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

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

#711

Post by freeflight » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

gregwebs wrote: post #617

ajross wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no requirement that bats be transported to Wuhan. It's close to a known bat virus, and that's all we know. There are local bats in Wuhan, needless to say. Other species can easily be involved. The truth is that there is nothing particularly surprising about the way this virus evolved. Fundamentally this is a pandemic like any other. They happen in some species or another every year. And that, more than anyth…

It is exotic to claim that the virus was engineered by humans, but that is not what this article (or myself) are claiming. Just that there is a lab outbreak. Researchers have gone to a particular region of China and otherwise gone to great effort to find these particular bat viruses. I agree it is possible that they could be ignorant of the fact that the virus is in their own backyard. But it must a lower probability…

> But it must a lower probability event that people got infected by such city bats

There have been examples of bats excrement contaminating fruits on fields as a transmission chain. Accounting for these, often undiscovered, interactions is extremely difficult in terms of probability.

> we already know for certain the labs were transporting the bat viruses directly

In research from 5+ years ago, research which warned exactly about the fact how the virus already had overcome critical barriers to infect human cells [0]. A very plausible interpretation here can also be that said research was a warning about things to come, and is now mistaken as the original cause for it.

[0] https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

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

#712

Post by docmars » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #579

docmars wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a pretty loose assumption that _all people_ are using it with ill intent. Anything can be said or used with ill intent, because intent matters and is separate from actual language. That's why we have tone in speaking and writing to help distinguish this. Our nonverbal cues say a lot more than the words themselves. A rise in violence against Spaniards cannot sloppily be attributed to the use of "Spanish…

> I think that's a pretty loose assumption that _all people_ are using it with ill intent. Some people drop the N-bomb without ill intent either. There's plenty of precedent for agreeing that certain words and phrases just can't be used anymore in good faith.

Are you suggesting that those in the Black community using the N-word isn't in good faith?

I don't think generalizations like these are useful or productive because they contradict themselves when you apply any other context to them. It's double-think in its most overt form.

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

#713

Post by ajross » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #695

throwawaygimp wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to build a bat virus research center... i'd put it close to where bats are. So these aren't independent. But your point is still a good one

Bats are everywhere. The specific bats that host the ancestor of COVID-19 are quite a bit far away from those labs. The disease was first noticed near the labs. Looking at the mechanics of the thing¹, I'd put a lab leak on similar odds of some village near the bats being infected and spreading it from there. 1 - I know nothing of their policy and competence to judge those.

> The specific bats that host the ancestor of COVID-19 are quite a bit far away from those labs.

This is wildly misstating the science. That bat virus is a relative, not an "ancestor". And it's not known to be limited to those "specific, far away" bats, that's merely where it was documented. Believe it or not we don't routinely test every animal species for an exhaustive catalogue of virus variants. It's just shotgun science.

And as it happens there was a close relative to covid found on the same continent in a species group that exists in a broad continuum basically everywhere. A bat-to-bat transmission to Wuhan is a bleedingly obvious hypothesis.

And yet we have to talk about all this Andromeda Strain nonsense anyway, based largely on jingoist US politics.

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

#714

Post by freeflight » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

bgandrew wrote: post #604

ajross wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no requirement that bats be transported to Wuhan. It's close to a known bat virus, and that's all we know. There are local bats in Wuhan, needless to say. Other species can easily be involved. The truth is that there is nothing particularly surprising about the way this virus evolved. Fundamentally this is a pandemic like any other. They happen in some species or another every year. And that, more than anyth…

The fact that they didn't find an intermediate host after more than a year of search should tell you something.

It took nearly a century to somewhat establish the geographical origin of the Spanish flu and even these results are still a bit controversial to this day [0].

The reality is that epidemiology is not a straight forward nor simple field of research, finding concrete and solid answers is usually way more difficult than most people assume when they want answers to point fingers.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/18/5298310

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

#715

Post by DoctorNick » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

kiawe_fire wrote: post #710

I look forward to seeing this article being retracted and taken offline, banned from being posted on social media, the author fired, and seeing people "cancelled" for sharing this article anywhere. You know... as happened only a few months earlier to people who wrote similar articles and discussed similar theories with very similar hypotheses, but who were NOT writing for a certain publication of a certain leaning. I…

I look forward to a bunch of HN posters uncritically swallowing State department propaganda.

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

#716

Post by abacadaba » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:17 AM UTC

fendy3002 wrote: post #473

woodruffw wrote: post #158

My 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…

Covid is special because it's highly contagious and has delayed symptoms. However in my opinion, chinese governments (esp. lower levels) like to lower the severity of any issue / risks and they like to repress / solve the issue with local power until it is solved or gets too big. The central gov that like to hide wrongdoings aren't helping either. In case of covid, they either underrate the severity or tried to suppr…

Yup no doubt they fucked up and all the coverup bs cost lives, but there is a 0% chance we would have kept it contained in any major American city.

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

#717

Post by Izkata » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:18 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #607

strogonoff wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An eerily prescient quote from a paper[0] published in 2015, two of the authors of which are with Wuhan Institute of Virology: > Understanding the bat origin of human coronaviruses is helpful for the prediction and prevention of another pandemic emergence in the future. China has clearly contributed valuable research into bat coronaviruses. They had all the motivation to look into these after the first deadly SARS. I…

My impression was that "lab escape" was conflated with "deliberate release" by conspiracy types early on, and once that took hold it became impossible to talk rationally about the accidental escape hypothesis.

What I saw was the opposite: proponents of "came from a lab" were generally clear about distinguishing whether they meant "escape" or "release", while anyone trying to discredit them were the ones conflating the two - by starting with the ambiguous phrase "came from a lab", ignoring the rest of the argument, and then debunking "created + deliberate release".

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

#718

Post by emkoemko » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

kodah wrote: post #649

gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

It's really ludicrous that anyone gets conspiratorial about the CCP spreading a bioweapon that originates in their own country. They snuck military scientists into the US to tap into coronavirus research. The most simple litmus test I can think of is if China led the race for a vaccine, but they didn't. People really need to stop and think, because next time that lab could be in your country. With icebergs and permaf…

we had a issues with the CCP few years back, they shipped deadly viruses out to the Wuhan lab.

"We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret. But what we know is that before she was removed, she sent one of the deadliest viruses on Earth, and multiple varieties of it to maximize the genetic diversity and maximize what experimenters in China could do with it, to a laboratory in China that does dangerous gain of function experiments. And that has links to the Chinese military."

i doubt their narrative because they where not transparent and kept making up conspiracy theories that it came from the US, then it was Italy, frozen fish etc etc all the while preventing any international investigations.. We also know labs do leak and even China had many leaks in the past including SARS and other viruses so its not unbelievable to think it was just a accident and if they where doing gain of function we need to know and we need to figure out a plan and have better systems in place to prevent leaks.

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

#719

Post by refenestrator » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #706

refenestrator wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a cultural thing, it's a universal human/organizational thing.

It’s certainly widespread but the cultural component is important to how strong the reaction is. China certainly isn’t alone in having it but the political stakes are a powerful amplifier.

The cultural component is just flavor.

Who suffered consequences for getting Iraq wrong, or the financial crisis? Fortune passes everywhere.

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

#720

Post by emkoemko » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #524

gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

> This article points out that a lab outbreak could have happened in the United States and many places in the world. We need to avoid demonizing China over this if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak. Then why hide information and prevent world-wide collaboration then?

imagine if this happened in the USA and they prevented any international investigations or collaboration... and instead just started to blame other countries. Then a long time later allow people in who they choose and basically tell them what happened and call that a investigation.