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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

#131

Post by throwkeep »

hayst4ck wrote: post #120

A lot of people here claiming there is no evidence. Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look, they think the evidence is poor, or they can't imagine any authoritative evidence without the help of China it's just not true. People imagine Chinese social media as something that is completely locked down when in reality it was abuzz with information when a new mysterious disease was appearing…

> Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look

The origin was politicized in the US and taboo to even question it, so few did. It was labeled a crazy conspiracy theory by the media and that shut the door on open inquiry until recently.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#132

Post by LetThereBeLight »

For those interested in understanding more detailed discussions there is an article by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

Perhaps the most interesting point is the discussion of the furin cleavage site.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#133

Post by fumbly »

astrobe_ wrote: post #128
adrianb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't at all look "like a conspiracy theory". Many past lab leaks have been documented (edit: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1394327678136852488), there had been widespread debate among virologists for years about whether the risk of a lab leak was too high to fund such research, the Obama administration banned it for a while for that reason, the State Department had expressed concerns about lax safety at the Wuhan lab, and so on. It's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. If anything "looks like a conspiracy theory" it's the way that the topic was so harshly suppressed for the last year. I don't think that was a conspiracy either, though, I think it was just political polarization. Hopefully the winds are shifting now to reduce that, on this particular issue.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#134

Post by kossTKR »

antattack wrote: post #48

It's not going to be possible to prove lab origin w/o Chinese cooperation. However, lab origin should not be totally dismissed, so we can have a discussion about safety of gain-of-function research now, rather than waiting for some verifiable event to happen in the future.

Why are people acting like China is doing anything in isolation?

The Wuhan Lab was funded through the american Ecohealth alliance, and a dozen american scientists probably know just as much as the Chinese do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#135

Post by lumost »

hayst4ck wrote: post #120

A lot of people here claiming there is no evidence. Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look, they think the evidence is poor, or they can't imagine any authoritative evidence without the help of China it's just not true. People imagine Chinese social media as something that is completely locked down when in reality it was abuzz with information when a new mysterious disease was appearing…

It is a miraculous coincidence that a novel virus would spontaneously emerge at the exact location of a virology lab studying that virus.

The counterpoint to this is that this lab was setup in this location for the exact reason that a novel coronavirus would potentially emerge from bats in the region. This would require both miraculous forethought on the potential for bats in the region to produce novel coronaviruses, and a strange desire to place the virology lab near the location.

Most high level virology labs are centered based on considerations such as ability to hire talent and security/land concerns. It's relatively straightforward to organize expeditions to any region of the world at this point to collect samples.

Which means that for the standard explanation to hold true.

- A virology lab was created to study potentially dangerous versions of coronavirus (WIV founded 1956)

- The virology lab must have been placed near the location where animals were producing interesting virus strains. (WIV studying coronaviruses from all over China since 2005 including Horshoe bats from Yunnan province carrying progenitor strains of the SARS virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology)

- A novel coronavirus emerged near the WIV lab in Q4 2019 due to unrelated sales of locally hunted bats.

Strange things occur, but this would be strange enough as to require plausible studies identifying animal sources of Covid-19 to take at face value.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#136

Post by prewett »

screye wrote: post #22

Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…

There was an article posted recently on HN with no discussion that outlined the evidence for the various theories, and had pretty solid evidence for the leak theory (assuming they didn't omit evidence for the other theories):

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#137

Post by austincheney »

jerf wrote: post #64
austincheney wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic does not cease to be fallacious merely because somebody works hard and becomes frustrated.

Many of the logical fallacies are logical fallacies from an Aristotelian perspective of statements that are either True or False, and nothing in between. "True" is a high bar. Many of them dissolve when treated correctly with something like a Bayesian analysis. [1] This is one of them. Absence of evidence is , in fact, evidence of absence, contrary to the frequent assertions otherwise. It just isn't proof . The stren…

The problem with your reasoning is that you are falsely equating absence of evidence into a qualifier for an opinion or conclusion, which it isn't. The absence of evidence only means that such evidence is missing and is in no way suggestive of anything else. All conclusions drawn from an absence of evidence are otherwise unqualified assumptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_assumption

This was the exact reasoning people bet the farm on the housing market prior to late 2008. There was no evidence the housing market ever depreciated, so with that absence of evidence the housing market must therefore not ever depreciate. Contrary to that reasoning the housing market crashed and I got my house as a foreclosure at a heavily depreciated value.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#138

Post by marcosdumay »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #94
marcosdumay wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, those are 3 very different points, so: > It was covered up This is not actionable. > The people responsible hid crucial information which could have helped contain the spread in the early days and find treatments You imply in punishing those people? In the case it was a leak, the people interested in punishing them don't have that power, the people with that power were the same suppressing the information, so no,…

> What we should do is take a good new look at the containment procedures of those labs, reevaluate them, verify if they are followed and fix what is not. Who should do that, exactly? The same people you seem to think we should not to attempt to investigate or hold accountable in any way? > We should also press uncooperative countries, like China, to open those up for inspection. If China was demanding to have a bunc…

Why are you assuming this is bioweapons research? There is more to virus research than bioweapons.

It is much easier to get China to complain with "we developed those standards for virus research, and would like you to comply too, like any other serious country" than "we believe you made an incredibly large fuck-up and want your help to prove it".

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#139

Post by lumost »

Pepe1vo wrote: post #124
TacticalCoder wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There doesn't appear to be any relation between the labs founding and zoonoses in the local region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#140

Post by sharken »

Pepe1vo wrote: post #124
TacticalCoder wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your point about the lab is great, it's just very hard to dismiss the idea that a lab error was at fault.

But i too think it all too likely that we won't be any wiser about the origins.

Though it would be great if a timeline could be established, i don't remember seeing a good explanation on Covid in Italy being discovered in 2019.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

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