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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

#311

Post by rogers18445 »

Gain of function research is not engineering, they are often conflated for some reason. Gain of function is essentially artificial selection with bells and whistles.

Such manipulation would leak some information into the virus. Already it seems like the virus has great difficulty spreading outdoors while great success spreading indoors.

It may be a coincidence but evolution does encode environmental assumptions into the genes of an organism under selective pressure.

It may turn out that the virus makes certain assumptions about its environment and if those assumptions are not compatible with open spaces in nature - where animals live, but relies on closed environments (certain humidity range, absent air currents, lack of any resistance to sunlight spectra) depending on how many of these assumptions are present a natural explanation for the virus may be all but ruled out.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#312

Post by lumost »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #174
lumost wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't appear to be any regional association with the WIV's research on Bats. WIV studied bats fro all over China and notably isolated the likely center of the 2003 SARS outbreak to a set of bats in Yunnan. The institute was founded in 1956, long before Coronavirus research started in earnest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#SA...

Wuhan is, however, in the range of Horseshoe Bats. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_horseshoe_bat So people who suggest that it's far from Yunnan are missing the point.

Considering that the Horshoe Bat range encompasses a band between Portugal and Japan that would make the mongol empire jealous, I fail to see how this changes the point. The probability of Coronavirus emerging within the Horshoe Bat range in the same city as a virology lab is vanishingly small without a further confounding variable.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#313

Post by ekianjo »

jrockway wrote: post #216
ekianjo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? It's not about removing, it's about finding who they are speaking out for.

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.

Most scientific research is not self funded. Why assume outside sponsoring has no influence. You dont see TV news bad mouthing pharma companies as TV channels rely on pharma ads...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#314

Post by kodah »

tshaddox wrote: post #264
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.

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.

If a scientist is telling people to unfollow them because those people believe it's a possibility that they don't want ruled out without evidence; that is the very definition of being a child. In fact, maybe they shouldn't have credentials at that point.

If someone is telling people who already only believe that conclusion then that makes sense.

It's important to ask people that do this stuff to be very specific about their motivations in the moment, document them, and hold them accountable at a later date when the dust settles.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#315

Post by strken »

swader999 wrote: post #243
elliekelly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.

There is plenty of evidence. CCP cleaning house at Wuhan Institute and purging online references is one item to question.

You think they wouldn't clean house if the virus had naturally hopped to humans but the WIV was still being publicly blamed? I think they responded to the accusation, not to the reality on the ground.

That's not to say that I think it didn't come from the WIV, just that they'd act the same way regardless of where the first transmission occurred.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#316

Post by shlant »

1024core wrote: post #202
bbatha wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lab leak does not necessarily imply the virus was engineered. Indeed there is reasonable evidence for the former and little, but not none, for the later.

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

for anyone interested in more information about this commonly parroted "smoking gun" (Furin cleavage site):

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1391507230848032772

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#317

Post by rogers18445 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #201

If I have a virus, how do I tell if its natural or man made? Unless someone has gone out of their way to add an indicator won't all viruses just be the same? It's not like you can leave finger prints or a "made in China" sticker on a virus right?

If you look at a cow knowing nothing about it or its history how do you know it was subject to artificial selection? The excessive production of milk or negative consequences that happen to it should it not be milked are some pretty big clues.

The information the process of evolution imparts on the genes/features of an organism differs based on whether it was natural or artificial.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#318

Post by shlant »

salawat wrote: post #270
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.

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 sma…

for anyone interested in more information about this commonly parroted "smoking gun" (Furin cleavage site):

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1391507230848032772

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#319

Post by XorNot »

snet0 wrote: post #286
mike00632 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, nam…

I politely recommend you do more research into the subject. It won't change your conclusions, but the state of affairs is very much not settled. Also, here's your falsifiability: when it can be shown that the virus is zoonotic in origin, the other theories of its origin are falsified. I do not believe that the virus was engineered in a lab at this point, but turning this into tribe warfare will not help anything. Say…

The initial probability of "novel new virus" is not "it was made in a lab / escape a lab".

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#320

Post by XorNot »

amayne wrote: post #158
Pepe1vo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Wuhan is ~1000km away from SARS spillover zones. Its human population was even used as a negative (no SARS) control group." Via @Ayjchan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=20

This is maybe 12 hours drive, depending on roads and traffic. 1000km is not a huge distance of migration to a major city.
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