Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#611

Post by tripletao » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #603

tripletao wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly this is unlike e.g. the 1977 flu pandemic, whose genetic sequence provided strong evidence that it was an accidental release of something derived from a stored 1950 sample. Even so, at the time the WHO said "laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395…

Hi you'll see elsewhere that I was very open about the fact that I, too, think an open and honest investigation from third parties is necessary. Seriously just search this page for "independent" or "investigation." I have said that several times on this post, and in the OP I linked as well. I am 100% in support of that and always have been. I just don't think the outcome will be conclusive, but I hope it will maybe p…

Then it seems like from a policy standpoint, you actually agree with Alina Chan, David Relman, Richard Ebright, etc. that a forensic investigation (i.e., an investigation that doesn't rely entirely on trust of the people providing information, similar to a financial audit) of the WIV's samples and records is necessary? That would imply you disagree with the Chinese government and with the WHO team's report, whose conclusion that lab origin was "extremely unlikely" was generally taken as meaning no further study of that scenario was required.

In any case, I certainly have work that I should be doing too, though lower-stakes than your exam. I'm not looking for solace or blame here; I just don't want another pandemic. Certainly this one might have been caused by exotic wildlife trading, or guano collection by farmers, or other nonscientific activity, and those activities should be restricted. But unless and until the WIV's collection and lab manipulation of novel potential pandemic pathogens can be confidently excluded as the cause, I don't see why anyone would permit that work either.

I'd privately guess that the Chinese government has already imposed such restrictions, and that while Shi's group may still publish occasionally for the sake of appearances their volume of risky research will fall sharply--the CCP doesn't want to lose face, but they don't want another pandemic either. Of course there's no way to confirm or refute that prediction but to wait and see.

Final note, I see that you wrote your "CoVID-19 did not come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology" post about a year ago. At the time, I would have mostly agreed with you; but since then no proximal animal host has been found, and quite a lot of Chinese-government obstruction has been. It's uncomfortable to adjust a position when you've previously made a strong statement; but that's a lot better than getting locked in to a position that you adopted based on less evidence than is available today.

Anyways, good luck on your exam. I'll continue to do everything I can to ensure that my group's designs don't explode or catch fire, and I hope you'll do the same with the risk that your (prospective) group starts a pandemic.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#612

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #358

clairity wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the american experiment in democracy was to make the government synonymous with the people. certainly that was pulled back a bit by the republican (as in republic, not the political party) elements by our founders, who were themselves 'elites' of the time. in china, the communist party is meant to be the same: a party of (all) the people. certainly xenophobia expresses itself acutely in mediopolitical contexts where…

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the American experiment is about making the government synonymous with the people. The American experiment was all about splitting the governmental power among different entities, keeping the government small and letting the people preserve freedom and power - while still being protected by the government. The constitution is a tool to prevent the government from overreaching…

> ... we need to try anarcho-capitalism.

This is the worst idea I've ever heard. [1]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#613

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

Igelau wrote: post #385

jokethrowaway wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the American experiment is about making the government synonymous with the people. The American experiment was all about splitting the governmental power among different entities, keeping the government small and letting the people preserve freedom and power - while still being protected by the government. The constitution is a tool to prevent the government from overreaching…

> I'm not sure where you got the idea that the American experiment is about making the government synonymous with the people. It's a common mistake to conflate the Gettysburg Address ("government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth") and the Preamble of the US Constitution ("We the people...")

The whole point of the electoral college was to intermediate the people and the government. The fear was that information wouldn't travel quickly enough to all edges of the realm, and that people couldn't therefore be trusted to make an electoral decision.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#614

Post by clairity » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #612

jokethrowaway wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the American experiment is about making the government synonymous with the people. The American experiment was all about splitting the governmental power among different entities, keeping the government small and letting the people preserve freedom and power - while still being protected by the government. The constitution is a tool to prevent the government from overreaching…

> ... we need to try anarcho-capitalism. This is the worst idea I've ever heard. [1] [1] https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

that had me literally laughing out loud. although to be fair, it was only depicting libertarian capitalism. anarcho-capitalism would be more like westworld on steroids.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#615

Post by jashmatthews » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

nyokodo wrote: post #610

lostlogin wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. And those figures are for the country, not a city. The point made that Auckland has a lot of travellers. It is true that in absolute terms NZ has small trade and travel relative to the UK and US, but those factors are far from being the only reasons that NZ has suffered less death and destruction. It’s more that the UK an…

> Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. Yes, hence my "per capita" comment. The risk of infection getting into a country is more of a function of how much total traffic it gets rather than the per-capita traffic. > And those figures are for the country, not a city. Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, an…

NZ had swine flu just 10 days after the USA. Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin. Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#616

Post by learnstats2 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

infogulch wrote: post #83

learnstats2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a) should have been likely Given that coronavirus would not be observable until there is a cluster of symptomatic cases in a city (and a doctor with relevant experience who can observe multiple cases - here 李文亮), I find it highly unlikely that we could observe earlier cases, if they spread less rapidly or outside a city - or even within another city with less institutional knowledge. > b) China would be highly ince…

> China being incentivized to act in that situation, doesn't affect how likely or unlikely that situation was. China being incentivized to find evidence supporting the CCP's desired image absolutely does affect how likely it would be for such evidence to surface if it exists. We see virtually no such evidence; we can assume that's not because China's lack of trying to find it; which should adjust our prior against su…

My belief is simply that there is no such evidence.

Reasonably convincing evidence, to me, would be:

- genetic precursor virus particles which have died and no longer exist - they are extinct, or,

- dated blood samples with immunological evidence of infection, sufficient that it isn’t just tampered/false positives. There’s no reason to expect this would have been collected.

i.e. if you haven’t collected it by 2019, there is never going to be any evidence.

This also answers your sibling commenter: it’s not in China’s interest to publicise any such search, when the odds of discovering anything (even if there were earlier infections) are vanishingly low.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#617

Post by chub500 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

inciampati wrote: post #491

lostinquebec wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this works, so forgive my ignorance. Wouldn't the Wuhan lab be able to disprove this really easily? How often do they sequence viruses? Couldn't they show categorically that COVID-19 is not a descendant of a virus they were working with/on?

No, it's impossible for them to categorically show that it wasn't. However, they could make an extremely strong case if they completely documented all ongoing research activities in the lab before the beginning of the pandemic. This would involve total disclosure of the activity of every researcher, open access to all materials and the sequencing of all viral samples and cultures. It is not feasible to do this probab…

I had never heard this before. Do you have a source? It seems to me the more informed in virology people are the more they seem to think the 'leak' is the most likely scenario.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#618

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

paledot wrote: post #567

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick, but important: saying "wealth redistribution (from the bottom to the top)" implies there's a fixed amount of wealth, like a pie, and the "top" are getting a bigger and bigger slice. A lot of people actually think like this, and it's incorrect. It's more correct to think of e.g. Carlos or Elon as leading efforts to bake lots and lots more pie, and then keeping a lot of the pie for themselves. The dominant the…

Not true. The people in the middle expand the pie, the people at the top (the 1% of the 1%) eat it. And the people at the bottom are indeed having a harder and harder time.

I hear what you're saying, and I think it hinges on how you assign credit for making more pie. Did the employee make the pie, or did the person choosing deploying the capital that particular way make the pie?

In any case, the point I think is important, and which I wanted to make, is "more pie, not dividing up the same pie" which works with both our stories.

Edit: oh, and I think it's probably not true that the people at the bottom are having a "harder and harder time". It of course would depend on which metrics you pick, but I generally understand that sort of sentiment as popular in the media but wrong in a Better-Angels-of-our-Nature kind of way. I could believe that people at the bottom are getting a smaller share percentage-wise, but the actual amount of pie they're getting is growing. People are living longer, healthier lives, there's less food insecurity, etc.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#619

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 11:49 PM UTC

drran wrote: post #518

phyalow wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah very interesting, I had no idea about that. Thanks for sharing.

The first covid-like epidemic was in November 2019 in South part of the Russian Federation, where Vector lab is located: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh11FtfaP0 Turn on subtitles, then select automatic translation -> English in options.

This seems rather unlikely based on how quickly covid spreads in countries that don't take many precautions or slow to quarantine (like the USA and Russia) . Only countries that lock down fast and decisively like China, Korea, and Taiwan kept it under semblence of control initially.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#620

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #425

rsync wrote: post #153

Once again, I will ask for (what I believe is) an interesting piece of context ... How many labs like this one are there in the world ? Are there 20,000 of them ? Are there 7 ? Of the labs like this one in the world, how many of them are doing GoF research on coronaviruses ? 1200 of them ? 1 of them ? This won't be conclusive but given the reasonable heuristics that I work with, having a sense of these proportions wo…

This depends how you define "like this one"; but Zhengli Shi personally discovered the origin of SARS in bats, and her group is probably the world's top researcher of such viruses. The only lab I'm aware of that's remotely competitive is Ralph Baric's. If anyone knows of others with programs of similar scale, please post citations. Of course far more virology labs exist in the world. But since this pandemic is SARS-l…

Your last point is my biggest bullet point for being skeptical.