The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#151

Post by mr_toad » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #112

cryptica wrote: post #35

When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger. I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to sprea…

Do we actually know this virus evolved in bats? To my knowledge, bats are simply a carrier, and the viruses they carry don't necessarily evolve in bats themselves (this should be checked). It seems possible the virus came from somewhere else. Bats are definitely not the only carrier of viruses, so it's dangerous to think they're the only animals to worry about. There are millions of viruses out there carried by all s…

Viruses are still replicating in carriers, and as long as they’re replicating they’re going to mutate and evolve.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#152

Post by dolmen » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

drtillberg wrote: post #96

cryptica wrote: post #35

When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger. I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to sprea…

Luc Montagnier's theory is inconvenient in two ways: 1. it suggests that academic research concerning viruses is potentially catastrophically hazardous and 2. he predicted that the pandemic will dissapate all on its own because the manipulated aspects of the virus will not survive long.[1] These are truly fascinating claims, especially the second, which despite the credibility and stature of the source, have been tar…

Luc Montagnier has long lost any credibility in his home country, France.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#153

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #139

sandworm101 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and this is a really crazy theory, they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.

> they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. The person you're responding to didn't say anything different to what you've said. > Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is th…

The person he/she/they is responding to may not have originated the thought, but the quote this poster is responding to is very clear from context. It reads as follows:

“The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.”

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#154

Post by dahfizz » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

addicted wrote: post #134

mjirv wrote: post #79

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!! But conditional on being in a pandemic the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!! There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0] That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to…

This is the same stuff that causes conspiracy theories around airplane crashes. The conspiracists go “It must be a conspiracy because there are like these 6 redundant safety mechanisms and the odds of them all failing at the same time are extremely low”. But the answer is obvious. If the 6 redundant mechanisms hadn’t failed, the plane wouldn’t crash. So as long as the odds of failure of each redundant system is not 0…

This is not the same thing IMO.

Imagine Russia announced last week they had a airplane hacking tool that could crash any 747 by using sonic waves to rattle some bolts loose making the wings fall off the plane.

If tomorrow, 3 different 747s crash all because their wings fell off, would that be suspicious?

You could say "well it was a plane crash, something had to go wrong". But things went wrong in a very specific and unique way that is directly linked to another nation.

It's the same here. The researchers are showing incredibly specific modifications to protein structure and DNA. It's not just "oh wow, this virus is very virulent". It's "oh wow, this virus has a handful of never before seen mutations, all of which were being studied in Wuhan, where the virus began".

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#155

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #110

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #9

> A Norwegian virologist has made claims about the non-natural origins of the new coronavirus. These claims were, reportedly, in an earlier draft of the paper, and Dr Sørensen has since repeated them to Norwegian press. > The final version of the research paper, which has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, doesn’t actually make any claims about whe…

> The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially engineered. Artificially engineered isn't really the question; the questions are 'is this a lab escape?' and 'if this is a lab escape, did the virus work so well on mammals pre-experiment?'. The scientists have a massive incentive not to believe that the virus is a lab escape until the evidence is overwhelming. This is a global disaster, if…

Everyone has a massive incentive to look for actual, concrete evidence for a lab escape before they draw any such conclusions. Leaving aside the uncomfortable geopolitical angle (US policy is to respond to deliberate biowarfare with nuclear weaponry), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#156

Post by robbiep » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #106

robbiep wrote: post #31

This seems to me to be a dangerous paper. It's effectively an opinion piece, pre-published, requiring a high degree of domain expertise to even read, with a clear conclusion in the title that you can see being used to deflect attention from the massive job the world has at hand (not that we shouldn't ask hard questions) Why am I qualified to comment? Well, I’m a medical doctor (which frankly means jack shit for the a…

I'm curious as to why this was downvoted so much. This chap seems legit (I checked), so he's not one of these "instant Internet experts." He's probably not in line for a Nobel in medicine, anytime soon, but he does seem to fit his description. I don't see much in his breakdown that is inflammatory. I am not qualified to judge it on its merits, though, so maybe he puts forth some kind of bad science.

Thank-you for your reply, tbh I couldn't understand it either and it was quite savage initially, particularly given the effort I went into to walk a straight line (and yes, certainly not going to be heading to Sweden anytime). Perhaps the highly political nature of the subject matter? Maybe I shouldn't have used the word dangerous

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#157

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #153

markdown wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. The person you're responding to didn't say anything different to what you've said. > Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is th…

The person he/she/they is responding to may not have originated the thought, but the quote this poster is responding to is very clear from context. It reads as follows: “The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.”

Which is not an accusation of research done in bad faith. The linked paper referenced 4 others as evidence. It doesn't say that those 4 were somehow done for evil - just that they were done.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#158

Post by FabHK » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

pmayrgundter wrote: post #144

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper: 1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans. 2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which m…

Good summary, thanks! Related to the origin hypotheses, the hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec no longer seems as relevant. It was first laid out in a widely disseminated paper in The Lancet [1, see Figure 1B], but since then retrospective wastewater analyses from Italy[2], Spain[3], Brazil and others[4] have found it was circulating much earlier. "The Italian National Institute of Health lo…

I think the “hypothesis of zoonotic outbreak from a wet market in mid-Dec” is still very relevant, and the few papers claiming to have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 prior to Dec 2019 outside China are still very questionable. It’s not like they tested old samples in a few places and the virus promptly showed up. Rather, lots of old samples were tested all over the place, and the virus almost never showed up, except in a very few instances that night more parsimoniously be explained with false positives.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#159

Post by stx » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #138

jkhdigital wrote: post #127

Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper: 1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans. 2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which m…

Or, and this is a really crazy theory, they were studying it in China because it was a local virus that they were worried might one day infect humans. Maybe they were studying which changes would make it most dangerous because they wanted to be ready if those changes happened naturally. Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.

I actually believe this to be the case. From what I have read researchers often do something called gain of function research. In this research they add genetic features to viruses that could make it more infective. This is done, at least in part, to help learn how to protect society from such a virus if it were to evolve naturally. I thought I heard somewhere that one of the functions coronavirus has that its closest known relatives do not have just happens to be something that virologists frequently add.

All this leads me to believe it was created in a lab. Likely for altruistic purposes but still. When this escaped whoever knew that it was from a lab should have disclosed it ASAP to help the world prepare.

I have no experience in virology so don't trust me.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#160

Post by dahfizz » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

mjirv wrote: post #142

jkhdigital wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high This statement obscures and oversimplifies, which is unfortunately what scientists sometimes do when speaking to the public because they assume people won't understand otherwise. When she says "like SARS-CoV-2" she is not speaking about the physical structure of the virus, she is really just referring to general qualities that a viru…

It is worth clarifying that she was not responding to this paper specifically, just to general arguments of the type “this must be man made because it has so many features that make it well-suited to spread in humans.” The fact that researchers in Wuhan were studying (some of?) these features is stronger evidence when combined with the location. However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers s…

> However, it also seems reasonable that features of viruses researchers study because of their likelihood to increase human transmission would show up in a naturally occurring virus with a lot of human transmission.

You are letting language get in the way here. Researchers at Wuhan weren't studying "features" of viruses, they were studying what happens exactly when you insert X amino acid at Y location and how that can affect the structure of Z protein. And that exact, one in a billion, never before seen mutation happens to occur randomly right next door to them?