More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins • Hacker News Board

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#291

Post by temp8964 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

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

If zoonoses was used to pick a lab location, it should be somewhere in the Guangdong Province.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#292

Post by hayst4ck » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #278

hayst4ck wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Yeah, I did make HN worse with that comment, didn't I. Thank you for the reminder.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#293

Post by mike00632 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #237

throwawaysea wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York The controversy around Peter Daszak goes deeper. First off, he was the only American on the WHO team that visited Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) earlier this year. Per the WSJ ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-china-hunt-covid-origins-11... ) the WHO rejected three different…

This article does a thorough examination of the origination, covers your points on Daszak well. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

The author of that article makes some claims that you should give some critical thought to:

Some are pretty obviously wrong:

- they say the virus hasn't mutated to become more suitable or transmissible in humans

- they imply the first cases of COVID-19 were hospitalizations and imply that asymptomatic spread of the disease is not possible

Then also the article claims that science hasn't tracked gene mutations of the virus that took place in bats. I think that has indeed happened.

The logic of the people they blame us contradictory too. They say the base DNA could have been concealed by making a novel base but then they say by that this was a researcher doing public, documented research, which suggests they would indeed use standard practices and the signatures would be there.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

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Post by mike00632 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:50 AM UTC

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…

The "conspiracy" part of the theory isn't the leak itself but that hundreds or thousands of people are involved in covering it up and the effort is being lead by an über-competent cabal of unnamed government officials. That is what makes this theory different from historical lab accidents and makes it seem pretty crackpot.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

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Post by mike00632 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

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…

2019 happened to have a really bad flu season. Taiwan responding to that is extremely logical and not much of a coincidence.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

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Post by ravel-bar-foo » Tue, May 18, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #265

throwawaysea wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For context, BSL-2 is usually locked doors, cabinets of filtered air, and easily-cleanable surfaces. PPE is usually a lab coat, gloves, and goggles.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

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Post by smallnamespace » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #277

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…

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…

> It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere

FYI, this really doesn't match my experience. I got curious and Googled about the lab's location myself about a year ago, not long after the outbreak, and found the hypothesis tantalizing, even in the absence of hard evidence.

I've seen ongoing discussion about this since then on various blogs and on Twitter.

As a more meta-comment, we're all in tiny, personalized information silos nowadays based on the sites and communities we frequent. Even a pseudo-public forum like Twitter is not really public - you only see the slice that you follow.

IMO 'nobody is talking about it' is more about how you've curated your own info-stream, rather than about the world at large.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

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Post by unishark » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

actusual wrote: post #45

whatthesmack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your point is. The source for SARS and MERS were found within months. We're over a year into this with no clue. Based on the current circumstances' inconsistencies with historical circumstances, this appears to be something different.

His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for this, did he commit the murder?

Suppose DNA was left at the scene and strong circumstantial evidence points to the man as the culprit, yet he refuses to let them compare his DNA to exonerate himself.