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

What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 792 posts

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#271

Post by eric_cc »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #252
theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19. Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab…

> we cooked them up

When you say “we”, who do you mean exactly? How did they cook them?

Can you explain why you believe the pandemic is not over?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#272

Post by aftbit »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #252
theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19. Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab…

Source please? Everything I've read about latest Omicrons suggests that they are more transmissible, more likely to evade immunity, and substantially _less_ severe in terms of hospitalization and deaths. By and large, this is what you'd expect to happen at the end of a pandemic, regardless of our response.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#273

Post by Nimitz14 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #257
trhway wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear - during 2014-2019 NIH actually paid $3.6M to EcoHealth Alliance under the grants clearly specifying the coronavirus GoF experiments in Wuhan with the "Human subjects included" checked. EcoHealth naturally kept about 75% of it as "commission/management fee/whatever" because conducting those experiments at BSL2 in Wuhan was much cheaper than the original experiments in US at BSL3+ (in those original experi…

Aside from he rest of the weird conspiracy insinuation I've come to expect - you should probably know that horseshoe bats are endemic to the caves around Wuhan and were studied by virologists in the hills above the biggest animal trade in Hubei.. So it's probably best if you stop making the silly claim about them being 1,000km away if you want to bolster your case. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824899…

No post body was provided.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#274

Post by qbasic_forever »

dehrmann wrote: post #269
qbasic_forever wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19. Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab…

The only alternative to this experiment is China's currently policy. There isn't much of a middle ground because anything short of aggressive testing, lockdowns, and quarantine won't be enough to stop the spread.

No, we literally just need to mandate N95 masks in public settings and get the effective R value down near 1 again. Contact tracing and government support for paid sick leave, etc. would control it even further. At no point do harsh lockdowns have to happen.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#275

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

mikeyouse wrote: post #237
tomp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your explanation for the fact that Moderna patented the very specific 19-nucleotide sequence that codes Sars-COV-2 furin cleavage site in 2018?

Just think about what you're claiming here with this silly question. You honestly think Moderna patented a sequence multiple years ago, and then what, shared their research with the Chinese to unleash a virus and create demand for a vaccine they hadn't invented yet? Why in the world would they patent it before that? It's literally the dumbest nonsense. A more direct refutation though is that the authors were extremel…

> Did Moderna invent birds too?

Maybe they did...

https://birdsarentreal.com/

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#276

Post by snowwrestler »

ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91
stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

> If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives.

The lesson here is not “we need to prove it was a lab leak,” the lesson is “we need better visibility inside China.” Which is also true for viruses that arise naturally inside China.

Do you think that if you could prove with total certainty that it was a lab leak in 2019, that would change China’s approach to secrecy in the future?

> If this was a lab leak, it means that this kind of research is far more dangerous than we've been lead to believe and continuing without appropriate safeguards puts us at great risk.

Do you think we can stop secret viral research in China if they want to do it?

One of my frustrations with the “lab leak theory” is that it seems to cause fuzzy thinking about future preparedness.

We can’t control other nations and we can’t stop natural viral evolution. Future preparedness is the same as past preparedness: detect and respond. We just did a bad job of it with COVID-19. The lesson is: do a better job.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#277

Post by eric_cc »

fguerraz wrote: post #31

It's not that the origin story is not important, it's not that people don't care, it's that it is a distraction. It doesn't help solve the crisis. The article makes the comparison with a nuclear bomb. This is a bad comparison. If we were attacked by a sentient creature, we could reason with it and mitigate further damage or escalation. In the case of a virus, it's good to know to prevent future pandemics maybe, and t…

> it is a distraction. It doesn't help solve the crisis.

This is extremely naive. Do you really believe it won’t happen all over again?

The real crisis is not Covid. It’s how easy something even worse than Covid could be started today.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#278

Post by rzz3 »

harshreality wrote: post #213
mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

Most of the "evidence" against lab-leak is just weird insinuation. Speculation about how the virus wasn't created wholly synthetically: nobody is seriously arguing it was, or it wouldn't be SARS-family. Arguments that the spike protein binding domain wasn't synthetically engineered: it didn't have to be. It could have been serial passage in humanized mice, considering that's what Daszak and co had literally proposed…

Very well put. One thing I’d add, is that this entire debate regarding the lab leak hypothesis is entirely politicized, and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#279

Post by timr »

rdl wrote: post #144
ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

Airborne was always known; debate was droplet vs aerosol (particle size and thus dwell time/radius). Not really a binary distinction anyway; a matter of degree.

I agree it's not binary -- and the SARS CoV2 debate, in particular, became a theater of the absurd -- but the categorical distinction is not entirely crazy: some viruses are much more sensitive to drying out or exposure to the environment and simply cannot transmit efficiently in tiny aerosols.

Tons of work has gone into weaponizing smallpox, for example. It's a non-trivial thing, even though smallpox is technically already a virus that transmits via aerosol. Many viruses will exist in saliva, and will happily transmit through direct contact, but won't transmit well via the air (mononucleosis comes to mind).

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#280

Post by qbasic_forever »

eric_cc wrote: post #271
qbasic_forever wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19. Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab…

> we cooked them up When you say “we”, who do you mean exactly? How did they cook them? Can you explain why you believe the pandemic is not over?

> When you say “we”, who do you mean exactly? How did they cook them?

The entire population of the western world. Every time COVID-19 infects a person and replicates it has the chance to mutate or introduce errors. If those errors in replication increase the fitness of the virus it will evolve to become a more powerful variant (i.e. gain of function). By continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of new cases and infections to occur daily we are increasing the chance of variants evolving. The _only_ way to stop variants is to stop transmission, period.

> Can you explain why you believe the pandemic is not over?

We are still averaging over 100k new cases a day in the US. And that's with almost all of the population using rapid tests that aren't counted in that measurement.

Post reply on HN