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

Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

rootclaim.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 372 posts

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#231

Post by DoingIsLearning »

sradman wrote: post #135

The Chimera section claims: > Pangolins and bats don't usually cohabitate, making this somewhat unlikely in nature. Horseshoe bats are nocturnal animals that roost in caves during the day but sometimes practice perch feeding at night [1]: > The other strategy is known as perch feeding: Individuals roost on feeding perches and wait for prey to fly past, then fly out to capture it. Pangolins [2] and palm civets [3] are…

The official position is that the start of this pandemic was in 'Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market' in Wuhan. [0]

So are you proposing that a pangolin from Lancang was transported more than 2000km to a seafood wetmarket in Wuhan?

At face value, this sounds like a very unlikely scenario for a zoonotic event/origin.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/04/coronavir...

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#232

Post by sakopov »

upbeat_general wrote: post #175
alphabettsy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using this logic isn’t it likely it came from the US? Simultaneously saying it’s nothing and China did it seems suspicious.

The US response was shit but A) we have a timeline of events so we know it came from China B) the US didn’t cover things up, rather some politicians (trump for one) massively downplayed the virus.

I find it difficult to understand how anyone is going to take action when the media trumpets that COVID isn't an issue much of January and February of this year. [1][2][3]

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/time-for-a-reality-che...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/europe/coronavirus-...

[3]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/29/8008132...

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#233

Post by SpaceRaccoon »

addicted wrote: post #146
SpaceRaccoon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can conclude you believe it purely coincidental that the Wuhan Institute of Virolgy specialized in research on bat coronaviruses? A paper in the lancet early in the year reported that the Wuhan Seafood market not only did not sell bats, but that many of the early patients reported never visiting the market. At this point, it may be too late to ever discover the true origin of the virus.

The Wuhan lab being specialized in bat viruses means very little. For one thing, this is a classic example of correlation != causation. Let’s say you had a shark attack on some beach and there was a team researching shark attack located right in that area. Would you then conclude that the team engineered the shark attack? The simple reality is that the most likely reason the team studying shark attacks is located in…

Everything that I've read suggests the bats from which the virus likely originated can only be found hundreds of kilometers away, so it must have been brought into Wuhan somehow. Either for food, or for research, unless you can propose another explanation?

> The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.

Source: https://archive.is/r4Yac

Now, I don't suggest that the virus was created in the lab, or deliberately leaked. But it had to be brought into Wuhan somehow. I just don't consider it dismissible, yet, that an inadvertent leak from the lab could have been the cause. I look forward to all new evidence that may emerge.

If the market was indeed the cause, then in the interests of global safety, wild animal markets of this nature should be prohibited.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#234

Post by jackweirdy »

wuwuno wrote: post #218

I've been saying it was an accidental release since mid December of last year. Everyone is focused on the genetics of the virus, but honestly that doesn't really tell us anything about how it was introduced into the human population. Frankly someone could have been legitimately studying the virus which was was circulating naturally in the bat community, with zero intention of trying to weaponize the virus, but anyone…

It seems reasonable to me to believe you have a “new flu” based solely on hospitals seeing increased pneumonia counts without identifying any of the usual causes - bacterial or influenza

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#235

Post by SpaceRaccoon »

thelittleone wrote: post #121
SpaceRaccoon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's proven that wet markets are a breeding ground for novel viruses, then yeah, clearly they should be banned.

Banned by who? Looking at the relative impact of the virus it seems the US is harder hit. Although the virus appears to be a tragic accident, a weakened US allows other nations to make advances. That being said, I tend to agree with your assertion.

Surely the rest of the world has the leverage to pressure China to ban wild-animal markets.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#236

Post by vajrabum »

School-Cotton wrote: post #195
NationalPark wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you aren't even trying to discuss it honestly! The prior probability of voter fraud is so low that it demands really incredible evidence. When you frame it like "vote fraud or not voter fraud", you're implicitly lending a whole lot of credibility to something that is, well, not the least bit credible. Also, to borrow from a completely different polarizing thread, you're making a classic motte-and-bailey argument…

> The prior probability of voter fraud is so low Why?

Because close to nobody is ever charged with voter fraud and multiple investigations after 2016 launched by folks at the federal level looking for it, failed to turn up cases. In the recent election, the Trump team has repeatedly alleged voter fraud but not presented any evidence of such in a courtroom.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#237

Post by bawolff »

bearbin wrote: post #36

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…

Because people want someone to blame, a villian to hold responsible, for whom they can call out for blood. Bats can't be morally culpable; other humans can be.

If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#238

Post by casion »

wuwuno wrote: post #218

I've been saying it was an accidental release since mid December of last year. Everyone is focused on the genetics of the virus, but honestly that doesn't really tell us anything about how it was introduced into the human population. Frankly someone could have been legitimately studying the virus which was was circulating naturally in the bat community, with zero intention of trying to weaponize the virus, but anyone…

They could know because of a difference in symptomatic presentation combined with exclusionary testing.

There's very few diseases with a similar presentation to COVID-19 that we don't already have tests for.

This is how new illnesses are almost _always_ detected: patient has illness with specific symptoms, test for illnesses correlated to those symptoms, if those tests (and follow ups) come back negative then you might have something.

When your patients start dying faster than you'd normal expect that's a great indicator too, which happened(s)

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#239

Post by messe »

defen wrote: post #223
arthur2e5 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China too. With the foreign ministry spokespersons repeatedly making US bioweapon suggestions, believing otherwise is more political than just following the rest of weibo. The media is more than happy to report on early detections out of China, and let suggestions that the vape lung (now linked to vit. E cutting agent) is COVID run free. We left the realm of rationality long ago, when the government did a tribalis…

> The govt still funds crackpots to argue against Chinese people originating in africa, to call greco-roman and egyptian history faked, and don't even get me started on their insistence on 5k years Wait what? The Chinese government does this? Who do they claim faked Greco-Roman and Egyptian history, and to what end? And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something?

> And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something?

I believe it's the claim that China has 5,000 years of written history. I'm not knowledgeable on this however, so this is a vague memory semi-confirmed by a cursory internet search.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#240

Post by VectorLock »

sam_goody wrote: post #25

Where do they offer $100K to anyone who debunks their hypothesis? How can someone "prove" it is Zoonotic in origin, to "win" the bet? Is this a false challenge; Someone may be able to prove that this started in a lab, but no one can prove the opposite. Free publicity. As an aside, it looks like they list "No whistleblowers" and "No reported infections at WIV" as increasing the odds it is not Zoonotic, which makes no…

They describe it here: https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge

>Since there is no lab test or clear-cut way to determine whether a Rootclaim analysis is correct, we have to rely on outside expert judges.

I haven't been able to find any place where it says who the judges are for this challenge.

Post reply on HN