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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#151

Post by TeeMassive »

tehjoker wrote: post #144
TeeMassive wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but since spring 2020? This variant slept without getting replaced by other more contagious variants? That doesn't seem likely.

The entire world has been blanketed in Coronavirus and as far as I know Africa has seen a mix of action that has been different from how Western countries have experienced it. The rates of infection are different, the rates of vaccination are different. Two VOCs have come out of South Africa, but who's to say that an earlier version from 2020 wasn't bumping around the continent and returned to South Africa? Everyone…

> The entire world has been blanketed in Coronavirus and as far as I know Africa has seen a mix of action that has been different from how Western countries have experienced it. The rates of infection are different, the rates of vaccination are different. Two VOCs have come out of South Africa, but who's to say that an earlier version from 2020 wasn't bumping around the continent and returned to South Africa?

You're pointing out distinctions that do not make any relevant or substantial differences to the argument.

> Everyone likes to posit human intervention when we have very little information, especially people highly motivated to declare COVID-19 a lab leak for geopolitical reasons. Give the science time and we might start to fill in the gaps.

With lack of information, ideas that have the less assumptions and concepts tend to be true than their counterparts who require many possible sub-hypotheses and concepts. GoF happen and lab leaks happen and the genetic histogram and the genes makes make this hypothesis the more likely one. The opposite require many hypothetical actors (mouses, immunosuppressed patients, back and forth between geographically distant places and all the combinations thereof) to account for it "hiding" since spring 2020.

> especially people highly motivated to declare COVID-19 a lab leak for geopolitical reasons.

Nobody blamed nobody here. GoF research happens everywhere.

> Give the science time and we might start to fill in the gaps.

Science is not beholden to your worldview. Filling the gaps is part of the scientific method, by the way.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#152

Post by yyx »

chana_masala wrote: post #146
croes wrote: post #81

Without wanting to or being able to contradict the article, some of it sounds like the creationists. Because we cannot fully explain evolution, we do not know all the ancestors and the result is so complex, there must be a creator. I hear exactly the same argumentation from creationists when it comes to the development of the human eye, for example.

You might find the work of David Gelernter (computer scientist) interesting. He's not a creationist, but he has abandoned the theory of evolution. > Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there…

It took 4 billion years to get to this point. Plenty of time.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#153

Post by yellow_postit »

chana_masala wrote: post #146
croes wrote: post #81

Without wanting to or being able to contradict the article, some of it sounds like the creationists. Because we cannot fully explain evolution, we do not know all the ancestors and the result is so complex, there must be a creator. I hear exactly the same argumentation from creationists when it comes to the development of the human eye, for example.

You might find the work of David Gelernter (computer scientist) interesting. He's not a creationist, but he has abandoned the theory of evolution. > Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there…

This is Intelligent Design dressed up in hand wavy math that builds on misrepresentation of cited studies and the fossil record. Read with a strong dose of skepticism.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#154

Post by epgui »

TeeMassive wrote: post #135
ufo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but since spring 2020? This variant slept without getting replaced by other more contagious variants? That doesn't seem likely.

Such gaps in phylogenetic trees actually happen all the time.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#155

Post by jbc1 »

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…

Chuck “Taiwan delta lab” in to google news and you’ll find a hundred articles on it. I don’t know which in particular you would find reputable.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#156

Post by Sparyjerry »

The article is very well written, as was the last article on lab origin theory. Previous articles have already recognized that this mutation (technically 33 mutations) emerged from a strain prior to even the naming of the Alpha strain. That by itself had resulted in several theories, a few of which were mentioned: a lab leak, that this was mutating within a single population for over a year before spreading, that is was mutating within a single person, or that it traveled to another species where it spread rampantly and mutated then traveled back. This adds further data and it's great to see articles that use highly credible PHD sources like this, and the explains things in easy to understand ways. I feel it does move the probability closer to a lab origin but as the article states it is still only more likely in their opinion. Some articles or people have an odd level of conviction behind non-definitive data or an emotional attachment to the origin of the virus and I'm not seeing that in this article.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#157

Post by ufo »

chana_masala wrote: post #146
croes wrote: post #81

Without wanting to or being able to contradict the article, some of it sounds like the creationists. Because we cannot fully explain evolution, we do not know all the ancestors and the result is so complex, there must be a creator. I hear exactly the same argumentation from creationists when it comes to the development of the human eye, for example.

You might find the work of David Gelernter (computer scientist) interesting. He's not a creationist, but he has abandoned the theory of evolution. > Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there…

By this logic, artificial selection is also impossible and therefore pugs, tomatoes, and fancy pigeons cannot exist.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#158

Post by bArray »

option wrote: post #27

a coincidence which is almost always ignored is that China had huge Hong Kong protests with no resolution in sight until a global pandemic hit halting all and any street protests there.

I believe it's important to separate China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

I don't doubt that the Hong Kong protests were a major problem for the CCP and that COVID allowed them to implement a series of restrictions and laws to stop protests. I also don't doubt the very real possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan (in fact, given how the CCP have responded, I find it very likely).

What I do doubt is that this virus was released to combat the Hong Kong protests. If it was on purpose, it was a huge self-inflicted wound, as the CCP's inability to contain the virus has made them look weak internally and externally. It's hugely crippled their own economic growth which was set to overtake the US, which has now been set back at least 5-10 years based on projections (if they are to be believed).

If I were an evil regime, I would probably fake terroristic plots from the protestors and then respond to them heavily. There were plenty of other options available too, such as "starving out" the protestors (a tactic I believe they employed).

What's more likely is that the CCP are very good at utilizing the current situation to serve their own means. They are surprisingly bad at it though and seem to completely misunderstand how they are perceived on the world stage.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#159

Post by TeeMassive »

epgui wrote: post #154
TeeMassive wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but since spring 2020? This variant slept without getting replaced by other more contagious variants? That doesn't seem likely.

Such gaps in phylogenetic trees actually happen all the time.

Other viruses are not scanned and studied for other variants like Covid-19 is and Omicron is the only outlier by a large margin.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#160

Post by medimikka »

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.

Yes, this is true. But it's also somewhat narrow.

Consider this: days after the successful sequencing of Omicron, similar cases were reported in dozens of countries, having arrived there just before or just after the announcement. We know, that it's "just before," because references are being kept and re-analyzed in those cases, and none of the countries with the resources for genomic surveillance has any data on earlier strains in the phylogenic tree.

It is simply very unlikely (not impossible, but if you're in London and hear hoof beats, it's probably a horse, not a zebra), that Omicron could have developed over 33 N and a superset of S mutations without ever popping up in any surveillance. South Africa, especially, is a key surveillance player. They're often much more granular than even European key players like the UK, Germany, or France.

A strain with this level of infectivity doesn't linger in one hospital. From the looks of the genome, that part (infectivity) would have developed before immune evasion. Having a highly infective strain evolve would ring alarm bells in labs the world around.

I guess it's pretty non debatable that Omicron started its World Dominance Tour in October or November 2021. To get there, it had to undergo a massive sequence of events making it as far removed from α.7 as it is. So we can state, with some certainty, that it evolved in isolation and broke free shortly before being discovered.

If we now consider the possible origins, wild zoonotic, single origin immune compromised, or accidental leak from research, the latter doesn't sound so improbable anymore. Again, horse, not zebra.

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