Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin • Hacker News Board

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#61

Post by cameldrv » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 6:34 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #20

I like Carl Bergstrom's take on this: I have reason to believe that if the outgoing administration claims to have reason to believe something but refuses to provide the evidence behind it, they are lying. https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1350292056782954498 Here's a very serious, legitimate review of the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5 Unfortunately, from my e…

This is her entire argument:

"Gain-of-function research is also subject to intense scrutiny and governmental oversight, precisely because of the high risk involved in conducting it safely; thus, it is extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar."

This research was not happening under the radar. WIV has been openly publishing gain of function research on bat Coronaviruses for years. It's quite possible that SARS-CoV-2 was a research project that they fully intended to publish, but was accidentally released during the research.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#62

Post by eunos » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 6:37 AM UTC

addicted wrote: post #21

"The COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable. Any responsible country would have invited world health investigators to Wuhan within days of an outbreak. China instead refused offers of help – including from the United States – and punished brave Chinese doctors, scientists, and journalists who tried to alert the world to the dangers of the virus. Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to p…

Pompeo for me seems very narcissistic person. This week alone I already saw his tweets as Sec of State asking people to follow his personal account. Is it normal to do that?

Not to mention having digital photo of him for every announcement tweets reminds me of my country's bureaucrats that keep doing same for every PSA posters.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#63

Post by peytn » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 6:46 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #57

throw3848 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if authorities were a bit more neutral. Some plausible options were ruled out from day 1, without any investigation. And words like "empirical facts" and "independent review" in context of China, do not add much credibility. If virus has natural origin, we should be able to find population of infected bats. Until then it is just another unproven theory.

I should clarify, neither I nor Dr. Rasmussen are claiming that we know what the true origin is, or that zoonotic spillover is definitely what happened. There is not enough evidence to make such a definitive conclusion. I can see how people might read my comment as implicitly asserting that if people did understand the empirical facts they would come to the conclusion of zoonotic origin. That said, there are facts, a…

I don’t know, there’s really not much concrete information to go off of at this point. I think any reasonable person would naturally side with the people asking for more evidence and/or transparency. In this case that appears to be the State Dept. I’m not sure if you could call that a political consideration, though the question of origin has garnered plenty of attention in our political theater.

Maybe you’re right and most people today will base their beliefs on politics. I’d still hesitate to label anybody when the facts haven’t landed yet, if only to deescalate the present day’s partisanship.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#64

Post by throw3848 » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #57

throw3848 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if authorities were a bit more neutral. Some plausible options were ruled out from day 1, without any investigation. And words like "empirical facts" and "independent review" in context of China, do not add much credibility. If virus has natural origin, we should be able to find population of infected bats. Until then it is just another unproven theory.

I should clarify, neither I nor Dr. Rasmussen are claiming that we know what the true origin is, or that zoonotic spillover is definitely what happened. There is not enough evidence to make such a definitive conclusion. I can see how people might read my comment as implicitly asserting that if people did understand the empirical facts they would come to the conclusion of zoonotic origin. That said, there are facts, a…

Human share 98.5 percent of DNA with shimpanzee. Percentage is just a pop science. Find the missing link and you have a proof.

But for start we could explain how south china wild bat got into wuhan meat market, 500 km from its origin.

I am not from US or China. From my view Wuhan lab was sponsored by US. My concern is how often will current crisis repeat, every 10 years? Nobody is answering this question.

And we do not need "lab origin" to pin blame on China. Wuhan meat market is open again, more bats sold...

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#65

Post by brippalcharrid » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #48

4ec0755f5522 wrote: post #42

This article discusses how common it is to have accidents/mistakes in these types of research labs, I found it pretty interesting but cannot vouch for it (perhaps it's already been debunked?) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...

This article is bullshit and real virologists are angry it's getting so much attention: https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13462321954305105... You may or may not have noticed, but there are some real problems we should be thinking about, including the very real probability that the B.1.1.7 variant is going to be much harder to suppress, and how to get our vaccination program on track. Instead we end up talki…

I'm curious as to why the arrival of developments like a new variant would make it appropriate to halt investigations into the original issue (like where can we find a physical sample of RaTG13, and why wasn't its sequence published until the beginning of last year?).

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#66

Post by pcthrowaway » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #45

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #38

At the end of December 2019, A friend had a layover in the business lounge in Seattle on a return flight from Europe to San Francisco. At the same time, a direct flight from Wuhan came in. He spent 3 hours in the lounge waiting for the flight to SFO, ate at the buffet. A few days later, he said he became deathly sick. Fever, coughing, and said he felt like he was going to die. His wife became very sick shortly after…

There are a lot of anecdotal stories like these, but the idea that Covid was circulating widely in the US before January just isn't consistent with the evidence on the ground. Trevor Bedford has written about this several times [1], and he would know, the phylogenetic work he and his team have been doing is one of the most sensitive instruments we have in figuring out how this thing spreads. So this basically boils d…

It baffles me that we can't scrutinize the claims of "highly regarded" people when they run counter to the someone's experience or even intuition. I'm not saying we should base policy or decisions on this scrutiny, but it's not unreasonable to have doubts. Highly regarded virologists were tweeting earlier in 2020 about how stupid masks were because they couldn't be effective in preventing the spread of a disease which was "not airborne"

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#67

Post by ardy42 » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #59

ardy42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jan. 9: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/state-dept-ta... > WASHINGTON — The United States said on Saturday that it would relax its restrictions on interactions between American officials and their counterparts in Taiwan as the Trump administration seeks to lock in a tougher line against Beijing in its final days. > ...The moves, some outside experts said, are meant to lay a trap for Mr. Biden, forcing…

Only Cuba looks weird to me there. Normalising relationships with Taiwan is a great idea, and Iran stirs conflict throughout the region.

> Normalising relationships with Taiwan is a great idea, and Iran stirs conflict throughout the region.

I personally, I'd agree with the Taiwan thing in isolation, but this last minute decision is clearly intended to put Biden in a bind: reverse it, and he pisses off Americans who reasonably have favorable feelings towards Taiwan; keep it, and diplomacy with China gets a lot harder.

I'm speculating, but my guess is the Iran thing is meant to throw a wrench into any attempt to restart the Iran nuclear deal. Also, note the Iran thing was actually nonsense about Al Qaeda, not Iran's own conflict-stirring.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#68

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #15

ardy42 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth track record of State Department is still much better than that of CCP. Maybe over the long run, but maybe not the current State Department at this moment. IIRC, over the last month it's literally been trying to stir up shit however it can to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration. The current administration seems to think it makes sense to burn US national credibility for petty, self…

> it's literally been trying to stir up shit however it can to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration Examples, please? Pompeo certainly taking a more hawkish and strident stance of late, but I’m yet to see anything that suggests they’re salting the earth rather than just trying to ram through some policy aims at the end of an administration

Ramming through foreign policy changes at the end of an administration (unless it is coordinated with the incoming administration) is salting the earth.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#69

Post by cameldrv » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #45

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #38

At the end of December 2019, A friend had a layover in the business lounge in Seattle on a return flight from Europe to San Francisco. At the same time, a direct flight from Wuhan came in. He spent 3 hours in the lounge waiting for the flight to SFO, ate at the buffet. A few days later, he said he became deathly sick. Fever, coughing, and said he felt like he was going to die. His wife became very sick shortly after…

There are a lot of anecdotal stories like these, but the idea that Covid was circulating widely in the US before January just isn't consistent with the evidence on the ground. Trevor Bedford has written about this several times [1], and he would know, the phylogenetic work he and his team have been doing is one of the most sensitive instruments we have in figuring out how this thing spreads. So this basically boils d…

He's not suggesting that it was widely circulating in the U.S. He's suggesting that someone coming off a flight from Wuhan might have passed it to him. At the end of December, we know for certain that there were numerous cases in Wuhan, so it's entirely possible that he caught it, passed it to his family, but they never infected anyone else.

Now would I bet on this? No, but it is entirely possible without resorting to anything that's not established scientific fact.

Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin

#70

Post by redis_mlc » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #45

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #38

At the end of December 2019, A friend had a layover in the business lounge in Seattle on a return flight from Europe to San Francisco. At the same time, a direct flight from Wuhan came in. He spent 3 hours in the lounge waiting for the flight to SFO, ate at the buffet. A few days later, he said he became deathly sick. Fever, coughing, and said he felt like he was going to die. His wife became very sick shortly after…

There are a lot of anecdotal stories like these, but the idea that Covid was circulating widely in the US before January just isn't consistent with the evidence on the ground. Trevor Bedford has written about this several times [1], and he would know, the phylogenetic work he and his team have been doing is one of the most sensitive instruments we have in figuring out how this thing spreads. So this basically boils d…

- corona has been traced in Wuhan back to Sept, 2019

- Italy claims corona was in sewage around that time

- corona is highly contagious

- the US received 100,000 passengers/week from Wuhan and Shanghai until flights were stopped (then passengers passengers routed through other airports)

So corona was likely in the US in late 2019, but with only 1/1000 dying from it, could have been unnoticed for a while.