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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#121

Post by dljones »

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…

The Nature article you mention says, "These data reveal strong selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy, which is associated with the emergence of viral variants that show evidence of reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in immunosuppressed individuals."

Fair enough. So is the hypothesis that this immune compromised person in SA was given a lot of antibodies over a long period of time, creating enough evolutionary pressure to create highly mutated forms of the virus? Such a person might end up with a highly mutated virus that is resistant to existing antibodies. Fair enough.

That explains one of the four weirdnesses, and leaves three unexplained. Where are all the missing silent mutations (Weirdness 2)? If someone is followed medically and receiving all these treatments, did no one around them ever get sick with an intermediate variant? (Weirdness 1)? And what about the mouse-related mutations? (Weirdness 4) Did the viruses in the immune compromised person develop those mouse-related mutations independently?

I find the "immune compromised person" hypothesis not a very parsimonious or compelling one, although if you can steelman it further, I'm all ears.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#122

Post by civilized »

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…

Thank you for visiting HN, Alina! And I agree, natural evolution seems to make more sense. It's natural to wonder about lab-driven adaptation before COVID was unleashed on the human race... but once it had the entire human race to run its own "gain-of-function experiments", a lab hardly seems necessary anymore.

The only question is why we didn't observe some steps on the way. And as you say, poorly monitored infections of the immunocompromised can easily explain this. It hardly seems necessary to posit nefarious secret labs when COVID is constantly spreading among billions of people, a significant fraction of whom are immunocompromised and chronically infected in minimally monitored areas.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#124

Post by maxerickson »

johncena33 wrote: post #110
maxerickson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I bitch at those people too.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#125

Post by dljones »

ufo wrote: post #46
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.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, yes. But take another look at the phylogenetic tree. Those are huge gaps. See also this article describing how good South Africa is at spotting and sequencing variants."The reality is that southern Africa is a top international powerhouse of COVID-19 surveillance." https://www.businessinsider.com/how-southern-africa-detected...

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#126

Post by CamperBob2 »

dqpb wrote: post #86
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…

Can you also comment on her claim that Delta was a lab leak?

She, and yes, she does need to go back over that sentence and clarify it, because it does read that way.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#127

Post by rob_c »

nnx wrote: post #42
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?

More simply, I don't think people tend to remain infected (and infectious) for a whole year (not saying they can't just that this seems a farcical assumption)

Yeah I agree with the going undetected too unless they're potentially asymptomatic (in which case why should we ever expect to find/treat them).

All leading to the same response of you can't control highly transmissible virus(vurii) once they have infected a large amount of the population. (aka a 0 covid strategy is self-defeating)

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#128

Post by klipt »

ufo wrote: post #46
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.

> absence of samples showing the step-by-step evolution

Sounds much like the "missing link" gotcha that creationists loved to deploy.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#129

Post by civilized »

This post takes many screens of text to get to the point: we don't know how omicron evolved from its last known ancestor in Spring 2020 to November 2021, when it burst into the world stage. Ergo, lab leak.

It's a great deal of throat-clearing for a one-sentence argument from ignorance. Alina Chan has pointed to a more plausible alternative in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29789480

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#130

Post by rob_c »

carlivar wrote: post #107
tatersolid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Serious people on serious topics, journals, peer reviewed publications, non anonymous blogs, large email threads...

Almost anything other than a) social media and b) anonymous platforms

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