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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?

#421

Post by gonehome »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #409
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…

Below the surface level question of "did it escape a lab" is the question of why that matters to people. Both escaping a lab and evolving naturally in the wild are in essence freak accidents. A roll of the cosmic dice. A bristling array of implausibilities. What difference does it make that we got unlucky in this way as opposed to that way? Would the logical conclusion from the "escaped a lab" theory be that China sh…

> "There are maybe one in a dozen proponents of the lab theory that are legitimately interested in these questions. For the remaining 11 out of 12, the Wuhan Lab theory is just a belief that they wear in public to signal "China bad"."

> "Don't give them legitimacy or talking points. Being honest about the lab theory in the face of people who will use your words dishonestly is a fools errand. Don't be the fool who thinks he can be nuanced enough to pull it off. Until you know you are talking with someone who cares about the lab theory for the right reasons, the correct thing to say is "it absolutely evolved naturally and did not escape a lab"."

This kind of second order thinking and attempted manipulation is a big reason the mainstream press has lost all of its trust.

The same nonsense was why people tried to justify saying "masks don't work" was okay. "Well, we need the masks for healthcare workers so just lie to the public so they don't try to buy too many".

There are a lot of problems with this.

1. First I think it's largely a lie, the people making these arguments are not masterminds working on 3 levels, they're making stupid tribal arguments of a similar depth to the people blaming China out of "China bad".

2. It fails, the attempted manipulation is obvious and comes out as wrong - this further discredits the press and weakens the trust of the public in institutions. This plays directly into the hands of the 'people who will use your words dishonestly'.

3. We should give a shit about the truth independent of tribal affiliation, second order manipulations are stupid - people that act to cover that up are not as clever as they think they are.

As the sister reply to your comment suggests, there should be consequences for negligence that leads to a global pandemic killing millions.

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

#422

Post by minkzilla »

zby wrote: post #308
evrydayhustling wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we abstract away the specific actors/motivations, this reminds me a bit of the Oumuamua debate. "Man made" and "natural" are both very broad theories that admit many details and are thus hard to falsify. But I wonder to what degree we agree about: (1) Which category (if either) has an advantage by Occam's razor? (2) Which category (if either) is more easily falsifiable? (Meaning easier to determine improbable, sin…

Just one nitpick - it does not need to be 'man made' to make a 'lab escape'.

Correct, and this is talked about a good bit in the article.

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

#423

Post by smcl »

FpUser wrote: post #273
smcl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you seem to be arriving at that yes/no answer as a result of reading the words of someone whose credibility and impartiality is in question.

Well here is surprise for you. I used to be a scientist myself. Just in a totally different area. From my experience being racist and impartiality to results in one's profession are orthogonal. All the arguments I see so far are of "but, but he cheats on his wife" quality.

This isn't doubting someone's opinion because of a completely unrelated character trait. Taking your examples, if he was cheating on his wife or eating babies (?) that probably wouldn't have any bearing on this. I think the issue people have is that someone with pretty questionable opinions on race has got some other opinions on a hot topic that has been tinged with racist rhetoric from the right. I can totally see why that'd be enough for some to pass on it and say "nah, no thanks".

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

#424

Post by rlpb »

40four wrote: post #272
rlpb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact is that an epidemic with a corona virus (never before or since seen in the wild) with a peculiarly efficient ability to infect humans started in the _only city in the world with a lab where gain-of-function experiments on corona viruses_ is located. Just apply occam’s razor, and then you are done. What's the reason the lab is located in that city? Is there an underlying causal connection? For example, is W…

The idea that the bat population is local to Wuhan is a misconception. The bats from which the gain of function research studies are being done were collected from Yunnan province 800 miles away, not locally in Wuhan. They still have not been able to identity any animals in the market, bats or civets, that would explain the natural spillover hypothesis.

I'm not trying to claim otherwise. My point is that an underlying connection, if one exists, would make the gp's Occam's Razor argument moot.

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

#425

Post by ravenstine »

caseysoftware wrote: post #390

I think the media successfully conflated four separate questions: a) Did it form in nature or in a lab? b) Did it become more communicable via nature or via the lab? c) Did it make it to humans through nature (or wet market) or via the lab? d) If it came from the lab was it on purpose or an accident? as simply "OMG IT CAME FROM A LAB" and then claimed it's all a conspiracy theory. The media as a whole shot themselves…

It's really interesting to see this shift in sentiment that HN users have towards the media and journalism. A couple of years ago this comment wouldn't have made it to the top of the page, and it may have even been grayed out.

This isn't something I'm celebrating, though. It's not a sign of a successful state when everyone is losing confidence in the press.

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

#426

Post by COGlory »

raducu wrote: post #391
COGlory wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primarily Occam's razor. The total area available to coronaviruses in the wild to replicate and mutate in is orders of magnitude greater than the area available in a laboratory.

But weren't they doing that exact thing in the Wuhan laboratory -- making coronaviruses infect humanized cells(with the ACE2 receptor)? Wouldn't the fact that it started in Wuhan point the razor in the direction of lab-escape theory?

It tilts the needle, yes, but there are numerous other pieces of evidence that tilt it in the other direction. Hence the 90%/10% split in my mind. But I won't fault anyone else for having a different split. I think that's reasonable.

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

#427

Post by lamontcg »

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…

> "Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses"

> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...

They exist in the human HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, MERS-CoV and appear to have evolved independently at least 6 times in betacoronaviruses.

Furthermore while this article claims that the furin cleavage site has not found in any sarbecoviruses, that is now outdated information:

> "Evidence for SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins in Southeast Asia"

> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7873279/

Both RacCS203 (91.5% similar to SARS-CoV-2) and RmYN02 (93.3% similar to SARS-CoV-2) have furin cleavage sites. So we're up to 7-to-9 times now that evolution has evolved a furin cleavage site in betacoronaviruses, including 3 sarbecoviruses that may or may not be directly related.

The whole "furin cleavage site is an indication of human engineering" argument is just falsified at this point.

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

#428

Post by COGlory »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #371
COGlory wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In my opinion this is the single strongest piece of evidence against the lab-leak hypothesis (and it also refutes the whole "furin-site uses non-canonical amino acids which shows evidence of human involvement" hypothesis as well). I haven't found anything disproving it, and I have looked a fair bit. However, epidemiology is not anything I know about, so I'm about on the same level as anyone else there.

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

#429

Post by teachingassist »

caseysoftware wrote: post #390

I think the media successfully conflated four separate questions: a) Did it form in nature or in a lab? b) Did it become more communicable via nature or via the lab? c) Did it make it to humans through nature (or wet market) or via the lab? d) If it came from the lab was it on purpose or an accident? as simply "OMG IT CAME FROM A LAB" and then claimed it's all a conspiracy theory. The media as a whole shot themselves…

I also think 'wet market' is still a conflation here - the first or earliest location that a cluster of the virus was identified, and the site of a significant evolutionary event, are not and were never likely to be the same.

We only are led to think that because the media repeated it so often.

Human-to-human transmission started (almost certainly) with one human, not one animal transmitting to multiple humans.

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

#430

Post by mekkkkkk »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #388
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…

Neither scenario for how Sars-Cov-2 came to infect humans looks good for China, it's interesting that they are pushing one over the other. On the one hand we have unsanitary food markets and the questionable production and sale of exotic animals for human consumption. On the other extreme we have the potential escape of a genetically modified virus from a research lab. Honestly I find the second scenario more reassur…

If I were the PR guy for China and I could choose what the origin was, I'd go for wet market without a doubt. The "ancient food culture" argument is much more complex, easier to defend and easier to empathize with.

Lab negligence is just a pure fuck up. Very hard to spin that and not take responsibility.

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