5 ms·

Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more plausibl

Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more plausible it evolved naturally and just jumped species. FAR FAR FAR more plausible.

RegnisGnaw 6y ago
In the the more common lab theory is that it was a natural virus being studies in the lab. It escaped by accident. China has had multiple SARS escape accidents.
bcrosby95 6y ago
"Building" it in a lab might be too scifi. But it's possible they were experimenting with things. E.g. "killer bees" are a product of human scientists trying to engineer a better bee - the release was accidental. It's not like we have the ability to genetically engineer a bee from the ground up. But as a species humans have been purposefully manipulating the traits of living things for thousands of years.
andreilys 6y ago
“Building” the virus is a sleight of hand that people use to discredit the lab theory. More likely than building the virus is studying it and accelerating it’s development. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened here however without the cooperation of the CCP we’ll have no idea what the truth of the matter is
Amezarak 6y ago
There was a great article in New York Magazine covering the background here and the possibilities. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca... It turns out we've been doing "serial passage" research for some time, which is where we leverage natural selection to do our genetic engineering for us, rather than manually editing genes. This is how we engineer viruses to jump species - on purpose. > They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. In fact, "we" (meaning humanity) have even been experimenting with serial passage into humans. > A few years later, in a further round of “interspecies transfer” experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their “infectious construct” replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote. The whole article is really worth a read.
- ummonk 6y ago
  Right, and combine this with a history of lab leaks both in China and the west (which the article outlines) and a lab leak scenario is perfectly plausible. It is however hard to tell whether it was a lab origin because serial passage is also the route the virus would have taken if it naturally evolved outside a lab to infect humans.
renewiltord 6y ago
You can, with your own body, the right drug regimen, and starting with just garden variety TB and no skills whatsoever, "build" XDR TB. The general evidence is this is yet another reason why wet markets are terrible for humanity, not that it was made in a lab and got away. But you can build lots of things.
- nsajko 6y ago
  This is what the acronyms stand for, in case it's not apparent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tuberculosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tub...
btilly 6y ago
Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. A random virus, no. This one, we do. We can't build a virus from scratch. But we can combine pieces of different viruses to build a new one. The same thing also happens naturally when an animal is sick with 2 viruses at once. If both get into the same cell, you get various mixes created and sometimes a mixture will turn out to be a better virus than either parent. This virus looks like a combination of apparently unrelated viruses. See https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy... for confirmation. That happens to be something that can happen either naturally or artificially. Where conspiracy theorists get going is that a few years ago there were papers from the lab near Wuhan suggesting that a combination much like COVID-19's actual combination should be particularly effective in humans. So this looks like an extension of a known line of research from a lab involved in military work. Combine that with the local coverup and you can see how people go down the rabbit hole.
- highstep 6y ago
  You really should cite those paper if you're going to offer such significant information. your comment is worthless otherwise.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > You really should cite those paper if you're going to offer such significant information. Yes. > your comment is worthless otherwise. No.
  - btilly 6y ago
    A good starting point is https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-building-that-covid-19-had-a-lab-origin/ https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-bu.... See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ for one of their previous lines of research that look similar to the actual COVID-19 virus.
- Amezarak 6y ago
mancerayder 6y ago
Why does it have to be "built"? It could have been isolated from bats and studied, and an error / human mistake occurred and it got out. There's a rational reason to study this one, since SARS (1.0) was a big deal in the early 2000's, and anyway why wouldn't you study something you don't fully understand as a matter of course. It's not a stretch if it was found that it leaked from the lab by accident and a cover-up ensued.
- ern 6y ago
  The problem is that an accidental release from a lab has been deliberately conflated with the idea of a bioweapon and labeled a conspiracy theory. Coupled with aggressive propaganda efforts from China, and the fact that the Trump Administration pushed the theory of a lab release (turning the concept into political kryptonite for more than 50% of the US population) its discussion has become verboten.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Well that's not surprising, we're trending towards a world of increase tightening of the exchange of data, fact checking, labels of "conspiracy", and there will of course be fallout that people will see in retrospect. Today the mainstream view is to knock the non-mainstream views out of acceptable discourse. I would say with QAnon and vaccine shennanigans, a lot of people support that. At some point something important will be covered up (such as during a war) and they won't be so gung ho. So swings the pendulum.
reducesuffering 6y ago
Are you serious? Occam's Razor says the only (non-vet) BSL4 lab in China, studying bat coronaviruses, several miles from known first virus reports, that has had multiple previous virus leaks, with huge information shutdown by China for a year, is the more plausible culprit.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  So I’m with you on this one. Why wouldn’t CCP stop all suspicion on this and say the virus originated in another part of China? It almost feels like a murderer trying to use reverse psychology by hiding in plain sight. Like, it can’t be from Wuhan Lab because they actually reported that it came from Wuhan (what idiot that’s trying to cover it up do that?). A calculated person would make such a calculation. The truth might be weird here.

RegnisGnaw 6y ago

In the the more common lab theory is that it was a natural virus being studies in the lab. It escaped by accident. China has had multiple SARS escape accidents.

bcrosby95 6y ago

"Building" it in a lab might be too scifi. But it's possible they were experimenting with things. E.g. "killer bees" are a product of human scientists trying to engineer a better bee - the release was accidental. It's not like we have the ability to genetically engineer a bee from the ground up. But as a species humans have been purposefully manipulating the traits of living things for thousands of years.

andreilys 6y ago

“Building” the virus is a sleight of hand that people use to discredit the lab theory. More likely than building the virus is studying it and accelerating it’s development. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened here however without the cooperation of the CCP we’ll have no idea what the truth of the matter is

Amezarak 6y ago

There was a great article in New York Magazine covering the background here and the possibilities. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca... It turns out we've been doing "serial passage" research for some time, which is where we leverage natural selection to do our genetic engineering for us, rather than manually editing genes. This is how we engineer viruses to jump species - on purpose. > They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. In fact, "we" (meaning humanity) have even been experimenting with serial passage into humans. > A few years later, in a further round of “interspecies transfer” experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their “infectious construct” replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote. The whole article is really worth a read.

ummonk 6y ago
Right, and combine this with a history of lab leaks both in China and the west (which the article outlines) and a lab leak scenario is perfectly plausible. It is however hard to tell whether it was a lab origin because serial passage is also the route the virus would have taken if it naturally evolved outside a lab to infect humans.

renewiltord 6y ago

You can, with your own body, the right drug regimen, and starting with just garden variety TB and no skills whatsoever, "build" XDR TB. The general evidence is this is yet another reason why wet markets are terrible for humanity, not that it was made in a lab and got away. But you can build lots of things.

nsajko 6y ago
This is what the acronyms stand for, in case it's not apparent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tuberculosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tub...

btilly 6y ago

Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. A random virus, no. This one, we do. We can't build a virus from scratch. But we can combine pieces of different viruses to build a new one. The same thing also happens naturally when an animal is sick with 2 viruses at once. If both get into the same cell, you get various mixes created and sometimes a mixture will turn out to be a better virus than either parent. This virus looks like a combination of apparently unrelated viruses. See https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy... for confirmation. That happens to be something that can happen either naturally or artificially. Where conspiracy theorists get going is that a few years ago there were papers from the lab near Wuhan suggesting that a combination much like COVID-19's actual combination should be particularly effective in humans. So this looks like an extension of a known line of research from a lab involved in military work. Combine that with the local coverup and you can see how people go down the rabbit hole.

highstep 6y ago
You really should cite those paper if you're going to offer such significant information. your comment is worthless otherwise.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > You really should cite those paper if you're going to offer such significant information. Yes. > your comment is worthless otherwise. No.
- btilly 6y ago
  A good starting point is https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-building-that-covid-19-had-a-lab-origin/ https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-bu.... See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ for one of their previous lines of research that look similar to the actual COVID-19 virus.
Amezarak 6y ago

mancerayder 6y ago

Why does it have to be "built"? It could have been isolated from bats and studied, and an error / human mistake occurred and it got out. There's a rational reason to study this one, since SARS (1.0) was a big deal in the early 2000's, and anyway why wouldn't you study something you don't fully understand as a matter of course. It's not a stretch if it was found that it leaked from the lab by accident and a cover-up ensued.

ern 6y ago
The problem is that an accidental release from a lab has been deliberately conflated with the idea of a bioweapon and labeled a conspiracy theory. Coupled with aggressive propaganda efforts from China, and the fact that the Trump Administration pushed the theory of a lab release (turning the concept into political kryptonite for more than 50% of the US population) its discussion has become verboten.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Well that's not surprising, we're trending towards a world of increase tightening of the exchange of data, fact checking, labels of "conspiracy", and there will of course be fallout that people will see in retrospect. Today the mainstream view is to knock the non-mainstream views out of acceptable discourse. I would say with QAnon and vaccine shennanigans, a lot of people support that. At some point something important will be covered up (such as during a war) and they won't be so gung ho. So swings the pendulum.

reducesuffering 6y ago

Are you serious? Occam's Razor says the only (non-vet) BSL4 lab in China, studying bat coronaviruses, several miles from known first virus reports, that has had multiple previous virus leaks, with huge information shutdown by China for a year, is the more plausible culprit.

runawaybottle 6y ago
So I’m with you on this one. Why wouldn’t CCP stop all suspicion on this and say the virus originated in another part of China? It almost feels like a murderer trying to use reverse psychology by hiding in plain sight. Like, it can’t be from Wuhan Lab because they actually reported that it came from Wuhan (what idiot that’s trying to cover it up do that?). A calculated person would make such a calculation. The truth might be weird here.