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

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#321

Post by mcherm » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

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…

At the end of the day we also have zero evidence of the animal transfer hypothesis. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was never documented in bats (prior to its spread among humans). No one has been able to demonstrate the capability of the virus to acquire it's current features in vivo in bats.

But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis. Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for various possibilities.

This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The existence of this grant application is evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic, about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to what we have observed in the virus.

[1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#322

Post by ezconnect » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

rualca wrote: post #320

blablabla123 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not true in the area of particle accelerator experiments. Every single step there is done in public so to say. And it's not that it's a niche, literally thousands of scientists and engineers work on this stuff. (Also I know people that had to change thesis topics half-way through, although I cannot fully recall the reasoning for that.) It's well-known that there has been high-risk coronavirus research acros…

> It's well-known that there has been high-risk coronavirus research across the globe. It's the first time I heard of anything of the sort. Do you have any reference pointing out, or is this just Facebook hearsay?

Corona virus and gain of function was done in the US and when a leaked accident occurred it got banned and outsourced to the world. The research labs and stories was famous during MERS outbreak. India, Pakistan and China is the best known countries with advance research labs for it.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#323

Post by mcherm » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #304

stablechaos wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a series of things to be considered independently. When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no serious investigation by the people in charge of something so significant, an injustice is being done. Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and…

Which other coincidence is there apart from the proximity of the lab to the initial detection site?

Well, there is the similarity between features of the virus and research being proposed in a grant application written half a world away just a couple of years before the virus spread to humans. That's a coincidence of note.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#324

Post by jml7c5 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

stablechaos wrote: post #249

fsh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim. It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel coronaviruses? I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it is not so clear if more human…

It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a series of things to be considered independently. When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no serious investigation by the people in charge of something so significant, an injustice is being done. Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and…

"A lot of small things adding up" is also how conspiracy theories are formed and sustained. Be it Qanon, GME, Pizzagate, 9/11-was-an-inside-job, etc. They all rely on small details that are not individually damning, but in aggregate fit a compelling narrative. You have to be extremely wary of this sort of thinking.

I don't think that a lab leak is implausible, but your statement that the small pointers "cease being coincidences" because they fit a narrative imparts far, far too much certainty to the lab leak theory.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#325

Post by lucb1e » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #316

lucb1e wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while conveniently leaving out that his own organization was involved in highly risky coronavirus research? Don't get me wrong, but in online discussions, all too often telling the whole truth makes people ignore your message. That's probably also why dishonest politicians can get populist votes from many people. Whenever you include the material to dig your grave with, people just take that by the horns and stop l…

Umm, wouldn't "I worked on coronaviruses, hence I know a lot about them" make his argument stronger? Anyway, this was in Lancet, a scientific publisher, not a mass medium, disclosures of interest are mandatory. I know that in today's age it looks like science papers are just mass media because they're so easy to consume and distribute, but they are not. They're supposed to be rigurous, otherwise people would lose tru…

It ought to make the argument stronger, yes, but not everyone reads the full text. Especially if it will get third-party media coverage, you're dependent on what part the media will report or in which proportions because they always make a selection. With honest intentions the vast majority of the time I'm sure, but still a selection of what they think is the message their readers should be getting.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#326

Post by krona » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

fsh wrote: post #243

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…

SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim. It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel coronaviruses? I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it is not so clear if more human…

You're correct, however after years of examining blood samples from hospital patients it was possible to trace the phylogeny of SARS to a zoonotic origin. This has not been possible for SARS‑CoV‑2, least of all because the government doesn't want such an investigation to take place. I can't think why.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#327

Post by roenxi » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

stablechaos wrote: post #249

fsh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim. It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel coronaviruses? I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it is not so clear if more human…

It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a series of things to be considered independently. When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no serious investigation by the people in charge of something so significant, an injustice is being done. Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and…

> When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences.

The internet doesn't handle subtlety well, so just to spell it out...

If we admit things are coincidences then they can't be added up to get evidence. Lots of coincidences isn't evidence. The point is these things aren't coincidences. If a new coronavirus breaks out next door to a lab studying coronaviruses, then the lab is a possible source of the virus and the proximity is evidence. It is weak evidence and still unlikely, but evidence nonetheless.

However, when the lab is very close and the closest known bat virus (RaTG13) is a very long way away as is the case for SARS-CoV-2 then that is starting to get quite murky as evidence goes. It would be much easier for RaTG13 to travel the rather large distance from its natural location to Wuhan in a freezer/test tube than in a bat.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#328

Post by aww_dang » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:32 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #63

recursivedoubts wrote: post #2

if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect

"Suggesting this as a possibility" is a pretty weak statement. But it's actually good to criticize someone for claiming that it happened without having any evidence, even if there happens to later be evidence that it happened.

Let's not confuse the issue.

Evidence is a method of confirmation. Motives, incentives and suspicious evasions can help us form hypotheses to evaluate. Dismissing a hypothesis as something unworthy of examination may fall under the 'suspicious evasion' subheading.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#329

Post by PicassoCTs » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:32 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…

He proudly proclaims his research in this video, he is not hiding anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#330

Post by throaway6679 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

The stridency with which people attempt to shut down discussion of a lab origin points in the direction of a coverup.

An example of this happening is on Wikipedia where one editor in particular seems to have declared it to be a “conspiracy theory” and scrubs every mention of it. The editor in question scrubs talk pages and their own talk page, thus effectively preventing any kind of consensus forming, which is out of the ordinary for Wikipedia. They have remarkable stamina, and thus can our out-wait other editors.

Wikipedia seems to be one example of a much bigger effort to suppress discussion of a potential lab leak.