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Lab Leak 2.0?

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Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#231

Post by kelnos »

howaboutnope wrote: post #54
PennRobotics wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 often upvote articles I find interesting enough I want to see a discussion of them on HN. To me it doesn't mean every word of an article is perfect and above criticism, it just means it's IMO interesting and of substance enough to warrant discussion. In this case I took my time fully reading it before posting it, but not being a biotech person I posted this here also because I was interested in criticism of flaws I…

Agreed on this. I read the article before looking at comments (now 8-9 hours after it was posted), and thought "hmm, ok, I'm skeptical, but these seem to be pretty strong arguments". I was pleased to come here to the comments to find strong counter-arguments, many of which are things I wouldn't have considered due to lack of expertise here. So I'm glad it got enough votes and stuck around long enough for serious discussion.

(For the record, I still do believe the various lab-leak theories have legs, and should be discussed and investigated, even if this particular article ends up being unconvincing.)

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#232

Post by kelnos »

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…

I don't know if this is truly the case (outside my area of expertise), but the article claims that most of the benefits of gain-of-function research can be realized through much safer methods. If true, the "good guys" don't really lose much by refusing to do what the "bad guys" might be doing.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#233

Post by kelnos »

daenz wrote: post #106

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.

Even then, the people working on this other planet/moon will probably want to come back home to Earth at some point. Maybe a leak that way is much less likely than a leak from an Earth-based lab next to a population center, but I would bet on humans still failing at perfect safety protocols, and bringing something nasty back to Earth regardless.

As the article states, we should be clearly weighing the benefits of gain-of-function research against its risks. It seems like that was the intent of the 2014 funding ban in the US, but we never actually did that work, and that's horrifying. And if the some/many/all of the benefits of GoF research can be realized through other means, even if those means are more difficult or costly, we should probably just do that anyway.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#234

Post by kelnos »

thurn wrote: post #139

This is interesting, but even a brief discussion of selection bias would help it be more convincing. If you pick the most wildly successful mutation out of the thousands of available choices of course it is going to be an outlier in numerous ways. Isn't it perhaps even likely that the most widespread variant would have a low number of silent mutations and strong immune-evasion capabilities?

It's definitely likely that the most widespread variant would have strong immune-evasion capabilities, but I don't see how it follows that it it's likely that it would have a low number of silent mutations. The immune-evasion would be something that evolution would select for, but the number of silent mutations (low or high) would seem not to matter where evolution is concerned.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#235

Post by kelnos »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #78

What if it was engineered in the lab to be LESS lethal and severe, so it could finally end COVID 19?

It's certainly a possibility, but an incredibly reckless, unethical route to take. One mistake, and you end up killing far more people than before.

Not that I'd put such a plan past some people...

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#236

Post by kelnos »

john_moscow wrote: post #115

What kinda raised suspicions about Omicron for me is that it propagates considerably faster in the bronchial tissue, while being much slower in the lungs [0]. Given the current state of biotech, it is not possible to just edit the viral RNA achieving the desired clinical result, but is entirely feasible to keep applying minor edits and measuring the propagation rate in different tissues in vitro, effectively optimizi…

And if this were the case, they don't seem to have done a particularly good job. People have already died of omicron, and that alone would be an indictment of the end result. "First, do no harm", and all that.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#237

Post by kelnos »

ufo wrote: post #38
ctoth wrote: post #34

Curious why this was flagged?

A blog post full of wild speculation, whose main sources appear to be a bunch of Twitter threads. Have we not learned anything in the past two years?

I dislike Twitter, but if the people posting there have legitimate credentials and expertise in the field, that credibility doesn't disappear just because they've chosen to talk about this on Twitter.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#238

Post by challenger-derp »

rob_c wrote: post #130
carlivar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but you're outdated on this point. Researchers & politicians of repute use Twitter to voice their opinion and share stuff with the public.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#239

Post by kelnos »

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?

A couple handfuls, maybe a couple dozen? Seems not that hard to keep something like that quiet, especially when everyone involved would be strongly incentivized not to admit to being party to something like this.

Not saying it's true, but I don't think "they couldn't keep this a secret" is a particularly compelling rebuttal here.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#240

Post by kelnos »

ei8htyfi5e wrote: post #207
bArray wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and no? In theory, the American government is "for the people, by the people", a feature not at all shared by the Chinese government. So actions taken by the American government should be the will of at least a majority of Americans.

(Of course, the reality is a bit different; the American government is run by people largely in the pockets of special-interest groups and lobbyists. But we'd like to think democracy works as well as we'd like...)

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