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

441–450 of 792 posts

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#441

Post by cameldrv »

lamontcg wrote: post #392
ChemSpider wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all of the people in those emails have updated their priors to favor zoonosis, According the to released FOIA'ed emails, these scientists changed their mind within 1-2 days from "wow, could really be a lab leak" to "lab leak is a conspiracy theory" - why that? None of them can explain what made them change their mind on this short time frame in spring 2020. Was there new knowledge? A break thru experiment? They ref…

A lot of them thought that no sarbecoviruses had a furin cleavage site and when they were first exposed to the issue by the headlines they assigned an overly high estimate to the FCS as being evidence of human tampering. Then other experts pointed out that isn't uncommon at all, and they all adjusted their thinking. "Woah, that's a million to one odds, that can't be by chance!" "No, it's actually really common, here'…

I don't think that there are any Sarbecoronaviruses other than SARS2 that have an FCS. This paper from 2021 supports that conclusion [1]. There are other Coronaviruses that have an FCS, but not Sarbecoronaviruses, and none of them use PRRA. Those twelve amino acids have essentially come out of nowhere.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#442

Post by peteradio »

ethbr0 wrote: post #420
themitigating wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious?

I like that the two sibling comments above are "Obviously, everyone knows {polar opposites}."

To be totally honest I don't even believe in my comment but it felt like the right retort, I have literally know clue what OP is saying. Can you flag balderdash?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#443

Post by rory »

BeefWellington wrote: post #321
water554 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It’s not where they exist in the wild. The closest related virus (RATG-13) to n-cov-2 come from northern china (Yunnan), where they were imported to the Wuhan virology lab to study. What a coincidence!

Firstly, Yunnan is in the southwest of China. Secondly, other Coronaviruses have appeared in southern China -- notably the original SARS' first known case was in November of 2002 in Guangdong.[1] Wuhan is well-placed (relatively centrally) to do that kind of research. Thirdly, RaTG13 likely isn't the closest related known virus anymore.[2][3] [1]: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20030411/sars-timeline-of-ou... [2]: h…

Quality comment. That person is confused about a couple things, but the main point that Wuhan is 1-2000km from the most likely places to find such a virus in the wild.

It could have been brought to Wuhan in a human, in an animal to eat, in an animal to study, or in a culture. I don't see how newer evidence eliminates any of those possibilities.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#445

Post by ikrenji »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #314
rzz3 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Occam’s is a logical shortcut, not a method of scientific conclusion. I personally suspect a lab leak origin, but I can’t say I have conclusive evidence. I just find it extremely likely based on a myriad of circumstantial evidence, and a lack of any conclusive evidence of natural origin.

I find it extremely unlikely given what I know about biology and how viruses and epidemiology works. Lack of transparency in China is no proof, it's standard operating procedure. They'll try to CYA even if they didn't do anything wrong, maybe especially then. The simplest and most probable way the pandemic started really is the way pandemics usually start: by a pathogen jumping from an animal species to Humans, witho…

it is really not extremely unlikely. mainly because it happened multiple times previously in china with sars epidemic. there is a precedent

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#446

Post by mikeyouse »

dekhn wrote: post #436
mikeyouse wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their accuracy is completely subject to stable mutation rate and frequency of sample -- with that second paper, they were working with ~10 samples from 15 years ago vs. thousands of samples with hourly granularity and entirely traceable transmission chains in the early days of Covid. Completely different capabilities arise with Covid-level specificity.

Thanks, I'll have to give this some deep thought, it's news to me that having that much more data gives you high resolution in real time.

It's more a matter of decreasing the error bars on the rate of substitution, to have extremely specific dates for the oldest infections in each clade and the ability to run real-time backtesting to make sure your assumptions are solid. The rate of spread of Covid was a curse but was important to this type of work -- when we were looking at contact tracing and trying to assess the rate of substitution on mutations, it was useful to know that e.g. on Jan 1st there was no Covid in NYC and on Feb 1st there was.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#447

Post by gojomo »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #393
gojomo wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lab worker who was careless (if not depressed/malicious) could just as easily carry out two variants as one. One animal shedded... two variants of virus? How did the animal get it, when no other nearby wild or market animals in the (lackluster) investigation around Wuhan, or since elsewhere, have shown candidate SARS-CoV2/precursor viruses? They proposed adding the FCS to existing viruses where FCS hadn't been seen…

> One animal shedded... two variants of virus Maybe, but more likely two different ones out of the many millions of poorly documented animals in the East Asia animal trade. Certainly more plausible than a single lab engineering two very distinct linages for no good reason. > That didn't mean that actually outracing nature to make the hypothesized worse viruses in accelerated lab processes was a good risk-reducing ide…

How would two different non-bat animals shed two different (but closely-related) bat viruses, in a market with no bats, and far away from the bat caves where related viruses are documented? And further, manage this with no evidence of any other animals infected with related viruses in that region, nor along the trade routes any such animals/viruses must have followed?

Those were the two luckiest bat-viruses ever!

On the other hand, the research lab across town had collected hundreds of such bat viruses from far away - suspiciously never fully catalogued.

EcoHealth belatedly reported in late 2021 to the NIH, its funder that it had already, prior to May 2019:

• created a new, chimeric SHC014-WIV1 virus that was more virulent in human tissue than the (relatively benign) natural WIV1 virus

• took a natural virus that was already highly deadly, MERS, & added new binding sites

You can read an overview from The Intercept at https://theintercept.com/2021/10/21/virus-mers-wuhan-experim...>, or a (partially-redacted) suspiciously-late EcoHealth report to the NIH at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21089573-priority-gr...> which describes these experiments.

Note also that per The Intercept, an EcoHealth spokesman had previously denied any such MERS gain-of-function experimentation had occurred - claiming instead it was only "suggested as an alternative and was not undertaken".

So: EcoHealth lied.

What if someone's secret budget, or pre-grant investigational work, had helped WIV do exactly the FCS addition they'd already asked for funding to do? That'd be a sufficient, and straightforward, way to get a SARS-CoV2-like virus from less-human-adapted viruses in nature.

And while this route isn't proven – perhaps because those involved have been suspiciously uncooperative – this hypothetical origin has more supporting evidence than "luckiest bat viruses ever snuck to Wuhan from a thousand miles away, zoonosed in Wuhan twice in rapid succession, leaving no sick animals or people anywhere else, despite a giant search".

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#448

Post by ikrenji »

fortuna86 wrote: post #258
warning26 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering this literally happened before at the Wuhan lab (among a group of sample collectors), this is, I think, the most likely scenario.

I agree. What is the previous case you mentioned, do you have a citation ?

not for wuhan but lab workers got infected with coronaviruses in the past...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#449

Post by incrudible »

ethbr0 wrote: post #410
rzz3 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth Not to be glib, but what would be a legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth? That this plausibly could have been of natural origin would seem to override any value in discerning where it actually came from. If it was a lab leak, "Oops." We hastened it occuring naturally by some amount of time. Lots of people…

You underestimate the time value of not having a pandemic today, as opposed to perhaps hundreds of years in the future. Serial passage through humanized mice is not exactly something that happens in nature.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#450

Post by mikeyouse »

pbreit wrote: post #414
bayesian_horse wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand biology. It is possible to date the divergence of genomes using a genetic clock. So they know if those spike proteins had been recombinated. Serial passage in mice can't be ruled out but is quite out there. Lots of theories can't be completely ruled out, but wild speculation like that is not very productive. For the lab-leak theory to be true, a "pandemicable" zoonotic virus (a VERY rare thing) h…

Less probable than such a coronavirus originating in Wuhan of all places?

The WIV was in Wuhan due to the proximity of coronaviruses and other bat-borne diseases like rhabdovirusus.. this line of logic is akin to blaming shark research centers in South Africa for nearby attacks.
Post reply on HN