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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

vanityfair.com

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#681

Post by bartimus »

Jarwain wrote: post #312
lamontcg wrote: post #185

> Wade devoted a full section to the “furin cleavage site,” a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells. > Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the…

There are so many "shocking" articles, but here's something I don't get: The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar. When it only has 29,903 base pairs, that's 1,136 mutations. I'm no bioscientist but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutation…

> The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar.

How did you come by 3.8%?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#682

Post by christophilus »

sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

It’s not surprising. The lab leak hypothesis was one of several obvious and logical hypotheses, but it’s the only one that we were consistently told was Dangerous and Disallowed Thought.

Even if it turns out to be a false hypothesis, it’s outrageous that it was treated the way it was for so long, with such vitriol, and with such unanimity before any real investigation had been done.

I’ve got no dog in this fight, but the way this hypothesis was treated gets my libertarian hackles up.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#683

Post by calsy »

peter422 wrote: post #90
jkhdigital wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Listen, if you are prepared to seriously consider a lab leak, then you have to assume that any public statements from Chinese authorities are dubious. I’m pretty sure my own government makes dubious statements all the time so it’s not hard to imagine.

I’m seriously considering it and put it higher than 0%. But if you think your hypothesis is the most likely outcome (>50%), and your defense at any evidence that discounts your view is that it is a giant and incredible cover up by the Chinese government then I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies. And also remember the people that leaked that 2-3 employees were hos…

You obviously have no idea how much control and influence the Chinese government exerts over its citizens. I really don't know how people can still be so blatantly naive about how communist parties operate and how they maintain power over their citizens.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#684

Post by zpeti »

bildung wrote: post #638
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or all the effort to not call it China Virus/Wuhan flu because that's racist and we don't name viruses after places anymore. Virus variants named after places on the other hand are apparently perfectly fine. So we don't have the Chinese virus but we do have British, Brazilian and Indian variants.

Nobody in the world except the US right called it that, and it is indeed uncommon to name viruses after its place of origin.

Literally any new variant has been called by its origin in the last year: -kent/brit variant -indian variant -california variant

What are you on about?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#685

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

lifeformed wrote: post #317
kaesar14 wrote: post #54

It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums. Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.

The way I remember it was that people conflated the lab leak theory with it being engineered in a lab. Those are very different things but easy to mix up in a headline. It being engineered as a bioweapon is in the realm of a crackpot theory, but it being just a poorly contained natural research project was fairly reasonable. Some prominent people mixed the two up on purpose and eventually the whole thing - both ideas…

I can definitely say that's what I understood outlets to mean, that it could have come from the lab in both contexts.

I guess I don't quite follow with how people would think that it being a weapon that spread intentionally or unintentionally is the base case.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#686

Post by TeMPOraL »

rayiner wrote: post #329
version_five wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the only really horrible thing is the way that anything other than the mainstream version of events was treated. I think there are different plausible theories, and I'm not surprised they have different adherents that are mostly all motivated by something other than a pure quest for the truth. That's life. If this was e.g. a civil or criminal trial, you'd see the same thing. The only difference is, in a trial,…

That’s another symptom of the same disease. People have an idea that “trust the experts” can replace all the messy, gross, and often wrong processes we have developed to deal with the fact nobody can be trusted. Trusting scientists involved in gain of function research will neutrally investigate the origins of the pandemic is one manifestation of that conceit. So is trusting fact checkers and review panels to decide…

'geofft upthread has a good point about assigning blame: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27389537.

Perhaps it would've been easier for the scientists involved in gain of function research to remain unbiased, if they weren't fully aware that anything but total denial will make the world think they're responsible - as a profession and individuals - without as much as shred of evidence to support it.

> People have an idea that “trust the experts” can replace all the messy, gross, and often wrong processes we have developed to deal with the fact nobody can be trusted.

I observe the opposite. People seem to have the idea that experts are always in on it, or out to get something out of a crisis, and thus should be ignored. The alternative is, of course, to listen to whatever uninformed opinion piece confirms one's worldview the most. I think we'd all do better with trusting the experts more - they may be wrong, but they're also in the best position to discover and correct that. They may be also right. Most people - including journalists, pundits and bloggers - are not capable of telling whether experts are right or wrong. So trusting them seems like a better bet than trusting random opinions (unless yourself you have enough familiarity with the field, at which point your own interpretation may be valid too).

C.f. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#687

Post by dalbasal »

yarcob wrote: post #524

One thing that's baffling to me is that I've not seen any discussion from scientists who actually know what they are talking about. All we get are articles who talk about the political side, and try to prove things by how certain actors behaved. Most of the actual science that all the articles cite are pop-sci simplifications at best. People talk about how parts from multiple viruses would be joined together etc, how…

I agree. It's a structural weakness.

Human stories about conflicts of interest, ideological takes focused on confluency with grander theories, politically factionalization and such make the better story. Hard positions make better stories than skeptical ambiguity.

That can't be helped. Most people are going to read the compelling story, so that will be what major publications print. We do need some sort of journalism that doesn't do this. Someone needs to research and investigate this without populist considerations playing a role. Not instead of what we have, in addition to.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#688

Post by shlant »

harryf wrote: post #6
bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

It gets worse - gain of function research was banned under Obama until the ban was lifted in 2017 under Trump - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... I can’t find sources for this right now but apparently Dr Anthony Fauci played a key role in getting the ban lifted. He’s also the head of the NIAID ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci ) which (apparently) is the ultimate source for…

> I assume this is getting down-voted either because is sounds like conspiracy theory

I would imagine that is true and it's because how you are presenting it is absolutely conspiratorial. You seem to be very adamant about involving Fauci with weak evidence which is the MO for almost all other biased conspiracy theorists in regards to this topic.

Fauci seems to be a scapegoat for many peoples frustrations with very little rational reasoning - similar to Soros and BLM. Conspiracy theorists rarely talk about the repercussions of their perspectives or tangible calls to action and instead get obsessed with who to blame and nefarious-by-default tangential financial associations.

Maybe if you addressed some of the evidence in the article or even the content of the comment you are replying to then your comment wouldn't be perceived in the same light.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#689

Post by lmm »

chrischen wrote: post #275
lmm wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more important takeaway is don't shout down those who are skeptical if you haven't actually investigated the authorities' credibility yourself. Get comfortable with not knowing, with being agnostic on a lot of issues, because it's often the only reasonable position. (The most important takeaway is to ignore Twitter - not "social media", but specifically Twitter).

So I give every quack the same attention, legitimacy, as say, an expert I trust? That's almost as bad advice as trust no one and do my own research for everything.

No, you make your own judgements, but you don't publish them. Otherwise initially legitimate credibility gets amplified to unreasonable levels because everyone ends up circularly reasoning that the more credible people are more credible.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#690

Post by TeMPOraL »

ButtSpark69 wrote: post #569
starfallg wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The marketplace of ideas is better than trusting gatekeepers of knowledge. That's such a simplification of the real situation that it's harmful to apply as an axiom. There are many levels of the marketplace of ideas. Ideally, the gatekeepers of knowledge also create a marketplace of ideas so that expert opinion is varied and shifts as new information come in. This is in inline with what we're seeing here. The market…

No one argued that it should be applied as an axiom. You're responding to an argument that wasn't made. Also, the "gatekeepers of knowledge" have a mostly.....negative past when you look at the sum of recorded human history. Are you arguing that humans today are just way better and far more trustworthy than the rest of history?

Let's be sure to use the same definition of "gatekeepers" for the past and present knowledge. What I see is, people look at the past examples of politicians and religious leaders telling people what to believe, and try to use those to dismiss opinions of present-day domain specialists. Which is a nasty case of motte-and-bailey fallacy.
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