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More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

nytimes.com

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Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#121

Post by bigpumpkin »

adrianb wrote: post #114
checker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for finding SARS source within months? This is contrary but I'm open to debate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747529/

Wikipedia [1] seems to include sources: > In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian pa…

In 2003, it was hypothesized that civets were the source. However, this was not conclusively proved until 2017.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#122

Post by fumbly »

johncena33 wrote: post #117
kossTKR wrote: post #112

What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanati…

Of course certain virologists would be eager to dismiss lab leak hypothesis. Just think about the implication of this hypothesis turns out to be true. Virologists have very strong conflict of interests. If these people have any integrity they'd refrain from commenting.

What's particularly significant and hasn't much been commented on yet is that Ralph Baric, the leading American collaborator of the bat coronavirus research at Wuhan, has signed the letter. He also (according to the OP) declined to comment further. That seems more like integrity.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#123

Post by syshum »

kossTKR wrote: post #112

What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanati…

>>I know the issue is politicized

This is becoming more and more common, Pure Science is almost never practiced anymore. The Hard sciences like Immunology, virology, general medicine used to be some what insulated from politics however in the last few years all sciences are no longer data driven.

You form a conclusion then find the facts that fit your narrative, and if your narrative is not the "correct" one you better not release your facts...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#124

Post by Pepe1vo »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #116
kossTKR wrote: post #112

What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanati…

I'm no virologist but of all the places on earth we are supposed to believe that, by cheer coincidence, the outbreak happened in that one city that happens to do research and have patents on lab-modified bat viruses and that it doesn't have anything to do with that lab. I mean: you seriously cannot make that up.

To be fair, the reason the lab is in that place is precisely because it's close to a place where zoonoses has occurred multiple times. Kind of like how we don't blame lighthouses for shipwrecks.

That being said, from what I've read it appears that a lab escape is a very real possibility. Though I doubt that we'll ever find out

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#125

Post by adrianb »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #121
adrianb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia [1] seems to include sources: > In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian pa…

In 2003, it was hypothesized that civets were the source. However, this was not conclusively proved until 2017.

Infected animals were found in the market where the outbreak began 4 months after it started. We have nothing comparable a year and a half after COVID.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#126

Post by checker »

adrianb wrote: post #114
checker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for finding SARS source within months? This is contrary but I'm open to debate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747529/

Wikipedia [1] seems to include sources: > In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian pa…

Thanks. Pretty legit sources from 2005.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#127

Post by dang »

splithalf wrote: post #111
jostmey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this the lab origin story more plausible than the original hypothesis that sars-cov2 originated from the wet-markets? Both are places where human and exotic animals closely interact, where sars-cov2 could have jumped. Why do you think the odds of the virus jumping are higher in one place than another?

Not one single infected animal. No serious honest person believes the wet market nonesense. It’s not supposed to be believable.

Please stop posting flamewar comments. You've done it more than once in this thread already. That's basically vandalism, if not arson, when the topic is this inflammatory. No more of this please.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#128

Post by astrobe_ »

adrianb wrote: post #98
slowmovintarget wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, all the choices have already been made. The data have already been destroyed. The Wuhan lab where this research was taking place also had a leadership change, and is now run by someone in the military. That happened in March or April of 2020, IIRC. Chinese researchers and journalists disappeared in that time frame (their work was deleted from online archives, their names removed from public employment listings...…

> if you made statements like "this started in Wuhan, in the lab there, not in the animal market next to it," you were called racist, even though race had nothing to do with it. Honestly I always felt like "a scientist working with dangerous pathogens had an accident" is way less racist than "someone ate a weird animal from a wet market"... And yet the backlash was stronger for the lab leak scenario, almost as if the…

To be fair the lab escape scenario looks a lot like a conspiracy theory. One should remember that around that time the "flat earth" theory was still going on (IIRC), and there are similar lab escape theories about AIDS.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#129

Post by dang »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #95
elliekelly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.

To say that "there isn't any evidence for either scenario" is willful ignorance.

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#130

Post by bonzini »

monday_ wrote: post #39

The trouble here is that a lot of institutions and public persons have more or less staked their credibility on dismissing the lab origin hypothesis. They had their reasons - if anything, over the last years their standing and the value of expert opinion was under constant pressure (notice I'm talking about a reason, not a justification). But this makes any admission of an error and, by extension, any useful reflecti…

Lab manufacturing is one thing and has been widely debunked, lab leak is another. I don't think the lab leak has been dismissed as much.
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