Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

technologyreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 662 posts

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#81

Post by [deleted] »

endisneigh wrote: post #79
engineer_22 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example: one of your local health department's jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food. Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency. Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they…

I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to r…

[deleted]

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#82

Post by engineer_22 »

endisneigh wrote: post #79
engineer_22 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example: one of your local health department's jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food. Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency. Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they…

I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to r…

Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks!

If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#83

Post by infogulch »

learnstats2 wrote: post #17
gfodor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's Razor doesn't really apply to this one, because each side has different priors on which theory is actually the "simplest." Given that, as far as I know, we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan - something which a) should have been likely and b) China would be highly incentivized to root out since it would disprove the lab hypothesis, it implies patient zero was probably in Wuhan. If…

> a) should have been likely Given that coronavirus would not be observable until there is a cluster of symptomatic cases in a city (and a doctor with relevant experience who can observe multiple cases - here 李文亮), I find it highly unlikely that we could observe earlier cases, if they spread less rapidly or outside a city - or even within another city with less institutional knowledge. > b) China would be highly ince…

> China being incentivized to act in that situation, doesn't affect how likely or unlikely that situation was.

China being incentivized to find evidence supporting the CCP's desired image absolutely does affect how likely it would be for such evidence to surface if it exists.

We see virtually no such evidence; we can assume that's not because China's lack of trying to find it; which should adjust our prior against such evidence existing at all. Yes?

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#84

Post by EMM_386 »

metalliqaz wrote: post #27
zthrowaway wrote: post #11

We should really be considering this if we want to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately this theory coming out during the Trump era made people knee-jerk shoot it down for political reasons, and you can also say the CCP is very invested in making sure they don't have pie on their face if this ends up being what truly happened.

The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona viruses). Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with DNA showing it came from pangolins,…

> The problem is evidence. What is the evidence?

I'd wager our intelligence services have it. That's why many who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory.

Forget the politics for a minute with regards to people like Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... they have seen information we don't have access to. How can we say they're wrong on this without seeing the same classified information?

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#85

Post by EMM_386 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #22
modzu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm curious what you would add to biosafety level 4 to tighten it up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_leve...

If there is a leak at a BSL 4 lab that implies that the lab is not strictly adhering to protocols not that the protocols are loose.

We warned about this lab.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

Note part 6.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#86

Post by endisneigh »

engineer_22 wrote: post #82
endisneigh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to r…

Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks! If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.

Yes, I completely agree.

Now would you want McDonalds to research Chipotle or stop outbreaks in their own stores? Seems pretty obvious to me. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Ultimately Chipotle is already incentivized to figure it out themselves, unless the argument is Chipotle is intentionally infecting their own customers?

Going back to the original point - what the USA should do for its own citizens won't change regardless of whether COVID was an accident, from wild game, etc.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

EMM_386 wrote: post #84
metalliqaz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona viruses). Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with DNA showing it came from pangolins,…

> The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? I'd wager our intelligence services have it. That's why many who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory. Forget the politics for a minute with regards to people like Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... they have seen information we don't have access to. How can we say they're wrong on this without seeing the same classified information?

> That's why everyone who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory.

That’s false.

> Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... forget the politics, but they have seen information we don't have access to.

Yes, one would need to forget the politics in order to overlook how selective a misrepresentation this is of “everyone who has seen classified information”, so its clear why you ask us to do that.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#88

Post by ckw »

endisneigh wrote: post #63
engineer_22 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conflict over the investigation is justifiable. It's necessary to understand how the virus got started. If it's lab-grown we will want to be very careful to scrutinize each other's labs. If it's natural we will want to be very careful to scrutinize wild game. The implications of any scenario are broad and complex, but clearly we don't want a repeat of 2020 if we can avoid it. Another point: just because there's s…

Thank you for your comment, but your comment is precisely the kind of comment I disagree with. What difference does it make? Let's say that it's both lab-grown and wild game. OK, so that means we should scrutinize both. OK, then. Now what? No amount of scrutiny can prevent an accident from occurring. It's not as if this pandemic happens every year. We're talking about a once in a century event. Not to mention some co…

If the virus was a product of gain of function research, the primary purpose of which is to reduce the risk of pandemics, then the research becomes much more difficult to justify. The argument I guess becomes then, yeah, periodically we’ll cause a pandemic, and millions of people will die, but we’ll be so much better at dealing with diseases that arise naturally, as SARS and MERS did, that on balance it will be worth the extra pandemics...

Whatever you think about this, it seems unbelievably foolish to locate these labs in the middle of metropolises.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#89

Post by engineer_22 »

engineer_22 wrote: post #82
endisneigh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to r…

Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks! If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.

Good, I'm glad we agree that investigation matters :)

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#90

Post by Nemrod67 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #10
silicon2401 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally the ad hominem fallacy. We should investigate the claim on its own merits, not the merits of whoever is making the claim

Uh-huh, lets have a polite conversation sprinkled with some Latin. Mean while racists are empowered to attach Asian Americans in the street because they "created the virus".

Hyperbole isnt helping anything
Post reply on HN