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

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #452

jeduehr wrote: post #353

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explicitly elsewhere that if SARS-CoV-2 arose from a lab accident, he believes it arose from manipulation of a novel, unpublished virus collected by the WIV from nature.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…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:50 AM UTC

Banyonite wrote: post #144

eightysixfour wrote: post #55

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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:…

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...

Post by mushishi » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

natch wrote: post #326

jeduehr wrote: post #236

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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…

> you cannot take any virus known in nature That is such a straw man. I seriously doubt anyone, much less a signatory to the recent open letter (many with experience and knowledge far beyond yours) would have claimed they can take ANY virus and transform it to ANY OTHER virus. Your green handle just lost any respect I might have extended to it.

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

twobitshifter wrote: post #258

jeduehr wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I do. I have A) direct relationships with the people who study viral biodefense at USAMRIID and serve on the government panels, and they were very surprised to hear about these cables. They didn't find the authors credible at all. One is an entrepreneur and the other a career diplomat. And for all those who don't have a PhD in the subject or know the people who know people, B) it's detailed closely in this w…

>The U.S. delegation was *led* by Jamison Fouss, the consule general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. The first article lists the “leaders” of the delegation only. Diplomatic business always needs diplomatic leaders, so it doesn’t tell us anything of the Doctors who were with them. Reading the rest of it, there’s a very convincing case that China is h…

Post by tim333 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

moosey wrote: post #113

The most likely candidate for this virus, and most future viruses that produce pandemics, will be environmental destruction and animal agriculture. We know there are novel viruses out there, too many to count. Even if this started in a lab the most likely reason is that scientists need to study the viruses that we will be coming into contact with as we commit, as a species, to more environmental destruction. I'm real…