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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
471–480 of 631 posts
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a natural fork in the road here which is why this is so contentious. The best argument gain of function proponents have for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out how to neutralize it. The argument the anti-GoF advocates have is that creating the next big thing in a lab leads eventually/inevitably to at least one of them gettin…
> The best argument gain of function proponents have for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out how to neutralize it Did that actually help in this case? Or are gain-of-function advocates the science equivalent of employees who want to rewrite your webapp in the language du jour ? They say it's for the benefit of the company (humanity)…
I don't understand how this argument has any traction at all. My understanding is we had the COVID vaccines formulated within weeks of the initial outbreak. The problem is, it then took many months of large scale testing, and then scaling production to make the vaccine readily available. In the meantime, the virus spread across the globe and mutated into forms that the vaccine isn't very effective against. Treatments seem to be in a similar position as well. How are you going to test a treatment for a virus that only exists in a lab, and is safely contained?
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the beginning this was the narrative because there was a shortage of masks, or because of plain ignorance. Maybe I missed something, but I don't remember ever hearing "masks don't work unless you're a medical professional" (outside of later revisionist accounts by the right-wing "COVID isn't real and this is all a vast conspiracy" crowd); I mostly remember hearing "initial findings show that masks seem to be eff…
The more conspiracy minded started parsing "please don't go out and panic-buy them like you've been doing with toilet paper" as "you don't need masks" almost immediately. It was dumb when it happened, it's still dumb today. I'm sure at least one talking head said something to that effect but that was not actually the consensus message. "Don't buy these masks unless you're a medical professional" ≠ "Masks don't work u…
Stop doing revisionist history. Fauci said directly that masks don’t work.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...
It’s fine to be wrong, that’s what science is all about, but at least admit it and explain the reasoning behind the change.
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "masks don't work unless you're a trained medical professional" Putting aside the phrasing, which I take to be something like "unless you follow procedures and have new masks often etc". In the beginning this was the narrative because there was a shortage of masks, or because of plain ignorance. Masks are not perfect, but they were effective, which is why they are still mandatory in some contexts. If one can ignore…
> In the beginning this was the narrative because there was a shortage of masks, or because of plain ignorance. Maybe I missed something, but I don't remember ever hearing "masks don't work unless you're a medical professional" (outside of later revisionist accounts by the right-wing "COVID isn't real and this is all a vast conspiracy" crowd); I mostly remember hearing "initial findings show that masks seem to be eff…
Fauci directly said masks don’t work at the start of covid
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's stipulate that everything you say is true. It still doesn't address the content of the comment you are responding to: "it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest. " And as someone who has no opinion on the issue at all, and hasn't researched it, and can easily believe it is/isn't of lab origin, I can say that the top level OP comment was a very quick "I don't want to spend a minute o…
Another comment addressing pure tone, while never addressing content, unbelievable! People conducting science need to behave ethically, those are reasonable probing ethical questions. If the initial discussion related to origins of a bad pandemic can be quelled by a handful of science bureaucrats with conflicted interests then I think an interested journalist would ask the grand-OPs questions. The fact we don't have…
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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#476If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
Here's some evidence: if you fart in an elevator, it stinks, but if you fart outdoors, not so much. Viruses, as opposed to farts, don't smell, but otherwise they are similar. If someone coughs outdoors, the aerosols containing the viral particles just spread around and soon their concentration becomes negligible. If someone coughs, or just breathes indoors, the aerosols spread, but if the space is not very large, the…
> Overall, the simplest explanation…
"New studies say Wuhan market is the only ‘plausible’ source of COVID-19 pandemic"
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2022-07-26/new-studies...
“I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer,” Andersen said. “Actually, the data points to this particular market.”
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. That's simply not true at all, whatsoever. See for example this paper sequencing early samples of the virus: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?logi... The "wet market" samples are less similar to closely related bat strains than other early samples which are unrelated to the market. The market i…
Your information is out of date. The paper I linked to shows that both early strains of the virus were present at the Huanan market. That is already very strong evidence that the market was the origin point of the original outbreak in Wuhan, and not merely a superspreader event. We now know that early cases were centered on the market, that both strains were present in the market, and that the types of wild animals t…
The market is still involved lab leak hypothesis or not. The market may still be the place where the earliest animal-human crossover occurred, even if the lab leak hypothesis is correct.
Say a group of animals intended to be euthanized were actually clandestinely sold at the market, it's completely reasonable that the virus could have mutated at the lab in the animal population before being transmitted to humans. In fact, this is literally exactly what occurs during gain of function research, when scientists are explicitly trying to get a virus to mutate in live animals.
There is simply not any hard evidence to concretely prove either hypothesis. Any evidence that points to the market can just as easily be involved in a lab leak scenario.
When you have no comprehensive data on transmission, and no audit trail of how the animals arrived at the market, it's not possible to determine origin from super spreader. The evidence for both would look identical!
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you’re leaving out the part where, for political or other reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell distrust in American institutions as well as their political rivals. You cannot seriously have a debate about this mistrust without acknowledging the role of misinformation and motivated actors looking to sew mistrust. Remember when 5G causing Covid was trending? Or memes about how hot water in a net…
>I think you’re leaving out the part where, for political reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell distrust in American institutions as well as their political rivals. The conversations on HN about the lab leak hypothesis always leave this out. They often imply the politicization of covid came from scientists trying to protect themselves rather than from politicians. Maybe the lab leak theory is true, but…
Not true.
Lab leak hypothesis came up early from NIH's own people. We have the emails. Government officials had these emails before "We the people" did so would have been first to sound the alarm publicly.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/emails-reveal-suspected-covid-...
https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114270/documents/...
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does. Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again. If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do. If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken, or such things should not be done in labs with iffy security practices... or maybe even not done at all. Many workplace (and general) safety rules were written because someone has died doing something (…
> Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again I really don't see that. If it is really true that both options are indistinguishably plausible, then what do you in response to this one event is absolutely meaningless. The next event could as likely come from "the other source", or from a new entirely one you don't even know about. Your only reasonable option _in any case_ is to just streng…
Gain of function research can either be outlawed or not outlawed. We don’t get to try both because viruses are global issues.
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you say scientists are not a monolith, then you don’t get to make sweeping generalizations about them. Sure you can. Humans are not a monolith but humans don't worship the Dark God-Eater Yglocth-Tyr. Both statements are accurate. Largely because he doesn't exist, in much the same way as there's no such thing as a macro level threat to scientists ability to ask for funding. It's not a real concept. If you feel co…
The discussion of how Big Science presents a macro level threat has been ongoing since at least WWII. It's no secret that the way things are funded have introduced bias or in some cases completely undermined the scientific method. There's the opportunity cost of Big Science displacing smaller, more independent researchers, the replication crisis, the publish or perish culture that has developed, etc. It's because of…
> It's also wrong to say a single dissenter can't bury a paper. It depends on the field, but in some fields there will only be one referee, and even when there are multiple referees, if the dissenter is a "leading authority" then they can absolutely bury the paper single-handedly.
The implication of the phrasing "It only takes one" tends to imply that anyone can do something. Not that there exists a single entity that can do it. You wouldn't say "remember, it only takes one person to pass an executive order". I also just don't agree with the claim that one person can bury a paper across an entire field. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen so many idiot papers being published about covid from quacks.
> So it's totally off base to write off this history of concern as non-existent, or pedantry.
There is no big science. There's DARPA, sure. But it's hardly "big science"