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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?

#371

Post by SiempreViernes »

COGlory wrote: post #289
pizza234 wrote: post #192

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 p…

Re: the chimera vs mosaic, that's not particularly true. If I take a known virus and make a single mutation (insertion of a furin site in this case), then I wind up with the same virus, + a furin. If I take that mutated virus, and then passage it through multiple generations in lab grown hosts, it will mutate at random throughout the genome. The exact rate and the time it would take is heavily debated, but one import…

Do you know if the early (March 2020) phylogenetic work[1] that showed that the most ancestral genomes extracted from early human samples weren't from Wuhan has stood up to scrutiny?

I just have a hard time understanding why so clear evidence of the epidemic starting outside Wuhan is missing from the debate, so I'd appreciate if you could comment on it.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241

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

#372

Post by bedhead »

koheripbal wrote: post #319
followtheplot wrote: post #294

"... proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence." "The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities." This is a fantastic article, but amazingly almost all of it is year-old news. Most of this was known in March 2020, and nearly all of it by the end of 2020. How does it take so long for the trut…

Unfortunately, the reality is that we have no new data on the origin of covid-19. No on-the-ground analysis has been allowed in China.

I mean, doesn't that alone kinda point us in one direction?

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

#373

Post by meowface »

gonehome wrote: post #326
followtheplot wrote: post #294

"... proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence." "The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities." This is a fantastic article, but amazingly almost all of it is year-old news. Most of this was known in March 2020, and nearly all of it by the end of 2020. How does it take so long for the trut…

What bothers me about it is not only did it take a long time for the “truth to win”, but mainstream media orgs actively suppressed it because of tribal stupidity. It was used as an example of “fake news”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/technology/biden-reality-... > “ Hoaxes, lies and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be. Thirty percent of Republ…

Worse yet, a recent NYT headline described the lab escape hypothesis as "debunked", which is even more egregious and incorrect than "baseless".

>Ex-C.D.C. Director Favors Debunked Virus Origin Theory

Basically trying to portray the ex-CDC director - a virologist - as an unhinged nutjob for saying such a thing.

After a ton of backlash, they relented and changed it from "debunked" to "unproven" and added an editor's note of "The theory is unproven, not debunked", which took a bit of the wind out of their original angle.

>What irony that in a piece pushing support for a “reality czar” (presumably to censor certain stories?) is the position of the NYT so divorced from reality itself.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with a Ministry of Truth?

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

#374

Post by cameldrv »

okaram wrote: post #298
tomp wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it needing a conspiracy to be kept quiet is one of the main arguments against thr lab theory. How many people (lab technicians, doctors, 'police') would know it is from a lab and are hiding that information? If the answer is 'hundreds' then the chances of it being kept hidden are very low. That is what labeling it a conspiracy theory means.

Back in January, it wasn’t. Some Chinese friends of mine became very convinced it was a lab leak back in Jan 2020 based on rumors on WeChat. The censors cleaned that up, but I’m pretty confident that privately a lot of people in China believe the lab leak theory.

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

#375

Post by caddemon »

sumedh wrote: post #365
Bayesian_bro wrote: post #300

The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think everyone had the best of intentions and either they found something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting links https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01A…

> I don't think they did this intentionally. Then why did they cover up and downplay the seriousness at the start?

People fuck up accidentally and then intentionally cover it up all the time.

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

#376

Post by KoftaBob »

dsyrk wrote: post #354
deltron3030 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What could they possibly have gained from that? Global power shifts to their favor by slowing down democratic economies, sacrificing parts of their own population and economy in the short term. As a collectivist dictatorship tracking every move of its population a pandemic is easier to handle.

Isn’t it also becoming more and more suspicious that they appear to literally be almost the best country in the world at controlling it. We are talking multiple orders of magnitude better. I struggle to understand how exactly.

If we're basing that claim on the numbers they're providing on deaths/cases, I don't believe it for a second.

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

#377

Post by raducu »

dopidopHN wrote: post #296
diogenescynic wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that be incredibly convenient and unlikely?

What would be unlikely for a pandemic to also affect wuhan?

To START in Wuhan, the only place doing gain-of function on the closest known virus to SARS2 and to not find a natural source for it given the source was found within months for both SARS1 and MERS.

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

#378

Post by SiempreViernes »

tomjen3 wrote: post #364
exegete wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on the one making the claim and the more extraordinary the claim the more extraordinary the evidence needs to be in my opinion.

What is least likely? A group of scientists in a quasy communist country do a shit job of safety and end up endangering the worlds population or that a virus that coexists with Bats, somehow and for no (direct) evolutionary benefit, becomes able to infect humans?

Uh, infecting a new type of organism is a pretty big evolutionary benefit though?

Saying there is no benefit is like saying there is no benefit for people people who switch jobs just so they get paid more.

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

#379

Post by SiempreViernes »

Gatsky wrote: post #156
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?

Admit it and say sorry? Or at least say "it is regrettable".

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

#380

Post by yonaguska »

roenxi wrote: post #360
unanswered wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does this justify moral superiority to those of us who understood from the beginning that the lab hypothesis was the most likely? Or was that not true until you decided it was true?

People aren't interested in whether you were right or not, what matters is the probability you will be right in the future. A body wandering around saying "I was right" is likely to get ignored, because people assume they were unreasonable and lucky, and therefore unlikely to be a good source of information in the future. Besides, it doesn't really matter. Lab accidents were going to happen and are going to happen re…

> Lab accidents were going to happen and are going to happen regardless of where COVID came from. China as a nation isn't exactly responsible and whatever people do next will be more about geopolitics than about details like the virus' genesis.

The Wuhan lab where this supposedly originated from was a BSL-4 lab. These aren't accidents, this is negligence. The lab had safety problems and wasn't meeting BSL-4 requirements. Chinese researchers at the lab raised concerns about lack of qualified technicians, and lack of resources. This is negligence. If the Wuhan BSL-4 lab was the source of Covid-19, this is absolutely the fault of China. No one is blaming Chinese people or Chinese citizens for this, but China as a government is responsible.

Furthermore, it does matter. Finding the source matters. If nothing changes, and root causes aren't fixed, it will happen again. Just dismissing this as an inevitability is a dangerous attitude.

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