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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?

#151

Post by roenxi »

ximeng wrote: post #122
novaRom wrote: post #66

There is an interesting peer reviewed paper published last month with analysis of existing facts about the origin of covid-19. A part from their conclusion: More than a year after the initial documented cases in Wuhan, the source of SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be identified, and the search for a direct or intermediate host in nature has been so far unsuccessful. The low binding affinity of SARS-CoV-2 to bat ACE2 studied to…

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... Here is a paper that states that the furin cleavage site appears naturally in a number of viruses. I looked into these lab origin theories for the furin cleavage site last year. The problem with it being a laboratory insertion was that although performing an insertion is relatively easy once you know what to insert, generally it’s beyond current science…

> generally it’s beyond current science to independently create mutations for a specific purpose.

Labs are the places where people go to push the boundaries. If we go with lab-leak, it is extremely possible that they had figured something new out. They were doing something novel in there, because they were paid money to do novel things.

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

#152

Post by strogonoff »

adriancr wrote: post #140
astrange wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's a natural sample that escaped a lab, cleaning up the lab doesn't necessarily help anything because it's not the actual reservoir of the virus.

it helps avoid the issue in the future... It would mean countries that have labs would either be forced to allow constant audits and reasonable regulations (such as don't have labs in cities) or face isolation. It would also mean quite a heavy political response towards china if it indeed escaped a lab (which is why they're sabotaging everything even if it didn't...)

> It would also mean quite a heavy political response towards china if it indeed escaped a lab (which is why they're sabotaging everything even if it didn't...)

The threat of such a response to me is part of the problem. This incentivises an insecure player to act counter to the common goal by concealing the facts in order to avoid a scenario of being attacked by other players.

In the end we’re all human and mistakes happen. Regulations, audits, this can be implemented transparently for everyone; if that was the end of it and there was no perceived potential of repercussions, perhaps we wouldn’t have this problem.

(Not to say this somehow justifies the obstruction of the investigation, but IMO it’s something to keep in mind.)

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

#153

Post by makomk »

Clewza313 wrote: post #116
throwaway4good wrote: post #102

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 arrticle 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: http…

So I've been pretty skeptical of the lab theory to date, but: > We visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is an impressive research facility, and looks to be run well, with due regard to staff health. We spoke to the scientists there. We heard that scientists’ blood samples, which are routinely taken and stored, were tested for signs they had been infected. No evidence of antibodies to the coronavirus was fou…

> This is probably the most convincing argument: if they actually had worked on viruses similar enough to plausible be modified into SARS-CoV-2, this would have left evidence in scientific papers etc.

If I remember correctly, wasn't there no evidence in scientific papers etc that the virus RaTG13, which is the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, actually existed until after the Covid pandemic started and they suddenly published information about it?

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

#154

Post by hnzix »

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…

Occam's razor is a heuristic that says to test the most likely hypothesis first. It doesn't make the simplest explanation automatically correct.

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

#155

Post by antoineiomena »

Long time lurker.

Some questions for people that know more about this.

How many Institutes of Virology exist around the world?

Is there a way to know how and by who are they funded?

Is there a way to know which ones were/had been working with coronavirus/sars?

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

#156

Post by Gatsky »

throwaway4good wrote: post #102

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 arrticle 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: http…

This is an entirely unsatisfactory investigation. Given the colossal incentive to absolve themselves of any responsibility, what possible value is there in asking the Chinese scientists questions and looking at what they give you? What would any rational entity do in this situation of causing a global pandemic?

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

#157

Post by ximeng »

zby wrote: post #146
ximeng wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... Here is a paper that states that the furin cleavage site appears naturally in a number of viruses. I looked into these lab origin theories for the furin cleavage site last year. The problem with it being a laboratory insertion was that although performing an insertion is relatively easy once you know what to insert, generally it’s beyond current science…

The natural origin hypothesis is also pushed for ideological reasons - at this level of meta analysis we are at a stalemate. The article was good at revealing that there is not just ideology - but also material interests involved and that the two prestigious letters that were so categorical in dismissing the lab escape hypothesis were quite a bit tainted by conflicts of interests.

I believe the lab origin theory is flawed based on the scientific reasoning, not the meta analysis. I agree that the meta analysis is inconclusive as it is not emphasising the science enough. The feeling I get is China doesn't really want to talk about it because it encourages ideologically motivated people to attack China, and serious scientists are mostly not convinced that this is a lab escape and so don't feel the need to discuss it.

At the same time, China risks looking guilty because they are defensive and try to control the information. All this leaves this kind of article with a seemingly plausible scientific and ideological basis that is difficult for laymen and even scientific journalists to evaluate due to the complexity of the science involved, and not many scientists interested in spelling out why the reasoning might be flawed.

You also see in the quote from the article:

“Yes, but your wording makes this sound unlikely — viruses are specialists at unusual events,” is the riposte of David L. Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow who regards lab escape as a conspiracy theory.

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

#158

Post by eggie »

flukus wrote: post #71
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…

> What this evidence shows is that is appeared already optimized. There are plenty of viruses from animals known to infect humans, viruses that have never been in humans and are not evolved to infect them, this happens alarmingly regularly. Here's a couple you've probably never heard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_bat_lyssavirus , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendra_virus There is absolutely nothing am…

> There are plenty of viruses from animals known to infect humans

Yes, absolutely. AFAIK that's where almost all viruses that infect humans come from.

> it's exceptional because it can pass from human to human

With extremely high efficiency, from the first appearance of the virus! If it were not already optimal, then the initial transmission rate would have been lower, and the genome would have had to rapidly change in the process of surviving. This was seen with SARS1. It's seen with other epidemics. The fact that it isn't seen here is very, very weird. Why did SARS2 not have to adapt to its new host?

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

#159

Post by notahacker »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #130
thu2111 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't support the case for it being intentional. Negligence at best. One of the things Wade demonstrates is that China was most likely doing research on CoV viruses in ordinary labs with nothing more than gloves and a white lab coat. The standard photo of Dr Shi is of her in a pressurised bubble suit but that's bsl4 and virologists don't like working in those conditions because it slows them down. So th…

I don't believe the lab escape was even remotely deliberate; however: > the virus has no characteristics that would make for a good weapon of any kind. Quite the contrary. The virus clearly favors authoritarian societies whose citizens will let their government weld them into their apartments. Just look at the death rate in China compared to the US and Europe. The only free societies that have come out unscathed are…

Pretty much any virus 'favours authoritarian societies' to the extent that stricter restrictions and their observance reduces transmissibility. And pretty much any society is a lot less likely to worry about movement restrictions being illiberal in an actual war.

This happens to be a virus which focuses most of its harm on elderly people who can be triaged out of care where resources are stretched in conflict situations, causes relatively few issues for combatants and spreads in an unpredictable manner well beyond the target population. Its clearly insufficient to undermine the actual fighting fitness of the societies which make no effort to stop its spread, but at the same time it goes round the world killing random noncombatants and likely gets back to your own population via neutral countries. Clearly far worse as a bioweapon than many naturally occurring viruses, especially when you apparently don't have an antidote and your potential adversaries can develop one faster

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

#160

Post by blackoil »

strogonoff wrote: post #129
DoreenMichele wrote: post #124

I don't really think it matters a whole lot whether it jumped species or was created in a lab. I think the issue is that there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet and that fact has somehow fundamentally changed how disease spreads and mutates. We need to be figuring out how to deal with that. Wondering where it came from is mostly neither here nor there. We aren't going to magically stop doing lab experiments i…

The issue with COVID is the precedent of attempts of trying to identify the origin of this new disease being sabotaged for seemingly political reasons (and with no obvious repercussions). It seems intuitive that knowing the origin of the virus (sample escaping a lab or pure nature) could help prevent similar cases in the future or deal with them more efficiently. Is my intuition wrong here?

It may be true, but isn't very surprising. It came when US-China tensions were already at peak and it was from onset was politicised as 'China virus', followed by political attacks by Trump and racial attacks against Chinese/Asians.
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