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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?

#191

Post by tomp »

dataflow wrote: post #186
tomp wrote: post #177

Earlier 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?

Maybe I should have written “obviously” instead. Basically, no need to invent “non-obvious” factors like “China had prior knowledge of the virus”. It’s definitely possible, but you can explain China’s success vs Western failure without that “hidden” factor as well.

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

#192

Post by pizza234 »

I'm very confused by the article.

There has been an extensive analysis by a virologist on Reddit[¹], who claimed that, very simply, SARS-COV2 is a so-called "mosaic" virus, while man-made viruses are inevitably "chimera" ones. The article does not seem to make this distinction.

The virologist also chimed on HN (besides, calling BS on people who were, out of ignorance, spreading false beliefs), but it seems he's not participating to this post.

It'd be best to have the opinion of a specialized scientist, in order to to have scientific clarity before starting the political arguments.

[¹]=https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

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

#193

Post by novaRom »

zby wrote: post #148
Clewza313 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has anyone compiled stats on lab escapes?

Would be nice to have it on Wikipedia. Here is one 2014's article: https://nationalpost.com/news/a-brief-terrifying-history-of-...

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

#194

Post by altacc »

FpUser wrote: post #84
Barrin92 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I only care about one thing whether that virus came out as the result of aforementioned research Then you should read what scientists write, not science journalists. If you can't actually understand the science, which is perfectly reasonable given that most of us are laymen, you can read scientific journalists, but then you need to acknowledge that you operate on trust, which would mean you need to take the authors…

>"and don't pretend you 'only care about the science'." I don't. The question was did the virus come out as the result of that research or not. The answer is simple yes or no. No need to dance around.

There is no clear yes/no answer here. Without a smoking gun either way there is a scale of probability/certainty and everyone who looks into this falls somewhere on that scale based on their experience, ideology, biases, research, etc...

Personally I think lab origin is unlikely as whilst it's possible to describe how it could happen, that's not proof it did actually happen. Too often people mistake theoretical actions for proof of action. The probability of natural origin still ranks higher for me but I wouldn't bet my house on it.

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

#195

Post by nairboon »

dehrmann wrote: post #85

Side question: what was the reason the WHO had a team inspect the lab in Wuhan a year after the outbreak happened? What would they even look for?

Because they weren't allowed to inspect earlier. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52420536

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

#196

Post by kspacewalk2 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #165
andreareina wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading it as shorthand for, "The prior probability of a lab escape is low, and we didn't see much evidence for it in this particular case, therefore we conclude that this instance being a lab escape is low", which is a fine argument.

Yes. It seems that proponents of the lab leak theory wants to turn the burden of proof upside down: I am claiming conspiracy starting with Anthony Fauci and ending up in a Chinese lab. It is up to you to provide hard evidence on why it is not so. Sure you can do that as in freedom of thought and speech. But honestly; this is not really a constructive way to go about things.

There is nothing to turn upside down. The burden of proof is equal for both theories.

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

#197

Post by altacc »

BillyTheKing wrote: post #114

the fact that this theory is still around after more than a year and not completely debunked is quite telling by itself. I thought this was a complete conspiracy theory last year, but the longer it sticks around the more likely it does become.

Debunking a theory doesn't make it disappear. Sometime it can do the opposite and reinforce the theory.

In this case there is no smoking gun either way and a natural origin is much harder to trace than lab origin. That lack of absolute certainty, which science is often comfortable working with, leaves room for alternative theories to circulate and attach to those who like the sound of them for various reasons. It is a common human flaw that being aware that an event could hypothetically occur can be mistaken for proof that event actually occurred.

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

#198

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

roenxi wrote: post #151
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…

> 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.

If we're going to play at paranoia and assume the virus was engineered, it doesn't necessarily follow that the release was an accidental leak.

It would be trivially easy for a hostile power to covertly release a pathogen in another country.

It would also be trivially easy to engineer simultaneous release in multiple locations.

It would be less easy but not impossible to take an existing pathogen during a pandemic, engineer a variant, and release it in another country.

There would always be ambiguity and uncertainty about the source, because there are no telltale markers that unambiguously define an origin, or even whether a pathogen is natural or man-made.

I am not suggesting any of this happened. But I am pointing out that biowarfare has some unexpected covert possibilities.

While Covid may or may not be an example - insufficient data - any defensive strategy should consider the possibility that some other pathogen might be seeded deliberately.

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

#199

Post by dataflow »

tomp wrote: post #191
dataflow wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a mix of some 5-6 factors... what does "easily" mean here?

Maybe I should have written “obviously” instead. Basically, no need to invent “non-obvious” factors like “China had prior knowledge of the virus”. It’s definitely possible, but you can explain China’s success vs Western failure without that “hidden” factor as well.

I'm not trying to quibble on the wording of your comment, but the thing is maybe you find it easy/obvious/whatever to combine those factors to explain this, but to me it's a fair bit of a jump.

Here's one way to look at it: if we had asked "how will China respond?" back in the beginning, how well would you have been able to predict their response if you had known the virus was of zoonotic origin? What if you had known the virus was of lab origin? I would think in the second case you'd have a lot more people betting that we'd get a swift (& deflective) response than in the former case, but it sounds like you disagree?

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

#200

Post by nairboon »

antoineiomena wrote: post #155

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?

Here is a list of the labs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_...
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