Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#401

Post by stefantalpalaru » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

stablechaos wrote: post #222

lamontcg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you…

"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as…

> blocks away from a major virology lab

Make that 33 km: https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm...

Further more, phylogenetic, epidemiological and pneumonia excess death data all point to an epicentre in Huanan market and an initial spread north of the Yangtze river. See figure 1 in this article: https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(21)00991-...

It took a couple of weeks for this virus to spread south of Yangtze and reach the district where Wuhan Institute of Virology is.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#402

Post by SilasX » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #392

marcosdumay wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that’s invalidated if your first point is valid right? No. There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation. If they did it, it's not COVID-19.

> There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation. There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally. What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee…

Yes, I remember this being a big point of contention with scientists going both ways. I saved this link [1] with the quote:

>“I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” Andersen added.

Although that was from Jan 2020 and I'm sure more evidence has come in since then to shed more light.

https://twitter.com/WendellHusebo/status/1400098956747718660

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#403

Post by SilasX » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

rualca wrote: post #400

Aeolun wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation. There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally. What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee…

> There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (...) have occured naturally. I feel this claim is simply not believable nor possible to take at face value, given that in order for a proof of impossibility to even be considered you need supporting evidence and a falsifiable model, which you have none. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_impossibility Given this, do you have any reference that supports your assertion? I…

You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment: "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)".

If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted scientific theories can't put a "very low probability" on certain things being observed ... what? That's exactly what a scientific theory -- or indeed, any well-posed belief -- should do!

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#404

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #142

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been extremely wary of how some of the evidence of Covid-19 origins have come about, particular because so much of it has been presented as "Well, we've never seen this before, so it must have lab origins." That said, I think the context around this is extremely damning for Daszak. I didn't realize this until reading the Wikipedia article on Daszak, but he was the one that organized the Feb 2020 letter in the La…

>I didn't realize this until reading the Wikipedia article on Daszak, but he was the one that organized the Feb 2020 letter in the Lancet condemning suggestions of a lab origin for Covid-19 as conspiracy theories. Tangent, but if it takes this long to learn a fact like that, consider a critical audit of your regular news sources.

You've mischaracterized what I meant. When I was reading the Intercept article, and it first started talking about EcoHealth and Daszak, the names were familiar but I couldn't remember where I heard them, so I searched and found the Wikipedia article on him, and it was then that I was like "Oh yeah, it's this guy." It's not like some news sources were keeping this information from me.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#405

Post by mdorazio » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

reilly3000 wrote: post #224

If you are an expert in virology I’d love to know the answer to this question: If given the right resources, would it be feasible to synthesize a pandemic-inducing virus in a lab setting? If so, a general question: why haven’t the villains of the world done so already?

Not an expert, but this has more or less already been done [1] and led to a temporary moratorium on this research.

To your last question, releasing such a thing would basically assure your (and your people's) own destruction in addition to your target's, as we've seen by how difficult it has been to control COVID. So you'd have to want everyone dead, and generally speaking the people who would be willing to actually do something like that don't have the resources and knowledge to make it happen.

[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/fouchier...

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#406

Post by colordrops » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

tikiman163 wrote: post #339

Guys, two points here. One, this proposal was rejected. This did not happen! Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of an existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus shows was not the case. This has nothing to do with the corona virus strains we are currently dealing with, and more importantly, there has never been any credible research proving that Covid was made in a lab. The only paper th…

I read the entire thread for this submission last night, which has an amazing amount of deep discussion, to wake up to a comment from a user without much post history saying nothing more than "guys, nothing to see here" pushed to the top. And the account name matches that of many other farmed accounts on Twitter and Reddit, that being two words and some random numbers. I can't help but be very suspicious.

I know this is may be against the hacker news ethos, but ive been on here for 10 years and don't make comments like this lightly.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#407

Post by robflynn » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

avianlyric wrote: post #382

rustymonday wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It likely wasn't made in a lab, but it likely did escape from the lab accidentally.

How does that follow? Where did the virus come from? Viruses don’t spontaneously come into existence in labs. If it wasn’t made in the lab, then it was already naturally occurring. Which means it didn’t need to escape anything, on account of it existing in the wild before it ever got near a lab.

If something were naturally occurring in a remote location where not many humans were around to cause mass spread, and the virus was being studied (but not engineered or modified) and the virus escaped, that could be an example of a naturally occurring, non-manmade, virus which escaped a lab.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#408

Post by rualca » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #403

rualca wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (...) have occured naturally. I feel this claim is simply not believable nor possible to take at face value, given that in order for a proof of impossibility to even be considered you need supporting evidence and a falsifiable model, which you have none. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_impossibility Given this, do you have any reference that supports your assertion? I…

You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment: "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)". If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted scientific theories can't put a "very low probability" on certain things being observed ... what? That's exactly what a scientific theory -- or indeed, any well-posed belief -- should do!

> You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment: "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)".

No, I left out the weasel words from the original claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

Either GP's claim is factual and indeed he is aware of proof of impossibility, or he is not and he's just knowingly spreading disinformation.

> If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted scientific theories (...)

I object to the idea of random people on the internet knowingly spreading disinformation with baseless claims that fly on the face of critical thinking, and then resorting to vague appeals to authority, inversions of the burden of truth, and outright bullying to force-fed their disinformation.

If there is any proof whatsoever supporting the claim that such thing is impossible then just support your claim and present the evidence or source. Don't expect everyone to just take your word for it, specially after you tried desperately to invert the burden of proof.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#409

Post by platz » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

avianlyric wrote: post #382

rustymonday wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It likely wasn't made in a lab, but it likely did escape from the lab accidentally.

How does that follow? Where did the virus come from? Viruses don’t spontaneously come into existence in labs. If it wasn’t made in the lab, then it was already naturally occurring. Which means it didn’t need to escape anything, on account of it existing in the wild before it ever got near a lab.

did you not read anything about the article, it talk about novel modification in a lab that is unlikely to occur in nature, not creation out of whole cloth

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#410

Post by devwastaken » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #392

marcosdumay wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that’s invalidated if your first point is valid right? No. There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation. If they did it, it's not COVID-19.

> There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation. There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally. What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee…

Not how probability works. What's the probability the entire universes atoms are arranged the way they are? The number is so finitely minute it's "impossible", because you're trying to make predictions on specific order out of chaos. The probability of any viruses currently existing would be equally infinitely tiny.

Research is not equivalent. Just because two people make an argument does not make them equally valid. Unless you are a medical researcher you're not meant to somehow know how medical research papers work and what their results are on your own. It's not black and white. It's the same as trying to take electrical engineering papers and base opinions on it without any knowledge of the math or how it works.