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The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

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Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#91

Post by rramadass »

guesst wrote: post #31
rramadass wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a very good point (and thanks for the links). However i would not let China off the hook until we have figured out exactly what happened. If nobody is held "accountable" (for a certain definition of this word) it is bound to happen again and the next time it most certainly will be "biological warfare". This needs to be treated as seriously and as comprehensively the way we treat Nuclear Weapons.

I really think it's just the other way around. The more people make this about China, the less likely we are to find out the truth. If it's used as a geopolitical chess piece, it will get bogged down forever in political mud, which is kind of where the question is right now anyways. People will decide what they think about it based on how they feel about China. That's crazy.

Whether we like it or not, the narrative has already become about China. That is the reality. Geopolitics, Military brinkmanship, Economic realities all are at play here. In spite of all this muddying, our Scientists/Investigators need to work together to get at the truth. Else the Racists/Jingoists/Warmongers will paint a facade to further their nefarious agendas. Condoning it now will truly open the Pandora's box of "Biological Weapons".

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#92

Post by misja111 »

guesst wrote: post #60
inciampati wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if), It seems like we don't have evidence, but the natural evolutionary experiment that's occurred provides a staggering amount. We can see from the virus phylogeny that: 1. The virus entered the human population in October 2019. All known SARS2 sequences are related in a single clade that, under very soft assumptions about mutation rate, would coalesce in late…

If the evidence is that overwhelming, then why are so few researchers saying so? I can understand things being extremely skewed at the political and policy level - that's expected - and I can understand the media being skewed because I'm familiar with that on other issues. But if your argument is right then this is also basically a total collapse of the scientific community. That's harder to swallow. From your commen…

You're a bit too trustful towards the flawless functioning of the scientific community. Scientists are humans and are prone the same group think errors like everyone else. Historical examples are plenty, e.g. Darwin was ridiculed by his peers about his theory of evolution, or the more recent erratic theory that coronary diseases are purely caused by eating too much fat and not by sugar.

In this case, as the article mentions, there was a conflict of interest as well that might well have motivated some leading scientists in the field to campaign against the theory that the Wuhan lab was the source of the outbreak.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#93

Post by swader999 »

misja111 wrote: post #65
molticrystal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bats , horseshoe bats, located in caves approximately a thousand kilometers away have often carried these viruses. [0] And at least 6 times since the year 2000 the collection of these bats have led to humans getting sick. It just takes some fecal matter dust. So a very likely explanation is some low level employees grabbed some bats, got their suits and vehicles contaminated didn't clean things properly, drove do…

Exactly. There was an outbreak in a deserted mine in South China in the early 2000's, 6 cleaning workers got seriously ill with symptoms similar to current Corona. See e.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.5815... The leader of the Wuhan team went there with a team to collect samples and animals. In the early days of Covid, those samples were re-examined and it turned out that the genome of the…

Also,this sars cov-2 virus will not infect bats. That really hurts the 'it came from the bats' theory.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#94

Post by fsh »

saiya-jin wrote: post #82
seymore_12 wrote: post #61

If we apply Occam's razor [1] decision between "Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses" and "Wuhan, there is a wet market where under certain conditions virus can jump from bat to monkey to person" is relatively straightforward But then, we should probably also apply Hanlon's razor [2] "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explain…

I keep repeating this since it seems like folks ignore this quite crucial piece of data which completely changes the whole Wuhan covid narrative - Covid was backdated in blood samples in September 2019 in Italy. They didn't have earlier samples still kept on ice, so its entirely possible it would be there earlier. Since its rather trivial to compare viruses and I haven't seen mention about it being a different varian…

It is worth noting that this was claimed in exactly one publication from researchers that are not experts in the field. The publication has meanwhile earned an expression of concern [1] by the publisher that unfortunately does not give much more details. It is also quite strange that the paper was published in a journal about cancer research.

The other big inconsistency is that the epidemic did not become nonticeable in Italy until late February 2020. If COVID was already present in September 2019, why didn't it spread rapidly like it did anywhere else?

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03008916209877...

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#95

Post by ajuc »

imiric wrote: post #74
bpodgursky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, we could stop doing gain-of-function research for one. This would be a pretty important datapoint on that risk analysis.

I'm a layperson, but AFAIU GoF research in principle is a good thing. It helps us anticipate future viruses, study how they impact humans, and prepare for an eventual outbreak. It's obviously very risky to do, but we should focus on adopting and enforcing better security practices to minimize the risks, not ban GoF altogether.

For one we could make these viruses in some remote base with no people in 100 km radius instead of a megacity with an international airport.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#96

Post by throwaway4good »

Nice layout of the dominating conspiracy theory that is constantly being repeated on various alt-right media.

Basically COVID-19 is the result of evil and illegal experiments setup by Anthony Fauci (US researcher and long time civil servant) at the Wuhan virology lab and covered up by WHO scientists.

It is as idiotic as it sounds.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#97

Post by ajuc »

secondcoming wrote: post #78
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

We don't want to know. That may sound a bit glib but I think it's true. What would be the reaction if we could determine the outbreak was due to an unintentional leak? China cannot reimburse the world for the economic damage covid has caused. It cannot be held accountable for all the lives that have been lost. It cannot compensate the world for the diminished quality of life we've all suffered. But there will be plen…

What's to stop the rest of the world from confiscating chinese overseas assets or writing off loans owed to china?

Resulting economic crisis. There's very few things "too big to fall" that are bigger than China.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#98

Post by swader999 »

guesst wrote: post #60
inciampati wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if), It seems like we don't have evidence, but the natural evolutionary experiment that's occurred provides a staggering amount. We can see from the virus phylogeny that: 1. The virus entered the human population in October 2019. All known SARS2 sequences are related in a single clade that, under very soft assumptions about mutation rate, would coalesce in late…

If the evidence is that overwhelming, then why are so few researchers saying so? I can understand things being extremely skewed at the political and policy level - that's expected - and I can understand the media being skewed because I'm familiar with that on other issues. But if your argument is right then this is also basically a total collapse of the scientific community. That's harder to swallow. From your commen…

Anyone versed well enough to call this man made likely has a lot of skin in the game and doesn't want to risk being ostracized and cast out. It would probably be a career limiting move.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#99

Post by wallacoloo »

trog wrote: post #90
seymore_12 wrote: post #61

If we apply Occam's razor [1] decision between "Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses" and "Wuhan, there is a wet market where under certain conditions virus can jump from bat to monkey to person" is relatively straightforward But then, we should probably also apply Hanlon's razor [2] "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explain…

> If we apply Occam's razor [1] decision between "Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses" and "Wuhan, there is a wet market where under certain conditions virus can jump from bat to monkey to person" is relatively straightforward Heh, what is the Razor or other applicable language construct when someone gives two options and then suggests there…

> it seems simplest that the leading world centre would have excellent safety protocols

There’s an unnecessarily large assumption being made here. We can look at the Wuhan institute’s past and the history of comparable labs to get an estimation of lab leak frequency.

Similarly, there’s a whole bunch of context around things like: what kind of samples did the lab have in its freezers when covid was discovered? In the wetmarket case, what’s the transmission chain from a reservoir through to the market have to look like?

Once you compile all this context, then Occam’s Razor becomes a good tool. But before that it’s just a shot in the dark (kinda like you hint at). I’m not sure any single HN comment is really capable of giving sufficient context for this particular case.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#100

Post by throwaway4good »

throwaway4good wrote: post #96

Nice layout of the dominating conspiracy theory that is constantly being repeated on various alt-right media. Basically COVID-19 is the result of evil and illegal experiments setup by Anthony Fauci (US researcher and long time civil servant) at the Wuhan virology lab and covered up by WHO scientists. It is as idiotic as it sounds.

For an alternative perspective on this - the official WHO report covers the lab hypothesis:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the...

Origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

And unlike the author here, this report is based upon interviews with employees at the lab and various form of documentation provided by the lab. Including health records of the employees.

For more from one of the WHO people:

https://theconversation.com/i-was-the-australian-doctor-on-t...

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

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