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The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

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

#221

Post by salawat »

jhgb wrote: post #217
exdsq wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> a lack of evidence for any of the alternatives to disprove the lab hypothesis I'm not sure that "disprove my wild hypothesis" is how proving things works.

When nothing has a smoking gun, and you've got volumes more circumstantial evidence for one thing than another, it does not serve one well to stick their head in the sand and not move forward under the assumption both can be right.

When you run into massive resistance to doing so, it only points one in the direction that there may be more to be uncovered in one direction than another.

>Come on in guys, let's compare notes research wise!

Would have done volumes more to defuse suspicions than nothing but stonewalling and saber rattling.

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

#222

Post by jhgb »

salawat wrote: post #221
jhgb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lack of evidence for any of the alternatives to disprove the lab hypothesis I'm not sure that "disprove my wild hypothesis" is how proving things works.

When nothing has a smoking gun, and you've got volumes more circumstantial evidence for one thing than another, it does not serve one well to stick their head in the sand and not move forward under the assumption both can be right. When you run into massive resistance to doing so, it only points one in the direction that there may be more to be uncovered in one direction than another. >Come on in guys, let's compare…

Smoking gun in the original SARS took 15 years to find and it was found in bats in a cave 1100 km away from the first outbreak. What exactly are you expecting two years into this outbreak?

The "circumstantial evidence" is that pretty much all recent new infectious diseases in humans were traced to animals in the wild, or alternatively, sometimes not traced anywhere at all (Hepatitis C, anyone?). "Yes, but this one is special!", conspiracy theorists swear. Sure, Jan.

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

#223

Post by salawat »

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…

Incorrect. The RBD was a 90+ percent match to a pangolin coronavirus, the backbone was 90% + match to a sample collected from bats in Guangdong if I recall correctly, and you had GoF techniques in play that enabled seamless porting of nucleotide sequences that left no traces of gene edits. We've gone over it in previous articles...

Capabilities. Not motivations. Never ever lose sight of that. You will never know what makes another human being tick or do what they do, but you can definitely establish an upper bound on the trouble they can get themselves in to.

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

#224

Post by salawat »

tomp wrote: post #191
raphlinus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second your recommendation of Alina Chan, as she has the scientific credentials, is careful with the science, and as you say is balanced in that she doesn't dismiss the natural origins hypothesis either. If people want to be informed about multiple perspectives of this debate, she is a must-follow. That said, let me temper that with some skepticism. First, having got a book deal[1] she is now in the position of dir…

I just read your link [2]. She definitely didn’t fabricate or misinterpret the quote, which says that lab leak + concealed IS a conspiracy theory. Full quote (as per Dr Rasmussen), and italic parts support the above interpretation: > Unfortunately, this did little to quell often contradictory and sometimes outright ridiculous conspiracy theories that spread faster than the virus itself: SARS-CoV-2 was the result of a…

> this was concealed to hide either spectacular incompetence

I won't even touch the rest, but this one still strikes me as too early to call, given the cultural importance of saving face. I'll buy that there was much less of it than people allow their imaginations to run away with it, but if you don't think there was some very long tense, sweating bullets meetings on how to best go about sculpting the narrative and shaping the story in terms of national interest goes, or covering of ass in the early days, then I don't think you've been paying attention to the diplomatic realities surrounding China at all.

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

#225

Post by snowwrestler »

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.

I’m not making an argument, I’m summarizing the article. Here’s the relevant sentence:

> The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1

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

#226

Post by arisAlexis »

snowwrestler wrote: post #225
arisAlexis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not making an argument, I’m summarizing the article. Here’s the relevant sentence: > The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1

Again, you seem to trust the Chinese administration to their word. I bet during Chernobyl we should have trusted the USSR for information too. And since this famous Chinese investigator said "oh no it wasn't romantic our lab" we should stop digging for the origin of the most catastrophic event since WW2

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

#227

Post by edanm »

arisAlexis wrote: post #226
snowwrestler wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not making an argument, I’m summarizing the article. Here’s the relevant sentence: > The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1

Again, you seem to trust the Chinese administration to their word. I bet during Chernobyl we should have trusted the USSR for information too. And since this famous Chinese investigator said "oh no it wasn't romantic our lab" we should stop digging for the origin of the most catastrophic event since WW2

You're misunderstanding parent's post. Parent is neither trusting nor mistrusting the Chinese administration. They are simply explaining (and quoting) the article.

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

#228

Post by lamontcg »

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #146
andreilys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The furin cleavage sites have now been pretty decisively debunked.

They're found not only in many other coronaviruses, but they've independently evolved over 6 times that we know about, and they've now been found in SARS-CoV-2 related sarbecoviruses in bats.

The goalpost moving has migrated to arguing that a couple of sequences in the furin sites are now "unusual". Kristian Andersen, whose early 2020 e-mail to Fauci has been passed around as evidence of the lab leak theory has more recently talked to the NYT about this:

> Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect.

> While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it.

And "surprising genome snippets" don't get you past the fact that the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is still decades of evolution away from being SARS-CoV-2 which is not something that can be engineered in the lab.

See this article for a lot more:

https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...

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

#229

Post by lamontcg »

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…

That is nonsense

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

#230

Post by Closi »

jhgb wrote: post #222
salawat wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When nothing has a smoking gun, and you've got volumes more circumstantial evidence for one thing than another, it does not serve one well to stick their head in the sand and not move forward under the assumption both can be right. When you run into massive resistance to doing so, it only points one in the direction that there may be more to be uncovered in one direction than another. >Come on in guys, let's compare…

Smoking gun in the original SARS took 15 years to find and it was found in bats in a cave 1100 km away from the first outbreak. What exactly are you expecting two years into this outbreak? The "circumstantial evidence" is that pretty much all recent new infectious diseases in humans were traced to animals in the wild, or alternatively, sometimes not traced anywhere at all (Hepatitis C, anyone?). "Yes, but this one is…

Eh, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.

One analogy I heard recently is that lots of people get covered in paint worldwide, but if you see 10 people covered in paint right next to the dulux paint factory, you should probably consider the likelihood it came from there, even if the paint factory denies it.

Let’s not forget that we are talking about the outbreak being right next to a lab which was known to have inadequate safety precautions which was trying to make bat coronaviruses jump species.

We are also talking about a strain that, if it began in a lab with inadequate safety standards, could have very easily escaped due to its high infectiousness and low detectability due to asymptomatic carriers.

Might we find it in a cave? Of course. Might we find it started in WIV? Of course.

The only people I personally think are silly are people that outright dismiss either option.

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