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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

vanityfair.com

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#511

Post by GavinMcG »

ramraj07 wrote: post #510
GavinMcG wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump didn't exactly follow Fauci's advice, so it's odd that you'd blame Fauci's "method of approaching pandemics" for "this mess." Was there some other, better, established method?

I meant Fauci at al.’s approach of proactively looking for the next pandemic via sample collection and lab engineering of new variants which predates the trump administration. By all appearances Faucis performance during the pandemic is nothing to be questioned. These are different topics.

Thanks for clarifying

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#513

Post by throwaway210222 »

The American government might much more cooperation in their lab-link investigation if they can guarantee the Chinese that there will be ZERO consequences (financial, legal, oversight, etc.) for them if its found to be true.

If its just about getting to The Truth.

But its not.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#514

Post by tfcata »

frickenhamster wrote: post #306
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had…

You might be ethnically Chinese, but you are probably sided with KMT. Now shut up for good. The US is not going to attack mainland for your worthless lives.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#515

Post by krrrh »

seventytwo wrote: post #453
krrrh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s covered in the article and it’s called RaTG13 and no one can get a straight answer on where it was acquired or when. However independent researchers found it is identical to a virus previously known as RaBtCoV/4991 that made several miners ill in 2012. It’s 96.2% similar not 98%. The issue is that coronaviruses in nature don’t mutate fast enough for that to be the missing link, and they have tested something lik…

Where have you heard that CoVs don’t mutate fast enough in nature to close the missing 3.8% gap?

It’s a claim that I’ve seen often referenced by people like Brett Weinstein and reporters who have been covering this story. I’m not sure where I first heard it, but here’s a quick reference published on a recent PLOS blog: [0]

> Clues to the transition from bat virus RaTG13 to human virus SARS-CoV-2 may lie within the 4% of the genome sequences that diverge. Evolutionary biologists estimate it would have taken at least 50 years for the bat virus to have mutated itself into SARS-CoV-2, considering known, natural mutation rates of viral genomes.

It goes on to say, that it’s possible this virus is just different.

This paper states 20-50 years an an estimate. [1]

> Bats belong to the usual suspects for zoonosis, and indeed, a bat virus that shared 96% sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2 was isolated in Yunnan /China in 2013. However, a 4% sequence difference (>1000 bp) would indicate 20 to 50 years of separation from SARS-CoV-2, making this bat isolate an unlikely direct source for the nascent epidemic. Chinese researchers explored tissue and faecal samples from 227 bats representing 20 species living in China, collected between May and October 2019 and analysed them by metagenome sequencing. This investigation found that the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 in this sample set shared 93.3% sequence identity over the entire genome, less than the bat coronavirus isolated in 2013 from the same province, Yunnan (Zhou et al., 2020).

I’m not a virologist, just trying to keep up with this story. It seems like a consensus that 3.8% is a large chasm to cross in that time frame, but there could be things we don’t know or possibly viruses that are closer to SARS-CoV2 that we haven’t sequenced yet. I think the most important thing to note is that there hasn’t been enough evidence to rule out a gain-of-function lab leak hypothesis given what we know today about viruses and there wasn’t a year ago either.

[0] https://dnascience.plos.org/2021/04/15/3-possible-origins-of...

[1] https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/175...

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#516

Post by tfcata »

I'm sorry to see the impotent Biden administration chose to politicize this issue that should've been left to scientists, just maybe to demonstrate he's not weak, or to shift the attention of the Americans who are under such economic stress cause by the shamefully ineffective measure taken by their government.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#517

Post by coupdejarnac »

40four wrote: post #492
ridaj wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wuhan wet market episode, in retrospect, was almost certainly a superspreading event rather than a patient zero situation. The virus's effects are so variable from person to person (lots of asymptomatic carriers, people who just get a little cold, symptoms undistinguishable from the flu) that it was almost certainly already circulating in Wuhan unnoticed, until it became big enough to be hard not to notice. Consi…

Guys, a bit of a tangent if I may? This is not normally my lane, but I really wish we could get over this term ‘wet market’. From a western point of view if you really think about it, it’s derogatory, and likely based in racial paranoia. We’ve all heard this term time and time again in the media. But after looking into it more, it’s not really accurate. Just call it a market. Or a farmers market as we call them in Am…

Lol. I just asked my friend from Beijing sitting next to me if the term wet market is racist.

Do a bit of research before engaging in ridiculous pearl clutching.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#518

Post by garmaine »

analog31 wrote: post #150
kaesar14 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would’ve had a better chance of being taken seriously if it wasn’t actively a bannable offense to talk about them on major social media websites.

Could be. I confess that I don't follow social media, but I participate in a handful of web forums that probably count as lightweight social media. On those forums, there are taboo topics, and my impression is that those are topics where any hope of civil discussion has long since evaporated. So, I wouldn't have high hopes for progress towards investigating this issue via a social medium if its curators have already…

FYI for the past year or so you could get a lifetime ban from YouTube (and Facebook and Twitter?) for discussing the lab-leak hypothesis. It was an outrageous overreaction.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#519

Post by jkelleyrtp »

seventytwo wrote: post #453
krrrh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s covered in the article and it’s called RaTG13 and no one can get a straight answer on where it was acquired or when. However independent researchers found it is identical to a virus previously known as RaBtCoV/4991 that made several miners ill in 2012. It’s 96.2% similar not 98%. The issue is that coronaviruses in nature don’t mutate fast enough for that to be the missing link, and they have tested something lik…

Where have you heard that CoVs don’t mutate fast enough in nature to close the missing 3.8% gap?

I believe the furin cleavage site has been quoted to be an exceptionally rare mutation. It is extremely unlikely for this particular mutation to exist without being accompanied by other less-rare mutations in a natural-spread scenario. For this particular mutation, a gap of greater than 3.8% would be expected. It may (I'm not an expert) may be unlikely for a 3.8% drift, but is less likely for only a 3.8% drift given the rarity of the ACE2 spike.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#520

Post by speedgoose »

USA's medias are a bit late to discuss this theory seriously. I know that they usually don't read newspapers that are not written in English, but they perhaps should do because it's not the first time they arrive months later. For example the theory was discussed a lot in major French medias months ago after the CNRS, a major research institute, published about it : https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/la-question-de-lorigine-d...

Since very recently you also have a letter in the Science journal written in English, so it may help USA medias to consider the theory: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

Anyway, better late than never and this is a good story from vanity fair.

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