China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by econcon » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

I've not been able to find that if we've technology to edit RNA.

I see that DNA changes are possible through CRISPR.

But it seems changing RNA could be possible if you've extracted similar virus from some animal then you replicated virus in a culture, after that you wait for the virus to mutate on its own or create condition to increase mutation rate for example radiation etc...

So the biological footprint being similar to the one which exists in nature doesn't really remove the possibility that the virus might be man made.

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

#312

Post by burfog » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

StandardFuture wrote: post #62

ueudrjjj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.

This is very valid clarification on what I will just name "lab theories". There is a huge differentiation in: 'purposely bio-engineered and intentionally-released' theories, vs. 'someone collected bats in the wild for research, brought them to the Wuhan lab, and there was an accidental pathogen escape during the research.' The former is entirely dramatic, while the latter is neither dramatic, unreasonable, illogical,…

Neither extreme seems likely.

We know that the lab was adding functionality to bat coronaviruses, making them able to infect human cells. This can be done without gene editing technology. We've been doing that in the opposite direction for decades, passing viruses through non-human cells in order to make weakened ones for live-virus vaccines. To make a virus worse for humans, simply pass it through human cells. This is what the lab was doing.

It's extremely hazardous research. The USA banned it.

If you do that and then you have a lab accident, your level of culpability is at neither extreme. You didn't gene-edit the virus and release it on purpose. You didn't just get infected while studying bats.

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

#313

Post by burfog » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

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…

Not that I think the lab escape was deliberate, but: shutting down pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong has been a result of the virus.

I don't really think the leaders would take that risk, considering all the unpredictable side effects, but there certainly was something gained.

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

#314

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #167

abc-xyz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of value in paying/blackmailing the moderators. You can clearly certain subreddits, such as r/worldnews, becoming increasingly pro-China. The mod team played a huge role in this, as they have been perma banning people who post a lot of anti-China comments. I’ve for instance had several accounts banned (one simply for sarcastically saying “Thanks China”) - there were also a thread on r/China where plenty…

r/China is very much an echo chamber of its own though. These days the line between criticizing the Chinese government and full blown sinophobia is getting rather thin.

/r/China used to be fairly moderate, well, much more than it is now, but then most of the foreigners that posted from China left (either China, or lost access to reddit, or just lost interest) and now it is just a bunch of CPC hate.

The line between criticizing the CPC and full blown sino-phobia isn't thin at all, it has always remained pretty thick. It is the people crossing the line that have changed.

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

#315

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

shadowbn123 wrote: post #303

sergiotapia wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at reddit to see how legions of paid government actors are actively shaping the discussion on mainstream platforms.

hey sergiotapioca talk is cheap, be the man you're claiming to be please, go out, mingle, get close to lots of your relatives. and remember, the government are telling you to wash your hands, so don't do that. show them how you're not gonna take any crap from the elites.

Ok Chinese Government Stooge #390-AEJ-039/2

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

#316

Post by javagram » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #269

jotakami wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to all my reasonable friends who think that the moment I say “it came from a lab” that means this is a bioweapon that was intentionally released. No, actually, there is a chain of evidence that makes an accidental lab leak more plausible than the theory that the virus jumped straight from an animal in a wet market hundreds of miles away from its normal habitat that just ha…

How does an "accidental lab leak" happen without a bunch of people at the lab getting infected? Seems like we'd have some evidence if it was an accidental leak.

1. Evidence could be suppressed

2. The person who accidentally leaked it from the lab may not even know it. Research into COVID-19 has estimated up to 20% of people infected may be asymptomatic carriers of the disease who can still spread it to others. Person who works in the lab gets infected, doesn’t get visibly sick, accidentally spreads it to someone in the vicinity of their lab by breathing or coughing or singing or sneezing, virus is now out and they don’t even realize it.

The 1977 H1N1 pandemic is widely believed by scientists to have been an accidental lab release. Evidence as to which lab it escaped from has never been found and we will probably never know. https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15 “A biosafety lapse in a research laboratory is now most often cited as the cause of the 1977-1978 reemergence of the H1N1 influenza virus strain”

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

#317

Post by boomboomsubban » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

dependenttypes wrote: post #296

boomboomsubban wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other way around. People started saying it was developed by the Chinese as a weapon almost immediately, and the originator of the "Chinese propaganda" specifically called out such claims before blaming the US.

We are talking about politicians specifically though.

Still, a congressman blamed the Chinese on TV before the start of the Lijian twitter incident.

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

#318

Post by runawaybottle » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #307

Klinky wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of witch-hunt logic belongs in the dark ages. Persecuting potential experts on the situation based on vague assumptions and rumors. Awful.

No one is being persecuted. It is correct to suspect. In a murder investigation the police start with those closest related to the victim. If money is missing from a bank vault you start your investigation looking at all those who had access. When a pandemic starts outside of a lab studying the same kind of virus tearing through the world you start with the lab. We will likely never know for sure, but it is absolutel…

Too put it even more simply, if most most of the world is prepared to do contact tracing on an average person for having been anywhere near the virus, then the lab should not be above due diligence.

The prevailing theory is more or less ‘someone touched a bat’. Like who? Staff at a lab messing with bats?

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

#319

Post by goatinaboat » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #48

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…

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense.

Why would you starve tens of millions of people just to test some crackpot theories of agriculture? Doesn’t make sense

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

#320

Post by dlubarov » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #285

dlubarov wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I didn't make an error. The way the conspiracy theory goes in China is that the Military World Games [0] were held in Wuhan just before the outbreak. In other words, they knew the US military was in Wuhan specifically (in fact,…

Yes, I assumed that if the virus is not from the WIV, then all areas of China (weighted by population) would be equiprobable candidates for the outbreak location. Of course this is an imperfect model, but I think it's a reasonable one.

This alternate conspiracy seems way more farfetched to me (why would US intelligence need such any such event to get an agent into China?), but if someone believed that it should be given a non-negligible prior, then they should revise my assumption that

> P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus not from WIV) = 1/3,000

I.e. their revised value should be at least as large as their prior for the alternate conspiracy.

What part of the argument are you disputing exactly? Are you claiming that applying Bayes' theorem in this way is somehow invalid, or are you just taking issue with the assumption quoted above?