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

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

#901

Post by iab » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

member492 wrote: post #550

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…

What is even more shocking is that the mass media and big tech have done everything to keep this covered. Most of the revelations are nothing new if you read alternative news sources where true journalism still exists. Big tech and mass media are now more like China state television, they decide what and how to tell you something based on what they want you to believe. The greatest threat of our times is not the Coro…

How exactly are alternative news sources more trustworthy than mainstream news sources? Your reasoning is that "mainstream" (I truly hate this moniker) news serves to present biased information, how do alternative non-vetted sources avoid this pitfall?

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

#902

Post by lovecg » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #814

jcrawfordor wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Fauci have even known? Budget numbers say NIAID clears around $5 billion in grant funding per year and this grant was more at the $100k per year level. Another source shows that NIAID receives around 3,000 grant applications per year and that's just in two of their multiple grant types. It seems most likely to me that the grant was approved and funded by a subject-area committee without Fauci being involved at…

>Would Fauci have even known? So maybe he finds out before making statements? I've lost faith in Fauci when he admitted he lied about the efficacy of masks early on in the pandemic. He literally came out and stated he lied in order to make sure frontline healthcare workers had enough PPE. That was the most insane statement I've ever heard a public health leader make - lying about healthcare to the public that may res…

And in case there was any doubt he also came out and said he intentionally lied about the required level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity [0] so that people don’t get too discouraged. He seems to be squarely in the “ends justify the means” camp. While the effectiveness of that is debatable, I find it hard to believe anything he says at this point.

[0] “In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...

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

#903

Post by shkkmo » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #805

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,…

The problem with this is that the American public discourse is broken. The Republicans (I can't tapdance around the direct call out with weasel words) and the right-wing media have lost all credibility because they often DO behave as racist, selfish, inconsistent conspiracy theorists. On those rare occasions when they are right or properly play the role of opposition rather than pushing an absurd agenda alongside the…

Unfortunate, the "left media" also faces massive credibility problems due to their willingness to uncritically publish anything they could spin as negative for Trump, regardless of veracity or verifiability.

Partisanship is a disease that is destroying our democracy.

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

#904

Post by nathanfig » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

eutropia wrote: post #763

tootie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think lab workers getting sick is really a useful data point. People get sick all the time. Could have very easily been seasonal flu or whatever. It also seems The Lancet letter doesn't actual address the question of lab leak. Only that it wasn't engineered. That was a pretty hot conspiracy theory at the time and one that remains far fetched. They didn't positively say it couldn't be a naturally occurring vir…

I quoted this bit in another comment, but Steven Quay (interviewed by the US gov as mentioned in tfa) The “engineered” comments refer to common amino acid sequences from lab practices, they leave a signature because ordinary biology is more random. The gene sequence for the amino acids in the furin site in CoV-2 uses a very rare set of two codons, three letter words so six letters in a row, that arerarely used indivi…

This kind of pattern hunting easily steps into a logical fallacy where meaning is derived from noise. We also need to know how many other viruses contain codons not typically found in other viruses. If in fact every virus has one or two unique traits, then we could likewise claim that all viruses are engineered. Not saying that is the case, just want to caution against the perils of searching for patterns in large data sets like this.

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

#905

Post by dqv » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #862

himinlomax wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the priors. There's one lab of that type doing that kind of work in China. What is the likelihood that an epidemic emerging in China next to that one lab while not being from the lab? Also lab leaks are a type of industrial accident. Industrial accidents happen even in the places with the most stringent security protocols. Were that lab's protocols the best in the world? Can't say. And those that are best in…

>Consider the priors. There have been two serious epidemics of coronavirus disease in recent history: SARS and MERS. There is overwhelming evidence that both have a natural origin. Indeed, the fear of further crossover events is precisely why there was a lab studying these viruses in Wuhan. I'm not saying that this wasn't a lab accident. What I'm saying that is that if you were actually "considering the priors" (in t…

But SARS has leaked from these labs before. Obviously we already knew about SARS-CoV-1 when it leaked, but this could be one of those situations where the virus leaked from the lab as its first exposure to humans.

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

#906

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #898

stef25 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labs may be built in areas relevant to their research.

They may be, but the WIV wasn't. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengl…

According to Wikipedia the lab had been established many decades ago, "The WIV was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory" and got its current name in 1978. For better or worse, open, public labs tend to be set up in urban areas, see the insane move of the work done at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center to college town Manhattan, Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan,_Kansas in the heartland of American agriculture.

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

#907

Post by fiftyfifty » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

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…

I found this News Week article also very interesting and it goes into more detail about the DRASTIC internet group and how they made some of their discoveries: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke...

IMO the most upsetting part about this is people like Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak being repeatedly caught in outright lies and coverup behavior. These people seemed to have the best of intentions at some point in their career but they are doing irreparable damage to their field and science in general with the public lies and coverups.

One example is Shi Zhengli publicly stating the the 6 miners that died after shoveling bat guano in a mine in Mojiang died from a fungal infection while the DRASTIC group was able to dig up two papers that specifically stated the miners died from a SARS-like virus. They also dug up evidence that Zhengli's lab visited the mine multiple times since 2012 to take samples after the miners died and retrieved as many as 9 unique Coronaviruses similar to SARS-Cov-2 from the mine.

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

#908

Post by shagmin » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #814

jcrawfordor wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Fauci have even known? Budget numbers say NIAID clears around $5 billion in grant funding per year and this grant was more at the $100k per year level. Another source shows that NIAID receives around 3,000 grant applications per year and that's just in two of their multiple grant types. It seems most likely to me that the grant was approved and funded by a subject-area committee without Fauci being involved at…

>Would Fauci have even known? So maybe he finds out before making statements? I've lost faith in Fauci when he admitted he lied about the efficacy of masks early on in the pandemic. He literally came out and stated he lied in order to make sure frontline healthcare workers had enough PPE. That was the most insane statement I've ever heard a public health leader make - lying about healthcare to the public that may res…

>the population would understand

I don't like these "strategic" lies either. And I agree the population in general would understand, but I think there'd still have been plenty of people that would've hoarded every mask possible, and at the time they had to make decisions based on possible scenarios, whereas now we have hindsight. Especially if things were handled differently in the beginning and the mask vs non-mask polarization manifested differently, who knows.

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

#909

Post by shkkmo » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #862

himinlomax wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the priors. There's one lab of that type doing that kind of work in China. What is the likelihood that an epidemic emerging in China next to that one lab while not being from the lab? Also lab leaks are a type of industrial accident. Industrial accidents happen even in the places with the most stringent security protocols. Were that lab's protocols the best in the world? Can't say. And those that are best in…

>Consider the priors. There have been two serious epidemics of coronavirus disease in recent history: SARS and MERS. There is overwhelming evidence that both have a natural origin. Indeed, the fear of further crossover events is precisely why there was a lab studying these viruses in Wuhan. I'm not saying that this wasn't a lab accident. What I'm saying that is that if you were actually "considering the priors" (in t…

> There have been two serious epidemics of coronavirus disease in recent history: SARS and MERS. There is overwhelming evidence that both have a natural origin.

This supports the idea that a jump from animals is a possible explanation. It does nothing to indicate that a lab leak is a unlikely explanation (especially with a sample size of two.)

However, the fact that this arose in one of 3 cities on the planet where this research is conducted does provide significant evidence that lab leak is a likely explanation.

Given the lack of evidence, it seems irresponsible to make strong assertions that one theory is more likely than the other.

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

#910

Post by tripletao » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #600

yumraj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did any of them originate a few miles from a pathogen research lab that handled such pathogen that caused those outbreaks?

Ebola Reston did.

Ebola Reston evolved naturally, and emerged in humans due to an infected lab monkey imported from the Philippines to a contract research organization in Reston. Anyone who guessed that it came from Fort Detrick would have been wrong about which lab it came from, but right that it came from a lab.

Put differently, if scientists there hadn't been experimenting with monkeys, Ebola Reston wouldn't have entered humans there. We don't absolve exotic wildlife traffickers or farmers of the consequences of their actions in releasing novel, naturally-evolved viruses; so I'm not sure why we'd absolve scientific researchers.