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This article is written in a highly conspiratorial tone, but the author does not appear to understand several basic things about coronavirus research. > Eviden

This article is written in a highly conspiratorial tone, but the author does not appear to understand several basic things about coronavirus research. > Evidence seen by The Sunday Times suggests that a virus found in its depths — part of a faecal sample that was frozen and sent to a Chinese laboratory for analysis and storage — is the closest known match to the virus that causes Covid-19. This has been publicly known for months. It was published in biorRxiv in January and appeared in Nature in early February.[1] > The virus was a huge discovery. It was a “new strain” of a Sars-type coronavirus that, surprisingly, received only a passing mention in an academic paper. RaTG13 was one of hundreds of SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in these bat caves. In 2013, it was not considered a major discovery. One reason is that it is only 80% similar to the original SARS. At the time, researchers were much more interested in viruses that were more like 99% similar to SARS. Those viruses were studied much more intensively, and were the subject of numerous papers. > What happened to the virus in the years between its discovery and the eruption of Covid-19? Why was its existence tucked away in obscure records, and its link to three deaths not mentioned? The article never provides any evidence that these people became sick from RaTG13. There are hundreds of known SARS-like coronaviruses, and there are estimated to be thousands of as-of-yet undiscovered ones. The author of this article seems to be under the impression that RaTG13 is the only known SARS-like coronavirus. > These produced a remarkable finding: while none had tested positive for Sars, all four had antibodies against another, unknown Sars-like coronavirus. There was a study published in 2016 that found that 3% of people tested in a region of the countryside in Yunnan province had antibodies against SARS-like coronaviruses.[2] The sorts of spillover events described in this article are probably not uncommon at all. It has always just been a question of when a spillover event would lead to sustained transmission, instead of petering out. The rest of the article goes on to try to suggest that RaTG13 leaked from a lab. RaTG13 is separated from SARS-CoV-2 by decades of evolution. It's the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, but not its ancestor. It's sad that tabloids are going after the people who have spent decades trying to understand these types of viruses, so that we would be prepared for new outbreaks. 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/

totetsu 6y ago
This is all stuff that was discussed on HN back in January.
awb 6y ago
What's your opinion on these claims from the article? > they were running controversial experiments to find out how they might mutate to become more infectious to humans. This “gain-of-function” work is described in papers released by the WIV between 2015 and 2017, scientists say. Shi’s team combined snippets of different coronaviruses to see if they could be made more transmissible in what they called “virus infectivity experiments”. > Ebright alleges, however, that the type of work required to create Covid-19 from RaTG13 was “identical” to work the laboratory had done in the past. “The very same techniques, the very same experimental strategies using RaTG13 as the starting point, would yield a virus essentially identical to Sars-Cov-2.” I also heard this claim from Eric Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast but don't know enough about the science or the claim to know if it's plausible.
- acqq 6y ago
  The article is effectively creating a conspiracy theory by leaving out the most important aspects of the motivation of the whole research: - The virology experts have known for decades that "spillovers" from animals to humans happen. - The virology experts did their research exactly with the goal to learn more about the viruses that could cause the next pandemics. - Bats were known as the animals in which a lot of different viruses spread that could be with the high potential danger to humans, and it was also known that their viruses reach humans easier than those from many other animals. - That is exactly the reason immense number of samples were made in the bat caves. - The importance of this work was known and it was not a Chinese but an international project. - It was internationally recognized that the more viruses we can collect, catalogue and research, the more chances we could have to avoid the consequences like this pandemics that we live now. - The people who do their work exactly to be able to prevent the next pandemic are obviously those who are more aware how carefully they should handle the samples and perform the sampling. - The number of the samples was huge, so much that not all samples were able to be as much analyzed as it was done later, once the similarity with the ongoing epidemic was searched for: there are different processes possible, and some are much more time consuming. - The sampling was done in many caves, not only some specific. - The sampling was done in hamzat suits, exactly because it was known that other approaches would be too dangerous. - The people doing the sampling were not the only ones having the contact with the viruses from bats. Exactly because it was known that the different viruses from bats in different moments "find the way" to the humans, typically those who live close to the caves, it was known that the researching exactly the samples from bats is especially worth doing. - The SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look like at all like a virus that the experts produce for their experiments. Any virologist who knows how these experiments are exactly done can confirm that -- so the claim that the virus is human made is not something that is supported by any expert. - Likewise, because the experts know that the research was necessary and how it is performed, they don't believe that the "spillover" resulted from the infected people working with the lab. They know that such events happen all the time in nature. In short trying to associate the SARS-CoV-2 with the work of the lab is something done by non-experts only, and only by those who have some agenda to create such stories. Specifically, I've just checked who Eric Weinstein is: "Eric Ross Weinstein" "is the managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's investment firm, a position he has held since 2015." says Wikipedia. Not an expert at all, but almost surely somebody who could have an agenda. The article in The Times manages to give the outbreak an "aura" of the intentional event by "asking questions" tricks ("Ancient Aliens" style "some believe that were aliens, maybe it is true?") and "cherry picking" the details out of the context. The research was done exactly because it was known that the outbreaks happen even if we don't do anything, so it's much better to try to learn as much as it is possible before.

totetsu 6y ago

This is all stuff that was discussed on HN back in January.

awb 6y ago

What's your opinion on these claims from the article? > they were running controversial experiments to find out how they might mutate to become more infectious to humans. This “gain-of-function” work is described in papers released by the WIV between 2015 and 2017, scientists say. Shi’s team combined snippets of different coronaviruses to see if they could be made more transmissible in what they called “virus infectivity experiments”. > Ebright alleges, however, that the type of work required to create Covid-19 from RaTG13 was “identical” to work the laboratory had done in the past. “The very same techniques, the very same experimental strategies using RaTG13 as the starting point, would yield a virus essentially identical to Sars-Cov-2.” I also heard this claim from Eric Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast but don't know enough about the science or the claim to know if it's plausible.

acqq 6y ago
The article is effectively creating a conspiracy theory by leaving out the most important aspects of the motivation of the whole research: - The virology experts have known for decades that "spillovers" from animals to humans happen. - The virology experts did their research exactly with the goal to learn more about the viruses that could cause the next pandemics. - Bats were known as the animals in which a lot of different viruses spread that could be with the high potential danger to humans, and it was also known that their viruses reach humans easier than those from many other animals. - That is exactly the reason immense number of samples were made in the bat caves. - The importance of this work was known and it was not a Chinese but an international project. - It was internationally recognized that the more viruses we can collect, catalogue and research, the more chances we could have to avoid the consequences like this pandemics that we live now. - The people who do their work exactly to be able to prevent the next pandemic are obviously those who are more aware how carefully they should handle the samples and perform the sampling. - The number of the samples was huge, so much that not all samples were able to be as much analyzed as it was done later, once the similarity with the ongoing epidemic was searched for: there are different processes possible, and some are much more time consuming. - The sampling was done in many caves, not only some specific. - The sampling was done in hamzat suits, exactly because it was known that other approaches would be too dangerous. - The people doing the sampling were not the only ones having the contact with the viruses from bats. Exactly because it was known that the different viruses from bats in different moments "find the way" to the humans, typically those who live close to the caves, it was known that the researching exactly the samples from bats is especially worth doing. - The SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look like at all like a virus that the experts produce for their experiments. Any virologist who knows how these experiments are exactly done can confirm that -- so the claim that the virus is human made is not something that is supported by any expert. - Likewise, because the experts know that the research was necessary and how it is performed, they don't believe that the "spillover" resulted from the infected people working with the lab. They know that such events happen all the time in nature. In short trying to associate the SARS-CoV-2 with the work of the lab is something done by non-experts only, and only by those who have some agenda to create such stories. Specifically, I've just checked who Eric Weinstein is: "Eric Ross Weinstein" "is the managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's investment firm, a position he has held since 2015." says Wikipedia. Not an expert at all, but almost surely somebody who could have an agenda. The article in The Times manages to give the outbreak an "aura" of the intentional event by "asking questions" tricks ("Ancient Aliens" style "some believe that were aliens, maybe it is true?") and "cherry picking" the details out of the context. The research was done exactly because it was known that the outbreaks happen even if we don't do anything, so it's much better to try to learn as much as it is possible before.