Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#31

Post by scotty79 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:17 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #24

srl wrote: post #6

From the Nature medicine paper: > Editors’ note, [30] March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus. And from "The Scientist": > Update (March 11, 2020): On social media and news outlets, a the…

There is no way that this is a coincidence: A GRANT PROPOSAL written by the U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research. Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the cre…

"the SARS-CoV-2 spike, similarly to the more distantly related Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), contains a polybasic CS, characterized as being a suboptimal furin CS. This polybasic CS is absent from the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, although similar polybasic CSs are found in more distantly related coronaviruses"

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#32

Post by caperfee » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #14

zozbot234 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there are many strong indications that it did. Nope, there really aren't. We're now finding more and more naturally-evolved viruses in cave-dwelling bats that share plenty of features with SARS-CoV2, including the 'weird' features everyone was talking about at the beginning of the pandemic. All it really takes is to go and look for them. Occam's razor says this virus too is just one of many.

> All it really takes is to go and look for them They did, the closest sample is still Ra4991/RaTG13 which was found in a Wuhan mine and transported to the Wuhan virology lab before the outbreak. Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13

> Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2

Paraphrasing from this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2

> BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2; one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago.

> RaTG13 is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 40–70 years ago.

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#33

Post by hunterb123 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

caperfee wrote: post #32

hunterb123 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All it really takes is to go and look for them They did, the closest sample is still Ra4991/RaTG13 which was found in a Wuhan mine and transported to the Wuhan virology lab before the outbreak. Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13

> Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2 Paraphrasing from this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 > BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2; one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago. > RaTG13 is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 4…

> The results, which are not peer reviewed, have been posted on the preprint server Research Square

It's a CCP propaganda piece. I find that "study" pretty fishy, the results would have been easy to verify if true.

Same as the CDC study they tried to use against Israel's study for natural immunity.

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#34

Post by fubarr » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#35

Post by 8note » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 5:36 AM UTC

asdkjjjthrow wrote: post #21

alevskaya wrote: post #16

Sigh. As I've said in other posts, if any experiment of this sort were the source of sars-cov-2, it would be -blindingly- obvious. The synthetic metagenomic experiments looking into spike, etc. leave completely obvious traces, number one being the use of known, characterized viral vectors. Using some random isolates as experimental vectors is not only methodologically pointless and counterproductive, it's vastly more…

I think this is very wishful thinking, or deliberately choosing how to interpret "lab-made" to be "sliced and diced and recombined". "Lab-made" still encompasses the whole of GoF research. That is, a virus can appear to have naturally evolved but have been evolved in lab under conditions by which it develops quicker, more efficiently, etc. If the virus was manufactured through some means then it was, by definition, l…

It sounds like you'd consider the state of Florida being a lab to produce covid variants?

The wet market theory is also then a lab made one, since putting sick Bata and pangolins and whatever together can promote viruses jumping species.

Flu is mostly a lab made virus by this definition too. Put people close to chickens, and you help people catch new flu variants

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#36

Post by 8note » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 5:38 AM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #29

This is a very polarizing topic. I'd love to know enough about this field to understand what is going on. I just hope that if this is man made we have learned something to prevent this happening again. How hard would it be for someone to do this on purpose?

i think the biggest learning from covid is that we cant prevent something like this from happening again.

not without stopping travel at least

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#37

Post by alevskaya » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #23

alevskaya wrote: post #16

Sigh. As I've said in other posts, if any experiment of this sort were the source of sars-cov-2, it would be -blindingly- obvious. The synthetic metagenomic experiments looking into spike, etc. leave completely obvious traces, number one being the use of known, characterized viral vectors. Using some random isolates as experimental vectors is not only methodologically pointless and counterproductive, it's vastly more…

We already know that the EcoHealth Alliance sought funding for DEFUSE, which involved making chimeras of "random isolates" (novel coronaviruses collected by the WIV from nature) and certain known backbones. They proposed to do that work in North Carolina, not Wuhan, and the proposal was rejected for safety concerns; but it gives general insight to the kind of work they wanted to do, and might have continued with othe…

Yeah, I used to engineer viruses and immune cells, etc. I've read that grant a few times. Again, a rejected _American_ grant for work to be done in Baric's lab in North Carolina. Most of the work outlined in it involved chimeric genomes that would be obvious. There's a few sentences about verifying properties of full-length quasispecies isolates, but the QS experiments aren't well outlined - a lot of chimeric experiments and re-syntheses, all which would likely leave pretty tell-tale signs.

Of course it's possible to describe a physically possible route to sampling, lab accident, and infection. Anyone can come up with these just-so stories. Professors too! Making a chimera of random isolates is crazy story. It's incredibly annoying to mess with 30kb RNA viruses. You have no idea. That's just not how a skilled practitioner would go about asking these questions. There's a reason most work on these things are in characterized strains.

These stories remain ludicrous when compared with the unambiguous epidemiological evidence for zoonosis that we have in hand. You're simultaneously alleging this tight collaboration between western scientists and WIV, but positing that somehow all these western scientists were in the dark about a conspiracy to do this massive amount of work without our knowledge, or an active conspiracy on the part of a significant percentage of western virology to hide it. All in a field that before the pandemic was a completely undramatic backwater of science!

The power of "lab-leak" isn't its strength as an evidence-backed scientific hypothesis, it's its power as a compelling work of fiction, and I doubt any amount of hard evidence will kill it.

The damage it does is distracting us from the unregulated wild-meat and fur industries that were the overwhelmingly likely cauldron for evolving these strains (as in SARS-1!). If we yet again fail to shut down those sources, we risk another pandemic just like this happening again in a few decades. That's where international attention and pressure should be applied, not this cockamamie distraction.

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#38

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

johncena33 wrote: post #27

jiocrag wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Parent poster is spewing a line without evidence. Please cite discoveries of respiratory viruses with “weird features” on par with SARS-cov2.

I think the parent poster was talikng about BANAL virus discovered in Laos, which apparently is closest to SARS-CoV2, but it doesn't have Furin Cleavage Site. > The Laos study offers insight into the origins of the pandemic, but there are still missing links, say researchers. For example, the Laos viruses don’t contain the so-called furin cleavage site on the spike protein that further aids the entry of SARS-CoV-2 an…

[deleted]

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#39

Post by scotty79 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

alevskaya wrote: post #16

Sigh. As I've said in other posts, if any experiment of this sort were the source of sars-cov-2, it would be -blindingly- obvious. The synthetic metagenomic experiments looking into spike, etc. leave completely obvious traces, number one being the use of known, characterized viral vectors. Using some random isolates as experimental vectors is not only methodologically pointless and counterproductive, it's vastly more…

Apparently seemless recombination was successfully attempted (search word seemless here https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...)

Whole post is quite interesting despite author alluding from time to time to lab leak being likely.

What I got from it is that lab leak is entirely possible but there are at least few indications that it would require mixture of ineptitude and pointless cunningness.

And that natural origin is superbly likely because coronavirus are just amazing melting pot where same exact mutations popup in multiple unrelated species.

Re: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate (2015)

#40

Post by asdkjjjthrow » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #35

asdkjjjthrow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is very wishful thinking, or deliberately choosing how to interpret "lab-made" to be "sliced and diced and recombined". "Lab-made" still encompasses the whole of GoF research. That is, a virus can appear to have naturally evolved but have been evolved in lab under conditions by which it develops quicker, more efficiently, etc. If the virus was manufactured through some means then it was, by definition, l…

It sounds like you'd consider the state of Florida being a lab to produce covid variants? The wet market theory is also then a lab made one, since putting sick Bata and pangolins and whatever together can promote viruses jumping species. Flu is mostly a lab made virus by this definition too. Put people close to chickens, and you help people catch new flu variants

This is a really dishonest form of argument and I don't think you actually read my post for context.

There's a very large difference between the relatively small gaps in genomes between related virus species and the grand canyon sized gap between COVID and it's nearest neighbor. The difference between omicron and delta is very small, delta and alpha also very small. These would be "expected" differences much like influenza changing to be a little different every single year. If we are to believe that a cave of bats cooked up a super infectious, lethal, extremely novel variant of CoV-SARS-1 then shouldn't other animal born diseases be the same? H1N1? Swine flu? Shouldn't they all have had extremely novel pathways given just how many animals it infected?

With the exception of certain hemorrhagic fevers I can't think of another virus that emerged from the wild with such extremely novel infection methods and I've been on this earth for a long time. Even H1N1, a big scare, wasn't THAT much different than it's neighbors.

Yet here we have a virus with basically never before seen infection pathways and virulence. Something that might have been created through scientifically tested and studied evolutionary pressure in a petri dish. It's not that hard to imagine. Get some lung cells, get some starter culture of a virus, and start beating it up with various methods until it evolves. Take those, and keep the survivors, and repeat ad nauseum. In fact, this is exactly how GoF research works. If you view it altruistically this allows us to create novel vaccines for novel infection methods. Unfortunately, it also means a leak will create a pandemic.

All of this could be cleared up in a month if China would allow regulators from the UN to investigate their lab and pull all the data associated with it. This is common procedure, and yet China appears to be railroading any attempt to do so going so far as to destroy related documents. Occam's razor, this isn't the action someone would take if it was a simple batch of bad bat soup. Logic would dictate you'd want to give up all the evidence of bad bat soup as fast as possible...yet 3 years later we have seen absolutely no evidence pointing to an animal borne infection pathway...