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

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

#91

Post by EMM_386 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
EMM_386 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I changed "every" to "many", I wasn't intending to paint that with a broad brush. But they are making public statements with access to information that we don't have. So who's to say they are wrong?

Personally I am no fan of Trump but on this particular subject I can't say he's right or wrong, and he has more information than I do on it.

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

#92

Post by endisneigh »

engineer_22 wrote: post #89
engineer_22 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

You've completely misunderstood my point. My point is that we're McDonalds - not Chipotle. Should McDonalds be investigating Chipotle's problems or their own? It's really that simple...

If you believe McDonalds in this analogy should be investigating the origins of Chipotle's problems as opposed to resolving their ongoing issue then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

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

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

EMM_386 wrote: post #91
dragonwriter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I changed "every" to "many", I wasn't intending to paint that with a broad brush. But they are making public statements with access to information that we don't have. So who's to say they are wrong? Personally I am no fan of Trump but on this particular subject I can't say he's right or wrong, and he has more information than I do on it.

> But they are making public statements with access to information that we don't have. So who's to say they are wrong?

Anyone with any experience with any public statements any of them have made that have subsequently been subject to scrutiny on virtually any topic is in a position to say that them saying something based on nondisclosed evidence on an issue that aligns with factional/partisan propaganda interests has, at best, zero evidentiary value. (In Trump’s case specifically, his habit of stating falsehoods even when it doesn’t particularly help his case might lead one to conclude it has actually negative evidentiary value.)

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

#94

Post by ericb »

engineer_22 wrote: post #66
ericb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, yes, many who ask this seem to have something political in-mind, so on that score, I kind of agree that there's no "there" there. Aside from that, though, we can consider international treaties against gain of function research? International inspections? Have a debate on whether this type of research is allowed? Create improved international procedure standards for Biolab safety? I mean, it has kill…

You're off by an order of magnitude. Total deaths in WW2 estimated at approx 70 million. [1] Johns Hopkins estimates COVID-19 deaths are approaching 3 million. [2] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Mis-remembered. Number of Americans who died in WW2.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/03/9628119...

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

#95

Post by metalliqaz »

abecedarius wrote: post #61
metalliqaz wrote: post #37

it's not xenophobic, but xenophobic people really love to talk about it. that's the problem with the discourse. of course the irony is that it doesn't even matter. We already know China (1) tried to cover it up, screwing the rest of the world, and (2) has poor wet market sanitation practices that seem designed to cultivate these kinds of diseases. Those issues are already bad enough.

> xenophobic people really love to talk about it Guilt by association + Overton Window enforcement. I guess you're pointing this out and not endorsing it?

that's correct

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

#96

Post by mylons »

kgwxd wrote: post #35
mylons wrote: post #3

we should definitely shout down anyone who says it, though!

Researchers should be discussing it. Until conclusive evidence is found, the only reason to post it on social media is to add fuel to the conspiracy fire, a fire that's inspiring people to kill people that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the origin of the virus.

maybe Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Other multi-billion dollar entities should censor their platforms and stop inciting violence algorithmically? why do I have to self censor because I'm smart enough to consider this with a beginner's mind, and not a bigot's?

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

#97

Post by engineer_22 »

ericb wrote: post #94
engineer_22 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're off by an order of magnitude. Total deaths in WW2 estimated at approx 70 million. [1] Johns Hopkins estimates COVID-19 deaths are approaching 3 million. [2] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Mis-remembered. Number of Americans who died in WW2. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/03/9628119...

Roger that.

Americans killed in WW2: 410,000

Americans killed by Covid: 550,000

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

#98

Post by dang »

mylons wrote: post #3

we should definitely shout down anyone who says it, though!

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. They include:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

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

#99

Post by rndmize »

I feel that for people paying attention to COVID news, this has always been the case; there's never been any kind of conclusive evidence on the origin of the virus (that I've read of). The article outlines three main possible origins - natural, accidental combination in lab, deliberate construction in lab. (There's a fourth option I've seen floating around - deliberate release of a constructed virus.) It seems that most of the scientists in the article are considering the second option; however, right-wing media has apparently in multiple instances sought to take their work to push the third, or even fourth option.

It is thoroughly unsurprising to me that most scientific publications would take a stance against releasing studies or articles considering option two or three, as right-wing media and politicians were/are fishing for anything with a suitable scientific veneer they could throw out as evidence of someone to blame. (And its not hard to see why - telling your constituents they have to deal with job losses, family deaths and lockdowns because someone in China ate a bat leaves people without something to blame, and the politicians tend to be the closest relevant people.) Given the amount of anti-asian racism/crime/murder we've seen spiking in the last year, I think the publications' stances (and the more mainstream media) to lean heavily towards option one is understandable - no one wants to be the used as justification for hate crimes or political action a la the Iraq war buildup.

Perhaps in another year or two things will have cooled down enough that stuff like this can be considered without collateral damage.

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

#100

Post by cameldrv »

eightysixfour wrote: post #55
loveistheanswer wrote: post #23

Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that: 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural" 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a…

I feel like people are doing a poor job distinguishing between "engineered" and "leaked." There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus," but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the result of gain of function research. My personal feeling is that these statements are true:…

I'm not sure you can rule out "engineered as you described above."

WIV had recently published research on, and had an active grant to perform (at the time of the outbreak), chimeric Coronavirus research, and they were one of the two world leading labs in this. In that research, they were transplanting the spike gene from one virus to the "backbone" of another. You could call this "engineering" or "gain of function" depending on your perspective.

The thing that raised people's suspicions about this is that the spike RBD strongly resembles a virus sequence they released recently (Pangolin-CoV), and the backbone strongly resembles another virus they recently published (RaTG13). That suggests that there was some sort of recombination event. That recombination could have occurred in nature, in an animal that was simultaneously infected with two viruses, or it could have occurred in the lab.

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