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

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451–460 of 662 posts

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

#451
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, because of the scientists featured in the above article... None of them are virologists. Petrovsky, for instance, if you look at his google scholar, hasn't published a paper in a virology journal in the 10 years that I looked. He's published in some predatory journals, ones I wouldn't be caught dead publishing in. He's also gotten /close/, I guess, by publishing about tuberculosis. But it really i…

From reading some of your comments here and on Reddit: your tone hurts your credibility.

I find this argument comes most often from people who already are so far down the rabbit hole, I had no chance of convincing them of anything anyway. Not always. But often.

If you read the reddit comments, you'd also see ones like this:

-https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

-https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

-https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/gogzk0/u_shibbole...

-https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

all praising my tone and how I "kept my cool" despite the trolls and sealions. A few similar comments here as well. Sorry it wasn't to your taste. Better luck next time I guess

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

#452

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-…

Deigin has said explicitly elsewhere that if SARS-CoV-2 arose from a lab accident, he believes it arose from manipulation of a novel, unpublished virus collected by the WIV from nature. This makes any arguments based on distance from existing, published viruses irrelevant.

RaTG13 was such a virus (collected 2013, published post-pandemic), but it's very unlikely to be the ancestor for the reasons that you note. No one outside the WIV (and thus, no one beyond the physical control of the Chinese government) knows what other viruses they had in their freezer or database. Deigin has recently published an article claiming to have discovered a novel coronavirus in contamination of agricultural samples sequenced at the same facility:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01533

To be clear, the new virus that he "discovered" absolutely is not an ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, and he absolutely isn't claiming that is; but it's (more) evidence that the WIV had unpublished coronaviruses.

The WIV took their database of viruses down from public access in September 2019. They say this was due to repeated hacking attempts. They haven't restored access, or provided their database in another format (e.g., a dump on a flash drive) that obviously presents no information security risk. Do you believe their claimed reason for taking it down? If not, why do you think they're lying?

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> covid-19 originating outside wuhan entirely, Is this the main stream opinion now? Can you provide a link? Or is this just your personal opinion?

Hi, I actually provided several links filled with sources above. here is the main one you're referencing again: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... Thanks

I live in a rural place in the middle of the USA, but we have a large number of international travelers pass through. I am aware of several local cases that seem very COVID-like that predate January 2020. Two of these I knew about before anyone heard of the outbreak in Hubei. I remember discussing at the time how it was weird to hear of someone in their early 50s to be hospitalized with pneumonia from 'flu'. Anyway I wonder if you have heard any similar reports and your thoughts on the potential for much earlier transmission in the US.

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

#454
post #266

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…

You can be sure that the Chinese have been very thorough at destroying any possible evidence of their potential incriminating evidence.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the american experiment in democracy was to make the government synonymous with the people. certainly that was pulled back a bit by the republican (as in republic, not the political party) elements by our founders, who were themselves 'elites' of the time. in china, the communist party is meant to be the same: a party of (all) the people. certainly xenophobia expresses itself acutely in mediopolitical contexts where…

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the American experiment is about making the government synonymous with the people. The American experiment was all about splitting the governmental power among different entities, keeping the government small and letting the people preserve freedom and power - while still being protected by the government. The constitution is a tool to prevent the government from overreaching…

it's hard to take that criticism seriously when you choose to hang your hat on anarcho-capitalism, a system that isn't even coherent in theory, much less in practice (were it to be). democracy is literally about aligning the government to the will of the people. the US is a representative democracy, which is a compromise borne of the founders' uneasiness with direct democracy (partially because it would mean piercing the sovereignty of the states).

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

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

Deigin has said explicitly elsewhere that if SARS-CoV-2 arose from a lab accident, he believes it arose from manipulation of a novel, unpublished virus collected by the WIV from nature. This makes any arguments based on distance from existing, published viruses irrelevant. RaTG13 was such a virus (collected 2013, published post-pandemic), but it's very unlikely to be the ancestor for the reasons that you note. No one…

Hi, I address this idea in this comment over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758597

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK so if you go back to here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26757986 You don't have any molecular biology refutation that I can find.

Hi that's truly quite rude. I link to several, I have a zillion in my post. Are you arguing in good faith?

Not sure what you're referencing as rude.

Let me go back to my original hypothesis, and then try to restate your arguments, and you can tell me where I'm restating them incorrectly.

My original 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.

You said: >And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is.

I honestly can't find anything that refutes what I said. Please, just paste the line that points out how this is, to quote you, wrong. As in, disproves that compared to its closest known relatives (RATG-13) it has acquired a furin site, which increases its virulence"

I can find absolutely nothing* in either your Reddit posts, or your posts here on HN, that refute this. I can find plenty of things explaining how natural evolution could cause it, but nothing saying that it hasn't acquired a furin site that enhances its virulence that its closest known relative doesn't have.

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

To be fair, you didn't dispute this.

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.

You said:

>how misguided your point 3 is.

OK, let's examine my point #3. It is non-canonical, as in only 5% of the arginines in SARS-CoV 2 contain it. I guess we can get into what exactly non-canonical means, and you do make some points there, but at the end of the day, 5% is 5%, and 5%*5% is 0.25%, so it seems to me that the usage of the term "non-canonical" to describe a site that has a 0.25% chance of occurring is fitting.

OK, so let's talk about the restriction site. You don't dispute the presence of it anywhere, at least not that I can find. Please, if you have something to dispute the presence of it, just paste it in reply to this because I legitimately can't find it. You also don't dispute the usefulness of using a restriction site to track genetic engineering, presumably because it's done all the time.

So with all this in mind, it seems to me like your disagreement with me is not with any of the 3 major points I made, or even the two of those three points you called out in your initial reply. So I'm thoroughly confused by what you're trying to debate. Are you debating the interpretation of those facts? Because that interpretation appears to be almost entirely of your own imagination. Nowhere did I offer (at least not that I can see) an interpretation of those facts beyond speculating that they are a possibility. In fact, my entire first post was just to reframe the argument as I understood it, and comment that it's very difficult to rule out because of the nature of the evidence. For the record, I find the likelihood that it was a lab leak extremely slim, but I'm not going to discount it, especially not concretely.

On the other hand, the post you linked to was very much dancing around any of the concrete arguments about the topic, making absurd insinuations like that people are claiming the 1200 mutations came from engineered Cas9 usage, which I've personally never seen claimed (by the way I'm still waiting for you to address this). All while ignoring crucial facts like that the furin site was an insertion, not a polymorphism.

I'm thoroughly confused by whatever point you're trying to make here. To me, it seems like you've been arguing against words you imagined me saying.

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

#458
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the virus was a product of gain of function research, the primary purpose of which is to reduce the risk of pandemics, then the research becomes much more difficult to justify. The argument I guess becomes then, yeah, periodically we’ll cause a pandemic, and millions of people will die, but we’ll be so much better at dealing with diseases that arise naturally, as SARS and MERS did, that on balance it will be worth…

> Whatever you think about this, it seems unbelievably foolish to locate these labs in the middle of metropolises. Is there a viable other option? Don't these facilities require large numbers of extremely highly educated staff?

Rocky Mountain Labs is located in Hamilton, Montana, population 5080.

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/rocky-mountain-overview

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

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deigin has said explicitly elsewhere that if SARS-CoV-2 arose from a lab accident, he believes it arose from manipulation of a novel, unpublished virus collected by the WIV from nature. This makes any arguments based on distance from existing, published viruses irrelevant. RaTG13 was such a virus (collected 2013, published post-pandemic), but it's very unlikely to be the ancestor for the reasons that you note. No one…

Hi, I address this idea in this comment over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758597

Thanks. That comment doesn't address the database, though. Do you believe their stated reason for taking it down? If not, why do you think they're lying?

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assign non-negligible probability to each of them. I don't know. But I hate the stupid racism and hate around it. COVID-19 attacked every country. With the exception of, like, New Zealand (but it affected them as well... had to shut down their borders, etc). These viruses are a threat to all humanity. I just want us to fight them better and help everyone. I think it's super important that we both simultaneously hol…

Unfortunately, avoiding a new Cold War is something that would take equal effort from both sides. If just one side is eager to wage such a battle, it will happen unless the other side acquiesces at every turn.

Maybe. But annihilating isn’t really in anyone’s interests.
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