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For experts who study coronaviruses, a grim vindication
- tim333 6y agoIt remains to be seen if the experts have been vindicated or if virus is a result of related research gone wrong.
- ketamine__ 6y agoIt's hard to completely prove a negative so the conspiracy will remain alive and well. That's sad because the simplest explanation seems the most likely: > A number of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats, they had discovered, were only a few simple mutations away from being able to infect human cells.
- macintux 6y agoThe article addresses that.
- Retric 6y agoIf you want to study diseases you go to places where they originate. It’s odd to me that people assume this is man made when the same thing happens several times a year in other areas and every few decades an unusually bad outbreak happens. But if it makes you feel better “ Similar logical patterns are absent in SARS-CoV-2, indicating that the virus evolved naturally.”
- kovid20 6y agoOdd to others that some people assume research implies man made. Accidents can happen with naturally evolved viruses as well.
- tim333 6y agoThere are odd features with the covid genome that make it seem more than just a bat bites researcher scenario.
- kovid20 6y agoI agree, but nothing that is smoking gun caliber where all scientists agree the genome is engineered. My point was merely casting the widest net on research possibly being to blame, which could include many more scenarios than bat bites and GOF experiments.
- Enginerrrd 6y agoI don't really believe the narrative that the virus jumped from the lab, but to play devils advocate: The proper allegation is that there was a program based on funding to perform gain of function research which included taking bat coronaviruses and infecting groups of intermediate animals with them to see if certain mutations were likely or problematic.
- tim333 6y agoThere's some odd stuff though this time though for example this story https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6160720369001 https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6160720369001
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoAt this point what would it require for you to believe it wasn't research gone wrong?
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- tim333 6y agoIdentify an animal reservoir? The chinese to be open and say come see the lab and here's the research we were doing rather than treatening to arrest people?
- baddox 6y agoThere seems to be broad agreement among experts that bats are the primary reservoir, and less agreement about an intermediate reservoir (although pangolins are commonly proposed). We certainly have wildlife sequences from bats that are plausibly recent close relatives to SARS-CoV-2. As far as the Chinese lab goes, I suspect that any research they release or international inspections they allow would just be dismissed by many people as evidence that they must be confident in their ability to cover up the horrible things those people have already concluded without evidence.
- downerending 6y agoWe'll likely never know. There appears to be evidence that is hard to explain, though. Hopefully that will be investigated as deeply as it can be, rather than just swept under the rug.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoLikely never know the answer, or the burden of proof for accepting an answer?
- downerending 6y agoThe former.
- outside1234 6y agoRemember, a large enough group of monkeys with keyboards will produce Shakespeare given enough time. Or a broken clock is right twice a day.
- pizlonator 6y agoYup yup yup. Glad someone brought this up. It would take a lot to prove that they actually had good foresight since it’s so likely that they just happened to be the ones who guessed right out of a large population of equally well informed people who guessed lots of other things using similar reasonings.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI think it's probably a strength of science that at any one time there's at least one person yelling about the dangerous of any possible event. It's also a strength that, as in the case of the LHC, the people who were shouting "this will cause a black hole" were drowned about by the ones who were being more realistic.
- ianai 6y agoThe philosophy of science precisely prefers knowledge which gives falsifiable, testable theories. A hypothesis indicating every possible outcome with little differentiation is worthless.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> The philosophy of science precisely prefers knowledge which gives falsifiable, testable theories. Knowledge doesn't give falsifiable, testable theories. Falsifiable, testable theories give knowledge. That's why the philosophy of science prefers them.
- take_a_breath 6y agoI never hear this sentiment on HN when it comes to writing code. Only the other, less-noble job classes.
- vikramkr 6y agoRetrospectively you can justify anything. But the coronavirus outbreak happening now is not proof of the idea that the optimal thing to do in 2010 was to invest in coronavirus research- that could have still been the correct decision based off the probabilities of an outbreak. Just about every virus has a virologist convinced it's the next big one. In recent times next big ones have been the flu (kind of expected), HIV (basically out of nowhere), COVID (we could have done better, but if you'd asked me to bet I'd have bet on avian influenza/H5N1 since that's already dangerously close to becoming an outbreak and has been on radars for a while). Ig a super virulent hantavirus emerged, are those that studied those viruses noe "vindicates" as to pandemic threat? They infect humans and cause small outbreaks too.
- csours 6y agoSee also Black Swans. If you call out 200 possible Black Swan events, and 1 comes true, people will call you a genius and ignore the 199 that didn't happen.
- claudeganon 6y agoPandemics are not black swans though. They occur at predictable intervals. Taleb explicitly says they’re not black swans in his work.
- ls612 6y agoThe lockdowns though and their scale were totally black swans with no precedent
- claudeganon 6y agoThere were widespread lockdowns during the 1918 pandemic and quarantines are a practice about as old and storied as urbanized human settlement. They’re not black swans any more than the pandemics themselves. Taleb has also talked about this quite a lot recently.
- Novukus 6y agoThe comments here are weirdly anti-science. There've been plenty of discussions about coronaviruses being a potential threat over the years. Given the proximity of bats to major population centres in China, I don't see how anybody could say "Well, it's so unlikely that research is unnecessary". All I see here is modern economic systems and scientific institutions failing because there isn't an immediate benefit, yet again, despite there being clear signs of a threat.
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- SkyBelow 6y agoPeople are very apt to justify or condemn a decision based off of the result and not based off of the data available at the time the decision was made. Only one of these helps us make better decisions going forward.
- christkv 6y agoActually I think focusing on understanding the human immune system would be just as important. Know the immune system and how it really works and you can prepare therapeutic defenses against new viruses because you understand what they do to the body and counteract their effect or diminish it. I would like to see a Manhattan project level funded research program on the human immune system.
- antibuddy 6y agoDoes nobody question the premise that Sars-Cov-19 is actually a big threat? At least the current incarnation seems rather tame. The panic over it however is rather real.
- trustfundbaby 6y agoI'd argue that a virus that can kill 500,000 (probably way more) people in a matter of months is a pretty big threat, and thats with most world economies shut down and actively trying to contain it. Imagining the damage that it could do without those containment strategies in place world wide, is why I'm convinced it is.
- antibuddy 6y agoThe flu kills way more than that and Corona will kill more than that. You can see what happens without containment in Sweden. Given that countries with a bad health system probably need more measures. The real difference is that we are informed broadly about the many deaths and this was not the case with the flu in our lifetime.
- trustfundbaby 6y ago> The flu kills way more than that The flu kills a lot of people over a long time, this is 500k in just a few months while everyone is actively trying to avoid spreading it. The flu definitely does not kill more than that.
- antibuddy 6y agoFlu season is about 2-3 months usually and kills, depending on severity, 1-2 million people each year.
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- emiliobumachar 6y agoOthers have pointed out that other threats may have seemed just as likely, and that hindsight may be essential to pick out this one. Now that we have hindsight about that, maybe the lesson is that it's worth it to find the money to research the hell out of every top-20 or top-200 pandemic threats. Spray-and-pray. Another pandemic will come. With luck, it will be another century from now. With bad luck, it will be next year. We must be better prepared.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoIt almost certainly went like this: Scientist: "Boss, it's only time for a disaster to happen" Policymaker: "Will it happen now?" Scientist: "No, but it will happen" Policymaker: "OK, then, remind me when it happens"
- nikanj 6y agoScientist: "So we'll do nothing until it does?" Policymaker: "No, but rest assured we'll blame you when it does happen"
- 29athrowaway 6y agoOr one of these: "we did not know", "we did not have enough data to make a decision", "thanks to all the heroes at the frontlines", "we are doing a great job", "it's the previous guy's fault".
- KCUOJJQJ 6y agoI think the fear of a terror virus was so great that a virus that didn't have such a bad quality was mentally turned into a virus that has this bad quality.