elections, and have to do their best. | afiori wrote: | I would guess that the vast majority of the population do | not take meaningful actions based on election prediction | (other than "I might [not] need to actually vote"). | | There are good reasons to have polls and predictions but | they are far from necessary. | ss108 wrote: | People who work for political campaigns need to know, | businesses and investors might like to plan, etc. | hermiod wrote: | Just because something isn't useful to everyone, doesn't | mean it isn't useful to someone. | | The original claim was that election prediction is | useless -- are you willing to concede that election | prediction isn't useless? | pickovven wrote: | Worse than useless. It likely impacts election outcomes. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Highly disagree that it was "useless": | | 1. First, when many pundits were basically saying there | was no chance that Trump would win, Silver was | particularly highlighting not just that it was in the | realm of possibility, but would not even be very | surprising if Trump won (e.g. I think Nate does a good | job with his "same probability of a team down by 3 points | at the beginning of the 4th quarter coming back to win" | to clarify to a lay person that this isn't unusual). | | 2. When making political predictions based on polling | that turn out to be "wrong" (i.e. end up going the way of | the < 50% option), it's helpful to think of why this | might happen. In Trump's case, it was pretty obvious he | was a very different type of politician than what came | before, so it's worth thinking whether that difference | might result in widespread error in some polls. Also, | whenever a race is very close, it's obvious that any | small movements one way or the other can affect the | outcome. In 2016 Trump lost the popular vote by a | substantial margin but won the electoral collage by a | significant but not huge amount. In fact, the "all or | nothing" way the US electoral college system works has | the effect of amplifying smaller differences into larger | vote outcomes. | yourapostasy wrote: | It isn't always a lack of will. Sometimes it is lacking a | worldview that continually perceives through the lenses of | statistical probabilities because most of the time, | heuristics are Good Enough. Constantly evaluating upon an | ever-shifting, -updating net of probabilities is relatively | more cognitively demanding. | | Those who do reflexively apply probability assessments | however, would do well to also perceive when to accept | heuristic Good Enough solutions. | SMAAART wrote: | > Good luck getting 95% of the American populace to | understand any of that nuance. | | And that's why media use these headlines (dark patterns?) and | politicians keep making fake promises and get reelected. | | #SAD | smsm42 wrote: | It's not like any other options have high confidence. All | theories are low confidence right now because there is no | conclusive proof for either. But if you support some, you are | the defender of science, and if you support another, you are | a filthy conspirologist and get banned from social media. Try | explaining that to 95% of the American populace. | brookst wrote: | I think it has more to do with the fact that one opinion is | supported by more conspiracy nuts. Doesn't mean it isn't | the right answer, but having lots of crazies insisting it | is the only possible answer makes more grounded people less | credible in the eyes of others. | barbazoo wrote: | Do we know why it is the Department of Energy that works on | that? I would have expected a branch of government that's more | related to health, granted, I know very little about US gvmt | structure. | mort96 wrote: | I don't know the answer to your question, but the DoE does _a | lot_ more than just energy. In addition to overseeing energy | policy, they oversee the R &D of nuclear weapons and the | nuclear weapons program, they oversee the National | Laboratories which does a lot of research and development in | the areas of technology, health, physics, climate/environment | and energy, they started the Human Genome Project, etc. | | Here's their overview of some of the stuff their National | Laboratories have done: | https://www.energy.gov/articles/75-breakthroughs-americas- | na... | NoImmatureAdHom wrote: | I remember when, not even three years ago, merely suggesting this | would get you shouted down as a RAYCIST!!1! in polite society in | the U.S. | downrightmike wrote: | And there seems to be a lot of traditional sabotage using | infectious agents in farming, like how triads were infecting pig | farms with African swine fever in 2019 (1). Maybe they didn't | just use African Swine fever and thought they found something | better. There was an explosion of pig farming this century(2), | and underhanded tactics should be suspected. (1) | https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3042122/chi... | (2) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca16b | bayesian_horse wrote: | Ridiculous. First of all, those triads would be stupid, if they | had done that with Sars-CoV-2, knowing it will hit them, too | and wreck all their earning potential. | | Secondly, bioterrorism (or whatever you want to call this) | using a pandemical Virus is really hard. You have to find a | virus that is able to cause a pandemic, and they are really | really rare, but never did so (otherwise it can't do that | because of the immunity). Sars-Cov-2 was only so dangerous | because it was novel. So those triads would have found this | needle in a haystack, and they aren't exactly known for running | world-class virus finding operations. It's easy to find and | smuggle some infectious ASV material. Maybe slightly harder to | do so for EBV or the like. Much harder to find a completely | novel virus. | bradgranath wrote: | Why is the Department of Energy making this announcement? What | does the CDC think? | Giorgi wrote: | [flagged] | Zetice wrote: | I would hate to live in a world where, when people randomly | guess something correctly, they feel vindicated and emboldened | to say other random guesses that are as completely unfounded as | the one they happened to get correct. | coolestguy wrote: | >when people randomly guess something correctly | | Or an educated guess where labs in the area were studying | this exact type of virus | friend_and_foe wrote: | Well you live in that world, and it's always been that way. | This propensity is the fundamental cause of gbling addiction | and superstitious behavior. | | But I'd point out, this wasn't a random guess. There has been | a whole lot of circumstantial evidence for a long time, it's | not quite a smoking gun but better than a guess for sure. | bushbaba wrote: | Annoying that early on even suggesting this as a possibility | labeled you as a crazy, racist, conspiracy freak. | | Hopefully in the years to come people are more open minded. | lucb1e wrote: | It may not be that we now love conspiracy freaks (as you put | it) because they're so open minded, but that now it doesn't | matter anymore to sidetrack the conversation from "how can we | fix it" to "whodunnit". Different period in the pandemic, | rather than a shift in mindset from whether pointing fingers | without evidence is helpful. | darkhorn wrote: | This article is from 2015. | https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787 "Engineered bat | virus stirs debate over risky research" | seydor wrote: | Even for the people that have always thought so, this must be | uncomfortable. This is only the 1st engineered virus which | brought the world upside down. We may be living in a biological | war already, or at least some potential for weaponization. | ajross wrote: | No one is claiming this was an "engineered virus" (and the | evidence for is _really_ thin, FWIW). The finding in the linked | article is only that a lab leak is the most probably origin of | the pandemic. | | That's the problem with this discourse. Everyone has gone full | absolutist and views even relatively sane, nuanced positions as | evidence for nonsense like "we may be living in a biological | war already". The fact that those of us in the "it's probably a | natural virus" camp may have been wrong about WIV involvement | doesn't validate your favorite conspiracy theory! | seydor wrote: | The article does not say it's not an engineered virus either. | | What's the hypothesis here, that the virus naturally arose | only inside the lab where it infected one person? Or if it | occured naturally in the wild, how come that it infected only | one person inside the lab , since it's easy to infect | isaacremuant wrote: | This has been written about many times, in 2020, very | convincingly in 2021 by Nicholas Wade | (https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...) | and now. | | It will always be dismissed by those who have a political | interest in seeing things differently. | | Authortiarianism and coordinated censorship between govs, big | health and big tech made it so that anything countering the | mandated narratives was heavily supressed and punished. | | That's why the online world and the real one varied, no matter | how many names and attacks the "mono narrative" mob used against | those of us who dissented. | | There will be no acknowledgement of the atrocities and human | right abuses in the name of covid. No admission of guilt or bad | faith. Just pretende that "we were wrong for the right reasons" | and anyone who was right, if it's even admitted, "did so for the | wrong reasons" | kakadu wrote: | Odd timing to announce this, in the eve of the Chinese siding | with the Russians. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-26 23:00 UTC)