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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

theintercept.com

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Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#131

Post by lamontcg »

harshreality wrote: post #112
lamontcg wrote: post #83

1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites 5. Furi…

There's nothing in that list that argues against SARS-CoV-2—and its spike protein and furin cleavage site in particular—being produced by serial passage through any of a variety of cell lines expressing human ACE-2. It does seem unlikely that the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or spike protein, or even just a small segment including the furin cleavage site, was synthesized. Although without knowing what protein folding modeling…

There's 1,000 nucleotide differences between the closest known progenitor and SARS-CoV-2. That is an evolutionary distance of 30-40 years in a coronavirus. You can't replicate that many years of evolution by serial passage in a lab. Serial passage isn't a magic wand.

And the rest of it is that you're arguing in favor of a science fiction explanation for the capabilities of the WIV lab.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#132

Post by willupowers »

lolwut8374 wrote: post #127
rhacker wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rejected proposal does not mean research does not happen. It means they were unable to get funding from DARPA. It does not necessarily mean they were unable to get funding from "somebody". And yes we do have reason to believe this type of research caused the pandemic.

So, who did they get funding from, if not one of the only bodies in the world capable of funding this kind of work? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t. You can tell that by looking at what they did work on next. Did you look? Like it says in the article.

We already know the NIH partially funded field survey work that appears to be very similar to this. It's pretty obvious to see that they continued applying elsewhere and may have been successful in getting the funding the requested. It just might be from several grants.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#133

Post by willupowers »

tootie wrote: post #123
echelon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more evidence for this type or research happening where the pandemic arose than there is for natural origin.

There's some evidence this kind of research happens. There's not really evidence it was happening in Wuhan nor evidence that the virus we have is the result of experimentation. Historically lab leaks are vanishingly rare and acquisition from animals is extremely common. For lab leak to be even a plausible story the evidence would have to be very strong and it is nowhere near convincing right now.

Looks like a pretty probable lead to me to continue investigating, especially since this leak evidence directly conflicts with many previous statements from Daszak and associates.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#134

Post by lolwut8374 »

willupowers wrote: post #132
lolwut8374 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, who did they get funding from, if not one of the only bodies in the world capable of funding this kind of work? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t. You can tell that by looking at what they did work on next. Did you look? Like it says in the article.

We already know the NIH partially funded field survey work that appears to be very similar to this. It's pretty obvious to see that they continued applying elsewhere and may have been successful in getting the funding the requested. It just might be from several grants.

Right, did you look at the publication records of the academics involved?

When you beg for grants you have to publish to show you’re good for the next one.

This isn’t a mystery.

It’s literally right there, published for your subscriber access.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#135

Post by willupowers »

lamontcg wrote: post #129
btilly wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposal that this article is about weakens your argument significantly. They were going to experiment with multiple backbones, experimenting with multiple variations of spikes, looking specifically to try novel types of furin cleavage sites. There was no public reporting of what happened with this research. We don't know what they have because WIV database was taken offline. They claimed to have searched it, but…

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you…

Calm down dude. Clearly you have some attachment to one theory over another, which is poor science.

The investigation will continue and those missing items you mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak that there are might be a significant number of unpublished sequences at WIV and EHA, etc.

If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions however.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#136

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

nl wrote: post #126
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> information (like titles) can be meaningfully extracted From a technical perspective it's probably simpler to just grep the page for the user-submitted title.

The issue is likely mostly paywalled sites and SPAs where this isn't as simple.

Sure, and I agree that this problem isn't worth spending a lot of resources on if the level of toil is acceptable.

But most paywall sites do display the title so that you know what great journalism you're being asked to pay for. I suspect that the typical SPA shows titles as well. So greping should work in those cases.

But my point was while title extraction is a hard problem requiring you to solve lots of corner cases, title greping is simple and handles the vast majority of cases. The corner cases are then handled by humans (as, IIUC, all cases are currently).

Accepting a user-generated title and comparing it to the text gives you a boolean. If they don't match you can just ask the user to affirm that what they submitted is really the title. Then, if you like, you can have a "this title may be dodgy" icon on posts that don't match.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#137

Post by willupowers »

lamontcg wrote: post #131
harshreality wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing in that list that argues against SARS-CoV-2—and its spike protein and furin cleavage site in particular—being produced by serial passage through any of a variety of cell lines expressing human ACE-2. It does seem unlikely that the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or spike protein, or even just a small segment including the furin cleavage site, was synthesized. Although without knowing what protein folding modeling…

There's 1,000 nucleotide differences between the closest known progenitor and SARS-CoV-2. That is an evolutionary distance of 30-40 years in a coronavirus. You can't replicate that many years of evolution by serial passage in a lab. Serial passage isn't a magic wand. And the rest of it is that you're arguing in favor of a science fiction explanation for the capabilities of the WIV lab.

30-40 years difference from SARS-CoV. However, the proposal actually says it would use other unpublished sequences for development. These unpublished sequences may have been much closer to SARS-CoV-2. I think you should read the leaks.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#138

Post by willupowers »

createdapril24 wrote: post #89
lamontcg wrote: post #83

1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites 5. Furi…

These are all very compelling claims. I am wondering if you can provide at least one reference for each. E.g. "There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites" is a claim that can be referenced pretty easily with a link to papers reporting said sarbecoviruses.

I believe the uniqueness has been established by the issue that the specifics of the 12-nt insertion is never found anywhere in a natural setting. Many papers have gone back and forth over this and there's no natural example.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#139

Post by darawk »

lamontcg wrote: post #83

1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites 5. Furi…

> 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research > 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research

> 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses

I believe what you mean to say here is that there is no published literature describing these things. That may be true. But the people doing this work are the ones who would develop and then publish such knowledge, if it were indeed something they were working on.

> It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is the thing which actually happened.

It isn't. What is suspicious is the following:

1. It happened in the city that houses the lab where this research was proposed to take place.

2. The natural reservoir of these viruses is hundreds of miles from this city.

3. The outbreak occurred exactly 2 years after this research was originally proposed, in the city that it was proposed to take place in, in roughly the amount of time one might expect this research to take.

4. Peter Daszak, despite coming out forcefully against the lab leak theory, and purposely downplaying his involvement with the lab in so doing, and being inexplicably selected as a member of the WHO team to investigate the lab origin theory, completely neglected to mention having made this proposal a mere two years prior.

If I were a major virus researcher, and my proposal to investigate the exact thing that just caused a massive global pandemic had been denied by DARPA two years prior, I would be shouting it from the rooftops as vindication. See, had you just let me investigate this, maybe we could have avoided this pandemic! But he didn't do that. He didn't mention it at all, despite its obvious relevance to all that has gone on.

This is not the behavior of someone with nothing to hide. Whether or not this virus originated in this lab, it's pretty clear that Peter Daszak is up to something he'd rather the world not discover.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#140

Post by tootie »

willupowers wrote: post #133
tootie wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some evidence this kind of research happens. There's not really evidence it was happening in Wuhan nor evidence that the virus we have is the result of experimentation. Historically lab leaks are vanishingly rare and acquisition from animals is extremely common. For lab leak to be even a plausible story the evidence would have to be very strong and it is nowhere near convincing right now.

Looks like a pretty probable lead to me to continue investigating, especially since this leak evidence directly conflicts with many previous statements from Daszak and associates.

Continue investigating what though? The research this team has done is all public knowledge. A rejected proposal doesn't shed much light. Lab leak remains remotely possible, but not supported by any direct evidence. Meanwhile, evidence for animal source is getting stronger: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1
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