25 ms·

Unusual Features of SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Lab Modification

147 points by ycombonator 6y ago

jkhdigital 6y ago
I posted what appears to be the top comment on the previous submission of a similar paper describing the probable laboratory origins of SARS-CoV-2 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758), so I'll try and do another quick summary here. (Caveat: I have no particular expertise in this area, I just read a lot of scientific research) The lead author here is an immunologist who, unlike the authors of prior papers alleging laboratory origin, is Chinese and was trained in Chinese institutions. At the time of the outbreak Dr. Li-Meng Yan was working in a public health lab at Hong Kong University and was asked to investigate. She claims that she fled to the US after realizing that there was a cover-up going on and she knew too much already. The most striking and novel claim made here is that the bat coronavirus RaTG13, which is a 96% genetic match to the novel coronarivus, is a total fabrication. This argument is based upon a few key observations: 1. RaTG13 was supposedly discovered in 2013 but not publicly reported until after the outbreak already started, in a paper (published by researchers closely affiliated with the WIV) that claimed it as evidence SARS-CoV-2 likely originated from bats. 2. A number of independent preprint papers raise significant concerns about the veracity of RaTG13, and one published paper indicates that the RaTG13 spike protein is actually ineffective at binding to ACE2 receptors in horseshoe bats (the supposed reservoir). 3. After excluding RaTG13, the next closest relatives are two bat coronaviruses (ZC45/ZXC21) that were discovered and characterized by Chinese military research labs. A Chinese lab published research near the start of the outbreak which identified these viruses as the closest relatives, and that same lab was apparently closed for "rectification" shortly thereafter. The paper goes on under the assumption that ZC45 or ZXC21 was the backbone for engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus, noting how the particular characteristics of the genomic match (100% E protein, 94% Orf8 protein) align with what one would expect after the gain-of-function modifications that produced the unusual RBM and furin cleavage site which were also identified in the Sørensen paper. This paper goes into much more detail on those two points, and provides counterfactuals to describe how unlikely these observations would be in a naturally-evolved virus. In the second half of the paper the authors describe in detail how a lab with sufficient technical acumen could engineer a virus like SARS-CoV-2 through a sequence of well-defined steps, with references to published research demonstrating these capabilities. Then they postulate the exact components involved in engineering the actual SARS-CoV-2, along with a projected timeline of six months for the whole process.
- drran 6y ago
  There is very few labs in the world, which can do synthesis of the virus from the published paper. One of them had major incident[0] (equipment was stolen from the lab by rescue team after blast and fire in the lab) right before epidemic. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosion-smallpox-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosi...
  - truckeelake 6y ago
    Yeah, and Malaysian Air flight 370 is being kept on a secret island to be used as a terrorist weapon. And my friend's dad works at Nintendo and can get us all free N64s!
- hoseja 6y ago
  This is the only comment here that actually mentions the furin-cleavage site, IMO the greatest smoking gun. Thank you.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    I know, right? It's amazing how much you can learn when you actually RTFP.
dannykwells 6y ago
Not to ad hom the piece, but Miles Guo, funder of this work, is a controversial Steve Bannon associate and Chinese billionaire in exile. So, you know, might have an axe to grind. Also, for a different, and published, perspective, see this piece: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
- _cs2017_ 6y ago
  Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare. He also made many other interesting claims: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-tied-to-steve-bannon-is-writing-fake-news-about-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-t... It's hard to doubt Miles Guo's credibility: it is as solid a zero as they come. To be fair, it's not like he's the only one who spends money to publish lies to brainwash people. Nearly every political party and government does that, although only select few would lie to such an extreme degree.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China... If that is true, your source doesn't show it. It says that a media outlet owned by Guo reported that "the Chinese government prepared to admit that the virus came from a lab". Not that it was engineered, not that it was intentionally released and certainly not as biologicial warfare to defeat the US (somehow by releasing it inside China).
  - balola 6y ago
    Guo has come out with almost no credile exposé anout the CCP despite repeatedly promising never-before-seen mega ones. Some of his followers did provide sensitive infos to him and quickly landed themselves on national television and jails. Conspiracy theories have since been his only hobby beside bodybuilding and preaching on his yacht.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare Such an assertion is well within the bounds for what should be considered possible. China's style of governance lends itself very well to extinguishing epidemics (namely, they can take swift and decisive action), so it's not a stretch to imagine that they would be affected by the outcome less than the USA in the longer term.
marccantwell 6y ago
Flag this shit. How many reposts is this now?
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
If the root-cause was anything more than a zoonotic event then there will never be an independent and serious investigation on it. Personally there are so many inconsistences with the timeline and location that I am much more inclined to believe the hypothesis of a "Gain-of-function" experiment that negligently escaped the lab, more so than a 'designed' virus or an unfortunate zoonotic event. I don't want to be controversial or go into arguments on facts versus 'circunstancial' evidence but I would like to point out that the last time I linked a url about this on reddit, my comments got silently shawdowbanned. I tried multiple variations and unless I obsfuscated the url the comment would always get shadowbanned. This is the link in question: https://project-evidence.github.io https://project-evidence.github.io
- gridlockd 6y ago
  People need to understand that this scenario is entirely plausible and could have happened even in the US and many research labs around the world. Gain-of-function experiments and engineered viruses are not the stuff of James Bond stories, they are ordinary scientific work. They aren't necessarily that dangerous, but even extremely dangerous pathogens have leaked from labs numerous times. The origin of the virus is unproven, yet somehow the "lab origin" story is a conspiracy theory while "zoonotic transfer through multiple hosts in an unlikely area (Wuhan)" is the dominant narrative. Either hypothesis has, at best, circumstantial evidence going for it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    Indeed, irrespective of the obvious agenda and credentials of OP's link, I would still expect this to be a platform for us to explore and discuss these scenarios with critical argumentation, beyond any divisive political polarization or propaganda. edit: typo
  - neuronic 6y ago
    The problem isn't even that it happened, since accidents and issues are an unfortunate part of research and life. It's the way some entities deal with it for political reasons that screws everything up and leads to huge public distrust and poisoning of discourse. The Coronavirus talk points are clear and to be adhered to. While I agree with the majority of the talk points (wear a mask etc.) I find it highly suspicious how some things evolved and changed over time. Before April 7th, apparently no research existed in the world which proved that even simple textile masks are highly efficient at reducing transmission of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 simply because they reduce droplets you spread. The virus needs droplets so its own size is irrelevant and the only leftover thing to check are fine aerosols which outside of artificial conditions rarely occur. Then suddenly, mask was everything as if somebody flipped a switch. People somewhere came together to flip the rhetoric which means that at some point, regarding the masks, it wasn't science-based but messages of control. Yea, maybe the mask supply was to be protected for medical personnel. Ok. But spreading the message that masks are not required is the wrong way to go about it. Case in point: > By contrast, surgical masks — those cheap, disposable, gauzy masks that often come in blue or green — are less uncomfortable. But Schaffner says the scientific evidence that "there might be a benefit for people in the community wearing [surgical] face masks is very, very meager. The general sense is perhaps, but they're certainly not an absolute protection." In other words, they do provide some benefit but they're far from foolproof. [1] This is NPR! It's January 29th, 2020 and they spread the message that simple disposable surgical masks have VERY VERY MEAGER BENEFIT. I can only say: what the fuck?! Why? This reads as if masks are not really helping so forget them anyways. As opposed to: there is significant reduction in transmission, even if not 100%, so wear them! But research has long since existed proving effectiveness of surgical masks spreading airborne pathogens [2, 2013!]. It was abundantly clear that they help. But WHO and media told us a different story. RKI in Germany lied as well until early April. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/800531753/face-masks-what-doctors-say-about-their-role-in-containing-coronavirus?t=1600164447562 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003205 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
djaque 6y ago
The author affiliations are listed as "Rule of Law Society". A quick google search shows that it is a political non-profit dedicated to "investigating Chinese corruption" and is led by Steve Bannon of all people [1]. Given the extraordinary nature of the claims, the fact that this didn't see any peer review and isn't published in a real journal as well as the clear political motivations of the money behind the study, my BS meter is going off the charts. Even the name of the document "The Yan Report" makes it sound like a political hit piece cosplaying as a scientific article. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wengui/2020/09/13/8b43cd06-e964-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wen...
- cafed00d 6y ago
  An aside though: ^^This comment crystallizes the best of hn. Within 30s I was able to learn so much — The gist of the paper, about how nefarious activities masquerade as academic research, politics and money in funding, and hardcore commitment of folks like Steve Bannon in pushing the overton window on trade relations, geopolitics etc. Phew!
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    Headlines are all you need in the modern world. It's enough.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    The author Li Meng Yan is also a regular on Bannon's 4-hour daily YouTube-show "War Room Pandemic" which is absolutely crazy. However they have a lot of money from some curious Chinese groups and you shouldn't underestimate how much influence they have over the current US administration.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    Your statement implies that “Hacker News” is primarily talking about people. Is that what “Hackers” do now?
    - 6y ago
lngnmn1 6y ago
This is how russkies got a working vaccine without any public testing - they made it along with the virus in the very same facility. Chinese comrades participated in the research and development, but something went wrong.
ttflee 6y ago
> In fact, a Chinese BSL-3 lab (the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre), which published a Nature article reporting a conflicting close phylogenetic relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and ZC45/ZXC21 rather than with RaTG13, was quickly shut down for “rectification”.
- 4684499 6y ago
  I think that's misinterpretd, the ref link in the paper is https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/chinese-lab-that-first-shared-novel-coronavirus-genome-shut-down/ https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/chinese-lab-that-firs... , which leads to SCMP's https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chinese-laboratory-first-shared-coronavirus-genome-world-ordered https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chin... SCMP's piece also mentioned that "It also obtained the required credentials to conduct research on the coronavirus on January 24." That indicates the Centre actually gained more access. And if you search Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre on Google, you can see it's still actively doing COVID-19 related research. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769741 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
White_Wolf 6y ago
So any country could do this (and even some rich private individuals if they are motivated enough). Keeping in mind that this virus showed up a lot earlier in other countries I'd say there is no way to prove who let the dogs out anyway.
thinkingemote 6y ago
Science 2004: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8587412_Infectious_diseases_Mounting_lab_accidents_raise_SARS_fears https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8587412_Infectious_... "For the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of SARS seems to have originated from a failure in laboratory containment. This latest incident, revealed in China late last week, is the most serious." 2019 Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity: Inaugural editorial: Towards evidence-based biosafety and biosecurity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331229899_Inaugural_editorial_Towards_evidence-based_biosafety_and_biosecurity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331229899_Inaugural... "In 2004, a case of laboratory-acquired SARS infection was reported, and a number of containment failures occurred in high-security laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and mainland China. The 2004 SARS outbreak in North China resulted from a series of flaws in the biosafety protocol at a national institute in Beijing, resulting in infection of four laboratory workers. This has been the most serious biosafety event to date."
- simonh 6y ago
  Oh I think it's entirely plausible this was an inadvertent escapee from a research facility, either of a naturally occurring virus under study or a bio-weapon. Neither possibility can be entirely discounted and I'd like to see a thorough investigation into the origins of the virus. That doesn't mean this paper is any use whatsoever. It's evidence is sketch, pasted together from snippets of other articles. There is no new research here at all, and it comes from sponsors with a long and well established track record of peddling disinformation. So sure, please do keep an open mind, but that goes both ways on theories like this.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    Sketchy evidence? Tell me more. I look forward to your thoroughly-cited refutation of the paper’s main claims.
    - simonh 6y ago
      I described some of my criticisms in another post, basically they cherry picked only the evidence they wanted to from the papers they sourced their ideas from. This is not research. There is nothing new or original in this paper, it's just taking things from elsewhere, stripping off the context and stitching it together into their own narrative. There's nothing original or substantive there to refute.
pella 6y ago
flagged in other threads : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477162
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Why should it be flagged?
  - ttflee 6y ago
    People don't learn molecular cloning, phylogenetics, or how to perform a PCR before they upvote/downvote. People just hate its rhetoric.
dependenttypes 6y ago
There is a wikipedia article about the 1st author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hitsetute 6y ago
I have now flagged this particular bullshit misinformation FIVE TIMES on HN. There is a group here on HN repeatedly posting this drivel and related nonsense. I would have thought that Trump-style lies and propaganda would be beneath HN, but here we are. So what’s up OP? Care to explain why you’re engaged in lies?
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  This is a scientific research paper. If you think it’s BS then I eagerly await your point-by-point refutation of the scientific evidence presented therein.
  - HelloNurse 6y ago
    It doesn't work this way. Given objective evidence of a political intent of anti-Chinese propaganda, such as the involvement of specific factions who want to blame China for the pandemic, it's perfectly reasonable to assume this text is "fake news", with only the form of a scientific paper. And on the other hand, we already know that building a custom coronavirus in a few months is feasible, if not easy; proving or refuting a plausible story about a synthetic biological weapon made by specific people in specific laboratories is a matter of espionage and investigation, not of scientific evidence.
    - jkhdigital 6y ago
      > proving or refuting a plausible story about a synthetic biological weapon made by specific peoople in specific laboratories is a matter of espionage and investigation, not of scientific evidence. Okay, fair enough, we'll call it forensic evidence. Either way, the arguments stand on their own merits. You can't dismiss a prosecutor's entire argument as "anti-defendant propaganda". The only people who would ever go to the trouble of building a case are the ones who believe the defendant to be guilty. Call it science or call it forensics, but the same principles of evidence and truth apply. Evaluate the argument on its merits.
      - 6y ago
hyperbovine 6y ago
For an opposing viewpoint written by actual experts in this field, please see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
AnnoyingSwede 6y ago
As many i started reading the paper from a non biologist perspective, then hit the comment section here to see the Steve Bannon references. That man has a whole carddeck up his sleeve. Question: Is it illegal to release misleading material like this?
- dekhn 6y ago
  No, it is not illegal to release known factually incorrect propaganda masequerading as scientific literature. If it was, large numbers of professors would be violating the law constantly.
zug_zug 6y ago
Worth reading Li Meng Yan's wikidedia page as a first stab at untangling this mess. She is a Chinese[1] viral researcher who published on covid[1], who fled to America when she felt her life was in jeopardy[1] for saying that China knew about human-to-human transmission of covid much earlier [1]. And lead author of this paper. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan
- pldr2244 6y ago
  It is downright depressing how much HN is scathingly attacking her work because of this.
biolurker1 6y ago
I really don't get why people were so resistant to the idea. We knew experiments went on at that lab. We knew they had coronaviruses.
schrodingersCat 6y ago
PhD in molecular biophysics here (did virology rotation in grad school also). There's not enough time to go into how bad the "science" is in this paper. Evidence is cherry-picked, and circumstantial at best. Lots of non-sequitors presented that are unconnected to the actual science. I've read earlier claims that are similar to this and basically they see low alignment similarity to commercially available vectors and claim "AHA it must be engineered". But anyone who has studied molecular biology knows that vectors are almost always derived from natural viruses. Also, while viral linkages are normally linear, crossover between viri in hosts is well documented and does occur "rarely". That's say it's rare compared to normal genetic drift, but common enough that it's not particularly surprising to see genetic material from another "vector" in the wild. It does not have to be lab derived to see the mutations observed. Once you call into question this fundamental premise, everything else looks like the scientific trash that it is.
jlbooker 6y ago
Other commentary on this paper: https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-push-study-claiming-china-manufactured-covid https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-pus... Bannon clearly has a narrative he wants to push, and this is just part of that play. This is far from objective science. The authors and funding clearly have huge conflicts of interest. The claims made are extraordinary compared with most other experts in the field. Those two facts alone are enough to significantly discount any claims made in the paper.
Zycloparadoxus 6y ago
Is this article already available in German?

147 points by ycombonator 6y ago

I posted what appears to be the top comment on the previous submission of a similar paper describing the probable laboratory origins of SARS-CoV-2 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758), so I'll try and do another quick summary here. (Caveat: I have no particular expertise in this area, I just read a lot of scientific research) The lead author here is an immunologist who, unlike the authors of prior papers alleging laboratory origin, is Chinese and was trained in Chinese institutions. At the time of the outbreak Dr. Li-Meng Yan was working in a public health lab at Hong Kong University and was asked to investigate. She claims that she fled to the US after realizing that there was a cover-up going on and she knew too much already. The most striking and novel claim made here is that the bat coronavirus RaTG13, which is a 96% genetic match to the novel coronarivus, is a total fabrication. This argument is based upon a few key observations: 1. RaTG13 was supposedly discovered in 2013 but not publicly reported until after the outbreak already started, in a paper (published by researchers closely affiliated with the WIV) that claimed it as evidence SARS-CoV-2 likely originated from bats. 2. A number of independent preprint papers raise significant concerns about the veracity of RaTG13, and one published paper indicates that the RaTG13 spike protein is actually ineffective at binding to ACE2 receptors in horseshoe bats (the supposed reservoir). 3. After excluding RaTG13, the next closest relatives are two bat coronaviruses (ZC45/ZXC21) that were discovered and characterized by Chinese military research labs. A Chinese lab published research near the start of the outbreak which identified these viruses as the closest relatives, and that same lab was apparently closed for "rectification" shortly thereafter. The paper goes on under the assumption that ZC45 or ZXC21 was the backbone for engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus, noting how the particular characteristics of the genomic match (100% E protein, 94% Orf8 protein) align with what one would expect after the gain-of-function modifications that produced the unusual RBM and furin cleavage site which were also identified in the Sørensen paper. This paper goes into much more detail on those two points, and provides counterfactuals to describe how unlikely these observations would be in a naturally-evolved virus. In the second half of the paper the authors describe in detail how a lab with sufficient technical acumen could engineer a virus like SARS-CoV-2 through a sequence of well-defined steps, with references to published research demonstrating these capabilities. Then they postulate the exact components involved in engineering the actual SARS-CoV-2, along with a projected timeline of six months for the whole process.

drran 6y ago
There is very few labs in the world, which can do synthesis of the virus from the published paper. One of them had major incident[0] (equipment was stolen from the lab by rescue team after blast and fire in the lab) right before epidemic. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosion-smallpox-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosi...
- truckeelake 6y ago
  Yeah, and Malaysian Air flight 370 is being kept on a secret island to be used as a terrorist weapon. And my friend's dad works at Nintendo and can get us all free N64s!
hoseja 6y ago
This is the only comment here that actually mentions the furin-cleavage site, IMO the greatest smoking gun. Thank you.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  I know, right? It's amazing how much you can learn when you actually RTFP.

dannykwells 6y ago

Not to ad hom the piece, but Miles Guo, funder of this work, is a controversial Steve Bannon associate and Chinese billionaire in exile. So, you know, might have an axe to grind. Also, for a different, and published, perspective, see this piece: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

_cs2017_ 6y ago
Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare. He also made many other interesting claims: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-tied-to-steve-bannon-is-writing-fake-news-about-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-t... It's hard to doubt Miles Guo's credibility: it is as solid a zero as they come. To be fair, it's not like he's the only one who spends money to publish lies to brainwash people. Nearly every political party and government does that, although only select few would lie to such an extreme degree.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China... If that is true, your source doesn't show it. It says that a media outlet owned by Guo reported that "the Chinese government prepared to admit that the virus came from a lab". Not that it was engineered, not that it was intentionally released and certainly not as biologicial warfare to defeat the US (somehow by releasing it inside China).
- balola 6y ago
  Guo has come out with almost no credile exposé anout the CCP despite repeatedly promising never-before-seen mega ones. Some of his followers did provide sensitive infos to him and quickly landed themselves on national television and jails. Conspiracy theories have since been his only hobby beside bodybuilding and preaching on his yacht.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare Such an assertion is well within the bounds for what should be considered possible. China's style of governance lends itself very well to extinguishing epidemics (namely, they can take swift and decisive action), so it's not a stretch to imagine that they would be affected by the outcome less than the USA in the longer term.

marccantwell 6y ago

Flag this shit. How many reposts is this now?

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

If the root-cause was anything more than a zoonotic event then there will never be an independent and serious investigation on it. Personally there are so many inconsistences with the timeline and location that I am much more inclined to believe the hypothesis of a "Gain-of-function" experiment that negligently escaped the lab, more so than a 'designed' virus or an unfortunate zoonotic event. I don't want to be controversial or go into arguments on facts versus 'circunstancial' evidence but I would like to point out that the last time I linked a url about this on reddit, my comments got silently shawdowbanned. I tried multiple variations and unless I obsfuscated the url the comment would always get shadowbanned. This is the link in question: https://project-evidence.github.io https://project-evidence.github.io

gridlockd 6y ago
People need to understand that this scenario is entirely plausible and could have happened even in the US and many research labs around the world. Gain-of-function experiments and engineered viruses are not the stuff of James Bond stories, they are ordinary scientific work. They aren't necessarily that dangerous, but even extremely dangerous pathogens have leaked from labs numerous times. The origin of the virus is unproven, yet somehow the "lab origin" story is a conspiracy theory while "zoonotic transfer through multiple hosts in an unlikely area (Wuhan)" is the dominant narrative. Either hypothesis has, at best, circumstantial evidence going for it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Indeed, irrespective of the obvious agenda and credentials of OP's link, I would still expect this to be a platform for us to explore and discuss these scenarios with critical argumentation, beyond any divisive political polarization or propaganda. edit: typo
- neuronic 6y ago
  The problem isn't even that it happened, since accidents and issues are an unfortunate part of research and life. It's the way some entities deal with it for political reasons that screws everything up and leads to huge public distrust and poisoning of discourse. The Coronavirus talk points are clear and to be adhered to. While I agree with the majority of the talk points (wear a mask etc.) I find it highly suspicious how some things evolved and changed over time. Before April 7th, apparently no research existed in the world which proved that even simple textile masks are highly efficient at reducing transmission of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 simply because they reduce droplets you spread. The virus needs droplets so its own size is irrelevant and the only leftover thing to check are fine aerosols which outside of artificial conditions rarely occur. Then suddenly, mask was everything as if somebody flipped a switch. People somewhere came together to flip the rhetoric which means that at some point, regarding the masks, it wasn't science-based but messages of control. Yea, maybe the mask supply was to be protected for medical personnel. Ok. But spreading the message that masks are not required is the wrong way to go about it. Case in point: > By contrast, surgical masks — those cheap, disposable, gauzy masks that often come in blue or green — are less uncomfortable. But Schaffner says the scientific evidence that "there might be a benefit for people in the community wearing [surgical] face masks is very, very meager. The general sense is perhaps, but they're certainly not an absolute protection." In other words, they do provide some benefit but they're far from foolproof. [1] This is NPR! It's January 29th, 2020 and they spread the message that simple disposable surgical masks have VERY VERY MEAGER BENEFIT. I can only say: what the fuck?! Why? This reads as if masks are not really helping so forget them anyways. As opposed to: there is significant reduction in transmission, even if not 100%, so wear them! But research has long since existed proving effectiveness of surgical masks spreading airborne pathogens [2, 2013!]. It was abundantly clear that they help. But WHO and media told us a different story. RKI in Germany lied as well until early April. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/800531753/face-masks-what-doctors-say-about-their-role-in-containing-coronavirus?t=1600164447562 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003205 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

djaque 6y ago

The author affiliations are listed as "Rule of Law Society". A quick google search shows that it is a political non-profit dedicated to "investigating Chinese corruption" and is led by Steve Bannon of all people [1]. Given the extraordinary nature of the claims, the fact that this didn't see any peer review and isn't published in a real journal as well as the clear political motivations of the money behind the study, my BS meter is going off the charts. Even the name of the document "The Yan Report" makes it sound like a political hit piece cosplaying as a scientific article. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wengui/2020/09/13/8b43cd06-e964-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wen...

cafed00d 6y ago
An aside though: ^^This comment crystallizes the best of hn. Within 30s I was able to learn so much — The gist of the paper, about how nefarious activities masquerade as academic research, politics and money in funding, and hardcore commitment of folks like Steve Bannon in pushing the overton window on trade relations, geopolitics etc. Phew!
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  Headlines are all you need in the modern world. It's enough.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  The author Li Meng Yan is also a regular on Bannon's 4-hour daily YouTube-show "War Room Pandemic" which is absolutely crazy. However they have a lot of money from some curious Chinese groups and you shouldn't underestimate how much influence they have over the current US administration.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Your statement implies that “Hacker News” is primarily talking about people. Is that what “Hackers” do now?
  - 6y ago

lngnmn1 6y ago

This is how russkies got a working vaccine without any public testing - they made it along with the virus in the very same facility. Chinese comrades participated in the research and development, but something went wrong.

ttflee 6y ago

> In fact, a Chinese BSL-3 lab (the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre), which published a Nature article reporting a conflicting close phylogenetic relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and ZC45/ZXC21 rather than with RaTG13, was quickly shut down for “rectification”.

4684499 6y ago
I think that's misinterpretd, the ref link in the paper is https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/chinese-lab-that-first-shared-novel-coronavirus-genome-shut-down/ https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/chinese-lab-that-firs... , which leads to SCMP's https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chinese-laboratory-first-shared-coronavirus-genome-world-ordered https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chin... SCMP's piece also mentioned that "It also obtained the required credentials to conduct research on the coronavirus on January 24." That indicates the Centre actually gained more access. And if you search Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre on Google, you can see it's still actively doing COVID-19 related research. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769741 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

White_Wolf 6y ago

So any country could do this (and even some rich private individuals if they are motivated enough). Keeping in mind that this virus showed up a lot earlier in other countries I'd say there is no way to prove who let the dogs out anyway.

thinkingemote 6y ago

Science 2004: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8587412_Infectious_diseases_Mounting_lab_accidents_raise_SARS_fears https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8587412_Infectious_... "For the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of SARS seems to have originated from a failure in laboratory containment. This latest incident, revealed in China late last week, is the most serious." 2019 Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity: Inaugural editorial: Towards evidence-based biosafety and biosecurity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331229899_Inaugural_editorial_Towards_evidence-based_biosafety_and_biosecurity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331229899_Inaugural... "In 2004, a case of laboratory-acquired SARS infection was reported, and a number of containment failures occurred in high-security laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and mainland China. The 2004 SARS outbreak in North China resulted from a series of flaws in the biosafety protocol at a national institute in Beijing, resulting in infection of four laboratory workers. This has been the most serious biosafety event to date."

simonh 6y ago
Oh I think it's entirely plausible this was an inadvertent escapee from a research facility, either of a naturally occurring virus under study or a bio-weapon. Neither possibility can be entirely discounted and I'd like to see a thorough investigation into the origins of the virus. That doesn't mean this paper is any use whatsoever. It's evidence is sketch, pasted together from snippets of other articles. There is no new research here at all, and it comes from sponsors with a long and well established track record of peddling disinformation. So sure, please do keep an open mind, but that goes both ways on theories like this.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  Sketchy evidence? Tell me more. I look forward to your thoroughly-cited refutation of the paper’s main claims.
  - simonh 6y ago
    I described some of my criticisms in another post, basically they cherry picked only the evidence they wanted to from the papers they sourced their ideas from. This is not research. There is nothing new or original in this paper, it's just taking things from elsewhere, stripping off the context and stitching it together into their own narrative. There's nothing original or substantive there to refute.

pella 6y ago

flagged in other threads : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477162

gridlockd 6y ago
Why should it be flagged?
- ttflee 6y ago
  People don't learn molecular cloning, phylogenetics, or how to perform a PCR before they upvote/downvote. People just hate its rhetoric.

dependenttypes 6y ago

There is a wikipedia article about the 1st author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hitsetute 6y ago

I have now flagged this particular bullshit misinformation FIVE TIMES on HN. There is a group here on HN repeatedly posting this drivel and related nonsense. I would have thought that Trump-style lies and propaganda would be beneath HN, but here we are. So what’s up OP? Care to explain why you’re engaged in lies?

jkhdigital 6y ago
This is a scientific research paper. If you think it’s BS then I eagerly await your point-by-point refutation of the scientific evidence presented therein.
- HelloNurse 6y ago
  It doesn't work this way. Given objective evidence of a political intent of anti-Chinese propaganda, such as the involvement of specific factions who want to blame China for the pandemic, it's perfectly reasonable to assume this text is "fake news", with only the form of a scientific paper. And on the other hand, we already know that building a custom coronavirus in a few months is feasible, if not easy; proving or refuting a plausible story about a synthetic biological weapon made by specific people in specific laboratories is a matter of espionage and investigation, not of scientific evidence.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    > proving or refuting a plausible story about a synthetic biological weapon made by specific peoople in specific laboratories is a matter of espionage and investigation, not of scientific evidence. Okay, fair enough, we'll call it forensic evidence. Either way, the arguments stand on their own merits. You can't dismiss a prosecutor's entire argument as "anti-defendant propaganda". The only people who would ever go to the trouble of building a case are the ones who believe the defendant to be guilty. Call it science or call it forensics, but the same principles of evidence and truth apply. Evaluate the argument on its merits.
    - 6y ago

hyperbovine 6y ago

For an opposing viewpoint written by actual experts in this field, please see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

AnnoyingSwede 6y ago

As many i started reading the paper from a non biologist perspective, then hit the comment section here to see the Steve Bannon references. That man has a whole carddeck up his sleeve. Question: Is it illegal to release misleading material like this?

dekhn 6y ago
No, it is not illegal to release known factually incorrect propaganda masequerading as scientific literature. If it was, large numbers of professors would be violating the law constantly.

zug_zug 6y ago

Worth reading Li Meng Yan's wikidedia page as a first stab at untangling this mess. She is a Chinese[1] viral researcher who published on covid[1], who fled to America when she felt her life was in jeopardy[1] for saying that China knew about human-to-human transmission of covid much earlier [1]. And lead author of this paper. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan

pldr2244 6y ago
It is downright depressing how much HN is scathingly attacking her work because of this.

biolurker1 6y ago

I really don't get why people were so resistant to the idea. We knew experiments went on at that lab. We knew they had coronaviruses.

schrodingersCat 6y ago

PhD in molecular biophysics here (did virology rotation in grad school also). There's not enough time to go into how bad the "science" is in this paper. Evidence is cherry-picked, and circumstantial at best. Lots of non-sequitors presented that are unconnected to the actual science. I've read earlier claims that are similar to this and basically they see low alignment similarity to commercially available vectors and claim "AHA it must be engineered". But anyone who has studied molecular biology knows that vectors are almost always derived from natural viruses. Also, while viral linkages are normally linear, crossover between viri in hosts is well documented and does occur "rarely". That's say it's rare compared to normal genetic drift, but common enough that it's not particularly surprising to see genetic material from another "vector" in the wild. It does not have to be lab derived to see the mutations observed. Once you call into question this fundamental premise, everything else looks like the scientific trash that it is.

jlbooker 6y ago

Other commentary on this paper: https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-push-study-claiming-china-manufactured-covid https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-pus... Bannon clearly has a narrative he wants to push, and this is just part of that play. This is far from objective science. The authors and funding clearly have huge conflicts of interest. The claims made are extraordinary compared with most other experts in the field. Those two facts alone are enough to significantly discount any claims made in the paper.

Zycloparadoxus 6y ago

Is this article already available in German?