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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

#261

Post by selimthegrim »

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…

96% is strongly resembles?

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

#262

Post by AndrewBissell »

andi999 wrote: post #206
cameldrv wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This article delves into the spike protein and its furin cleavage site which some have argued looks engineered: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...

Incidentally (or perhaps not?), there is some evidence that the furin-cleavage site is what makes the virus resistant to hydroxychloroquine, which can be countered by combining it with a TMPRSS2 inhibitor: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

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

#263

Post by AndrewBissell »

tinus_hn wrote: post #259
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…

It’s because they have been trained to think: corona leaked from a lab is tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

Heh when can we start discussing the "lab intentional release" hypothesis?

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

#264

Post by jeduehr »

ChemSpider wrote: post #252
jeduehr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I actually ended up responding below to point 3 in particular but I also respond to it in my original post. Very few, if any of these arguments are novel. The reason you will find extremely few people with actual credentials in the science we're discussing in these discussions is that working scientists don't have the time or will to get into these debates with people who wouldn't have the faintest idea how to ac…

Alina Chan seems at least equally qualified and disagrees: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1374108473571557377

Alina Chan, also not a virologist.

She's a geneticst or biochemist. She just uses some viruses in her research sometimes, like basically all biochemists.

Calling her qualified in virus biosafety is like saying someone with a PhD in Visual Arts is qualified as an expert in ballpoint pens because they've used them to draw. Sure they know some things about using ballpoint pens and which ones they prefer, but would you trust them to tell you how to design one from scratch? Or how to fix pens?

Not as much as some guy with a PhD in engineering and design at Mont Blanc, get what I'm saying?

I have also responded to her criticisms substance elsewhere, but she makes some big leaps in judgment that show she hasn't ever worked in a BSL4 lab before. Or studied the nitty gritty of virus genetics in nature before.

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

#265

Post by wisty »

mywittyname wrote: post #149
yumraj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not xenophobic for people from the US.... While racism and xenophobia is real, it has been and is being used very effectively, especially by China but others too, to deflect/blunt genuine criticisms and claims. Just as an amusing example, we talk openly about UK variant, SA variant, Brazil variant - but never talk about original as Wuhan variant - it is simply coronavirus.

It's cuts both ways. Some of the UK Politicians happily throwing around "China/Wuhan virus" got butt-hurt on Twitter when people called the B117 strain the "UK Variant." We shouldn't be using that terminology for variants either. While I understand that people largely use location names for the sake of convenience, it really doesn't feel good to be a person from one of those locations.

Were they "butt-hurt" or were they feigning outrage to point out the hypocrisy of their opponents? I feel the later happens a lot on the internet (and some people even loose sight of the original intent).

It's like "censorship is OK if a private company does it". This makes a bit of sense if you're attacking a Libertarian, but for left wingers to earnestly think that private companies should have the right to shut down discussion they don't like is very odd.

Sometimes I worry that large portions of online debate has been overrun by people making claims they don't really believe because they're a bad slippery slope take on the views of the people they disagree with; and sometimes people have even started to buy the deliberately bad arguments their side has created.

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

#266

Post by cletus »

Look, this is simple: the lab leak theory shouldn't be discounted until the WHO or some independent body does their due diligence on, at an absolute minimum, these points:

1. Account for what coronaviruses Wuhan labs actually have. The Chinese authorities have been circumspect on this; and

2. Examine the virus database that was taken offline right before all this started.

To be clear: I'm not insinuating that this is true or that China has covered something up here. I consider it more likely that no one simply knows (including in China) but for China there's little upside in being open about this so we can explore these avenues of inquiry. This "not wanting to know" isn't uniquely a China problem either.

The WHO simply hasn't done the due diligence warranted to eliminate this theory. That's all.

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

#267

Post by rossdavidh »

rndmize wrote: post #99

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 m…

Absolutely. Lots of issues that are just way too high-emotion right now for rational and objective discussion.

One other reason it's way too hot to discuss right now: it would suggest that scientists were at least partly to blame for the pandemic. Even if you're not Chinese, you might not want to be discussing that idea if you were a scientist yourself.

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

#268

Post by EMM_386 »

jeduehr wrote: post #167
COGlory wrote: post #106

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 protei…

Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical to this one have also been found in nature, and have been generated in nature in very short spans of time (on the order of a few decades, which is what is suspected to have happened with SARS-CoV-2). I describe the evidence in detail in this detailed longform post I wrote on reddit a few months back: Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, a…

> Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical to this one have also been found in nature

I don't believe this is correct.

There are no other examples of a CoV within the sub-genera Sarbecovirus of a species/strain that shows evidence of insertion of a polybasic furin cleavage site.

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

#269

Post by ChemSpider »

jeduehr wrote: post #209
ricksunny wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab

This is a straw man argument. No one is seriously claiming that this is a "cooked up" (artificially created) virus. It could be a natural virus that escaped the lab.

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

#270

Post by jeduehr »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #241
jeduehr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I actually ended up responding below to point 3 in particular but I also respond to it in my original post. Very few, if any of these arguments are novel. The reason you will find extremely few people with actual credentials in the science we're discussing in these discussions is that working scientists don't have the time or will to get into these debates with people who wouldn't have the faintest idea how to ac…

That's fair if you don't want to engage because you feel you don't have time, but the spirit of the website is to have an open discussion. That means people will say wrong things. If you don't have time to engage with that....it's totally fine. But just saying I'm right and dropping a large read goes against the spirt of discussion. No one is forcing you to. If you wanted to just do a general response to everyone jus…

I am engaging, against my better judgement!
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