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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#141

Post by mikrotikker »

pbreit wrote: post #28
LeonB wrote: post #11

Early on the article makes a conjecture that others also make which I think is part of why the topic is so hot: “Whether the virus emerged as a result of a leak from a laboratory or from nature has become one the most controversial problems in science.” The words “in science” are my problem here: people thinking this is a “scientific” question. It’s a history question, a political question, and could be made into a f…

How is science not involved in a major way here? Of course science will continue to play a huge role in the matter.

A few possible reasons.

The communist party is sensitive doesn't want it to be known that a Chinese lab leaked a dangerous virus (see also "how does RBMK reactor explode?")

The ecohealth alliance that Fauci and Dazack were involved in don't want it widely known that they had a hand in the WIV GoF (that Obama banned stateside) and worked early in the pandemic to obscure their own involvement in it.

Trump doesn't want it widely known that his administration contributed $100k to the Ecohealth alliance.

Lots of powerful people working to not take responsibility and obfuscate reality.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#142

Post by pcrh »

living_room_pc wrote: post #117
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

> Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. That is completely untrue. Agricultural labs for instance research plant viruses which are _incompatible_ with humans completely. Still these plant virus would have to be researched under stringent isolation because of the damage they may po…

Agricultural viruses are dangerous to human food security. At least the ones under study usually are.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#143

Post by zosima »

pcrh wrote: post #138
zosima wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And crucially, researchers from the Wuhan lab were studying bat virus samples from Laos, before covid. https://www.business-standard.com/amp/article/current-affair...

Those viruses are slightly more related to SARSCoV2 than RaTG13, however note 1) that they were found even further away from Wuhan than was RaTG13 and 2) that they still remain too different from SARSCoV2 to be its direct ancestor. One of the things we know for sure is that that about 50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2, so they are not its direct ancestors.

There may have been brought even closer relatives of covid-19 to Wuhan by lab personnel.

We don't know as for unknown reasons the database of specimens collected by the Wuhan lab was taken down in September 2019.

The distance in years between two viral strains you mention makes no sense at all, as the mutation rate is extremely dependent on environment.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#144

Post by pcrh »

dotandgtfo wrote: post #140
pcrh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those viruses are slightly more related to SARSCoV2 than RaTG13, however note 1) that they were found even further away from Wuhan than was RaTG13 and 2) that they still remain too different from SARSCoV2 to be its direct ancestor. One of the things we know for sure is that that about 50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2, so they are not its direct ancestors.

>50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2 Do you have a source for this? Also, I'm no biologist, but is comparing the base rate of evolutionary changes still relevant if SARSCoV2 wasn't of natural origins? E.g. through creating chimeras or 'serial passaging' as described in this article? Wouldn't that create an environment where 50 years could pass in a way shorter timeframe?

This is the study I alluded to:

>Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID- 19 pandemic

>Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4

You should also know that SARSCoV2 1) is not a chimeric virus, and 2) that the present study includes viruses linked to RaTGP13 but more distant from SARSCoV2, i.e. it includes evidence from viruses unassociated with the pandemic.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#145

Post by amoss »

pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

The map showing the clustering around the lab is not labelled in the article. It looks like the map from the senate report which used internet search history. I recall that their point in the original report was that there was a cluster of internet searches for flu-like symptoms clustered around the institute, rather than the market.

There is no new direct evidence in the article, simply the weight of existing indirect evidence synthesized together. There does not seem to be another hypothosis for how the virus emerged that has as much indirect evidence pointing towards it?

The main gist of the article is:

* The institute applied for funding for a specific piece of research (inserting a furin cleavage site).

* The institute claims it did not perform the research.

* Covid is what we would expect if somebody did perform that research.

* The research would have been performed at the time and place where covid emerged.

It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#147

Post by khazhoux »

th0ma5 wrote: post #133
kortilla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible aliens came from space and dropped the virus off to see how we would handle it. How much effort should we put into preventing that pandemic path? Nearly every airline regulation that results in air travel being so safe today is because we spend such an enormous amount of resources investigating the root causes of accidents with the NTSB. Try suggesting to them “it doesn’t matter why the plane crashed, l…

The limit is five why's and often you can't even get that. Planes still crash. Perhaps we've pulled on this thread as much as we can. Especially with long ass articles like this that say nothing new. Seriously, what are we expecting to learn. This is like a plane at the bottom of the ocean never to be found. We'll never know what happened to this plane, and we don't have to. We know that situation was probably poor p…

> We'll never know what happened to this plane,

You've decided the truth is unknowable, no good would come from knowing the truth, and searching for the truth is itself causing harm.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#148

Post by smohare »

zosima wrote: post #135
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

The Huanan Seafood market paper has been heavily critized. Especially the fact that covid was not found in a single animal sample does make the evidence rather weak. In addition it seems that the lack of sampling from outside the market and the fact that the market is a busy place in the center of the city where the virus would likely be once it's spreading from person to person , does not really lend support to the…

[dead]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#149

Post by oneshtein »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #73
oneshtein wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russians started to clean up evidence, which points to BSL4 lab "Vector". IMHO, this article is a part of their disinformation campaign. The name of their vaccine "Sputnik V" (Follower 5) suggests that there was "Something","Sputnik I", "Sputnik II", "Sputnik III", "Sputnik IV" before "Sputnik V". It's impossible for Russians to produce 5 vaccines in row in such short span of time, just few months, which took billion…

It was named after the satellite Sputnik 1 and the V is not a roman five but stands for victory, multiple sources consistently claim? Sounds reasonable that this was just PR propaganda to connect to prior great successes in Russia.. (Even without that knowledge I'd find this theory a bit far fetched, there could be many other good reasons for that naming).

"Sputnik" is a regular Russian word, which means "one who travels together with another" (s-put-nik s-=with, -put-=travel/road/journey, -nik=somebody).

Victory is Latin word. Russian word for victory is "pobeda" (po-beda po-=after, -beda=bad/something very different from good, "after bad times").

It looks like 5 in the name is from Ad5 component of vaccine.

Moreover, the vaccine produced by Vector is called EpiVacCorona[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EpiVacCorona

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