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Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

biorxiv.org

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Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#51

Post by zamalek »

codingslave wrote: post #5

This would be a really scary outcome. As has been commented elsewhere, there's confirmed events of at least four virus leaks from labs in Beijing. Evidence/article on it here: https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-lab... Not only that, but just last year there was a case of a Chinese scientist who was banished from a Canadian bio lab level 4 for stealing virus samples, as well as a Harvard Academic…

> None of this proves the lab theory

The attempted and partially continued cover-up and downplaying of the outbreak does add a significant amount of credence to the theory.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#52

Post by yters »

ceejayoz wrote: post #11
yters wrote: post #8

I thought detecting intelligent design in the genetic code was impossible and bad science.

Detecting intelligent design in things is done all the time. Teacup dachshunds are intelligently designed. So's corn and broccoli. Throwing your hands up and saying "God must've done it!" when you don't have an immediate explanation and can't be bothered to do some research into one is the bad science part.

I totally agree. Intelligent design is about doing the research and good science, not 'god of the gaps'. The only assumption in the field is that detecting intelligent design is possible. If design detection can be done for the recent past, then design detection can be done for the distant past, as well.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#54

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ericb wrote: post #46
317070 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the conclusion of this paper is that the odds of this virus coming to be naturally are very small. Which is a very scientific way of saying "we think this was man-made". But, that is what the paper is saying. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence is what I think. I feel the evidence here is quite small, but I'm not a bio-data-scientist.

Is it an extraordinary claim? The sequence matching should be easy to verify as the genome has been published. If the sequences are short or common enough maybe it would be a more likely coincidence. That said: What are the priors on a "natural" virus erupting in the only city in China with a level 4 biohazard facility? Source: http://english.www.gov.cn/state_council/ministries/2018/01/0...

So if it's not extraordinary it's still going to require evidence, which without peer review we still pretty much have none.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

dang wrote: post #49
ceejayoz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detecting intelligent design in things is done all the time. Teacup dachshunds are intelligently designed. So's corn and broccoli. Throwing your hands up and saying "God must've done it!" when you don't have an immediate explanation and can't be bothered to do some research into one is the bad science part.

Please don't feed egregious comments by replying. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . A religious flamewar on top of whatever else we've got here is the last thing this thread needs!

Fair enough! I don't seem to be able to delete it; please feel free.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#56

Post by mcantelon »

chadmeister wrote: post #22
ajna91 wrote: post #4

A thread by an epidemiologist on the new results: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1223305946723704832

This has been pointed out in previous threads, but this Twitter is full of alarmist unscientific BS and it appears to be spammed with some regularity on HN recently.

The Twitter user seems legit. The Internet in general is full of BS yet we don't guilt-by-association the entire Internet.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#57

Post by lisk1 »

My dose of speculation. So far we have strong evidence that this is a biolab virus, probably they were experimenting with this virus on animals the lab personal didn't realize on time how easy this virus could be transmitted by air, probably they were using the public transport from home to work during the incubation period thats how it boomed all of a sudden.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#58

Post by hirenj »

This looks like a whole lot of rubbish to me. They're excited they managed to get blast hits for these short inserts.

But in the spirit of open-mindedness, what do I need to be convinced this is even interesting? First I want to see where on gp120 these inserts align to. Are they receptor/carbohydrate binding regions? Where do they map to on the coronavirus? These structures are known, so I don't know why this isn't in this manuscript.

If somehow this is engineered, I am honestly impressed that someone could take features from one protein and estimate how to engineer those same features in another protein altogether, with little homology. It's like engineering a monkey tail onto an elephant and somehow getting the elephant to swing through the trees.

Re: Scientists claim to find HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf]

#60

Post by hnarn »

I'm not saying I believe the conspiracies, but it would be a pretty scary future if a totalitarian nation decided to quietly immunize their population (or just a selected elite) from a pathogen designed by themselves, and if push comes to shove you have a bioweapon that will do the job for you, which you know the people you care about can't contract. It's like a smart nuke.
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