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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

#411

Post by sh34r »

startupsfail wrote: post #370
godelski wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon. To add to this, most countries have turned away from infectious biological weapons because they are near impossible to control. The the release of them might harm your enemies, but at a serious cost to yourself. It is like trying to cut off your enemy's leg by cutting off your own arm. It ends up ki…

Can the lab be sued out of existence for damages? It is quite clear that they did amplification research as they’ve planned. And had inserted the furin site into the coronavirus . And they’ve mismanaged the research and they’ve let the virus to spread. This had caused a lot of damage, in particular the deaths, economical damage, long-covid damages, mental illnesses and diminished IQ (covid brain fog). There’ve been s…

> Can the lab be sued out of existence for damages?

It's in China, not America. Come on now.

The CCP might remove the lab from existence, but they're not gonna do it with a lawsuit.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#412

Post by russdill »

Auracle wrote: post #395
russdill wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the gain of function thing always thrown in? This makes the case much harder to prove and seems entirely unnecessary. The family of viruses is already very contagious and potentially dangerous with covid19 hardly being the worst combination of the two properties.

Because the virus was never found in the wild, so it seems likely. Also because gain of function research is risky as hell with seemingly little benefit. The same lab had requested funds to do it on viruses that were much deadlier.

Why is it the expectation that the specific strain would be noted in the wild before the start of a pandemic? Is there precedent for such a thing?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#413

Post by srj »

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…

It may just be that they went looking for covid cases there and found them. If they looked around the institute they may have found clusters there too.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#414

Post by raccoondogs »

julianeon wrote: post #362
HardlyCurious wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a huge difference though between “lab leak” meaning “a wild virus collected and stored at the Wuhan lab escaped”, vs. “biomedical engineers manufactured a super weapon which escaped.” I think the evidence, or at least the plausibility, of the former is excellent. For the latter, it’s poor.

That's not correct. There's evidence of genetic engineering in the genome of the virus. There's a 2018 DARPA DEFUSE proposal from scientists at WIV/UNC/EcoHealth Alliance which essentially predicts what SARS-COV-2 would look like.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#415

Post by masswerk »

tim333 wrote: post #352
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…

It had data that is new to me. Especially: >They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa. That procedure is pretty much exactly what you'd have to do to make covid in a lab. Assuming that's true, it's pretty much a smoking gun.

For a smoking gun, I'd expect evidence. This is just reporting on a diffuse claim of hearsay, allegedly by what might be labeled a party with geopolitical interest in the public narrative. It may be disinformation just as well. (Especially, as similar claims were already repeatedly made based on what turned out to be false links, like the Wuhan Institute being just around the wet market.)

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#416

Post by raccoondogs »

sudosysgen wrote: post #396
inciampati wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

That's untrue. Viruses which spillover may spread across humans at a low level of efficiency for months, mutating for higher affinity towards humans, and only becoming pandemic once a high level of affinity has been achieved. All viruses which have higher affinity for humans spilled over, didn't they?

That's what happened with H1N1 but we know that hasn't happened with Sars2 because Sars2 only spreads efficiently with a furin cleavage site but the furin cleavage site also makes it more pathogenic so it would definitely not spread undetected.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#418

Post by throwaway290 »

ricksunny wrote: post #326
Xen9 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idea: Community / site for collective truth-seeking. Possibly integrated with Metaculus. One can submit new pieces of evidene which would be commentable (in threads), votable, and programmable (to toggle / affect of other submitted evidence threads). Users can adjust the weights, vote on them (to generate a certain consensus / prediction), and even toggle of pieces of evidence manually. The site automatically gives t…

Neat idea, if you can keep it from getting gamed. It sounds a little like this RootClaim (I just learned about here) https://www.rootclaim.com/how-rootclaim-works but with the users adjusting & voting on weights? This is a strawman demonstrator I'm wware of w r t origins probability surveying & calculation. https://www.getguesstimate.com/models/18631 It's intended for any one user to evaluate ther priors and see how…

resistance to manipulation can probably come from things like more substantial evidence + personal reputation or identity confirmation.

By the way, why do people weigh zoonotic spillover so high relatively to lab leak accident? There were lab leaks before even in Beijing, eg. of the original SARS when it was researched. That SARS kills faster so it didn't get to infect too many people... And that's only what's documented, considering it's China there could've been any number of other times.

Intentional leak chance is low but accidental leak is so likely it's surprising this pandemic didn't happen before considering security practies that were known and raised questions before the pandemic. But everyone magically forgets about it. All because some US scientists wanted grant money too much and so laughed everyone who disagrees out of the room.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#419

Post by lamontcg »

Biorealism wrote: post #283
lamontcg wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They found racoon dog DNA, along with other susceptible animals, comingled with SARS-CoV-2 in samples from the market: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/science/covid-raccoon-dog... And the behavior of China behind that whole story looks very much like China tried to cover up the existence of susceptible animals at the market.

That was written before Jesse Bloom reanalyzed the data and found a negative correlation with raccoon dogs. https://news.yahoo.com/raccoon-dogs-did-not-start-covid-19-n...

Raccoon Dog DNA was still found at the market. That was previously denied.

I'm not making the argument that the DNA samples indicate that the Raccoon Dogs that the samples were from had SARS-CoV-2. I'm just arguing that previously it had been stated that there were no Raccoon Dogs in the market at all and that has been proven wrong.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#420

Post by [deleted] »

sudosysgen wrote: post #397
danenania wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, zoonotic transfer happening naturally in any particular time and place is extremely unlikely, even in places where the conditions are optimal. I always thought this was a good test for whether someone can apply Bayesian reasoning. It turns out not many can, including a lot of highly educated people. Without hard evidence to contradict it, lab leak should have always been the default hypothesis. That it hasn’t i…

Bayesian reasoning is that your prior is a 99.999% chance that the virus is natural, as all other viruses are. The probability that a virus would crop up in Wuhan out of all cities in China is 1/70. Feel free apply Bayes' formula.

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