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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#101

Post by zucked »

d23 wrote: post #79

I'm open minded, but my bullshit detectors started going off around the point where it was casually implied that we all know and it is widely accepted that delta was leaked from a lab. I tried googling it but could find nothing. Then I looked at the two sources the author links: > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4371212 > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4382708 Neither of these have nearly enough evidence…

Heavy agree - I can entertain theories just fine, but those are the jankiest of sources that do not at all support the theory that Delta was a lab leak, simply that a technician was infected by Covid and the prevailing believe is that it was a mouse > human transmission.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#102

Post by mikeyouse »

Sevaris wrote: post #94
mikeyouse wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if they did do genomic analysis - it's entirely plausible the results are sitting in a hospital database somewhere instead of uploaded to the international gene surveillance repository.

Plausible, yes. If the data exists, it should be made public. The article still mostly just makes a hypothesis and makes the argument that this is something that should be seriously investigated, not that the author has determined without a doubt that this is a lab leak.

Sure - but what are the chances that whichever hospitals did the sequencing even know they're in possession of the intermediate data? The OPs' method of "just asking questions" is really bad science and feels a whole lot like the God of the Gaps argument style that Creationists are so fond of using.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#103

Post by daxuak »

howaboutnope wrote: post #65
daxuak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let me offer two informal "substantial" arguments. It's too long to question every point. The author argued in section "weirdness 1" that the phylogentic tree implies the omicron strain is directly related to an ancestor genome from Spring 2020. I have the following concerns: the tree is based on https://nextstrain.org/ , a database initially introduced in 2018 [1]. This is a great data source. However, for COVI…

> correct me if I'm wrong I don't even remotely have the expertise for that, if applicable others would have to do that. But thanks a lot for elaborating!

Oh I genuinely mean that and nothing else. I'm remotely familiar with the topic, but I do not work with protein translation and viruses at all. My question about this silent/functional ratio argument could be completely wrong or in the wrong direction.

That original argument is interesting and is a surprising obervation to me, and I would love to read a well-written piece on that. Just keep in mind that "statistically unlikely" doesn't immediately mean "it's unlikely", you might have used the wrong presumption (in this case, silent mutation being not really silent).

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#104

Post by testplzignore »

d23 wrote: post #79

I'm open minded, but my bullshit detectors started going off around the point where it was casually implied that we all know and it is widely accepted that delta was leaked from a lab. I tried googling it but could find nothing. Then I looked at the two sources the author links: > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4371212 > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4382708 Neither of these have nearly enough evidence…

I think there is confusion on what the author meant by "leaked". The Delta variant was already spreading, yes. The author is saying - and the first link above essentially states this - that a lab worker was infected with Delta while in a lab. (Though it's not stated whether that worker was quarantined immediately, or if they could have possibly spread it to others.)

So what's the point? 1,000,001 people have Delta instead of 1,000,000? No. The point is to show that Covid infections are indisputably already happening in labs. And if there is a GoF lab that creates a new variant, it logically follows that it is possible for that new variant to escape. So instead of the not-so-bad 1,000,001 vs 1,000,000 Taiwan scenario, you could have a disastrous 1 vs 0 scenario.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#105

Post by tailspin2019 »

d23 wrote: post #79

I'm open minded, but my bullshit detectors started going off around the point where it was casually implied that we all know and it is widely accepted that delta was leaked from a lab. I tried googling it but could find nothing. Then I looked at the two sources the author links: > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4371212 > https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4382708 Neither of these have nearly enough evidence…

I had the same reaction. Those articles don’t back up that claim one bit. And I cant make sense of the timings of the events described in those articles either and how that would line up with a supposed lab leak of delta.

Some of the other points made in this article were mildly compelling to me (though I don’t know enough on this topic to be able to poke holes) but that delta claim and lack of convincing data to back it up doesn’t help with credibility.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#106

Post by daenz »

Ban it all until we have an established colony on another planet/moon specifically for this kind of research. It's not worth the risk otherwise.

But something tells me that "oops we created a dangerous virus now we need to seize more control" offsets that risk to the governments of the world.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#107

Post by carlivar »

tatersolid wrote: post #87
sliken wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a cheap shot to me. Does twitter as a communication medium somehow invalidate what was being said? One quoted thread was from "Tony VanDongen, an associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke" Seems like a reasonably valid opinion from someone with a clue. He's addressing specifically why Omicron is weird, and doesn't look like a normal evolution of COVID-19. Another is from "Scott Ferguso…

> Does twitter as a communication medium somehow invalidate what was being said? Pretty much. Serious people discussing serious things don’t use Twitter as their communication medium.

What do they use?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#108

Post by prirun »

beardedwizard wrote: post #11

So how are they keeping all the scientists involved in such a leak quiet? How many of these scientists are there?

People said the same thing about the government monitoring everyone's communications: "It could never be kept secret". Edward Snowden proved they were wrong, and this was kept a secret, for years.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#109

Post by pazimzadeh »

> "[A virus wouldn’t be expected to develop a bunch of resistances to the current human antibodies if it evolved in] An animal, because animals in natural circumstances don’t have human antibodies"

Animal antibodies would work just fine to put selective pressure on the virus.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#110

Post by johncena33 »

maxerickson wrote: post #63
ctoth wrote: post #34

Curious why this was flagged?

Keeps the discussion from getting tedious. Hah!

That doesn't stop at least few "I Hate Ads" (read "I Hate Google") threads popping up every single day. For some reason this "tedious" tag only applies when it comes to Lab Leak or any China related threads.
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