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An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

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Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#61

Post by athrowaway3z »

It seems to me the consensus has been on "it's plausible" for a while now.

However, sometimes i see people paint a picture where experts are categorically denying the possibility, and i don't understand the field well enough to be sure one way or another.

What would be the minimum necessary steps to create something like Covid-19?

Corollary: If i mix 100 different natural strains together with a couple dozen CRISPR cutters at random, and inject it into a human. What are the chances of a permutation to be infections/dangerous, and transmissible between humans?

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#62

Post by asxd »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #60
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour. Just playing the devil's advocate here, but, I'd argue that it makes quite a lot of sense from a biological warfare perspective in terms of intelligence gathering on how different societies and countries behave against such a threat. In particular, the pandemic has brought to the surface the how larg…

Is HN unable to entertain opposing views or hypothetical scenarios without resorting to downvoting?

What you're proposing seems possible, but without any sort of evidence it's hard to see it as anything other than FUD.

That being said, you're absolutely right that the virus has generated all this data. What's suspect is whether someone created the virus with the intention just to collect that data.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#63

Post by boomboomsubban »

dogsboywonder wrote: post #18

The amount of censorship, especially among the qualified scientific community in just about every facet of this disease is alarming. Even if the origins were accidental or lab-born or whatnot, the response has been so politicized worldwide that pure science has been largely thrown out the window. Every possibility should be analyzed & tested, even if it goes against the interests of a ruling party and all parties are…

Keep in mind that analyzing and testing every possibility for SARS took over a decade. The actual science may well he happening, but it's completely overwhelmed by the noise from the political backed "science."

Personally, I think we should just quietly let the origin research happen and all of the political fervor should be immediately leveraged towards preventing any future zoological or lab leak pandemics.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#64

Post by simonh »

indy wrote: post #31
dogsboywonder wrote: post #18

The amount of censorship, especially among the qualified scientific community in just about every facet of this disease is alarming. Even if the origins were accidental or lab-born or whatnot, the response has been so politicized worldwide that pure science has been largely thrown out the window. Every possibility should be analyzed & tested, even if it goes against the interests of a ruling party and all parties are…

As someone mentioned on Twitter: "When you mix Science with Politics you end up with Politics"

Anything + Politics = Politics

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#65

Post by input_sh »

dkersten wrote: post #24
dreen wrote: post #17

It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.

> An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Very few people are arguing that it was intentional. I agree that an intentional lab leak is highly, highly unlikely, but I think an accidental lab leak is at least just as likely as the wet market hypothesis and CCP certainly acted extremely suspicious.

Accidental lab leaks happen often and are owned up to. Not just in China, everywhere (US, France, Russia, Hungary, Sierra Leone, etc): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...

If you scroll to the bottom of it, China owned up to accidentally leaking brucellosis mere months before Covid became a thing, sourced by China Daily (CP's English website). That's why I don't get the accidental lab leak hypothesis. It's inconsistent with previous ones unless you make some 4D chess plays in reasoning.

As for suspiciousness, is that action different than in other situations, or are we they just behaving like that all the time and most of the West is only learning about it now? I'm leaning towards the latter.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#66

Post by blagie »

dreen wrote: post #17

It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.

Possibilities:

1) Natural bat origin

2) Natural non-bat origin

3) Originated elsewhere (per above) and broke out in Wuhan

4) Unintentional lab leak of a natural strain

5) Unintentional lab leak from GoF research

6) Unintentional lab leak from bioweapons research

7) Intentionally released to by the CCP

8) Intentionally released by internal opponents of the CCP

9) Intentionally released by external opponents of China

10) ... and so on

I can come up with sensical (if not always likely) scenarios which fit all of those, and many more.

Most of the scenarios suggest we should be doing much more.

For example:

* If there was an unintentional lab leak of a strain in GoF research, China knows things about COVID19 we don't. They took extreme measures. It's reasonable to assume they might have had some reason.

* If this was a "test" of a bioweapon -- understand China's and the world's response -- it's worth treating as a dry run (note that this does not necessitate Chinese-run test)

* If this were a bioweapon, we should take long COVID very, very seriously, since the best bioweapons are designed to cripple rather than to kill.

What's odd to me is that, as far as I know, no one has compiled a list, evidence, or implications.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#67

Post by dreen »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #52
dreen wrote: post #17

It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.

> An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour. Just playing the devil's advocate here, but, I'd argue that it makes quite a lot of sense from a biological warfare perspective in terms of intelligence gathering on how different societies and countries behave against such a threat. In particular, the pandemic has brought to the surface the how larg…

If that indeed was a master plan then Id argue it backfired massively, that information is not worth the losses and the risks, and is exactly why modern armies don't deploy biological or chemical weapons or zeppelins (because they are hard to control and are not effective against armies).

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#68

Post by krona »

zarzavat wrote: post #20
wilsonfiifi wrote: post #8

Does it even matter any more? From where I stand Covid-19 might have been much less devastating globally if it had been treated seriously in the early days. In fact, based on the initial footage from Wuhan, countries should have adopted more stringent protocols when they repatriated their nationals, i.e. quarantine on arrival etc... If in doubt throw everything including the kitchen sink at just to be sure. But it is…

In the UK we quarantined all people coming in from Wuhan, while flights from Chinese cities outside of Wuhan continued to run without restriction, even though it was known that the virus was there too. There was a lot of wishful thinking and denialism back in January/February 2020. The only country that got the initial response right was North Korea, they shut all their borders, and were mocked for it too.

Japan closed its borders 3 weeks before North Korea. Several other countries too. I suppose one difference between North Korea and Japan is Japan allowed residents to return, however that's unlikely to be an issue for North Korea, given residents aren't allowed to leave in the first place.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#69

Post by simonh »

dreen wrote: post #17

It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.

While silencing Li was appalling, in practice it probably didn’t slow down recognition and escalation of the issue much as there were other doctors already aware of it and raising the alarm. Wuhan CDC had been alerted on 27th December, and the WHO had been told there was a pneumonia cluster of unknown origin on 31st December, 3 days before Li was strong armed.

All the instances of messing up found so far were incompetence and bureaucratic bullying. This certainly obstructed the free flow of information and delayed effective investigation and action though, but there’s no real sign of a concerted cover up because there were several lines of investigation in the open from early on that were never shut down.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#70

Post by PartiallyTyped »

asxd wrote: post #62
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is HN unable to entertain opposing views or hypothetical scenarios without resorting to downvoting?

What you're proposing seems possible, but without any sort of evidence it's hard to see it as anything other than FUD. That being said, you're absolutely right that the virus has generated all this data. What's suspect is whether someone created the virus with the intention just to collect that data.

Perhaps not necessarily created for this purpose, but assuming it leaked, and information about the lethality and transmissibility was known in models, it doesn't seem implausible that the approach of CCP didn't change as the events unfolded.

I didn't mean to spread FUD, I stated from the beginning that it was just a hypothetical scenario, and we should be making hypothetical scenarios to see how events unfold over time, if we can't have these discussions, then are we doing anything but regurgitating information?

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