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Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

nytimes.com

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Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#71

Post by jrm4 »

xracy wrote: post #31
jrm4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nah. You're conflating certainty with risk. Crazy virus comes from where said crazy viruses are literally made and studied. Occams Razor suggests a lot, but more importantly, smart risk management dictates that you treat the lab as if it is the source; absent some sort of clear risk-related reason that these experiments are likely to do more good than harm. So I suppose the correct question is -- what are we ge…

There's literally an alternative proposed leak method that is the current consensus (market) that is more believable than the lab-leak theory.

This is the wet market theory, yes? I presume these wet markets exist in places other than Wuhan.

Yeah, nah, that one is only "more believable" propped up by e.g. xenophobia and racism. Falls way too neatly into "look at the weird Chinese people they eat bats" or whatever.

Pretty flimsy compared to "lab that literally does this kind of virus all day."

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#72

Post by fzeroracer »

kylebenzle wrote: post #59
chrisco255 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a vaccine is to inoculate against a disease. The vaccine failed miserably at that. If the disease were actually deadly enough, more people would have chanced an experimental mRNA injection into their bloodstream vs taking the disease on via natural immunity. You didn't have to propagandize and gaslight people to take the smallpox vaccine: it was self evident how deadly the disease was. And yet, the wor…

Wow, I did a double take in your second paragraph thinking I was reading a comment I had left earlier, lol. But right on, I feel exactly the same. I do plant transformation and we call these experiments, mRNA "transient-expression" assays, as in, transiently transgenic. It was so weird from my perspective that we were going to start using the common lab technique to test genes on people. The only two facts I needed w…

You realize early on into the pandemic our hospital systems were struggling with the amount of patients that had to come in and see urgent care, right? As in, other people with more treatable conditions were dying because hospitals were filled up and there were no staff or beds available. Like this is just an objective fact.

COVID now is far more mild because of vaccination and how the virus has evolved (Omnicron being far more mild than the earlier variants).

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#73

Post by Ajay-p »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37
Ajay-p wrote: post #25

Perhaps I am one of a small group but it still irritates me how politicized the origins of COVID were. It should never have been that way and it should never happen again. Lab leak, deliberate act, accident, or a mutation in the wild, the origins should have been rigorously challenged and pursued no matter the consequence.

This entire topic has gotten harebrained, so I’ll add to the fire: the part of our population that had a problem getting vaccinated would have responded much better to a perceived threat from a tangible adversary.

Could you please expand on that? To be sure I understand correctly: Those who resisted taking the vaccine would have been more inclined to do so had a specific country been identified as the source, or that it may have been a leak from a laboratory?

To state different: Was the unknown/disputed origins the catalyst for some not getting vaccinated?

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#75

Post by burnished »

oldpersonintx wrote: post #21
somewhereoutth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of course that isn't what happened. All evidence points to zoonotic spillover, aggravated by our encroachment on previously undisturbed natural areas and global warming. Sadly, it was both political useful ('the Chinese did it!'), and ideologically useful ('a few faulty humans did this, like in the movies'), to blame the lab in Wuhan. By doing so, we can absolve ourselves of blame, and of need to take action -…

> All evidence points to zoonotic spillover, aggravated by our encroachment on previously undisturbed natural areas and global warming. what evidence? in any case, thats fancy language for: "Donald Trump was a proponent of the lab leak hypothesis so we had to come up with an alternate theory lest we appear to be in agreement with Donald Trump...so we've decided that it was people eating Pangolin Soup"

Because that is the way you'd get diseases like this normally.

The folks claiming that there is evidence only for their theory are incorrect.

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#76

Post by somenameforme »

jsisto wrote: post #49
JoshTko wrote: post #24

Any benefit from research of gain of function research is clearly outweighed by risk of lab leak. I.e if the estimated incremental realized benefit of better planning, better mitigation from a single gain of function research equaled X; the cost of a lab leak seems to be 100X~10,000X.

If it clearly outweighs the risks can you provide a study showing this? I can't seem to find any.

Here's [1] a reasonable one. That list should be considered far from comprehensive, as it's extremely safe to assume that many events end up buried, especially given all of the grey-tier legality bio research happening in far off shores, researching who knows what.

But looking at the reported events (that have made their way onto Wiki), since 2000 we've had lab leaks and "incidents" in the US (repeatedly.. to say the least), Japan, Taiwan, China, Russia, UK, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and many more places. That includes incidents at BSL-4 labs, the highest biosecurity rating. And the leaks/incidents involve some pretty crazy stuff: polio - lab worker was infected without anyone's knowledge, ebola - lab worker infected at a BSL-4 lab, smallpox - vials of active smallpox found casually laying around in cold storage at a rando facility, anthrax - 75 exposed, and more.

It seems completely obvious from the absurd volume of reported incidents that we're bee-lining to a global biosecurity accident, almost certainly far more serious than COVID, completely of our own making, again.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#77

Post by burnished »

TheBlight wrote: post #66
Ajay-p wrote: post #25

Perhaps I am one of a small group but it still irritates me how politicized the origins of COVID were. It should never have been that way and it should never happen again. Lab leak, deliberate act, accident, or a mutation in the wild, the origins should have been rigorously challenged and pursued no matter the consequence.

It's curious to me that deliberate act is the one option no one seems interested in entertaining as a possibility.

Because it lacks motive. Further 'they did it to us' was pretty clearly sparked by fear.

And it has been years; if some one did it deliberately then they failed to capitalize on it.

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#78

Post by cdchn »

pmarreck wrote: post #9
purpleblue wrote: post #5

I'm glad that things are slowing down here. Virology research is one of those things no one ever thought about, but the fact that a single careless lab was able to release a virus that killed tens of millions around the world should be a wake up call that the researchers were outpacing the regulations. The entire industry around the world has to be heavily regulated at this point to prevent this from happening again.

> the fact that a single careless lab was able to release a virus that killed tens of millions around the world Wait, is this canon now? If so, how is China going to not garner the hatred of the entire world?

What should the world do about it other than grumble disapprovingly?

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#79

Post by mkmk3 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #51
JoshTko wrote: post #24

Any benefit from research of gain of function research is clearly outweighed by risk of lab leak. I.e if the estimated incremental realized benefit of better planning, better mitigation from a single gain of function research equaled X; the cost of a lab leak seems to be 100X~10,000X.

Gain of function research is the kind of experiment that could develop a disease that kills billions. It isn't a game we should be playing lightly if at all. The argument is that eventually biology could make the same mutation. The thing is, it is extremely unlikely that Ebola becomes air born naturally, for example. But that is the kind of thing that gain of function seeks to develop, you know, just in case.

Naturally, there's an adversarial game playing out, and we accelerate it massively. If the results of our small games enter the larger playspace, we're damned, so I get your concern.

Is there some scifi solution to step outside of the game? Are the problems involved in understanding the systems involved (to the extent that you can predict realistic risk and mitigate) solvable?

I don't know the level of realistic risk for a devastating virus naturally occurring, nor the potential for us to address it without this kind of research, so I don't know what is within reason here. It would be cool to see any studies that attempt to address these two questions.

Edit: And a systematic review of past and considered lab leak scenarios probably wouldn't hurt either. If we still have to do this work, and just decide it must be done by isolated monks/robots in space, for humanity ending risks I guess that's worth discussing

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