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The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
181–190 of 578 posts
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The threat is not just external and controllable.
Communist party rule will be in big danger if chinese people start blaming it for this clusterfuck.
Externally, its not controllable, US invaded 2 countries after 9/11, it would be easy to think that politicians will do something or someone more radical will get elected.
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
I find it hard to take seriously any “scientist” that dismisses an idea as a “conspiracy theory” (i.e. a concept developed by the CIA specifically to discredit political opponents) as opposed to using actual rational / scientific arguments. At best, it demonstrates intellectual laziness, at worst a political / ideological conviction, neither of which is a hallmark of a good scientist.
First, "conspiracy theory" these days has a wider meaning, in that it can be used to refer to pretty much any claim that goes against conventional explanations. I'm not a fan of the wide use of this term but it is what it is and it's now basically a useless term in any discussion except for manipulation.
But let's flip this round as the author here is openly heavily weighing his dismissal of scientific support for natural origin by claiming that it is supported by ideological reasons. That's exactly the same as someone dismissing the lab claim for ideological/conspiracy reasons, just the other way round. Natural origin doesn't support the author's ideology, so he dismisses it and has a bias towards evidence for lab origin. The author has previous done this exact some thing with his previous writings, taking a fringe position and dismissing scientific objection that aligns with the scientific consensus as ideology. Basically, this is a subjective opinion piece, not objective analysis.
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…
> 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…
This is complete speculative junk.
> The virus entered humans with it's spike protein already fully adapted to the human ACE receptor protein.
1. Is a partially functional (still infectious) spike receptor protein possible? (you don't know, and present no evidence in this rant)
2. How do you know the virus shows "no accelerated evolution"...partially effective viruses would have a lower replication factor, and not become global pandemic, and would not spread far enough to preserved within the human population as anything of interest.
3. How do you know that a natural virus which was only partially effective at replication didn't in fact encounter favorable conditions when it encountered humans, having accidentally been better adapted for them?
> The fact that it doesn't mutate rapidly indicates it is near a strong local optimum.
4. How do you know that the spike protein - which is highly conserved amongst coronaviruses - can even have a range of mutations and still retain function (allowing viral entry to the cell for infectious purposes)? (you don't, research finds that the spike protein has suboptimal binding to ACE receptors - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239051/)
> This stands in intense contrast to every other zoonotic transfer we know of.
5. Does it? Because no research is proposing this. Research in fact finds that analysis of similar coronaviruses shows that the spike protein is likely the result of multiple recombinations between a few species (https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2020/1/290/5956769).
> Do we have evidence? What is the probability of this pattern occuring in the case of a natural spillover?
6. Do you? Apparently not because there's not a single shred of peer reviewed research you care to link to support your position here, and you've done none of the legwork to support the logic part of your conclusions.
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…
> 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…
> The virus entered humans with it's spike protein already fully adapted to the human ACE receptor protein.
That's not really true. It was adapted to ACE but not perfectly. As the B117 shows it could do better. Coronaviruses mutate slowly and random mutation in the spike protein is a lot more likely to make non-functional than to improve it. It's good enough, not perfect. Evolution likes good enough.
EDIT: but you do raise a good point with how much better than the known coronaviruses' spikes it is. Perhaps there is another intermediate host with ACE2 closer to humans? Sars-Cov-2 infects pretty well lots of animals - almost all the cats, minks, ...
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#186For me it felt allways a bit strange how fast china acted. The virus was very fresh, nothing was known, just a few cases and china totaly locked down millions if people. Two, three months later, when we already had high numbers if cases in the west, lockdowns started in the west also. But everybody said, "we know nothing about this new virus". For me it allways like, china knew much more about the virus early on.
This is easily explained by a combination of past experience (SARS), Chinese dictatorship (Western countries can’t realistically solder people into their homes), hubris (“our medical system is so good that we could easily handle a pandemic”), wokeism (locking borders is evil) and scientific failures in medicine (if it’s not proven by randomised controlled trials, it doesn’t exist). Add a bit of political infighting i…
That's a mix of some 5-6 factors... what does "easily" mean here?
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…
> 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…
This sounds a plausible explanation, but I see one problem: there’s a big fear that the vaccines don’t work on the more infectious strains (South African, Brazilian, Indian, ...). Vaccines target the spike protein. So surely if the spike protein doesn’t evolve (and isn’t responsible for the increased virality of these strains), then the vaccines should still work against it?
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, I don’t read articles written by racists. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2834627 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/on-the-...
And if the article tells the truth? Why would author's racial preferences matter? You might be surprised how much of modern tech was developed by racists and other bad apples. If you are from the US try reading how your rocket / space industry had been developed for example.
This article should definitely be read as an opinion piece, not objective analysis to conclude the truth. Regardless of his personal views it's his methods that introduce a lot of doubt. The author has previously dismissed large swathes of scientific consensus against his publications as ideologically driven. He takes fringe positions and introduces a lot of selection and confirmation bias to support his opinion. He writes very well and some of the ideas are interesting but they should definitely be weighted up against a more balanced analyses.
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is easily explained by a combination of past experience (SARS), Chinese dictatorship (Western countries can’t realistically solder people into their homes), hubris (“our medical system is so good that we could easily handle a pandemic”), wokeism (locking borders is evil) and scientific failures in medicine (if it’s not proven by randomised controlled trials, it doesn’t exist). Add a bit of political infighting i…
That's a mix of some 5-6 factors... what does "easily" mean here?
Parent comment was highlighting that a healthy variety of plausible factors contributed to each respective country's outcome, and not all of them would have to be true to produce such an outcome
Not "easily" in the sense that it's easy to pinpoint the exact recipe, but "easily" in that the opposite outcomes would have been far more unlikely
Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
#190For me it felt allways a bit strange how fast china acted. The virus was very fresh, nothing was known, just a few cases and china totaly locked down millions if people. Two, three months later, when we already had high numbers if cases in the west, lockdowns started in the west also. But everybody said, "we know nothing about this new virus". For me it allways like, china knew much more about the virus early on.
Chinese citizens were visibly angry with what happened in Wuhan, because they saw it as a failure of the govt especially after the same mistake and steps happened with SARS. Their handling, and all of Asia’s handling was deeply informed by their experiences with SARS.