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There are 2 concrete distinct ideas, but many are conflating both of the ideas. It results in it being very hard to have a conversation because it's unclear whi

There are 2 concrete distinct ideas, but many are conflating both of the ideas. It results in it being very hard to have a conversation because it's unclear which idea people are talking about. Idea 1: SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab Idea 2: SARS-CoV-2 was in/around/related to WIV and escaped Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists. Idea 2 is an idea that there is a considerable body of circumstantial evidence supporting and is certainly the most likely origin in my estimation. > why these weird rumors about Gain of Function research that no one seemingly looks into etc. You can read one such yourself: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258702/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258702/ we investigated the receptor usage of the SL-CoV S by combining a human immunodeficiency virus-based pseudovirus system with cell lines expressing the ACE2 molecules of human, civet, or horseshoe bat. Later down on the paper it describes the process by which they did the combination. Our own American scientists said this process would likely result in biomarkers that were not found in the circulating virus (my layman, not expert, understanding).

isaacremuant 5y ago
Idea 1 wasn't debunked: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... It's a long read but a worthy one. Exploring all the options better than the NYT article. The lack of biomarkers is not proof either way.
cameldrv 5y ago
What do you mean by "engineered in a lab?" No one believes that anyone just typed a sequence into their computer and created it from whole cloth. On the other hand, the WIV has recently published papers about creating new coronaviruses by combining a gene from one virus with the rest of another virus, as well as other types of modifications to existing coronaviruses. They have active grants to continue with this type of research. They also have acknowledged performing this work in BSL-2 labs, which would not be secure enough to contain SARS-CoV-2 if it were to have been the result of one of these experiments.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a BSL-4 lab, but US diplomats were concerned by the untrained staff operating the lab (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...). Even with the best of facilities and staff, containment can be hard. For example, back in 2014 86 lab workers at the CDC were possibly infected with anthrax (https://time.com/2902415/cdc-anthrax-atlanta/ https://time.com/2902415/cdc-anthrax-atlanta/) because protocols were not followed.
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    WIV contains a BSL-4 lab, which is fairly new. WIV itself has been around for 65 years. It contains many labs, at various levels of security. It's a huge hassle to conduct work in the BSL-4, and researchers generally would only work in the BSL-4 if they were working with pathogens that required it. WIV has acknowledged that at least some of their bat coronavirus research was conducted in their BSL-2 labs which have a far, far lower level of security.
    - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
      For context, BSL-2 is usually locked doors, cabinets of filtered air, and easily-cleanable surfaces. PPE is usually a lab coat, gloves, and goggles.
  - wk_end 5y ago
    WIV has a BSL-4 lab, but not all the work there was done in it. > Before 2020, the rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. But all other bat coronaviruses could be studied in BSL2, the next level down. BSL2 requires taking fairly minimal safety precautions, such as wearing lab coats and gloves, not sucking up liquids in a pipette, and putting up biohazard warning signs. Yet a gain-of-function experiment conducted in BSL2 might produce an agent more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. And if it did, then lab workers would stand a high chance of infection, especially if unvaccinated. Much of Shi [Zheng-li, head researcher at WIV]’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “[t]he coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.” 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...
mellosouls 5y ago
Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists I don't personally doubt it's a conspiracy theory but would you clarify exactly where "American scientists" debunked this - is it in the link you provided, it's not clear, it appears to only deal with claim 2?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  For evidence about debunking, you can check out Twitter threads from Trevor Bedford (bio: https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/ https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/) that are linked from https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400 https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400 In this discussion and the older threads he links in there, Bedford basically rules out an 'engineered' virus, does not rule out a lab leak, but leans towards zoonosis (pathogen jumping from animal to human). - Here are Thread reader links for the older threads he references: Were parts of HIV inserted into SARS-CoV-2? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1223666856923291648.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1223666856923291648.html What do the number of amino acid and nucleotide changes tell us? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224207086013149184.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224207086013149184.html Which data point are consistent with zoonosis or lab escape? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230634136102064128.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230634136102064128.html
  - timr 5y ago
    Trevor Bedford is one scientist at the Hutch. He is certainly qualified to have an opinion, but his opinion is not the conclusive determination on the matter. Other scientists whom I respect have different opinions: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 The other links you provide are rebuttals of particular arguments, but in no way settle the entire question. Knowing that bits of HIV weren't inserted into SARS-CoV2, for example, tells you nothing about whether this virus may have emerged from natural selection experiments in the lab. There are good arguments on both sides, but Twitter, in particular, seems stuck on the pronouncements of early 2020, when nobody knew much of anything about the virus and a certain prominent politician was speculating wildly, thus setting up a left/right polarization over what should be a factual debate. We need to stop this hostile form of "scientific debate" where one person's opinion is held up as "the science", while all other voices are dismissed as fringe.
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
There is a 3rd option. I'm going to repost a comment I made a few days ago regarding the labs in Wuhan: The "Wuhan Institute of Virology" is named in a couple of news articles and scientific publications. However what is rarely discussed is that the Wuhan CDC (武汉市疾病预防控制中心), which also has a virus lab and was also researching coronaviruses is in walking distance from that wet market! I took a screenshot of it, in the top right is the Huanan Seafood Market, in the bottom the CDC, which includes a virus lab: https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png Unfortunately you won't find it on Google Maps but anyone who is able to read Chinese can check this themselves. All the early cases were centered around this area, including the hospital that treated the first cases. It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere. On the CDC website they had an open position looking for a researcher to study, among others, exactly the kind of bat CoV that's been identified as most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. This has since been deleted but it could still be accessed during the early days of the outbreak.
- smallnamespace 5y ago
  > It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere FYI, this really doesn't match my experience. I got curious and Googled about the lab's location myself about a year ago, not long after the outbreak, and found the hypothesis tantalizing, even in the absence of hard evidence. I've seen ongoing discussion about this since then on various blogs and on Twitter. As a more meta-comment, we're all in tiny, personalized information silos nowadays based on the sites and communities we frequent. Even a pseudo-public forum like Twitter is not really public - you only see the slice that you follow. IMO 'nobody is talking about it' is more about how you've curated your own info-stream, rather than about the world at large.
  - divbzero 5y ago
    To add one more data point, for the past year I’ve been following this story passively — reading articles I’ve come across but never searching actively — and this is the first I’ve heard of the coincident location of the Wuhan CDC.
rubatuga 5y ago
No, idea 1 has not been debunked.
Reason077 5y ago
> "Our own American scientists said this process would likely result in biomarkers that were not found in the circulating virus" There is debate about that. Interesting article here: 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 also suggests that one of the loudest early detractors of the "escaped from lab" theory, the main author of the Feb 19, 2020 Lancet letter, had an undeclared conflict of interest because he is president of an organisation which funded Coronavirus research at WIV)

isaacremuant 5y ago

Idea 1 wasn't debunked: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... It's a long read but a worthy one. Exploring all the options better than the NYT article. The lack of biomarkers is not proof either way.

cameldrv 5y ago

What do you mean by "engineered in a lab?" No one believes that anyone just typed a sequence into their computer and created it from whole cloth. On the other hand, the WIV has recently published papers about creating new coronaviruses by combining a gene from one virus with the rest of another virus, as well as other types of modifications to existing coronaviruses. They have active grants to continue with this type of research. They also have acknowledged performing this work in BSL-2 labs, which would not be secure enough to contain SARS-CoV-2 if it were to have been the result of one of these experiments.

throwawaysea 5y ago
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a BSL-4 lab, but US diplomats were concerned by the untrained staff operating the lab (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...). Even with the best of facilities and staff, containment can be hard. For example, back in 2014 86 lab workers at the CDC were possibly infected with anthrax (https://time.com/2902415/cdc-anthrax-atlanta/ https://time.com/2902415/cdc-anthrax-atlanta/) because protocols were not followed.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  WIV contains a BSL-4 lab, which is fairly new. WIV itself has been around for 65 years. It contains many labs, at various levels of security. It's a huge hassle to conduct work in the BSL-4, and researchers generally would only work in the BSL-4 if they were working with pathogens that required it. WIV has acknowledged that at least some of their bat coronavirus research was conducted in their BSL-2 labs which have a far, far lower level of security.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    For context, BSL-2 is usually locked doors, cabinets of filtered air, and easily-cleanable surfaces. PPE is usually a lab coat, gloves, and goggles.
- wk_end 5y ago
  WIV has a BSL-4 lab, but not all the work there was done in it. > Before 2020, the rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. But all other bat coronaviruses could be studied in BSL2, the next level down. BSL2 requires taking fairly minimal safety precautions, such as wearing lab coats and gloves, not sucking up liquids in a pipette, and putting up biohazard warning signs. Yet a gain-of-function experiment conducted in BSL2 might produce an agent more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. And if it did, then lab workers would stand a high chance of infection, especially if unvaccinated. Much of Shi [Zheng-li, head researcher at WIV]’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “[t]he coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.” 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...

mellosouls 5y ago

Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists I don't personally doubt it's a conspiracy theory but would you clarify exactly where "American scientists" debunked this - is it in the link you provided, it's not clear, it appears to only deal with claim 2?

throwawaysea 5y ago
For evidence about debunking, you can check out Twitter threads from Trevor Bedford (bio: https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/ https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/) that are linked from https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400 https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400 In this discussion and the older threads he links in there, Bedford basically rules out an 'engineered' virus, does not rule out a lab leak, but leans towards zoonosis (pathogen jumping from animal to human). - Here are Thread reader links for the older threads he references: Were parts of HIV inserted into SARS-CoV-2? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1223666856923291648.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1223666856923291648.html What do the number of amino acid and nucleotide changes tell us? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224207086013149184.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224207086013149184.html Which data point are consistent with zoonosis or lab escape? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230634136102064128.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230634136102064128.html
- timr 5y ago
  Trevor Bedford is one scientist at the Hutch. He is certainly qualified to have an opinion, but his opinion is not the conclusive determination on the matter. Other scientists whom I respect have different opinions: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 The other links you provide are rebuttals of particular arguments, but in no way settle the entire question. Knowing that bits of HIV weren't inserted into SARS-CoV2, for example, tells you nothing about whether this virus may have emerged from natural selection experiments in the lab. There are good arguments on both sides, but Twitter, in particular, seems stuck on the pronouncements of early 2020, when nobody knew much of anything about the virus and a certain prominent politician was speculating wildly, thus setting up a left/right polarization over what should be a factual debate. We need to stop this hostile form of "scientific debate" where one person's opinion is held up as "the science", while all other voices are dismissed as fringe.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago

There is a 3rd option. I'm going to repost a comment I made a few days ago regarding the labs in Wuhan: The "Wuhan Institute of Virology" is named in a couple of news articles and scientific publications. However what is rarely discussed is that the Wuhan CDC (武汉市疾病预防控制中心), which also has a virus lab and was also researching coronaviruses is in walking distance from that wet market! I took a screenshot of it, in the top right is the Huanan Seafood Market, in the bottom the CDC, which includes a virus lab: https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png Unfortunately you won't find it on Google Maps but anyone who is able to read Chinese can check this themselves. All the early cases were centered around this area, including the hospital that treated the first cases. It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere. On the CDC website they had an open position looking for a researcher to study, among others, exactly the kind of bat CoV that's been identified as most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. This has since been deleted but it could still be accessed during the early days of the outbreak.

smallnamespace 5y ago
> It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere FYI, this really doesn't match my experience. I got curious and Googled about the lab's location myself about a year ago, not long after the outbreak, and found the hypothesis tantalizing, even in the absence of hard evidence. I've seen ongoing discussion about this since then on various blogs and on Twitter. As a more meta-comment, we're all in tiny, personalized information silos nowadays based on the sites and communities we frequent. Even a pseudo-public forum like Twitter is not really public - you only see the slice that you follow. IMO 'nobody is talking about it' is more about how you've curated your own info-stream, rather than about the world at large.
- divbzero 5y ago
  To add one more data point, for the past year I’ve been following this story passively — reading articles I’ve come across but never searching actively — and this is the first I’ve heard of the coincident location of the Wuhan CDC.

rubatuga 5y ago

No, idea 1 has not been debunked.

Reason077 5y ago

> "Our own American scientists said this process would likely result in biomarkers that were not found in the circulating virus" There is debate about that. Interesting article here: 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 also suggests that one of the loudest early detractors of the "escaped from lab" theory, the main author of the Feb 19, 2020 Lancet letter, had an undeclared conflict of interest because he is president of an organisation which funded Coronavirus research at WIV)