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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

#251

Post by throwawaysea »

cameldrv wrote: post #227
hayst4ck wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 concrete distinct ideas, but many are conflating both of the ideas. It results in it being very hard to have a conversation because it's unclear which idea people are talking about. Idea 1: SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab Idea 2: SARS-CoV-2 was in/around/related to WIV and escaped Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists. Idea 2 is an idea that there is a considerable body of circumstantial ev…

What do you mean by "engineered in a lab?" No one believes that anyone just typed a sequence into their computer and created it from whole cloth. On the other hand, the WIV has recently published papers about creating new coronaviruses by combining a gene from one virus with the rest of another virus, as well as other types of modifications to existing coronaviruses. They have active grants to continue with this type…

Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a BSL-4 lab, but US diplomats were concerned by the untrained staff operating the lab (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...). Even with the best of facilities and staff, containment can be hard. For example, back in 2014 86 lab workers at the CDC were possibly infected with anthrax (https://time.com/2902415/cdc-anthrax-atlanta/) because protocols were not followed.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#252

Post by chasd00 »

loudmax wrote: post #89
mirekrusin wrote: post #18

What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.

I tend to sympathize with this attitude, and while it is absolutely true that the world needs to be better prepared for pandemics regardless of origin, I don't think it's correct that the origin of the disease doesn't matter. Just from a scientific perspective, we should know where covid-19 came from. If it hopped from bats to people in a wet market, that tells us something about the likelihood of this type of virus…

Thin skinned or not if it was a lab leak they’re liable for millions of deaths and trillions in economic devastation world wide. I would say that reason enough to get to the bottom of the origin question.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#253

Post by JPKab »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #228
throwkeep wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. " There were a lot of them on twitter, and frankly, they disqualified themselves from the adult table. They've chosen politics over science.

Social media is designed around social proof and validation. Plenty of otherwise rational people crave the support and affirmation of endorsing “correct” thinking while also attacking the “incorrect” thinking.

I always wondered why people used the phrase "dunk on" when referring to Twitter. Then I witnessed the purely and obviously performative nature of the bulk of these kinds of user's statements.

Even ones who claim to be activists will ignore any good faith questions, because every second they spend engaging in meaningful dialogue doesn't allow them to sit there and attack others for points from their followers.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#254

Post by franciscop »

matt_kantor wrote: post #218
franciscop wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Since the beginning the science has been in conflict with politics (or the Church, or the Kings/Emperors before democracy). Notable political/social opposition to the sciences are well documented. Couple of examples: doctors washing their hands was a controversial issue [2] and how being able to eat "higher-class" food killed thousands of Japanese, who rejected eating other food even when it was known it was k…

Don't forget about Galileo.

I didn't forget about Galileo, it's literally my first link and it's the same link that @jimmygrapes shared later :)

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#255

Post by hilbertseries »

midlightdenight wrote: post #217
1024core wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence that some parts of the virus were engineered. See, for example, the Furin cleavage site.

Could you post links to this evidence? I can only find sources saying that the Furin cleavage site doesn’t rule out engineering, or sources saying the Furin cleave site could be naturally occurring. Sounds like we don’t know yet.

Here’s some evidence that it is naturally occurring from a virologist.

https://twitter.com/wanderer_jasnah/status/13942477140246609...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#256

Post by noofen »

throwawaysea wrote: post #239
mellosouls wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists I don't personally doubt it's a conspiracy theory but would you clarify exactly where "American scientists" debunked this - is it in the link you provided, it's not clear, it appears to only deal with claim 2?

For evidence about debunking, you can check out Twitter threads from Trevor Bedford (bio: https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/ ) that are linked from https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400 In this discussion and the older threads he links in there, Bedford basically rules out an 'engineered' virus, does not rule out a lab leak, but leans towards zoonosis (pathogen jumping from animal to human). - Her…

> Bedford basically rules out an 'engineered' virus, does not rule out a lab leak, but leans towards zoonosis (pathogen jumping from animal to human).

Where are all these animals in the wild (since the lab theory has been "debunked") with SARS-CoV-2?

I'd imagine we'd have found tons of them by now, right?

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#257

Post by dirtyid »

natch wrote: post #187

Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here is a list of them: https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... Spoiler: They are all “mysteriously” missing or at least have disappeared from their normal lives.

"Some scientist" = couple doctors "whistle blowers" without virology background, couple blogger journalists, and couple activists who got on Beijing's shit list for wrongthink politics. Aka exactly zero scientists with credible subject matter knowledge. Whistle blowers were initially "correctly" punished for spreading rumors that literal SARs came back, later their images rehabilitated as "heros" for domestic politics. The other four were put in shitlist for suggesting PRC covid19 response would be China's Chernobyl, and were in hindsight spectacularly wrong. None of them ever endorsed position on lab leak.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#258

Post by franciscop »

bamboozled wrote: post #238
franciscop wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Since the beginning the science has been in conflict with politics (or the Church, or the Kings/Emperors before democracy). Notable political/social opposition to the sciences are well documented. Couple of examples: doctors washing their hands was a controversial issue [2] and how being able to eat "higher-class" food killed thousands of Japanese, who rejected eating other food even when it was known it was k…

Being in Japan, 3 was fascinating. I feel like Japans strong cultural belief in their own superiority and love of hierarchy make it especially susceptible to these type of issues. If you’re interested, here is a more recent example of “politics vs science” and politics losing badly: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Abe-declares-e... Here’s a fun quote from the article: "We have managed to bring the outbr…

I also happen to live in Japan, that's prob why I knew this example well and I'm well aware/critic of the covid situation and the Olympics being pushed forward.

Abe resignation seems to be based on being sick though, there was some, well extreme people measuring how long it took him to walk a fixed distance over time and when he started to slow down significatively, they predicted he was sick. He resigned few days later, officially because of an illness:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-abe-goes-to-hospital-for...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#259

Post by JPKab »

jrockway wrote: post #189
908B64B197 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist Would be interesting to dig further into who is funding their research.

That sounds like the worst of the Internet in action. You disagree with someone's off-handed remark on social media, so you want to remove their funding source? I guess that's pretty popular, but I have to say I don't care for it. Many people are still in the bargaining stage of COVID response -- if we find that some person made this virus and released it into the wild, we just send them to prison and the problem goe…

You completely misinterpreted the statement. It was rather obvious to me that the person you were replying to was curious if there was any conflicts of interest that would cause someone to ignore a conclusion.

Finding someone to blame as you say is not really the key issue. If you want to prevent this from happening again you might just possibly want to know where this virus came from.

4 months after SARS 1 we knew the intermediate host was a civet. 9 months after MERS, we knew the intermediate host was a camel. As of now not a single intermediate zoonotic host has been identified.

At this point the probability threshold has shifted towards a lab leak. We can acknowledge this fact or we can collectively acknowledge that maybe just maybe a research center with a quarter of a billion dollars in funding from the United States government for evolving Corona viruses from bats to infect humanized mice might have had something to do with the virus that broke out in the exact same city.

I mean it really is absurd how quickly people dismiss this rather obvious fact.

Figuring out where this virus came from is extremely relevant considering that the gain of function research that in all likelihood created it is going to be increased in funding as a result of the pandemic. If the public knew that the virus was almost certainly not a naturally transmitted one from a wild animal host, they probably wouldn't be on board with funding more of the research that created it.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#260

Post by chasd00 »

google234123 wrote: post #5
mensetmanusman wrote: post #3

Part of me thinks that we should almost not waste the time to find out. Spend the effort on preparing for the next one, by improving air filtration etc. Politics is too deeply entrenched, it will be an impossibility to uncover the truth.

What is sad is that these ideas were dismissed as crackpotish or racist until now.

It reminds of how hostile people became when you merely questioned the effectiveness or need of the lockdowns last year.

I think many academics and scientists are so emotionally invested in the side they took they will defend it no matter of the evidence.

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