The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#131

Post by throwaway326429 » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

mjirv wrote: post #79

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!! But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!! There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0] That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to…

> But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!!

This statement is a distraction from the main question. The question is: conditional on being in a SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, what is the probability that the virus arose through purely natural processes, vs. the probability that it escaped from a lab.

I am not equipped to assess the biological evidence, but I do know this: The virus came out of Wuhan, the location of a top safety level (BSL-4) lab that experiments on coronaviruses. It is China's first BSL-4 lab, and one of a small group of such labs worldwide. This alone suggests that the probability of a lab escape is not negligible and should be taken seriously. In fact, without considering additional evidence I would argue this puts the probability of a lab escape above 50%. But again, I am not familiar with nor am I equipped to assess the biological evidence.

In addition, if the virus did escape from a lab, both the Chinese government and the bio scientific community are clearly and highly incentivized to keep this fact a secret. Therefore, when a member of one of these groups argues that this is not a lab escape, this serves as very weak evidence in favor of natural evolution. The incentive to keep such an outcome a secret is so strong, that I would argue we should discount such statements altogether and focus on the actual evidence.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#132

Post by jkhdigital » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

mjirv wrote: post #79

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!! But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!! There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0] That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to…

> the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high

This statement obscures and oversimplifies, which is unfortunately what scientists sometimes do when speaking to the public because they assume people won't understand otherwise.

When she says "like SARS-CoV-2" she is not speaking about the physical structure of the virus, she is really just referring to general qualities that a virus would need to display in order to reach pandemic level: high infectivity, unusual disease progression for which proper treatment is poorly understood, frequent and unpredictable mutation, etc.

What the researchers in this paper have done is identify the unusual components of SARS-CoV-2, i.e. the proteins and their physical structure, which give it this pandemic potential. And then they describe a sequence of research papers, published by virologists from the WIV, which demonstrate awareness of the characteristics of these exact features as well as a laboratory capability to produce chimeric viruses with these exact features. And the epicenter of the pandemic is a stone's throw away from the laboratory where those virologists work.

If you're going to make a hand-wavy argument about real-world events using Bayesian inference, you need to be prepared to explain why certain evidence is independent of your prior. Or drop the argument.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#133

Post by droopyEyelids » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

voldacar wrote: post #80

autokad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I saw a headline that said gene researchers say there is no way the virus was made in a lab. I'm like oh this should be interesting, they must have done some sort of dating on the mutations. maybe there are markings biologists can look at that are telling signs of natural vs man-made. or compared genomes to ... And there 100% undeniable argument: the virus effects bats and people researching bio weapo…

>you really that narrow minded and completely devoid of imagination? you think labs are only for making bio-weapons? It wouldn't even have to be bio-weapon related. It could just be a genetically altered virus (routine in gain of function research) that escaped a lab due to an accident or carelessness, and was later covered up with the whole wet market story. People who disdain the idea that the virus could be man ma…

It's the whole "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" thing...

but I always like to add, "and don't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by the fundamental complexity of life"

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#134

Post by addicted » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

mjirv wrote: post #79

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!! But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!! There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0] That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to…

This is the same stuff that causes conspiracy theories around airplane crashes.

The conspiracists go

“It must be a conspiracy because there are like these 6 redundant safety mechanisms and the odds of them all failing at the same time are extremely low”.

But the answer is obvious. If the 6 redundant mechanisms hadn’t failed, the plane wouldn’t crash.

So as long as the odds of failure of each redundant system is not 0%, every plane crash that ever happens will look the same, with multiple redundant items with extremely low likelihood’s of failing, failing together.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#135

Post by calf » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper: 1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans. 2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which m…

I feel step 4. is just a more specific detail of step 2, and the critical tricky piece of their argument is step 3 because that's the step that synthesizes steps 1 and 2. I imagine that the rebuttals would try to show that step 1 or 3 do not hold.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#136

Post by eunos » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

DominikPeters wrote: post #130

eunos wrote: post #126

This forbes blog piece contains a compilation of refutations attempt for the said theory https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controver...

This seemed mostly fluff and argument from authority to me, with the main substantial counterpoint this: > Gunnveig Grødeland, vaccine researcher at the University of Oslo, is one of the scientists voicing their disagreement with Sørensen. She explains that what Sørensen referred to as "inserted sequences" can enable the development of a more serious disease, but this is not unusual in nature: "Examples can be found…

To be fair, this claim (the main paper) is released for a month. I even remember encountered a HN submission for it. However, the claim doesn't really attract much attention. A few UK media mention it, but focus mainly on the MI6 chief. Googling the researcher names also found mostly Norwegian sites. Since the traction of this claim is quite low, then not much further discussion by other scientists as well.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#137

Post by pdfernhout » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

mekoka wrote: post #66

etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

> it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." That current culture of science has gradually driven me toward skepticism. Unless I see converging evidence from various independent sources, a claim is just…

Something I put together about 10 years ago: https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-abou... "Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding. ..."

See especially from Marcia Angell: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-co... "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

And, from the 1990s, from David Goodstein, who was Vice Provost of Caltech then, here is part of why thing have gotten that way: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html "Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#138

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper: 1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans. 2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which m…

Or, and this is a really crazy theory, they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#139

Post by markdown » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #138

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper: 1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans. 2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which m…

Or, and this is a really crazy theory, they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.

> they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally.

The person you're responding to didn't say anything different to what you've said.

> Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.

Why did you say that? It certainly isn't stated or even implied by the person you're replying to.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#140

Post by gmuslera » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

mjirv wrote: post #79

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!! But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!! There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0] That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to…

The odds of having a particular order in a deck of cards is very low, but the cards have one of them anyway. I think you are looking at the odds from the wrong place.

Could have been a pandemic with a simpler virus, too.