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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#721

Post by peteradio »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #701
peteradio wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 stil…

It does sound like you have a framework which may admit the possibility of lab-leak if specific evidence is found, in this case probably contemporaneous documentation of exactly that happening. I actually think we are largely in agreement then, I think though that it is very difficult to apply statistics here to gauge the likelihood of one or another event being true in the absence of much stronger evidence in certain directions. I'm only wedging my toes in the door of a not closed case, making no claim either way.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#722

Post by stetrain »

johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #547
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…

Thank you for posting this. We know that COVID couldn't have come from China. It came to China through frozen meat packages. WHO-China report already stated that fact. Dr. Fauci also believes that. The only reason we can't find evidence because other countries wouldn't collaborate, for obvious reasons. Racists are trying to blame China because of lack of competence of their leaders.

My comment says nothing about whether or not China or a lab leak was the source.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#723

Post by stetrain »

remflight wrote: post #484
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…

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic What??? I honestly expect more from HN readers than blatant china-apologists. OF COURSE it changes the consequences! We tell China to hand over all research and distribute it to scientists around the world so that research doesn’t start from ground 0. If it could have accelerated understanding of the virus by several months, ima…

My understanding is that we did not start from ground zero, already had a large scientific understanding of similar coronaviruses, had the virus sequenced very quickly, and then proceeded to get a vaccine tested and to market in a historic record-breaking amount of time.

Of course we should research the origin and, if a research lab was the source, take action to prevent it happening again. I'm not saying there should be no consequences, just countering the article which comes off as "why isn't this the number one priority??"

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#724

Post by skrebbel »

tintedfireglass wrote: post #614
skrebbel wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quashing this virus for good. This is impossible. You'd kill the host together with the virus.

We can eradicate viruses. Polio and small pox as an example

Ok, how do you plan to eradicate Covid? I mean, a polio vaccine is one shot and you're set for life, pretty much. It's incomparable.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#725

Post by dekhn »

peteradio wrote: post #719
dekhn wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to argue with you; you can choose to ignore what I said. but the funders who pay for molecular biology typically are scientists who understand, or wealthy people who hire people who understand, that medical biology, while scientific, is not like the highly quantitative physical sciences, nor is it easily appreciated by novices. Everything about causation in biology works differently than in other science…

Unfortunately I must resort to novice assertions to get any understanding. I'm not really sure I understand how causation in biology is fundamentally different. Apart from that you can certainly encapsulate biological events into some sort of locality and apply normal causative analysis to rule out specific scenarios, really that is what I am talking about here. I think we can agree that there are infectious molecule…

The molecules are not infectious, but specific assemblies of them are. But more importantly, here's a great example: the molecules which form an assembly do so spontaneously. It's like putting all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in a bag, shaking it, and every time, the puzzle comes out completely solved, even if the chances of that happening randomly are unbelievably small. We only observe the statistical average of enormous numbers of these things, which are all happening simultaneously, with complex effects.

Many biological papers don't work with mechanisms at all- they just deal with statistical associations between entities- and treat them as complex black boxes.

Here's another exmaple. Why do people grow to the heights they do? Well, originally people thought there were maybe 1-2 genes, with a few specific mutations, and the results all sort of added up linearly. Nope! Instead, we've learned that about 50% of total height variation is explained by genetics, and even then, there are hundreds of different genes that contribute to height, with all sorts of different variations in and between genes causing nonlinear effects (typically ignored in genetics, but considered strongly in evo-devo) that are extremely hard to explain in a detailed causal way.

In short: biology is highly nonlinear with huge numbers of variables, along with active feedback mechanisms and other complex systems that work to maintain homeostasis against entropy and protection against constantly evolving infectious agents. The basic concepts of causality, like "entity A causes event B which leads to outcome C" really do apply, but they're fully probabilistic and massively tensorial.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#726

Post by trhway »

mikeyouse wrote: post #341
trhway wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't notice you're pushing the 2021 work by that same Wuhan institute. It is as trustworthy in that matter as that EcoHealth Aliance's owner/PI Daszak's conclusion that the coronavirus wasn't of their making.

Yes, the WIV does indeed study the bats that we're questioning. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan". Do you think they just invented the bats? I mean... they're on video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s

>The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan".

That again is a strawman argument. I didn't say anything about bats. I was talking about the natural siblings of COVID-19, ie. the coronaviruses using ACE2 (like for example WIV1). Those viruses were found in Yunnan (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711), a 1000km from the Wuhan, and weren't found in Wuhan. Given that Yunnan people there have incomparably higher chances to get exposed to those viruses, there are no chances that one of such viruses was brought on a bat/civet from Yunnan to the market in Wuhan and jumped on human for the first time there without such a virus independently infecting significant number of people in Yunnan. On top of that that supposed natural COVID-19 virus supposedly did such a first jump on human in Wuhan market at exactly the same time when the Wuhan lab produced in BSL2 environment (hardly can be called "biosafety" at all, especially for an airborne virus) a chimeric virus by all accounts indistinguishable from COVID-19. It isn't a conspiracy theory. It is probability theory.

If we imagine that an event of such vanishingly small probability did happen, then it would be a crown achievement of human science worth 10 Nobels - just think about it - creating the same virus at the same place at the same time as the supposedly "natural" beginning of the pandemic. EcoHealth and WIV would be doing non-stops victory laps, and we would be putting bronze statues of Daszak on every corner of every public street. Instead all the participants - the WIV, EcoHealth, NIH and China government went total denial and "5th amendment" and started that huge PR campaign to spread that nonsense that thinking that an airborne virus can escape BSL2 makes you a racists conspiracy theorist.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#727

Post by Izkata »

kgwgk wrote: post #678
Izkata wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the page they link to, in the section the 241k came from, is a link that says "More detail on the analysis". It goes to my link.

I still don't get how that is related to the "The 241K number is total gibberish." statement that follows. Is it because they should have removed the "More detail on the analysis" link to a no-longer-updated analysis and not removing the link invalidates the latest results somehow? Or is there anything in that analysis of the results as of two years ago that discredits also everything that came later?

It's the source they're giving for the number, and there's nothing there that indicates it's valid. From every other source unrelated to that one, the UK's numbers have never been as high as they're claiming. Therefore, it's gibberish.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#728

Post by ellopoppit »

Xorakios wrote: post #671
mikeyouse wrote: post #84

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…

That is an excellent article and, as the authors say in the first paragraph, lengthy and informative. The combination of Chinese secrecy and Trump demanding that they pay reparations have poisoned a lot of discussions. But come on, a novel bat virus exploding from the world's main research facility about bat viruses that was first reported by a doctor from a hospital in the same city with symptoms from the wife of a…

>symptoms from the wife of a researcher at the Wuhan facility

I'm interested to confirm this, do you know what their name is/was or where I could find more information on this?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#729

Post by chasil »

lupire wrote: post #532
chasil wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I will tell you is a thing that I have read, and I hold close: Forgive one another, and you will be forgiven. In order to forgive, we must have the truth. Without it, we are in a fog of blind judgement and accusation. Clarity of the source of this misfortune allows us to forgive. I cannot say that I hold the full pantheon of the origin of these words to be true, but the four books that imparted this teaching to…

What books are you cryptically referring about? The USA just launched a major assault on the human rights of 55% of its population (women and homosexuals), after a yearlong assault on the foundation of our democratic government, all under the guise of four books of "mercy, justice, and hope". Forgiveness is not on the political table.

Perhaps you will find them someday.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#730

Post by FunnyBadger »

Recently (6/20/2022) our boy Tedros, head of WHO, stated that Lab Leak is the most like explanation for the COVID pandemic.

https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/covid-virus-likely-le...

So there's that.

Plus the obviousness of the circumstantial evidence combined with utter lack of evidence for counter-theories, for this going back to 2020.

And finally the evidence that ALL of those who purported the counter-theories were DEEPLY involved in funding Wuhan for exactly this kind of "Gain of Function of Bat Coronavirus" research. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck .... it's a duck.

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