Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

minervanett.no

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 494 posts

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

#281

Post by chrisco255 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #244
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…

This isn't entirely true, though. SARS-CoV-2 is much less virulent than SARS or MERS. For a virus that recently crossed the zoonotic barrier, and even moreso for one crossing from bats, it's virulence is actually astonishingly low. Therefore, the hypothesis of a two-stage crossing to humans, from bats to a larger land based mammal and then to humans is much much more likely, because this would explain high transmissi…

Isn't there often a trade-off between virulence and infectiousness in viral transmission?

See "A transmission-virulence evolutionary trade-off explains attenuation of HIV-1 in Uganda" https://elifesciences.org/articles/20492

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

#282

Post by sudosysgen »

chrisco255 wrote: post #281
sudosysgen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't entirely true, though. SARS-CoV-2 is much less virulent than SARS or MERS. For a virus that recently crossed the zoonotic barrier, and even moreso for one crossing from bats, it's virulence is actually astonishingly low. Therefore, the hypothesis of a two-stage crossing to humans, from bats to a larger land based mammal and then to humans is much much more likely, because this would explain high transmissi…

Isn't there often a trade-off between virulence and infectiousness in viral transmission? See "A transmission-virulence evolutionary trade-off explains attenuation of HIV-1 in Uganda" https://elifesciences.org/articles/20492

That trade off is made by evolution. I don't see why scientists in a lab would make that trade off in a gain of function analysis - you can just make it more infectious and keep (likely increase) the level of virulence.

Since evolution isn't involved in the proposed mechanism, I see no reason why such a trade-off would occur.

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

#283

Post by casefields »

bwi4 wrote: post #114

So what would evidence, rather than speculation, look like in this case? A SARS-CoV 2 genome sequence dated before December 2019? Somehow identifying patient zero and corresponding records of their exposure at the lab? I’m skeptical that any hard evidence will be found. It seems to me the origin is likely to remain speculative indefinitely.

NSA/CIA intelligence catching them red handed discussing how it happened. Of course, with the Iraq fiasco still in our collective memory, who knows if the public would believe it.

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

#284

Post by hedora »

pmayrgundter wrote: post #144
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…

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 read the spain paper. They don’t report the false positive rate of the test they used, but if it was one that was commonly available, that paper’s P-value is something like 0.5. They don’t compute a P value.

Until the others make it through peer review, I wouldn’t read anything into their results.

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

#285

Post by poof131 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #244
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…

This isn't entirely true, though. SARS-CoV-2 is much less virulent than SARS or MERS. For a virus that recently crossed the zoonotic barrier, and even moreso for one crossing from bats, it's virulence is actually astonishingly low. Therefore, the hypothesis of a two-stage crossing to humans, from bats to a larger land based mammal and then to humans is much much more likely, because this would explain high transmissi…

Is this actually the case? This paper [1] seems to indicate that there are multiple types of gain-of-function research, not just an increase in virulence. In fact, the paper specifically discusses “transmissibility”, which would seem to support the argument of the paper under discussion: “In short, SARS-CoV-2 is possessed of dual action capability. In this paper we argue that the likelihood of this being the result of natural processes is very small”

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/

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

#286

Post by sudosysgen »

chaostheory wrote: post #277
sudosysgen wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virulence : 1. the severity or harmfulness of a disease or poison. COVID-19 - has an fatality rate of around 0.5-1%, according to the best methodologies we have, in various environments, with recent papers suggesting that it might be even less lethal in places where medical care is sufficient. In comparison, the best data for SARS fatality rates is of around 11% (!). This means that SARS-CoV-2 is around ten times les…

Should we go by the crude fatality rate since the data around COVID-19 isn't rock solid yet right? Shouldn't we measure COVID-19's virulence by the IFR aka infection fatality rate instead? As of today with 14,194,795 cases and 599,438 deaths, COVID-19's infection fatality rate is 4.23%. By comparison, SARS only had 8,098 cases and only 774 deaths, giving it an IFR of 9.56%.

4.23% is a case fatality rate, or CFR, not IFR.

The issue is the SARS had a lot less cases, and was more virulent. There is no evidence for asymptomatic spread of SARS, and almost every single infection was accounted for using contact tracing.

Therefore, it makes sense to use the best guess at IFR for both. The best guess for IFR for COVID-19 is around 0.3-0.9%, depending on the state of the healthcare system.

SARS however, seems to have a very low rate of asymptomatic carriers : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3371799/ , of around 7%. Of those 7%, it is expected that the vast majority are detected, as there were very few cases of SARS of unknown origin (IE, no contact with an infected person). On the other hand, COVID19 is believed to have asymptomatic infection rates of as high as 50%, and even at the very beginning there were tons of cryptic transmission.

Therefore, it is likely that the CFR of SARS is very close the IFR. Using a high-estimate for the IFR of COVID19 and comparing it to the CFR of SARS should yield a very good comparison for virulence of the two viruses.

Therefore, SARS is indeed in the ballpark of 10x more virulent than COVID19.

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

#287

Post by tomp »

roenxi wrote: post #110
i_cannot_hack wrote: post #9

> A Norwegian virologist has made claims about the non-natural origins of the new coronavirus. These claims were, reportedly, in an earlier draft of the paper, and Dr Sørensen has since repeated them to Norwegian press. > The final version of the research paper, which has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, doesn’t actually make any claims about whe…

> 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…

> dire consequences for the funding and regulation of level 4 biosecurity centres and potentially global trade & travel for countries that have them.

This is wishful thinking. Countries would simply lie; push such labs underground, or disguise them as some other kinds of labs.

But even that is a misdirection. DNA isn’t nuclear material; technology to manipulate it will soon be available at home.

More in the podcast with Naval Ravikant: https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/044

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

#288

Post by sudosysgen »

poof131 wrote: post #285
sudosysgen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't entirely true, though. SARS-CoV-2 is much less virulent than SARS or MERS. For a virus that recently crossed the zoonotic barrier, and even moreso for one crossing from bats, it's virulence is actually astonishingly low. Therefore, the hypothesis of a two-stage crossing to humans, from bats to a larger land based mammal and then to humans is much much more likely, because this would explain high transmissi…

Is this actually the case? This paper [1] seems to indicate that there are multiple types of gain-of-function research, not just an increase in virulence. In fact, the paper specifically discusses “transmissibility”, which would seem to support the argument of the paper under discussion: “In short, SARS-CoV-2 is possessed of dual action capability. In this paper we argue that the likelihood of this being the result o…

Sure. The issue is that there would have to be gain-of-function research to reduce virulence and (maybe, it's not entirely clear) to increase transmissivity.

There is no evidence for that AFAIK, and I don't understand why a lab would do a gain of function experiment and reduce function instead.

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

#289

Post by pldr2244 »

chrisbrandow wrote: post #228

Has this paper either been peer-reviewed or submitted for peer-review as a preprint? I have a PhD in chemistry and I certainly don’t feel like I’m qualified to judge the quality of the work or the track record of the authors, scientifically. I think this paper’s deserves a thorough airing and evaluation, but I don’t think Hacker news is a forum well equipped to produce a high signal to noise evaluation on such a high…

Most of HN is not qualified either to judge the quality of AI, ML, opsec, renewables or any of a whole host of topics that are actually deeply complex.

But that does not mean it does not classify as potentially substantial news, that at least should be visible.

Nobody is arguing that it shouldn’t be more properly vetted when published via normal scientific channels, as these things usually are.

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

#290

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

madriffsin wrote: post #279
ALittleLight wrote: post #265

As an aside, if you look at that person's comment history, pretty much every comment they've made is about China and defending China. An odd focus for a hackernews account.

Can we stop with these posts where we dig through someone's post history and accuse them of shilling/being paid trolls if they hold a constant view that differs from our own? If you disagree with something you can debate it without having to resort to such nasty, underhanded tactics.

If that constant view only ever promotes a single narrative and doesn't engage at all in HN comment streams about typical HN topics elsewhere - no, I don't think we should.

Also, I think it's unhelpful to pretend that propaganda isn't a thing, or that HN isn't monitored by any number of state and corporate actors with a narrative to sell.

Post reply on HN