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Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, t

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all. It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates... Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?

haunter 6y ago
I'm also curious about that. HN has very strong opinions about China especially about the Xinjiang re-education camps and/or the organ harvesting in China YET for some reason can't believe that the same country would lab make a virus like this. idk I'm just an outsider
- ladyanita22 6y ago
  Political ideology I guess
- baby 6y ago
  We can’t just entertain every complot theory
- TurkishPoptart 6y ago
  Bret Weinstein, who has a Ph.D in biology, claims it's highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was man-made, rather than naturally occurring. So it's definitely possible it was a test that went wrong (and let's be honest, the Chinese government has a less than stellar safety record).
  - nyolfen 6y ago
    specifically he is a specialist in bat biology, but perhaps more relevantly he had a very interesting conversation with a russian virologist who also thinks this is the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug here is an essay written by his guest: https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
    - dash2 6y ago
      I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I read three or four people on a thread all agreeing with each other, I become suspicious. It doesn’t seem how normal conversations go. It probably just is my quirk, does anyone else share this gut feeling?
      - nyolfen 6y ago
        i think you will find this thesis gaining credibility in the near future: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1&utm_campaign=nym https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
      - dathinab 6y ago
        In this case no. The reason is that if you have a less widely accepted opinion and someone states it and you can add additional info to it which makes it "stronger" you are likely to do so. Which still doesn't mean I believe it. As far as I know the scientific majority believe is that the virus doesn't show any indication of potential human manipulation and is very unlikely to be human made assuming China isn't years ahead wrt. virus manipulation (which doesn't mean it doesn't escaped from a lab, btw.). But as I'm not to much involved in this I would need hours to collect sources and trace them back to their original source to provide any useful links. So no credibility to this post.
- purplecats 6y ago
  one is science so ration thoughts and the other is lies and bs so it’s politics
delbarital 6y ago
The liability of China is the main question here. If it was released from a lab (and I don't think it was), China is liable to this world pandemic which is a huge thing.
- cs02rm0 6y ago
  Liability is the first point, but it's swiftly followed by what are they going to do next and how do we defend against it. This is a whole other ball game if it's malice/incompetence.
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  But liable to what end? What international jurisdiction will force China to “pay”? America destroyed Iraq on lies, but what has that liability cost them?
  - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
    You don't need to force China to pay. Typically what is done is that foreign assets are legally seized, for example, Chinese state assets in the West, if China refuses to pay for damages.
    - baskire 6y ago
      The “west” could absolve all foreign debt to China both in 1st world and 3rd world countries as payment for covid liability. The only action China could do would be to start a world war 3 in response.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Really, you are going to compare the destruction of "Iraq" to the hindering of the activities of the entire civilised world?
    - jannes 6y ago
      Why do you put Iraq in quotes as if it weren’t a real country?
knowhy 6y ago
I believe it is because a lab origin would mean that we, humans, are not just the subject of the arbitrariness of nature. The virus exemplifies that we do not have control over everything. And that is a truth which is hard to accept.
DevKoala 6y ago
Because it would make China liable, and for the majority of individuals, their stance on China as a good actor in global matters is now linked to their American political allegiance. It is hard for many folks to reconcile both.
- deeviant 6y ago
  How does it make China more liable. Allowing wet markets to exist is a equal or greater threat than shoddy research labs.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that people should not be able to hunt for wild foods? Or that they shouldn’t be able to sell what they catch or kill? Or something else?
    - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
      If it's proven that wet markets are a breeding ground for novel viruses, then yeah, clearly they should be banned.
      - thelittleone 6y ago
        Banned by who? Looking at the relative impact of the virus it seems the US is harder hit. Although the virus appears to be a tragic accident, a weakened US allows other nations to make advances. That being said, I tend to agree with your assertion.
        SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
        Surely the rest of the world has the leverage to pressure China to ban wild-animal markets.
        dathinab 6y ago
dash2 6y ago
It would have vast consequences if this came from a lab. It would be the most deadly example of "science gone wrong" ever: 1.8 million deaths, comparable to the Holocaust, from a single disaster in a single lab. We would seriously have to rethink how we did virus biology. And probably there would be repercussions throughout the whole of science. We might e.g. start to worry much more about the risks of many kinds of scientific experimentation.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  But it doesn't matter. We know that it could have come from a lab, even if it didn't. So why shouldn't we be asking those serious questions anyway?
  - sacomo 6y ago
    The origin of the virus is worth knowing. I think the far-right in the US are trying to use "covid was made in a Chinese lab" as a way to build anti-China sentiment and also to dismiss the virus' impact in a way. Their power comes from garnering votes from people who are swayed by boogie men. Keep in mind, the US ruling class is trying to start a new Cold War with China. Someone mentioned in another comment that some on the left were tying criticism of China with racism, and I'd like to point out that those identity politics only benefit the right. I think this link is mostly coming from some of the US liberal class (financially well off, lives aren't directly affected by election outcomes, centrists, etc.) and not from The Left (socialists, left of Bernie types). Blame a government, not its people. There is plenty of criticism to throw at China without being racist. But if anyone is claiming that blaming China is racist then they are just as misdirected as the people that use criticism of a county to be racist against its people.
  - dangero 6y ago
    Yes, even if this was not developed in a lab, every government in the world is now 100% aware of the potential uses for bioweapons. We should discuss how we would deal with and detect attacks like that in the future. Furthermore, we should talk about ethical disclosure responsibilities that all countries can agree on for outbreaks going forward as well as what will happen if those rules are not followed. For example, countries around the world should agree that if a country experiences a pandemic outbreak and they don't take certain measures to stop an international spread and disclose updates to the world, they will be liable for the extended outbreak. Allowing a virus like this to spread internationally while covering up details where now more than a million people have died is really grounds for war. Even if the virus was not created in a lab or intentional in any way, any limitation on communication and disclosure can have massive impact.
deleted 6y ago
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mytailorisrich 6y ago
This is the virus that has probably received the most attention by the largest number of global experts in history, or close to. If there was anything that showed it was in any way artificial it would have been detected by all mainstream experts by now and that information would have been publicised one way or another. Yet these claims and 'evidence' are only reported as coming from fringe people if not likely paid 'agents' (I'm thinking about that HK 'scientist' girl that fled and is in the US now, doing the rounds of all tabloids on the planet). On the other hand, there are known virii extremely similar to it in the mild (90-95% similar and related). I don't know if the hypothesis that it may be artificial is plausible to start with, but the facts seem to weigh heavily against it while the interests of some to create this "conspiracy theory" is pretty obvious as are the interests of some to expose China if they had actual evidence.
- rcpt 6y ago
  There are experts discussing this https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Wild conjectures with no shred of evidence is not 'discussing'... It has no place in a scientific journal and is pub talk at best or, worse, FUD. It is perfectly possible and sensible to state that finding the origin of this virus is important, like it is important for all new viral diseases, without engaging in conjectures, especially wild ones. Judging by the comments on HN many people (even more educated than average) are not able the see through this, are not able to distinguish facts from fiction and baseless conjectures. FUD works and is dangerous.
deleted 6y ago
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happytoexplain 6y ago
>consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions Really? I usually see a lot of plain disagreement based on reasonable lines of thinking, but only a very small proportion of "_extremely_ strong" wording. Are you sure you're not just interpreting a multitude of similar opinions as creating a feeling of that opinion being "extremely strong"? Or that you're not just thinking of the cases where people are responding to the overtly political conspiracy hyperbole that sometimes comes as a wrapper around the proposal?
- kmm 6y ago
  It's of course just more anecdotal evidence, but in my experience if you dare to mention the possibility of the virus being man-made on Reddit, regardless of the nuance and sources you add, you will get torn to shreds. This is not just me being salty about reactions to my own comments, I've personally never made a comment on the origin of the covid on Reddit, as I don't feel like I have anything of value to add yet. It's just something I've witnessed over and over again. Like the GP of this thread I've never understood why such a relatively harmless claim would be so contentious. I've always assumed it was something political that as a non-American I simply don't know the context of. It reminds me of the drama around hydroxychloroquine, where mentioning it on Reddit would get you tarred-and-feathered as a loony Trumpist, even though it seemed like a non-issue to me. Obviously HCQ doesn't really work, but believing it does never seemed to deserve such harsh treatment, which I'm again assuming has roots in a political context I don't fully understand.
  - cloverich 6y ago
    the political context is that one Trump / far right angle is to play up Chinas fault and use it as a weapon to discount the USs otherwise poor handling of the outbreak. I have several friends and family who think this way, and are nearly offended at the suggestion that eg Trump making fun of Biden wearing a mask is innapropriate. My general view is i am less concerned with the origins and more concerned with our preparedness for the next outbreak. So while i am not one of those down voters you speak of, i do legitimately fear that if it does turn out to be lab made, the far right will win back ground and we won’t see any meaningful progress towards bolstering out defense against the inevitable next outbreak.
addicted 6y ago
Because there is no strong evidence. Strong claims require strong evidence.
- bearbin 6y ago
  But this (escape from a vial in a lab) isn't a strong claim, or at least no stronger than the alternative (the virus escaped from bat in a a wet-market)- why is there no outcry against the wet market hypothesis?
  - wcoenen 6y ago
    As explained in the linked page under "starting point", the priors for zoonosis are much higher than lab escape. So lab escape actually is a much stronger claim which requires more evidence. The source of the numbers is under the "more >" link.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Zoonosis is basically the null hypothesis, as this is the mechanism for essentially every single other virus. For this virus to be special and have a special and different origin requires evidence.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      No, the null hypothesis is unknown origin. Science doesn't just default to either explanation without evidence.
      - dash2 6y ago
        That’s untrue. Null hypotheses are indeed typically “defaults” - for example, assuming, prior to any evidence, that X has no correlation with Y in the population. If you want to put it in a Bayesian framework, scientists cannot avoid priors any more than anybody else.
        6y ago
js2 6y ago
> evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses: > Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came from bats, mice, or domestic animals. > More so, bats are the source of the Ebola virus, rabies, Nipah ad Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and influenza A virus. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-19-update-coronavirus-has-zoonotic-animal-origin-scientists-explain-why.htm https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-1... > An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin (1,2). Globally, infectious diseases account for 15.8% of all deaths and 43.7% of deaths in low-resource countries (3,4). It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year (5). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711306/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711306/
- SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
  One can conclude you believe it purely coincidental that the Wuhan Institute of Virolgy specialized in research on bat coronaviruses? A paper in the lancet early in the year reported that the Wuhan Seafood market not only did not sell bats, but that many of the early patients reported never visiting the market. At this point, it may be too late to ever discover the true origin of the virus.
  - xbpx 6y ago
    It isn't coincidental. The reason the institute is there is because of the high prevalence of bats and bat viruses in the region. If you want to study bat viruses you can't pick many better places. The researchers involved, including connected US researchers, have been warning about this for years. Ironically one of these researchers, Daszak, was politically targeted for his connections to this Wuhan lab [1], even though he and Wuhan scientists have been trying to get the attention to this problem for some time. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4
cle 6y ago
In the US, it's because this claim, or rejection of it, is strongly tied to political identity. Because the US is highly polarized right now, once political identity comes into play, you've left the realm of rationality and entered the realm of tribalism.
- casefields 6y ago
  This is on par with election fraud. No matter if there is any, one side will downplay while the other screams it’s the tip of the iceberg. Both sides know presidential elections are a zero-sum game and will do whatever it takes to win. Again, I don’t think there was that much, let alone enough to swing the election, but we can’t even discuss any of it honestly.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    We can't discuss it because they side that claims it exists is solely doing so to overturn the election. Don't try to tiptoe the fact that it's their ulterior motives which is why they are met with a tsunami of eye-rolling.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    But you aren't even trying to discuss it honestly! The prior probability of voter fraud is so low that it demands really incredible evidence. When you frame it like "vote fraud or not voter fraud", you're implicitly lending a whole lot of credibility to something that is, well, not the least bit credible. Also, to borrow from a completely different polarizing thread, you're making a classic motte-and-bailey argument in record time. You start out broad - "election fraud", a "zero sum game" that they must be cheating at - but by the end of the comment you're already on, "Okay, not election fraud, but there were votes that were incorrectly cast somehow, and thats what I'm actually upset about..." which of course is obviously a defensible position that nobody would disagree with. Another way to think about how silly this is: Can you conceive of a world were Trump and his supporters don't claim there was fraud, but accept a Joe Biden win?
    - 6y ago
nobodyandproud 6y ago
Entertaining the question is dangerous (I don’t believe it, but for the sake of argument)... My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus? Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable? Is it to prevent another MERS SARS? Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troublesome minority populations, as long as they have some amount of deniability to rely on. Is it to stress test global medical science and institutions? I’ll keep an open mind in that if (and it’s a large if) there are respected scientists who present evidence of it being a lab modified virus, then the motive must be understood and fast. Edit: I will say that China isn’t helping its case by impeding research and publishing of any studies simply trying to establish whether COVID even crossed from local (wild) bat populations; and promoting only theories that claim COVID came from elsewhere.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I don’t really get why even entertaining the question is dangerous, and I can imagine some reasonable justifications for why they’d be doing that kind of research (which I believe is called “Gain of Function”). Understanding what mutations could make a virus more communicable is something that I think would benefit everyone. The dangerous questions really do come in at your last hypothetical, which obviously signals extreme nefarious intent and would require extraordinary evidence.
  - nobodyandproud 6y ago
    Because I personally don’t want to lend any credence to bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, especially in a public forum. I’m a complete nobody, but the internet has a way of amplifying things.
    - stevehawk 6y ago
      You can't stop batshit crazy. There's no vaccine for it. So to go full head in the sand on a topic because of the crazies is detrimental to intelligent debate in general.
rcpt 6y ago
A very calm response to this https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 > Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.
- hrktb 6y ago
  Does it still matter that much once we have a series of effective vaccines ? It seems the crux of the argument is to better react in the short term, but it looks to my untrained eyes that we already passed that level of investigation if we have effective means to prevent infection. I also guess we’d still need to explore all other tracks anyway (we can’t just focus on lab spills for instance, if that was the root cause, and stop to care about the bat/human interface, nor should it be assumed that any other path will be less important in the future)
  - rcpt 6y ago
    I think if it's a natural virus from wet markets there's another strong argument against animal agriculture.
  - dvsfish 6y ago
    What about other potential viruses though? We don't have vaccines for those.
    - hrktb 6y ago
      Those other viruses could as well come from bats or be leaked. I’m arguing that precise knowledge of what happened a year ago might not be a priority to help us deal with what happens in the real world now. Basically I see it as preparing to win the last war.
  - philippoi 6y ago
krona 6y ago
it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all. Viruses used for gain of function research are selected for high rates of mutation and adaption. If we had known this from day one we would likely have made several changes to how to protect against it in the long term, especially with regards to cross-species transmission.
- puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago
  However, the mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be fairly slow for a RNA virus. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6
yters 6y ago
Strong opposition in the west may because it was a western lab originally?
ssss11 6y ago
It becomes political.
IIAOPSW 6y ago
Its simple. Humans are addicted to blame thinking. People instinctively expect a just world, where bad things are a consequence of some form of sin from bad people and good things are a consequence of some virtue from good people and all problems are some sinners fault. A large fraction of people can't comprehend a world where bad things happen to them and nothing/no one is to blame. In the absence of reason they invent one. My kid got autism? I bet it was the vaccine shots. School shooting? I bet it was those violent video games. Internet connection went down? I bet it was because I just tried to scan a document (yes this is a real example). Any explanation, no matter how spurious, is more palpable to the human mind than "this is random and out of our control". Throw some confirmation bias on top of it. The easiest group to blame for bad things is the group you already disliked. Traditionally this means foreigners, other races, and heretics. Blaming China both let's people have their imagined just world and vindicates whatever pre-existing hard-line stance they had on China. It's no secret that a lot of people already had a hard-lie stance on China for unrelated reasons (Eg the trade war). In conclusion the human logical apparatus is bugged, no one is releasing any patches, and the whole issue is emotional because who you blame is tribal signaling dressed up as rational interest.
- petre 6y ago
  They covered it up just like the USSR covered up the Chernobyl nuclear accident, so China is at the very least liable for doing that, which led to a delayed response to the outbreak. Responsible parties were doctor Zhang Yongzhen who published the virus sequence, enabling research on vaccines, Li Wenliang and his colleagues who shared the news about the outbreak and were punished for doing so.
  - IIAOPSW 6y ago
    There's a world of difference between "China has some liability for delaying the response" and "China intentionally engineered this in a lab". The reasonable argument of the former is drowned out by emotional blame-thinkers who have adapted the latter.
mcbits 6y ago
> ... whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market Maybe this is pedantic, but the introduction to humans could have happened in a wet market whether the virus itself originated in a lab (where bats could have escaped or been smuggled out and sold, etc.) or zoonotically.
- philippoi 6y ago
  Right. One scenario could be: escaped from the lab with a technician who visited the wet market on the way home from work, sparking the first identifiable cluster.
- bearbin 6y ago
  Indeed, that is a possibility. It's possible both for the virus to be engineered and spread from the wet-market, and to be zoonotic and spread directly from the lab (where a sample was stored). Perhaps the ambiguity there does contribute to some of the more extreme opinions and discussion.
bawolff 6y ago
Because people want someone to blame, a villian to hold responsible, for whom they can call out for blood. Bats can't be morally culpable; other humans can be. If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.
- tiahura 6y ago
  That seems a bit unfair. I lean towards the “random technician was a little careless one day hypothesis.” I’m not looking to blame anybody. S* Happens as they say.
brmgb 6y ago
It's a geopolitical matter. China doesn't want to be seen as the culprit. It goes against its global ambition. Internally they are heavily pushing the preposterous claim that the virus is of foreign origin, possibly imported via frozen food. Objectively lab origin seems likely. The virus started in the city housing the only P4 laboratory in China. This laboratory is known for its lax security (see the 2018 American embassy cables and the declarations of multiple sources in France who participated in its construction) and research on bat coronavirus transmission to humans were conducted there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if an accident didn't happen especially considering that we still can't find the missing link which would firmly establish a zoonotic origin. Of course, as China is extremely uncooperative on this question, we will probably never know.
- dathinab 6y ago
  And there is also a difference between a natural virus brought for analyses into a Lab and an accident happens and a lab created virus and a lab created virus released intentionally. But without question their internal propaganda is about it is super questionable.
deleted 6y ago
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ilaksh 6y ago
I'm going to go ahead and be the "crazy" person in this thread. In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators. So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic character and more a brutal practicality. In this worldview, the operating paradigm is not essentially civil. It is "might makes right". Now if you go further and put the deployment of nuclear weapons into that context, you will have an even more "extreme" worldview. So in this paradigm, China may, like other countries before it, seek to improve it's access to resources and general power. And like other countries before it, it would be operating in the "brutally practical" paradigm. So if one was brave and "crazy" then one could speculate that the Covid-19 event may have been the Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. And even if it wasn't intentional, it could be said to serve that purpose. Even "crazy" people hope that isn't truly part of the paradigm now. But some of the braver "crazies" might still be able to admit some slight possibility.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  I don't think it's particularly brave to admit there is a chance this came from a lab. I want to see evidence before I change my prior, and it's a very small chance, but I suspect if people framed it in terms of probabilities, we would find more agreement. However, labeling the perspectives in heroic terms does a disservice to your ability to more accurately predict the future. Most people with crazy theories end up being crackpots.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    I didn't say it was brave or heroic to suggest it came from a lab. But in many social groups such as HN you do have to be kind of brave to suggest it might have been a bioweapon. People who say things like that are often ostracized in many places online. Or at the very least you get called a crackpot.
- Clubber 6y ago
  >It is "might makes right". It is and always has, since the beginning of conflict. That's the only rule that can't be broken. >Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. It's not crazy, it's certainly plausible. I've heard theories that China would suffer the outbreak better because they would be better at locking down the population than the West and therefore suffer less economic damage. Such a thing could destroy the Western economy, particularly the US economy (no safety nets) so China could recover more ground or possibly take the economic lead. It's the, "lets both take poison but I have built up an immunity," strategy as seen on The Princess Bride. Total lockdowns being the immunity. Having said that, if it did come from a lab, I suspect the lab was designed to counter outbreaks (China has been wearing masks for several years now due to various outbreaks), and an accident happened. Due to the contagiousness during the incubation period and lack of serious symptoms in much of the infected, it had spread and already taken hold of the population before the government could effectively react.
vlovich123 6y ago
Having the origin be China is bad enough for the CCP but if it’s caused by some kind of accident sloppiness that can somehow be tied to lack of government regulations or something, they’re looking at serious domestic problems. Even if it did happen the CCP would never admit that and will seek to censor any claims to that effect. That’s why both conspiracy theories about this being a man-made conspiracy of the USA/China stem from the populist camps (ie Trump and Xi).
jokoon 6y ago
A lab virus might have been designed to be hard to vaccinate. I'm not a virologist, but the stories about reinfection are weird too. I don't believe in those theories, I just think "what if?".

haunter 6y ago

I'm also curious about that. HN has very strong opinions about China especially about the Xinjiang re-education camps and/or the organ harvesting in China YET for some reason can't believe that the same country would lab make a virus like this. idk I'm just an outsider

ladyanita22 6y ago
Political ideology I guess
baby 6y ago
We can’t just entertain every complot theory
TurkishPoptart 6y ago
Bret Weinstein, who has a Ph.D in biology, claims it's highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was man-made, rather than naturally occurring. So it's definitely possible it was a test that went wrong (and let's be honest, the Chinese government has a less than stellar safety record).
- nyolfen 6y ago
  specifically he is a specialist in bat biology, but perhaps more relevantly he had a very interesting conversation with a russian virologist who also thinks this is the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug here is an essay written by his guest: https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
  - dash2 6y ago
    I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I read three or four people on a thread all agreeing with each other, I become suspicious. It doesn’t seem how normal conversations go. It probably just is my quirk, does anyone else share this gut feeling?
    - nyolfen 6y ago
      i think you will find this thesis gaining credibility in the near future: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1&utm_campaign=nym https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
    - dathinab 6y ago
      In this case no. The reason is that if you have a less widely accepted opinion and someone states it and you can add additional info to it which makes it "stronger" you are likely to do so. Which still doesn't mean I believe it. As far as I know the scientific majority believe is that the virus doesn't show any indication of potential human manipulation and is very unlikely to be human made assuming China isn't years ahead wrt. virus manipulation (which doesn't mean it doesn't escaped from a lab, btw.). But as I'm not to much involved in this I would need hours to collect sources and trace them back to their original source to provide any useful links. So no credibility to this post.
purplecats 6y ago
one is science so ration thoughts and the other is lies and bs so it’s politics

delbarital 6y ago

The liability of China is the main question here. If it was released from a lab (and I don't think it was), China is liable to this world pandemic which is a huge thing.

cs02rm0 6y ago
Liability is the first point, but it's swiftly followed by what are they going to do next and how do we defend against it. This is a whole other ball game if it's malice/incompetence.
adamcstephens 6y ago
But liable to what end? What international jurisdiction will force China to “pay”? America destroyed Iraq on lies, but what has that liability cost them?
- SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
  You don't need to force China to pay. Typically what is done is that foreign assets are legally seized, for example, Chinese state assets in the West, if China refuses to pay for damages.
  - baskire 6y ago
    The “west” could absolve all foreign debt to China both in 1st world and 3rd world countries as payment for covid liability. The only action China could do would be to start a world war 3 in response.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Really, you are going to compare the destruction of "Iraq" to the hindering of the activities of the entire civilised world?
  - jannes 6y ago
    Why do you put Iraq in quotes as if it weren’t a real country?

knowhy 6y ago

I believe it is because a lab origin would mean that we, humans, are not just the subject of the arbitrariness of nature. The virus exemplifies that we do not have control over everything. And that is a truth which is hard to accept.

DevKoala 6y ago

Because it would make China liable, and for the majority of individuals, their stance on China as a good actor in global matters is now linked to their American political allegiance. It is hard for many folks to reconcile both.

deeviant 6y ago
How does it make China more liable. Allowing wet markets to exist is a equal or greater threat than shoddy research labs.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that people should not be able to hunt for wild foods? Or that they shouldn’t be able to sell what they catch or kill? Or something else?
  - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
    If it's proven that wet markets are a breeding ground for novel viruses, then yeah, clearly they should be banned.
    - thelittleone 6y ago
      Banned by who? Looking at the relative impact of the virus it seems the US is harder hit. Although the virus appears to be a tragic accident, a weakened US allows other nations to make advances. That being said, I tend to agree with your assertion.
      - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
        Surely the rest of the world has the leverage to pressure China to ban wild-animal markets.
        dathinab 6y ago

dash2 6y ago

It would have vast consequences if this came from a lab. It would be the most deadly example of "science gone wrong" ever: 1.8 million deaths, comparable to the Holocaust, from a single disaster in a single lab. We would seriously have to rethink how we did virus biology. And probably there would be repercussions throughout the whole of science. We might e.g. start to worry much more about the risks of many kinds of scientific experimentation.

jtbayly 6y ago
But it doesn't matter. We know that it could have come from a lab, even if it didn't. So why shouldn't we be asking those serious questions anyway?
- sacomo 6y ago
  The origin of the virus is worth knowing. I think the far-right in the US are trying to use "covid was made in a Chinese lab" as a way to build anti-China sentiment and also to dismiss the virus' impact in a way. Their power comes from garnering votes from people who are swayed by boogie men. Keep in mind, the US ruling class is trying to start a new Cold War with China. Someone mentioned in another comment that some on the left were tying criticism of China with racism, and I'd like to point out that those identity politics only benefit the right. I think this link is mostly coming from some of the US liberal class (financially well off, lives aren't directly affected by election outcomes, centrists, etc.) and not from The Left (socialists, left of Bernie types). Blame a government, not its people. There is plenty of criticism to throw at China without being racist. But if anyone is claiming that blaming China is racist then they are just as misdirected as the people that use criticism of a county to be racist against its people.
- dangero 6y ago
  Yes, even if this was not developed in a lab, every government in the world is now 100% aware of the potential uses for bioweapons. We should discuss how we would deal with and detect attacks like that in the future. Furthermore, we should talk about ethical disclosure responsibilities that all countries can agree on for outbreaks going forward as well as what will happen if those rules are not followed. For example, countries around the world should agree that if a country experiences a pandemic outbreak and they don't take certain measures to stop an international spread and disclose updates to the world, they will be liable for the extended outbreak. Allowing a virus like this to spread internationally while covering up details where now more than a million people have died is really grounds for war. Even if the virus was not created in a lab or intentional in any way, any limitation on communication and disclosure can have massive impact.

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mytailorisrich 6y ago

This is the virus that has probably received the most attention by the largest number of global experts in history, or close to. If there was anything that showed it was in any way artificial it would have been detected by all mainstream experts by now and that information would have been publicised one way or another. Yet these claims and 'evidence' are only reported as coming from fringe people if not likely paid 'agents' (I'm thinking about that HK 'scientist' girl that fled and is in the US now, doing the rounds of all tabloids on the planet). On the other hand, there are known virii extremely similar to it in the mild (90-95% similar and related). I don't know if the hypothesis that it may be artificial is plausible to start with, but the facts seem to weigh heavily against it while the interests of some to create this "conspiracy theory" is pretty obvious as are the interests of some to expose China if they had actual evidence.

rcpt 6y ago
There are experts discussing this https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Wild conjectures with no shred of evidence is not 'discussing'... It has no place in a scientific journal and is pub talk at best or, worse, FUD. It is perfectly possible and sensible to state that finding the origin of this virus is important, like it is important for all new viral diseases, without engaging in conjectures, especially wild ones. Judging by the comments on HN many people (even more educated than average) are not able the see through this, are not able to distinguish facts from fiction and baseless conjectures. FUD works and is dangerous.

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happytoexplain 6y ago

>consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions Really? I usually see a lot of plain disagreement based on reasonable lines of thinking, but only a very small proportion of "_extremely_ strong" wording. Are you sure you're not just interpreting a multitude of similar opinions as creating a feeling of that opinion being "extremely strong"? Or that you're not just thinking of the cases where people are responding to the overtly political conspiracy hyperbole that sometimes comes as a wrapper around the proposal?

kmm 6y ago
It's of course just more anecdotal evidence, but in my experience if you dare to mention the possibility of the virus being man-made on Reddit, regardless of the nuance and sources you add, you will get torn to shreds. This is not just me being salty about reactions to my own comments, I've personally never made a comment on the origin of the covid on Reddit, as I don't feel like I have anything of value to add yet. It's just something I've witnessed over and over again. Like the GP of this thread I've never understood why such a relatively harmless claim would be so contentious. I've always assumed it was something political that as a non-American I simply don't know the context of. It reminds me of the drama around hydroxychloroquine, where mentioning it on Reddit would get you tarred-and-feathered as a loony Trumpist, even though it seemed like a non-issue to me. Obviously HCQ doesn't really work, but believing it does never seemed to deserve such harsh treatment, which I'm again assuming has roots in a political context I don't fully understand.
- cloverich 6y ago
  the political context is that one Trump / far right angle is to play up Chinas fault and use it as a weapon to discount the USs otherwise poor handling of the outbreak. I have several friends and family who think this way, and are nearly offended at the suggestion that eg Trump making fun of Biden wearing a mask is innapropriate. My general view is i am less concerned with the origins and more concerned with our preparedness for the next outbreak. So while i am not one of those down voters you speak of, i do legitimately fear that if it does turn out to be lab made, the far right will win back ground and we won’t see any meaningful progress towards bolstering out defense against the inevitable next outbreak.

addicted 6y ago

Because there is no strong evidence. Strong claims require strong evidence.

bearbin 6y ago
But this (escape from a vial in a lab) isn't a strong claim, or at least no stronger than the alternative (the virus escaped from bat in a a wet-market)- why is there no outcry against the wet market hypothesis?
- wcoenen 6y ago
  As explained in the linked page under "starting point", the priors for zoonosis are much higher than lab escape. So lab escape actually is a much stronger claim which requires more evidence. The source of the numbers is under the "more >" link.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Zoonosis is basically the null hypothesis, as this is the mechanism for essentially every single other virus. For this virus to be special and have a special and different origin requires evidence.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    No, the null hypothesis is unknown origin. Science doesn't just default to either explanation without evidence.
    - dash2 6y ago
      That’s untrue. Null hypotheses are indeed typically “defaults” - for example, assuming, prior to any evidence, that X has no correlation with Y in the population. If you want to put it in a Bayesian framework, scientists cannot avoid priors any more than anybody else.
      - 6y ago

js2 6y ago

> evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses: > Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came from bats, mice, or domestic animals. > More so, bats are the source of the Ebola virus, rabies, Nipah ad Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and influenza A virus. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-19-update-coronavirus-has-zoonotic-animal-origin-scientists-explain-why.htm https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-1... > An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin (1,2). Globally, infectious diseases account for 15.8% of all deaths and 43.7% of deaths in low-resource countries (3,4). It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year (5). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711306/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711306/

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
One can conclude you believe it purely coincidental that the Wuhan Institute of Virolgy specialized in research on bat coronaviruses? A paper in the lancet early in the year reported that the Wuhan Seafood market not only did not sell bats, but that many of the early patients reported never visiting the market. At this point, it may be too late to ever discover the true origin of the virus.
- xbpx 6y ago
  It isn't coincidental. The reason the institute is there is because of the high prevalence of bats and bat viruses in the region. If you want to study bat viruses you can't pick many better places. The researchers involved, including connected US researchers, have been warning about this for years. Ironically one of these researchers, Daszak, was politically targeted for his connections to this Wuhan lab [1], even though he and Wuhan scientists have been trying to get the attention to this problem for some time. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4

cle 6y ago

In the US, it's because this claim, or rejection of it, is strongly tied to political identity. Because the US is highly polarized right now, once political identity comes into play, you've left the realm of rationality and entered the realm of tribalism.

casefields 6y ago
This is on par with election fraud. No matter if there is any, one side will downplay while the other screams it’s the tip of the iceberg. Both sides know presidential elections are a zero-sum game and will do whatever it takes to win. Again, I don’t think there was that much, let alone enough to swing the election, but we can’t even discuss any of it honestly.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  We can't discuss it because they side that claims it exists is solely doing so to overturn the election. Don't try to tiptoe the fact that it's their ulterior motives which is why they are met with a tsunami of eye-rolling.
- NationalPark 6y ago
  But you aren't even trying to discuss it honestly! The prior probability of voter fraud is so low that it demands really incredible evidence. When you frame it like "vote fraud or not voter fraud", you're implicitly lending a whole lot of credibility to something that is, well, not the least bit credible. Also, to borrow from a completely different polarizing thread, you're making a classic motte-and-bailey argument in record time. You start out broad - "election fraud", a "zero sum game" that they must be cheating at - but by the end of the comment you're already on, "Okay, not election fraud, but there were votes that were incorrectly cast somehow, and thats what I'm actually upset about..." which of course is obviously a defensible position that nobody would disagree with. Another way to think about how silly this is: Can you conceive of a world were Trump and his supporters don't claim there was fraud, but accept a Joe Biden win?
  - 6y ago

nobodyandproud 6y ago

Entertaining the question is dangerous (I don’t believe it, but for the sake of argument)... My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus? Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable? Is it to prevent another MERS SARS? Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troublesome minority populations, as long as they have some amount of deniability to rely on. Is it to stress test global medical science and institutions? I’ll keep an open mind in that if (and it’s a large if) there are respected scientists who present evidence of it being a lab modified virus, then the motive must be understood and fast. Edit: I will say that China isn’t helping its case by impeding research and publishing of any studies simply trying to establish whether COVID even crossed from local (wild) bat populations; and promoting only theories that claim COVID came from elsewhere.

remarkEon 6y ago
I don’t really get why even entertaining the question is dangerous, and I can imagine some reasonable justifications for why they’d be doing that kind of research (which I believe is called “Gain of Function”). Understanding what mutations could make a virus more communicable is something that I think would benefit everyone. The dangerous questions really do come in at your last hypothetical, which obviously signals extreme nefarious intent and would require extraordinary evidence.
- nobodyandproud 6y ago
  Because I personally don’t want to lend any credence to bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, especially in a public forum. I’m a complete nobody, but the internet has a way of amplifying things.
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    You can't stop batshit crazy. There's no vaccine for it. So to go full head in the sand on a topic because of the crazies is detrimental to intelligent debate in general.

rcpt 6y ago

A very calm response to this https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 > Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.

hrktb 6y ago
Does it still matter that much once we have a series of effective vaccines ? It seems the crux of the argument is to better react in the short term, but it looks to my untrained eyes that we already passed that level of investigation if we have effective means to prevent infection. I also guess we’d still need to explore all other tracks anyway (we can’t just focus on lab spills for instance, if that was the root cause, and stop to care about the bat/human interface, nor should it be assumed that any other path will be less important in the future)
- rcpt 6y ago
  I think if it's a natural virus from wet markets there's another strong argument against animal agriculture.
- dvsfish 6y ago
  What about other potential viruses though? We don't have vaccines for those.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    Those other viruses could as well come from bats or be leaked. I’m arguing that precise knowledge of what happened a year ago might not be a priority to help us deal with what happens in the real world now. Basically I see it as preparing to win the last war.
- philippoi 6y ago

krona 6y ago

it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all. Viruses used for gain of function research are selected for high rates of mutation and adaption. If we had known this from day one we would likely have made several changes to how to protect against it in the long term, especially with regards to cross-species transmission.

puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago
However, the mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be fairly slow for a RNA virus. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

yters 6y ago

Strong opposition in the west may because it was a western lab originally?

ssss11 6y ago

It becomes political.

IIAOPSW 6y ago

Its simple. Humans are addicted to blame thinking. People instinctively expect a just world, where bad things are a consequence of some form of sin from bad people and good things are a consequence of some virtue from good people and all problems are some sinners fault. A large fraction of people can't comprehend a world where bad things happen to them and nothing/no one is to blame. In the absence of reason they invent one. My kid got autism? I bet it was the vaccine shots. School shooting? I bet it was those violent video games. Internet connection went down? I bet it was because I just tried to scan a document (yes this is a real example). Any explanation, no matter how spurious, is more palpable to the human mind than "this is random and out of our control". Throw some confirmation bias on top of it. The easiest group to blame for bad things is the group you already disliked. Traditionally this means foreigners, other races, and heretics. Blaming China both let's people have their imagined just world and vindicates whatever pre-existing hard-line stance they had on China. It's no secret that a lot of people already had a hard-lie stance on China for unrelated reasons (Eg the trade war). In conclusion the human logical apparatus is bugged, no one is releasing any patches, and the whole issue is emotional because who you blame is tribal signaling dressed up as rational interest.

petre 6y ago
They covered it up just like the USSR covered up the Chernobyl nuclear accident, so China is at the very least liable for doing that, which led to a delayed response to the outbreak. Responsible parties were doctor Zhang Yongzhen who published the virus sequence, enabling research on vaccines, Li Wenliang and his colleagues who shared the news about the outbreak and were punished for doing so.
- IIAOPSW 6y ago
  There's a world of difference between "China has some liability for delaying the response" and "China intentionally engineered this in a lab". The reasonable argument of the former is drowned out by emotional blame-thinkers who have adapted the latter.

mcbits 6y ago

> ... whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market Maybe this is pedantic, but the introduction to humans could have happened in a wet market whether the virus itself originated in a lab (where bats could have escaped or been smuggled out and sold, etc.) or zoonotically.

philippoi 6y ago
Right. One scenario could be: escaped from the lab with a technician who visited the wet market on the way home from work, sparking the first identifiable cluster.
bearbin 6y ago
Indeed, that is a possibility. It's possible both for the virus to be engineered and spread from the wet-market, and to be zoonotic and spread directly from the lab (where a sample was stored). Perhaps the ambiguity there does contribute to some of the more extreme opinions and discussion.

bawolff 6y ago

Because people want someone to blame, a villian to hold responsible, for whom they can call out for blood. Bats can't be morally culpable; other humans can be. If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.

tiahura 6y ago
That seems a bit unfair. I lean towards the “random technician was a little careless one day hypothesis.” I’m not looking to blame anybody. S* Happens as they say.

brmgb 6y ago

It's a geopolitical matter. China doesn't want to be seen as the culprit. It goes against its global ambition. Internally they are heavily pushing the preposterous claim that the virus is of foreign origin, possibly imported via frozen food. Objectively lab origin seems likely. The virus started in the city housing the only P4 laboratory in China. This laboratory is known for its lax security (see the 2018 American embassy cables and the declarations of multiple sources in France who participated in its construction) and research on bat coronavirus transmission to humans were conducted there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if an accident didn't happen especially considering that we still can't find the missing link which would firmly establish a zoonotic origin. Of course, as China is extremely uncooperative on this question, we will probably never know.

dathinab 6y ago
And there is also a difference between a natural virus brought for analyses into a Lab and an accident happens and a lab created virus and a lab created virus released intentionally. But without question their internal propaganda is about it is super questionable.

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ilaksh 6y ago

I'm going to go ahead and be the "crazy" person in this thread. In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators. So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic character and more a brutal practicality. In this worldview, the operating paradigm is not essentially civil. It is "might makes right". Now if you go further and put the deployment of nuclear weapons into that context, you will have an even more "extreme" worldview. So in this paradigm, China may, like other countries before it, seek to improve it's access to resources and general power. And like other countries before it, it would be operating in the "brutally practical" paradigm. So if one was brave and "crazy" then one could speculate that the Covid-19 event may have been the Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. And even if it wasn't intentional, it could be said to serve that purpose. Even "crazy" people hope that isn't truly part of the paradigm now. But some of the braver "crazies" might still be able to admit some slight possibility.

edmundsauto 6y ago
I don't think it's particularly brave to admit there is a chance this came from a lab. I want to see evidence before I change my prior, and it's a very small chance, but I suspect if people framed it in terms of probabilities, we would find more agreement. However, labeling the perspectives in heroic terms does a disservice to your ability to more accurately predict the future. Most people with crazy theories end up being crackpots.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I didn't say it was brave or heroic to suggest it came from a lab. But in many social groups such as HN you do have to be kind of brave to suggest it might have been a bioweapon. People who say things like that are often ostracized in many places online. Or at the very least you get called a crackpot.
Clubber 6y ago
>It is "might makes right". It is and always has, since the beginning of conflict. That's the only rule that can't be broken. >Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. It's not crazy, it's certainly plausible. I've heard theories that China would suffer the outbreak better because they would be better at locking down the population than the West and therefore suffer less economic damage. Such a thing could destroy the Western economy, particularly the US economy (no safety nets) so China could recover more ground or possibly take the economic lead. It's the, "lets both take poison but I have built up an immunity," strategy as seen on The Princess Bride. Total lockdowns being the immunity. Having said that, if it did come from a lab, I suspect the lab was designed to counter outbreaks (China has been wearing masks for several years now due to various outbreaks), and an accident happened. Due to the contagiousness during the incubation period and lack of serious symptoms in much of the infected, it had spread and already taken hold of the population before the government could effectively react.

vlovich123 6y ago

Having the origin be China is bad enough for the CCP but if it’s caused by some kind of accident sloppiness that can somehow be tied to lack of government regulations or something, they’re looking at serious domestic problems. Even if it did happen the CCP would never admit that and will seek to censor any claims to that effect. That’s why both conspiracy theories about this being a man-made conspiracy of the USA/China stem from the populist camps (ie Trump and Xi).

jokoon 6y ago

A lab virus might have been designed to be hard to vaccinate. I'm not a virologist, but the stories about reinfection are weird too. I don't believe in those theories, I just think "what if?".