Live data from Hacker News

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

technologyreview.com

281–290 of 662 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As far as I’m concerned you can start right now, I’m not afraid of ideas. I think however that, unless someone makes a really big mistake, it’ll never be possible to prove such a hypothesis.

Of course; if we wait around for documentary proof of covert operations to emerge it almost invariably arrives long after the point where anything can be done with the information.

There are oddities in the whole timeline which stand out to me. The social media videos of people keeling over in streets and buildings in Wuhan from the virus, which doesn't appear to be a genuine phenomenon of its pathology and therefore looks planted for psyop purposes. The CDC behaving so incompetently around testing and acknowledging the threat of the virus that it beggars belief (see: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cdc-re...). No one from the global ruling class succumbing to the virus even as it claims multiple Covid-skeptical leaders in Africa where its impact is otherwise quite muted. Cuomo, Newsom, and Whitmer implementing policies which grossly amplified nursing home deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. Various maneuvers of public consent management, e.g. "15 Days to Slow the Spread" to get people to start lockdowns, followed by "we have to keep going until we get the vaccines" alongside zero investment in new ICU capacity and even reductions in hospital staff. The obvious wealth transfers and consolidation of the economy away from the middle class and small businesses which has occurred, along with the accelerated adoption of surveillable tech platforms as the primary means of interpersonal communication. Doctors reduced to begging on Twitter for people to run trials on repurposed generic treatments while all the stops are pulled out for the vaccines (even the Washington Post has recently acknowledged that financial incentives and political considerations are preventing cheap drugs from getting a fair shake: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/08/ivermectin-...).

But yeah, certainly nothing I can point to as hard proof.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange how Asian is equated with Chinese. How insulting. It’s often the typical virtue-signaling liberals who group disparate languages, races, religions, and cultures in one monolithic block. What do you mean by Asian that would encourage one to use the term synonymously with “Chinese”? Are you referring to “people with slanty eyes”? White urban liberals do this a lot... to them, all “brown” people are the same. A…

News articles are not equating Chinese and Asian. It seems very obvious to me that those doing racist hate crimes aren't going to ask their victims if they're Chinese or not before attacking them, so you'd see an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in general, not just anti-Chinese hate crimes, and so it makes sense to talk about anti-Asian hate crimes as a whole.

> It seems very obvious to me that those doing racist hate crimes...

Who are doing racist hate crimes?

There is nothing obvious about it.

The media narrative is that Trump’s use of the term “China Virus” or “Kung Flu” has led to attacks on ALL Asians.

I’ve never seen any evidence of this.

And what is disgusting is assuming any old lady anywhere — be she Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, etc— who get pushed or mugged is the result of “anti-Asian racism” fueled by criticism of China.

That somebody would push an old lady because of their dislike of the CCP, is unbelievable enough. But, now I’m supposed to believe some mysterious ‘racists’ are harassing Japanese people because they dislike the CCP...

Where’s is the evidence for this ‘obvious’ state of affairs?

It’s absurd on its face.

Their is more ‘racism’ against Chinese from Vietnamese populations for instance... and vice versa. Ditto for Japanese v. Korean and Chinese v Japanese.

The fabled ‘white supremacist’ out there certainly know the difference between the various ethnicities. Your fabled red-neck Bubba knows the difference between Chinese and Vietnamese and the rest... many of these red-necked bubbas come from families that fought in the Korean War, Vietnam war, have been stationed in Japan, and took R&R in Thailand.

It seems the only segment of society that lumps them all together are white liberals who blithely assume all “people with slanty eyes” are the same. Just as they do with all “brown” people.

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

#283

> The virus does have an inexplicable feature: a so-called “furin cleavage site” in the spike protein that helps SARS-CoV-2 pry its way into human cells. While such sites are present in some coronaviruses, they haven’t been found in any of SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relatives. This is false. First of all it should be stated clearer that there has been parallel evolution across several branches of coronaviruses which…

Yes. And making it even more obvious the extremely well known (now) story of how the researcher that discovered the technique of stablizing the spike in it's pre-fusion conformation with proline substitutions (before being acted on by furin proteases) did so while working with MERS-CoV. It's not even obscure knowledge anymore that MERS had the same furin cleavage site. It's filtered out into public non-expert awareness.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of #1 is false? 1.1 Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature 1.2 and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. 1.3 If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"

1.3. you cannot take any virus known in nature (like Ratg-13 for example) and "cook" it for long enough or in any specific way to make it look like SARS-CoV-2. You can't do it in the time we've been able to handle viruses like this or modify them in the ways we can. You'd have needed to start a few decades ago, have tools that we've only just invented, and a huge number of willing test subjects. I cover this in extre…

WIV had many unpublished coronavirus samples, and took their database offline in fall 2019. RaTG13 is just the least distant relative to SARS-CoV-2 that they did publish.

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> I have also responded to her criticisms substance elsewhere,

Link?

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm sorry man, but wouldn't you be able to just reply directly if you feel inclined to disagree with the parent. I'm not saying HN is entitled to your opinion but it feels a little lazy and disrespectful to the parent to say "you're wrong" then drop a link off site to a massive general summary of the situation in order to respond to a few specific points. Especially since point 3 has a source from a decently reputabl…

This idea that everything always needs to be litigated from first principles is stupid. They pointed out what they thought was salient about their write up, if you don't want to read it don't, if you do and think they are wrong, you can write about why.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is frankly an ignorant comment. Many of the best Special Olympic athletes would absolutely thrash your average in shape adult. Many of the men in their respective disability category for the 100m dash are sub 11-second, putting them in or near world class athlete times. And while those aren't Usain Bolt times, and not every category of Special Olympic athlete is equal, your average athletic male would be lucky to be in the 11-12 seconds range.

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

#289

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…

It’s worth noting that in both the Sverdlov case and in this one, world scientists are only being given access to the situation in an extremely controlled fashion. A primary reason we can’t say more on what happened in this case is the CCP’s tight control over access that could help clarify the situation.

Which will always look suspicious, whether it was actually a completely natural virus or not.

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

#290
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not xenophobic to suggest the possibility of a lab leak because lab leaks happen regardless of who's doing the research; even at BSL-4 facilities, mistakes are made. And also because there were two separate SARS-CoV-1 leaks/outbreaks from Chinese labs which the PRC admitted to. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC403836/

There are also cases isolated from US blood samples taken before any known infection in China's outbreak, so the racist nature of this discussion is really misplaced. In reality, statements about the origin of this virus are almost purely geopolitical speculation, and it is from these politics that racism is injected into the etymology. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-01/covid-inf...

The First covid-like symptoms were registered in November 2019 in Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh11FtfaP0

Post reply on HN