China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest • Hacker News Board

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#61

Post by andromeduck » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #43

amvalo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's not engineered doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab. It could be a natural virus that was collected and escaped. The original SARS escaped no less than 3 times from chinese labs following the outbreak.

It could be lots of things. The focus on a possible escape from containment as the source seems odd given that - among other more likely causes - bat guano is also widely used as fertilizer, and bats, like humans, shed coronaviruses in their feces. Except that where we do so only occasionally and only when actively infected, bats' generally higher viral load and the high intraspecific transmissibility of a lot of the…

Except this started in the heart of a city the size of New York, near a market not known to have sold bats, within half a kilometer of a lab known to have been doing research collecting bats from neighboring provinces near villages with people confirmed contracted SARS like viruses from bats per their own state media documentary.

And then there's the behavior of the CCP.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#62

Post by StandardFuture » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

ueudrjjj wrote: post #55

andromeduck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing. That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant fraction of the first known hospitali…

One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.

This is very valid clarification on what I will just name "lab theories". There is a huge differentiation in: 'purposely bio-engineered and intentionally-released' theories, vs. 'someone collected bats in the wild for research, brought them to the Wuhan lab, and there was an accidental pathogen escape during the research.'

The former is entirely dramatic, while the latter is neither dramatic, unreasonable, illogical, or "conspiracy".

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#63

Post by meowface » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #50

meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research in Wuhan. Yeah. Just a coincidence.

Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#64

Post by Noumenon72 » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #20

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

It's not at all a coincidence that there's a lab there. George W. Bush started an anti-pandemic project called PREDICT whose purpose was to collect specimens from bats and other mammals to identify ones that could transfer from bats to humans[1]. They trained and supported the lab in Wuhan. To me if you're looking for zoonotic transfer, one of the most likely places to look is someplace that's actively out there collecting viruses that are zoonotically transferrable.

I still think the program would have been worthwhile even if it did leak the coronavirus. If China thinks the same, I can see why they would try to prevent a backlash against studying viruses.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#65

Post by dlubarov » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #20

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

> Wuhan is a massive city and economic hub

Let's dig into this a bit more though. The WIV's location on Google Maps apparently changed after the incident [1]. I don't know if it was a legitimate correction or what, but for the sake of argument let's suppose that the old location was correct. Then the lab is 8.6 miles from the wet market, or ~14 km.

It looks like the population density in that area is around 10,000 people per km^2, so there are around 400k people in a 14km radius, or about 1/3,000 of China's population.

If we assume

    P(virus from WIV) = 0.01
    P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus from WIV) = 1
    P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus not from WIV) = 1/3,000

Then Bayes' rule gives P(virus from WIV | outbreak in 14km radius) ~= 97%. Even if we reduce our prior to 0.001 (0.1%), the result is still ~75%.

So while I have no idea if the virus was a random mutation or what, I strongly suspect that it's somehow connected to the WIV.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/exdvt6/google_...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#66

Post by stevespang » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Well over 680,000 views in just 4 days:

THE documentary movie on the origin of CCP virus(Coronavirus, an investigative report with scientists interviewed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMJ0EmMfb3U&t=

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#67

Post by papermachete » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #51

papermachete wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.

it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...

They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only engage in political damage control.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#68

Post by alderz » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

2019-nCoV wrote: post #39

Flow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ

Not sure why this is downvoted. It is not Indonesia as the previous child (now deleted) alluded to — the easy tell is the distinct lack of Hijabs visible (which are ubiquitous in the largest Muslim country in the world).

It is Indonesia. See https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-co... for the details. There are signs that are definitely not chinese. You can see them clearly in the original higher quality video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc

The lack of hijabs is due that it is recorded in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, where the majority is christian.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#69

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

alderz wrote: post #52

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?

You might be thinking of this one https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

Yes that is it, thank you! I like that it clears things up like -

> According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.

I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the lab that is 280 meters away and studied bat viruses is a lot more plausible than it originating in a wet market. People make stupid mistakes handling waste all the time. There was no need for the Chinese government to throw the wet market under the bus or for people to imply Chinese people ate bats or some other racially motivated theory and there was no need to believe the chinese government created a bioweapon. Most likely is that it was just a horrible mistake and careless handling of biohazardous waste/animals.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#70

Post by meowface » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #48

meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

There are still lots of other confounding variables there that you need to factor into the probability.

Maybe I shouldn't say overwhelmingly likely for all of those possibilities - a lab escape isn't that unlikely. But there's no evidence of that. If it's true, we indeed may never discover any evidence, but evidence is still required to actually make the claim. As it is now, it's only worthy of speculation.

edit: I edited my original post to make my beliefs more clear.