Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#291

Post by adflux » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #197

baja_blast wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there will never be an independent investigation

This is correct. China delayed a site visit for more than a year. And then when it happened they controlled what was said. And on top of that the only US representative was Daszak, since the WHO rejected a few other candidates from the Trump administration and picked someone who was seemingly favorable to the outcome they (or perhaps China?) desired. It is incredible that all these countries around the world didn’t i…

Like sending a murderer to investigate his own murders

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#292

Post by darawk » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #235

darawk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments over their use and validity. Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anyth…

> Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anything.

Where did I say it was engineered? We have no evidence of its natural origin either. Can you provide its natural reservoir? An animal sample? Another coronavirus with this furin cleavage site? Anything?

What we are trying to do is ascertain the likelihoods of various scenarios given the evidence we have. Not the evidence we wish we had. I do not believe, nor have I anywhere asserted, that we have proven the virus was unnatural in origin. I also do not believe we have proven that the virus was natural in origin.

What I believe is that the evidence is presently insufficient to determine, and fairly ambiguous. What is unambiguous is the extraordinarily shady and self serving behavior of Peter Daszak. Why it is that he's doing that, I don't know. It could be because he participated in the engineering of this virus, but it could be for entirely separate reasons that pertain to him. I do think we should at least make a serious effort to find out, though.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#293

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

fsh wrote: post #250

throwawaysea wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the state department knew of dangerous research taking place in unsafe conditions at 1-2 years before: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

The original cable was published in the meantime [1]. I don't see any mention of "dangerous research taking place in unsafe conditions". Why don't you read it for yourself? It's only three pages. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

To my eyes, this cable confirms what the Politico article said. It says there is a "serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory". This is on Page 2, in the last paragraph. As for what's dangerous, Page 3 specifically mentions research undertaken with funding from NIH/NIAID studying SARS-like coronaviruses that can interact with ACE2 (transmittable to humans). Handling such viruses, particularly ones whose infectiousness has been increased (gain of function), in a lab without properly trained staff, seems pretty alarming to me.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#294

Post by proc0 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

lovemenot wrote: post #269

proc0 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more than science here. This is also game theory, if a lab leak is still plausible. Why was this being researched? Who knew about it and why was it covered up, and to what extent was it covered up? Personally I think it's naive that people are omitting human and government intentions from all this, as if they are not actors in complex political world. These huge world changing events don't happen in a vacuum,…

Game theory could plausibly explain why PRC keeps resurfacing their unsubstantiated US military origins theory . Assuming an actual lab leak at WIV, from a US project similar to the one rejected by DARPA. And PRC is aware of all these facts. Under these assumptions, this story/rumour could be seen as a threat, which re-emerges whenever PRC feels under pressure: "We won't go down alone for this"

Agreed, and it was unsubstantiated till now (and also with the funding of it, etc).

My point was mostly that we won't really be able to figure out the microbiology details of it in order to make reasonable conclusions. I think it would be like trying to figure out the physics of the nuclear bomb during the Manhattan project, and concluding no such bomb can be built because no physicist has figured out nuclear reactions yet.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#295

Post by pfortuny » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #86

Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus origins, but this did not get mentioned in any reports. Instead he warns other not to discuss it. He does not include notes that research was done on modifying bat viruses to make them infectious to human cells. These behaviors look like a guilty person, do they not? The wuhan and eco-health researchers had already started work on the furin cleavage sites and why…

Not necessarily guilt but a HUGE conflict of interest…

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#296

Post by zhdc1 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:09 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #259

stablechaos wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as…

The “zero evidence” claim is fun because every day there is a failure to discover an origin species is de facto evidence of a non-zootonic origin, since that evidence is not subject to being hidden and is highly incentivized to find given it would be exculpatory.

> since that evidence is not subject to being hidden and is highly incentivized to find given it would be exculpatory

Why? The wet markets in Wuhan were sterilized and emptied (meaning that the animals inside were removed, killed, and their carcasses disposed of) at the very start of the outbreak - several days before anyone had definitive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could be transmitted by person to person contact.

I'm sure that the Chinese government would love to have definitive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is zoonotic, but that evidence likely went up in smoke (January 1st, 2020) weeks before anyone realized that COVID-19 would turn into a legitimate pandemic (January 23rd, 2020).

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#297

Post by willupowers » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

inciampati wrote: post #280

lamontcg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." It isn't as simple as altering the proposal. You're speculating a very large and hidden process using sequences that were kept perfectly secret and have not been leaked, with virus backbones that would take considerable effort to create but which were never shared publicly (and kept perfectly secret before SARS-CoV-2 happened before t…

First, it really doesn't take major effort to make a viral backbone. You'd like to make a protocol that generates them in high multiplex (thousands, millions, billions) and then selects on that background to find functional ones. The current virus could descend from a recombinant generated with such an approach. It might never have been sequenced or observed directly because it was one of innumerable examples that we…

That and a coupe authors already arrived at contrary conclusions before this nature piece was even released. It fails to even acknowledge their work, compare, or comment why there should be favor in their own claims above others with different approaches that might be better suited (biostatistical methods to model a progenitor and the probable evolution of the lineages).

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#298

Post by ImaCake » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

inciampati wrote: post #285

passivate wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments over their use and validity. Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anyth…

The viral phylogeny and history of it's evolution are a mountain of evidence. Why don't you trust them? We don't see adaptation to the new host. This means that either the spillover happened a long time before it was detected (months, years), or the proximal host was a primate. Or, the virus could have been adapted to human cells and their surface proteins in relatively straightforward laboratory experiments. Then, i…

>The viral phylogeny and history of it's evolution

... point to it being a natural zoonotic spillover event. Wuhan had a virus institute because it is a place where novel viruses are found, not the other way around.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#299

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

I don’t buy this. This proposal had been reviewed by someone (probably multiple someones) in 2018, and when a year later we get a human transmission coronavirus that sweeps the entire globe nobody remembers this thing immediately (even vaguely)?

I can’t say if it’s a setup, but I’d be very sceptical of this proposals origins.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#300

Post by ImaCake » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:27 AM UTC

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…

A lot of comments against this, but I think this is a pretty good summary of why I think this is a zoonotic spillover event. To put it bluntly, evolution is much more creative than us and SARS-COV2 seems like a master stroke. Much of the arguments in favour of the lab escape hypothesis read like arguments made by people who are not virologists or related experts.