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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

wsj.com

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#171

Post by Zetice »

tanseydavid wrote: post #119
boeingUH60 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic. I even flagged this one despite commenting on it.

>> flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic Please do not do this. When you do this, it potentially prevents others from being able to to analyze it and form their own judgement. "Too toxic" is an opinion.

Yeah, an opinion I share, and if enough people share that opinion, HN is designed to react.

I'm not going to stop flagging this kind of content, and dang is here to overrule me/others when he feels the need to, which is also how HN is designed.

The post is up, the system is working as intended. We all have roles to play here, no need to worry!

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#172

Post by kranke155 »

lamontcg wrote: post #111
ttul wrote: post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…

What about the request to use gain of function research to add furin sites to coronaviruses? That seems to me the smoking gun, since this lab asked for funding to do exactly that.

It’s a bit like Jaime Meitzl (sp?) said - for the first time in history you find a unicorn (furin binding site in a coronavirus) next to a lab that asked for funding to make regular horses into unicorns. But the lab says it’s “natural origin”.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#173

Post by UKR_anon »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #160
paganel wrote: post #147

This was considered "fake news" and heavily reprimanded all throughout the pandemic in the media attached to the Western consensus, hilarious how they're starting to do a 180 on it (next is doing a 360, I guess).

It's always been a possibility although other explanations are more likely. I'd be interested in the evidence.

[flagged]

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#175

Post by xyzzy123 »

lamontcg wrote: post #111
ttul wrote: post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…

The argument "they would have used a published backbone and reverse genetics system" is wishful thinking.

You might interested in this paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v2

"Discovery of a novel merbecovirus DNA clone contaminating agricultural rice sequencing datasets from Wuhan, China"

MERS is really nasty, this is clearly evidence of engineering, and guess what the system is unpublished.

Personally I suspect this paper (which came out a while ago but got "boosted" recently) could be the reason for DOE "confidence update".

Media have not reported on this and "the usual" zoonosis advocates have been remarkably silent about it.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#176

Post by audunw »

lamontcg wrote: post #111
ttul wrote: post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…

Earlier in the pandemic I read a report talking about the possibility of the virus being something they sampled, and that it leaked when they accessed the sample presumably to start sequencing/analyzing it.

The theory was that it was a virus they'd have sampled from immunocompromised miners working in the same caves that the bats with the most closely related viruses inhabit. They had some references to a report with something like that happening some time prior.

It's so far the only theory I've read that seems to match the evidence.

The evidence doesn't seem to indicate that it was engineered, or that it was a product of gain of function research on animals. I think there would have been more solid evidence pointing in that direction by now, if that was the case. They would have published something related to it, or non-Chinese researchers connected to the lab would have known something.

Yet there's no evidence of any related animal resorvoir, and the virus was very well adapted to humans from the very start. And everything points to the virus passing through the lab somehow. Those things put together seems to point at them having sampled a virus that already made the jump to humans, and that somehow during the sampling, or retrieving the sample from storage, the virus escaped.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#177

Post by vkou »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #6

Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly a…

> That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again?

If history is any indicator, no, and there isn't any.

But if you're interested in establishing precedent for reckless behaviour damaging the world economy, and the health of millions of people, I understand that would open the developed world to a mountain of liability in the arena of climate change.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#178

Post by alchemist1e9 »

ffssffss wrote: post #168
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also article mentions FBI has “moderate” confidence it was lab leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn’t be so much based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection the FBI has.

And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.

Probably they still aren’t sharing all the information they have with each other. I had thought that was supposed to be much improved post 9-11.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#179

Post by [deleted] »

cld8483 wrote: post #110
fidgewidge wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem to have contribut…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#180

Post by ashwagary »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #154
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

Also article mentions FBI has “moderate” confidence it was lab leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn’t be so much based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection the FBI has.

If you repeat a lie often enough, even the at first reluctant will start to believe it. That's how the propaganda machine typically works.

The more these claims based on minimal new evidence are repeated, the more it seems the virus may have potentially been released by nefarious actors as an attack on the population.

It's not implausable for an entity with knowledge and access to a virus being studied, to release a copy of it in the environment surrounding the lab while maintaining a high degree of deniability.

If it is so, then the question that remains is, much like in the case of Nordstream, which nation state has the most incentive to carry it out?

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