8 ms·

The Covid lab-leak theory goes mainstream

89 points by cwwc 5y ago

darkhorn 5y ago
https://www.wired.com/2013/05/h5n1-h1n1-reassortment/ https://www.wired.com/2013/05/h5n1-h1n1-reassortment/
dkdk8283 5y ago
If it is true China would never admit it. It can’t be dismissed on their word alone. Glad to see this investigated.
dqv 5y ago
Good. Of course I'm not expecting anyone to prove a negative, but the lab leak theory was dismissed with very little evidence to the contrary. We know other viruses have leaked from labs before [0]. I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory" bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good faith. [0]: https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 (thanks to whichever HNer posted this initially - not even sure if it had to do with a covid discussion)
- RachelF 5y ago
  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists released a long, but well argued article on the lab leak theory: 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... It appears the US was sponsoring "gain of function" tests on corona viruses at the Wuhan lab as they were banned as too dangerous in the US and EU.
- babelfish 5y ago
  That’s kind of the opposite of how evidence works
  - dqv 5y ago
    I tire of this type of comment on HN. There's a pervasive smug tone that doesn't do anything for the conversation. Are you here to have a good faith conversation or not? The evidence to the contrary would be strong evidence in favor of the other theory. We currently have little evidence to prove either, so dismissing one in favor of the other is foolish.
  - bassman9000 5y ago
    "Evidence not yet provided" != "No evidence provided" The Higgs boson was theorized in the mid 60s. Final evidence not found till a few years ago. It's was a valid theory until then. It is exactly how it works: theory is good enough that working to find the evidence pays off. And there wasn't a strong incentive NOT to find the boson, such in the lab case. Some US institutions and actors, and the CCP, would be hit by liabilities, severely, if the theory is proven true. Not only careers (rightfully) ruined, but heavy sanctions, and international condemnation, given the damage. So there's a strong incentive to shoot down the theory, even if it's the most logical one.
- Exmoor 5y ago
  > the lab leak theory was dismissed with very little evidence to the contrary And the "evidence" to the contrary was largely a letter to the editor from people with major conflicts of interest[0]: >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.” [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...
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    As far as I understood, this is an open issue and Daszak still has to respond: 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...
- belltaco 5y ago
  >I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory" bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good faith. I still don't understand how they're ready to blame China so viciously for something that they tell us is just a flu and not even worth using face coverings or risking taking a vaccine. Not to mention magic cures like HCQ. All these efforts were just to deflect from the last government's failure to contain the virus. And they're not even internally consistent with each other. "The virus is not dangerous, the left is just hyping and faking it. But the not-dangerous virus is completely China and Fauci's dangerous fault and they must be raked over the coals for it so Trump doesn't have to take any responsibility". The whole thing is an insult to intelligence for anyone that doesn't just believe what they're told to. Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics.
  - dqv 5y ago
    >I still don't understand how they're ready to blame China so viciously for something that they tell us is just a flu and not even worth using face coverings or risking taking a vaccine. Not to mention magic cures like HCQ. All these efforts were just to deflect from the last government's failure to contain the virus. And they're not even internally consistent with each other. "The virus is not dangerous, the left is just hyping and faking it. But the not-dangerous virus is completely China and Fauci's dangerous fault and they must be raked over the coals for it so Trump doesn't have to take any responsibility". This is more a collective inconsistency than an individual inconsistency. But yes these issues when layered with politics tend to just use whichever spaghetto sticks to the wall. >Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics. I still think it's important to find out where it came from. If leaked from a lab, what was done wrong that can be avoided in the future? If it really did happen out in the wild, how can monitoring be improved? The Trump administration was wholly ineffective at stopping it, but it's not like decisive action in the US would have stopped it from spreading elsewhere. Bolsonaro would still be president of Brazil. There is utility in getting as close to what really happened as possible and trying to mitigate it. Maybe virologists working directly with pathogens should have to wear masks out in public all the time. >The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics. I know this whole thing has changed me and I will be continuing to wear a mask in public well after the mask mandates have ended. Possibly forever.
meepmorp 5y ago
An alternative to the standard lab leak theory: Thee virus escaped a lab, but not wasn’t actually genetically manipulated - patient zero was exposed to a naturally occurring virus during the course of their work and it mutated to become more transmissible in vivo.
- dqv 5y ago
  ??? I don't remember hearing anything about genetic manipulation being a part of the lab leak theory. My understanding is that these kinds of viruses are studied all the time without being modified.
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    The WIV is either the #1 or #2 lab worldwide in studying and genetically modifying coronaviruses. They had multiple active grants and recent published papers on this work.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That was the most common form - and the one raised by people familiar with the topic - but there were conspiracy theories alleging that it had been deliberately released, modified in the lab, or was even part of a bioweapon program. Given the political rancor and most of the world spending the year on social media, those got a lot of traction especially because anyone opposing China had the choice of amplifying them even if they didn’t really believe in them.
- Izkata 5y ago
  That is the standard lab-leak theory. Intentional manipulation of the virus was the strawman used to discredit it, by conflating the two. ...which is especially interesting in that it's going mainstream alongside more serious looks at the gain of function research that was funded there. This is actually more conspiratorial than what people had been saying for the past 14 months.
victor106 5y ago
Ex cdc director also believes this. https://youtu.be/f0_RhfT21bw https://youtu.be/f0_RhfT21bw The Chinese government has a lot to answer to the world. Their cover up in the initial stages costed thousands of lives and unspeakable damage to millions of people. The irony is the world still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > The irony is the world still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them Even if it were undeniably from a lab leak in China, there is so much infrastructure depending on their manufacturing capacity and competitive pricing that the world probably couldn't stop immediately.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    will never stop. where else do you get smart people willing to work for free? the wolrd might be running out of those.
totalZero 5y ago
This theory has been mainstream since before Covid. At the time of the laboratory's inception as a BSL-4 facility, Nature published an article describing worries that China would be unable to contain pathogens there. Here's a PDF: https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/nature.2017.21487.pdf https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/t...
- dqv 5y ago
  I guess mainstream is the wrong word for it. During the Trump administration, it seemed like there was an effort to suppress the theory by associating the lab leak theory with Trump supporters. I also recall an Indian virologist trying to suggest SARS-CoV-2 had been modified to have parts of HIV in its genetic material.
  - 07121941 5y ago
    I agree, seems like it got memory-holed, or at least lumped as tinfoil-hat bs
arisAlexis 5y ago
An outbreak occurring next to the the only Bsl4 lab dealing with coronavirus research and it took the world 1.5 year and 15mln deaths to start seriously thinking about this.
- leaveyou 5y ago
  Exactly. I remember seeing this video on youtube in April 2020 and being kind of confused about it's content: youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU From what that guy is saying there, there were clear signs of a coverup at that institute very early in 2020.
Jun8 5y ago
NYT article from less than two months ago still underlining that the lab leak hypothesis has been thoroughly dismissed by scientists and it was an idea pushed by Pompeo and Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/science/redfield-coronavirus-wuhan-lab.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/science/redfield-coronavi....
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Two things can be true at once—Pompeo and Trump may have decided to push a theory they wanted to be true, without actually examining the evidence for it. That's obviously not productive—but the theory could still be true. The article does mention that some scientists thought the lab leak was a real possibility. They even quote Dr. Fauci saying saying as much (although he made it clear that he thought a natural cause was more likely).
- dqv 5y ago
  Yeah this is what I was talking about elsewhere in this thread. But what the article really says is the hypothesis "that the virus was created or modified intentionally in a lab were dismissed by scientists and U.S. intelligence officials." That does not preclude it from being leaked from a lab. I find it uncomfortable that they are using crafty wording to jump from "it wasn't created in a lab" to the virus never escaping the lab, which are two entirely different claims.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Very common technique to manipulate public opinion. If you want to quash some idea, just take the most extreme example (even if only the fringe believe it) and prove it false (which is easy since you picked the most extreme example). Once you’ve proven it false, then forever refer to any related claim as “already proven false”.
spinny 5y ago
The theory been around since covid. People were concerned about lab leaks from that particular lab in Wuhan (the one close to the market where it supposedly started) before covid. The research on this type of virus was happening at this lab, they had posted a job opening for a researcher some time before. All the Trump hate going around (an the willingness to go against all-things-Trump) at the time, clouded massively any actions to properly identify the origins and even some preventive actions. Any traces that could only be identify at the time are gone by now, and as time passes, we may have more information but probably less concrete evidence. Sadly the world may end up with only theories
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I think it's going to be really interesting in the future to see if there was anything else that was dismissed or treated with disdain simply because of pure contrarianism to anything with Trump-adjacency. As if all it should have taken for Trump to have won was to have tried baby-tier reverse psychology. I wonder how many otherwise rational and educated people here on HN who hold that hatred still would be willing to analyze their intentions deeply enough to figure out why they hate? I am not interested in justifications, just suggesting some multi-level introspection. Most of the time when I discuss this with younger people, asking "why do you feel that way?" at least 3 times results in a complete blank (or violent/emotional reaction), a blatant cognitive fallacy, or simple trend/peer pressure. The ones who can still answer are those with truly unique ideas, in my experience at least. If anybody reads this and is willing, I'd be glad to hear your take on this.
  - whipaway 5y ago
    > if there was anything else that was dismissed or treated with disdain simply because of pure contrarianism to anything with Trump-adjacency It's blindingly clear that you can (remarkably this should raise eyebrows, but in this case it's shamefully close to reality) paint with broad brush-strokes that the entire media/tech/creative class making more than the avg household, that lives in cities, etc. effectively out-sourced their judgement to Trump. The reactions to him were automatic and opposite.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
Just wait until alternative treatments of COVID go mainstream
upofadown 5y ago
For this to mean anything then it would have to be specific enough that it could lead to policy changes at the institute in question (and possibly others). Otherwise it makes no difference. We know it came from bats. It might of spent time in a building somewhere. It may or may not of escaped from that building. Either way we still would of ended up with a pandemic. It wasn't going to magically stay in bats after it mutated to a form transmissible to humans. They were Chinese bats. So if we want to hate China for this we still can. Hatred doesn't have to make logical sense.
- Exmoor 5y ago
  We know the labs were specifically trying to enhance the viruses ability to infect humans ("gain of function"). Regardless of whether or not SARS-COV-2 leaked from a lab, I think the world has seen enough to know that trying to engineer viruses to be more easily transmitted is a huge mistake and should be permanently banned.
  - upofadown 5y ago
    >We know the labs were specifically trying to enhance the viruses ability to infect humans ("gain of function"). I was not able to find a reference for that on a quick search. There is a recent paper about gain of function but there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect that gain was artificially induced.
divbzero 5y ago
Direct links to the underlying letter from epidemiologists and biologists — [HTML]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1.full [PDF]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/372/6543/694.1.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/372/6543/694.1.fu...
akomtu 5y ago
Just half year ago, each and every comment in this thread would be flagged/dead for "spreading disinformation". It's interesting to see how quickly the narrative changes.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  Events of the past four or five years have trained me to look for moments when the mainstream media moves in lockstep to INTENSELY deny something or "debunk"/set the record straight etc. Whenever the lady doth protest too much, it's a good sign there really is something going on, and the people who own the media really, really don't want you to know. To be fair, a number of suspicions about Covid have turned out to be false alarms as time has gone on, as was always going to be the case. "Fog of war" and all that. But it was clear from the beginning that the lab origin story had potential, precisely because it was so vehemently denied.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Not sure why you’re so downvoted. This is exactly what happened during the Iraq War. The official truth was Saddam had WMDs and all the mass media held to that line with a few exceptions. It was all wrong.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - jjtheblunt 5y ago
    it was also plainly plausible, really.
  - collyw 5y ago
    How do you feel about the vaccine? I am not an anti vaxxer, I have had plenty in the past, but when we have Prince Harry, David Beckham telling you take the vaccine it seems a bit off. I don't understand why it is being forced upon the whole population, when it should be like the flu vaccine - give it to those at risk.
admeyer 5y ago
Is Dengvaxia-caused antibody-dependent enhancement acerbating Covid-19 severity? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5
mikem170 5y ago
This reddit post [0], by a PhD with a background in high risk biocontainment viruses, goes into great detail that the evidence, including genetic evidence, points to covid-19 crossed over from nature hundreds of miles away from Wuhan, before making its way to the meat market there and spreading further. This post is very comprehensive, including a table of contents and linked references. The other articles I have seen, including this one, don't have a fraction of the documented facts backing them up that this one does. I highly recommend checking it out if interested. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
- dqv 5y ago
  Thanks. This will be an interesting read. It looks like the author here doesn't really discuss how SARS-CoV-2 got its furin cleavage site. The Bulletin article [0] seems to think that's significant while Dr. Duehr kind of brushes it off. I'd love to know what his theory is. Obviously Dr. Duehr's paper predates The Bulletin article by almost exactly a year. [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...
  - mikem170 5y ago
    Section 2.3 of the reddit post [0] (titled: "And if it were created in a lab, SARS-CoV-2 would have been engineered by an idiot") mentions covid having a polybasic cleavage site, which is suboptimal for humans (the "ford focus" of cleavage sites), but binds to many other species (ferrets, cats, chimps, etc), along with a promiscuous and somewhat unstable spike protein to bind to those diverse ace2 receptors, meaning this was most likely made by nature, jumping through animal populations. The article you linked seemed to mention furin cleavage sites in a hypothetical context, unless I'm missing something. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/fqpby1u/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
    - dqv 5y ago
m0llusk 5y ago
Exhaustive investigations have shown how SARS and MERS both hopped naturally from animal hosts to humans, so we know that we must be vigilant against animal viral transmission in any case and should attempt to reduce human contact with wild animals. We know the Chinese were unable to culture coronavirus for their ineffectiveness tests and also that the SARS-CoV2 genome has no telltale signs of human editing. We also know China's Communist party does not respond to shaming with obedience. What is worst about this idea is how it shamelessly panders to common bias. Instead of believing in natural disasters all events have reasons and are guided by the hands of man. Furthermore, punishment brings justice. Both of these ideas are misguided junk.
- dqv 5y ago
  >We know the Chinese were unable to culture coronavirus Can you source this? It's kind of hard to find information about the lab at the moment so it would be extremely helpful to read about this.
exegete 5y ago
Related, I just saw Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and on board of Pfizer, retweet a link to this article “The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?” 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... Some of the discussion on the genetic makeup of the virus was helpful for me

89 points by cwwc 5y ago

darkhorn 5y ago

https://www.wired.com/2013/05/h5n1-h1n1-reassortment/ https://www.wired.com/2013/05/h5n1-h1n1-reassortment/

dkdk8283 5y ago

If it is true China would never admit it. It can’t be dismissed on their word alone. Glad to see this investigated.

dqv 5y ago

Good. Of course I'm not expecting anyone to prove a negative, but the lab leak theory was dismissed with very little evidence to the contrary. We know other viruses have leaked from labs before [0]. I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory" bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good faith. [0]: https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 (thanks to whichever HNer posted this initially - not even sure if it had to do with a covid discussion)

RachelF 5y ago
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists released a long, but well argued article on the lab leak theory: 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... It appears the US was sponsoring "gain of function" tests on corona viruses at the Wuhan lab as they were banned as too dangerous in the US and EU.
babelfish 5y ago
That’s kind of the opposite of how evidence works
- dqv 5y ago
  I tire of this type of comment on HN. There's a pervasive smug tone that doesn't do anything for the conversation. Are you here to have a good faith conversation or not? The evidence to the contrary would be strong evidence in favor of the other theory. We currently have little evidence to prove either, so dismissing one in favor of the other is foolish.
- bassman9000 5y ago
  "Evidence not yet provided" != "No evidence provided" The Higgs boson was theorized in the mid 60s. Final evidence not found till a few years ago. It's was a valid theory until then. It is exactly how it works: theory is good enough that working to find the evidence pays off. And there wasn't a strong incentive NOT to find the boson, such in the lab case. Some US institutions and actors, and the CCP, would be hit by liabilities, severely, if the theory is proven true. Not only careers (rightfully) ruined, but heavy sanctions, and international condemnation, given the damage. So there's a strong incentive to shoot down the theory, even if it's the most logical one.
Exmoor 5y ago
> the lab leak theory was dismissed with very little evidence to the contrary And the "evidence" to the contrary was largely a letter to the editor from people with major conflicts of interest[0]: >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.” [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...
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  As far as I understood, this is an open issue and Daszak still has to respond: 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...
belltaco 5y ago
>I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory" bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good faith. I still don't understand how they're ready to blame China so viciously for something that they tell us is just a flu and not even worth using face coverings or risking taking a vaccine. Not to mention magic cures like HCQ. All these efforts were just to deflect from the last government's failure to contain the virus. And they're not even internally consistent with each other. "The virus is not dangerous, the left is just hyping and faking it. But the not-dangerous virus is completely China and Fauci's dangerous fault and they must be raked over the coals for it so Trump doesn't have to take any responsibility". The whole thing is an insult to intelligence for anyone that doesn't just believe what they're told to. Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics.
- dqv 5y ago
  >I still don't understand how they're ready to blame China so viciously for something that they tell us is just a flu and not even worth using face coverings or risking taking a vaccine. Not to mention magic cures like HCQ. All these efforts were just to deflect from the last government's failure to contain the virus. And they're not even internally consistent with each other. "The virus is not dangerous, the left is just hyping and faking it. But the not-dangerous virus is completely China and Fauci's dangerous fault and they must be raked over the coals for it so Trump doesn't have to take any responsibility". This is more a collective inconsistency than an individual inconsistency. But yes these issues when layered with politics tend to just use whichever spaghetto sticks to the wall. >Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics. I still think it's important to find out where it came from. If leaked from a lab, what was done wrong that can be avoided in the future? If it really did happen out in the wild, how can monitoring be improved? The Trump administration was wholly ineffective at stopping it, but it's not like decisive action in the US would have stopped it from spreading elsewhere. Bolsonaro would still be president of Brazil. There is utility in getting as close to what really happened as possible and trying to mitigate it. Maybe virologists working directly with pathogens should have to wear masks out in public all the time. >The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics. I know this whole thing has changed me and I will be continuing to wear a mask in public well after the mask mandates have ended. Possibly forever.

meepmorp 5y ago

An alternative to the standard lab leak theory: Thee virus escaped a lab, but not wasn’t actually genetically manipulated - patient zero was exposed to a naturally occurring virus during the course of their work and it mutated to become more transmissible in vivo.

dqv 5y ago
??? I don't remember hearing anything about genetic manipulation being a part of the lab leak theory. My understanding is that these kinds of viruses are studied all the time without being modified.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  The WIV is either the #1 or #2 lab worldwide in studying and genetically modifying coronaviruses. They had multiple active grants and recent published papers on this work.
- acdha 5y ago
  That was the most common form - and the one raised by people familiar with the topic - but there were conspiracy theories alleging that it had been deliberately released, modified in the lab, or was even part of a bioweapon program. Given the political rancor and most of the world spending the year on social media, those got a lot of traction especially because anyone opposing China had the choice of amplifying them even if they didn’t really believe in them.
Izkata 5y ago
That is the standard lab-leak theory. Intentional manipulation of the virus was the strawman used to discredit it, by conflating the two. ...which is especially interesting in that it's going mainstream alongside more serious looks at the gain of function research that was funded there. This is actually more conspiratorial than what people had been saying for the past 14 months.

victor106 5y ago

Ex cdc director also believes this. https://youtu.be/f0_RhfT21bw https://youtu.be/f0_RhfT21bw The Chinese government has a lot to answer to the world. Their cover up in the initial stages costed thousands of lives and unspeakable damage to millions of people. The irony is the world still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> The irony is the world still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them Even if it were undeniably from a lab leak in China, there is so much infrastructure depending on their manufacturing capacity and competitive pricing that the world probably couldn't stop immediately.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  will never stop. where else do you get smart people willing to work for free? the wolrd might be running out of those.

totalZero 5y ago

This theory has been mainstream since before Covid. At the time of the laboratory's inception as a BSL-4 facility, Nature published an article describing worries that China would be unable to contain pathogens there. Here's a PDF: https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/nature.2017.21487.pdf https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/t...

dqv 5y ago
I guess mainstream is the wrong word for it. During the Trump administration, it seemed like there was an effort to suppress the theory by associating the lab leak theory with Trump supporters. I also recall an Indian virologist trying to suggest SARS-CoV-2 had been modified to have parts of HIV in its genetic material.
- 07121941 5y ago
  I agree, seems like it got memory-holed, or at least lumped as tinfoil-hat bs

arisAlexis 5y ago

An outbreak occurring next to the the only Bsl4 lab dealing with coronavirus research and it took the world 1.5 year and 15mln deaths to start seriously thinking about this.

leaveyou 5y ago
Exactly. I remember seeing this video on youtube in April 2020 and being kind of confused about it's content: youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU From what that guy is saying there, there were clear signs of a coverup at that institute very early in 2020.

Jun8 5y ago

NYT article from less than two months ago still underlining that the lab leak hypothesis has been thoroughly dismissed by scientists and it was an idea pushed by Pompeo and Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/science/redfield-coronavirus-wuhan-lab.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/science/redfield-coronavi....

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Two things can be true at once—Pompeo and Trump may have decided to push a theory they wanted to be true, without actually examining the evidence for it. That's obviously not productive—but the theory could still be true. The article does mention that some scientists thought the lab leak was a real possibility. They even quote Dr. Fauci saying saying as much (although he made it clear that he thought a natural cause was more likely).
dqv 5y ago
Yeah this is what I was talking about elsewhere in this thread. But what the article really says is the hypothesis "that the virus was created or modified intentionally in a lab were dismissed by scientists and U.S. intelligence officials." That does not preclude it from being leaked from a lab. I find it uncomfortable that they are using crafty wording to jump from "it wasn't created in a lab" to the virus never escaping the lab, which are two entirely different claims.
- refurb 5y ago
  Very common technique to manipulate public opinion. If you want to quash some idea, just take the most extreme example (even if only the fringe believe it) and prove it false (which is easy since you picked the most extreme example). Once you’ve proven it false, then forever refer to any related claim as “already proven false”.

spinny 5y ago

The theory been around since covid. People were concerned about lab leaks from that particular lab in Wuhan (the one close to the market where it supposedly started) before covid. The research on this type of virus was happening at this lab, they had posted a job opening for a researcher some time before. All the Trump hate going around (an the willingness to go against all-things-Trump) at the time, clouded massively any actions to properly identify the origins and even some preventive actions. Any traces that could only be identify at the time are gone by now, and as time passes, we may have more information but probably less concrete evidence. Sadly the world may end up with only theories

jimmygrapes 5y ago
I think it's going to be really interesting in the future to see if there was anything else that was dismissed or treated with disdain simply because of pure contrarianism to anything with Trump-adjacency. As if all it should have taken for Trump to have won was to have tried baby-tier reverse psychology. I wonder how many otherwise rational and educated people here on HN who hold that hatred still would be willing to analyze their intentions deeply enough to figure out why they hate? I am not interested in justifications, just suggesting some multi-level introspection. Most of the time when I discuss this with younger people, asking "why do you feel that way?" at least 3 times results in a complete blank (or violent/emotional reaction), a blatant cognitive fallacy, or simple trend/peer pressure. The ones who can still answer are those with truly unique ideas, in my experience at least. If anybody reads this and is willing, I'd be glad to hear your take on this.
- whipaway 5y ago
  > if there was anything else that was dismissed or treated with disdain simply because of pure contrarianism to anything with Trump-adjacency It's blindingly clear that you can (remarkably this should raise eyebrows, but in this case it's shamefully close to reality) paint with broad brush-strokes that the entire media/tech/creative class making more than the avg household, that lives in cities, etc. effectively out-sourced their judgement to Trump. The reactions to him were automatic and opposite.

AzzieElbab 5y ago

Just wait until alternative treatments of COVID go mainstream

upofadown 5y ago

For this to mean anything then it would have to be specific enough that it could lead to policy changes at the institute in question (and possibly others). Otherwise it makes no difference. We know it came from bats. It might of spent time in a building somewhere. It may or may not of escaped from that building. Either way we still would of ended up with a pandemic. It wasn't going to magically stay in bats after it mutated to a form transmissible to humans. They were Chinese bats. So if we want to hate China for this we still can. Hatred doesn't have to make logical sense.

Exmoor 5y ago
We know the labs were specifically trying to enhance the viruses ability to infect humans ("gain of function"). Regardless of whether or not SARS-COV-2 leaked from a lab, I think the world has seen enough to know that trying to engineer viruses to be more easily transmitted is a huge mistake and should be permanently banned.
- upofadown 5y ago
  >We know the labs were specifically trying to enhance the viruses ability to infect humans ("gain of function"). I was not able to find a reference for that on a quick search. There is a recent paper about gain of function but there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect that gain was artificially induced.

divbzero 5y ago

Direct links to the underlying letter from epidemiologists and biologists — [HTML]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1.full [PDF]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/372/6543/694.1.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/372/6543/694.1.fu...

akomtu 5y ago

Just half year ago, each and every comment in this thread would be flagged/dead for "spreading disinformation". It's interesting to see how quickly the narrative changes.

ergot_vacation 5y ago
Events of the past four or five years have trained me to look for moments when the mainstream media moves in lockstep to INTENSELY deny something or "debunk"/set the record straight etc. Whenever the lady doth protest too much, it's a good sign there really is something going on, and the people who own the media really, really don't want you to know. To be fair, a number of suspicions about Covid have turned out to be false alarms as time has gone on, as was always going to be the case. "Fog of war" and all that. But it was clear from the beginning that the lab origin story had potential, precisely because it was so vehemently denied.
- refurb 5y ago
  Not sure why you’re so downvoted. This is exactly what happened during the Iraq War. The official truth was Saddam had WMDs and all the mass media held to that line with a few exceptions. It was all wrong.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  it was also plainly plausible, really.
- collyw 5y ago
  How do you feel about the vaccine? I am not an anti vaxxer, I have had plenty in the past, but when we have Prince Harry, David Beckham telling you take the vaccine it seems a bit off. I don't understand why it is being forced upon the whole population, when it should be like the flu vaccine - give it to those at risk.

admeyer 5y ago

Is Dengvaxia-caused antibody-dependent enhancement acerbating Covid-19 severity? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5

mikem170 5y ago

This reddit post [0], by a PhD with a background in high risk biocontainment viruses, goes into great detail that the evidence, including genetic evidence, points to covid-19 crossed over from nature hundreds of miles away from Wuhan, before making its way to the meat market there and spreading further. This post is very comprehensive, including a table of contents and linked references. The other articles I have seen, including this one, don't have a fraction of the documented facts backing them up that this one does. I highly recommend checking it out if interested. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

dqv 5y ago
Thanks. This will be an interesting read. It looks like the author here doesn't really discuss how SARS-CoV-2 got its furin cleavage site. The Bulletin article [0] seems to think that's significant while Dr. Duehr kind of brushes it off. I'd love to know what his theory is. Obviously Dr. Duehr's paper predates The Bulletin article by almost exactly a year. [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...
- mikem170 5y ago
  Section 2.3 of the reddit post [0] (titled: "And if it were created in a lab, SARS-CoV-2 would have been engineered by an idiot") mentions covid having a polybasic cleavage site, which is suboptimal for humans (the "ford focus" of cleavage sites), but binds to many other species (ferrets, cats, chimps, etc), along with a promiscuous and somewhat unstable spike protein to bind to those diverse ace2 receptors, meaning this was most likely made by nature, jumping through animal populations. The article you linked seemed to mention furin cleavage sites in a hypothetical context, unless I'm missing something. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/fqpby1u/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
  - dqv 5y ago

m0llusk 5y ago

Exhaustive investigations have shown how SARS and MERS both hopped naturally from animal hosts to humans, so we know that we must be vigilant against animal viral transmission in any case and should attempt to reduce human contact with wild animals. We know the Chinese were unable to culture coronavirus for their ineffectiveness tests and also that the SARS-CoV2 genome has no telltale signs of human editing. We also know China's Communist party does not respond to shaming with obedience. What is worst about this idea is how it shamelessly panders to common bias. Instead of believing in natural disasters all events have reasons and are guided by the hands of man. Furthermore, punishment brings justice. Both of these ideas are misguided junk.

dqv 5y ago
>We know the Chinese were unable to culture coronavirus Can you source this? It's kind of hard to find information about the lab at the moment so it would be extremely helpful to read about this.

exegete 5y ago

Related, I just saw Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and on board of Pfizer, retweet a link to this article “The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?” 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... Some of the discussion on the genetic makeup of the virus was helpful for me