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]

#431

Post by etangent » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:06 PM 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.

> Conspiracy theorists and unethical people with agendas use documents like this to support their beliefs, and it becomes impossible to refute them

This should give you a very hard pause and rethink. If it becomes impossible to refute unethical people because they have sources to back them up how do you know that anyone who has ever used scientific evidence in any shape or form was doing it ethically? Maybe they were just very good at citing sources?

Secondly, most ethics (except perhaps honesty) is fundamentally consensus driven. Science is supposed to be orthogonal to consensus. Thus, if one wants to be an honest scientist, one must accept possibility that one's work might be used for unethical ends. And honesty, to remind you, is an ethical position.

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

#432

Post by theknocker » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

DarthGhandi wrote: post #280

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

Is there any real reason you created this account solely for this post? I find it hard to believe you're an epidemiologist trying to stay anonymous here.

I was paid by George Soros to shill the idea that reality exists.

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

#433

Post by takeda » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #398

murgindrag wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if I were to make a bioweapon, I would think about long-term impact. (1) Millions disabled is far worse than millions dead. (2) Attacks can come in multiple pieces. The first virus might do damage to make people especially vulnerable to the second virus. If I can protect my population against the first one /or/ the second, my people are safe. My opinion is it's just a matter of time before we see bioweapons, and…

Infectious bioweapons are a horrible idea in a highly connected world for the reason we can all plainly see: they don’t respect national borders. It is an old-fashioned notion of a weapon that only made sense when there was little exchange between the citizens of states in opposition, like the U.S. and USSR. China, for whom international trade is a crucial part of their strategy, would not work on an infectious disea…

If there is a country that benefited most from this virus, it's Russia. Crippling economies of China and especially US (with additional misinformation to make people not wear masks).

Why would a country that wanted to deploy a bio weapon started on it's own land? It's not like travel to other countries was restricted.

Also Russia is not a country that would have qualms about affecting own citizens. Putin get to power by coordinating bombings on apartment complexes and blaming Chechens for it.

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

#434

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

bananaface wrote: post #381

sudosysgen wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not completely true. Some of those pressures still apply to artificial viruses once they're released. Highly dangerous viruses get quarantined, and viruses that produce symptoms quickly (and don't transmit asymptomatically, or have a shorter window) are more obvious. Both of those properties reduce real-world transmissability, which is all that actually matters.

I'd argue that SARS-CoV-2 is very far from the Pareto optimal trade-off in infectivity and virulence. There are viruses that are both more virulent and more infectious.

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

#435

Post by srg0 » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #334

hirenj wrote: post #252

Of the five salient points they make here, I would argue that they are a lot less strong than the authors believe them to be. Point 1 can also likely be made for the original Sars-CoV, and probably is irrelevant. If they show CoV-2 is more human like than the earlier, then they can begin to make the point. Point 2 is a gigantic leap of faith - I don’t understand how they connect amino acid inserts into the sequence t…

I will add a few points which I read on a github page and I am unable to verify, so I would be keen to have others review and sanity check: 1) The likely genetic source of SARS cov1 and cov2 is a species of bat in Yunnan province, thousands of miles away, two provinces away from Hubei (Wuhan). Ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708621/ 2) The outbreak allegedly started in December in Hubei province wh…

5) We're talking about a dense urban area ~ 1580 km^2. A _lot_ of businesses and institutions are within 13 km radius from each other. And there are 19 million people in this metro area. So a lot of things should e hapenning in the same city and only few km away, but most of them are not related to each other.

1, 2, 4) are probably irrelevant, because the researchers mostly agree that there was an intermediate host (which one remains to be determined, might be pangolin). So it doesn't matter if the bats were far away or hibernating. Consider also that people often travel, and trade is not limited to one town.

3) It only confirms that we still don't know who was patient zero, and when and where he or she was infected.

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

#436

Post by thu2111 » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #269

holler wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A virus being engineered to be an order of magnitude less virulent seems unlikely to say the least. From what I gathered it’s not suggesting specific genetic traits were engineered, but rather that they were experimenting and one of those experiments could have accidentally been released(?).

Yes, but is the theory is that one experiment, in the context of a gain analysis, was made in order to see how the virus might evolve to be much less severe? Why would a gain analysis try to find ways in which a virus could be made weaker? I don't doubt that an accidental release is feasible, though very very unlikely, but why would an experiment make a less severe virus in the first place?

Why do you think it's very, very unlikely?

Accidental releases of viruses from labs have happened quite regularly. It's a serious concern.

The UK was first introduced to the uselessness of Imperial College and their epidemiological modelling by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 amongst livestock. It resulted in mass killing (by humans) of animals. Eventually the epidemic disappeared, amongst great acrimony and disaster for farmers.

In 2007 foot and mouth appeared again. This time, the virus was traced to the source of the outbreak. It came from a lab in Pirbright where the virus had been stored for research. Two government orgs were connected by pipes, and the pipes had been allowed to rust due to a budget dispute over which org should pay for repairs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

There's a long history of biolabs leaking and being found to be dangerous. It's not at all unlikely given this shoddy history.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-long-histo...

the New York Times (8/5/19) reported: “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns”

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/reports...

"Hundreds of bioterror lab mishaps cloaked in secrecy"

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/23/undisclosed-cd...

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday they have identified 34 incident reports involving bioterror pathogens mishandled at CDC labs that were “inadvertently” not disclosed in 2014 to congressional investigators who had asked for the information

Oh and here's one from December 2019:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03863-z

Chinese institutes investigate pathogen outbreaks in lab workers

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

#437

Post by mytailorisrich » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

jryle70 wrote: post #430

mytailorisrich wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discu…

A healthy discussion starts by acknowledging bias, racism, and misinformation. All of which have been widespread on this issue (Covid-19).

Now, this thread goes further by continuing to relay the conspiracy theory that the virus is man-made, not least when the paper concludes by claiming that the burden of proof is reversed and that it is the natural origin of the virus that must be proven.

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

#438

Post by chrisbrandow » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

pldr2244 wrote: post #289

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.

I’m not saying anyone’s arguing that. But I’m just trying to establish if it is being properly vetted anywhere. If so, it would be nice to amplify the vetting as much as the claim itself, given its seriousness.

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

#439

Post by Bjartr » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

skj wrote: post #343

jakeogh wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which professional published best case death estimate did the US not beat? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407130 Excess deaths are the only accurate measure.

Then it was truly unavoidable for the us to keep getting worse and worse, for some reason more in states full of people who think masks are mind control (a total mystery that we will never understand), while other countries are seeing things get better.

It's not that mysterious how tribalism, fear, and the discomfort of admitting being wrong, just to name a few contributing factors, can result in people holding irrational beliefs.

They're not a different species, they're people. If you give into the urge to treat them as "other", as inferior, or as a different "tribe" to be defeated you're not as different from them with their ridiculous beliefs as you might like to think.

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

#440

Post by trevelyan » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

hazeii wrote: post #349

trevelyan wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins were so effective at binding to human cells, they had to be caused by natural selection. Read the article you are citing. There is convincing evidence that the virus developed via evolutionary mechanisms. That in no way refutes lab-origin and is entirely consistent with how most labs promote infectiousness (particularly airborn infectiousness) through gain-of-function research. https://www…

>There is convincing evidence it developed via evolutionary origins. Er, yes. Not sure what you're saying here (the title is "..Covid-19 is not a naturally-evolved virus...')?

Gain of function serial infection techniques do not constitute natural evolution: they constitute lab-directed evolution.

That is for all intents and purposes man-made, unless one is splitting hairs, which much of the politicized media is doing.