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

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

#181

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC

Closi wrote: post #174

jpeloquin wrote: post #149

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 aga…

I think part of the quest is about deciding if gain-of-function research is safe and should be allowed in the future. If it happens to be the root cause, no doubt there will be a huge change in how it is carried out, if not outright banned. If it is proven to not be the cause, it will be easier to argue that it can be safe.

To be honest, I never really bought into the lab escape theory. Still really don't, with all the investigations going on I am willing to consider it as an alternative. Thing is, I have yet to see a timeline, starting with the earliest cases elsewhere, and a summary of the genetic research into COVID-19. Without having the time, and knowledge, to deep dive into the studies I jave to rely on news reports. And those, IMHO, are more about creating clicks than really informing people.

Curious to see what comes of that so. Not that it would change a lot in term of fighting the pandemic, we have working vaccines by now. The narrative will change a lot, so. And with all the mask clusterfuck still going on, I don't think the narrative will be good.

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

#182

Post by simonh » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

runawaybottle wrote: post #79

yskchu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to know the actual conditions, there is a recent article from a much better source Bloomberg: The Last–And Only–Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out She is an Australian virologist, now working in Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, previously scientific director of the biosafety lab at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School in 2016. Archive link: https://archive.is/IFDZY

I read that and her volunteered info was all over news sites last week. However, this is not what we need. What we need is an independent body that goes into the Wuhan lab. Let us inspect the bats. The cages, the equipment, the staff.

It seems unlikely to me that a team going to the lab now would be able to tell us anything at all about how the lab was operated 18 months ago. The chances that it hasn't been completely gutted and re-worked from scratch by now seem to me to be precisely zero. The window of opportunity to get a team in there and actually find out what was going on closed probably in late January or early in February 2020.

Meanwhile we have someone here with direct experience of the lab as it was at the actual time in question. It seems to me that's absolutely the best we are ever likely to get.

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

#183

Post by erostrate » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

_tik_ wrote: post #171

erostrate wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing that out. I agree with your first point about the book deal. On your second point, she has stated repeatedly and explicitly that her position is that she doesn't know what the origin of the virus is, natural origin is not ruled out either, and that all she is asking for is that both theories are credibly investigated, for example here [1]. Of course she talks a lot more about the lab leak, but tha…

I just read Alina Chan profile news on local news. It is mention that her background is in genetic therapy. How seriously I should take her statement on covid based on her background?

I'd encourage you to read what she says before you decide. Her background should make you take her more seriously that if she was, say, a software engineer, but less seriously than if she was a virologist. But for me, her background is only one factor in my decision of how seriously I take her. A bigger factor is how serious, informed and reasonable what she says is.

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

#184

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

imiric wrote: post #172

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some sequences appear to have been deleted That is a completely unrelated issue. The sequences you're talking about are sequences from patients (obtained in February 2020, I believe). They are not bat coronavirus sequences, which is what the poster above you is referring to. The Wuhan Institute of Virology publishes the sequences it discovers. RaTG13, the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, was published in 2016,…

I'm not familiar with genetics, so speaking as a layperson here, but if there was manipulation of patient data why should we consider WIV publications to be truthful and exhaustive? If the patient data had links to unpublished bat sequences the lab was working on, it would certainly be motivation to get rid of both. Unfortunately any claims pointing in the direction of a zoonotic transfer or lab leak is speculation a…

There was no "manipulation of patient data." The authors withdrew their raw data from a database, and then published the summary data (what most people will actually want to know) in a paper. The summary data matches the raw data (later recovered from the cloud).

> Could you link to this please?

It's in Table 1 of their June 2020 paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smll.202002...

> If the patient data had links to unpublished bat sequences the lab was working on, it would certainly be motivation to get rid of both.

The patient data had nothing to do with bat sequences. The paper we're talking about was a methodology paper, in which the authors were trying to test a new sequencing technology using recent patient samples. They were not focusing on SARS-CoV-2 origins, and they certainly weren't working with bat coronavirus sequences. I don't even think there's any connection to the WIV here: the corresponding authors don't appear to be affiliated with the institute.

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

#185

Post by rrll22 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #107

There’s going to be a ton of comments on the lab security aspects, but there are two other big takeaways from this article: 1) Researchers easily found multiple naturally occurring coronaviruses that seemed likely to be able to jump into humans. In fact that is why they were so eager to conduct that lab research: the natural threat seemed imminent. 2) The sequence of COVID-19 does not yet resemble any of the sequence…

2) ZXC21/ZX45 87% https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30662...

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

#186

Post by T-A » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #125

andreilys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet almost a year later and still no smoking gun showing a clear zoonotic link. I suppose we’ll never find one because China has no interest in getting to the truth. Cooperation means disclosing things which have the potential to make them look bad so why risk it?

SARS-CoV-1 happened in Guangdong in 2003. The Bat CoVs that are likely part of its natural zoonotic reservoir were only found in 2013-2016 in Yunnan.

What's missing now is not the reservoir, it's the last link from that reservoir to humans. With SARS, it was fond in less than a year (civets). This time, it remains notoriously missing, despite tens of thousands of animals tested.

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

#187

Post by edumucelli » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

This part of the article citing Anthony Fauci's 2012 comment [1] is impressive to me:

“Consider this hypothetical scenario,” Fauci wrote. “An important gain-of-function experiment involving a virus with serious pandemic potential is performed in a well-regulated, world-class laboratory by experienced investigators, but the information from the experiment is then used by another scientist who does not have the same training and facilities and is not subject to the same regulations. In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?”

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/

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

#188

Post by exdsq » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #181

Closi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the quest is about deciding if gain-of-function research is safe and should be allowed in the future. If it happens to be the root cause, no doubt there will be a huge change in how it is carried out, if not outright banned. If it is proven to not be the cause, it will be easier to argue that it can be safe.

To be honest, I never really bought into the lab escape theory. Still really don't, with all the investigations going on I am willing to consider it as an alternative. Thing is, I have yet to see a timeline, starting with the earliest cases elsewhere, and a summary of the genetic research into COVID-19. Without having the time, and knowledge, to deep dive into the studies I jave to rely on news reports. And those, IM…

Interesting - I've been thinking it's the obvious case for a year now since I first read about it. Just too many coincidences and a lack of evidence for any of the alternatives to disprove the lab hypothesis has come up since.

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

#189

Post by imiric » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #184

imiric wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with genetics, so speaking as a layperson here, but if there was manipulation of patient data why should we consider WIV publications to be truthful and exhaustive? If the patient data had links to unpublished bat sequences the lab was working on, it would certainly be motivation to get rid of both. Unfortunately any claims pointing in the direction of a zoonotic transfer or lab leak is speculation a…

There was no "manipulation of patient data." The authors withdrew their raw data from a database, and then published the summary data (what most people will actually want to know) in a paper. The summary data matches the raw data (later recovered from the cloud). > Could you link to this please? It's in Table 1 of their June 2020 paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smll.202002... > If the patient…

There certainly was deliberate deletion of raw patient sequence data from the NCBI database. See the paper by Jesse D. Bloom that the NYT article references[1]. I would classify this as "manipulation".

The author is also puzzled why this was done if the data matches the published summary in the Wang et al. 2020b paper, but hasn't received any replies from the authors.

This is also interesting:

> Particularly in light of the directive that labs destroy early samples (Pingui 2020) and multiple orders requiring approval of publications on COVID-19 (China CDC 2020; Kang et al. 2020a), this suggests a less than wholehearted effort to maximize information about viral sequences from early in the Wuhan epidemic.

> I don't even think there's any connection to the WIV here: the corresponding authors don't appear to be affiliated with the institute.

The authors of the nanopore paper are associated with Wuhan University. Since the CCP controls all aspects of Chinese research it's safe to say that a connection with the WIV certainly exists and they would be in a position to control the output of both.

Again, the reason behind this will likely never be known to the outside world. But to take anything coming from Chinese researchers as evidence for a narrative that exculpates China from any fault would be extremely naive. Or do we really believe there's nothing suspicious about a country of 1.4bn people having 5,508 reported deaths from COVID-19[2]?

[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v2....

[2]: https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn

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

#190

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #166

snowwrestler wrote: post #107

There’s going to be a ton of comments on the lab security aspects, but there are two other big takeaways from this article: 1) Researchers easily found multiple naturally occurring coronaviruses that seemed likely to be able to jump into humans. In fact that is why they were so eager to conduct that lab research: the natural threat seemed imminent. 2) The sequence of COVID-19 does not yet resemble any of the sequence…

How do you know 2? It is documented that the Chinese deleted sequences from a global database. Also how naive can we be thinking they have given WHO access to all the research? They didn't. So remove argument 2.

> It is documented that the Chinese deleted sequences from a global database.

You're referring to something completely different, which has nothing to do with bat coronavirus research or the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A group of researchers working on new sequencing techniques for patient samples (not bat coronaviruses) withdrew their raw data from a database. They then published the key data in a peer-reviewed journal.[1] It's better to have the raw data, but it's not as if the researchers hid their results. And again, this has nothing to do with bat coronaviruses or the WIV.

The WIV publishes the viruses it discovers. They published RaTG13, which is now recognized as the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 (but not the progenitor), in 2016. WIV scientists regularly publish papers, give talks at scientific conferences, and collaborate with international scientists. We have a very good idea of what they had and what viruses they were working with. Nobody from the WIV ever mentioned anything that looks like SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic began.

1. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202002169