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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#71

Post by user3939382 »

stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

I guess I'm more cynical, maybe even conspiratorial. My theory is that NIH was possibly, even if indirectly, contributing funding to the research that caused the outbreak, and that the major corporate media networks are there to shill for the establishment forces in the government and hushed this story as not to humiliate Fauci and the NIH.

I've seen Rand Paul credibly grilling Fauci on this issue a number of times and each time, the propaganda machine on reddit came out to damage control for Fauci.

The larger problem, beyond whether we funded this or not, whether or not it was a bat, is that the media and leaders in the government have repeatedly shown themselves to be completely undeserving of trust and so you're left guessing what the truth is with whatever limited information you have access to.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#72

Post by rob_c »

But don't worry the 'scientific hive mind of the internet' will now come to correct this, except it's no longer a pointlessly political topic. It's fairly set in stone the blame lies with the chinese state.

Also it's extremely unlikely to kill you if you're under 50 to the point of being not a statistically significant cause of death (unlike guns). But we still need to acrew so much national debt that we might as well have put humans in a space colony as a species...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#73

Post by phatboyslim »

fguerraz wrote: post #31

It's not that the origin story is not important, it's not that people don't care, it's that it is a distraction. It doesn't help solve the crisis. The article makes the comparison with a nuclear bomb. This is a bad comparison. If we were attacked by a sentient creature, we could reason with it and mitigate further damage or escalation. In the case of a virus, it's good to know to prevent future pandemics maybe, and t…

The origin story is paramount to preventing future outbreaks and to the loss of, and disruption to, our way of life. The US took the same position on combating terrorism when it rooted out Al-Qaeda. To stop future loss of life, the root cause needs to be identified and dealt with. I vehemently disagree with the assessment that the origin is not instrumental to the defense of future outbreaks.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#74

Post by letmevoteplease »

NationalPark wrote: post #36
throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

Can you link some sources here? Call me skeptical, but if the evidence is as convincing as you make it sound, then it implies a pretty widespread conspiracy among experts (of many countries and affiliations) who would understand the implications yet are deliberately mis-communicating via their podcasts, news appearances, papers in famous journals, etc. Are there any papers published on this or is it just in the book…

"We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”) that was submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25). The 2018 proposal to DARPA was not funded, but we do not know whether some of the proposed work was subsequently carried out in 2018 or 2019, perhaps using another source of funding.

"We also know that that this research team would be familiar with several previous experiments involving the successful insertion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV-1 (26) and other coronaviruses, and they had a lot of experience in construction of chimeric SARS-like viruses (27–29). In addition, the research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC α (19), which was extensively characterized at UNC (17, 18). For a research team assessing the pandemic potential of SARS-related coronaviruses, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be efficiently cleaved by host furin present in the target location (epithelial cells) of an important target organ (lung), of the target organism (human)—might be a rational, if not obvious, choice of FCS to introduce into a virus to alter its infectivity, in line with other work performed previously."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#75

Post by barneygale »

kazz wrote: post #38

> As you may have guessed from our strange spelling, UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places. Ahh yes, definitely the mission statement of a reputable source.

UnHerd has a following among conspiracy theorists, but its journalism is pretty good! E.g. here's an interview with Sajid Javid (UK minister for health) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7yZZKlg-m8

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#76

Post by hammock »

stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

> I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself.

You list some reasons, and I have in my mind a different reason.

There was a media blackout on the lab leak hypothesis because China put the kibosh on it, and since the US is dependent on Chinese exports for healthcare, PPE, defense and other critical supply lines, we did not want to piss them off.

Direction to the media for this blackout came from the US State Dept, and Mike Pompeo confirmed as much in semi-public comments that I will link if I ever find them again.

edit: this isn't the source I was thinking of, and it fingers the IC not State. I will keep looking https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-l...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#77

Post by dekhn »

With the lack of any really strong unequivocal data supporting any real hypothesis, I think people got tired of arguing about it and recognized that throwing around huge claims with massive implications was probably irresponsible.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#78

Post by Bromeo »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #44
NationalPark wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link some sources here? Call me skeptical, but if the evidence is as convincing as you make it sound, then it implies a pretty widespread conspiracy among experts (of many countries and affiliations) who would understand the implications yet are deliberately mis-communicating via their podcasts, news appearances, papers in famous journals, etc. Are there any papers published on this or is it just in the book…

You can find the primary source for the DARPA leak on hn; if you care to verify that the sequence comes from a patent yourself directly from primary sources, you can find instructions on how to do that on hn too. I've done the search myself, it's real. I can't provide direct sources for the fact that these predictions preceded the discoveries, but I can tell you they ran through my head, and others I talked to, and t…

I assume the DARPA leak is this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644428

~700pts, ~450 comments, with the source published 23. September 2021.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#79

Post by synergy20 »

Based on what China's reaction to the source-chasing-efforts, I have no doubt it is where this is originated.

Wuhan is a huge city with the only lab on earth that works with SARS, virus-leak is not uncommon in China over the years(including SARS-1 that was leaked a few times but was contained quickly), after COVID China issued lots of new policies including stricter lab management, and new leadership from military to be in charge of Wuhan lab, and hide the initial samples of COVID, and started a diplomatic propaganda to paint USA as the virus maker.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#80

Post by duxup »

> But what has disappeared is any real or urgent interest from the media

How do we determine this? Isn't that just normal?

So many stories are just unseen until someone can prove something. If they haven't been able to then there you go, it's not much of a story.

Yeah there's lots of speculation in the media but it comes and goes and no surprise that something so far unproven faded from view.

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