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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#41

Post by ibejoeb »

stonogo wrote: post #2

None of these Substack-based lab-leak hysteria pieces ever address "so what?" I see nothing here to convince me that Omicron is a lab leak as opposed to an animal reservoir, where the author includes "seems to have come from mice" as evidence for the former and not the latter, which is confused. Regardless, there is nothing actionable about any origin theory aside from "be mad at some unnamed scientist" or, as some o…

> I see nothing here to convince me that Omicron is a lab leak as opposed to an animal reservoir

The majority of the the piece goes to arguing exactly that. What's the counter?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#42

Post by nnx »

ayjchan wrote: post #37

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…

"Omicron could have evolved over an entire year in an immunocompromised individual before finally infecting others"

Is it likely that this infected person would not have started any detectable cluster this whole time? How do you explain the ratio of functional vs silent mutations?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#43

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

stonogo wrote: post #2

None of these Substack-based lab-leak hysteria pieces ever address "so what?" I see nothing here to convince me that Omicron is a lab leak as opposed to an animal reservoir, where the author includes "seems to have come from mice" as evidence for the former and not the latter, which is confused. Regardless, there is nothing actionable about any origin theory aside from "be mad at some unnamed scientist" or, as some o…

There's nothing hysterical about the article. Nor do they encourage the reader to conclude they should "be mad at a scientist/science in general". In fact they explicitly encourage the reader to believe and engage with scientists; just, you know, the ones that don't have obvious conflicts of interest around virology and specifically GoF research, who have been some of the most visible and vocal in speaking out against the Lab Leak theory. Also there's a clear call to action, which is to stop GoF research. Did you even read tfa?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#45

Post by bloaf »

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

My understanding is that this article understates how far and quickly these viruses spread in the wild.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/science/bat-coronaviruses...

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#46

Post by ufo »

ayjchan wrote: post #37

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…

Another thing that the blog post appears to be unaware of is that the absence of samples showing the step-by-step evolution towards omicron doesn't mean that this didn't happen. A lot of places in the world don't have the resources to do covid testing and genomic surveillance.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#48

Post by natch »

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?

In a leak? Zero would be the minimum who would have knowledge of the leak. There is no law of the universe saying that anyone would be aware of what had happened or how, especially with an active disinterest and disincentives toward responsibility and accountability.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#49

Post by hermitdev »

PennRobotics wrote: post #40
howaboutnope wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I read the article, then up voted. On refresh it was buried. I had to find it via my upvoted submissions.

In my opinion, the immediate flagging is a symptom of the hostility of even discussing the origins, lab leak or not.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#50

Post by ekianjo »

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.

Journals are very unlikely to publish this kind of things, because of massive conflicts of interests. Look at the Lancet.
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