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Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

sciencemag.org

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Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#131

Post by ci5er »

sjwalter wrote: post #112

The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dan…

Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested after we received a sample and sequenced it (~36 hours), I think it is possible (possible! not likely!) that we engineered it, and they paid a researcher to give them a copy.

* Some pretty heavy researchers in the US say that it (the virus) was not human-engineered. I find their reasoning spurious, but they know more than I do.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#132

Post by austhrow743 »

ci5er wrote: post #131
sjwalter wrote: post #112

The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dan…

Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested after we received a sample and sequenced it (~36 hours), I think it is possible (possible! not likely!) that we engineered it , and they paid a researcher to give them a copy. * Some pretty heavy researchers in the US say that it (the virus) was not human-engineered. I find their reasoning spurious, but they know more than I do.

Who is we and they in this comment?

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#133

Post by ci5er »

austhrow743 wrote: post #132
ci5er wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested after we received a sample and sequenced it (~36 hours), I think it is possible (possible! not likely!) that we engineered it , and they paid a researcher to give them a copy. * Some pretty heavy researchers in the US say that it (the virus) was not human-engineered. I find their reasoning spurious, but they know more than I do.

Who is we and they in this comment?

Oh. Sorry. I was too embedded in the context of the Chinese-funding of US University/Academic research story. In this context here:

  - "We" == "US Research Programs, funded by the Chinese, but not disclosed according to requirements given to them by the university or the federal grant authorities (whoever they might be for any given program)"

  - "They" == "Whichever Chinese organizations, governmental or otherwise, that fund US researchers, and encourage them to 'under-the-table' provide results/data/samples"
EDIT: For whatever it's worth. I have no problem with US and Chinese researchers collaborating and funding each other. But I do like a bit of disclosure from time-to-time.

EDIT: User pavelrub made a very reasonable comment on this thread that he was amazed at American's ability to conspiracy-monger (my words, not his, but he has since deleted his comment. I hope I am not taking too many liberties with his statement), but he's right. I have no basis (as I said up-thread) to believe any of this. Right now, I am hypothesis-hunting, and probably shouldn't share that mental-process in public, given that 99.9% of them (the broken hypotheses) will turn out to be trash.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#134

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

tinodotim wrote: post #47
NathanKP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must still be a cache somewhere for you. When I try to view it, it says "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules."

Interesting, I visited it from IPs from all around the world through different desktop browsers and it's available everywhere BUT there is no author and no author bio. If that's (kind of) on purpose that's really weird, to suspend somebodies account but leave the article up and remove all the author references. Anybody from medium on hn :)?

At first it was like that for me too. After a reload, because trying to click on that Adrian Bond icon to see what else he posted, it's now gone completely like parent poster described.

The funny thing about that is when you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology the geocoordinates there lead you into the same forest on all major mapping services, while the pictures are recent or even from this year.

Interesting edit history, 'patriots' proudly performing Psyberwar...

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#135

Post by OJFord »

SECProto wrote: post #114
svara wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of days ago I posted a link to the BLASTN sequence alignment between the 2003 SARS virus and the Wuhan virus in a comment on one of the other discussions here. You can see they are closely related, at about 88% sequence identity. There are point mutations spread more or less evenly over the entire genome. This is how evolution works on genomes, and basically rules out genetic engineering, since researchers w…

> The amount of pseudoscience being peddled for attention or thrills in these threads is getting really worrying to me, I had expected something totally different from this community. :/ I believe this is generally the case with most topics outside the standard focus of this site (which I would posit is computers generally). There tends to be a mixture of intelligent, accurate commentary, and intelligent but misled c…

When you know enough about something, there's horrible misinformation on it everywhere, even on HN.

But one of my favourite things about HN is the rebuttals, deep-dives, and 'well, actually's of informed commenters discussing niches I know little about.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#136

Post by shard972 »

yurlungur wrote: post #52

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1....

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#137

Post by epicgiga »

I've more faith in the bat origin theory than the others so far.

Don't know if the science is solid, but given how riddled bats are with all kinds of nasty stuff, you probably don't want to be eating that unless you're particularly keen on developing an exotic disease.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#138

Post by wtmt »

svara wrote: post #84
mc32 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modified, not synthetic.

A couple of days ago I posted a link to the BLASTN sequence alignment between the 2003 SARS virus and the Wuhan virus in a comment on one of the other discussions here. You can see they are closely related, at about 88% sequence identity. There are point mutations spread more or less evenly over the entire genome. This is how evolution works on genomes, and basically rules out genetic engineering, since researchers w…

If you’re an expert in this area, it would help everyone else if you compose and put up a top level comment explaining things. It could get upvoted to be among the first few comments, steering the conversation accordingly. Replies to specific comments with limited information won’t help as much since they won’t bubble up.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#139

Post by wtmt »

ggffryuuj wrote: post #111
exdsq wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobste.rs looks cool but I see you can only join if you're invited by an existing member. Would you mind sending one to me, or letting me know where I can go about getting one? :) edward [dot] haigh [at] iohk [dot] io

I’ve reviewed your comment history and was pleased with the technical stuff and lack of flaming. Expect an invite in the next 24 hours

This kind of “Gmail Beta” thingy that makes the service a premium and doesn’t allow people to join in good faith is why I didn’t join said site. I once waited there for an invite on chat, was polite and everything, but didn’t get invited. I also didn’t see many comments on most posts there. So the exclusivity, as I saw it then, was a drawback to the quantity and quality of the site and discussions. I’m no longer interested in begging around for something that wouldn’t be as valuable as HN.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#140

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

soperj wrote: post #40
Aperocky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 23 genome publicly available, And it’s closely identifies with existing coronavirus from bats and are further away from SARS. I am not a biologist, tell me should I trust the existing science or your story? It was said that the virus might not have originated from the market itself, people who actually raised or caught these wild animals might have gotten it first. But to make a jump from that to the biolab…

The part about not going to the moon that always baffles me, is when I start asking questions like "Were the Saturn Rockets fake? were the satellites launched fake? Do you believe the ISS is currently being faked? the Space Shuttle? Any of the SpaceX stuff that is currently happening?" and they believe that stuff is real. If that's all real, then why couldn't they land on the moon?

Because anything which currently involves humans in tin cans in earth orbit happens below the van Allen Belts, which is one point the non-believers are holding up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt

Their point being to cross the Belts in tin cans even going fast would have toasted them nicely and afterwards being toasted further by having no protection from cosmic rays or solar winds at all.

Which won't happen if you stay in LEO where every human space flight happened afterwards.

To return back to the current topic, there was a (good!) movie about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One from 1978 where they faked it to proactively saving face in case of any real mishaps. Though that was for traveling to Mars, not the Moon.

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