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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

#261

Post by franciscop »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #211
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…

I think neither is exactly true. Like any endeavour that requires patronage, scientists have to sing for their supper. The combinations of scientists and patrons vary across time and space with some being more amenable to pure science and others breeding corruption. Like everything it is much more complex upon closer inspection.

The cases I've shared were not about patronage (maybe Galileo, unsure), but about third parties categorically denying the science it based on their social/political thinking.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#262

Post by astrobe_ »

fumbly wrote: post #133
astrobe_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> It doesn't at all look "like a conspiracy theory"

Maybe for someone well informed like you. But I assure you it does look like a conspiracy theory for "the mere mortal". This is precisely what I was trying to explain. Please don't shoot the messenger.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#263

Post by saalweachter »

alanwreath wrote: post #232
jrockway wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you all are so quick to assume that people have a financial agenda rather than their own thoughts. Like maybe people just think things and say them, and it's not all some propaganda campaign.

Career scientists not motivated by money assumes there is something that would dissuade them from not being so. Is there anything that motivates a scientist to avoid tailoring a response beyond personal moral codes? We do have a replication crisis mind you https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Overall

The problem is you're bringing it in too early.

Discrediting your opposites is primarily a feature of rhetoric, not discourse.

If your goal is to have an earnest discussion, to go over the various sorts of evidence and the varied hypotheses, you need to address those first.

Some American scientists have claimed the virus does not look engineered. Why? What is their evidence for the claim? If you are asserting the virus is or at least could be engineered, can you account for the evidence supporting their assertion? Can you point to evidence that supports your hypothesis and not theirs? How do they respond to this evidence?

It may be -- in an earnest discussion -- that one side is not engaging, for one reason or another. Maybe they don't want to admit they are wrong, maybe they are getting paid not to. At that point, after you have yourself examined their claims, after you have examined whether you are just being stubborn yourself, it is quite reasonable to disregard them, maybe even in the future.

Bringing it in too early, before engaging with their claims, trying to find reasons not to examine their evidence, makes it seem like you are just interested in winning the rhetorical argument.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#264

Post by tshaddox »

throwkeep wrote: post #219
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…

> 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.

Isn’t that tweet pretty clearly aimed at people who were already concluding that it was engineered in a lab? That’s a lot different than saying we should investigate the origins of the virus.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#265

Post by cameldrv »

throwawaysea wrote: post #251
cameldrv wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wer…

WIV contains a BSL-4 lab, which is fairly new. WIV itself has been around for 65 years. It contains many labs, at various levels of security. It's a huge hassle to conduct work in the BSL-4, and researchers generally would only work in the BSL-4 if they were working with pathogens that required it.

WIV has acknowledged that at least some of their bat coronavirus research was conducted in their BSL-2 labs which have a far, far lower level of security.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#266

Post by wk_end »

throwawaysea wrote: post #251
cameldrv wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wer…

WIV has a BSL-4 lab, but not all the work there was done in it.

> Before 2020, the rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. But all other bat coronaviruses could be studied in BSL2, the next level down. BSL2 requires taking fairly minimal safety precautions, such as wearing lab coats and gloves, not sucking up liquids in a pipette, and putting up biohazard warning signs. Yet a gain-of-function experiment conducted in BSL2 might produce an agent more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. And if it did, then lab workers would stand a high chance of infection, especially if unvaccinated. Much of Shi [Zheng-li, head researcher at WIV]’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “[t]he coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.”

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

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#267

Post by gravelc »

The way the virus could have got from the source (where the animal host is) to Wuhan is interesting. How could it not be lab transmission?

We've learn't a lot more about viral transmission in places like Australia with very low COVID incidences and very strong contact tracing when an infected person does go out into the community. It's very clear now that many people are extremely poor at spreading the virus - out in the community for 2 weeks with one of the infectious variants - in restaurants, pubs etc. - and only manage to infect 1 person, who is a close contact. Others are super spreaders, that infect many many people (but these people seem much rarer).

I can easily see how it could get 1000km away from the source. A person who had the virus with no symptoms could simply have traveled to Wuhan. Didn't infect anyone on the way. Infected a close contact once there. Gets to a super spreader, then off it goes.

I get the feeling that the lab leak hypothesis ignores the unevenness of transmission that is now evident.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#268

Post by halfjoking »

99_00 wrote: post #176

I'm convinced that it's a lab leak. I'm also convinced the slow reveal is a psyop and I don't disagree with it's objectives. The sudden revelation that China screwed up and lied to the world is too shocking for the vast majority of people. The global public's response would not be optimal. The slow reveal gives societies around the world time to adjust to the new reality. If we were all thrown into that reality overn…

What if China's vaccine was a biological weapon? Would you be OK with the slow reveal for that? Allowing governments to get away with things has consequences.

Speaking of governments... does the US funding of gain of function research change nothing in the discussion of vaccines?

The US RNA vaccines were funded by BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) for 10+ years, the tech is not open-source, and only a few politically connected companies are allowed to manufacture them. Any criticism of these very new, never tried before vaccines are censored online. Censorship is so bad it's reaching great firewall of China levels on social media.

So we have a PsyOps campaign looking to move the US towards required vaccination, a government that funded the research that allowed a virus like this to exist, and we're still yelling "trust the science" at anyone who questions authority?

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#269

Post by temp8964 »

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…

I find the word "debunk" has been frequently used by one political side to label any idea they disagree with.

This is a very strange word. When I read history of science books, this word was almost never used. Change of scientific consensus is not uncommon in the history of science. Scientists disagree with each other, debate with each other, but they don't claim they debunk each other.

I don't believe people use this word in good faith. It seems to be politically loaded power grab.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#270

Post by salawat »

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.

As I recall this article by Nicholas Wade goes into why the Furin cleavage site is a strong signal of potential active engineering in the GoF vein.

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...

As addition of a Furin cleavage site is an old hat acknowledged technique for increasing human infectivity of a virus. The issue with a zoonotic origin though, is that the odds of a mutation is incredibly small, and a recombination at that site would require the sequence to exist in another coronavirus, which has not been discovered to date.

It is also known WIV researchers had recieved instruction from another virologist on "no-see-um" editing techniques that would not leave traces of the mechanism used to splice in an edit.

So not proof, but the network of coincidence is as hard to ignore as a spinal tap amp duct taped to your head, cranked to 11, playing the 1812 Overture.

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