Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#341

Post by hfjfktkrkf » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

daly wrote: post #15

For expert opinion on this subject listen to actual virologists. They do a podcast about 2-3 times a week. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

Ok then. Let's watch TWiV 615, where they interview Peter Daszak, the virologist which headed the recent WHO origin seeking mission in China.

Listen to him talk about how easy is to modify coronaviruses in labs and how they are actually doing this, mixing and matching viruses at 29:50:

> Well, coronaviruses are pretty good... you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot what happens in a coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can bulid a protein, and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this, insert into the backbone of another virus, and do some work in the lab, so you can get more predictive, when you find a sequence.

https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#342

Post by esja » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #327

ryandrake wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worrying about where it came from is misdirection to distract us from the real issue that you pointed out: That nearly all countries totally failed to effectively deal with it and contain the spread, resulting in a body count that should be totally unacceptable. We got extraordinarily lucky that it wasn't super deadly. Imagine if the next COVID is 20X deadlier and hits uniformly across age ranges. We're doomed if we…

And maybe people should not have dismissed it as a crockpot idea that should be dismissed out or hand and had Twitter suspensions over mentioning it. And maybe if it was a leak and the world had been warned of the dangers then they would have locked down movement to and from the origin before it began to spread internationally.

The way China responded to the leak, I don't think they felt it was a crackpot idea. Quite the reverse.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#343

Post by chiefalchemist » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #308

3327 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if it wasn’t CONCEALED by the government in the country of origin, our lives would be different now. Talk about that will you?

We had 1.5 months [1][2][3] of clear warning that this is a serious epidemic. When China locks 35 million people in their homes, and this makes the New York Times, and we don't do anything to respond for another month, and we don't do anything meaningful for a month and half... What we have is a domestic, not a foreign problem. These articles made the news on January 8th, January 23rd, and February 7th. The first tra…

Let's go back even further. There was a respiratory pandemic a few years ago. Perhaps not as deadly but still a pandemic. That resulted in no N95 or PPE stockpile. We knew we dodged a bullet yet no prep for next time?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#344

Post by throwawaysea » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

0-_-0 wrote: post #4

For anyone who wants to set their Bayesian priors to estimate the probability of a lab leak I recommend this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... For example, the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) escaped from the lab twice, both in 2003 and 2004.

Also, the Obama administration banned gain of function research broadly due to "biosafety incidents" at federal research labs in the US. The announcement explicitly called out research on SARS: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-d...

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#345

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #315

boringg wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to this theory. I didn't subscribe to it originally because it seemed to dystopian. However on reading the recent politico article ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin... ) really changed my opinion about it. To be clear I think it would have been an accident at a Chinese government lab that was underfunded and overworked. Seems to me like the likeliest candidate. I don't think t…

What about that article convinced you? All I saw was some concern about safety protocols 2 years before the outbreak, some content free insinuations, and a whole lot of "we don't have any evidence." It's not a crazy theory by any means, but, if it happened, then there's evidence. So, where is the evidence? Literally, where is there any actual evidence it happened?

> if it happened, then there's evidence

Really? Why would there be evidence TODAY? Those bats have likely been destroyed, and all records of sequences taken from them have likely long since been shredded and burned.

There's not that much evidence involved here.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#346

Post by 8note » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

the_jeremy wrote: post #287

As 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 wo…

What does this actually change? If China did indeed release the virus, does that mean I should not take a vaccine? That I should stop wearing a mask?

If China knows and is hiding it, I'm still not clear what that changes. They'll still know to improve their safety practices

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#347

Post by danudey » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

zozin wrote: post #300

hospadar wrote: post #260

Like, 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…

Maybe, just maybe you can care about two things at the same time? Maybe, just maybe, a Wuhan lab leak was concealed by the Chinese gov't to save face, thus shrinking the amount of time we had to respond fast in order to save lives?

Western nations had plenty of time to react, relatively speaking. The US was hit especially hard, though, by policies which dismantled the government's ability to handle this sort of event, the discarding of a practiced playbook for responding to this sort of event, and government and right-wing lies and conspiracy theories.

Given that the US government's response was basically to do nothing until it was too late, and then to do nothing except hinder the states' abilities to respond, it's hard to imagine that an extra six months' time would have made any difference, other than giving them six more months to downplay and dismiss the problem.

So yeah, we can care about whether the Chinese government was trying to save face, but in the end does it matter whether that's the case or not? The only thing we can change is our own countries' responses to pandemics like this.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#348

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #296

hospadar wrote: post #260

Like, 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…

> 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). Then we shouldn't be doing _gain of function_ research on the types of viruses that can cause these outbreaks. > Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign countries we do not…

> we shouldn't be doing _gain of function_ research on the types of viruses that can cause these outbreaks.

Why not? Seriously, this is the "let's just stop developing nukes" argument... someone will and whether we're prepared or not is on us.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#349

Post by jariel » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

hospadar wrote: post #260

Like, 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…

Both things matter a lot.

In particular, if true that it 'leaked' ... it's not like other nations are leaking pathogens which kill millions and cause 5 Trillion in destruction. It would literally change the geostrategic equation overnight and be seminal, defining world event certainly bigger than 9/11. On the scale of a WW.

If it was quasi-intentional (this is definitely not true, but since you speculated...) then it would be an act of war and the most damaging attack on the US (and other nations) ever. The US and the world would have to go to war with China over this. (Again this surely is not the case).

All while the US/EU/Rest of Word 'get better' at the above.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#350

Post by esja » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

onethought wrote: post #322

tkinom wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is indeed "sloppy lab" leak the virus and we don't care, it will happen again.

As has been pointed out, it will happen again no matter what. The vectors of deadly disease occurring are huge. The response is the piece we can properly control.

If it is shown that this occurred because scientists took a virus and made it much more infectious to humans, banning that sort of research would mitigate a lot of the risk.