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The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

technologyreview.com

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Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#111

Post by scythe »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #96
jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

> we haven't found anyone that interacted with the nearest bat population hundred of miles away This is simply untrue. People work and live in close proximity to bats throughout much of China and Southeast Asia, including in Yunnan province. The mine workers who got sick in Mojiang in 2012 (where RaTG13 was discovered) were literally cleaning out massive mounds of bat poop.[1] There is research that shows that a non-…

>The lab leak theory really is a conspiracy theory, because it requires the scientists at WIV to have discovered a virus that they didn't tell anyone about, including their close collaborators abroad, for them to have secretly isolated it, for it to have escaped from a highly secure laboratory, and then for them to have covered it up. You can assert that all these things happened, but there's precisely zero evidence for it.

This is a generally informative and helpful comment, but I think there's a flaw in this argument. If WIV isolates viruses (from samples), there could be the possibility that a virus escapes before it is isolated and sequenced, or that the virus is not successfully isolated and sequenced but escapes and infects somebody. We do not need to suggest that they had preexisting records of SARS-CoV-2, which I would agree is clearly beyond reasonable speculation.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#112

Post by syrrim »

scythe wrote: post #107
camjohnson26 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is proof that the slippery slope of social media censorship already has a causality. Twitter banned ZeroHedge, an irreverent but very well known financial website, for months just for pushing this theory. Yesterday’s crazy conspiracy theories become today’s plausibilities. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

ZH singled out an individual and made statements that could subject him to harassment. That's not merely a case of having the wrong suspicions about globally significant events.

>made statements that could subject him to harassment

Not sure what said statements were, but as described, that is not at all a reason to ban someone. On the internet, legitimate criticism very frequently leads to harassment. That is not at all the fault of the critic, and as long as they didn't intend to cause harassment, it's no reason to ban them.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#113

Post by rhino369 »

phroobster wrote: post #103
jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

A never before seen coronavirus was found just miles away from one of only two BSL-4 laboratories in all of China, which also happens to publish gain of function research on coronaviruses. I find it amusing that anyone can claim a lab accident origin is “crazy”.

Especially since US and European labs have had a lot of accidents that risked viruses escaping the lab.

I really don't have any reason to believe or disbelieve it came from a lab. But that possibility certainly is not crazy.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#114

Post by sampo »

jsz0 wrote: post #76
jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

It wouldn't even be the first time Chinese labs have leaked dangerous pathogens so it's entirely plausible. People who reject the theory outright are just not living in a reality based world. It has happened before and it'll probably happen again.

Here are some escape cases, from both West and East:

https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Esc...

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#115

Post by MilnerRoute »

jdhn wrote: post #99
MilnerRoute wrote: post #91

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lab-theory-robert-redfiel... CBS News, yesterday: Kristian G. Andersen, director of the infectious disease genomics, translational research institute at Scripps Research, noted that "We know that the first epidemiologically linked cluster of cases came from the Hunan market and we know the virus was found in environmental samples — including animal cages — at the market," he said. "…

Is it possible that the virus got there due to it floating around in the air, and not because it originated in animals?

No.

The BSL-4 high-security lab was 7 miles away.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#116

Post by sudosysgen »

jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

I don't see why 1) is unlikely - people that work with bats have antibodies to bat (corona)viruses already, and we know that even in a vacuum people often have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It's even more likely since the virus was probably not adapted to human hosts initially.

2) is also likely, for some viruses it took years and years, sometimes even more than a decade to find the actual intermediate animal.

4) is unlikely because further analysis cannot produce a likely scenario. If the virus was from an animal source known to the lab, we would know already, and if it was due to a gain-of-function experiment, it would be quite unlikely for the virus to take so much time to adapt to humans (it still hasn't fully done so), and there is still a lot of function to be gained. Besides, there is no obvious marker for genetic engineering (the furin cleavage sites are perfectly well described by both 1 and 2), and the fact the virus does not seem to be at a local optima yet indicates that it's probably not the result of engineering by repeated selection.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#117

Post by peytn »

williamdclt wrote: post #83
dimgl wrote: post #79

I was called a conspiracy theorist on Reddit last year for saying that this likely came from the lab in Wuhan. Now it's a possibility? It's getting incredibly frustrating to go online and be constantly attacked for having common sense views.

It might be because you were saying it was "likely" despite any evidence? Ending up being right isn't a to anybody's credit if the original assumption was groundless. (I'm not attacking you, I don't know what was your exact argument)

The initial outbreak was literally covered up. Conditioning on that fact, common sense would place more belief on “lab leak” and less on “natural origin.” Thus, in the Bayesian sense, one might describe a lab leak as “likely” relatively speaking despite lacking direct evidence such as lab notebooks for or against that hypothesis.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#118

Post by shawnz »

towergratis wrote: post #108
camjohnson26 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is proof that the slippery slope of social media censorship already has a causality. Twitter banned ZeroHedge, an irreverent but very well known financial website, for months just for pushing this theory. Yesterday’s crazy conspiracy theories become today’s plausibilities. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

To be fair, although we are a bit better here in west, we are still far from perfect. Letting the POTUS call it China virus, is despicable.

I agree that was in poor taste, but would you say the naming of "Zika virus", "Ebola virus", or "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" is despicable?

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#119

Post by sudosysgen »

scythe wrote: post #111
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we haven't found anyone that interacted with the nearest bat population hundred of miles away This is simply untrue. People work and live in close proximity to bats throughout much of China and Southeast Asia, including in Yunnan province. The mine workers who got sick in Mojiang in 2012 (where RaTG13 was discovered) were literally cleaning out massive mounds of bat poop.[1] There is research that shows that a non-…

>The lab leak theory really is a conspiracy theory, because it requires the scientists at WIV to have discovered a virus that they didn't tell anyone about, including their close collaborators abroad, for them to have secretly isolated it, for it to have escaped from a highly secure laboratory, and then for them to have covered it up. You can assert that all these things happened, but there's precisely zero evidence…

The virus was out in the wild for months before it was detected.

For the scenario in your second paragraph to play out, the WIV would have to have isolated the virus, then leaked it, but for nothing to published or communicated to collaborators about it for months. This is very unlikely.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#120

Post by drran »

EMM_386 wrote: post #98
drran wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot about another country, which was not so lucky before, and which had an incident in their 4 level biolab just before the start of epidemic.

So that is more likely than a level 4 biolab that happened to be IN Wuhan and was being warned about by US State Department officials years before this happened? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

Yep. I cannot calculate exact numbers, but a similar incident happened already in the past: a blast at the disinfection site created an aerosol with virus particles, which caused infection.

Distance doesn't matter so much in today's world, when cities are connected by planes.

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