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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

#691

Post by brigandish »

I would say the most important aspect of this news, as it will almost certainly never be solved one way or another, is for how research is conducted going forward. Clearly, the general population will be averse to this kind of research being conducted, let alone funded, by their own governments. However, said governments and others want to continue this kind of research, so I think the lack of transparency we've seen these past few years will only increase. For example[1]:

> an NIH official said EcoHealth Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other records from its Wuhan partner that relate to controversial experiments involving modified bat viruses, despite multiple requests.

[1] https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/nih-to-terminate-ecohealth-a...

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

#692

Post by naasking »

this-crap-sucks wrote: post #613
naasking wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passage through humanized mice wouldn't leave signs of unnatural manipulation. It's still pretty suspicious that COVID was so transmissible between people from the outset, and no evidence of it circulating in local populations was found.

If it wasn't so transmissible, it wouldn't have been a pandemic.

The question was not "why was it a pandemic", yhe question is, why was it so transmissible when earlier outbreaks, like SARS, had relatively much poorer transmission? That's the typical profile of new viruses.

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

#693

Post by wonderwonder »

kristopolous wrote: post #682
dangwhy wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery.

People want a blunt weapon to promote their politics with. All of the theories had the properties of being convenient darlings of some pre-existing political faction. The most responsible thing is to claim ignorance on the origin story unless you have genuine, credentialed, expertise and analytical training for it and even then, those people choose their audiences and presentation carefully because of the unintended…

"People want a blunt weapon to promote their politics with." You are right and thats the most fascinating / absurd part of this whole thing. Somehow wet market vs lab leak has political sides and people are emotionally invested in one over the other. Its crazy, lets just have the truth and move on, either way it came out of China and savaged the world. People don't want the lab leak theory to be true for the sole reason that Trump said it and they believe Trump is the devil. I am very much not a fan of Trump and saw his actions leading up to the election as a clear and present danger to our democracy but still have no emotional investment in one theory over another. I just want the truth. This is an example of how insane American politics have gotten over the last 8? years

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

#694

Post by peteradio »

che_shirecat wrote: post #391
cld8483 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What should the consequences be? The abolition of modern virology, roll the clock back on them a hundred years. Allow the development of vaccines for extant viruses, but completely ban all Dr Frankenstein activities with viruses. No more "invent a virus in a lab to beat nature to the punch" horse shit, with is flagrant weapons development under the cover of civilian research. As soon as the virus started circulatin…

Hackernews now advocating for burning books, wow. This is the end result in allowing political ragebait threads instead of focusing on tech and startups.

> Hackernews now advocating

THE HACKERNEWS?!

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

#695

Post by hotpotamus »

bradleyjg wrote: post #576
axxto wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "sightly-less-shitty-than-other-theories" theory is still a shitty theory. Low-confidence means exactly what it sounds like.

Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.

What was the origin of Bubonic Plague, of AIDS, of Polio? Do we know in sufficient detail? I remember many saying that the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 may never be known. Say it did escape from a Chinese lab - is that all you need to know? Or would you want to know how it came to be in the lab in the first place?

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

#696

Post by zzzeek »

UKR_anon wrote: post #211
zzzeek wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

I never saw lab leak called fake news. I saw it called irrelevant, not important, unlikely, not knowable , but never "fake". Just want to see the source, that's all

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

#697

Post by midoridensha »

bsder wrote: post #490
tomp wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only bad viruses. Good viruses will be genetically coded to only harm a particular subgroup.

Until they mutate. It is beneficial to the survival of a virus to infect the largest group that it can. A virus targeted to a small group of people has a large "survival benefit" the moment it can mutate to infect everybody. In addition, it's really hard to target a biological entity at a specific subgroup of humans. From a biological standpoint, all humans are damn near identical.

You share 50% of your DNA with a banana.

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

#698

Post by Vecr »

awb wrote: post #453
dmix wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, you don't need such a complicated theory. 3 doctors researching a coronavirus end up in a regional hospital, but before they get ID'd with a virus they interact with others in the local community helping it quietly spread among people with stronger immune systems. It's a 45min drive between the Hunan market WIV building: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/30%C2%B022%E2%80%B235%E2%80%...

It’s definitely plausible, but then wouldn’t you expect multiple outbreak sites? * In and around WIV * In and around the scientist’s homes, families and neighborhoods From the news I’ve seen all of the initial known cases were traced back to the market.

Not necessarily. If you look at the nature of superspreading events, it's quite often confined to a single site as opposed to infecting people they meet as they travel. In addition, most of the transmission comes from a minority of infected people, look up "overdispersion".

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

#699

Post by midoridensha »

mort96 wrote: post #457
barbazoo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know why it is the Department of Energy that works on that? I would have expected a branch of government that's more related to health, granted, I know very little about US gvmt structure.

I don't know the answer to your question, but the DoE does a lot more than just energy. In addition to overseeing energy policy, they oversee the R&D of nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons program, they oversee the National Laboratories which does a lot of research and development in the areas of technology, health, physics, climate/environment and energy, they started the Human Genome Project, etc. Here's their…

It sounds like they need to rename themselves. Perhaps "Department of Science"?

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

#700

Post by hedora »

People like to focus on China’s handling of this, but it is important to remember that the source of the possible leak was research done in collaboration with the US.

Westerners (including, but not just Americans) should be holding their own governments responsible for reckless biological weapons research.

Think globally, act locally, and all that.

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