The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

What is your evidence that she didn't have evidence? Lots of credible people were saying lab leak in 2020. I was there and following it closely. It wasn't hard to come by if you employed basic skepticism of the mainstream narrative.

I didn't dismiss the entirety of The Guardian for all time (straw-man, anyone?), I said I would be skeptical of anything they publish related to a contested narrative because they have shown repeated bias. What's wrong with that? I'm not telling you not to be skeptical of this journalist. It seems like you're really projecting your own beliefs here.

Even the friendliest forums a liable to politicization during times of political upheaval. 2020-2021 should qualify, imho. Should we ensure HN is a safe place to talk about Rust, compilers, space, css, etc, even as the world is under strict pandemic politics and dissension is raging? Or should we use this niche community try to gather and influence each other's political thinking before it becomes illegal? All the hot topics are technical -- we are living through a technocratic revolution.

Just like in the real world, there certainly are ideological groups. While some are adhoc others are highly organized.

So once you are on target or even a mild comment that challenges their ideology gets heavily down voted.

We see the long terms effects of this behavior in the real world, not just individuals but institutions stay away from questioning certain ideologies as a norm.

In addition to not making new viruses, we should consider a moratorium on further digging up of old viruses, e.g. securing Arctic graves of Spanish Flu victims, or ancient viruses in the sea bed or icebergs, https://www.nature.com/articles/437794a (2005)

> It is thought to have killed 50 million people, and yet scientists have brought it back to life. In this issue of Nature, scientists publish an analysis of the full genome sequence of the 1918 human influenza virus … Some scientists have already hailed the work as giving unprecedented insight into the virus. Working out how it arose and why it was so deadly could help experts to spot the next pandemic strain and to design appropriate drugs and vaccines in time, they say. But others have raised concerns that the dangers of resurrecting the virus are just too great. One biosecurity expert told Nature that the risk that the recreated strain might escape is so high, it is almost a certainty.

Photos: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-19...

Only two years later, a version was created in a lab, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/0...

> "We know that the virus itself is different, and we know that the host response is different," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin who headed the international research team. "The virus is really a bad actor," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The virulence of the 1918 virus has always been a mystery.

> ..The experiment was done in a Canadian biosafety Level 4 lab, where researchers work in the equivalent of space suits. Kawaoka's team does not have permission to experiment with the virus in the United States. In the new experiment, Darwyn Kobasa, a scientist in a Canadian government microbiology lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba, synthesized the 1918 virus from scratch and infected seven macaque monkeys with it.

> ..The monkeys infected with the 1918 virus were so sick within eight days that they had to be euthanized. "Profuse watery and bloody liquid" filled 60 to 90 percent of the their lung tissue, "greatly reducing lung function," the researchers reported ... The animals infected with the 1918 virus produced less interferon, a type of cytokine that suppresses virus growth by limiting the microbe's ability to infect new cells. The virus continued to replicate and spread, reaching in one case 5,000 times the levels seen in the tissue of the monkeys infected with the modern virus. The ability to selectively limit interferon production is seen in other microbes, including respiratory syncytial virus, Ebola virus and parainfluenza virus, Fauci said.

> In response to the virus's unchecked growth, the monkeys' immune systems produced large amounts of inflammatory substances aimed at killing it and the cells already infected. That ultimately did lethal damage to the lungs of the animals.

That lethality was before Gain-of-Function research, which followed a few years thereafter :(