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Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

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Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#591

Post by haihaibye »

igouy wrote: post #589
haihaibye wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confirming zooinosis outside of the lab (eg outside Wuhan) would disprove lab leak Finding the animal reservoir, would disprove it was modified in the lab. I guess it would also lower the chance of a lab leak (though I could still be natural) China allowing a proper investigation would reduce the odds (though how to prove they haven't tampered with evidence in the years since) I think every day the natural source isn…

>… outside of the lab would disprove lab leak Might someone still claim — transferred without infection beyond the lab? Given the available evidence how would "Confirming zooinosis outside of the lab" be done? > Finding the animal reservoir… In bats? In intermediary animals? Apparently "No reports are known to be available for SARS-CoV-2 test results from these mammals at the Huanan market" and "we do not have access…

China has vast resources and every reason to try and track down the natural source.

But yes, you're right, it's possible we can never know. And thus we should act upon the probability distribution of the cause behind millions of deaths, and try and improve the safety of both wet markets and labs.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#592

Post by brnaftr361 »

chasil wrote: post #548
8note wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not convincing. Our immune systems were evolving 100 thousand years ago, and they still are now. If we weren't able to handle new diseases, everyone would have died from covid, not some percent of a percent. Our immune systems are very very capable for handling pathogens

The book has extensive references. I hope you've brought yours. https://kurzgesagt.org/immune-book-sources/ https://www.philippdettmer.net/immune

So does Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, and Dawn of Everything and so does 1491 - and for all they do touch on disease what I've said comports with them.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#593

Post by blast »

samwillis wrote: post #47

Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature edit…

Ebright has since posted sources: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1567569831586861056.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#594

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

undecisive wrote: post #561
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these are "settled facts" flies in the face of papers like this that go to great lengths to hedge their language. This paper does not go to great lengths to hedge its statements, and the authors have very explicitly stated on numerous occasions that their work rules out the lab leak idea. > An epicenter is NOT where a thing started, and it's not in any doubt to even the most die-hard conspiracy theori…

My initial statement wasn't for or against - it was that the method of argument isn't going to work on many people here on Hacker News, not because we're a bunch of antivaxxer conspiracy theorists, but because we're predominantly a bunch of people who work with logic, day in day out. Things like: > the authors have very explicitly stated on numerous occasions ... appeal to authority, and then fails to mention even on…

> My initial statement wasn't for or against - it was that the method of argument isn't going to work on many people here on Hacker News, not because we're a bunch of antivaxxer conspiracy theorists, but because we're predominantly a bunch of people who work with logic, day in day out.

Looking at the comment section here, I do see a large number of anti-vaxxers, and their comments appear to be very popular. I've noticed this quite a bit on HN, and I'm not sure what the reason for it is.

I know a lot of people both in tech and in scientific research. While tech people are generally very clever, that does not necessarily mean that they all understand how scientific research works, or that they keep up with the latest research into coronaviruses. A common mistake that some technical people make is assuming that their reasoning ability in programming, engineering, etc. somehow means that they don't have to have domain knowledge to discuss a different technical subject.

You have to actually follow the research into coronaviruses to find out what's known about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Simply put, people who get their information from Ebright's Twitter thread are not in a good position to evaluate this question.

> By all means, bring your faith. Bring some evidence too

I linked to a very thorough scientific paper on the subject, which establishes that the initial outbreak in Wuhan was at the market, not at the lab. If you're calling that "my faith," you're just not arguing in good faith.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#596

Post by HillRat »

goatcode wrote: post #458
seydor wrote: post #6

Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert some beneficial mutations to humanity. In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life, record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-made, then nature may do this again soon with another vir…

In nature, it makes no sense for a virus to be both highly transmissible and highly deadly. Any such virus would cease to exist after having run amok in such a way in its hosts. Therefore, any extremely deadly virus should be looked at with similarly extreme criticism, especially if / when it adapts and becomes a better behaving parasite.

You're assuming that viruses don't have natural reservoirs. For example, viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly filovirus VHFs, are both highly transmissible and highly deadly -- accounting for their history of rapid, fast-growing, and quickly-diminishing epidemics amongst humans -- but have stable zoonotic reservoirs that allow them to circulate freely across those populations. (Bats' unique immune system, like camelids, makes them a particularly good evolutionary proving ground for viral evolution, so they serve as a reservoir and a source of ongoing viral mutations.)

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#597

Post by kcplate »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #551
kcplate wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both options are indistinguishably plausible, then what do you in response to this one event is absolutely meaningless. How is it “absolutely meaningless” if you can narrow the chance of happening of the one you have control over? Is a global pandemic is a rare occurrence already don’t you make it more rare if you mitigate the risk of one of the possible sources?

What is absolutely meaningless is _which_ was the cause of this one particular event, since both clauses are almost equally plausible. I am obviously not claiming that the best course of action is not to mitigate anything; I am claiming that the best course of action is the same irregardless of the particular cause of this one event.

No doubt, but if the catalyst for the folks involved to take that best course of action is a global public revelation that governments and scientists had a hand in this either by irresponsible experimentation or lax safety over dangerous experimentation then it’s not meaningless.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#598

Post by igouy »

ajross wrote: post #96
chaosbolt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…

> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1…

> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun.

1000 miles just doesn't take long by truck.

"… Mengla county, Yunnan province…"

"… identification of four SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in bats…"

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf

Google says that 1400 miles to Wuhan is just 24 hours driving.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#599

Post by igouy »

haihaibye wrote: post #591
igouy wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>… outside of the lab would disprove lab leak Might someone still claim — transferred without infection beyond the lab? Given the available evidence how would "Confirming zooinosis outside of the lab" be done? > Finding the animal reservoir… In bats? In intermediary animals? Apparently "No reports are known to be available for SARS-CoV-2 test results from these mammals at the Huanan market" and "we do not have access…

China has vast resources and every reason to try and track down the natural source. But yes, you're right, it's possible we can never know. And thus we should act upon the probability distribution of the cause behind millions of deaths, and try and improve the safety of both wet markets and labs.

Yes but —

"China just doesn’t want to look bad. They need to maintain an image of control and competence." 18 Aug 2022

https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-start-anywh...

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#600

Post by tripletao »

kgarten wrote: post #146
null_object wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is now evidence firmly against lab leak and firmly in favour of natural origins, covered in depth by a domain expert here... A counter: https://ayjchan.medium.com/evidence-for-a-natural-origin-of-... As for Angie Rasmussen - she is hardly the dispassionate scientist that you seem to want to portray her as, in your post[0] [0] https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/a-toxic-milie...

Did you read the thread? The counter just takes the first paper she cites into account ... Not the second: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 Both of them are interesting reads. I find a natural cause now more plausible after reading them. Yet, of course nobody knows and we might not for a long time (or never).

The "two lineages" argument has been grossly oversold. They're just two SNPs apart, making it near-impossible to distinguish whether they evolved in animals (implying two introductions into humans) or in humans (after one introduction). If they were more different, then we could exclude evolution in humans, since it's unlikely the virus could spread for that long without causing enough sickness and death for someone to have noticed earlier. With just two SNPs, that's much harder--SARS-CoV-2 picks up something around 1/3 of an SNP per transmission, so it's not even that unlikely that the lineages formed in a single human-to-human transmission (p ~ 1/9). It's also possible that an intermediate lineage existed but went extinct before it could be sampled, as most lineages do.

Pekar et al. do some complicated phylogenetic modeling that purports to show the MRCA in humans is too recent for a single introduction. That result is unintuitive, and I believe their model is highly suspect, per my comments and links at

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32740568

I agree that "of course nobody knows", and so do Ebright and Chan; they are careful to assert only that further investigation is required, if necessary by subpoena (e.g. for any sequencing data potentially containing early genomes of SARS-CoV-2, whether as the deliberate target or from contamination like those Antarctic soil samples).

The author of the thread that you're praising does not though; she considers the question closed, and has viciously attacked those calling for such investigation, including Chan, whom she called "an intellectually dishonest, manipulative conspiracist". (Ebright gets rather unpleasant himself, so perhaps one could excuse her behavior to him as tit for tat; but Chan does not.) I find both those attacks and the overselling of Pekar's result to be deeply unfortunate. Don't you?

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