Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#811

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:29 AM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #559

Tenoke wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of extremely simplistic view one holds if they only get their news via The Daily Show or are in a massive echo chamber that tells them their opponents are cartoon villains. Such events are rarely so conveniently mono-causal and it should be easy to disprove for yourself if you weren't just looking for a convenient narrative given that Trump had significant minority vote (30-38% of Hispanics, Asian an…

First of, using "they" and "simplistic view" in one sentence doesn't work, because it makes a generalized simplistic argument while using itself. "disprove for yourself if you weren't just looking for a convenient narrative given" How does "Millions of white Trumps voters are racist" contradict "that Trump had significant minority vote (30-38% of Hispanics [...]"? First it assumes Hispanics can't be racists - everyon…

It's even simpler than actual racism: quite a few people believe that they are intrinsically 'better' along some dimension (virtue, way of life, religion, skin color, whatever) and that the 'others' are worth less or are even sub-human on account of this.

Racism is mostly an expression of one of those factors. This perfectly explains why division happens on the basis of an 'in' group and an 'out' group and why the solutions (for want of a better word) aimed at the outgroup start with deportation and end with gas chambers: they're lesser humans or not even humans at all in the eyes of the perpetrators.

The fact that skin color is so easily determined obviously makes it a perfect candidate.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#812

Post by tripletao » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:34 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #807

tripletao wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to suggest that you were confusing anything with MERS. I just brought MERS up to show that not only had we found an animal infected with SARS-1 within about a year of its emergence in humans, but we'd also found such an animal for MERS, on a similar timescale. This means that SARS-CoV-2 is the 1/3 for which we haven't, not impossible just by chance but slightly more surprising than just 1/2. And yeah, y…

We have no proof that civets gave us SARS-1 and not the other way around. Since it was also found in raccoon dogs, ferret badgers and domestic cats which one of those was the actual intermediate animal? Civets were just the first identified. Either one of them gave it to us and we gave it to the other three, or possibly we got it from bats and gave it to all four. AFAIK there's no conclusive phylogenetic analysis est…

I think you're strictly right there. If they'd obtained sequences then they could have built that tree; but as far as I know they didn't, perhaps because the cost of sequencing was higher back then. That's still more evidence than we have for SARS-CoV-2, though.

With SARS-1 we had the additional evidence that some wildlife traders had antibodies, presumably from mild infections by related viruses in the animals they handled. There's again no genomic evidence to exclude "reverse zoonosis" there, but the timing seems to make that pretty unlikely.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140695/

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#813

Post by baobabKoodaa » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 9:28 AM UTC

grog454 wrote: post #796

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's naive to think that HN is necessarily better than an arbitrary Subreddit in terms of quality of conversations and depth of discussions, especially on non-tech related material. HN is much better than an arbitrary subreddit in terms of quality of conversations. Dissenting opinions are very rarely censored on HN, but dissent on subreddits is typically quelled. Subreddits are mostly echo chambers for people who w…

Maybe it depends on the topic. In the 3 years I've been reading HN I've observed a pretty steady increase in similarity to tech focused subreddits. Sometimes things are effectively "cross posted" on either site. There's nothing stopping anyone on reddit from posting on HN and vice versa. I am a random example of someone who discovered reddit before HN, but was drawn to HN for what I also perceived to be better "quali…

> There's nothing stopping anyone on reddit from posting on HN and vice versa.

Yes there is. About 1/3 of my comments on Reddit have been censored for being against the "official truth" of the subreddit.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#814

Post by tgv » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #768

tgv wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although they were hesitant at first, the Chinese government handled the SARS-1 outbreak differently.

The similarities vastly outweigh the differences. The biggest difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the latter takes a bit longer before you get ill but you are already contagious. Other than that it's mostly the same old story. Note that if not for SARS-CoV this would have been a lot more serious because that served as a dress rehearsal and put a lot of mechanisms in place as well as suggested screening f…

The comment was about the way the Chinese government (mis)handled the information sharing, etc., and hence about the possibility of a lab leak, not about the actual disease, which (IMO) is even different, as covid-19 is much, much more contagious. And if the lab leak hypothesis is true, then the first outbreak didn't serve "as a dress rehearsal", but rather as the inspiration for the current one.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#815

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #809

tim333 wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well "accidental release or natural event? I am 70:30 or 60:40." sounds like Mike Farzan thought it quite likely. And >Before I left the office for the ball, I aligned nCoV with the 96% bat CoV sequenced at WIV. Except for the RBD the S proteins are essentially identical at the amino acid level – well all but the perfect insertion of 12 nucleotides that adds the furin site. S2 is over its whole length essentially ide…

Meanwhile, we have hard proof that this does occur in nature. So this part of the discussion is no longer relevant from an evidence of view, the 'even more implausible' part turned out to be true. This - again - illustrates why I think this whole thread is a large pile of rubbish. If you are arguing with old information for an implausible viewpoint why are you arguing at all?

I'm arguing mostly that scientists should be open with the relevant data. I don't see what should be controversial about that. It's like there's an air crash and the authorities say we must not investigate and keep all documents confidential in case it upsets the plane manufacturer. It's not a good idea to do that.

Specifically EcoHealth Alliance who were the main US funders of WIV and main enthusiasts for gain of function research on bat viruses should publish their emails and data. They are a US government funded non profit and have no business obstructing all inquiries really.

I mean even if you are convinced the origin is natural and not involving a lab then why not be enthusiastic for data about lab research to be open so you can rule that out?

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#816

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 11:45 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #401

bArray wrote: post #348

> But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”. COVID-19: the time where Scientists pretended to be politicians and politicians pretended to be Scientists. Also if their intention was to not hurt Chi…

> For all we know, COVID-X is just around the corner. Not necessarily Coronavirus based, but the next jump from one species to another of some pathogen (viral, bacterial) is pretty much a certainty. And with the amount of habitat destruction and bushmeat/wetmarkets we are increasing the odds of it happening soon considerably. The last three decades have seen an ever increasing number of such events each of which has…

Talking about COVID-X EcoHealth Alliance who were enthusing about Covid gain of function research also wanted to much around with MERS, a virus that kills 30% of humans rather than the namby pamby Covid with its mediocre 1%. Another reason why I feel this stuff should be investigated properly https://mobile.twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/143200746439279411...

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#817

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #815

jacquesm wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, we have hard proof that this does occur in nature. So this part of the discussion is no longer relevant from an evidence of view, the 'even more implausible' part turned out to be true. This - again - illustrates why I think this whole thread is a large pile of rubbish. If you are arguing with old information for an implausible viewpoint why are you arguing at all?

I'm arguing mostly that scientists should be open with the relevant data. I don't see what should be controversial about that. It's like there's an air crash and the authorities say we must not investigate and keep all documents confidential in case it upsets the plane manufacturer. It's not a good idea to do that. Specifically EcoHealth Alliance who were the main US funders of WIV and main enthusiasts for gain of fu…

Imagine for a moment that everything is reversed and read 'USA' for 'China' and 'China' for 'USA'. Now what do you think are the chances that an American research facility will open its books to the world after a political war of words all but blaming the USA for a pandemic? Because - in my opinion rightly - such a mission is bound to generate a lot of data that will then be mis-interpreted by people with an agenda seeing proof in everything that they were right all along, no matter what the scientists say.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#818

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 12:23 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #811

KingOfCoders wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of, using "they" and "simplistic view" in one sentence doesn't work, because it makes a generalized simplistic argument while using itself. "disprove for yourself if you weren't just looking for a convenient narrative given" How does "Millions of white Trumps voters are racist" contradict "that Trump had significant minority vote (30-38% of Hispanics [...]"? First it assumes Hispanics can't be racists - everyon…

It's even simpler than actual racism: quite a few people believe that they are intrinsically 'better' along some dimension (virtue, way of life, religion, skin color, whatever) and that the 'others' are worth less or are even sub-human on account of this. Racism is mostly an expression of one of those factors. This perfectly explains why division happens on the basis of an 'in' group and an 'out' group and why the so…

But you have chosen that line arbitrarily. You can have groups that separate along decisions. Some select way A, some select way B. The same group dynamics apply. Agreed that skin color is a good candidate, but it was not required in the case of gas chambers for example.

As an outsider looking towards the US, I wouldn't say conservatives started with this discrimination and it is far more a product of academia that might have removed itself from common problems of people they also like to make fun off because they are insecure about themselves.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#819

Post by mandmandam » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

godmode2019 wrote: post #806

mandmandam wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Chinese CDC is literary across the road from the wet market I would looove a source on that, please. Can't find anything with a quick search and haven't heard that before.

I can read Chinese and saw it on a Chinese map at the start of the pandemic, when I was looking at the huanan wet market. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Center_For_Disease_Con... No. 288, Machang Road, Jianghan District, Wuhan If you duckduckgo the address you can see a bunch of academic papers listing that as the address. Its not controversial. Just no one has ever brought it up. Only media that reported on i…

> its a weird fact to leave out of public discourse

It surely is. Thanks for getting back to me, appreciate it.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#820

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

eloisius wrote: post #801

loup-vaillant wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would be shocked if the US arrested scientists and journalists to conceal the origins of a viral outbreak. The US are actively prosecuting a journalist on phony charges because he helped expose their war crimes, among other things. The UK is of course actively complicit, which contributed in making his life a living hell. Given that precedent, I wouldn't be shocked at all.

And you'll read an endless trove of comments posted on this site, including from myself, in support of Assange and his work, and condemnation of what the US is doing to him. We shouldn't even be on this tangent, because the parent comment was nothing but "what about America!" and now we're veering into even more tangential territory with "well what about America with regards to some other topic!?" This isn't a Chuck…

My point was, I didn't see much difference to what the US has done to Wikileaks, and the hypothetical arrest by the US of journalists & scientists over leaking the top secret origins of an outbreak.

Now that I think of it I was likely incorrect. There's one big difference: I expect the US would first make sure they wouldn't look too bad doing it. That's almost certainly why some Swedish prosecutor happened to blow Assange's sexual affairs utterly out of proportion: kill the name before the guy.