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]

#161

Post by roenxi » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #155

roenxi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially engineered. Artificially engineered isn't really the question; the questions are 'is this a lab escape?' and 'if this is a lab escape, did the virus work so well on mammals pre-experiment?'. The scientists have a massive incentive not to believe that the virus is a lab escape until the evidence is overwhelming. This is a global disaster, if…

Everyone has a massive incentive to look for actual, concrete evidence for a lab escape before they draw any such conclusions. Leaving aside the uncomfortable geopolitical angle (US policy is to respond to deliberate biowarfare with nuclear weaponry), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

1) This clearly wasn't biowarfare. The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon that there is no way it is even vaguely possible that it was developed as one. The idea is laughable.

The Chinese military would have to be beyond stupid to go into a bioweapons program and develop a virus that mainly only targets old people, usually doesn't cause symptoms, spreads like wildfire and is therefore a huge risk to countries with large, densely packed populations. If it was a lab escape it would probably have been just part of studying SARS-like viruses for public health reasons.

2) And there is nothing extraordinary about claiming "Standards in practice were lower than the standards on paper". That is a pretty mild claim. Lab escapes of viruses are a thing.

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

#162

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

maest wrote: post #11

This is a really big claim, so some background checking: The paper was published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics[0] (this accepted version is materially different from the original link posted here). Only thing I could find about Birger Sorensen's was his Linkedin page [1a] and the Immunor page where he's listed as the Chairman [1b]. Angus Dagleish looks legit, although it's notable that he did stand for Parlia…

>“The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.”

I think they are just two different papers. The linked paper has the following quote:

>We have just (2nd June 2020) published Biovacc-19 in QRB-Discovery: a candidate vaccine for this daunting task (Sørensen et al., 2020).

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

#163

Post by waspleg » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:35 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.

Why give a government with modern day concentration camps, forced organ harvesting, and military occupation of free countries like Hong Kong the benefit of the doubt on biological weapons research gone awry?

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

#164

Post by dionian » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #102

cryptica wrote: post #35

When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger. I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to sprea…

Biology, and the universe in general, aren't always intuitive. I'm also completely flabbergasted that you take 1 person's opinion, despite it being the opposite of the opinions of a general educated scientific community, and you take that one person's opinion more seriously. And apparently you are not a historian, either, because we've had viruses spread in humans in the past. I don't see how this being a naturally-m…

is there evidence that it's not?

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

#165

Post by philwelch » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

thinker912345 wrote: post #123

zenhack wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for the OP, but for myself: I am not qualified to evaluate the evidence in this case; I just don't have the biology background. But sometimes when you get some out-there questionable sounding stuff research, and you spend a minute googling, you quickly find out that the journal the thing is published in is chaired by the author and itself has no credibility, the author is selling some form of snake oil di…

> I am not qualified to evaluate the evidence in this case; I just don't have the biology background. A "background check" does not change this fact, nor does your point actually negate the comment you are responding too. No one here is arguing that you must listen and believe everything that someone has written in a paper, but things must be proven and disproven. "Background checking" in any form is not science. It…

As a non-expert, if someone says something unusual that would require expertise in the field to say with credibility, I have every right to verify their expertise. Or to at least verify whether or not they have a history of things like “being convicted of fraud” or “being barred from practicing medicine due to publishing fraudulent papers in the Lancet”.

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

#166

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:40 AM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #158

pmayrgundter wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good summary, thanks! Related to the origin hypotheses, the hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec no longer seems as relevant. It was first laid out in a widely disseminated paper in The Lancet [1, see Figure 1B], but since then retrospective wastewater analyses from Italy[2], Spain[3], Brazil and others[4] have found it was circulating much earlier. "The Italian National Institute of Health lo…

I think the “hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec” is still very relevant, and the few papers claiming to have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 prior to Dec 2019 outside China are still very questionable. It’s not like they tested old samples in a few places and the virus promptly showed up. Rather, lots of old samples were tested all over the place, and the virus almost never showed up, except in a ver…

Why not both?

There could have been a baseline level of the virus or a close brother of it in circulation early in 2019, but the conditions of the wet market ecosystem in late 2019 let it suddenly spiral out of control, or make a final evolution to its current high-transmissiveness form.

Sort of like how we can find, retrospectively, intermittent cases of HIV back to the early part of the 20th century, but it suddenly exploded in the 1980s.

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

#167

Post by tridentlead » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

robbiep wrote: post #149

nothal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your impetus to tell others to 'stick to your lane' but I respectfully disagree and cite their post and your response as why. OP had what you deem a misapprehension and they deem a valid point. By voicing their point as they believes it, you were able to retort with evidence you feel should convincingly disprove it. To me, this is reasoned, diverse discourse correcting for unintuitive misapprehensions, a…

It’s taken me a little while to parse this one. HN has always felt like a good/safe place (to me) to talk about interesting things with a mix of experts and lay people. When it gets down to science though, agree or disagree need to be left to the experts. I can’t be the expert/final arbiter because my knowledge isn’t good enough (although I have some capacity), and so I am encouraging OP to go with the experts on thi…

Ben Franklin once said that the best argument against democracy was a discussion with the average voter. But I think there is an equal risk there of members of a society being unwilling to read what experts put out, and evaluate it themselves as well. Once people start saying I don't know anything about this and I can't make any determinations, democracy starts to make a lot less sense. At the end of the day science is basically critical reasoning backed by fact collection. If you can go read up on the facts, you can reason based on them. If someone can explain to you why you are wrong that may be one thing, but simply assuming you can never reason anything out is very dangerous.

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

#168

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

jmcgough wrote: post #72

The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created. There's a reason we haven't seen a virus like this in a century - because it's so unlikely that a new virus will appear in any given year with both a high rate of transmission and a high fatality rate.

>The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created.

I think intelligent design would be a pretty plausible explanation for humanity, if we already knew there was a god.

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

#169

Post by bnjms » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #21

bnjms wrote: post #14

I’m open to this idea but I cannot imagine a goal for this line of research. It doesn’t appear to benefit anyone.

You don’t think it is important to understand the root cause of COVID-19 ? It is going to kill millions of people, potentially reduce the life expectancy of tens of millions more and severely impact everyone on this planet.

No you have me backwards. I don’t understand for what cause CV19 May have been made purposefully. I don’t see who it would benefit.

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

#170

Post by theknocker » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

jmcgough wrote: post #77

theknocker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consensus should be determined by science, not the other way around. Otherwise, what is the point of science? edit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." t. redditadmin.txt

This isn't just about science. Conspiracy theorists and unethical people with agendas use documents like this to support their beliefs, and it becomes impossible to refute them. In the age of social media, misinformation and conspiracy theories can cause real damage.

It wouldn't be impossible to refute them if ostensible authority cared enough about credibility to have any, e.g. if, for the purposes of "public discourse," reality determined consensus and not the other way around.

edit: I was forced to wait like an hour to post this reply.