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More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

440 points by temp8964 5y ago

haspoken 5y ago
http://archive.is/vgHCm http://archive.is/vgHCm
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Part of me thinks that we should almost not waste the time to find out. Spend the effort on preparing for the next one, by improving air filtration etc. Politics is too deeply entrenched, it will be an impossibility to uncover the truth.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Sort of agree. But if it was from a lab, that might make people and governments more careful in the future Also, what do you mean by "improving air filtration"?
- google234123 5y ago
  What is sad is that these ideas were dismissed as crackpotish or racist until now.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    I wonder in who's best interest it was to dismiss these theories as racist.
    - google234123 5y ago
      China? This seems pretty obvious. The far left also enjoys calling things racist so they probably pushed it too.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        I wonder if that's why the comment was downvoted so heavily and flagged.
    - Judgmentality 5y ago
      Are you saying Trump was complicit in calling it the Chinese virus as part of their propaganda campaign? Sometimes things can just be explained by stupidity.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Was the idea that we should inquire about the virus’ origin dismissed as such, or just the idea that there is already strong evidence of any particular origin story?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ska 5y ago
    Most of what I recalling at the time doesn't match that description. It was more disparaged as pointless speculation mostly being used to fuel political finger pointing when people had far more important things to figure out. Sampling bias acknowledged.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    It reminds of how hostile people became when you merely questioned the effectiveness or need of the lockdowns last year. I think many academics and scientists are so emotionally invested in the side they took they will defend it no matter of the evidence.
- baryphonic 5y ago
  How do we know the next one will involve air filtration at all? Perhaps it will thrive on surfaces for long periods and will react negatively to air. How should we prepare for this or any other etiology that might be significantly different than this one? If we're constantly preparing for the last pandemic, and the next one is surprisingly different, wouldn't that be bad as well, as those resources could have been used better in the intervening time? But, also, wouldn't it be better to determine the cause of this one so we know not to do whatever it was that caused this? For example, try to discourage exotic meats that might be host to the virus and/or eliminate or strictly control gain of function research, depending on the actual cause (or some other cause that isn't actually either of these)?
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Why is it an either/or? It seems like it would be possible to improve air filtration and have an inquiry.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  No this needs more investigation. Even if the Chinese side might be hard to crack, the American angle needs to be fully evaluated. Which American scientists were at least aware if not complicit (including Fauci) in this entire misguided attempt at proactively finding the next virus? Did they actively try to suppress their involvement once everything hit the fan?
- fumbly 5y ago
  The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of pandemic prevention. That's one serious reason for wanting to investigate whether gain-of-function research may have caused the current one. The risks of such research have been in open debate for years, and the Obama administration even banned it for a while. It's not a far-fetched possibility, and it's a shame that the discussion about it became such a political casualty for the first year or so. The fact that heads are cooling a little now is clearly the precondition for scientists to be able to start writing letters like the OP.
  - baja_blast 5y ago
    > The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of pandemic prevention. Do you have a source for this? Because if true this would be extremely frightening, even if Covid is natural the research is just too risky. GoF research should be banned, I mean it's entire justification for conducting this research in the first place is that it "helps predict new emergent diseases and develop vaccines" but it failed to predict this pandemic and did nothing towards vaccine development.
    - fumbly 5y ago
      "Also, current plans are to expand worldwide collaboration on risky virus research sixfold, through the $1.2 billion Global Virome Project. Shouldn’t we figure out if this research sparked the pandemic before drastically expanding it?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/congress-is-finally-investigating-the-lab-accident-covid-19-origin-theory/2021/05/06/d7bfb0e4-aeaf-11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/cong...
      - bagacrap 5y ago
        That's a pretty weak reference because it's part of an opinion piece with no references. However there's an article in Nature which makes it clearer that the 1.2B figure is just an amount requested by those who suggested the project. A far cry from "current plans" to fund that amount.
- monday_ 5y ago
  If a containment breach of a relatively harmless virus can lead to worldwide catastrophic consequences, you may want to know what procedures were breached and what institutional incentives are required to make sure the risks are constrained. In software terms, if you have a bug that breaks the production and the response is messy and slow, you absolutely need to spend time and effort to change your response process. But you also need to know how this type of a bug became possible in the first place.
- eplanit 5y ago
  Preparation for the next event _requires_ understanding the origin of this one to the greatest extent possible. I think it's very wrong to shy away from inquiry of the truth out of fear of politics.
  - dasudasu 5y ago
    Besides, forgoing any investigation is a political statement and indeed the preferred outcome by one major political player.
  - ska 5y ago
    I'm sympathetic to this view, but the flip side of it is we don't do much about currently identified pandemic vector risks such as swine CAFO operations; why would we expect new information (if any) affect our behavior any more than that? If it's expensive to mitigate and hard to quantify, it's always going to be an uphill battle.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  We need to make the penalty for this so insanely high that nobody, absolutely nobody ever even thinks of doing research that might lead to this ever again.
- johncena33 5y ago
  Yes. By that logic, why start punishing people for vehicular manslaughter? Just spend the effort on educating perpretrators so that they don't kill someone next time.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  That viewpoint basically amounts to head in the sand. There is a plausible pathway to determine the origin. The lab could be openly investigated and the natural environment could be combed for an ancestor. If this was an unintentional release, it would vastly change the public perception and oversight protocols around pathogen research. Think what Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima did to nuclear energy. If we don't get open cooperation from China, it's also extremely useful information and helps all other nations recalibrate their levels of trust and ties. Because if a future lab release happens, it could be so, so much worse. If it seems impossible, disease was a contributing factor in 31 species' extinctions that we know of, and those diseases were of natural origin.[1] The Plague of Justinian, also of natural origin, is estimated to have killed up to half the world's population at the time. After the last year, can we really afford to take these risks lightly anymore? [1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.brown.edu/Research/Sax_Research_Lab/Documents/PDFs/evidemnce%2520for%2520role%2520of%2520disease.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCl-n1zdHwAhVjiYsKHctPADkQFjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw2B5DeRTJOID5t0lXfdfwaj https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This is actually a good point. I think you changed my mind :) Thanks for the thoughtful post
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      I think that may be a first for me in 25 years on the internet. Thanks for being so open minded!
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
As it takes longer and longer to find any evidence in nature a lab leaking is becoming the most likely source.
- austincheney 5y ago
  That is an argument from ignorance logical fallacy. The inability to find something has no bearing on whether it exists or not and thus has no bearing on the probability of an inverted outcome. Dark matter/energy also frequently fall into this sort of argument. There is no evidence that they do exist, which does not suggest the absence of their existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
  - whatthesmack 5y ago
    Not sure what your point is. The source for SARS and MERS were found within months. We're over a year into this with no clue. Based on the current circumstances' inconsistencies with historical circumstances, this appears to be something different.
    - actusual 5y ago
      His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for this, did he commit the murder?
      - dgfitz 5y ago
        How do you know he was home?
      - dkersten 5y ago
        No, but when the second hypothesis is the one that CCP has banned any investigation and news of, is not cooperating on the investigation and when there had been claims about the WIV safety and the WIV has openly stated that they were researching bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses, then the lack of evidence for any other cause makes this one seem all the more likely. That's a lot of coincidences. If CCP are covering it up, then of course there will be a lack of direct evidence. The above doesn't prove it conclusively, but it does make it rather suspicious. Why would CCP be hampering the investigations if they have nothing to hide? It was over a year before they let the WHO have a look. Plenty of time to get rid of any actual evidence.
actuator 5y ago
How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is going to be difficult.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tomjen3 5y ago
  If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    So guilty unless proven innocent?
    - option 5y ago
      if they are indeed innocent isn’t fair and unbiased investigation in their best interest?
      - thereare5lights 5y ago
        No because there's no such thing as a fair and unbiased investigation. Politics will be inexorably intertwined in such an investigation.
      - Dah00n 5y ago
        Yes, by Chinese citizens. Not by foreigners.
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      For anybody who has power, absolutely. I am beyond tired of police, countries and politicians getting away with horrible crimes. For ordinary citizens, of course not.
dataflow 5y ago
Related (long) article in case you missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432
captaincurrie 5y ago
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mirekrusin 5y ago
What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.
- btilly 5y ago
  The question is whether the type of research that might have lead to this result should be shut down to prevent similar accidents in the future. If COVID-19 was, in fact, a lab release then that's a strong argument for shutting the research down.
  - bko 5y ago
    And maybe liability on the offending party?
    - CamouflagedKiwi 5y ago
      There's no possibility to get that kind of money paid back if a party was found responsible. At this point it must be trillions.
      - noofen 5y ago
        Liable in the hundreds of billions? Too big to fail. Liable in the trillions? Too big to speak about.
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      I agree. We should start looking at Anthony Fauci himself, who most likely pushed for this type of research via his influence at the NIAID/NIH [0]. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
      - JadeNB 5y ago
        > We should start looking at Anthony Fauci himself, who most likely pushed for this type of research via his influence at the NIAID/NIH [0]. This seems like a reach. There's a big difference in liability between "mismanaged deadly pathogens, caused a pandemic" and "said that someone should study deadly pathogens".
screye 5y ago
Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would ever agree to a fair trial.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.
  - adolph 5y ago
    By observation of the night sky would you believe Copernicus or Ptolemy? Would you need to have evidence of the solar system's origins or is the decreased computation required for Copernicus enough to indicate it to be a superior explanation? https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4.html https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4....
  - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
    To say that "there isn't any evidence for either scenario" is willful ignorance.
    - dang 5y ago
      Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    If I can't find my phone and I either left it somewhere in the house or on the Uber I took home last night, the longer I search my house and don't find it, the more likely it is that I left it on the Uber.
Bayesian_bro 5y ago
The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think everyone had the best of intentions and either they found something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting links https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... is the papers done by a NIH grant to Eco Health Alliance. This shows they were looking for new variants of Coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114... This shows they were artificially synthesizing Coronaviruses and incubating them in monkey cells. Dr. Peter Daszak seems to be in the center of a lot of this and IMO had a conflict of interest being on the WHO COVID-19 origins report.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't copy-paste comments. It strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio, and it contradicts the principle that HN threads are supposed to be conversations. People don't repeat long pre-written statements in conversation. If you want to refer to something you said in a previous context, that's fine and is what links are for. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- varispeed 5y ago
  > China's global reputation is going to take a hit. If having openly racist culture and running concentration camps has done nothing to their reputation, I don't think anything will. > I don't think they did this intentionally. Regardless if this was intentional or not, they should take responsibility. Imagine if Russia dropped a nuclear bomb on Europe by mistake. This is the same calibre of "oops my bad.". It's not a secret that these viruses were researched as a potential bio-weapon. In that sense whether it was intentional or not, it has done immense damage to worldwide economy, which is exactly the goal of such bio-weapon.
  - 5y ago
wedn3sday 5y ago
Claiming that COVID came from a lab is pretty close to non-falsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove. I assume that if it was an accidental or intentional release of a bioweapon, all evidence would have long since been wiped clean. Making the claim that the CCP secretly created COVID is backed by zero evidence, and assuming they're even vaguely competent, all evidence to prove it would have been long since destroyed. This is a very unproductive path of inquiry,
- dicroce 5y ago
  It's also possible that it was an accidental lab leak. But yes, its going to be next to impossible to prove.
- prewett 5y ago
  There was an article posted to HN recently that went into detail on the evidence contained within the virus itself, that it has features not consistent with natural processes. However, it wasn't secretly created, it was created (in part) with grants from the US, which are public. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > Claiming that COVID came from a lab is pretty close to non-falsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove. I don't think this is true. A hypothesis can be unfalsifiable without being unprovable. (Think of a "needle in a haystack" existence hypothesis: it's unfalsifiable, at least practically speaking, but it can be proven simply by finding the needle.)
tristanj 5y ago
Not surprising at all considering Wuhan Lab scientists admitted on video they were bitten by bats and they had lax to no safety standards. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 > A video released two years before the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic shows Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists being cavalier toward protective equipment and being bitten by bats that carry deadly viruses such as SARS, demonstrating a lax safety culture in the lab. > On Dec. 29, 2017, Chinese state-run TV released a video designed to showcase Shi Zhengli, (石正麗), also known as "Bat Woman," and her team of scientists at the WIV in their quest to find the origin of SARS. Despite the fact that the scientists work in a biosafety level 4 lab, they show a shocking disregard for safety when handling potentially infectious bats both in the wild and in the lab. > From 4:45 to 4:56, a scientist can be seen holding a bat with his bare hands. Team members from 7:44 to 7:50 can be seen collecting potentially highly infectious bat feces while wearing short sleeves and shorts and with no noticeable personal protective equipment (PPE) other than gloves. > Virus researcher Cui Jie (崔杰) relates his experiences of being bitten from 8:47 to 8:50. He said that the bat's fangs went right through his glove, which was likely nitrile. He described the feeling as "like being jabbed with a needle." The video then cuts to a person's limb showing swelling after a bat bite. That provides a plausible origin scenario of the pandemic: In October 2019, a researcher at the Wuhan Lab was bitten by a bat, got infected (asymptomatically), went home and unknowingly infected other people in the community, and the virus spread from there. Sadly, I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Those who were directly involved with the early stage of the outbreak will never speak up, because Beijing issued a complete gag order on what happened. Anyone that speaks about the early stages of the pandemic be charged with espionage, and if found guilty, they can receive the death penalty. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chinas-authorities-issue-gag-order-about-virus-to-doctors-in-wuhan.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chin...
- yabones 5y ago
  Indeed, this type of carelessness adds to the inherent danger of researching highly infectious diseases. Labs leak all the time, for example the original SARS escaped from labs at least three times [1]: > The recent announcement of nine cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome linked to China's National Institute of Virology brings to three the number of lab outbreaks of the disease in the past eight months. It's also happened dozens of times in the US, UK, and former Soviet Union. Tuberculosis, Smallpox, various flu viruses have all escaped from "secure" labs. [2] [3] Maybe studying viruses isn't as safe as we thought. --- [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/sars-cases-in-asia-show-labs-risks/4c28a35a-e673-4953-a6a8-1e61c366c1c8/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/s... [2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center-hit-by-blast-fire/30167495.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center-hit... [3] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/1978-accidental-birmingham-laboratory-release-smallpox-virus-are-lessons-l https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/1978-accidenta...
ping_pong 5y ago
What's the point? After reading all the evidence, people such as myself firmly believe that it came from the Wuhan lab. Nothing the inquiry will come up with convince me otherwise. It's pretty obvious once you read all of the unbiased articles that show that months earlier, the same research facilities and scientists were touting their research in gain-of-function in bat coronaviruses. I mean come on! Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a Chinese lab. The "inquiry" will say that it's unlikely and try to bury the issue, and then it will just keep popping its head out in news articles that get ultimately ignored.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a Chinese lab. Why do you care if you will NEVER EVER believe it didn't?
- Dah00n 5y ago
  You haven't read enough evidence to know the cause no matter how much you follow the case as we have hardly started collecting evidence. It's still in early preliminary stages. To find a source we need a host. We haven't even found a host from SARS yet even though that happened back in 2002. All we have is a very closely related one (96% match?) and that was found in 2020. It takes a lot of work by scientists living among wild animals for years in often very remote locations. Stating it was from a lab after so little time has past and so little work has been done is at a minimum jumping to conclusions.
ChicagoDave 5y ago
Everyone should read Frank Herbert’s White Plague. The transmission vector can be anything.
- johncena33 5y ago
  What does a sci-fi author or book have to do anthing with actual investigation of a real-life pandemic?
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    No answer will be given, of course, but perhaps it can open one's mind to new avenues of thought that may help lead to an/the answer.
    - kubanczyk 5y ago
      In short, enlarging the hypothesis space.
      - ChicagoDave 5y ago
        The vulnerable can also be anyone or a subset. I suspect it's inevitable for someone to design a custom virus.
monday_ 5y ago
The trouble here is that a lot of institutions and public persons have more or less staked their credibility on dismissing the lab origin hypothesis. They had their reasons - if anything, over the last years their standing and the value of expert opinion was under constant pressure (notice I'm talking about a reason, not a justification). But this makes any admission of an error and, by extension, any useful reflection on it very, very improbable. I think if the lab origin is true and at some point becomes common knowledge, it will be treated like the Iraq war. The people responsible for botching the response and the message will fail up and treat the pandemic as if it were a tsunami, rather then human error.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bonzini 5y ago
  Lab manufacturing is one thing and has been widely debunked, lab leak is another. I don't think the lab leak has been dismissed as much.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    They’ve been repeatedly conflated, either purposefully or carelessly. Almost no one was actually pursuing the engineered bioweapon angle but anyone who even suggested that it may have leaked from a lab that studies bat coronaviruses was treated like a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut. It’s pretty dismal that no one is going to be accountable for their behaviour through this whole mess, nothing will be learned and we’ll probably be worse off the next time something like this happens.
    - jl2718 5y ago
      The behaviorist interpretation of belief is that beliefs expressed will be based on whatever is the most socially acceptable, and that that internal beliefs are formed to be consistent with outward expression of belief. Nobody will be able to look at this rationally until nobody cares either way. That’s what makes history interesting. It always changes.
antattack 5y ago
It's not going to be possible to prove lab origin w/o Chinese cooperation. However, lab origin should not be totally dismissed, so we can have a discussion about safety of gain-of-function research now, rather than waiting for some verifiable event to happen in the future.
- kossTKR 5y ago
  Why are people acting like China is doing anything in isolation? The Wuhan Lab was funded through the american Ecohealth alliance, and a dozen american scientists probably know just as much as the Chinese do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432
  - fullshark 5y ago
    I don't know who is acting like that, but that's the kind of thing that becomes very interesting if you believe COVID leaked from a lab and not appeared suddenly at a wet market.
  - antattack 5y ago
    According to this fact-check only small amount, 600k USD, was distributed to the Ecohealth Alliance/Wuhan: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fact-check-obama-administration-did-not-send-3-7-m-wuhan-lab/3061490001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fac...
AndrewBissell 5y ago
The discussion around this issue is always implicitly framed as though "Covid came from a lab" implies "created by CCP researchers." The GoF ties to US institutions including the Pentagon are always assiduously avoided (the NY Mag article being one notable exception: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...) Very interesting to see this idea bubbling to the surface at the same time that Bill Gates's Epstein ties are being re-broadcast, the CDC is rapidly reversing guidance and relaxing protocols, the WEF cancelling its summer meeting, Elon Musk suddenly sticking the knife in crypto's back ....
Dah00n 5y ago
Any actual scientist (and not an "expert") know how long these things take. It took from 2002 to 2020 (edit: or was it 2018? I can't remember) to find a closely related SARS host (as in "not a match but close enough to point to a likely cause"). I find it very telling that we get lots of articles stating lots of stuff but not really any real scientific research papers on the source. I'm also not seeing any of these scientists volunteer to live for years in remote locations taking anal swaps of animals to actually find the cause. I believe what we are seeing are the science equivalent to armchair generals.
- marcell 5y ago
  What do you make of the claim in this article [1], which says that intermediate host species were found within 4 months of SARS1 outbreak, and within 9 months of MERS outbreak? Admittedly I can't find the underlying source for his claims. [1] https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    I haven't read it but an intermediate host is a link between humans and the original host. The intermediate host was quickly found. I linked this elsewhere in the thread: >"As no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat populations despite 15 years of searching and as RNA recombination is frequent within coronaviruses, it is highly likely that SARS-CoV newly emerged through recombination of bat SARSr-CoVs in this or other yet-to-be-identified bat caves." They also write... >"After the causative agent of SARS was identified, SARS-CoV and/or anti-SARS-CoV antibodies were found in masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and animal handlers in a market place. However, later, wide-reaching investigations of farmed and wild-caught civets revealed that the SARS-CoV strains found in market civets were transmitted to them by other animals." Sorry if I made a mess of this as I'm on my phone and commented on more than on post too quickly really.. Edit: Woops, forgot the source. I knew it would be a mess.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11.1842 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11...
kossTKR 5y ago
What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanations. I know the issue is politicised and that's wrong as Ecohealth alliance from the US sponsored this research so there is no "single country at fault" - no need to avoid topics. It's not "chinas fault" it's more like, what on earth was the US based Ecohealth alliance doing with this research, why so many previous lab leaks with little attention, what is the history if the Wuhan lab, whats the actual facts about Gain of Function research etc. All topics that the press is not looking into for some reason. On Ecohealth alliance: “ It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  I'm no virologist but of all the places on earth we are supposed to believe that, by cheer coincidence, the outbreak happened in that one city that happens to do research and have patents on lab-modified bat viruses and that it doesn't have anything to do with that lab. I mean: you seriously cannot make that up.
  - kossTKR 5y ago
    That fact alone is what makes this even more absurd to me. I know about probability math, - the fact the these virologists seemingly just discard that factor is twilight-zone territory to me.
    - 5y ago
hayst4ck 5y ago
A lot of people here claiming there is no evidence. Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look, they think the evidence is poor, or they can't imagine any authoritative evidence without the help of China it's just not true. People imagine Chinese social media as something that is completely locked down when in reality it was abuzz with information when a new mysterious disease was appearing in Wuhan. Countries like Taiwan were suspicious and taking action as early as December. Here is a set of evidence I have a hard time poking holes in: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ There are some pieces of evidence that are compelling alone: - beyond a reasonable doubt, coronavirus research was done at WIV. - beyond a reasonable doubt, collection of coronavirus from bats was done for the lab. - beyond a reasonable doubt, there have been instances of poor PPE/safety measures.
- throwkeep 5y ago
  > Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look The origin was politicized in the US and taboo to even question it, so few did. It was labeled a crazy conspiracy theory by the media and that shut the door on open inquiry until recently.
  - prox 5y ago
    This is why there is a big difference between skepticism and conspiracy. A skeptic digs deeper to gather more data and facts, a conspiracy loosely joins a few data points and makes a poor conjecture. Conspiracy is political ammunition, skepticism is healthy debate and gladly welcomes more data.
    - andrewclunn 5y ago
      "Skepticsm" is when over educated pseudo-intellectuals want THEIR theories to have the ring of "science," while dismissing others as conspiracy theorists.
    - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      All of science is driven by hypothesis, but those hypotheses don't just appear out of nowhere. Suspicion, bias, and bad data can all drive focus on a particular field. In that way, such conjecture is a powerful scientific tool that in my opinion is too often dismissed.
LetThereBeLight 5y ago
For those interested in understanding more detailed discussions there is an article by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... Perhaps the most interesting point is the discussion of the furin cleavage site.
rossdavidh 5y ago
I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it matters, as far as what we need to do next, and more pressure on this point may just make that harder. 1) Regardless of whether or not this virus came from a lab, could such a thing plausibly happen in the future? Unquestionably yes. 2) Do we have international bodies to do inspection of the safety standards of any lab doing this kind of work? Ones that have the authority to require changes, or even shut down a lab, if those safety standards are not met? Unquestionably no, we have no such international body. 3) Could we make one? Yes, if China and Russia and the USA all agree to make one, it could be made binding on the rest of the world. So, let's get on with that. I fear that the discussion of the origin of covid-19, while it has certainly been useful in showing what the potential future problems are, may get in the way of setting up something to prevent it happening (again?) in the future.
- daenz 5y ago
  >I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it matters I know the quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" and all, but if we deem it important to get to the bottom of individual deaths, accidental or not, than it is important to get to the bottom of millions of deaths.
_wldu 5y ago
This answers the Fermi paradox.
ggm 5y ago
The sheer amount of the word "seems" and "plausible" here ought to tell you what is being discussed: what's being discussed is not primary evidence, it's interpretation of the meaning and impact, in the mind of the discussing parties If you want to go all "judicial" on this, "on the balance of probabilities" in the context of an ongoing political and trade dispute between the parties, feels to me like an attempt to appeal to pseudo rational claims, more than an actual, dispassionate declaration of likelihood. The article says "keep an open mind" which strongly suggests the "evidence" is equivocal. If you're not a virologist or scientist who works in the primary field, and I am not one either, you're at BEST attempting to interpret science at second or third hand. Science often uses words differently to colloquial speech. The word "must" for instance, has no normative force always. This "must" be because blah blah blah is not saying "causative" unless it actually says so. If it doesn't say WHY it MUST mean something, it's opinion. If it says MUST because of the balance of probabilities it's actually MAY in any case.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
What does it matter, beyond natural curiosity, whether it was released from a lab or not? It is of no real consequence because: (1) if it *was* released from a lab, its highly suspect that it was intentional due to it infecting China's own citizens; if it was some kind of "attack" you would think they would plant it somewhere else. (2) this is somewhat of the price we (as a society) pay for experimentation on diseases and viruses. It suffers from it-could-happen-here-ism where COVID or a COVID-like disease could be released by any other country and we'd still be in the exact same situation. So, in my mind, the only definitive issue is whether it was released maliciously or by accident. If it was malicious, that's a completely different, crimes against humanity, type problem. If it was not, then I don't think it matters really how COVID happened.
- mjparrott 5y ago
  If it was by accident, then it calls into question the quality controls over labs. It isn't "equally likely to happen anywhere" if the quality and safety standards vary by location. Operating a lab with poor safety standards is not "bad luck".
  - xxpor 5y ago
    The problem is: what is anyone going to do about it? China will never admit it, even if it is true (I have no position one way or the other).
    - AuryGlenz 5y ago
      Other countries could insist on oversight of China’s labs, and if they aren’t given that they could put economic screws to them.
    - kubanczyk 5y ago
      > China will never admit it, even if it is true. China has ways to stop this class of research internally. It's very likely to happen. That's the entire point. China does not need to admit, discuss, have referendums, or partake in any other self-harming activities.
jrochkind1 5y ago
If scientists believe a leak like this is plausible, then I don't think we need to wait for proof to push for international treaties against doing this kind of research that can have these disastrous accidental consequences. Developing super-viruses should not be allowed by the international community, including in the USA. It is too dangerous.
99_00 5y ago
I'm convinced that it's a lab leak. I'm also convinced the slow reveal is a psyop and I don't disagree with it's objectives. The sudden revelation that China screwed up and lied to the world is too shocking for the vast majority of people. The global public's response would not be optimal. The slow reveal gives societies around the world time to adjust to the new reality. If we were all thrown into that reality overnight it would get messy.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swader999 5y ago
  I don't disagree but you should probably say CCP instead of such a broad stroke with the word China.
- halfjoking 5y ago
  What if China's vaccine was a biological weapon? Would you be OK with the slow reveal for that? Allowing governments to get away with things has consequences. Speaking of governments... does the US funding of gain of function research change nothing in the discussion of vaccines? The US RNA vaccines were funded by BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) for 10+ years, the tech is not open-source, and only a few politically connected companies are allowed to manufacture them. Any criticism of these very new, never tried before vaccines are censored online. Censorship is so bad it's reaching great firewall of China levels on social media. So we have a PsyOps campaign looking to move the US towards required vaccination, a government that funded the research that allowed a virus like this to exist, and we're still yelling "trust the science" at anyone who questions authority?
pishpash 5y ago
Suppose for a moment this was not a lab leak. What kind of evidence would be sufficient to be convincing? Or are we looking for investigation after investigation until the end of time? What this letter fails to establish is a success criterion. Nobody is going to invest in a "proper investigation", much less one tinged with politics, without even knowing something will come out of it.
natch 5y ago
Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here is a list of them: https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/1248442812414201866?s=21 https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... Spoiler: They are all “mysteriously” missing or at least have disappeared from their normal lives.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  "Some scientist" = couple doctors "whistle blowers" without virology background, couple blogger journalists, and couple activists who got on Beijing's shit list for wrongthink politics. Aka exactly zero scientists with credible subject matter knowledge. Whistle blowers were initially "correctly" punished for spreading rumors that literal SARs came back, later their images rehabilitated as "heros" for domestic politics. The other four were put in shitlist for suggesting PRC covid19 response would be China's Chernobyl, and were in hindsight spectacularly wrong. None of them ever endorsed position on lab leak.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - natch 5y ago
    Nevertheless, these are people who apparently have been disappeared by the Chinese government. That's not something to be brushed off lightly. Not only because of the effects on them personally and (best case scenario) their careers. But also because of the chilling impact on scientific and public discourse.
t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
there is footage of Fauci in a public congressional questioning where he first denies a financial tie to that lab and then admits it reluctantly. can somebody shed light on what's going on there?
- fffawe 5y ago
  Yes - he's trying to hide this: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 It is funding explicitly to study bat coronavirus and it is explicitly for the Wuhan Lab. This is a government ran website that shows government funding. He perjured himself last week under testimony and that is why the CDC has made the new recommendations. This is bigger than treason - it is genocide.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  As i understood it Fauci denied funding gain of function research in the lab but readily admitted funding other research since this area is a hotspot for new viruses. Rand Paul tried to mix the gain of fuction research in the US with that done in wuhan which made it confusing.
ObserverNeutral 5y ago
Screw that, I don't want to live in a new cold war. Even if it came from a lab people should be told it's natural Besides after Snowden whistleblowers learned that their life is basically over after they speak out. Very low recognition and potentially jail time or worse People interested in the matter should research but incentives are there for them to keep their mouth shut luckily
LatteLazy 5y ago
If I have a virus, how do I tell if its natural or man made? Unless someone has gone out of their way to add an indicator won't all viruses just be the same? It's not like you can leave finger prints or a "made in China" sticker on a virus right?
- rogers18445 5y ago
  If you look at a cow knowing nothing about it or its history how do you know it was subject to artificial selection? The excessive production of milk or negative consequences that happen to it should it not be milked are some pretty big clues. The information the process of evolution imparts on the genes/features of an organism differs based on whether it was natural or artificial.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    That makes sense. But that seems to indicate covid 19 was entirely natural does it: * highly transmissible * not very deadly * similar to know viruses in the proposed natural sources A lot of people seem to really want covid to be an engineered thing. But I'm not seeing any evidence to support that. And I would highly support action against China so I am bias in favour of this theory...
- Izkata 5y ago
  It depends on if by "man made" you mean "engineered" or "artificial selective pressure". If it was full-on engineered, as in splicing RNA from different viruses together (or other such direct modifications), there would actually be fingerprints based around the method of splicing used. Artificial selective pressure (introducing a virus to different hosts and selecting for desired random mutations) would look natural.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    What fingerprints does RNA splicing leave? I thought CRISPR was pretty seamless, does it insert itself as well or something?
alphabet9000 5y ago
here is a collection of news articles and headlines since early 2020 that reference the 'lab leak' theory in some way. https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  What exactly is that site? Is it an automatic indexer of news articles? Or someone's personal curated list of articles? If automated, I am really curious how it manages to crawl and capture some of the news articles that are behind a paywall.
FriendlyNormie 5y ago
Look ar all the cocksuckers in this comment section pretending they’ve always been capable of considering this information now that their favorite mainstream leftoid shitrag gave then permission to. Each and every one of you FAGGOTS a year ago were telling anyone saying this to unfollow you and kill themselves. I implore you to take your own advice now because look at what your stupidity has done to the world you STUPID FUCKS. We’re on the verge of being enslaved by a Chinese social credit style vax pass medical tyranny because you’re all such retarded ignorant pussies. You all need to die.
ummonk 5y ago
It’s unfortunate that the reaction to the outbreak has been to sue China (and even see first world countries talking about getting reparations), creating even more pressure for China to cover up any details of a potential lab leak. It’s imperative that the world puts an end to dangerous gain of function research, particularly given how little such research has actually contributed to our understanding of virology and epidemiology, while potentially resulting in a pandemic that killed several million people.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  China has been the only country to grow their economy during Covid. Given the likelihood of the cause being preventable, I’m not sure how bad I feel for China nor do I think they would have been any more forthcoming if no one had pressured them for answers. The latter part just doesn’t seem how the CCP works. While we agree gain for function is bad. Do you think China will stop it now? Sort of a new arms race. ETA: Does no one else remember those videos out of China with people foaming at the mouth, convulsing, and literally lying dead in the street? Does anyone seriously think that was some weird organic for-fun deception? I have no proof that was a state run for-western media campaign.... buuuuttt...
gravelc 5y ago
The way the virus could have got from the source (where the animal host is) to Wuhan is interesting. How could it not be lab transmission? We've learn't a lot more about viral transmission in places like Australia with very low COVID incidences and very strong contact tracing when an infected person does go out into the community. It's very clear now that many people are extremely poor at spreading the virus - out in the community for 2 weeks with one of the infectious variants - in restaurants, pubs etc. - and only manage to infect 1 person, who is a close contact. Others are super spreaders, that infect many many people (but these people seem much rarer). I can easily see how it could get 1000km away from the source. A person who had the virus with no symptoms could simply have traveled to Wuhan. Didn't infect anyone on the way. Infected a close contact once there. Gets to a super spreader, then off it goes. I get the feeling that the lab leak hypothesis ignores the unevenness of transmission that is now evident.
tawa10093 5y ago
I think the lab origin is almost for sure. WIV released the RaTg13 sequence which is the closest to the covid virus. They had got samples from the patients who was infected by RaTg13 back in 2013. But they have never released the sequence, which could be a direct proof, or at least can bridge some gap.
sk1459 5y ago
Hard hitting journalism from the New York Times...after Pfizer has made their money.
irrefute35235 5y ago
The evidence is irrefutable: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 It very clearly spells out that the virus was paid for with US taxpayer dollars. Fauci needs to be arrested.
irrefute35235 5y ago
Downvote away - the evidence is painfully clear! https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 ARREST FAUCI!
leftieleft 5y ago
Lefties going to left but everyone knows Fauci funded the virus. Arrest Fauci Now!
leftieleft 5y ago
3.7M for "UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OF BAT CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCE" with awards to "WUHAN INSTITUTE OF VIROLOGY CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION" https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529
fffawe 5y ago
Keep in mind many people whose families that were affected by AIDS believe Fauci to be a mass murderer: https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111 https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111
rogers18445 5y ago
Gain of function research is not engineering, they are often conflated for some reason. Gain of function is essentially artificial selection with bells and whistles. Such manipulation would leak some information into the virus. Already it seems like the virus has great difficulty spreading outdoors while great success spreading indoors. It may be a coincidence but evolution does encode environmental assumptions into the genes of an organism under selective pressure. It may turn out that the virus makes certain assumptions about its environment and if those assumptions are not compatible with open spaces in nature - where animals live, but relies on closed environments (certain humidity range, absent air currents, lack of any resistance to sunlight spectra) depending on how many of these assumptions are present a natural explanation for the virus may be all but ruled out.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Humans are susceptible to being damaged by sunlight but it doesn't imply we evolved indoors in a lab.
  - rogers18445 5y ago
    Humans evolved melanin to resist UV while also needing UV for vitamin D synthesis. Your point is what exactly?
- basch 5y ago
  Building an artificial selection machine / process sounds like a form of engineering, no? It’s fairly systematic. It almost sounds to me like a semantics argument arguing whether injection molding is manufacturing or applied physics. A chimera followed by gain of function would be engineering as well.
naruvimama 5y ago
It has all the traits of a perfect bio weapon. China is the only country that seems to be totally unaffected by it. Far from helping out its neighbours it has tried to expand its territory. Any offer of help is more of an extortion. Even in countries with otherwise porous borders, the virus seems to obey political boundaries. I have no doubt that it is a controlled bioweapon.
samizdat1 5y ago
I just can't fathom how anyone thought it was a good idea to keep changing viruses in a lab with the sole purpose of making them capable of infecting humans. This kind of research needs to be banned. And people who allowed it to happen (in the US and in China) need to be held accountable.
jl2718 5y ago
I’d like to understand why the entire media and government were so intent on ridicule of any such inquiry. (Perhaps even more so why the usual virtue signaling crowd on social media was parroting this, but that’s a different phenomenon). The best explanation I can see is that they didn’t want to spark ‘racism’ against Asians. If so, it really shows that they think of us like violent apes. Strangely the narrative is strongest in academia and scientific literature, suggesting that intellectuals are simply the most trainable form of ape, mostly useful for their influence upon the hebetudinous. At some point, if we are all idiot followers in such lockstep, there must be some kind of idiot leader that sets the agenda for us to delude ourselves with.
Nitramp 5y ago
What's interesting to me on a meta level is that this appears to be a very hotly contested topic in the United States. Meanwhile it's not even making news over here in Germany, outside of "Americans are discussing odd things" kind of reporting. I believe it's generally accepted that it's most likely an animal origin. That's just a data point, but it goes to show how political the debate is.

440 points by temp8964 5y ago

http://archive.is/vgHCm http://archive.is/vgHCm

Part of me thinks that we should almost not waste the time to find out. Spend the effort on preparing for the next one, by improving air filtration etc. Politics is too deeply entrenched, it will be an impossibility to uncover the truth.

giantg2 5y ago
Sort of agree. But if it was from a lab, that might make people and governments more careful in the future Also, what do you mean by "improving air filtration"?
google234123 5y ago
What is sad is that these ideas were dismissed as crackpotish or racist until now.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  I wonder in who's best interest it was to dismiss these theories as racist.
  - google234123 5y ago
    China? This seems pretty obvious. The far left also enjoys calling things racist so they probably pushed it too.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      I wonder if that's why the comment was downvoted so heavily and flagged.
  - Judgmentality 5y ago
    Are you saying Trump was complicit in calling it the Chinese virus as part of their propaganda campaign? Sometimes things can just be explained by stupidity.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Was the idea that we should inquire about the virus’ origin dismissed as such, or just the idea that there is already strong evidence of any particular origin story?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ska 5y ago
  Most of what I recalling at the time doesn't match that description. It was more disparaged as pointless speculation mostly being used to fuel political finger pointing when people had far more important things to figure out. Sampling bias acknowledged.
- chasd00 5y ago
  It reminds of how hostile people became when you merely questioned the effectiveness or need of the lockdowns last year. I think many academics and scientists are so emotionally invested in the side they took they will defend it no matter of the evidence.
baryphonic 5y ago
How do we know the next one will involve air filtration at all? Perhaps it will thrive on surfaces for long periods and will react negatively to air. How should we prepare for this or any other etiology that might be significantly different than this one? If we're constantly preparing for the last pandemic, and the next one is surprisingly different, wouldn't that be bad as well, as those resources could have been used better in the intervening time? But, also, wouldn't it be better to determine the cause of this one so we know not to do whatever it was that caused this? For example, try to discourage exotic meats that might be host to the virus and/or eliminate or strictly control gain of function research, depending on the actual cause (or some other cause that isn't actually either of these)?
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Why is it an either/or? It seems like it would be possible to improve air filtration and have an inquiry.
ramraj07 5y ago
No this needs more investigation. Even if the Chinese side might be hard to crack, the American angle needs to be fully evaluated. Which American scientists were at least aware if not complicit (including Fauci) in this entire misguided attempt at proactively finding the next virus? Did they actively try to suppress their involvement once everything hit the fan?
fumbly 5y ago
The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of pandemic prevention. That's one serious reason for wanting to investigate whether gain-of-function research may have caused the current one. The risks of such research have been in open debate for years, and the Obama administration even banned it for a while. It's not a far-fetched possibility, and it's a shame that the discussion about it became such a political casualty for the first year or so. The fact that heads are cooling a little now is clearly the precondition for scientists to be able to start writing letters like the OP.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  > The current plan is to 6x the funding for gain-of-function research, from $200 million to $1.2 billion, in the name of pandemic prevention. Do you have a source for this? Because if true this would be extremely frightening, even if Covid is natural the research is just too risky. GoF research should be banned, I mean it's entire justification for conducting this research in the first place is that it "helps predict new emergent diseases and develop vaccines" but it failed to predict this pandemic and did nothing towards vaccine development.
  - fumbly 5y ago
    "Also, current plans are to expand worldwide collaboration on risky virus research sixfold, through the $1.2 billion Global Virome Project. Shouldn’t we figure out if this research sparked the pandemic before drastically expanding it?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/congress-is-finally-investigating-the-lab-accident-covid-19-origin-theory/2021/05/06/d7bfb0e4-aeaf-11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/cong...
    - bagacrap 5y ago
      That's a pretty weak reference because it's part of an opinion piece with no references. However there's an article in Nature which makes it clearer that the 1.2B figure is just an amount requested by those who suggested the project. A far cry from "current plans" to fund that amount.
monday_ 5y ago
If a containment breach of a relatively harmless virus can lead to worldwide catastrophic consequences, you may want to know what procedures were breached and what institutional incentives are required to make sure the risks are constrained. In software terms, if you have a bug that breaks the production and the response is messy and slow, you absolutely need to spend time and effort to change your response process. But you also need to know how this type of a bug became possible in the first place.
eplanit 5y ago
Preparation for the next event _requires_ understanding the origin of this one to the greatest extent possible. I think it's very wrong to shy away from inquiry of the truth out of fear of politics.
- dasudasu 5y ago
  Besides, forgoing any investigation is a political statement and indeed the preferred outcome by one major political player.
- ska 5y ago
  I'm sympathetic to this view, but the flip side of it is we don't do much about currently identified pandemic vector risks such as swine CAFO operations; why would we expect new information (if any) affect our behavior any more than that? If it's expensive to mitigate and hard to quantify, it's always going to be an uphill battle.
tomjen3 5y ago
We need to make the penalty for this so insanely high that nobody, absolutely nobody ever even thinks of doing research that might lead to this ever again.
johncena33 5y ago
Yes. By that logic, why start punishing people for vehicular manslaughter? Just spend the effort on educating perpretrators so that they don't kill someone next time.
dougmwne 5y ago
That viewpoint basically amounts to head in the sand. There is a plausible pathway to determine the origin. The lab could be openly investigated and the natural environment could be combed for an ancestor. If this was an unintentional release, it would vastly change the public perception and oversight protocols around pathogen research. Think what Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima did to nuclear energy. If we don't get open cooperation from China, it's also extremely useful information and helps all other nations recalibrate their levels of trust and ties. Because if a future lab release happens, it could be so, so much worse. If it seems impossible, disease was a contributing factor in 31 species' extinctions that we know of, and those diseases were of natural origin.[1] The Plague of Justinian, also of natural origin, is estimated to have killed up to half the world's population at the time. After the last year, can we really afford to take these risks lightly anymore? [1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.brown.edu/Research/Sax_Research_Lab/Documents/PDFs/evidemnce%2520for%2520role%2520of%2520disease.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCl-n1zdHwAhVjiYsKHctPADkQFjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw2B5DeRTJOID5t0lXfdfwaj https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  This is actually a good point. I think you changed my mind :) Thanks for the thoughtful post
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    I think that may be a first for me in 25 years on the internet. Thanks for being so open minded!

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

As it takes longer and longer to find any evidence in nature a lab leaking is becoming the most likely source.

austincheney 5y ago
That is an argument from ignorance logical fallacy. The inability to find something has no bearing on whether it exists or not and thus has no bearing on the probability of an inverted outcome. Dark matter/energy also frequently fall into this sort of argument. There is no evidence that they do exist, which does not suggest the absence of their existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
- whatthesmack 5y ago
  Not sure what your point is. The source for SARS and MERS were found within months. We're over a year into this with no clue. Based on the current circumstances' inconsistencies with historical circumstances, this appears to be something different.
  - actusual 5y ago
    His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for this, did he commit the murder?
    - dgfitz 5y ago
      How do you know he was home?
    - dkersten 5y ago
      No, but when the second hypothesis is the one that CCP has banned any investigation and news of, is not cooperating on the investigation and when there had been claims about the WIV safety and the WIV has openly stated that they were researching bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses, then the lack of evidence for any other cause makes this one seem all the more likely. That's a lot of coincidences. If CCP are covering it up, then of course there will be a lack of direct evidence. The above doesn't prove it conclusively, but it does make it rather suspicious. Why would CCP be hampering the investigations if they have nothing to hide? It was over a year before they let the WHO have a look. Plenty of time to get rid of any actual evidence.

actuator 5y ago

How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is going to be difficult.

deleted 5y ago
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tomjen3 5y ago
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  So guilty unless proven innocent?
  - option 5y ago
    if they are indeed innocent isn’t fair and unbiased investigation in their best interest?
    - thereare5lights 5y ago
      No because there's no such thing as a fair and unbiased investigation. Politics will be inexorably intertwined in such an investigation.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      Yes, by Chinese citizens. Not by foreigners.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    For anybody who has power, absolutely. I am beyond tired of police, countries and politicians getting away with horrible crimes. For ordinary citizens, of course not.

dataflow 5y ago

Related (long) article in case you missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432

captaincurrie 5y ago

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mirekrusin 5y ago

What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.

btilly 5y ago
The question is whether the type of research that might have lead to this result should be shut down to prevent similar accidents in the future. If COVID-19 was, in fact, a lab release then that's a strong argument for shutting the research down.
- bko 5y ago
  And maybe liability on the offending party?
  - CamouflagedKiwi 5y ago
    There's no possibility to get that kind of money paid back if a party was found responsible. At this point it must be trillions.
    - noofen 5y ago
      Liable in the hundreds of billions? Too big to fail. Liable in the trillions? Too big to speak about.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    I agree. We should start looking at Anthony Fauci himself, who most likely pushed for this type of research via his influence at the NIAID/NIH [0]. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
    - JadeNB 5y ago
      > We should start looking at Anthony Fauci himself, who most likely pushed for this type of research via his influence at the NIAID/NIH [0]. This seems like a reach. There's a big difference in liability between "mismanaged deadly pathogens, caused a pandemic" and "said that someone should study deadly pathogens".

screye 5y ago

Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would ever agree to a fair trial.

elliekelly 5y ago
Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.
- adolph 5y ago
  By observation of the night sky would you believe Copernicus or Ptolemy? Would you need to have evidence of the solar system's origins or is the decreased computation required for Copernicus enough to indicate it to be a superior explanation? https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4.html https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4....
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  To say that "there isn't any evidence for either scenario" is willful ignorance.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fallingknife 5y ago
  If I can't find my phone and I either left it somewhere in the house or on the Uber I took home last night, the longer I search my house and don't find it, the more likely it is that I left it on the Uber.

Bayesian_bro 5y ago

The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think everyone had the best of intentions and either they found something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting links https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... is the papers done by a NIH grant to Eco Health Alliance. This shows they were looking for new variants of Coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114... This shows they were artificially synthesizing Coronaviruses and incubating them in monkey cells. Dr. Peter Daszak seems to be in the center of a lot of this and IMO had a conflict of interest being on the WHO COVID-19 origins report.

dang 5y ago
Please don't copy-paste comments. It strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio, and it contradicts the principle that HN threads are supposed to be conversations. People don't repeat long pre-written statements in conversation. If you want to refer to something you said in a previous context, that's fine and is what links are for. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
varispeed 5y ago
> China's global reputation is going to take a hit. If having openly racist culture and running concentration camps has done nothing to their reputation, I don't think anything will. > I don't think they did this intentionally. Regardless if this was intentional or not, they should take responsibility. Imagine if Russia dropped a nuclear bomb on Europe by mistake. This is the same calibre of "oops my bad.". It's not a secret that these viruses were researched as a potential bio-weapon. In that sense whether it was intentional or not, it has done immense damage to worldwide economy, which is exactly the goal of such bio-weapon.
- 5y ago

wedn3sday 5y ago

Claiming that COVID came from a lab is pretty close to non-falsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove. I assume that if it was an accidental or intentional release of a bioweapon, all evidence would have long since been wiped clean. Making the claim that the CCP secretly created COVID is backed by zero evidence, and assuming they're even vaguely competent, all evidence to prove it would have been long since destroyed. This is a very unproductive path of inquiry,

dicroce 5y ago
It's also possible that it was an accidental lab leak. But yes, its going to be next to impossible to prove.
prewett 5y ago
There was an article posted to HN recently that went into detail on the evidence contained within the virus itself, that it has features not consistent with natural processes. However, it wasn't secretly created, it was created (in part) with grants from the US, which are public. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
JadeNB 5y ago
> Claiming that COVID came from a lab is pretty close to non-falsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove. I don't think this is true. A hypothesis can be unfalsifiable without being unprovable. (Think of a "needle in a haystack" existence hypothesis: it's unfalsifiable, at least practically speaking, but it can be proven simply by finding the needle.)

tristanj 5y ago

Not surprising at all considering Wuhan Lab scientists admitted on video they were bitten by bats and they had lax to no safety standards. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4102619 > A video released two years before the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic shows Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists being cavalier toward protective equipment and being bitten by bats that carry deadly viruses such as SARS, demonstrating a lax safety culture in the lab. > On Dec. 29, 2017, Chinese state-run TV released a video designed to showcase Shi Zhengli, (石正麗), also known as "Bat Woman," and her team of scientists at the WIV in their quest to find the origin of SARS. Despite the fact that the scientists work in a biosafety level 4 lab, they show a shocking disregard for safety when handling potentially infectious bats both in the wild and in the lab. > From 4:45 to 4:56, a scientist can be seen holding a bat with his bare hands. Team members from 7:44 to 7:50 can be seen collecting potentially highly infectious bat feces while wearing short sleeves and shorts and with no noticeable personal protective equipment (PPE) other than gloves. > Virus researcher Cui Jie (崔杰) relates his experiences of being bitten from 8:47 to 8:50. He said that the bat's fangs went right through his glove, which was likely nitrile. He described the feeling as "like being jabbed with a needle." The video then cuts to a person's limb showing swelling after a bat bite. That provides a plausible origin scenario of the pandemic: In October 2019, a researcher at the Wuhan Lab was bitten by a bat, got infected (asymptomatically), went home and unknowingly infected other people in the community, and the virus spread from there. Sadly, I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Those who were directly involved with the early stage of the outbreak will never speak up, because Beijing issued a complete gag order on what happened. Anyone that speaks about the early stages of the pandemic be charged with espionage, and if found guilty, they can receive the death penalty. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chinas-authorities-issue-gag-order-about-virus-to-doctors-in-wuhan.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chin...

yabones 5y ago
Indeed, this type of carelessness adds to the inherent danger of researching highly infectious diseases. Labs leak all the time, for example the original SARS escaped from labs at least three times [1]: > The recent announcement of nine cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome linked to China's National Institute of Virology brings to three the number of lab outbreaks of the disease in the past eight months. It's also happened dozens of times in the US, UK, and former Soviet Union. Tuberculosis, Smallpox, various flu viruses have all escaped from "secure" labs. [2] [3] Maybe studying viruses isn't as safe as we thought. --- [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/sars-cases-in-asia-show-labs-risks/4c28a35a-e673-4953-a6a8-1e61c366c1c8/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/s... [2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center-hit-by-blast-fire/30167495.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-virology-research-center-hit... [3] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/1978-accidental-birmingham-laboratory-release-smallpox-virus-are-lessons-l https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/1978-accidenta...

ping_pong 5y ago

What's the point? After reading all the evidence, people such as myself firmly believe that it came from the Wuhan lab. Nothing the inquiry will come up with convince me otherwise. It's pretty obvious once you read all of the unbiased articles that show that months earlier, the same research facilities and scientists were touting their research in gain-of-function in bat coronaviruses. I mean come on! Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a Chinese lab. The "inquiry" will say that it's unlikely and try to bury the issue, and then it will just keep popping its head out in news articles that get ultimately ignored.

pessimizer 5y ago
> Bureacracies like WHO will NEVER EVER say that it came from a Chinese lab. Why do you care if you will NEVER EVER believe it didn't?
Dah00n 5y ago
You haven't read enough evidence to know the cause no matter how much you follow the case as we have hardly started collecting evidence. It's still in early preliminary stages. To find a source we need a host. We haven't even found a host from SARS yet even though that happened back in 2002. All we have is a very closely related one (96% match?) and that was found in 2020. It takes a lot of work by scientists living among wild animals for years in often very remote locations. Stating it was from a lab after so little time has past and so little work has been done is at a minimum jumping to conclusions.

ChicagoDave 5y ago

Everyone should read Frank Herbert’s White Plague. The transmission vector can be anything.

johncena33 5y ago
What does a sci-fi author or book have to do anthing with actual investigation of a real-life pandemic?
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  No answer will be given, of course, but perhaps it can open one's mind to new avenues of thought that may help lead to an/the answer.
  - kubanczyk 5y ago
    In short, enlarging the hypothesis space.
    - ChicagoDave 5y ago
      The vulnerable can also be anyone or a subset. I suspect it's inevitable for someone to design a custom virus.

monday_ 5y ago

The trouble here is that a lot of institutions and public persons have more or less staked their credibility on dismissing the lab origin hypothesis. They had their reasons - if anything, over the last years their standing and the value of expert opinion was under constant pressure (notice I'm talking about a reason, not a justification). But this makes any admission of an error and, by extension, any useful reflection on it very, very improbable. I think if the lab origin is true and at some point becomes common knowledge, it will be treated like the Iraq war. The people responsible for botching the response and the message will fail up and treat the pandemic as if it were a tsunami, rather then human error.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bonzini 5y ago
Lab manufacturing is one thing and has been widely debunked, lab leak is another. I don't think the lab leak has been dismissed as much.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  They’ve been repeatedly conflated, either purposefully or carelessly. Almost no one was actually pursuing the engineered bioweapon angle but anyone who even suggested that it may have leaked from a lab that studies bat coronaviruses was treated like a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut. It’s pretty dismal that no one is going to be accountable for their behaviour through this whole mess, nothing will be learned and we’ll probably be worse off the next time something like this happens.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    The behaviorist interpretation of belief is that beliefs expressed will be based on whatever is the most socially acceptable, and that that internal beliefs are formed to be consistent with outward expression of belief. Nobody will be able to look at this rationally until nobody cares either way. That’s what makes history interesting. It always changes.

antattack 5y ago

It's not going to be possible to prove lab origin w/o Chinese cooperation. However, lab origin should not be totally dismissed, so we can have a discussion about safety of gain-of-function research now, rather than waiting for some verifiable event to happen in the future.

kossTKR 5y ago
Why are people acting like China is doing anything in isolation? The Wuhan Lab was funded through the american Ecohealth alliance, and a dozen american scientists probably know just as much as the Chinese do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432
- fullshark 5y ago
  I don't know who is acting like that, but that's the kind of thing that becomes very interesting if you believe COVID leaked from a lab and not appeared suddenly at a wet market.
- antattack 5y ago
  According to this fact-check only small amount, 600k USD, was distributed to the Ecohealth Alliance/Wuhan: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fact-check-obama-administration-did-not-send-3-7-m-wuhan-lab/3061490001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fac...

AndrewBissell 5y ago

The discussion around this issue is always implicitly framed as though "Covid came from a lab" implies "created by CCP researchers." The GoF ties to US institutions including the Pentagon are always assiduously avoided (the NY Mag article being one notable exception: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...) Very interesting to see this idea bubbling to the surface at the same time that Bill Gates's Epstein ties are being re-broadcast, the CDC is rapidly reversing guidance and relaxing protocols, the WEF cancelling its summer meeting, Elon Musk suddenly sticking the knife in crypto's back ....

Dah00n 5y ago

Any actual scientist (and not an "expert") know how long these things take. It took from 2002 to 2020 (edit: or was it 2018? I can't remember) to find a closely related SARS host (as in "not a match but close enough to point to a likely cause"). I find it very telling that we get lots of articles stating lots of stuff but not really any real scientific research papers on the source. I'm also not seeing any of these scientists volunteer to live for years in remote locations taking anal swaps of animals to actually find the cause. I believe what we are seeing are the science equivalent to armchair generals.

marcell 5y ago
What do you make of the claim in this article [1], which says that intermediate host species were found within 4 months of SARS1 outbreak, and within 9 months of MERS outbreak? Admittedly I can't find the underlying source for his claims. [1] https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
- Dah00n 5y ago
  I haven't read it but an intermediate host is a link between humans and the original host. The intermediate host was quickly found. I linked this elsewhere in the thread: >"As no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat populations despite 15 years of searching and as RNA recombination is frequent within coronaviruses, it is highly likely that SARS-CoV newly emerged through recombination of bat SARSr-CoVs in this or other yet-to-be-identified bat caves." They also write... >"After the causative agent of SARS was identified, SARS-CoV and/or anti-SARS-CoV antibodies were found in masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and animal handlers in a market place. However, later, wide-reaching investigations of farmed and wild-caught civets revealed that the SARS-CoV strains found in market civets were transmitted to them by other animals." Sorry if I made a mess of this as I'm on my phone and commented on more than on post too quickly really.. Edit: Woops, forgot the source. I knew it would be a mess.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11.1842 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11...

kossTKR 5y ago

What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanations. I know the issue is politicised and that's wrong as Ecohealth alliance from the US sponsored this research so there is no "single country at fault" - no need to avoid topics. It's not "chinas fault" it's more like, what on earth was the US based Ecohealth alliance doing with this research, why so many previous lab leaks with little attention, what is the history if the Wuhan lab, whats the actual facts about Gain of Function research etc. All topics that the press is not looking into for some reason. On Ecohealth alliance: “ It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432

TacticalCoder 5y ago
I'm no virologist but of all the places on earth we are supposed to believe that, by cheer coincidence, the outbreak happened in that one city that happens to do research and have patents on lab-modified bat viruses and that it doesn't have anything to do with that lab. I mean: you seriously cannot make that up.
- kossTKR 5y ago
  That fact alone is what makes this even more absurd to me. I know about probability math, - the fact the these virologists seemingly just discard that factor is twilight-zone territory to me.
  - 5y ago

hayst4ck 5y ago

A lot of people here claiming there is no evidence. Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look, they think the evidence is poor, or they can't imagine any authoritative evidence without the help of China it's just not true. People imagine Chinese social media as something that is completely locked down when in reality it was abuzz with information when a new mysterious disease was appearing in Wuhan. Countries like Taiwan were suspicious and taking action as early as December. Here is a set of evidence I have a hard time poking holes in: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ There are some pieces of evidence that are compelling alone: - beyond a reasonable doubt, coronavirus research was done at WIV. - beyond a reasonable doubt, collection of coronavirus from bats was done for the lab. - beyond a reasonable doubt, there have been instances of poor PPE/safety measures.

throwkeep 5y ago
> Whether they think there was none because they didn't bother to look The origin was politicized in the US and taboo to even question it, so few did. It was labeled a crazy conspiracy theory by the media and that shut the door on open inquiry until recently.
- prox 5y ago
  This is why there is a big difference between skepticism and conspiracy. A skeptic digs deeper to gather more data and facts, a conspiracy loosely joins a few data points and makes a poor conjecture. Conspiracy is political ammunition, skepticism is healthy debate and gladly welcomes more data.
  - andrewclunn 5y ago
    "Skepticsm" is when over educated pseudo-intellectuals want THEIR theories to have the ring of "science," while dismissing others as conspiracy theorists.
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    All of science is driven by hypothesis, but those hypotheses don't just appear out of nowhere. Suspicion, bias, and bad data can all drive focus on a particular field. In that way, such conjecture is a powerful scientific tool that in my opinion is too often dismissed.

LetThereBeLight 5y ago

For those interested in understanding more detailed discussions there is an article by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... Perhaps the most interesting point is the discussion of the furin cleavage site.

rossdavidh 5y ago

I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it matters, as far as what we need to do next, and more pressure on this point may just make that harder. 1) Regardless of whether or not this virus came from a lab, could such a thing plausibly happen in the future? Unquestionably yes. 2) Do we have international bodies to do inspection of the safety standards of any lab doing this kind of work? Ones that have the authority to require changes, or even shut down a lab, if those safety standards are not met? Unquestionably no, we have no such international body. 3) Could we make one? Yes, if China and Russia and the USA all agree to make one, it could be made binding on the rest of the world. So, let's get on with that. I fear that the discussion of the origin of covid-19, while it has certainly been useful in showing what the potential future problems are, may get in the way of setting up something to prevent it happening (again?) in the future.

daenz 5y ago
>I know this sounds odd, but at this point I don't think it matters I know the quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" and all, but if we deem it important to get to the bottom of individual deaths, accidental or not, than it is important to get to the bottom of millions of deaths.

_wldu 5y ago

This answers the Fermi paradox.

ggm 5y ago

The sheer amount of the word "seems" and "plausible" here ought to tell you what is being discussed: what's being discussed is not primary evidence, it's interpretation of the meaning and impact, in the mind of the discussing parties If you want to go all "judicial" on this, "on the balance of probabilities" in the context of an ongoing political and trade dispute between the parties, feels to me like an attempt to appeal to pseudo rational claims, more than an actual, dispassionate declaration of likelihood. The article says "keep an open mind" which strongly suggests the "evidence" is equivocal. If you're not a virologist or scientist who works in the primary field, and I am not one either, you're at BEST attempting to interpret science at second or third hand. Science often uses words differently to colloquial speech. The word "must" for instance, has no normative force always. This "must" be because blah blah blah is not saying "causative" unless it actually says so. If it doesn't say WHY it MUST mean something, it's opinion. If it says MUST because of the balance of probabilities it's actually MAY in any case.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

What does it matter, beyond natural curiosity, whether it was released from a lab or not? It is of no real consequence because: (1) if it *was* released from a lab, its highly suspect that it was intentional due to it infecting China's own citizens; if it was some kind of "attack" you would think they would plant it somewhere else. (2) this is somewhat of the price we (as a society) pay for experimentation on diseases and viruses. It suffers from it-could-happen-here-ism where COVID or a COVID-like disease could be released by any other country and we'd still be in the exact same situation. So, in my mind, the only definitive issue is whether it was released maliciously or by accident. If it was malicious, that's a completely different, crimes against humanity, type problem. If it was not, then I don't think it matters really how COVID happened.

mjparrott 5y ago
If it was by accident, then it calls into question the quality controls over labs. It isn't "equally likely to happen anywhere" if the quality and safety standards vary by location. Operating a lab with poor safety standards is not "bad luck".
- xxpor 5y ago
  The problem is: what is anyone going to do about it? China will never admit it, even if it is true (I have no position one way or the other).
  - AuryGlenz 5y ago
    Other countries could insist on oversight of China’s labs, and if they aren’t given that they could put economic screws to them.
  - kubanczyk 5y ago
    > China will never admit it, even if it is true. China has ways to stop this class of research internally. It's very likely to happen. That's the entire point. China does not need to admit, discuss, have referendums, or partake in any other self-harming activities.

jrochkind1 5y ago

If scientists believe a leak like this is plausible, then I don't think we need to wait for proof to push for international treaties against doing this kind of research that can have these disastrous accidental consequences. Developing super-viruses should not be allowed by the international community, including in the USA. It is too dangerous.

99_00 5y ago

I'm convinced that it's a lab leak. I'm also convinced the slow reveal is a psyop and I don't disagree with it's objectives. The sudden revelation that China screwed up and lied to the world is too shocking for the vast majority of people. The global public's response would not be optimal. The slow reveal gives societies around the world time to adjust to the new reality. If we were all thrown into that reality overnight it would get messy.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swader999 5y ago
I don't disagree but you should probably say CCP instead of such a broad stroke with the word China.
halfjoking 5y ago
What if China's vaccine was a biological weapon? Would you be OK with the slow reveal for that? Allowing governments to get away with things has consequences. Speaking of governments... does the US funding of gain of function research change nothing in the discussion of vaccines? The US RNA vaccines were funded by BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) for 10+ years, the tech is not open-source, and only a few politically connected companies are allowed to manufacture them. Any criticism of these very new, never tried before vaccines are censored online. Censorship is so bad it's reaching great firewall of China levels on social media. So we have a PsyOps campaign looking to move the US towards required vaccination, a government that funded the research that allowed a virus like this to exist, and we're still yelling "trust the science" at anyone who questions authority?

pishpash 5y ago

Suppose for a moment this was not a lab leak. What kind of evidence would be sufficient to be convincing? Or are we looking for investigation after investigation until the end of time? What this letter fails to establish is a success criterion. Nobody is going to invest in a "proper investigation", much less one tinged with politics, without even knowing something will come out of it.

natch 5y ago

Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here is a list of them: https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/1248442812414201866?s=21 https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... Spoiler: They are all “mysteriously” missing or at least have disappeared from their normal lives.

dirtyid 5y ago
"Some scientist" = couple doctors "whistle blowers" without virology background, couple blogger journalists, and couple activists who got on Beijing's shit list for wrongthink politics. Aka exactly zero scientists with credible subject matter knowledge. Whistle blowers were initially "correctly" punished for spreading rumors that literal SARs came back, later their images rehabilitated as "heros" for domestic politics. The other four were put in shitlist for suggesting PRC covid19 response would be China's Chernobyl, and were in hindsight spectacularly wrong. None of them ever endorsed position on lab leak.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- natch 5y ago
  Nevertheless, these are people who apparently have been disappeared by the Chinese government. That's not something to be brushed off lightly. Not only because of the effects on them personally and (best case scenario) their careers. But also because of the chilling impact on scientific and public discourse.

t8e56vd4ih 5y ago

there is footage of Fauci in a public congressional questioning where he first denies a financial tie to that lab and then admits it reluctantly. can somebody shed light on what's going on there?

fffawe 5y ago
Yes - he's trying to hide this: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 It is funding explicitly to study bat coronavirus and it is explicitly for the Wuhan Lab. This is a government ran website that shows government funding. He perjured himself last week under testimony and that is why the CDC has made the new recommendations. This is bigger than treason - it is genocide.
Paradigma11 5y ago
As i understood it Fauci denied funding gain of function research in the lab but readily admitted funding other research since this area is a hotspot for new viruses. Rand Paul tried to mix the gain of fuction research in the US with that done in wuhan which made it confusing.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago

Screw that, I don't want to live in a new cold war. Even if it came from a lab people should be told it's natural Besides after Snowden whistleblowers learned that their life is basically over after they speak out. Very low recognition and potentially jail time or worse People interested in the matter should research but incentives are there for them to keep their mouth shut luckily

LatteLazy 5y ago

If I have a virus, how do I tell if its natural or man made? Unless someone has gone out of their way to add an indicator won't all viruses just be the same? It's not like you can leave finger prints or a "made in China" sticker on a virus right?

rogers18445 5y ago
If you look at a cow knowing nothing about it or its history how do you know it was subject to artificial selection? The excessive production of milk or negative consequences that happen to it should it not be milked are some pretty big clues. The information the process of evolution imparts on the genes/features of an organism differs based on whether it was natural or artificial.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  That makes sense. But that seems to indicate covid 19 was entirely natural does it: * highly transmissible * not very deadly * similar to know viruses in the proposed natural sources A lot of people seem to really want covid to be an engineered thing. But I'm not seeing any evidence to support that. And I would highly support action against China so I am bias in favour of this theory...
Izkata 5y ago
It depends on if by "man made" you mean "engineered" or "artificial selective pressure". If it was full-on engineered, as in splicing RNA from different viruses together (or other such direct modifications), there would actually be fingerprints based around the method of splicing used. Artificial selective pressure (introducing a virus to different hosts and selecting for desired random mutations) would look natural.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  What fingerprints does RNA splicing leave? I thought CRISPR was pretty seamless, does it insert itself as well or something?

alphabet9000 5y ago

here is a collection of news articles and headlines since early 2020 that reference the 'lab leak' theory in some way. https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets

throwawaysea 5y ago
What exactly is that site? Is it an automatic indexer of news articles? Or someone's personal curated list of articles? If automated, I am really curious how it manages to crawl and capture some of the news articles that are behind a paywall.

FriendlyNormie 5y ago

Look ar all the cocksuckers in this comment section pretending they’ve always been capable of considering this information now that their favorite mainstream leftoid shitrag gave then permission to. Each and every one of you FAGGOTS a year ago were telling anyone saying this to unfollow you and kill themselves. I implore you to take your own advice now because look at what your stupidity has done to the world you STUPID FUCKS. We’re on the verge of being enslaved by a Chinese social credit style vax pass medical tyranny because you’re all such retarded ignorant pussies. You all need to die.

ummonk 5y ago

It’s unfortunate that the reaction to the outbreak has been to sue China (and even see first world countries talking about getting reparations), creating even more pressure for China to cover up any details of a potential lab leak. It’s imperative that the world puts an end to dangerous gain of function research, particularly given how little such research has actually contributed to our understanding of virology and epidemiology, while potentially resulting in a pandemic that killed several million people.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
China has been the only country to grow their economy during Covid. Given the likelihood of the cause being preventable, I’m not sure how bad I feel for China nor do I think they would have been any more forthcoming if no one had pressured them for answers. The latter part just doesn’t seem how the CCP works. While we agree gain for function is bad. Do you think China will stop it now? Sort of a new arms race. ETA: Does no one else remember those videos out of China with people foaming at the mouth, convulsing, and literally lying dead in the street? Does anyone seriously think that was some weird organic for-fun deception? I have no proof that was a state run for-western media campaign.... buuuuttt...

gravelc 5y ago

The way the virus could have got from the source (where the animal host is) to Wuhan is interesting. How could it not be lab transmission? We've learn't a lot more about viral transmission in places like Australia with very low COVID incidences and very strong contact tracing when an infected person does go out into the community. It's very clear now that many people are extremely poor at spreading the virus - out in the community for 2 weeks with one of the infectious variants - in restaurants, pubs etc. - and only manage to infect 1 person, who is a close contact. Others are super spreaders, that infect many many people (but these people seem much rarer). I can easily see how it could get 1000km away from the source. A person who had the virus with no symptoms could simply have traveled to Wuhan. Didn't infect anyone on the way. Infected a close contact once there. Gets to a super spreader, then off it goes. I get the feeling that the lab leak hypothesis ignores the unevenness of transmission that is now evident.

tawa10093 5y ago

I think the lab origin is almost for sure. WIV released the RaTg13 sequence which is the closest to the covid virus. They had got samples from the patients who was infected by RaTg13 back in 2013. But they have never released the sequence, which could be a direct proof, or at least can bridge some gap.

sk1459 5y ago

Hard hitting journalism from the New York Times...after Pfizer has made their money.

irrefute35235 5y ago

The evidence is irrefutable: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 It very clearly spells out that the virus was paid for with US taxpayer dollars. Fauci needs to be arrested.

irrefute35235 5y ago

Downvote away - the evidence is painfully clear! https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 ARREST FAUCI!

leftieleft 5y ago

Lefties going to left but everyone knows Fauci funded the virus. Arrest Fauci Now!

leftieleft 5y ago

3.7M for "UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OF BAT CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCE" with awards to "WUHAN INSTITUTE OF VIROLOGY CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION" https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529

fffawe 5y ago

Keep in mind many people whose families that were affected by AIDS believe Fauci to be a mass murderer: https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111 https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111

rogers18445 5y ago

Gain of function research is not engineering, they are often conflated for some reason. Gain of function is essentially artificial selection with bells and whistles. Such manipulation would leak some information into the virus. Already it seems like the virus has great difficulty spreading outdoors while great success spreading indoors. It may be a coincidence but evolution does encode environmental assumptions into the genes of an organism under selective pressure. It may turn out that the virus makes certain assumptions about its environment and if those assumptions are not compatible with open spaces in nature - where animals live, but relies on closed environments (certain humidity range, absent air currents, lack of any resistance to sunlight spectra) depending on how many of these assumptions are present a natural explanation for the virus may be all but ruled out.

XorNot 5y ago
Humans are susceptible to being damaged by sunlight but it doesn't imply we evolved indoors in a lab.
- rogers18445 5y ago
  Humans evolved melanin to resist UV while also needing UV for vitamin D synthesis. Your point is what exactly?
basch 5y ago
Building an artificial selection machine / process sounds like a form of engineering, no? It’s fairly systematic. It almost sounds to me like a semantics argument arguing whether injection molding is manufacturing or applied physics. A chimera followed by gain of function would be engineering as well.

naruvimama 5y ago

It has all the traits of a perfect bio weapon. China is the only country that seems to be totally unaffected by it. Far from helping out its neighbours it has tried to expand its territory. Any offer of help is more of an extortion. Even in countries with otherwise porous borders, the virus seems to obey political boundaries. I have no doubt that it is a controlled bioweapon.

samizdat1 5y ago

I just can't fathom how anyone thought it was a good idea to keep changing viruses in a lab with the sole purpose of making them capable of infecting humans. This kind of research needs to be banned. And people who allowed it to happen (in the US and in China) need to be held accountable.

jl2718 5y ago

I’d like to understand why the entire media and government were so intent on ridicule of any such inquiry. (Perhaps even more so why the usual virtue signaling crowd on social media was parroting this, but that’s a different phenomenon). The best explanation I can see is that they didn’t want to spark ‘racism’ against Asians. If so, it really shows that they think of us like violent apes. Strangely the narrative is strongest in academia and scientific literature, suggesting that intellectuals are simply the most trainable form of ape, mostly useful for their influence upon the hebetudinous. At some point, if we are all idiot followers in such lockstep, there must be some kind of idiot leader that sets the agenda for us to delude ourselves with.

Nitramp 5y ago

What's interesting to me on a meta level is that this appears to be a very hotly contested topic in the United States. Meanwhile it's not even making news over here in Germany, outside of "Americans are discussing odd things" kind of reporting. I believe it's generally accepted that it's most likely an animal origin. That's just a data point, but it goes to show how political the debate is.