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

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#701

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #672

bayesian_horse wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a difference between leaking a novel virus and one that has been circulating. Also the accusation of "gain of function" experiments making the virus more dangerous. Of course it is not extremely unlikely that a virus escapes from a lab. To me it seems very unlikely that this particular virus first escaped from this lab and especially that it wasn't a threat before being collected.

> Also the accusation of "gain of function" experiments making the virus more dangerous. Is that a complete sentence? What are you saying? Are you dismissing out of hand the possibility that gain of function research was being done at the time of the first discovery of SARS-COV-2 on the same type of viruses?

You don't need to "dismiss the possibility" to say it's unlikely. There's really zero evidence this kind of research has been done a) at all in this lab b) on this Virus c) the virus leaked. Nor is it even clear the virus originated in Wuhan at all.

"Lab leak hypothesis" sometimes includes the "gain of function" theme and sometimes it doesn't. I find neither very likely, neither has any evidence to back it up. I still think the zoonotic hypothesis is the most likely truth, if not for the fact that we know this has happened so often in history. Any other hypothesis needs extraordinarily good evidence to convince me otherwise.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#702

Post by native_samples » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #617

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…

From the article, it seems that there's a general conspiracy to sabotage your book. I really don't understand why. Have you tried contacting Bill Gates and ask him to support you, and give your book more visibility?

If you've read Gates' own book on the pandemic, you'll see he would not be open to the contents of Viral.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#703

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

noptd wrote: post #643

mikeyouse wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so we're clear -- your evidence for lab leak is based on the way samples were handled after the last big zoonotic pandemic in China.

Odd that you think this is some sort of gotcha given that the best predictor of future behavior is, in fact, past behavior.

There's a wild leap of faith between saying someone handled samples badly in the past to saying they are responsible for the current pandemic.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#704

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #276

ShannonLimiter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…

> If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. The lesson here is not “we need to prove it was a lab leak,” the lesson is “we need better visibility inside China.” Which is also true for viruses that arise naturally inside China. Do you think that if y…

> Do you think we can stop secret viral research in China if they want to do it?

We could probably start by not funding exactly that, not sending our scientists there, not openly exchanging these processes and techniques with them… if they aren’t going to be reliable and upstanding stewards.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#705

Post by kaitaincps » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #625

cm2012 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest evidence for lab leak is that no one can find a wild reservoir of covid 19. The Chinese government and the rest of the world has a ton incentive to find a reservoir and havnt.

That's a very weak argument.

Not really.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#706

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

kaitaincps wrote: post #599

bayesian_horse wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand biology. It is possible to date the divergence of genomes using a genetic clock. So they know if those spike proteins had been recombinated. Serial passage in mice can't be ruled out but is quite out there. Lots of theories can't be completely ruled out, but wild speculation like that is not very productive. For the lab-leak theory to be true, a "pandemicable" zoonotic virus (a VERY rare thing) h…

> has to somehow make it into a lab undetected Undetected? The lab was specifically searching for and storing pandemic-capable viruses, and had applied for grant money to insert furin cleavage sites into them!

Nope. It was looking for bat viruses. There is no way to tell if such a virus is even able to infect Humans, without testing it out on Humans.

The grant application is not proof that they either performed such experiments at all, that they did it on that particular virus nor that it worked. And there's still a long distance between a random bat virus with a "furin cleavage site" and something that is good at infecting Humans. All this theory is so far is wild speculation.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#707

Post by native_samples » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #332

rzz3 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well put. One thing I’d add, is that this entire debate regarding the lab leak hypothesis is entirely politicized, and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have.

> I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth. Either theory is perfectly viable given the evidence we currently have. This has been extensively investigated by scientists - it’d be a career making move if you could prove something that juicy! - but the problem is that the conclusions aren’t completely certain but rather comparing probability & the limited evidence to concl…

"it’d be a career making move if you could prove something that juicy!"

That's absurd. We know the grant that funded the WIV lab work was signed off by Fauci during a time when GoF research was banned in the USA. If you proved the virus came from a lab funded by the guy who literally funds your colleagues you would never work in the field ever again.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#708

Post by kaitaincps » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #225

phatboyslim wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it is not, because it is undisputed that viruses can evolve to infect humans. If we had 100% solid proof SARS-COV-2 originated in a lab, it would not change our approach to detecting or mitigating future outbreaks. We always have to prepare for either. It’s not like it never occurred to anyone before that dangerous infectious agents could escape a lab. It was a well-known possibility and was incorporated into U.S.…

Rubbish. The response would not be to increase surveillance near labs. It would be to float a moratorium on GoF research and to increase biosafety at labs. Much of the work being done at the WIV was carried out at BSL-2, which is absolutely shocking.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#709

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

noptd wrote: post #644

bayesian_horse wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very weak argument.

How so?

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Do I really need to point out to you how many animal species and potential reservoir populations there are? It's impossible to sample all of them, or even enough to be sure there is no such reservoir.

One potential explanation could be a commercial mink farm somewhere in China. The virus is very affine to mink, mink can infect Humans and Humans can infect mink. If they were the intermediate host or "reservoir" there is no way of ever proving it, because those mink are all dead now and I doubt there will be enough samples left to detect the Virus somehow.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#710

Post by kaitaincps » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #103

bandyaboot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t been fixated on this by any means but I remember reading an article months back that looked at the timeline and locations of the early cases and compared them against the locations of the market and the research facility. I came away thinking that the animal market hypothesis seemed much more likely than the lab leak.

Yep - there are a ton of such points of evidence. The strict "lab leak" proponents have essentially made an unfalsifiable hypothesis akin to the intelligent design people's "God of the Gaps" where each time there's new research that disproves a core assumption, that just means the conspiracy goes deeper. I linked it above, but aside from the fact that every other pandemic we've seen came about the same way, there's a…

Hmm, but have there been any other pandemics that started close to a lab researching the kind of pathogen involved in the pandemic? Funny you should ask. There was this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu

By “came about the same way”, I’m assuming you mean “by zoonotic transfer”. But the 1977 Russian flu pandemic is now widely believed to have been a lab leak, or a vaccine trial that went wrong.

So your claim is false.