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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#31

Post by howaboutnope »

daxuak wrote: post #25

I don't like certain aspects of publishing with peer review, but if one is so confident with their lab leak theory, try go publish in journals or put it up in one of the preprint servers instead of substack. The key is to demonstrate not that your claims are based, but that you have tried various ways to invalid the conclusions but could not success.

This discussion instantly garned upvotes, not one substantial argument against the article, and was flagged off the front page.

At least this person has a reasoning and stands behind it, that's heads and shoulders above the tactics of those who want to bury this.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#32

Post by omginternets »

torstenvl wrote: post #20
omginternets wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you have a bit of a straw man in mind. The opposition would likely say something like: "GoF is the best means at our disposal to fight diseases much worse than COVID".

Friend, I think you maybe clicked the wrong reply link? I didn't say anything about GoF research at all. Assuming that we ever get the honest and open public debate about COVID-19's origins, and if it was a lab leak from WIV and was related to GoF research, then certainly the potential benefits of GoF research would be weighed against the potential dangers. I don't take a position one way or another in that conversat…

Perhaps I read into your comment more than was warranted.

However, "follow the evidence" applies to science. You are describing an ethical question, which means you are doing philosophy.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#33

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

beaned wrote: post #21
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cover up isn't very hard to execute if the involved parties all have aligned incentives - in this case, not ruining their careers, possibly destroying their entire professional field, and publicly accepting culpability for millions of deaths and other damages.

Also does anyone know how many scientists would actually be involved anyway? What is the minimum?

Not that many, probably 1, or maybe 3 to be conservative. Of course there are the institutional and governmental parties as well, but still not that many (1 lab director, maybe 1 executive above them, plus a handful of regulators with detailed knowledge of the labs operations). If it is the case that, say, the WIV leaked the initial virus, there's probably less than a dozen people in the world with positive knowledge of that fact.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#36

Post by cherioo »

GolfPopper wrote: post #26
netizen-936824 wrote: post #13

As someone who wasn't totally sure about the lab leak hypothesis before, this is rather convincing. Especially for the path that omicron took. I'm also surprised gain of function research has not been banned, the risk is far too high

I found it completely unconvincing, particularly when it came to discussing the "lab leak". From the article, where the author speculates about why the omicron variant is so genetically different from other variants of the virus:> "One parsimonious hypothesis is that some engineering has been done to it, in order to make its evolution look so unnatural. I have not heard another parsimonious hypothesis." A New Scienti…

The author actually mentioned those two theory several paragraphs down in the article.

However, this actually made the article less credible to me, as this make me feel the article's purpose is to build a narrative and try to discredit everyone else, not to fairly evaluate all theories equally.

One thing I have been feeling about internet is there are too many experts on it, so one can always find enough quotes that support ones theory. However, as a reader, it's become impossible to determine whether particular expert should be trusted.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#37

Post by ayjchan »

This is Alina Chan, one of the co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.

In defense of a natural origin of Omicron, this study describes the remarkable evolution of SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma treatment of an immunosuppressed patient for 3-4 months; the mutations also reduced sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03291-y

We know that there is a large immunocompromised population in Africa and that Covid-19 is rampant there. We also know that most hospitals, regardless of country, don't have the resources to track the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in their immunocompromised patients. So it's not unexpected that a variant like Omicron could have evolved over an entire year in an immunocompromised individual before finally infecting others.

If there is any evidence that a lab in the region was serially passaging SARS-CoV-2 in neutralizing antibodies/patient serum, then I'd say there is something to go on for a potential lab origin. But at the moment, there is not even circumstantial evidence pointing to this happening in Africa. Maybe setting up a secure channel for whistleblowers with evidence of the above would be the most productive approach.

The above is not to say that I don't think there needs to be much more transparency and accountability from scientists working with pathogens. https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1468582694007279616

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#38

Post by ufo »

ctoth wrote: post #34

Curious why this was flagged?

A blog post full of wild speculation, whose main sources appear to be a bunch of Twitter threads. Have we not learned anything in the past two years?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#39

Post by nnx »

This should be un-flagged. It's an interesting detailed write-up, worth to investigate further to say the least.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#40

Post by PennRobotics »

howaboutnope wrote: post #31
daxuak wrote: post #25

I don't like certain aspects of publishing with peer review, but if one is so confident with their lab leak theory, try go publish in journals or put it up in one of the preprint servers instead of substack. The key is to demonstrate not that your claims are based, but that you have tried various ways to invalid the conclusions but could not success.

This discussion instantly garned upvotes, not one substantial argument against the article, and was flagged off the front page. At least this person has a reasoning and stands behind it, that's heads and shoulders above the tactics of those who want to bury this.

This post had 40 points within 20 minutes, which is the reading time of the article at 200 WPM plus a minute or two for figures. How many of those upvotes were from people who didn't read or who skimmed the article?
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