The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan • Hacker News Board

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#211

Post by raphlinus » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

_tik_ wrote: post #171

erostrate wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing that out. I agree with your first point about the book deal. On your second point, she has stated repeatedly and explicitly that her position is that she doesn't know what the origin of the virus is, natural origin is not ruled out either, and that all she is asking for is that both theories are credibly investigated, for example here [1]. Of course she talks a lot more about the lab leak, but tha…

I just read Alina Chan profile news on local news. It is mention that her background is in genetic therapy. How seriously I should take her statement on covid based on her background?

I'd absolutely give her this one. This is the relevant line from LinkedIn:

> Investigating the effects of human genetic variation on the efficacy of adeno-associated virus (AAV) variants in order to engineer gene therapy viral vectors targeting diverse patient populations.

So this is professional work at a prestigious institute on (a) viruses, (b) engineering of viruses, and (c) deeper understanding of the dynamics of transmission of these viruses in humans. Further, adenovirus is one that can be engineered to be combined with pieces of SARS-CoV-2 to do interesting things in humans, as I can personally attest, having had the J&J vaccine.

It's hard to imagine a set of credentials better suited to analyzing origins of Covid. There are a lot of grifters out there, "epistemological trespassers" if you will, but Dr. Chan's is a voice that deserves being listened to.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#212

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #208

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is documented that the Chinese deleted sequences from a global database. You're referring to something completely different, which has nothing to do with bat coronavirus research or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A group of researchers working on new sequencing techniques for patient samples (not bat coronaviruses) withdrew their raw data from a database. They then published the key data in a peer-reviewed jou…

I think you are not familiar with https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01731-3 And you are talking about something else.

No, I am talking about exactly that story.

From the Nature article you link to:

> The sequences were associated with a paper in which researchers used nanopore-sequencing technology to detect SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in samples from people. That study was published in the journal Small in June 2020, having been posted on bioRxiv in March of that year.

> the sequences Bloom recovered were not hidden: they are described in detail, with enough sequence information to know their evolutionary relationship to other early SARS-CoV-2 sequences, in the Small paper.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#213

Post by swiley » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

LordDragonfang wrote: post #127

swiley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things killed people last year, including the lock down. Being allowed to criticize things like that is what separates us from countries that lack democracy.

Germany has certain very strict policies about whether you're allowed to discuss certain things, and they outrank the US by 30 positions on the World Press Freedom Index[1]. Sometimes you have to suppress bad actors who willfully push unverified or outright fallacious information in order to have actual freedom of information. [1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table

Suppressing criticism of the government should always be considered unacceptable. Doing so trivially allows some nasty social pathologies.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#214

Post by jhgb » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #180

tynpeddler wrote: post #63

This article has a number of issues that jump out to me from just a cursory read. The author admits that the NIH has a specific definition of "gain of function research" and then seems to go forward with the article using their own definition, without calling out that they're doing this. Why are they using their own definition instead of the NIH's? The Chinese research this author cites claims that there are large re…

I've made up my mind to discount the lab escape hypotesis as it's likely to generate more yellow journalism and controversy fueling the "news cycle", conspiracy theories and finger pointing. I guess we'll find the truth in another five or more years.

It took...what, fifteen years to find the tentative source of SARS in the wild(https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9)? Good luck with those five years.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#215

Post by jhgb » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #199

jpeloquin wrote: post #149

The quest to come up with a narrative for why Covid happened reminds me of the reporting when Katrina hit New Orleans. The city's vulnerability was known beforehand [0] but the inevitable disaster was greeted with shock, confusion, and a search for peripheral explanations. In the case of the pandemic, our vulnerability to zoonotic viruses and other diseases was also well-known; e.g. [1] was published in 1995. But aga…

As an aside the Katrina stuff was odd - I was in Ireland watching cable (CNN I think) and for 48 hrs or so they'd been going on about New Orleans was likely to flood, on repeat, at least hourly, so I thought I'd get the popcorn and watch (I didn't think it'd be that bad). Then it flooded. Then Bush popped up saying no one could have predicted it would flood. Strange - guess he didn't have CNN. The lab leak reporting…

For comparison, SARS was first identified here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foshan) and fifteen years later a tentative source in wild was finally found here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiyang_Yi_Ethnic_Township). The distance between the two places is around 1100 km. Was that a lab leak as well? And pray tell, from which lab did it escape?

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#216

Post by devwastaken » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #93

devwastaken wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platform/publisher isn't a thing. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201017/13051145526/secti...

There's no legally spelled out condition, but one editorializes content and the other is content agnostic. The justification of 230's existence is that the host shouldn't be liable, because it's not their speech. That's no longer true if they're picking and choosing what gets heard, what gets buried, and what gets banned. They may not be typing the post, but they're determining what actually gets said. And that means…

Choosing speech to be removed doesn't make it your speech. If at a city council meeting you're not allowed to yell and be inflammatory - is it now the cities speech when they tell you to get out? No.

If they tell you, "you can't say that, change what you're saying" is it now the cities speech? No.

230 specifically is for the purpose of not being liable, and being able to choose what's on your platform. Specifically so you can moderate your own platform.

No one has some magical right to use your social media business.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#217

Post by jhgb » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #188

hef19898 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I never really bought into the lab escape theory. Still really don't, with all the investigations going on I am willing to consider it as an alternative. Thing is, I have yet to see a timeline, starting with the earliest cases elsewhere, and a summary of the genetic research into COVID-19. Without having the time, and knowledge, to deep dive into the studies I jave to rely on news reports. And those, IM…

Interesting - I've been thinking it's the obvious case for a year now since I first read about it. Just too many coincidences and a lack of evidence for any of the alternatives to disprove the lab hypothesis has come up since.

> a lack of evidence for any of the alternatives to disprove the lab hypothesis

I'm not sure that "disprove my wild hypothesis" is how proving things works.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#218

Post by istorical » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

bavell wrote: post #106

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sadly he's gone off the deep end on "spike protein", but he has been a good fount on the origins of covid.

I'm curious what makes you think he's "gone off the deep end"?

He had an academic guest on his podcast that was stating that the spike protein in covid vaccines causes damage the same way that the spike protein in the virus itself causes damage, when the vaccine creators specifically took measures to make the vaccine's version of the spike protein safer and less damaging to cells.

In general there's a fine line to walk with being cautious around vaccines vs 100% assuming they are safe, but he got it wrong with the guest he had on talking about cytotoxic spike proteins in the vaccine. At least that seems to be the overall scientific consensus that I've seen (but who knows! it's a rapidly evolving topic!).

Relevant:

" “The sound bite ‘SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic’ is not technically wrong—also not news at per se—but that has nothing to do with overall established safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines,” Lee said.

That’s in part because, according to Machamer, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is different than the spike protein created after the administration of the mRNA vaccines.

“The vaccine, at least the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they supply the information to make spike, but it’s not exactly the spike that’s in the virus,” she said.

“There are changes that were made on purpose that would prevent the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor and fusion,” Machamer explained. “And so, all this business about toxicity that has been shown for the real spike protein, the one that doesn't have that block, is totally irrelevant for the vaccine.” "

Source: https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/v...

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#219

Post by dharma1 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #103

amazingman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at Bret Weinstein, and it wasn’t good. Not good at all. He seemed to be making every effort he could to blame the mRNA vaccines for problems that —if true— could have any number of mundane explanations. But hey, maybe he’s right about the lab leak theory.

Yeah sadly he's gone off the deep end on "spike protein", but he has been a good fount on the origins of covid.

I listened to a couple of Bret’s own podcasts after he was a guest on Lex’s show. I think it’s important to be able to discuss this stuff (origins of the virus, emerging therapeutics, potential risks or adverse effects of vaccines) freely without being censored by YouTube. It shouldn’t be censored and some of these ideas may turn out to be correct. In the meanwhile, I’ll happily take an mRNA vaccine based on my own personal/public health risk analysis.

That said, I take everything he and his brother Eric say with a large pinch of salt - they are clearly both very intelligent but I don’t like this cult leader like absolute certainty of their own ideas and the audience (and revenue) building based on controversy and semi-conspiracy. I think it’s essential to have many voices though so I welcome what they are bringing in to the mix, but personally for me it gets tiring after a couple of podcasts.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#220

Post by salawat » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

LordDragonfang wrote: post #127

swiley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things killed people last year, including the lock down. Being allowed to criticize things like that is what separates us from countries that lack democracy.

Germany has certain very strict policies about whether you're allowed to discuss certain things, and they outrank the US by 30 positions on the World Press Freedom Index[1]. Sometimes you have to suppress bad actors who willfully push unverified or outright fallacious information in order to have actual freedom of information. [1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table

Let us not use Germany as an example of a place that justifies regulating speech. That particular quirk of German jurisprudence has so much baggage behind it, it really isn't worth bringing to the conversation.