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

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

#411

Post by voidfunc » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #395

voidfunc wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is definitely evil by western standards.

We're pretty deep into "I support this lab theory for unrelated political reasons", but hey, it's Friday night, I'll get sidetracked. Their government has more support from their people than ours does -- ours is capped at 50% approval. So go whole hog or go home. Hair-splitting is for cowards. Either include the people or, if you'd like, you can start wondering why they think that, maybe they have more context and th…

Youd support your government too if it massively raised yours and your neighbors standard of living within a 30-40 year period. The Nazis did that too and were wildly popular.

But evil is evil. And theres a really bad and consistent track record.

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

#412

Post by cambalache » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

If the virus were originally from the US and not China, 99% of the commenters here will be scoffing if a letter signed by MBAs,Zoologists, Industrial Engineers, Journalism students all from Russia and China were requesting total and full access to the US record, institution and land like this letter is requesting, especially after a panel of ACTUAL experts from WHO minimized the possibility of the lab-leak option.

There are 2 rules in this world. One for white-dominated , rich, western countries and other for the rest. Racism, ethnocentrism and hypocrisy have been and will be human traits impossible to eliminate.

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

#413

Post by jeduehr » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #392

jeduehr wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spend an awful lot of time attacking me and not very much time attacking my arguments. That's not very scientific of you. I said I had no way to know you were actually a virologist, which I didn't. It isn't really important to the discussion though, as I said. Can we talk about this like adults? Thanks. I'm only gonna address the science in your post from here on out. I want to make it clear I never insulted you…

>You spend an awful lot of time attacking me and not very much time attacking my arguments. That's not very scientific of you. I said I had no way to know you were actually a virologist, which I didn't. It isn't really important to the discussion though, as I said. Can we talk about this like adults? Thanks. Unfortunately that is impossible for two reasons: 1) Because you have inextricably tied your argument to who y…

1200 mutations away from RATG-13 is how significant exactly? I will propose that it is not particularly significant. One virus I work with, I have 14 variants ranging from 300 to 500 base-pair differences. That is from passing in a laboratory only. I have one variant that has a 14000 BP deletion! (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7217056/#mmi144... TABLE S2) However, it is noteworthy for that reason. That said, these are dsDNA viruses with comparatively much slower mutation rates. 1200-base differences are almost nothing.

You're comparing apples and oranges. 14 mutational sites across a virus with 17k ssDNA genome is not comparable to RATG-13 vs SARS-2, which have not just 1200 mutations different, they're spread out over HUNDREDS of SNPs.

That's the important comparator. And why it will take so long to mutate one into the other by natural mutation rates.

>The two non-canonical arginines don't make it less likely?

Not particularly. CGG exists in MERS 15 times. NL63, 29 times. It even exists twice in a row in Human coronavirus 229E. Throughout all of the known alphacoronaviruses (94 described) CGG exists 1575 times. In betacoronaviruses, it exists more times than my processor can count without hanging, and I believe it tops out at 9,999 events.

I just ran blastn to figure that out. Using these datasets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/coronavirus/genomes/

Why is it so unlikely that synonymous mutational drift over the course of 70 years of infections in millions of viral generations could create these arginine codons that are not the most optimized but still work in the mammals this virus infects? CGG works. It makes an arginine when this virus infects its host.

Why couldn't it be a recombination event between SARS-2 and one of the known coronaviruses with an extremely similar cleavage site? We know already coronaviruses have recombined with viruses totally outside of their family on occasion: https://www.virology.ws/2016/10/27/genome-recombination-acro...

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

#414

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #254

arcticbull wrote: post #127

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/

The fact that this particular theory reaches the front page of hacker news every week, despite zero evidence besides the existence of a lab.. hey, we're just asking questions, here, right? Frankly, it would be irresponsible NOT to provacatively suggest this thing we have no evidence of, repeatedly.

[deleted]

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

#415

Post by COGlory » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

abandonliberty wrote: post #409

COGlory wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to nitpick. I don't believe there's evolutionary pressure to evolve this. Evolution is (going to piss some people off) almost entirely random. There may be purifying selection but that has an entirely different set of properties than the idea of Lamarckian evolution. Edit: Perhaps to clarify, what I'm trying to say is that evolution does not have foresight. And this is not my opinion, but merely that of Eugene…

I hate to nitpick. How do you end up bringing Lamarckism into this? It's thoroughly discredited, and misleading to call it 'evolution'. Did you just travel here from the late 19th century? Mutations are entirely random, usually deletrious. Evolutionary pressure is the selection for fitness.

Actually, CRISPR/Cas is a fantastic example of lamarckian evolution.

What I'm trying to say is that it's not pressure into with evolution, but rather, random mutation + purifying selection = evolution of new traits.

Organisms can't determine what they need to evolve to. There is no guidance of "evolve to this", but rather - "entirely random evolution maybe I won't die yay" - everything that isn't useful dies.

So saying that organisms can evolve to something is a little misguided because they have no specific objective in mind.

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

#416

Post by nyolfen » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #264

ChemSpider wrote: post #252

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…

this pulling rank thing might work better on reddit, but if you want to make an argument you should give your audience the courtesy of actually making one

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

#417

Post by _tik_ » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

lostinquebec wrote: post #298

NineStarPoint wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand how this works, so forgive my ignorance. Wouldn't the Wuhan lab be able to disprove this really easily? How often do they sequence viruses? Couldn't they show categorically that COVID-19 is not a descendant of a virus they were working with/on?

In politics controlling narative is more important than the truths. PRC govt paranoids US will control the narrative into another iraq's WMD. The PRC looks at this issue differently US.

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

#418

Post by refenestrator » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #411

refenestrator wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're pretty deep into "I support this lab theory for unrelated political reasons", but hey, it's Friday night, I'll get sidetracked. Their government has more support from their people than ours does -- ours is capped at 50% approval. So go whole hog or go home. Hair-splitting is for cowards. Either include the people or, if you'd like, you can start wondering why they think that, maybe they have more context and th…

Youd support your government too if it massively raised yours and your neighbors standard of living within a 30-40 year period. The Nazis did that too and were wildly popular. But evil is evil. And theres a really bad and consistent track record.

The Nazis were not wildly popular, they were a minority government, and they definitely did not improve material conditions for their people. World War II fucking sucked. They barely held on by being at war, stirring things up against foreign enemies, and getting lucky against assassination attempts. Peace would have ruined them.

The Chinese government is not at war. They are vastly less at-war than the US is. They have no rally-around-the-flag effect and yet their people still like them better than we like our government.

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

#419

Post by R0b0t1 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #353

Banyonite wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a rather detailed description of circumstantial evidence that leans towards the gain of function statement: https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

Hi, Yuri makes a few mistakes in this. 1) Chimeric viruses (copy and paste) are what scientists make in the lab. They take a piece of one virus and paste it into the genome of another, en masse. This is very different from what SARS-2 is, which is more accurately described as a "mosaic" (lots of little changes all over the genome). This is much much more difficult (if not very close to impossible in the case of SARS-…

Without explicitly supporting the theory it is a loosed weapon, I think your estimation of technology is off. Typically military technology will lead by about a decade, maybe more. So all of the rest could be explained, a little paranoically, as intentional action.

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

#420

Post by phyalow » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

drran wrote: post #299

phyalow wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia there are 56 BSL-4 labs globally, I cant find any good references on the amount of labs (BSL-3/BSL-4) doing GoF research on coronaviruses, but I cant imagine it is a significant amount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_... There is one fascinating article I came across published by Nature in 2017 which has all sorts of innuendo given the state of facts on the ground t…

How many of them had a major incident between September-December 2019?

Probably only one.

There is strong tertiary evidence that patient zero was a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher named Huang YanLing 黃燕玲, this has all been scrubbed from public memory. The wayback archive links still hold up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU (links are at the bottom of the video description).