Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

newrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 233 posts

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#211

Post by forcry »

mikem170 wrote: post #161
blast wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the argument. Nobody's pretending that propositional logic can decide this. It's a question of how to weight empirical evidence. Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses, especially since concerns had been raised about unsafe conditions there.

But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected samples from infected people: > In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A, B and C. > His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to t…

>But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuh..

I see you repeat this all around this thread. Can you show me where it says evidence is for emergence?

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#212

Post by native_samples »

lamontcg wrote: post #187
native_samples wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all." None of this is right. RNA (of which mRNA is just a subtype) is extremely unstable and degrades almost immediately unless carefully protected, which is why viruses need a capsid and why mRNA vaccines need cold chains. You can't just touch some…

Yeah I meant RNA but it was early in the morning and my fingers autocorrected to mRNA. And many samples ARE degraded and only partial reads can be recovered. > “These samples are not like huge vials of blood,” Rasmussen said. “It’s not like a big Erlenmeyer flask of green liquid.” Researchers would have to grow the virus in cells in order to stand a real chance of infecting people, she added, and it’s difficult to gr…

You skipped over the second part of my response. I'll point it out again:

"Researchers would have to grow the virus in cells in order to stand a real chance of infecting people"

They were filing patents on designs for bat cages. Videos from inside the WIV before COVID showed live bats. They were doing far more than growing virus in cells, they were growing them in live animals, as virologists typically do.

"PCR amplification means that you can find the needle in the haystack and find enough RNA to construct aa genome out of it"

This would be relevant if virologists were mere lab technicians running PCR tests, but they aren't.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#213

Post by native_samples »

forcry wrote: post #208
native_samples wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice idea but there are a lot of problems with it. 1. Being able to replicate a study is necessary but not sufficient for the conclusions to be correct. Scientists pump out a lot of studies that are just doing stats on public data sets. These should be easily replicable, but the conclusions may still be nonsensical if the analysis isn't done right (and a lot aren't done right), or if the scientific work itse…

>Scientists pump out a lot of studies that are just doing stats on public data sets. May be I didn't make myself clear. I only meant to include actual experiments, in the context. So it will only involve procedures that include collecting raw data from nature. Mostly agree with the rest of your comment.

Yes, this gets into the (very important!) topic of what exactly the definition of science is.

Consider that the normal 'street' definition of people doing experiments on nature would mean the following fields aren't scientific:

1. Computer science

2. Economics

3. Climatology

I'd personally be fine with all three being considered un-scientific or even defunded, even though I quite enjoy reading computer science papers. It's more of an engineering discipline in my view and the attempts to make it seem scientific mostly just obfuscate things.

And most people would be fine with economics not being a science.

The live wire is of course climatology. These people don't do experiments, they just compile data and analyze it. Good luck convincing people that climatology isn't a science, even though you may be in the right about it!

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#214

Post by shard972 »

mbauman wrote: post #112
whydoyoucare wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - dismissing the lab-leak theory early on without conclusive evidence either way was certainly suspicious. Any scientist worth his/her salt shouldn't dismiss any theory outright without having hard data to back it up.

There are two things going on here: - There's strong evidence that it's not bioengineered; scientists used very strong and convincing language here. - There was initially hope of finding the zoonotic reservoir; scientists used couched language here to subtly detangle a natural virus vs. a natural virus that had adapted to passage in cell culture in a lab, and had priors assuming a zoonotic source would be found. Gues…

your talking shit that this was just journos, this was scientists shutting down public debate and tech companies banning people for discussing it.

Don't try and pretend like this is just another case of journos making shitty headlines because your fucking lying.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#215

Post by codewench »

mikem170 wrote: post #198
codewench wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the paper this article is based on is somewhat contested. For example "There are several serious flaws with their findings and interpretation." [1] "The authors’ misinterpretation of MJNs fosters misconceptions, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of fundamental phylogenetic principles."[2] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/23/12522 [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/23/12518

Thank you for those links. I appreciate the new inputs. ("Sampling bias and incorrect rooting make phylogenetic network tracing of SARS-COV-2 infections unreliable" and "Median-joining network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes is neither phylogenetic nor evolutionary") Do you think that these conflict with the statement Forster made that "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't h…

I believe it's worth continued study, however my understanding is that the Chinese government has been somewhat reluctant to allow these sorts of studies to occur.

Personally I'm suspecting an accidental leak of non-engineered (eg, naturally occurring) virus is the most likely cause, if only due to the actions of the CCP. That said, I'm an engineer and have no training in virology or infectious disease studies, so my opinion is basically worthless.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#216

Post by mikem170 »

forcry wrote: post #211
mikem170 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected samples from infected people: > In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A, B and C. > His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to t…

>But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuh.. I see you repeat this all around this thread. Can you show me where it says evidence is for emergence ?

I was replying to a post that said "Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses".

There's that word "emerged" (in reference to Wuhan) that you pointed out that I also used in my post. I was replying, with a supporting source, that this is not a certainty.

From the source I quoted earlier [0]:

> "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't have many samples from the early phase," he says. "But it seems to me we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wuhan when looking for the origin."

> Asked if his ongoing research should quash speculation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, Forster is circumspect. "It's not black and white. All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."

I've repeated this because it seems to be a common misconception that the virus first appeared in Wuhan when in fact there is some evidence to the contrary.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#217

Post by mikem170 »

twobitshifter wrote: post #201
mikem170 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's evidence pointing to an origin 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on sampled early cases and genetic sequencing. [0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

That research presupposes that the virus came from bats to uses this to draw the conclusion that a more bat like variant found elsewhere is the origin point - however researchers know that COVID binds more tightly to human cells that both bat and pangolin, and more strongly to pangolin than bat. https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-find-covid-19-virus-was... “The computer modelling found the virus’s ability to bind t…

I don't think that the source I quoted was saying that the virus jumped directly from bats to humans. I believe they were attempting to track mutations from the closest currently known/sequenced genetic relative, which happened to be that bat virus.

I don't think that changes my point in bringing this up, that it is not a foregone conclusion that Wuhan was the location of the first human infections, that in fact there is some genetic evidence pointing in other directions.

> Asked if his ongoing research should quash speculation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, Forster is circumspect. "It's not black and white. All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."

Full disclosure: I've be made aware of papers pointing out that Forster's methodologies may be unreliable, that the gap between bat and human viruses are too large to say definitively which varient of the human virus is older. But I don't think this materially changes the fact that his paper casts a good bit of doubt on Wuhan being the location of the first human infections, showing that there may be evidence to the contrary in his collected and sequenced genetic samples. He admits that himself in the same article:

> "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't have many samples from the early phase," he says. "But it seems to me we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wuhan when looking for the origin." [0]

The source you quote jives with what I have read in other places, that there are still missing pieces to this puzzle.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#218

Post by forcry »

mikem170 wrote: post #216
forcry wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuh.. I see you repeat this all around this thread. Can you show me where it says evidence is for emergence ?

I was replying to a post that said "Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses". There's that word "emerged" (in reference to Wuhan) that you pointed out that I also used in my post. I was replying, with a supporting source, that this is not a certainty. From the source I quoted earlier [0]: > "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of o…

>I've repeated this because it seems to be a common misconception that the virus first appeared in Wuhan when in fact there is some evidence to the contrary.

To be frank, that article is speculation, because they assume a certain variant to be the "founding variant" because of its similarity to existing/known virus. It looks like a bit of circular reasoning to me.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#219

Post by peytn »

mikem170 wrote: post #216
forcry wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuh.. I see you repeat this all around this thread. Can you show me where it says evidence is for emergence ?

I was replying to a post that said "Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses". There's that word "emerged" (in reference to Wuhan) that you pointed out that I also used in my post. I was replying, with a supporting source, that this is not a certainty. From the source I quoted earlier [0]: > "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of o…

Hmm, I’m looking at the Forster paper and I don’t see where they wrote that the origin might not be Wuhan.

Unless it’s peer-reviewed and published, I’m not going to count it as evidence. As far as I can see, you’re citing one dude’s speculations. Unless somebody’s followed up on those speculations in the past year, I’m not sure there’s a case here.

Re: The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

#220

Post by mikem170 »

codewench wrote: post #215
mikem170 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for those links. I appreciate the new inputs. ("Sampling bias and incorrect rooting make phylogenetic network tracing of SARS-COV-2 infections unreliable" and "Median-joining network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes is neither phylogenetic nor evolutionary") Do you think that these conflict with the statement Forster made that "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't h…

I believe it's worth continued study, however my understanding is that the Chinese government has been somewhat reluctant to allow these sorts of studies to occur. Personally I'm suspecting an accidental leak of non-engineered (eg, naturally occurring) virus is the most likely cause, if only due to the actions of the CCP. That said, I'm an engineer and have no training in virology or infectious disease studies, so my…

The original article pointed out that the Chinese were sercretive about SARS also, referncing this NYTimes article [0].

It seems like an interesting leap to assume the lab leak is the most likely cause, when there is so much precedent for natural spillover, even antibody sampling which seem to indicate that millions of people per year may be catching various coronaviruses from bats [1], let alone other mammals like civits, pangolins, etc.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/weekinreview/china-discov...

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...

Post reply on HN