It will be interesting if the cause of the pandemic can be pinned down to specific time, place and person
Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
281–290 of 1001 posts
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#282the elephant in the room that became too controversial to question. Solid post
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are mixing two theories here: A) A lab leak B) Gain of function research. My understanding is that A) is very much possible because it has happened before (SARS), but we have no evidence yet (and might never acquire). For B) however, from my limited understanding, there is no strong evidence. We only know about a fraction of existing coronaviruses out there and given we observe one, that has caused a pandemic, th…
Isn’t he referring to a lab leak of a virus which was engineered with ‘gains of function’. I’m particularly convinced of this theory because it explains the glaring weakness of the Covid-19 virus to UV radiation (ie sunlight). If Chinese researches were modifying viral samples to gain functions (evolutionary or otherwise), weakness against sunlight is a believable oversight, considering it wouldn’t have been subjecte…
Huh? Do most viruses thrive in UV radiation?
I thought UV resistant organisms were usually referred to as extremophiles because it's so infrequent
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the evidence is there's a relevant viral research lab in the epicentre with known history of safety issues and no animal transmission link have been confirmed.
Epicenters of a disease like this (respiratory disease with asymptomatic transmission) are likely to be in an urban area, so it's not surprising it's in a large city. In a typical city the size of Wuhan, what are the odds it has some sort of viral research lab? If this happened in (picking a city at random...) Chicago, you could work backwards, find a viral research lab in say, University of Illinois, and make the sa…
Well, we know for a fact that the outbreak started in Wuhan, not in Chicago. Had it happened in Chicago, am certain the university lab would be under suspicion.
And no, the vast majority of cities do not have viral research labs.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. The virus did not originate in our own house. Seems like a deflection to say we should focus on ourselves when we're starting at evidence that Chinese missteps could have caused a global pandemic that has killed millions and upended life for billions. 2. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We should also acknowledge that an investigation much earlier on could have happened if it were not for Chinese government obstruct…
1. Even if this particular virus didn't originate in our own house, if we want to demand openness and security from other countries, we in the US should start by being open with records of accidents and enhanced measures to prevent future accidents.
Safety issues at US labs are not kept secret, as the author of the linked article has literally reported on them before, and they have also never caused a deadly global pandemic.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same thought. Maybe it's just the crowd I run with, but criticism of gain-of-function research (certainly including informed speculation of a lab escape for this coronavirus) seem very mainstream to me.
I believe grand-parent was talking about a lab leak, not necessarily with gain of function research being involved, and scientists dismissal. Which is not a dismissal at all. What scientists are saying is that both zoonotic transfer and lab leak are plausible, but that we don't have evidence for the latter (yet!) and the former is more likely. In many media articles this simplifies to 'scientists say virus origins ar…
>the former is more likely.
Is this likelihood differential being calculated using data, or is it just a hypothesis?
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#287As a layperson whose activism only amounts to charitable donations, yard signs, and voting, why should I care whether this virus was a lab escapee or naturally spread?
This is an earnest question, not a blind "I don't care". I think this is interesting, and I can see some amount of merit in these claims, but at the end of the day it doesn't feel like it matters to me which one it was. It seems like the only change would be "China gets more bad PR" and maybe American racists use this as an excuse to be more racist.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#288Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
> We should get better at responding fast and saving lives
If the whole pandemic could’ve been avoided, that’s part of getting better at this.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#289My understanding of the author's central thesis is this: the US, despite its world-class virology and disease study labs, regularly has lapses in procedure that regularly lead to situations in which the public might be exposed. Given that this is happening in our own backyard, we might reasonably expect countries of similar status (like China) to experience similar lapses. That reads as reasonable to me, but raises a…
The biggest difference between all of those and this virus is that those were leaks of already-known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 wasn't known to exist before 2019 and there's no known precursor virus. There's a somewhat closely related virus that infected the miners in Yunnan but it was only 96% similar. There's nothing at all in this article on how SARS-CoV-2 was discovered or created.
The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. They've thrown away their wastewater samples, there's some evidence WHO found of SARS-CoV-2 spreading locally prior to December 2019, but no backtesting of any samples. Nobody seems to be looking at the bats in Hubei for sarbecoviruses.
By blocking study of the zoonotic origin of the pandemic, they can use the theory it was imported in food for domestic propaganda. For external propaganda they're happy to have conspiracy theories flying about this lab leak theory creating a "firehose of falsehoods" and distractions. They can rely on American scientists to get engaged with the conspiracy theory and debunk it, wasting their efforts and then they can use that also for domestic propaganda.
Meanwhile nobody gets fucking outraged that China isn't properly investigating the origin of the virus and isn't aggressively looking at the bats in Hubei and any animal farms in the surrounding area. My suspicion is that animal farms (like minks) functioned as a bioreactor that had many opportunities to spillover from bats and then the close contact allowed it to spread well and mutate to optimize it for a more human-like ACE2 receptor, then the mink contact with humans allowed multiple spillover events until it started to spread epidemically in humans.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is irresponsibility propagating a conspiracy theory and elevating its status in the public’s mind. I’m a bioscientist. It’s frustrating to respond with evidence and in good faith, and be downvoted by those who simply disagree. But sadly it appears that the loudest voice prevails over reason. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00599-7
I, like many others, would truly like to be pointed to resources that can help me understand what would lead bio scientists to this conclusion. Make no mistake, I am super well aware that I lack all the grounding to understand the explanation. But can you point me in the right direction? The context surrounding what you are saying must be learnable. At least to some level.
Your request is admirable! Here’s how I go about gathering info:
Google “covid 19 origin evidence”, look for academic publications or scientific journalism that is well-cited & from reputable sources, eg
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5 [2] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-05-09/was-the-cor... [3] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientis... [4] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/coronavir...
We really need to do better with scientific communication. As scientists we are evaluated too much on our communication with other scientists (ie paper publishing), while communication with the public is not weighed much for career advancement. I wish this structural problem would be discussed more so it can be addressed.
But not all of this is on the scientists. The public must do better. We can’t just blindly trust what a senator says on Fox News for political expedience, or “trust our gut”.