The Lab Leak Hypothesis • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#211

Post by Retric » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #205

Retric wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. I assume you're referring to this part of your link: > In March 2017, Salamet Memetimin, an ethnic Uyghur and the Communist Party Secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village in Qira County, Hotan Prefecture, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home. In interviews with Radio Free Asia in 2020, residents and officials of Shuf…

First there is plenty of evidence on the marriage thing with the most well documented being marriage subsidies and propaganda, the Wikipedia link was for context and the quote. Anyway, a 60% drop in births isn’t part of a wider national trend, this is extremely targeted.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#212

Post by gdubs » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #203

gdubs wrote: post #199

This article does a really good job, IMO, of addressing the controversy inherent in the title and the implications therein. But rather than just reading the headline, it’s a really well written article on “Gain of Function” research, and the history of contemporary bioweapons and infectious disease institutions. Particularly the funding, beginning in the 50’s, and exploding during the war on terror. It’s simply fasci…

Yes, it's a great article. Too bad many commenters won't have read it ;) The most interesting part to me wasn't actually the lab leak part. That's been widely discussed for some time. The more interesting bit was how the anthrax scare turned out to be a lab worker who had a financial stake in vaccine research and apparently wanted funding to be increased ... and how that scare was used by the USG to justify drastic i…

That part made me sit up in my chair — I remember that era, the anthrax scare, and yet never heard about that scientist!

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#213

Post by heidar » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #198

heidar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

The BBC article is a summarizing a linked study reputable enough to be published in the Lancet. Also, the CCP is quite good at using brute force to impose its will within China, but they've been signally unsuccessful in crafting propaganda for Western consumption.

They've been incredibly successful at soft propaganda in the West to craft an image of China that makes it look better than it is, while also being successful at hiding the things they don't want us to see.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#214

Post by treis » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

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…

>he similar virus was known to the lab was enough to drag me to thinking it is probably a toss up.

A human generated virus wouldn't be similar in this way to a wild one. You would take a candidate virus and splice in genetic material from a different one. The new virus would match 100% in most places and then be completely different in a few places.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#215

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

cheph wrote: post #153

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…

> We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. No wet markets here where I am ... so maybe speak for yourself.

Look up the definition of what a wet market is. for example, most markets in the UK can be classed as wet, as well as many large supermarkets with a meat or fish counter

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#216

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #52

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…

> So why would Covid-19 even need to come from a lab? We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. It's the perfect breeding ground to create a pandemic-level virus and probably a few thousand more viruses of lesser impact. The question of how it got to Wuhan all the way from Southern China remains unanswered. There weren't any bats sold on the wet markets, nor h…

> The question of how it got to Wuhan all the way from Southern China remains unanswered.

There are coronavirus-carrying bats in Hubei province.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#217

Post by throwaway189262 » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

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…

SARS has leaked from Chinese labs multiple times. And the only lab in the world specializing in coronaviruses was ~1000 ft away from the first cases. The leaked US diplomatic cables urge the US to help China with this very lab because biosecurity there was so concerning to visiting scientists. It's also the only BSL4 lab in China. In addition the head of that lab has published numerous papers about generic engineering of coronaviruses. That lab also discovered the closest ancestor of COVID.

COVID is also interestingly contagious among minks and ferrets, common lab animals used for serial passage. It's also undergone remarkably little generic drift since the pandemic began. Since the moment it was released it was already human adapted. Extremely suspicious for a brand new virus.

For SARS, MERS, etc we were able to find a 99.9% identical virus in nature. The closest one we have to COVID is 96%, quite distant genetically.

The last time we couldn't find the virus in nature was the 1976 flu pandemic. 20 years later scientists began admitting that it was triggered by a lab leak. When genetic engineering became advanced enough it was obvious that the strain was identical to a pandemic flu strain from the 50's.

In reality, the scientist new from the beginning that the 1976 pandemic was a lab leak but the information was thoroughly suppressed so that the soviet union would cooperate with monitoring. This is exactly what happened with China early in the pandemic. Nobody wanted to criticize people being welded into their homes because China was providing data on the virus. I am completely convinced that this is why the lab leak hypothesis for COVID is being "debunked"

To me there is overwhelming evidence that COVID is a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. IMO the only reason everybody is denying it is the severe political repercussions for China essentially killing more people than WWII. US researchers are co-authors on many of the institutes papers on coronavirus genetic manipulation. The US was funding some of their research, presumably because gain of function research is banned in the states.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#218

Post by noetic_techy » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

sradman wrote: post #180

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…

Deigin conflates RNA samples with viral isolates that can be used to infect lab animals. Weinstein seems to be stuck on bat respiratory disease that spreads in roosting caves. He does not consider gastrointestinal infections spread by bat guano at night in their feeding range which is shared by nocturnal/arboreal pangolins and palm civets. Bat to human direct infection is also just as plausible near the horseshoe bat…

And the well adapted to humans furin site is just plain luck? Its not like this has not happen before, SARS like virus's have crossed species within modern history that we have detected, and they all flame out eventually. I'm no virologist, but I believe its typically because of selection pressure and the mutations needed to start to adapt to humans don't come easily once a jump occurs, it usually takes a few jumps to get it right. This one came out already well adapted to humans and has a furin site not seen in other bat corona viruses, plus 4 additional amino acid chains that give it even more ability to infect cells. This is why Elon Musk got egg on his face for making the prediction that it would be over within a few months, that was based on past outbreaks.

Bret is very clear that yes, this can happen naturally, but the chances are very slim that such a alignment of events occurred in proximity to a lab that was performing gain of function research which does this very thing of combining aspects of multiple viruses and rapidly adapting them in either other animal hosts or petri dishes of cells, including human cells.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#219

Post by mgamache » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #214

roenxi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>he similar virus was known to the lab was enough to drag me to thinking it is probably a toss up. A human generated virus wouldn't be similar in this way to a wild one. You would take a candidate virus and splice in genetic material from a different one. The new virus would match 100% in most places and then be completely different in a few places.

This is not how they conduct gain of function research. It's uses serial passage (using biological hosts and the virus's own variations). This produces vary little evidence of manipulation.

Re: The Lab Leak Hypothesis

#220

Post by aerostable_slug » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #135

wbl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is a terrible bioweapon. It's fragile, with an outer lipid membrane that has to be preserved. It's not very lethal to people of military age, and spreads readily between people making collateral damage inevitable.

Still, it appears to be very good at disrupting the enemy's economy. Not that I think it was engineered as a bioweapon, but it does show that bioweapons don't have to be deadly to be effective.

One of the best bioweapons is Tularemia, and part of that reason is its general lack of lethality. It temporarily renders the exposed population incapable of putting up a good fight, but it kills relatively few. Escape isn't that big a deal (because again, it's not very lethal), and it's easy enough to inoculate one's own troops against the particular flavor being used.