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The Lab Leak Hypothesis

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Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#161

Post by esja »

mabbo wrote: post #32
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #9

I think the closest natural virus was 95% similar. 5% seems pretty far for mutations. Is there a historical track record for finding the natural virus to a 99.9% similarity?

Two answers. First, it was 96% identical. But that was in 2013. Presume it's being passed bat to bat every few days for 6 years, then at some point made the jump to another species, most likely in a wet market. It's really not unreasonable to imagine a 4% drift in that time. Second, we don't identify every virus or every strain of every virus. Just because we found one that was 96% similar doesn't mean that all the o…

Can you explain how that evolutionary path led to the virus becoming better adapted to humans than it is to bats, and can you explain how all the samples we have ever found, from the very beginning of this outbreak, are uniquely adapted to humans?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#162

Post by [deleted] »

esja wrote: post #158
mabbo wrote: post #27

> There is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities, just as there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap But there is so much more opportunity for the zoonotic possibilities. In fact, this is the seventh time we've seen Betacoronavirus cross from bats, through another animal, and then into humans. SARS came via palm civets. MERS came via camels. Four more types cause a mild cold only and so they…

Can you explain how this virus became (instantly) better adapted to humans than it is to bats? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199

[deleted]

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#163

Post by DanBC »

roenxi wrote: post #111
emmelaich wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, and I tend to think the 'escaped from a lab' case is at least as strong as the zoonotic one. A small counterpoint though -- the market is the Huanan market, i.e. specialising in south china sourced or styled food. I would not be surprised if some exotic animals were there but never admitted to.

Although reasonable, one theory ("the bat coronavirus was transported by scientists to the lab that studies bat coronaviruses") involves no illigal activity. On the other hand the counter-theory ("there was illegal bat trafficking from a small mine in Yunnan") involves speculation that something happened that we don't know about. Strictly speaking, the lab leak theory has more observed evidence. Presumably the Chines…

> On the other hand the counter-theory ("there was illegal bat trafficking from a small mine in Yunnan")

One theory is that people mine bat guano from caves, so there's no need for them to ever touch a dead bat.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#164

Post by cygx »

noetic_techy wrote: post #72

I would implore those who are skeptical of a lab leak hypothesis to listen to the evolutionary biologist Bret Weinsteins Darkhorse Podcast with Yuri Deigin on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bret-weinstein-and-yur... Related article by Deigin: https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug... The podcast is a much easier listen then the deep dive that is in the article. All in all, th…

Note that Bret is also a bit of a contrarian with a habit of 'just asking questions' (It is not clear their was substantial fraud in the 2020 U.S. election, but it is clear there is valid reason for concern. Why is there not broad, bipartisan interest in finding out?)

Doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong, and many of his takes are pretty reasonable, but personally, I nevertheless do take his opinions with an additional grain of salt...

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#165

Post by Retric »

yorwba wrote: post #133
noctua wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I've understood it correctly, China isn't persecuting Muslims, but Uyghurs, and their main justification for it is the East Turkestan independence movement. There are plenty of Muslims in other parts of China living normal lives.

There are plenty of Uyghurs living normal lives. Don't forget that even the highest estimates of a million targeted amount to maybe 10% of the total population. There are also plenty of ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims among the eyewitnesses interviewed in Western media, as well as restrictions on religious freedom all over the country: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-m... Of course having…

The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. That’s impacting people outside of internment camps. A policy which removes some pressure from the excess male births from the rest of the country and destroys an unwanted ethnic group. Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60%.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#166

Post by heidar »

howlgarnish wrote: post #101
manicdee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab seven miles away is basically across the street. The whole phrase was “basically across the street” indicating relatively proximate in comparison. Why did you have selectively quote the statement so that you could refute a claim that wasn’t made? What are you hiding?

How does a virus spread primarily by aerosols/droplets travel 7 miles across a city of 10 million people? Also, the first known confirmed case has no known connections to the Huanan market or the virology institute. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...

The first sentence in the BBC article.

> Chinese authorities and experts are at odds about the origin of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

I'm not saying this argument is invalid in general but it's important to assume that we know next to nothing about this whole situation and that the things that we know are potentially false pieces of information pushed by the CCP.

They've tried to sweep this under the rug and control the discussion from day one and this happens to be something they're incredibly good at.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#167

Post by neuronic »

inciampati wrote: post #146
RobertoG wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"The virologists working in Wuhan did travel all the way to Southern China to collect bat coronavirus samples and they did perform gain-of-function experiments. Viruses - even highly pathogenic ones - have escaped labs on numerous occasions. There is a plausible scenario here." Another plausible scenario, in my opinion, is that the virus was brought to Wuhan by the virologists (in the virologist or their helpers) b…

It's very unlikely that you'd get a one step transfer from a bat that yielded a spike protein with the level of affinity it has for human ACE2. If you look at that protein alone, the most-likely proximal hosts are primates. If we seriously believe in zoonotic transfer, we should be looking at those populations, and understanding how orangutans and bonobos infiltrated Wuhan and transmitted the virus to unwitting human…

The only thing we REALLY know is that these types of coronaviruses originate in Southern China and somehow got to the point of being suspiciously well adapted to ACE2 by the time it exploded in Wuhan.

That, however, can also be achieved purely by natural causes over a long time - not just in a lab. Maybe Wuhan is simply the point at which the first very infectious form of SARS-CoV-2 occurred - not the first overall occurrence of any SARS-CoV-2 variant. And it provided a perfect environment to spread at its wet markets. If the virus originated in the West, maybe we would be shitting all over meat processing facilities now?

So, how many people would need to get infected to facilitate these mutations? We could possibly have missed SARS-CoV-2 infections with earlier virus strains that were vastly less infectious. It would take quite a lot of people to raise suspicions of anything other going on than nominal incidents of flu-like symptoms. So maybe the initial SARS-2 was basically SARS-1 with much less incidence of severe symptoms - so it slipped under the radar until it mutated, exploded in incidence and suddenly produced overwhelming hospitilization rates.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#168

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #56
MilnerRoute wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "likely vector" would be the millions of peasants living near bat caves in rural China (who actually have already been shown to have antibodies to bat viruses). And some of whom traveled to the market. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296... So I would upgrade that quite a bit from "moderate-low." (One of the researchers in this NPR article seems to rate it as an obvious suspect, so I'd ca…

Those millions of peasants living near bat caves would have traveled to thousands of markets all over China, but the virus originated at the one market in China that is basically across the street from a virus lab? It's not impossible, but my money is on the lab.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted [1]:

"AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States"

"Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa and were transferred to humans in the early 20th century."

If HIV, a relatively less infectious virus, can make its way across the Atlantic Ocean to land on America shores, I wouldn't be surprised SARS-CoV-2 could do the same. Another explanation could be that SARS-CoV-2 is a lot more common than we think --- many people might have caught it before but it didn't manage to spread, but this time the virus just hit the jackpot.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS#History

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#169

Post by robbiep »

esja wrote: post #161
mabbo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two answers. First, it was 96% identical. But that was in 2013. Presume it's being passed bat to bat every few days for 6 years, then at some point made the jump to another species, most likely in a wet market. It's really not unreasonable to imagine a 4% drift in that time. Second, we don't identify every virus or every strain of every virus. Just because we found one that was 96% similar doesn't mean that all the o…

Can you explain how that evolutionary path led to the virus becoming better adapted to humans than it is to bats, and can you explain how all the samples we have ever found, from the very beginning of this outbreak, are uniquely adapted to humans? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199

You’ve asked the same question in 3 spots. You’re asking the question backwards and not reading the other comments here (for example, the particular response you responded to) There are some very good reasonable answers for why and how this could have happened, unless you’re a biologist and are going to tell us how it happened (which the paper you cited doesn’t) you’re beating on a painful drum

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#170

Post by heidar »

Amezarak wrote: post #145
MilnerRoute wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "likely vector" would be the millions of peasants living near bat caves in rural China (who actually have already been shown to have antibodies to bat viruses). And some of whom traveled to the market. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296... So I would upgrade that quite a bit from "moderate-low." (One of the researchers in this NPR article seems to rate it as an obvious suspect, so I'd ca…

According to the article, the bat caves are nearly a thousand miles away. It seems unlikely peasants were traveling a thousand miles for the purpose of visting the market. It also presents some reasons why bat viruses on their own were unlikely to become as contagious as COVID, citing the example of RaTG13's discovery. So the "zoonotic transfer from bats" theory requires an extraordinary new strain (possible!) to tra…

Also not mentioned in the article but bats are in hibernation at the time of year when the spread started, making it even less likely.
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