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

421–430 of 494 posts

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

#421

Post by xbar »

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…

And here we find the voice of antireason.

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

#422

Post by MiroF »

mikedilger wrote: post #190
MiroF wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Related to the origin hypotheses, the hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec no longer seems as relevant Perhaps in your mind, but this is not at all a fair representation of the general scientific consensus - most still hold the weight of the evidence leans towards a November '19 origin in Wuhan

How did you determine the general scientific consensus?

Reading peer-reviewed papers & following field leaders on Twitter.

I have experience in academia, so it might be easier to parse because of that, but news articles are certainly not sufficient.

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

#423

Post by MiroF »

jkhdigital wrote: post #192
MiroF wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Related to the origin hypotheses, the hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec no longer seems as relevant Perhaps in your mind, but this is not at all a fair representation of the general scientific consensus - most still hold the weight of the evidence leans towards a November '19 origin in Wuhan

He cited papers, you referenced a "general scientific consensus". This is a gun fight, sir, so you'd best put that knife away.

He cited two scientific papers, one which is peer-reviewed and indicates that the virus originated in Wuhan and one which is an un-peer reviewed pre-print on medRxiv, funded by a private company with interest in promoting the efficacy of wastewater monitoring, that Covid was present in wastewater. It's worth looking in to, but hardly discredits the widely-accepted Wuhan origin yet.

In your poorly fit analogy, the scientific consensus would be the gun to the single, unreviewed paper's knife.

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

#424

Post by MiroF »

ardit33 wrote: post #195
MiroF wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Related to the origin hypotheses, the hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec no longer seems as relevant Perhaps in your mind, but this is not at all a fair representation of the general scientific consensus - most still hold the weight of the evidence leans towards a November '19 origin in Wuhan

Please don't spew falsehoods and add 'general concesus' to it. There are reports that the French team that traveled in October in Wuhan for mil. sports games, got infected by it. So, that it was at circulating in Wuhan at least since October, even most probably: early september. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/08/covid-19-pandemi...

Why did you quote me 'general concesus' and then misspell the word?

I'm not going to respond to the rest of the comment suggesting the Telegraph should be part of my consideration when judging the science.

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

#425

Post by MiroF »

bart_spoon wrote: post #356
FabHK wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It isn’t relevant, and hasn’t been since almost the beginning of the pandemic. We’ve known since March that the earliest retroactively identified case of the disease in China was from October and had no connection with the Wuhan wet market. The wet market may be the the earliest identified widespread outbreak, but it is clear that the crossover event happened earlier and the virus had been circulating at low levels p…

> but it is clear that the crossover event happened earlier and the virus had been circulating at low levels prior to that.

Source? Definitely some experts think it is not impossible that it was brought to the wet market very early in the outbreak, that's not implausible at all. But the idea that it was circulating globally or widely at all before that is not backed by the evidence.

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

#426

Post by bmitc »

mr_toad wrote: post #151
bmitc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we actually know this virus evolved in bats? To my knowledge, bats are simply a carrier, and the viruses they carry don't necessarily evolve in bats themselves (this should be checked). It seems possible the virus came from somewhere else. Bats are definitely not the only carrier of viruses, so it's dangerous to think they're the only animals to worry about. There are millions of viruses out there carried by all s…

Viruses are still replicating in carriers, and as long as they’re replicating they’re going to mutate and evolve.

But carriers does not necessarily equal bats.

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

#427

Post by snypher »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #389
sudosysgen wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire, you would expect random bat viruses to be incredibly virulent in humans.

Really? How is that? Proof? Link?

This research seems relevant;

>Our key result is that hosts most closely related to humans harbour zoonoses of lower impact in terms of morbidity and mortality, while the most distantly related hosts—in particular, order Chiroptera (bats)—harbour highly virulent zoonoses with a lower capacity for endemic establishment in human hosts.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...

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

#428

Post by rayhendricks »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #275
ixacto wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Comments like these make HN threads with even the slightest mention of China completely unbearable. Some people actually want to have a discussion on the original post, not this predictable, tiring flamewar nonsense that appears every single day, hopefully you can respect that Ray. There's dozens of other places that would welcome this long-winded conspiratorial rant with open arms.

Wow looks like I hit a nerve here "Darth"... If you don't like HN go somewhere else.

I'd say its not conspiratorial though as you describe, as the paper walks you right through the evidence excluding natural causes of covid virus modification.

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

#429

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

snypher wrote: post #427
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How is that? Proof? Link?

This research seems relevant; >Our key result is that hosts most closely related to humans harbour zoonoses of lower impact in terms of morbidity and mortality, while the most distantly related hosts—in particular, order Chiroptera (bats)—harbour highly virulent zoonoses with a lower capacity for endemic establishment in human hosts. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...

True, but to be dangerous the have to pass cross species barrier, before that event, virulence is exactly zero. So, random bat viruses have zero virulence in people.

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

#430

Post by jryle70 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #404
jryle70 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, (fruit) bats eaten as food in West Africa is a major vector of the spread of Ebola. And maybe one day we can conclusively say bats play no roles whatsoever in the spread of Covid-19, like we are able to say confidently about bats and Ebola. We aren't at that point yet, dismissing bats as a factor is a disservice to science.

Discussing whether bats play a role as vector or reservoir of the virus is not the same as making thinly-veiled racist comments on a culture or as spreading misinformation on a culture.

Would you rather that we don't discuss bats in this specific thread? Because all that mentioned so far is that bats are(were) sold at Wuhan market as food, and that they may have a role in spreading the virus. Both of that is true. Nothing that implies Chinese people are "barbarians" or they should eat like "normal people".

Bringing racism up where it doesn't exist discourages, or at worst suppresses, a healthy discussion.

Post reply on HN