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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

#371

Post by gadf »

roenxi wrote: post #361
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:…

And to a fair extent these questions are academic - say that it wasn't a lab leak and came from a natural reservoir. That doesn't change the fact that BSL-4 lab protections aren't perfect and there will be leaks of a similar magnitude of risk in the future. The biological research community are obviously playing with some much riskier toys than everyone else.

So even if what we're saying if not true, we're still right. collateral racism bedamned. You're not going to take our legitimized bias say from us, so stahp trying!

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

#372

Post by gadf »

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…

What you doin, mouse?

Just talking to grandpa

Oh, more stories.

Yeah.

What was it this time, the iPhone? Or Twitter?

Nah, grandpa was telling me about the time, they, as a culture, the West, found a way to rationalize their anti China sentiment. He looked so proud, his eyes were shining. I guess it must have been been a big relief for them.

What was?

Having a way to hate them that was okay.

Your really think grandpa know what's he's talking about? He's nearing 180 real time, you know. Neuroimplant degeneration. Agree regression psychosis.

He's not crazy!

No no i know -

They just grew up in the decline of the West, and the rise of the old world. It was hard for them.

I know, i know. It's just -

Just what?

Never mind.

No. what?

Never mind! Oh, It's just so fucking 20th century.

And you're a historyetician, absolutist!

I'm not, i just - how can you care about him whining about his dying "culture"?

So? It's true, isn't it. And I hate how you do that.

Do what?

Pretend like everything in of the past is not real.

But it's not fucking real! It's just stories. That's why they call it his-tory!

You're such a dumbass. I'm going to mum's. Later dickweed.

Cuntface. He's just sucking you in -

Faggot.

Oooh, retro -

She stopped at the door, and turned, eyes on me in a moment - It wasn't easy to see everything they knew stripped away and replaced - eyes on me, and closed it.

The old building was silent. It disapproved. It was autumn. It would rain soon.

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

#373

Post by khuey »

BurningFrog wrote: post #366
NineStarPoint wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it looks like a coverup, Occam says it is a coverup. The Chinese authorities are not stupid. They know how bad it looks to not allow investigation. Which means they think the result of a free investigation would look even worse.

I thought the lab leak hypothesis was pretty unlikely in early 2020 but having seen the how the Chinese state has acted since then it now seems entirely believable.

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

#374

Post by jeduehr »

COGlory wrote: post #193
jeduehr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical to this one have also been found in nature, and have been generated in nature in very short spans of time (on the order of a few decades, which is what is suspected to have happened with SARS-CoV-2). I describe the evidence in detail in this detailed longform post I wrote on reddit a few months back: Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, a…

I read through your post and it was incomplete and hand wavy, although that makes sense because it was written for Reddit. The bias was also obvious, and remarkably unscientific in how you approached the "problems" in a deterministic manner. You cherry picked examples (for instance, saying we can detect Cas9 mutations) that make no conclusive point (for example, there are a variety of ways to add a furin site to a ge…

I say that we could /very likely/ detect the methods necessary to edit the virus.

How do you suggest we would be able to completely engineer, from scratch, a novel virus with 1200 mutations spaced randomly throughout the genome, that would rescue properly and be capable of infecting a novel host? I know of no such modeling technology to accomplish this. All of these are phenomena that happen easily and constantly in a massive natural reservoir of any viral population.

And if you think it was not strictly "engineered" but instead "evolved" selectively by hand, then how can you escape the S/NS ratio problem? How can you escape the adaptation and glycosylation problem I describe in my original post? How could you avoid the issue of adapting to the host it was evolved in, and acquiring these "lab animal" or "cell culture" specific adaptation mutants that would then need to be somehow removed. Or it likely would not infect humans with any great reproductive efficiency. And then it would have an S protein that would be a bit more adapted to humans, as it has become over the course of the last year. As it's evolving in us, it is becoming better at infecting us. If it had been evolved in humans prior to the pandemic, this would not be as necessary and it would not happen on the scale it's currently happening.

And when exactly would China have started this little "experiment?" Where? With what subjects? How did they keep it secret?

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

#375

Post by refenestrator »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #345
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.

Roll a die representing all possible human-bat virus interactions in the world. How many of those rolls land next door to a lab researching these?

Add in bat-livestock interactions and a very hands-on agricultural sector, and you get a real, real lot of rolls.

Obviously noone can prove a negative, there's a chance it came from that lab, but the odds are astronomical that it came about the same boring way as bird flu and SARS.

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

#376

Post by jeduehr »

Banyonite wrote: post #244
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's why when consensus exists about something, you should respect it. There is quite a large consensus about this one. Respecting a consensus is reasonable. That having been said, I would be interested to hear what the virologists to whom you refer think about Ralph Baric's work. Ralph Baric is a very well-known virologist specializing in corona virology. His group synthesized quite a few SARS-CoV variants, a nu…

Hi, I made a response to the Deigin medium post in your original context. Sorry I don't have time to go more in depth, that thing is a beast. But he makes a few fundamental mistakes that tear at his core argument that I think are sufficient to show he doesn't really know what he's talking about in this arena.

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

#377

Post by temp8964 »

jeduehr wrote: post #220
mistermann wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is point 3 misguided?

Everyone is citing the evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 leak as reason to believe that viruses escape labs. But you know what's interesting about that? We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./ They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety community (the people with degrees in these things) helped china become more standard and respectable and safe. And now 15 years later, w…

This is the most naive take of the real world. Yes. The Chinese government can easily make Chinese scientists lie when needed.

"with zero evidence"? The Chinese government told their labs destroy lab samples at the beginning of the pandemic. The Chinese government refuse to give raw data of early patients to the WHO investigation team. Not matter what the origin of the virus is, the "covering up" is strongly supported by evidence.

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

#378

Post by gadf »

mywittyname wrote: post #149
yumraj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not xenophobic for people from the US.... While racism and xenophobia is real, it has been and is being used very effectively, especially by China but others too, to deflect/blunt genuine criticisms and claims. Just as an amusing example, we talk openly about UK variant, SA variant, Brazil variant - but never talk about original as Wuhan variant - it is simply coronavirus.

It's cuts both ways. Some of the UK Politicians happily throwing around "China/Wuhan virus" got butt-hurt on Twitter when people called the B117 strain the "UK Variant." We shouldn't be using that terminology for variants either. While I understand that people largely use location names for the sake of convenience, it really doesn't feel good to be a person from one of those locations.

So, on balance, it all evens out. Anti China racism, causality delusion to the detriment of the West, all looks to be in order. Carry on

Humans responding to a crisis by blaming each other. Most predictable thing ever. HN commentariat talking with such authority about things which they know nought and can't even see beyond their bias to engage their rational faculty about. Me included

Double most predictable thing ever. Hn is a microcosm.

Each of us all prisoners of our bias pretending we hold the truth of the world in the palms of our hands. a shining pearl of truth is actually a musty bolus we've wrenched up from the bowels of our own experience.

If only we were all a little less sure. A little less strident. But it's not gonna happen. This is who we are. This is where we are. We are the truth!

So let's get back to fighting. It'll be dark soon... Still a lot of fight needs gettin done before the day's out.

Don't let me spoil yer fun, y'all.

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

#379

Post by Dma54rhs »

RedditGuy02017 wrote: post #349
dlp211 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is frankly an ignorant comment. Many of the best Special Olympic athletes would absolutely thrash your average in shape adult. Many of the men in their respective disability category for the 100m dash are sub 11-second, putting them in or near world class athlete times. And while those aren't Usain Bolt times, and not every category of Special Olympic athlete is equal, your average athletic male would be lucky t…

If anything you are fueling his argument. /r/science actually has a pretty high bar for submissions and is heavily moderated. In addition, you must directly link to published peer reviewed research. It's not the traditional subreddit that you are used to when you think of "Reddit". It's not quite the major leagues but has A LOT of quality posts because of the rules and moderation.

What? I had to ubsubscribe that joke of a subreddit. It's full of dumb American politics, literally 'research proves gop votes are more likely poorer than..". Day in and out.

That whole place is as much as to do with science than your FB mum group. There's very little serous discussion going on.

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

#380

Post by robbiep »

throwaway292893 wrote: post #325
sneak wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it matters much how long we take, because it's not figuring out the pandemic - that we're already failing to do, even without an origin story - but instead figuring out the origin . The origin, truth be told, is basically irrelevant, just like the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. We live in the world today, and while the story of how we got here might be somewhat academically or historically interesting, i…

if you don't figure out the origin it's doomed to happen again. if it did leak from a lab, we should shut these labs down.

The origin is interesting but hardly conclusive in stopping the next pandemic, which is only a matter of time anyway.

Instead, the significant economic and health costs could have been significantly mitigated by the response of governments. That’s going to be more important for preventing harm in the next pandemic. Even if it was a lab escape, how does shutting down the labs help for the future? They are also a defence against the next pandemic

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