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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

#201

Post by eightysixfour »

ricksunny wrote: post #198
eightysixfour wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of those areas where our day-to-day probability heuristics do not align with the actual probabilities. So, as an individual, trying to decide which theory makes the most sense is a Sisyphean task. For example, I have seen a lot of comments that the closest natural COVID reservoir is 500 miles away, that sounds like a lot! But the average tractor trailer can cover that in a day no problem, so our h…

> we can afford to wait and let experts do their jobs We can emphatically not expect the experts to do their job. Those cited as having the most expertise (virologists who undertake gain-of-function research, symbolically under the auspices of HHS’ toothless P3CO regulation framework) have the most to lose from a finding that the pandemic’s source was a lab leak. They lose all the grants and public financial support,…

Scientists are human, and they will make mistakes, the benefit is that there are many of them with different incentives. The "Blocked Virology" twitter account references a lot of previous lab escapes to say that lab escapes are possible, this is good evidence against your point - how do you think we know about the previous escapes? It wasn't a random group of technically-minded individuals, it was experts that tracked it down.

The level of arrogance necessary to believe that any "technically minded" individual can find where the virus originated is mind blowing to me. Logic isn't the end-all-be-all, for many fields you must also have knowledge. We should not ignore the blindspots that deep knowledge can introduce but to just dismiss it is absurd.

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

#202

Post by dang »

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.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751680.

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

#204

Post by eightysixfour »

loveistheanswer wrote: post #67
eightysixfour wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can say the vast majority of us are not qualified to answer the question either way though. It's also worth noting that even the leading experts can get these things wrong, as was the case with the Sverdlovsk lab leak. Soviet authorities covered it up by blaming local meat markets, and leading US experts concurred with them, only to reverse their conclusion 6 years later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk…

Absolutely, without multiple trust-worthy first-person accounts backed by evidence, the likely best we can hope for is an eventually-consistent story that we are "pretty sure" about. Considering the size of the impact on the world, that will take a long time.

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

#205

Post by spaetzleesser »

hnbad wrote: post #128

While interesting on a purely intellectual level, I think people unhealthily obsess over this. Epidemiologists have warned about the possibility of a pandemic for years. They've even been pretty clear about factors that manifested in SARS-CoV-2, like it having flu-like symptoms and originating in China. Whether the virus leaked from a lab, from a chicken or from some guy eating a bat, doesn't matter. This was going t…

Agreed. Putting blame is not helpful at the moment or at best a sideshow. What counts now is how to deal with the situation. Knowing that China is to blame or not won’t save lives.

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

#206

Post by andi999 »

cameldrv wrote: post #100
eightysixfour wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" d…

Sources, please.

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

#207

Post by amznthrwaway »

temp8964 wrote: post #174
powerapple wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason behind it is that almost 70% asian experience racism, and we don't see British people being attacked in street randomly

"almost 70% asian experience racism"? Only if you mean how college admission in the U.S. discriminates against Asian kids.

Hey @dang — I know you love to let dumb racist shit stand on this website, but where do you draw the line?

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

#208

Post by cicero »

lamontcg wrote: post #170

All of this can be explained by a real simple alternative hypothesis. Farmed animals like minks and racoon dogs were kept in cramped breeding conditions. Rhinopholous bats infected with sarbecoviruses are also present in Hubei. Those bats probably roosted above the animal pens and shit down on the animals below for years. The animals would periodically become infected. Eventually through mutation or recombination a s…

An alternative hypothesis does not rule out the other possibilities, even if it provides a better explanation. What matters is what actually happened, not what provides the neatest explanation.

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

#209

Post by jeduehr »

ricksunny wrote: post #198
eightysixfour wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of those areas where our day-to-day probability heuristics do not align with the actual probabilities. So, as an individual, trying to decide which theory makes the most sense is a Sisyphean task. For example, I have seen a lot of comments that the closest natural COVID reservoir is 500 miles away, that sounds like a lot! But the average tractor trailer can cover that in a day no problem, so our h…

> we can afford to wait and let experts do their jobs We can emphatically not expect the experts to do their job. Those cited as having the most expertise (virologists who undertake gain-of-function research, symbolically under the auspices of HHS’ toothless P3CO regulation framework) have the most to lose from a finding that the pandemic’s source was a lab leak. They lose all the grants and public financial support,…

Actually a lot of virologists are also critical of GOF.

Just look at public health people, epidemiologists. Folks like Andrea Sant, Michael Osterholm, David Topham, etc.

These folks criticize GOF all the time, and are a big part of the group that helps write regulations to make Virology research safe.

But you know what these same virologists also don't believe? That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab.

That should tell you something.

Science is adversarial, and virology is no exception.

That's why when consensus exists about something, you should respect it. There is quite a large consensus about this one.

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

#210

Post by itssssotrue »

jeduehr wrote: post #164
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…

Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, and a few months back I wrote a very lengthy and involved piece full of sources. And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is. And how misguided your point 3 is. The post also won a "best of r/science 2020" award! You can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

The fact that you state that your article won a "best of r/science 2020" award is a bit like stating you came in first at the special olympics.
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