The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory • Hacker News Board

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#141

Post by mikem170 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

mandmandam wrote: post #121

mikem170 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the article cover the scenarios you mentioned? The article said that the lab's normal job was to look for new bat viruses, and that it's pretty hard to get infected from a qtip swabbed over a bats anus stored in a stabilizing solution. The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out…

> The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence: such as the earliest cases happening in a single-digit mile radius from one of the worlds few labs studying gain-of-function in coronaviruses, while bats are hibernating, a thousand miles from the nearest bat colony, and the extraordinary response and thr…

I'm not sure about your statement saying the earliest cases were near the wuhan lab. Do you have a source for that? I've seen the opposite, that there is genetic evidence that the virus originated 600 miles south of Wuhan, where there are bats:

> Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. [0].

The above would imply that the markets in Wuhan were a super-spreader site for covid-19, but not the origin.

Coronaviruses in bats and jumping from bats to humans is incredibly common, with 3% of people they randomly tested in bat cave areas with bat coronavirus antibodies [1], which this source extrapolated to mean that 1-7 million people a year are infected by various bat viruses.

I agree with you that genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have at this point.

> To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth

Would be interesting if some lab tried to duplicate some of this theorized tricky editing, to prove it could be done.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#142

Post by scotty79 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

forcry wrote: post #136

scotty79 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing unique about covid spreading to humans. It infects various species very easily. Cats, dogs, ferrets. It wasn't uniquely adapted to humans in the beginning. Humans are just more connected species than for example panthers. As it grew to pandemic levels it spawned mutations slightly more adapted to humans.

>It wasn't uniquely adapted to humans in the beginning. Seems wrong. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92388-5#Abs1 >Conspicuously, we found that the binding of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein was higher for human ACE2 than any other species we tested, with the ACE2 binding energy order, from highest to lowest, being human > pangolin > dog > monkey > hamster > ferret > cat > tiger > bat > civet > horse > cow > snak…

"Overall, given the high binding energy of S protein for pangolin ACE2, the possibility of pangolins being an intermediary vector for SARS-CoV-2 cannot be excluded"

There's really no wonder that virus that spreads through human population is slightly better adjusted to humans than animal species its ancestor was infecting.

It's the case of water in the puddle surprised how well the puddle shape fits the water shape.

What I'm saying is that this virus is sufficiently general that it can infect multiple species with high efficiency and if hamsters were more densly connected than humans it could have been a hamster pandemic before it would become human pandemic.

This virus fits us well but not uniquely well.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#143

Post by agentofoblivion » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

Who is this author and as the lay public, can we trust the authoritative tone she takes? Basic clicking around shows she's a journalist, not a scientist, and has written articles e.g., highlighting the medical struggles of Jordan Peterson with statements about him like:

> His stern ethos of self-help and bootstrapping has made him a darling of the so-called intellectual dark web, and a gateway drug for countless budding right-wingers who have stumbled upon one of his lectures on YouTube. (https://newrepublic.com/article/156829/happened-jordan-peter...)

It seems too much of a coincidence that another member of "the so-called intellectual dark web" is perhaps the most recognizable proponent of the Lab Leak Theory. She also writes for The Nation, which is unapologetically leaning pretty hard to the left.

In other words, I question both her motives and authority.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#144

Post by jpeloquin » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

ChemSpider wrote: post #50

Synaesthesia wrote: post #30

As far as I'm concerned it's largely irrelevant, because the real question is how the governments all handled the Covid crisis, once it was out in the open.

Not really. Once thing the lab leak theory would explain is that why the virus was so unexpectedly infective right from the start (adapted to human tissue e. g. via passage in humanized mice). In that sense, I hope that it was a lab leak. It will be better for us humans.

> Once thing the lab leak theory would explain is that why the virus was so unexpectedly infective right from the start.

There's nothing unexpected about Covid being infective because spread in humans is why we took note of it and are currently discussing it. That is, we're discussing P(human infectiousness | human epidemic). If we _randomly selected_ a virus from amongst _all_ viruses, then yes, P(human infectiousness) would be expected to be low, but we're not doing that. The former is plain selection bias (by which I mean the technical error; I'm not accusing you of bias).

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#145

Post by jandrese » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

The evidence is sadly too thin to make a definitive call one way or the other at this point. We may never know.

But at the same time I have to wonder how much it matters? It's the difference between telling some researchers to double-check their containment procedures vs. not? I think it's extremely unlikely that this was an intentional attack from CCP on their own people. It wasn't a Uyghur town as far as I know, and even so containment was nearly impossible so it's a dumb idea anyway.

So the only two plausible theories is it was either a natural source or an unintentional lab leak. At the end of the day it doesn't matter that much which one was true, the response is about the same. Maybe on the extreme end the lab could be shut down and its work moved elsewhere. People are wasting an enormous amount of energy arguing over this.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#146

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

canoebuilder wrote: post #123

albinofrenchy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article addresses this very point. I have 0 trust in the CCP to do or say anything not in it's own interest, but on the whole the "They found a novel virus in the wild, sampled it, and then it escaped their lab" seems a lot less likely than "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick".

There is a wide literature on this at this point. Please don’t make conclusive statements that also indicate you don’t have the faintest bit of background in what you are talking about. At this point, this is not a complete black box, “novel virus.” There is a scientific understanding of the virus. There are known related viruses in the wild, just not anywhere near Wuhan. There are multi-pathway paper trails linking…

Please don't cross into personal swipes and flamewar in HN threads. It leads to hell and discredits the position you're arguing for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#147

Post by jandrese » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

watertom wrote: post #111

Full disclosure: I do not think this virus was engineered I do not think this was deliberately released I do think the Chinese were studying this virus in the lab, not engineering it, but studying it. I do think it was the result of a lab accident, a technician tried to cover up an accident/carelessness in order to avoid getting punished or fired, normal human behavior. HOW DID THE CHINESE KNOW THEY HAD A NEW VIRUS W…

From what I understand they knew because there was a lot more than a handful of cases. The government was suppressing the news because that's what you do when you have bad news in an authoritarian state. Remember the early news from doctors who were trying to understand what was going on and were getting censored by the government? They had to form an underground information exchange until the problem finally got so big (and spread internationally) that they couldn't pretend anymore.

IMHO, this discussion about the lab is a distraction from the real discussion we should be having. The one about suppressing discussion between doctors who are merely reporting on what they're seeing and delaying the worldwide response as a result.

Even today the CCPs official numbers on COVID infections in China are extremely unlikely. They claim to have had fewer cases than even New Zealand. Clearly there is political influence being exerted over the official figures.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#148

Post by canoebuilder » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

mikem170 wrote: post #126

canoebuilder wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, Highly tendentious claim... > and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out. Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months. Are you privy to s…

So you think that it's less than 51% probable that this virus jumped from nature (from animals) into people, like every other virus we know about? There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just this article. EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence he references points to covi…

Yes, similar viruses are known far outside Wuhan. In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan and no known bat coronavirus source anywhere near Wuhan, other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology..., lends credibility to the lab theory, does it not?

Infections from nature aren’t rare, unfortunately neither are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the relative few places on earth where this type of viral and pathogen research occurs to all the places humans interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world, you could say infections coming from labs are actually are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted. There is even a paper trail of government officials expressing concern about lax safety measures at this particular lab. Well before the world heard of coronavirus.

If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses, I don’t see that as a point against the theory that one or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside the lab.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#149

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

albinofrenchy wrote: post #137

canoebuilder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a wide literature on this at this point. Please don’t make conclusive statements that also indicate you don’t have the faintest bit of background in what you are talking about. At this point, this is not a complete black box, “novel virus.” There is a scientific understanding of the virus. There are known related viruses in the wild, just not anywhere near Wuhan. There are multi-pathway paper trails linking…

> At this point, this is not a complete black box, “novel virus.” Not sure why you insist on being pedantic on word choice here. It obviously isn't a novel virus at this point; but it was in 2019 -- or whenever WIV would have found it. I'd also bet dollars to donuts you have no experience in virology apart from participating in online forums. Which I don't think is any kind of point against you; but it makes it weird…

Please don't respond to a bad comment, or a provocation in a comment, by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only takes us deeper into hell. We're trying to avoid that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#150

Post by forcry » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

mikem170 wrote: post #135

forcry wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin.. Some scientists think otherwise, quite strongly in the opposite direction, it seems.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs

I found this link [0] that seems to debunk, in a lot of detail, the congressional testimony of these two physicists on the specifics of their claims for evidence of gain of function manipulation in the gentic sequence of covid-19. That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19 evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a lab. [0] https://resp…

Well, if the authors of these posts disagree, they should contact the government and offer their testimony as well, then we can consider their argument to hold similar weight.