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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#271

Post by meowface »

dlubarov wrote: post #161
meowface wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your prior is also exactly what you're trying to calculate, though. I don't think you can just try different numbers picked from a hat for that value. Also, it isn't accounting for lots of other highly relevant, potentially confounding variables. And those assumptions make no sense to me at all. Can you write them out much more explicitly? I think it's totally plausible it was a lab escape, but this analysis seems ex…

> Your prior is also exactly what you're trying to calculate, though. Maybe I should have been more explicit, but they're not the same. The prior here is the probability that the virus originated from WIV, knowing only that the virus originated in China, and not accounting for the location of the outbreak. I'm trying to calculate an adjusted probability given the outbreak location. > I don't think you can just try di…

> The prior here is the probability that the virus originated from WIV, knowing only that the virus originated in China, and not accounting for the location of the outbreak.

Makes more sense, but as you say, there's really no way of knowing what number is appropriate there. I'm not a statistics expert, but I'd say it's inextricably tied up with what you're trying to calculate the probability of in the first place. The whole point is we don't have a prior for WIV being likely to have a virus escape the lab, or a coronavirus, or this specific virus.

I think you'd need to break it down into priors like: probability any Chinese lab has any virus escape, probability this particular lab has any virus escape, probably this particular lab had any virus escape around this time frame, probability this particular lab had a sample of SARS-CoV-2, and a lot more things.

>And sure, it's a simplified analysis, but it's better than just asserting whatever our intuitions say about coincidences.

It certainly can be much better in general, and I'm a huge fan of Bayesianism, but it can also sometimes provide a very misleading impression to others. I'm somewhat tempted to try to do a deep dive into a Bayesian analysis of this, but I'm not really qualified, and it would be a ton of work, and there would be some priors that would be nearly impossible to know (number and density of animals of certain species in the area, what pathogens they may have, what animals and viruses the lab may have collected or been interested in collecting, what and how many animals are hunted in the area, what and how many hunted animals are sold at local wet markets, how such animals are handled or prepared, etc.)

I think to assess this with any serious confidence, we're probably going to need something like leaked/stolen documents or a whistleblower.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#272

Post by throwanem »

legolas2412 wrote: post #253
throwanem wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great questions, and thank you for asking them! 1. Yes. The claim based on the misreading of the 2019 paper is that SARS-CoV-2 is actually a lab-created combination of another coronavirus and the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. If that were true, the genome of SARS-CoV-2 would incorporate large parts of the HIV genome verbatim. It does not; comparing these genomes for identical or nearly identical sub…

Thanks for your answer. I'll like to point out that 3 is slightly eased off if the two viruses are already able to jump to humans. In this case, it could be the SARS coronavirus and the pangolin virus whose receptor proteins are similar to ncov19. Then all that is required is for the two viruses to jump over and then recombine. Definitely a possibility. I find the wet market theory full of such improbabilities too. H…

Compared to other families of viruses, coronaviruses recombine unusually often and are unusually likely to produce viable new strains that way. Those traits make them unusually capable of producing zoonoses, which is one of the reasons why they're a subject of particular interest among infectious disease researchers.

Those same traits also produce a high degree of similarity between a lot of genomically differentiable strains of coronavirus, especially since spike proteins tend to be strongly conserved for their direct effect on virulence - a significant mutation there is likely to be maladaptive, if it changes the protein structure enough for cells to no longer uptake a virion that expresses it. So it's not really a surprise to see that two different strains have similar spike proteins, and doesn't really give much basis for inference about relatedness between them.

Another important point is that coronaviruses are so common specifically in bats, which are both extremely plentiful and unusually accommodating hosts for many kinds of viruses including coronaviruses, very often with multiple strains infecting a single host at once. That gives coronaviruses - which, remember, are already good at recombining to produce new strains, every one being possibly able to jump species - more chances at that kind of recombination than they would have otherwise.

Too, bats shed virus in feces the same way humans do, and bat guano is so effective a fertilizer that wars have started over access to supplies of it. So it's not difficult or unlikely to postulate a chain of events like this:

- a recombination event in a bat produces a virus capable of infecting humans,

- which is then deposited in feces used to fertilize a human food crop,

- which is then harvested and taken to a city market to be sold,

- and all it takes for someone to get sick from there is not washing their hands often enough while they're cooking.

To be clear, I'm not saying this is what happened. Nobody knows that yet. But precisely because nobody knows that yet, it's important to consider the relative likelihoods of various ways that the pathogen might have developed into a form that can infect humans, and then reached the point of actually doing so.

That's what I'm doing here. Each stage of this postulated chain of events relies only on things that are already known to frequently occur, and have been so known since long before SARS-CoV-2 was even known to exist.

The result is unprovable, of course, just as with every other theory of this disease's origin that anyone has advanced so far. But it doesn't rely on any unusually small probabilities, and so it seems a lot likelier to me than the combination of a lab accident of a kind known to have happened only a few times in the last two decades, and a simultaneous superinfection of a single researcher with two different strains of coronavirus.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#273

Post by Medicalidiot »

surge wrote: post #262
Medicalidiot wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even if this isn't a bio-weapon, it actually would be pretty effective as one assuming you already had the vaccine, which no one does. Not even close, not even a little close. With proper containment COVID-19 is easily contained. This isn't that great, especially when you look at countries who are handling this well: Taiwan. Bioweapons are notorious for being quick and lethal. As per the CDC on bioterrorism: >When t…

It's easily contained by shutting down the economy and social distancing... You didn't read a thing I said did you? You're calling whats happening now, easy? Did you even read what happened to the naval ship that got infected? This has had pretty disastrous effects for the economy of the entire world, there are food riots overseas right now, the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. The social disorder alone, cops are a…

>You're calling whats happening now, easy?

I'm saying that the response to COVID-19 is easy. You know why? Because all it would have taken is surveillance and proper quarantine. I'm going to say it again: if you give me a normal amount of resources and a normal team I would be able to manage anyone with COVID with reasonable success. Now it starts getting tricky with any serious comorbidities and luckily we have nephrology to manage electrolytes. Shutting this thing down is not challenging. What's challenging is when you have incompetent leadership that ignores expert advice.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#274

Post by dang »

nikofeyn wrote: post #228
hoot wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this as well. Does China have any stake in HN that would allow them to sway discussions?

i don't know regarding investments. but just to be clear, the trend i have noticed is a clear anti-chinese sentiment on hacker news. it comes up a lot. i think it's simply because a lot of americans are on hacker news, and there is a gross level of anti-chinese sentiment in the united states in general, probably more-so from educated people.

Last I looked, about half of the HN community is in the US. Since that includes many expats, presumably less than half of HN users are American. An overwhelming majority are from Western countries though.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#275

Post by dlubarov »

knzhou wrote: post #229
dlubarov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by P(virus from CIA)? Do you mean the probability that the CIA planted the virus in the WIV? If so, then > How can there both be a 97% chance that the CIA did it, and a 97% chance that WIV made it? There's no contradiction there. If the CIA planted the virus in the WIV, then it's simultaneously true that the CIA planted the virus and that the WIV was the source of the outbreak.

Why not both? Using your exact logic three times: - there's a 97% chance the CIA planted it in the seafood market - there's a 97% chance the CIA planted it in the WIV - there's a 97% chance the WIV made it Now it's obvious that something is going wrong here. There is no conceivable way these probability assignments can make sense. But your math was formally correct! What a mystery.

I threw out 1% as a seemingly reasonable prior probability that the outbreak came from the WIV, given an implicit assumption that the virus originated in China. Obviously I didn't put much thought into the exact number, but 1% seems within the realm of reason to me, given that the WIV is the only BSL-4 facility in China.

It doesn't make sense to apply the same prior to "the CIA planted COVID-19 in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market", because there are many such markets in China, and only one BSL-4 facility. You might think 1% is a reasonable prior for "the CIA planted COVID-19 in some market in China", but then it wouldn't make sense to adjust the probability based on the outbreak location as I did.

What you're doing is like starting with a prior probability of 10% that a random individual lives in Maui, and 10% that a random individual lives in Kawaii. Then you learn that an individual lives in Hawaii, and you try to adjust both probabilities based on Hawaii's population in relation to the world population. Bayes' theorem gives ~99.8% each for P(Maui | Hawii) and P(Kawaii | Hawaii). The results are obviously impossible, but the argument wasn't structurally wrong, you just started with bad priors. You should have started with P(Kawaii) ~= 0.001%, giving P(Kawaii | Hawaii) ~= 5%, which is correct.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#276

Post by surge »

nikofeyn wrote: post #228
hoot wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this as well. Does China have any stake in HN that would allow them to sway discussions?

i don't know regarding investments. but just to be clear, the trend i have noticed is a clear anti-chinese sentiment on hacker news. it comes up a lot. i think it's simply because a lot of americans are on hacker news, and there is a gross level of anti-chinese sentiment in the united states in general, probably more-so from educated people.

[flagged]

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#277

Post by dang »

taiwanboy wrote: post #111
Razengan wrote: post #90

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…

On 1/22, Xi jinping and CCP blocked internal transportation such as railways, subways, ferries, trains and domestic flights in and out of Wuhan. But still let international flights in and out of Wuhan. If the coronavirus wasn’t weaponized with that intent I don’t know what is.

We've banned this account for doing nationalistic flamewar on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#278

Post by dang »

thankswell wrote: post #183
taiwanboy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 1/22, Xi jinping and CCP blocked internal transportation such as railways, subways, ferries, trains and domestic flights in and out of Wuhan. But still let international flights in and out of Wuhan. If the coronavirus wasn’t weaponized with that intent I don’t know what is.

I don't know your intention but it's unwise to spread disinformation on HN, "taiwanboy". 武汉天河国际机场于23日13时关闭离港。航空公司方面，国泰港龙航空、春秋航空、吉祥航空、中国南方航空、中国东方航空、全日空等航司取消或调整多班来往武汉的班机[29]。1月24日天河机场本场仅允许国际航班进港并当日空返，另有两架运送救灾物资的顺丰航空货机抵港[30] Note that the international airline is allowed in but leave empty . 天河机场自4月8日起恢复运营，暂不恢复国际航班和北京往返航班[58] Until April 8, international airlines are still not restored, i.e. all airlines are stopped dur…

We've banned this account for doing nationalistic flamewar on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#279

Post by kds3 »

chillacy wrote: post #187
Razengan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. Historically, China has not been above harming their own citizens. There is probably still a substantial "Greater Good" philosophy there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

I can understand the logic to shutting down pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen if you're a party member and your political system is at stake. This type of thing (sadly) happens all around the world. But I don't see what was to be gained. Take in mind there are a not insignificant number of people who believe that the US planned 9/11 and Pearl Harbor as well. It just seems like in all these cases (9/11, Pearl Harbor…

9/11 is not a good example here. It allowed US to pass important PRISM-like PATRIOT acts without much opposition from US citizens, just in time for the rise of the Internet. It also provided a great narrative to start Iraq war and forced them to accept USD for their oil, strengthening the economy. So it clearly was in both government and (some) citizens interest for 9/11 to happen.

It's not easy to find any Coronavirus-related political narratives for China or any other country yet, because nothing has changed in China politics, but we will wait and see.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#280

Post by FriendlyNormie »

dlubarov wrote: post #65
meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

> Wuhan is a massive city and economic hub Let's dig into this a bit more though. The WIV's location on Google Maps apparently changed after the incident [1]. I don't know if it was a legitimate correction or what, but for the sake of argument let's suppose that the old location was correct. Then the lab is 8.6 miles from the wet market, or ~14 km. It looks like the population density in that area is around 10,000 pe…

The Wuhan Center for Disease Control, which routinely sent viral samples to WIV, is only 300 meters from the wet market. The 300 meter radius circle surrounding the Wuhan Center for Disease Control is 0.33 square miles. China is 3,705,009 square miles. The chances of this happening so close to the Wuhan Center for Disease Control is therefore 1 in 11.2 million.
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