What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#581

Post by skrebbel » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 5:59 AM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #252

theptip wrote: post #45

I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.

Whatever toy gain of function research someone is doing in a lab vastly pales in comparison to the enormous gain of function 'experiment' we are right now performing worldwide with the continued high transmission rate of COVID-19. Look at what variants like Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 have evolved into, they are quite possibly the most infectious and dangerous air spread pathogens known to man. These didn't come from a lab…

> quashing this virus for good.

This is impossible. You'd kill the host together with the virus.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#582

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

handmodel wrote: post #366

dehrmann wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in tech, what bothers me is all the attention AI gets for possible ethical problems, while biologists are doing some pretty scary experiments with potentially large-scale negative consequences, and they've gotten relatively little attention.

It's also very weird that the same type of people who normally talk about corporations/governments covering up pollutants do not talk about how many people could die from a potential lab leak.

Every single pandemic before SC2 was of natural origin. You have to make a much more persuasive case than "people could die from a lab leak" to ban research that could plausibly reduce the death toll from the next pandemic.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#583

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

fortuna86 wrote: post #260

shadowgovt wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It could also have come from nature and while it was being studied in the lab, a similar strain made a jump to humans.

Yes but in that case, why would it emerge in Wuhan, hundreds of miles away from Southern China, where Coronaviruses actually exist in nature ?

I'm not sure where people developed this idea that coronaviruses don't exist near Wuhan. I've corrected it like a dozen times in this thread, but there are absolutely horseshoe bats in Hubei and there are absolutely coronaviruses in those bats -- including some close ancestors to SarsCov2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711/figures/1

See the RF1 and RM1 in the bottom chart? Sars-like bat coronaviruses from Hubei Province!

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#584

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:16 AM UTC

WithinReason wrote: post #281

Just a reminder that the predecessor of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-1 leaked from the lab 4 (yes, four) times. The Wikipedia page lists 3 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... Biosecurity incidents are shockingly common.

Just a reminder that the predecessor of Covid-19 was a pandemic of zoonotic origin that had multiple spillovers from animal hosts into humans. That virus was eventually studied and some lab workers were indeed infected but the origin was unquestionably natural.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#585

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:22 AM UTC

ayjchan wrote: post #531

This is Alina Chan, one of the co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. I’m going to answer some of the questions that have come up in the comments. 1. Are Chan and Ridley selling a book? Yes, the updated paperback comes out in the US next week: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/viral-matt-ridleyalin... The updated epilogue now discusses three significant new developments since the publication…

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#586

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:23 AM UTC

rory wrote: post #443

BeefWellington wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also confused about that - there are tons of horseshoe bats in Hubei Province including in caves 60 miles from Wuhan[1] and there are absolutely sars-like coronaviruses in the horseshoe bats in Hubei.

RM1 and RF1 in this paper are sars-like bat coronaviruses isolated from horseshoe bats in Hubei:

https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/docserver/fulltext/jgv/...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#587

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:28 AM UTC

adeelk93 wrote: post #567

Aeolun wrote: post #565

The whole world is tired of COVID. We all just want to move on. Besides, what are we going to do when we do confirm it was a lab leak? We can hardly make these lvl 3/4 facilities any more secure than they already are, and it’s not as if China will ever actually take any form of blame (nor would the US, if it leaked there).

Not have those labs? That’s one solution. Is the study of virology worth all the loss and suffering caused by a pandemic?

That this specific pandemic may have came from a lab -- but every other one didn't should perhaps give a clue to the stakes of "the study of virology". It's not some high-minded philosophical pursuit -- we know that pandemics regularly kill substantial percentages of the world population, the study of virology is the study of reducing the impact of pandemics.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#588

Post by taneq » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #493

incrudible wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a substantial value, to be sure. But I also look at it the other way: COVID was perhaps the smallest scale event that could produce fundamental change in the way we (as in, humans) approach biodefense and disease control. If we needed a wakeup call, better to have it now than ~2100, when we're estimated to reach peak population + continued concentration in cities.

This is what I've been saying all along. COVID-19 is just about the gentlest possible practice run for a seriously nasty pandemic. From what we've seen so far, if we did encounter something more deadly, we would not do well.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#589

Post by mikeyouse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:38 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #396

status200 wrote: post #338

I have tried to get a biologist / someone with more scientific knowledge than me to either help peer review, confirm or debunk this paper by Steven Quay: https://zenodo.org/record/4642956 It seems so scientific and created a buzz when it came out, it has been the most thorough explanation of the lab leak theory, but I never saw a decent discussion that either helped confirm or debunk the ideas within.

I think it's kind of rubbish but 140 pages long and most serious scientist have better things to do than going through all that. But at a glance he seems to be using bayesian analysis in a not very valid way.

Plenty of people have been through and debunked it. Quay is an unqualified kook (eat broccoli and brush your teeth to avoid Covid!) who was specifically chosen to make the argument for lab leak. It's no way to do science and it's as useful as you'd expect for a physician performing their first bayesian analysis on a topic that they aren't familiar with.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#590

Post by kaitaincps » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

One thing I would point out here: Shi Zhengli is the principal bat-borne sarbecovirus researcher at the WIV. When the pandemic first came to light, the first thought Shi Zhengli had was, "Oh my goodness! That might have have come from our lab! Let's investigate! I wonder if the municipal health authority has got it wrong. I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China."

Zhengli goes on to report that she was apparently enormously relieved to discover that so far as she could tell, the outbreak had not come from her lab.

All well and good, but... When she was told about the nature of the epidemic, and the kind of virus it was, why was Shi Zhengli's first instinct that it might have leaked from her lab? Don't you think this is curious? What does she know that made her turn to that possibility immediately? Why didn't she simply assume, like most others, that it was some new natural pathogen arising from zoonotic transfer?