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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

#271

Post by salawat »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #77
tomjen3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.

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...…

Project EVIDENCE has records-ish of some of those deletions.

https://project-evidence.github.io/

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#272

Post by 1024core »

hilbertseries wrote: post #255
midlightdenight wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I read it in Nicholas Wade's article: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... (long read).

Some more reading: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210217/The-origin-of-SAR...

All these lines of evidence and reasoning show that the acquisition of the polybasic furin cleavage site by SARS-CoV-2 is a “missing link” in our understanding of its evolutionary history, that can only be addressed through the discovery of new viruses.”

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#273

Post by trompetenaccoun »

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 highly doubt that AtlasObscura article, it sounds like a classical urban myth. In East Asia there are tens if not hundreds of millions of people who've eaten nothing but white rice as the staple in their diet their whole life, and it's not caused any issues as far as I'm aware. Of course if you eat just rice and nothing else, that might be unhealthy. But that's not an issue with white rice.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#274

Post by mike00632 »

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…

If you want people to take seriesly the idea of COVID-19 coming from a lab then be scientific about it and offer up some ways to make it falsifiable. Otherwise it's simply not scientific, and almost everyone here pushing that theory is ignoring the evidence against it or modifying the conspiracy to fit the facts that contradict it. It's not constructive right now.

The hypothesis that COVID-19 came from an animal, namely a bat, in Wuhan China is independently suggested by multiple areas of science (genetics and epidemiology). It's also in line with similar outbreaks that happened in the past. The science of this is about as "unsettled" as the the theory of evolution vs creationism.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#275

Post by adolph »

JPKab wrote: post #247
throwawaysea wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Define "engineered". If it was bred in a lab via humanized mice engineered with human ACE 2 receptors, would you consider that? What about forms of "no seeum" splicing?

Also, Dr. Shi was trained by Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina in building “chimera” viruses — taking, for example, the spike protein from a new virus and splicing it to the backbone of a known one like SARS. He invented “no-see-um” techniques that left no trace of the splice.

From

https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/how-i-learned-to-stop...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#276

Post by tawa10093 »

I think the lab origin is almost for sure. WIV released the RaTg13 sequence which is the closest to the covid virus. They had got samples from the patients who was infected by RaTg13 back in 2013. But they have never released the sequence, which could be a direct proof, or at least can bridge some gap.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#277

Post by trompetenaccoun »

hayst4ck wrote: post #214
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…

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…

There is a 3rd option. I'm going to repost a comment I made a few days ago regarding the labs in Wuhan:

The "Wuhan Institute of Virology" is named in a couple of news articles and scientific publications. However what is rarely discussed is that the Wuhan CDC (武汉市疾病预防控制中心), which also has a virus lab and was also researching coronaviruses is in walking distance from that wet market! I took a screenshot of it, in the top right is the Huanan Seafood Market, in the bottom the CDC, which includes a virus lab: https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png

Unfortunately you won't find it on Google Maps but anyone who is able to read Chinese can check this themselves. All the early cases were centered around this area, including the hospital that treated the first cases. It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere. On the CDC website they had an open position looking for a researcher to study, among others, exactly the kind of bat CoV that's been identified as most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. This has since been deleted but it could still be accessed during the early days of the outbreak.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#278

Post by dang »

hayst4ck wrote: post #193
querez wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but this feels like conspiracy-theory peddling and FUD. What the linked site calls "evidence", is are at best "hints" or "possible signs". No evidence anywhere. Instead, you have wildly weird texts like section 8.3 ("A Note on Biowarfare") that literally just reads "This document does not make any attempt to link the work done at these laboratories as part of a 'bioweapon' or "bio-warfare" program.". It's…

You say the article feels like a conspiracy theory, yet it points to negligence as the likely culprit, which is pretty much the opposite of a conspiracy. You call it FUD (fear uncertainty doubt), but I'm totally uncertain how it would qualify as FUD. There is one obvious conspiracy by the Chinese government to prevent all understanding of the virus. That does fit the definition of what a conspiracy is. > "This docume…

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. The parent took a step in that direction, which is bad, but you've responded by escalating noticeably, which is worse. (It's also not in your interests because it discredits the view you're arguing for, in the eyes of neutral readers.)

Please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules. They include:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

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

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#279

Post by gnicholas »

tshaddox wrote: post #194
gnicholas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature leaves a trail, so if you don’t find a trail then it becomes increasingly implausible that COVID resulted from a natural process. There are currently several intermediate steps that have not been uncovered anywhere, and which would have to have happened in order for this to be a natural process.

This just sounds like the “lack of evidence is evidence of a conspiracy” epistemology so often resorted to by conspiracy theorists. The problem with the epistemology is that it applies equally well to all conceivable conspiracies.

This may be true in general, but in this case we're trying to figure out if something is man-made or occurred naturally. No one is saying it couldn't have happened naturally, but natural evolution happens differently (and more slowly and messily) than human creation. In prior cases (SARS and MERS), plenty of evidence of natural evolution was found very quickly. Here it has been conspicuously absent. What conclusion would you draw from that?

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#280

Post by programmarchy »

SECProto wrote: post #230
ekianjo wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an astronaut tweeting "if you think we didn't land on the moon, please unfollow me" That's a pretty bad analogy. It's not like a lab leak is an extremely unlikely possibility at all. You should rather check who is funding the people who are making certain statements like that. Follow the money trail.

> It's not like a lab leak is an extremely unlikely possibility at all. The tweet was talking about the virus being engineered in a lab, not the possibility it escaped from a lab. Their opinion on the possibility of lab leak seems [1] quite reasonable to me - they believe it's possible but unlikely, and link to more info. > You should rather check who is funding the people who are making certain statements like that.…

What’s the difference between gain of function research and engineering? My understanding is that gain of function research accelerates the natural selection process to intentionally produce i.e. engineer desired mutations, like the capability of infecting human cells. Seems like a distinction without a difference.
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