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CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

nytimes.com

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Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#441

Post by ak217 »

cyberax wrote: post #349
throwawaymaths wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a 19 bp sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade). now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virul…

> there's a 19 bp sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent Sigh. Here's the first line from the patent: "The present invention provides a cDNA of a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus". You don't think that two coronaviruses just might have similar structural proteins?

No. The patent in question: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9587003B2/en

The article: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/virology/articles/10.33...

The sequence (reverse complemented) matches positions 2751-2733 of sequence ID 11652 attached to the patent: https://seqdata.uspto.gov/seqdetail?docId=US09587003B2&publi... - as the other person said, it's located in the S1/S2 furin cleavage site, and produces no BLAST hits outside the SARS-CoV-2 lineage.

It's not entirely clear to me when the sequence was incorporated into the patent - it doesn't look like it was in the first revision. But it looks like it was added before 2020.

The whole theory still has gaps (even if we assume someone was searching specifically within that patent, what would a screen look like to single out that sequence? It would have to be very high throughput and use very sophisticated modeling), but it's interesting.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#442

Post by Beijinger »

It is close to my degree, and it was always the most likely explanation. I am not saying there was purpose, I am not saying there was gain of function, but the connection to the Wuhan lab was obvious.

Don't suspect maliciousness if something can be explained by stupidity!

This was a likely source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8490156/

There was a Chinese master thesis found on the web about this incident that was translated. I can't find any sources now anymore. Maybe it was this one: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/a-chinese-phd-...

Nope. This one: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/masters-thesis-analysis...

There is even a girl that worked in the Wuhan lab and has likely died from this Virus. https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20210117/2...

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#443

Post by AngryData »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #326
AngryData wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it barely moves the needle, specifically because as you have said we have found other remarkably similar viruses in the past. We have known about coronaviruses for almost 100 years, and we have been studying them due to their dangers for atleast 60 years, and it has likely existed since before humans could be called human. And it has been shown to be a highly virulent numerous times in many different forms. No…

You're not saying it, but you're obviously starting with a very different bayseian prior than my 50/50. As someone that makes forecasts for a living, I'd like to see what you're assumptions are about the base rates there. As for how the facts produce modifications to the base rate, personally I think that a virus identified in a cave over a thousand miles away popping up in a very urban area right next to a BSL facil…

Its origin is at a huge meat market full of both hunted and farmed produce and animals both live and dead from all over the country and attended by thousands of people daily. I find that far more convincing than the fact that there was a virology center in an urban area, there are virology centers in tons of large cities and all of them hold samples of many corona viruses because they are incredibly common. The fact that the one that potentially escaped just happens to be incredibly dangerous would seem like an astronomical coincidence if it wasn't released on purpose, and there are many problems with that idea. But the fact that a market full of both live and fresh slaughtered animal products ends up being the origination point of a dangerous virus does not seem coincidental at all, just a mere matter of time.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#444

Post by lamontcg »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #288
therealpygon wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should realize experience in a tangentially related field and there being a lab somewhere in the area is not the same as insight and evidence. That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true. “Low confidence” means that there is a lack of evidence and the st…

There's a paper from 2014 that tried to estimate the annual chance of a pandemic from a lab leak. They estimated it at 2%. I assumed they overestimated a bit for effect and put it at around 1%. Pandemics have historically happened somewhere around ever 100 years. What's that annual probability? 1%. So if you knew NOTHING else, from a bayesian standpoint, if you have to differentiate a once in a 100 year spillover or…

> Now add in the fact that the outbreak occurred right next to a BSL lab.

The outbreak was likely to happen in a large population center near where the bats were. The actual probability that it went north and happened in Wuhan was probably 1-in-12 or so. And the first time there was a coronavirus spillover and pandemic, it happened in Guangzhou. So we rolled 1d12 once and didn't get a 1 and then rolled it again and did. Not that mind-blowingly improbable.

Also, not surprising that the lab was in a major city somewhat central and closer to the bats than e.g. Beijing. Because that is what it was set up to study.

> Now add in the fact that lab workers at that lab got hospitalized with respiratory symtpoms in November.

This has been asserted by a story in the NYT, but never proven and denied by WIV. There's literally no evidence of this.

> and that the virus in question is remarkably similar to one they found in 2013 thousands of miles away,

Still roughly a thousand base pairs and a few decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2. You can't get from RaTG-13 to SARS-CoV-2 in a lab, and there's no evidence they ever had live virus RaTG-13 in the lab.

> and that the COVID virus has just such a furan cleavage site

It had a novel PRRAR furin cleavage site which had never been seen before. Not one that humans would have ever guessed. That is actually strong evidence AGAINST it being lab-made.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#445

Post by tripletao »

jyounker wrote: post #399
dehrmann wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a greater burden of proof for spillover when there just happens to be a lab doing virus research near the epicenter of the outbreak.

There have been two other spillover events from coronaviruses in the last 30 years. One of those (SARS) was from Chinese wet markets. Wuhan has a population of 13 million. It would be surprising if the city didn't have a lab doing virus research.

The WIV had the single largest collection of novel sarbecoviruses in the world. There's zero question that the UNC and WIV wished to engineer those sarbecoviruses to produce an enhanced virus broadly similar to SARS-CoV-2, in their unfunded DEFUSE proposal. An unconfirmed intelligence leak further claims that work was actually performed, at the WIV only.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-p...

Lots of cities have "a lab doing virus research". There's no reason to shift to that broader category except willful obfuscation, though.

As to prior spillovers, proximal hosts have been identified for those other two coronaviruses (SARS-1 and MERS), for both within a ~year of emergence. For SARS-CoV-2, we're still waiting.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#446

Post by hakfoo »

Izkata wrote: post #412
jdietrich wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. The precise cause of the 2019 pandemic is only a very minor variable in that analysis, because that specific outcome doesn't change the underlying probability of a lab leak. More to the point, do we realistically believe that everyone will stop doing it, even if there's a credible international moratorium? If not…

> The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. Has there ever been benefit to such research? People fall back on wishy-washy "we could learn ___" when trying to defend it, but with how long it's been going on have we ever actually had a solid benefit from it?

Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?"

We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the silicon fab: the underlying science is viewpoint-neutral, but people will be overwhelmed by doom scenarios associated with it.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#447

Post by dmix »

Fomite wrote: post #341
scarab92 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive the silly question, but does the lab leak theory entail the virus being engineered in the lab, or simply sampled from nature by researchers then not adequately contained? I’m not clear on what exactly is being alleged by these agencies?

One of the key parts of the lab leak hypothesis is that, depending on who is advancing it, it ranges from "poor biocontainment of a natural virus" to "engineered and released" with everything in between.

What does the biocontainment angle entail? They keep the bodies of animals (or live ones) or samples?

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#448

Post by what »

hansvm wrote: post #314
pstuart wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Clarifying: Many of the pardoned individuals have video evidence of assaulting police with weapons and claim to be part of organizations diametrically opposed to BLM, Antifa, and the FBI. Are they: 1. Lying, masquerading as Trump supporters in deep cover for many years (secretly a part of the organizations you're blaming, despite playing part in an attempted coup that would have opposed those organizations and despit…

[flagged]

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#449

Post by ahartmetz »

jdietrich wrote: post #367
jtc331 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.

The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. The precise cause of the 2019 pandemic is only a very minor variable in that analysis, because that specific outcome doesn't change the underlying probability of a lab leak. More to the point, do we realistically believe that everyone will stop doing it, even if there's a credible international moratorium? If not…

GoF pro: might help in some case, to the best of our knowledge never did. (Some scientists like their deadly toys!)

GoF contra: might cause a pandemic, kill millions, probably did.

So, yeah, I don't know, tough decision.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#450

Post by gtgvdfc »

DonHopkins wrote: post #227
nxm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.

[flagged]

Who's "they"? You just grabbed a bunch of different arguments you disagree with and then bunched them all together with the lab leak.

Btw, I wouldn't remind people of "horse dewormer" debacle I were you - you come off as anti-science.

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