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This is precisely why it is so touchy. There’s been a strong correlation between people who believe lab leak and people who believe the Chinese were doing somet

by jghn 5y ago

This is precisely why it is so touchy. There’s been a strong correlation between people who believe lab leak and people who believe the Chinese were doing something bad. As an anecdote, someone recently asked me if we could tell if the COVID genome had come via animals/natural origin or engineered in some way. I said that most likely, yes that should be possible. Their immediate reaction was that this meant I didn’t believe in lab leak. That’s not at all what I had said

pjc50 5y ago
> if we could tell if the COVID genome had come via animals/natural origin or engineered in some way. I said that most likely, yes that should be possible How?
- garblegarble 5y ago
  There's quite a comprehensive document compiled by a virologist on reddit discussing what the options for engineering would be, and what traces they would leave, I found it quite interesting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9jI9WX7/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9j...
  - baybal2 5y ago
    No engineering, I want to underline it. This is not precluding a natural virus leak with, or without gain of function experiment involvement. Current facts on the ground: - 1st response to CoVID occurrence was certainly in Wuhan. - The closest wild strain of CoVID happens in bats living thousand kilometres from Wuhan - Wuhan had two institutes which, on record, did gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses - SARS had a record of lab escapes past the previous pandemic even without live animal hosts.
    - jghn 5y ago
      The story with the miners[1] has caught my attention. A group of miners fell ill w/ a SARS-like virus via bat droppings. In retrospect it sounds a heck of a lot like COVID. Wuhan was known to have investigated the case. Perhaps a researcher manages to get infected, or something like that. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/
- jghn 5y ago
  garblegarble's link explains it better than I could, but the tl;dr is that there are patterns that occur with natural evolution. Messing with those patterns would look, well, unnatural.

by jghn 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

> if we could tell if the COVID genome had come via animals/natural origin or engineered in some way. I said that most likely, yes that should be possible How?

garblegarble 5y ago
There's quite a comprehensive document compiled by a virologist on reddit discussing what the options for engineering would be, and what traces they would leave, I found it quite interesting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9jI9WX7/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9j...
- baybal2 5y ago
  No engineering, I want to underline it. This is not precluding a natural virus leak with, or without gain of function experiment involvement. Current facts on the ground: - 1st response to CoVID occurrence was certainly in Wuhan. - The closest wild strain of CoVID happens in bats living thousand kilometres from Wuhan - Wuhan had two institutes which, on record, did gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses - SARS had a record of lab escapes past the previous pandemic even without live animal hosts.
  - jghn 5y ago
    The story with the miners[1] has caught my attention. A group of miners fell ill w/ a SARS-like virus via bat droppings. In retrospect it sounds a heck of a lot like COVID. Wuhan was known to have investigated the case. Perhaps a researcher manages to get infected, or something like that. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/
jghn 5y ago
garblegarble's link explains it better than I could, but the tl;dr is that there are patterns that occur with natural evolution. Messing with those patterns would look, well, unnatural.