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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

#101

Post by xiphias2 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #20
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.

What is the actionable "fix", though? I mean: there are very real questions to be asked about gain-of-function research. There are other questions to be asked about standards for lab safety. But we should be asking these questions anyway , especially now that we've seen how devastating a real pandemic can be. Whatever happened in Wuhan it seems like the primary evidence is gone now. Trading in unverifiable theories a…

One actionable fix is not putting virus labs in big cities (just like Nuclear and industrial plants), the other is stronger regulation of animal markets. Both make sense independent of where the virus originated from.

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

#102

Post by disambiguation »

endisneigh wrote: post #42

Every time this comes I ask - "so what?" So again, I ask - even if it's true, so what? It's impossible to conclusively prove, and even if proven what exactly is proven? That an accident occurred? OK, so what? The article attempts to answer this: > The vitriol also obscures a broader imperative, Relman says, which is that uncovering the virus’s origins is crucial to stopping the next pandemic. Threats from both lab ac…

> It's impossible to conclusively prove

no it's not. it might be impossible to prove the negative, but if it did come from the lab there should be physical records and first hand witnesses.

> so what

so maybe we make it a point to have the lab shut down so this doesn't happen again? maybe we publicly acknowledge there are secret teams working on secret science and viruses that can kill people en masse?

but you have a point, it's always easier to embrace nihilism than tackle hard problems head on.

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

#103

Post by johncena33 »

endisneigh wrote: post #42

Every time this comes I ask - "so what?" So again, I ask - even if it's true, so what? It's impossible to conclusively prove, and even if proven what exactly is proven? That an accident occurred? OK, so what? The article attempts to answer this: > The vitriol also obscures a broader imperative, Relman says, which is that uncovering the virus’s origins is crucial to stopping the next pandemic. Threats from both lab ac…

By that logic, we shouldn't have judicial systems. We shouldn't have any post-mortems. There shouldn't be any kind of accountability.

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

#104

Post by ChemSpider »

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,…

> in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past,

Not correct. All previous SARS outbreaks were in a totally different places (~1000 km away).

Prof. Shi (石正丽, the head of the Wuhan virus lab) herself said in her March 2020 interview that she was totally surprised of a SARS outbreak in Wuhan. It is not a location where it was expected.

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

#105

Post by draw_down »

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.

> it's not xenophobic, but xenophobic people really love to talk about it. that's the problem with the discourse.

AKA, "you're not allowed to say that". The problem with the discourse is that it exists; its existence is problematic. (Considered problematic, I'm not claiming that)

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

#106

Post by COGlory »

The evidence is circumstantial, but there has yet to be any evidence ruling it out. To be clear, the lab leak hypothesis is always possible. Things can always leak out of labs, let's not kid ourselves.

Some things (going by memory here) that seem to support the hypothesis:

1) Major point of differentiation for this virus is that compared to it's closest known relatives, it has acquired a furin site (eukaryotic protein cleavage site) that enhances its virulence.

2) That furin site RNA contains a non-canonical amino acid codon

3) That non-canonical codon contains a restriction site that could easily be used to track, whether, say, your added furin site is surviving multiple cell passages, by performing a restriction digest and running the fragments on a cell.

Like I said above, it's circumstantial, but this is all very normal. Both adding the furin site (how does coronavirus evolve into something more virulent?) and tracking it that way. Then all it takes is someone to get infected (EVERYONE working in biology has broken at least one lab safety rule in their life, even in BSL4) and either not be symptomatic and realize, or not say anything.

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

#107

Post by lazide »

brigandish wrote: post #69
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.

> but xenophobic people really love to talk about it All too often I see this used as the standard for labelling someone a xenophobe and it becomes a classic case of begging the question. Since we all agree it's not xenophobic to speak about it, perhaps it's time we wait for actual xenophobia before making what should be serious accusations?

Since some of the very first discussion of the topic in public was by the president using it as a political football alongside a trade war with China and a nontrivial amount of public fear and aversion to random people that happened to look Chinese, that well is pretty solidly poisoned at this point?

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

#108

Post by lancebeet »

lhorie wrote: post #75
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.

> has poor wet market sanitation practices Honest question: Is that a fair/accurate generalization to make? If Hell's kitchen episodes and accounts from food industry workers are any indication, sanitation practices in food handling establishments elsewhere are not necessarily always stellar either. And surely China has some equivalent of WholeFoods? One ought to be careful not to attribute a characteristic different…

>If Hell's kitchen episodes and accounts from food industry workers are any indication, sanitation practices in food handling establishments elsewhere are not necessarily always stellar either.

The issue with wet markets isn't the sanitary practices of their workers so much as the fact that meat and other food is handled in very close proximity to live animals being slaughtered, and this combined with a large volume of foot traffic. Granted, I haven't seen all episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, but I've never seen slaughter of any kind taking place at a restaurant in that show, let alone at a restaurant that is visited by tens of thousands of people each day.

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

#109

Post by s5300 »

brigandish wrote: post #69
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.

> but xenophobic people really love to talk about it All too often I see this used as the standard for labelling someone a xenophobe and it becomes a classic case of begging the question. Since we all agree it's not xenophobic to speak about it, perhaps it's time we wait for actual xenophobia before making what should be serious accusations?

I'm not sure if I'm reading this incorrectly and misinterpreting...

But Asian hate crimes are waaay up since the beginning of Covid-19

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684

Do you not call this xenophobia?

It would be my elementary understanding that this rise in hate crime against Asians may be related to the President of the U.S. aggressively referring to the virus as the "china virus" and broadcasting that this was all China's fault during this time.

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

#110

Post by 8note »

endisneigh wrote: post #42

Every time this comes I ask - "so what?" So again, I ask - even if it's true, so what? It's impossible to conclusively prove, and even if proven what exactly is proven? That an accident occurred? OK, so what? The article attempts to answer this: > The vitriol also obscures a broader imperative, Relman says, which is that uncovering the virus’s origins is crucial to stopping the next pandemic. Threats from both lab ac…

The biggest so what is that if it's a lab leak, the failure can be analyzed and improvements be made to the safety process
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