Nobody will ever want the truth because if it did come from the lab it implicates the Chinese government as well as the US government given that the US funded research in Wuhan through the EcoHealth Alliance to get around the ban on Gain of Function research in the US.
Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#302After 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…
> all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses
There should be more attention on this. We're busy worrying about AI that can troll at a college level, while scientists are still busy making frankenviruses after a pandemic plausibly caused by a lab leak.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
The “circumstantial evidence” is only novel if the event in question is novel, which the emergence of a new strain of a virus is not. It is certain that a new strain of some virus is emerging right now next to a lab that works with viruses, because that is a thing that happens continuously in nature, and labs exist within nature. It’s also likely that such a new strain will not cause human illness, as most viruses do…
This would all be more compelling if the WIV were not explicitly experimenting with creating viruses like SARS-COV-2 ! If HIV had emerged proximal to a lab experimenting with creating viruses like HIV then that lab origin theory would be much more credible!
Saying “viruses like SARS-COV-2” only makes sense for broad applications of the word “like.”
As other comments have pointed out, while that lab was working with coronaviruses, none of the strains were genetically close to SARS-COV-2. Coronavirus is a broad category of viruses.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#304After 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…
Actually, the closest natural viruses to covid were sent to Wuhan for study. I mean, that is what the Wuhan institute of coronaviruses was built to do right?
The indirect evidence of a lab leak theory is overwhelming frankly. And it doesn't require any malice. No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon.
Gain of function research is real, scientists intentionally make viruses which could start a pandemic. They do this for the purposes of knowledge and preparedness for the inevitable natural spillover events that will happen. It isn't nefarious.
But it is risky, and there many people now and before who thought it was a practice that should be curtailed because of the risk.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 indire…
Chief among key new assertions the parent article makes, https://twitter.com/BlockedVirology/status/16676623250907463... • WIV added FCS's to coronavirus(es?) exactly as described in DEFUSE, according to a US lab collaborator. • Zhou Yusen "fell" off the roof of the WIV in May 2020 • WIV was working on a 'closer [than published] unpublished variant' • Of all caves/mines, only scholarly attempts to access the Mojiang…
> Zhou Yusen "fell" off the roof of the WIV in May 2020
I mean, this is a pretty significant and concerning new finding right? Someone associated with the lab researching COVID early on just mysteriously disappearing in China?
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#306After 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…
Actually, the closest natural viruses to covid were sent to Wuhan for study. I mean, that is what the Wuhan institute of coronaviruses was built to do right? The indirect evidence of a lab leak theory is overwhelming frankly. And it doesn't require any malice. No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon. Gain of function research is real, scient…
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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't actually think that is what they meant. If there are no animals to even sample, you don't describe that as "that covid was not found in a single animal sample". No one would phrase it that way.
Easier on my general well-being to just assume positive intent. (As is obvious from my comment history I don't always succeed there, but I do try.)
That you have been able to maintain assuming positive intent with regard to COVID comments for this long is kind of amazing.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#308After 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 thing with Wuhan Institute of Virology is they were particularly studying the spillover risk of SARS-related coronaviruses. The nearest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 are found in Yunnan and Laos. One clear link with Wuhan is the fact Wuhan Institute of Virology sampled both locations.
You can't read much into the early case data that David Relman described as "hopelessly impoverished". There were likely much earlier cases based on excess mortality data (a key reason WHO haven't accepted market origin). Also, there is a clear sampling bias in the cases in the article cited above. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#309After 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…
>Additionally, the closest relative to SARSCov2 that has been identified (RaTG13) As of 2022, this is no longer true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13
IIRC, this is still true if you exclude the spike protein and use a higher similarity threshold.
Why would one do that? Well, two reasons. First, the spike more variable as it is subject to greater evolutionary pressure as the major component of the viral surface. Second, in coronavirus reverse genetics typically the virus is segmented into multiple pieces, most of which compose the non-spike backbone and a subset which compose the spike protein. This is intentional to enable the swapping of spike proteins. So, if SARS-CoV-2 is spike-swap or spike variant assembly, a RaTG13-like virus could be the "backbone" of SARS-CoV-2.
Moreover, a hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 backbone could exist in the viral sequences list the WIV took down in Sept. 2019. They sequenced RaTG13 a few years prior. The lab's raison d'etre is collecting and sequencing coronaviruses poised for spillover. And, with modern DNA synthesis technology, it's not difficult to print out arbitrary backbone contigs for a viral assembly.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing. - We have a bunch of evidence of WIV engineering SARS-1-like viruses because they talked about it before the pandemic. - We have zero evidence of them ever doing experiments on live SARS-2-like virus - We have zero evidence of the existence of a SARS-2-like progenitor virus - Before the pandemic th…
The nearest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 are found in Yunnan and Laos. The only known link to Wuhan is the Wuhan Institute of Virology sampled both areas. They refuse to share their records with WHO or the NIH. That's a crucial caveat when saying there is no evidence they held a precursor. We don't know as they have refused to share their database. The Times article is interesting as it suggests the work in DEFUSE to add…
> why humans topped the list for binding affinity from the outset
This is an unbelievable coincidence that makes the zoonotic spillover hypothesis laughable. To a biologist, the likelihood of this happening by chance is clear: virtually 0. But explaining the size of the space of optimal solutions to a given binding problem versus the space of good solutions to the general public, well, that's really hard too. So an obvious and completely non-circumstantial piece of evidence is the last one in the public's mind. And we are still acting like there is a question of where the virus came from, and we will be for decades, or at least until the average level of biology education is raised by a few sharp degrees.