Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lab Leak 2.0?

bprice.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 319 posts

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#201

Post by tailspin2019 »

cassepipe wrote: post #179
tailspin2019 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bac…

You misread because of a poorly worded sentence. She does not claim Delta's origin was a lab leak at all but that there has been a lab leak. Instead she implicitly compares Omicron and Delta showing that Delta did evolved naturally whereas it is unlikely of Omicron.

Ah, thank you for clarifying.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#202

Post by WaxedChewbacca »

dawnerd wrote: post #186
ibejoeb wrote: post #35

There is no legitimate reason for this to be flagged. What happened to the vouch option?

There sure is. I flagged it because it’s speculation and conspiracy stuff shouldn’t be on HN. Sure it could be a leak but armchair detective work can be dangerous.

No post body was provided.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#203

Post by alanfranz »

dawnerd wrote: post #186
ibejoeb wrote: post #35

There is no legitimate reason for this to be flagged. What happened to the vouch option?

There sure is. I flagged it because it’s speculation and conspiracy stuff shouldn’t be on HN. Sure it could be a leak but armchair detective work can be dangerous.

It’s quite well written. It may be false, but why should it be a conspiracy?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#205

Post by indigodaddy »

I posted this article on my Facebook feed and it was promptly auto-deleted by Facebook.

A sad state of affairs indeed.

*EDIT* it looks like it didn’t actually get deleted. When I went to edit the post my edit wouldn’t take and it said the post was deleted. But I am still seeing the post, so I think it’s “there” at least..

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#206

Post by ei8htyfi5e »

zucked wrote: post #85

If any of this is true, and I don't have enough brain power to decipher if it is or is not, would it be at least in the realm of possibility that Omicron was not an accidental leak; perhaps, rather, a deliberate one, to counteract the original (and Delta variant's) virulence and impact? We know that the virus is likely to continue to mutate in the wild, on its own - and that the virus in the wild has upended our way…

So you’ve seen The Last Ship’s finale on Hulu…

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#207

Post by ei8htyfi5e »

bArray wrote: post #158
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…

Should other countries distinguish between the USA and the American government? That’s something I don’t see.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#208

Post by trenchgun »

dljones wrote: post #121
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,…

Suggestion: The immunocompromised patient was a humanized mouse, who had HIV.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#209

Post by trenchgun »

validuser wrote: post #192
boublepop wrote: post #190

> “If a $1000 PhD side project could kill millions of people, we must end viral [gain-of-function research], or it may end us.” This sentimental reminds me of a talk given by a government bomb expert where a naive student asked “why do we allow the ingredients for bombs to be sold in store, shouldn’t we ban them all?” The answer of cause is that if we do that, then we suddenly don’t have gasoline, orange juice, basic…

There's an infinite number of possible viruses. Inventing some random new ones doesn't protect anyone.

We need to be able to defend from the dark arts. Just like in Harry Potter.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#210

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #148
alex_young wrote: post #132

If the author actually had some kind of evidence that there was a lab leak source of Omicron, don’t you think it would be mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the blog? Instead we have a long list of connect-the-dots tweets, out of context quotes, and unsubstantiated speculation going on for 2/3s of the post before we even get to the Omicron stuff. The meat of the speculation is a scary looking graph plotting genet…

The plot on Wikipedia looks to me like it has lots of variants with frequent branches coming off of each variant, except for Omicron, which went a great distance with no branches and then started branching rapidly again. This seems most consistent with a lab leak.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN