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Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

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Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#301

Post by XorNot »

cameldrv wrote: post #100
eightysixfour wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people are doing a poor job distinguishing between "engineered" and "leaked." There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus," but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the result of gain of function research. My personal feeling is that these statements are true:…

I'm not sure you can rule out "engineered as you described above." WIV had recently published research on, and had an active grant to perform (at the time of the outbreak), chimeric Coronavirus research, and they were one of the two world leading labs in this. In that research, they were transplanting the spike gene from one virus to the "backbone" of another. You could call this "engineering" or "gain of function" d…

They're viruses from the same family of viruses. "Strongly resembles" is not strong evidence.

Which you note by pointing out that this is the exact thing we'd expect from a natural event.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#302

Post by endisneigh »

troyvit wrote: post #294
endisneigh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so what. What can we do to make China stop doing this research if they want to? Are we going to go to war over this? No. Are we going to have an embargo with China? No? So effectively this becomes a situation of "oh yeah they should've not had that accident, oh well." In the USA we've had the same problem ourselves (lab accidents with pathogens), and we banned gain of function research and ended up removing the b…

Why does it have to be a "we" vs "China" discussion at all? Why don't we think non-politically about it for a minute and recognize that as a global species we have a chance to learn as much as we can from a pandemic that affected us globally so that we can try to do better when the next one inevitably comes along? And yeah, maybe China doesn't wanna think that way, but let's find out first, and second find out why. O…

There’s nothing to learn though:

It’s either from wild animals, it was an accident, or it was spread with malice. In all scenarios we already have procedures around gain of function research, limiting interaction with animals in markets and biological weapons, respectively.

If the prevailing theory was that it came from an asteroid that would be interesting.

I personally doubt China would pay anything even if it was a lab accident. I guess we’ll see.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#303

Post by refenestrator »

arcticbull wrote: post #297
refenestrator wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this particular theory reaches the front page of hacker news every week, despite zero evidence besides the existence of a lab.. hey, we're just asking questions, here, right? Frankly, it would be irresponsible NOT to provacatively suggest this thing we have no evidence of, repeatedly.

Yes it sure would be irresponsible to ask questions about the... (1) BSL-3 lab doing bat coronavirus research... (2) on gain-of-function projects... (3) one block away from the epicenter of a coronavirus pandemic with bat ties... (4) that nobody's being allowed into... (5) when they have a history of coronavirus lab escapes. I'm not saying we know this is what happened. I'm saying it's not a far-fetched position and…

The write-up specified that they're a noisy minority who disagree with the consensus. In the subheading, after the heading 'scientists say..'. Media!

It's still 100% speculation. The question to ask is, would there be this level of suggestive speculation if it wasn't America's newest top rival?

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#304

Post by bostonsre »

eightysixfour wrote: post #55
loveistheanswer wrote: post #23

Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that: 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural" 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a…

I feel like people are doing a poor job distinguishing between "engineered" and "leaked." There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus," but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the result of gain of function research. My personal feeling is that these statements are true:…

Yea, I'm not sure how some people can vehemently say any of the most plausible explanations are absolutely wrong or right. It seems like it's just not possible for anyone outside of a very small group in China to know the truth and also seems possible that no one at all knows exactly what happened. Without any smoking gun evidence, it seems like everything else is just guess work with some guesses a lot more educated than others.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#305

Post by nbardy »

rndmize wrote: post #99

I feel that for people paying attention to COVID news, this has always been the case; there's never been any kind of conclusive evidence on the origin of the virus (that I've read of). The article outlines three main possible origins - natural, accidental combination in lab, deliberate construction in lab. (There's a fourth option I've seen floating around - deliberate release of a constructed virus.) It seems that m…

You think we should wait one-two more years to figure out the biggest pandemic in 100 years?

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#306

Post by natch »

This headline does not match the original, but, more importantly, the HN version is unintentionally misleading.

It seems to be implying that these scientists who say this are outliers in their belief. Really they are just outliers (I believe) in their willingness to speak up about this matter.

There are reasons others won’t speak up, ranging from access to grant money, to wanting to keep the door open for a China visa in the future, to not wanting to rock the boat with colleagues who are loyal to China.

Unfortunately all this also gets mixed up, even if intentions are completely beyond reproach, with perceived racism and with possibly creating an uncomfortable environment for those who would rather not have the stuff talked about. It’s unfortunate. I don’t know the solution, but unfortunately a harsh “we must get to the bottom of all facts at all costs” approach is not cost free. The alternative let’s all sing Kumbaya approach also is not cost free. No conclusions or solutions here.. it’s a big complex problem. I would prefer to see more nuanced headlines though on HN...

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#307

Post by nbardy »

rossdavidh wrote: post #267
rndmize wrote: post #99

I feel that for people paying attention to COVID news, this has always been the case; there's never been any kind of conclusive evidence on the origin of the virus (that I've read of). The article outlines three main possible origins - natural, accidental combination in lab, deliberate construction in lab. (There's a fourth option I've seen floating around - deliberate release of a constructed virus.) It seems that m…

Absolutely. Lots of issues that are just way too high-emotion right now for rational and objective discussion. One other reason it's way too hot to discuss right now: it would suggest that scientists were at least partly to blame for the pandemic. Even if you're not Chinese, you might not want to be discussing that idea if you were a scientist yourself.

Because people are having emotional discussion doesn’t mean we should stop trying to have rational ones.

In fact it’s the opposite we need to have the hard conversations as early as possible.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#308

Post by arcticbull »

refenestrator wrote: post #303
arcticbull wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it sure would be irresponsible to ask questions about the... (1) BSL-3 lab doing bat coronavirus research... (2) on gain-of-function projects... (3) one block away from the epicenter of a coronavirus pandemic with bat ties... (4) that nobody's being allowed into... (5) when they have a history of coronavirus lab escapes. I'm not saying we know this is what happened. I'm saying it's not a far-fetched position and…

The write-up specified that they're a noisy minority who disagree with the consensus. In the subheading, after the heading 'scientists say..'. Media! It's still 100% speculation. The question to ask is, would there be this level of suggestive speculation if it wasn't America's newest top rival?

Sure, but also, if the PRC didn't have a tendency of murdering it's dissenters and anyone who made them look bad. They're not exactly a shining beacon of transparency. If this was going down in New Zealand I'm not sure anyone would be speculating, and also WHO investigators would have been granted full access to the facility on day 1.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#309

Post by jeduehr »

ChemSpider wrote: post #269
jeduehr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a lot of virologists are also critical of GOF. Just look at public health people, epidemiologists. Folks like Andrea Sant, Michael Osterholm, David Topham, etc. These folks criticize GOF all the time, and are a big part of the group that helps write regulations to make Virology research safe. But you know what these same virologists also don't believe? That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab. That should tell…

> That SARS-COV-2 was cooked up in a lab This is a straw man argument. No one is seriously claiming that this is a "cooked up" (artificially created) virus. It could be a natural virus that escaped the lab.

Hi, I actually wrote a direct response to this idea in my original post.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vRbACWf90iBC35xNOwlI5bWcUq0... (Footnote 1)

Also, you can literally look around on this exact post and find people who believe that this virus was cooked up in a lab. There were also a lot of people on my original post who believed that.

As is often the case: never underestimate the intellectual overconfidence of people with little knowledge of the subject matter.

To draw a very clear distinction in the sand, I never said we can be 100% certain that this virus didn't originate in a lab. It's just really really unlikely. And there isn't any real evidence to support it. /Maybe/ some circumstantial evidence in the geographic proximity. But even that is probably irrelevant if the current epidemiological evidence is to be believed, which shows that the virus likely jumped into humans outside of Wuhan entirely. See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

In order of likelihood, based on all available evidence and expert consensus:

zoonotic release >>> accidental lab release of a wildly collected virus >>>>>>> accidental lab release of a "cooked up" virus > intentional lab release of a "cooked up virus"

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#310

Post by stefan_ »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #289
loveistheanswer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can say the vast majority of us are not qualified to answer the question either way though. It's also worth noting that even the leading experts can get these things wrong, as was the case with the Sverdlovsk lab leak. Soviet authorities covered it up by blaming local meat markets, and leading US experts concurred with them, only to reverse their conclusion 6 years later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk…

It’s worth noting that in both the Sverdlov case and in this one, world scientists are only being given access to the situation in an extremely controlled fashion. A primary reason we can’t say more on what happened in this case is the CCP’s tight control over access that could help clarify the situation. Which will always look suspicious, whether it was actually a completely natural virus or not.

Then don't make conclusions from insufficient data and manufacture consent?

I think historians in a million years will snort from laughter when reading "The WHO that denies the existence of Taiwan determined that COVID19 did not originate from the bioweapons lab in Wuhan researching that very virus, only in the city".

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