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

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

#661

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #651
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that. The thing is, no new info supporting the lab-leak theory has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been. All the evidence still points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology not having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic, and all the new evidence is consistent with the default prior - that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from…

No new evidence for natural origin has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been, and you are making an isolated demand for rigor. If you read the Nicholas Wade article, the PLOS blog, or even this article, you will know the evidence is not pointing in any one direction at the moment, but there is solid evidence of a cover-up and blame shifting by the Chinese government and the virology /…

> No new evidence for natural origin has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been, and you are making an isolated demand for rigor.

This is an absurd equivalence. Viruses spill over from nature all the time. There are millions of people coming into contact every day with animal populations that harbor myriad SARS-related coronaviruses. Every known novel virus that has entered the human population has done so through spillover. This is the default hypothesis, which must be overwhelmingly favored at the outset of any discussion. Everything we know so far is perfectly consistent with this default assumption, and there is precisely zero evidence of a lab leak.

> If you read the Nicholas Wade article

I've read it, and it is appalling that an article by someone who does not understand the subject they are writing about is getting so much circulation.

> there is solid evidence of a cover-up

There is no evidence at all of a cover-up of a lab leak. Everything we know so far points to the lab not even having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic. It appears to be a completely novel virus, not closely related to anything else known before, which is precisely what you'd expect for a novel virus that spilled over from an unknown animal population. If there were a major outbreak of a virus that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had (such as WIV-1), that would be a different matter, but there isn't.

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

#662

Post by stef25 »

yumraj wrote: post #29
peter422 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was every other emerging virus also created in a lab? SARS? MERS? Influenza? Polio? The highest probability is this virus originated like every other virus in history.

Did any of them originate a few miles from a pathogen research lab that handled such pathogen that caused those outbreaks?

Labs may be built in areas relevant to their research.

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

#663

Post by teachingassist »

yarcob wrote: post #613
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the theory is being pushed for political reasons, and most virologists think it's nonsense. The evidence for a lab leak is the same as it's ever been: nothing. There's no evidence the lab even had SARS-CoV-2 on hand before the pandemic, which is an absolute prerequisite for the lab leak theory to be possible, and all the evidence points to the lab not having had the virus. They regularly publish the ge…

> most virologists think it's nonsense That's exactly the kind of unsubstantiated statements I see all the time (both from proponents of the lab leak theory and from opponents). I'd love to read the actual reasoning why virologists think that it's nonsense. I'm a bit sad that hacker is so full of political and over-simplified arguments for this topic, and the actual science is missing.

From my point of view, the lab-leak hypothesis is presented in a political way and not a scientific way, so it's hard to challenge scientifically.

This is my genuine scientific take, having worked in a genome lab:

If the virus was artificially engineered, then you might expect to see points of artificial cleavage in the genome (which I assume you don't, because that would have been identified by now and would be presented as strong scientific evidence for lab origin).

If the virus were stored and allowed to mutate naturally but in a lab, then it might look very much like any naturally-occurring virus, but in lab conditions it seems likely (probabilistically 'almost certain') to evolve in the direction of reduced infectiousness. So, this also seems unlikely.

Deliberately engineering a human-infectious virus to appear natural is theoretically possible, but it seems to me that it would have to be deliberate - and is far beyond our current public understanding of science. So, I'd expect the cost to be astronomical. One lab or one group of scientists privately working on this doesn't seem to be enough.

The fact that this coronavirus transfers so easily to and between other species (and mink in particular) suggests that it has cross-species potential, and therefore cross-species origin. It suggests that this virus doesn't have any particular connection to humans.

Like any scientist, I'm prepared to accept that it's not impossible. Indeed, I have laid out three routes in this comment. But, the arguments for a lab-leak it are not scientifically convincing, to me, and it seems vanishingly unlikely. I haven't seen any hint of evidence that would make me sit up and pay attention.

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

#664

Post by jk7tarYZAQNpTQa »

JProthero wrote: post #540
tootie wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other pertinent data point, how many epidemics have been positively traced to a lab leak since virology has been widely studied? The Wuhan lab was founded in the 1950s. You can say the likelihood that a virus would one day escape from one of these labs is pretty high. The likelihood that a given virus would be from a lab is very low. All of which brings us back to where we were at the start. It's plausible and possib…

A 2007 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (an important virus affecting cattle) was traced to effluent released from a laboratory in the UK [1]. A small number of SARS infections in 2003-2004 are also believed to have been due to laboratory accidents [2]. This article [3] gives an introduction to the subject from the perspective of a journalist who has reported on laboratory safety in the US. This article [4] publish…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

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

#665

Post by okamiueru »

simonh wrote: post #627
harryf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's shady to provide that funding. What I'm saying is it demonstrates conflict of interest. Last year in May 5 2020 Fauci dismissed the idea that the virus came from a lab that his own organisation was providing funds to - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-fauci-wuhan-lab-coronav... Whether or not anything shady was happening, the conflict of interest is clear.

Fauci was responsible for the work of large swathes of the US medical research establishment, and was questioned on that work on a daily basis. Does it make any sense to say he can't comment on the work of an organisation he runs because he runs it? In this case the lab didn't even work for him, it just got some small amount of funding from his organisation's budget but he had no say in it's operations. So he can com…

Why is disclosure of potential conflict of interest made out to be such a high bar? And why do you put arguments forth that did not exist in what you replied to?

> Does it make any sense to say he can't comment on the work of an organisation he runs because he runs it?

Is a straw man argument, because what was said was that the conflict of interest should have been disclosed. And, not that he cannot make a comment.

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

#666

Post by s5300 »

JesseMReeves wrote: post #478
um_ya wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this whole thing is a great example of why you don't ban alternative viewpoints, even if considered "conspiracy theories". Zerohedge was reporting this early on, and Twitter banned them for "misinformation".

That newspaper scene from Men in Black. I’ve relived it a number of times over the past year particularly. Local mainstream “fact checkers” have even called Covid-19 a “right-wing conspiracy theory” in early 2020.

>>I've relived it a number of times over the past year particularly.

Perhaps you should consider checking in to a psychiatric care facility, that's definitely not normal.

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

#667

Post by whitepaint »

sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

What was the evidence that it occurred naturally?

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

#668

Post by concordDance »

thebigman433 wrote: post #484
bglazer wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite astounded and confused at the sudden shift in discourse towards assuming that the lab leak theory must be true. It's not so much the theory itself that's surprising. Lab leak remains plausible but less probable then natural origins. The sudden shift is just baffling to me though. This huge new furor is due to anonymous CIA sources saying three people got sick? That's extremely tenuous evidence, as you state…

> This seems more like people declaring victory because they're finally getting a hint of public support for their suspicions, rather than some truly damning evidence. I think this is the main thing driving these comments. Instead of being totally against the idea, these articles are providing a shred of hope (despite not having any new proof as far as I can tell) for the people who are locked in on the lab leak theo…

People can be censored but wrong, however, that doesn't mean the censorship policy was good. Censorship distorts your information market and makes getting to the truth harder. Sure, only the general public might be being censored but that makes said public (and the news media) associate taking the censored hypothesis seriously with craziness and evil. Which makes it substantially harder for university scientists (and to an extent, government ones) to research (this can take the form of cancellations, like Steve Hsu, lack of funding or just reputational damage)

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

#669

Post by zarzavat »

cm2187 wrote: post #643
glitchcrab wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect given the new WHO guidelines https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/01/covid-19-varia...

Except it is TVs and newspapers that were lecturing us that it was racist to call it the chinese flu and that are now happily using the xx-variant designation. It is the obvious bad faith that I find appalling.

Because there was no other name they could use. Blame the WHO for moving at the speed of molasses on this issue.

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

#670

Post by andi999 »

stef25 wrote: post #622
kelnos wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure if I ran an organization that funds a bunch of labs that do virus research, and a global pandemic started in the neighborhood of a lab doing virus research, and people started floating the theory that the virus leaked from that lab, one of the first things I'd do is call my grant-funding team and ask them if we funded that lab. If Fauci didn't do that, he's a strange dude.

100K from a 5B budget is peanuts and you couldn't reasonably expect the person at the top to know the details of what each recipient of 100K is doing exactly. If all of the 5B is spent on coronavirus research then it's a different story. Most likely it's spent on an incredibly wide array of topics.

Just take your excel sheet of funded project, filter by country then filter by city....
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