The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan • Hacker News Board

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#141

Post by peytn » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #134

lamontcg wrote: post #75

The problem with this whole article is that we know of no suitable backbone virus to use, and we know of no suitable spike-protein sequence to form a chimera which results in SARS-CoV-2. The experiments done on the SARS-CoV-1 or WIV1 backbone don't remotely get you close to SARS-CoV-2 and you're dealing with centuries of evolutionary difference there. The RaTG13 virus backbone is also several decades of evolution awa…

Here's a much better article that lays out the argument I'm trying to make pretty much exactly: "The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory": https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...

Article conveniently ignores the adverse inference angle, which is the most damning. Let’s wait until we see what was actually going on in the lab.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#142

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #78

jdavis703 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of work should absolutely get more difficult for western scientists too. We’ve had several lab leaks that through luck didn’t turn in to pandemics. Certainly the costs of auditing and complying with lab safety is far cheaper than a global pandemic.

Prominent, respected virologists have been questioning gain of function research for a while. Here's a cite[1] from 2018 from Marc Lipsitch, who would be on most people's top ten list of trusted virologists on Covid. He's also one of the signatories of the letter calling for investigation[2]. I think it's possible to split out the question of bioresearch risks from Covid origins. If it was a lab leak, obviously we sh…

> If it was a lab leak, obviously we should regulate those risks better, but we should also do more to mitigate zoonotic spillover

> If it wasn't lab leak, we should do more to mitigate spillover, but it would also be a good idea to be more careful about biosafety

This seems like a roundabout way to endorse Matt Yglesias' view that there are basically no implications to the question "was it a lab leak?"

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#143

Post by raphlinus » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #142

raphlinus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prominent, respected virologists have been questioning gain of function research for a while. Here's a cite[1] from 2018 from Marc Lipsitch, who would be on most people's top ten list of trusted virologists on Covid. He's also one of the signatories of the letter calling for investigation[2]. I think it's possible to split out the question of bioresearch risks from Covid origins. If it was a lab leak, obviously we sh…

> If it was a lab leak, obviously we should regulate those risks better, but we should also do more to mitigate zoonotic spillover > If it wasn't lab leak, we should do more to mitigate spillover, but it would also be a good idea to be more careful about biosafety This seems like a roundabout way to endorse Matt Yglesias' view that there are basically no implications to the question "was it a lab leak?"

Very little in the way of public health implications. Quite a bit in terms of geopolitical implications. I do think people confuse the two a fair amount.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#144

Post by snowwrestler » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:06 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #113

jdavis703 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of work should absolutely get more difficult for western scientists too. We’ve had several lab leaks that through luck didn’t turn in to pandemics. Certainly the costs of auditing and complying with lab safety is far cheaper than a global pandemic.

> is far cheaper than a global pandemic It’s hard to overstate the case here. Even a tiny chance for a proposed research project to causing something like covid 19 has a gigantic risk adjusted cost and should only have been undertaken if the expected results were likewise enormously beneficial. Something seems off with the cost benefit analysis in these laboratories.

The whole point of research like this is to better understand a naturally occurring risk of disease. Without the work to understand in detail how similar coronaviruses infect humans cells, there is no way Moderna and BioNTech could have turned around their mRNA vaccine candidates as fast as they did.

When looking at cost-benefit analysis you have to understand that the probability of a naturally occurring human infectious disease capable of causing a pandemic is 100% over a long enough time span. Therefore the possibility of a lab leak can add little marginal risk over that same period of time. Whereas the understanding that comes from research will confer benefits no matter the origin of the disease.

Labs should be as secure as possible: yes. But there is a huge opportunity cost to saying “don’t work with human infectious diseases any more.”

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#145

Post by unparagoned » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #140

amazingman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at Bret Weinstein, and it wasn’t good. Not good at all. He seemed to be making every effort he could to blame the mRNA vaccines for problems that —if true— could have any number of mundane explanations. But hey, maybe he’s right about the lab leak theory.

Look I'm not anti vaxer here but to Bret's points, entries into the physician's VAERS database as well as the UK's equivalent already show it's the deadliest vaccine in history. Even v chief of medicine at Baylor is warning the same thing that the membrane spike proteins (and lipid nano particles) are unexpectedly breaking off, circulating, and triggering immune reactions throughout the body. The fact groups about ad…

VAERS does not show it is the deadliest in historical.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#146

Post by poorjohnmacafee » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #92

lamontcg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of this reminds me of how we went to war against Iraq The lead author of the WSJ piece on the "sick lab workers" is the same author that helped get us into Iraq with a NYT article on Hussein's nuclear WMD program in 2002.

It’s almost like those two pieces are completely unrelated to one another. If you’re looking for someone with a clean record commenting on the viability of the lab leak theory for months, take a look at Bret Weinstein.

For well over a year. If folks don't know, in the third month of the pandemic he did a long form discussion with a geneticist about the surprising genome snippets found in the base coronavirus strain that the wuhan lab obtained from a bat cave in Hunan. They discuss gain of function practices at that lab and others. None of this discussion is new.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#147

Post by landemva » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #144

bradleyjg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is far cheaper than a global pandemic It’s hard to overstate the case here. Even a tiny chance for a proposed research project to causing something like covid 19 has a gigantic risk adjusted cost and should only have been undertaken if the expected results were likewise enormously beneficial. Something seems off with the cost benefit analysis in these laboratories.

The whole point of research like this is to better understand a naturally occurring risk of disease. Without the work to understand in detail how similar coronaviruses infect humans cells, there is no way Moderna and BioNTech could have turned around their mRNA vaccine candidates as fast as they did. When looking at cost-benefit analysis you have to understand that the probability of a naturally occurring human infec…

If it adds little marginal risk, why bother with any secure labs?

Following your "gonna happen eventually", let the scientists play with their toys under tents in the public square.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#148

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #143

thaumasiotes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was a lab leak, obviously we should regulate those risks better, but we should also do more to mitigate zoonotic spillover > If it wasn't lab leak, we should do more to mitigate spillover, but it would also be a good idea to be more careful about biosafety This seems like a roundabout way to endorse Matt Yglesias' view that there are basically no implications to the question "was it a lab leak?"

Very little in the way of public health implications. Quite a bit in terms of geopolitical implications. I do think people confuse the two a fair amount.

If there are no practical implications, why would there be political implications? You don't usually premise your political stances on the foundation that "something irrelevant happened".

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#149

Post by jpeloquin » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

The quest to come up with a narrative for why Covid happened reminds me of the reporting when Katrina hit New Orleans. The city's vulnerability was known beforehand [0] but the inevitable disaster was greeted with shock, confusion, and a search for peripheral explanations. In the case of the pandemic, our vulnerability to zoonotic viruses and other diseases was also well-known; e.g. [1] was published in 1995. But again the reporting, as it seems to me anyway, focuses on the particular circumstances of the disaster rather than our fundamental vulnerability. There is a plentiful supply of unknown microorganisms to fuel the next global health crisis, and we need to expect and prepare for it so that next time we can prevail without great struggle.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/predicting-katrina/

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46722.The_Coming_Plague

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#150

Post by snowwrestler » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

landemva wrote: post #147

snowwrestler wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of research like this is to better understand a naturally occurring risk of disease. Without the work to understand in detail how similar coronaviruses infect humans cells, there is no way Moderna and BioNTech could have turned around their mRNA vaccine candidates as fast as they did. When looking at cost-benefit analysis you have to understand that the probability of a naturally occurring human infec…

If it adds little marginal risk, why bother with any secure labs? Following your "gonna happen eventually", let the scientists play with their toys under tents in the public square.

If you run a secure lab, you don’t accelerate the onset of a potential pandemic. If you run an insecure lab, you might accelerate the onset, which is bad.

My point is that ceasing research entirely does not rule out a future pandemic, but it certainly would harm our ability to respond to a future pandemic.