6 ms·

Science is needed to find how sars-cov2 reached humans

42 points by bamboo2 5y ago

ianai 5y ago
Call to action: “”” We welcome calls for scientifically rigorous investigations.10, 11 To accomplish this, we encourage WHO and scientific partners across the world to expeditiously move to continue and further extend their initial investigation with experts in China and the Chinese Government. WHO's report from March, 2021,12 must be considered the beginning rather than the end of an inquiry, and we strongly support the G7 leaders' call for “a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened phase 2 COVID-19 origins study”.13 We also understand that it might take years of field and laboratory study to assemble and link the data essential to reach rational and objective conclusions, but that is what the global scientific community must strive to do “”” They also call to move beyond rhetoric with a goal of ending this pandemic and enacting systemic change to sense and halt the next one. “”” Having robust surveillance and detection systems in place across the globe is essential to detect and report new or evolving pathogens that can potentially unleash the next local or global threat, as required by the International Health Regulations. Equally essential will be ensuring that the field workforce, laboratory facilities, and the health-care community can all work under the safest conditions. Until this pandemic ends, we ask, as we did in February, 2020,1 for solidarity and rigorous scientific data. “””
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  I'm pretty cynical about this. The CCP hasn't been very forthcoming so far and I don't suspect that to change.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Why limit your cynicism? The US has plenty of motivation as well.
    - brodouevencode 5y ago
      I assume you're referring to the grants issued by the US to China to work on GoF research?
      - refenestrator 5y ago
        No, I'm referring to generic geopolitical rivalry plus cover for mismanagement of the crisis domestically. If we can make it all China's fault, that's a win for us. Facts, evidence or lack thereof aren't material compared to interests and arguments.
  - ianai 5y ago
    But what is the alternative?
    - brodouevencode 5y ago
      Short of some sort of global sanctioning I'm not so sure there is one. Hopefully the data that comes out will be useful and honest.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  They must be dreaming if they think the CCP will help a fair investigation. If Ecohealth wants to investigate Covid on Norwegian Salmon they might get support, but since Chinese state media now denies that Covid even began in China, they won’t investigate the lab leak, that much is certain. There are good scientists in China who would want to investigate this, but the government will not allow it, and from what we know they are actively working to erase the evidence needed for the scientific process.
yonaguska 5y ago
Ecohealth Alliance with another "peer-reviewed" published paper attempting to quell the lab-leak hypothesis. Peter Daszak being one of the authors of this paper basically removes any shred of credibility for what is effectively an opinion piece.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Moreover: no statement on conflicts of interest (at least not readily available), possibly because it is “only” a letter (wish I could get one published in the lancet…). Rubbish.
  - m0llusk 5y ago
    You might not agree with what is stated, but the final paragraph is full of clarifications of interests. > PD's remuneration is paid solely in the form of a salary from EcoHealth Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation. EcoHealth Alliance's mission ... Funding for this work comes from ... EcoHealth Alliance's work in China was previously funded by ... PD joined the WHO–China joint global study on the animal origins of SARS-CoV-2 towards the end of 2020 and is currently a member. As per WHO rules ... includes collaboration with a range of universities and governmental health and environmental science organisations, all of which are listed in prior publications, three of which received funding from ... All of EcoHealth Alliance's work is reviewed and approved by ... And so on. This is the longest paragraph by far and goes into considerable detail regarding the contributors, their sources, and the intentions and revenue sources for all involvements.
    - pfortuny 5y ago
      Everywhere I publish, conflicts of interest appear under a specific heading though. Thanks anyway.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  This doesn't attempt to quell anything, it just points out that being certain of origins is probably going to require rigorous investigation. This is the same as with SARS and MERS which both took around 15 years to fully understand and also did not have full cooperation from the governments involved. Like most science all of the statements here can be verified with respect to the sources cited. Saying that the origins of SARS-CoV2 have not been conclusively established but are of great interest is not controversial. If there is any lack of credibility here it is with lab leak hypothesis enthusiasts failing to supply solid evidence and then claiming that criticism amounts to both censorship and a kind of indirect proof of their assertions.
unanswered 5y ago
Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  It's not? For example, "Did a nuclear power plant meltdown in Kansas yesterday?" We use science for all sorts of stuff like that.
- julienchastang 5y ago
  Do you care to elaborate? For example, it was science ex post facto that established Luc Montagnier and not Robert Gallo was the first to isolate HIV [0]. Interestingly, Luc Montagnier has a role in the lab origin theory of SARS-CoV-2. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
  - unanswered 5y ago
    > Do you care to elaborate? Not really because my viewpoint is not permitted on HN. Further discussion will likely draw moderator attention.
- samatman 5y ago
  Strikes me that "radiocarbon dating" is the only thing which need be said to robustly disprove this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Zenst 5y ago
  > Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question. But it is used to validate, and without validation you would not have history, only opinions.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question. Historical questions are questions of material fact, science is an appropriate epistemic tool to answer questions of material fact, and, so, I disagree. Some historical questions may not be convenient to investigate scientifically given available tools, but that's a different issue.
julienchastang 5y ago
> SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory Why either or, why not both?
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Peter Daszak, conflicts of interest, Ecohealth Alliance. That is why.
3pt14159 5y ago
I don't think anyone should be absolutely sure one way or another, but China is a pretty big place and the country only has two labs at that level. Coincidences happen, yes, but this one seems pretty unlikely.
- FullStackAda 5y ago
  On the other hand where does it make sense to build a lab that studies a pathogen? As far away as possible from pathogen's natural reservoir or close by?
  - ChemSpider 5y ago
    The Wuhan lab is more than 1000 km away from related pathogen's natural reservoirs. Shi Zhengli said this herself: Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
jxramos 5y ago
Can someone substantiate this idea that it's improbable for a virus to surmount these two evolutionary obstacles highlighted below? I'll copy the quote for the idea I've seen circulating, the bold part is the idea I'd like to hear challenged and would like to learn more about what its foundation is predicated upon. For ultimately, in order to create a human pandemic, an animal virus has to accomplish **two very difficult things**. First, it has to successfully infect a person, and then it needs to jump from one person to the next rapidly enough to get ahead of the rate at which sufferers recover or die. SARS2 is a master of this trick, but the closest wild relatives seem to be neutralised, with spike proteins built to invade horseshoe bat cells, not human cells. To trigger a pandemic in people they need substantial evolutionary retooling.
- monocasa 5y ago
  It's rare in the global sense, but really nasty infections are sort of known for jumping from another mammalian species. AIDS, original SARS, Ebola, etc. all fit that pattern.
  - Zenst 5y ago
    When it comes to odds in mammalian species, you can't but help be reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Sars and bird flu both did it in that part of the world quite recently. It's not like the phenomenon is unheard of. Maybe it's unlikely but when you also have a billion people in third world conditions.. it's not that unlikely after all.
  - Zenst 5y ago
    I like to think of such unlikely things in the context of winning the lottery, that I find gives a perspective based upon however large the odds are - somebody does win in the end. I didn't see any numbers in the article to give some weight to any probability word usage.
vadansky 5y ago
I recommend reading "Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century", at least the COVID chapter.
hereforphone 5y ago
Awhile back there was an article on the front page of HN which seemed to support the lab leak hypothesis. This was before that hypothesis gained traction. I checked back shortly thereafter and it was gone. I went through the history (scrolled through pages) and couldn't find it. Maybe it was a BS / questionable article. I don't know. But it seems we were eager to squash that line of thinking early on, whereas now it's at least debatable. This is why I'm suspicious of moderation.
- baq 5y ago
  imagine the bullshit people submit when there's no moderation.
  - hereforphone 5y ago
    That's also true, and that's the problem that has yet to be solved IMO. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? As far as I can tell it currently involves a lot of personal opinion and prejudice, and that may be unavoidable at the moment.
- munawwar 5y ago
  Was it linked to this one? https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
  - hereforphone 5y ago
    No idea
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  There are about a dozen[1] HN submissions from February 2020 alone about a potential lab leak. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=4&prefix=true&query=lab%20leak&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=4&prefix=true&que...
paulpauper 5y ago
so you're telling me for the past 1.5 years, ppl haven't been using science?
ChemSpider 5y ago
> Careful and transparent collection of scientific information is essential Sure, I agree. But they make it sound like this is a global issue. But that is not true, and they know it. Nothing and nobody stops these scientists to check blood samples/animals/whatnot all over the world. The only country in the world that does not allow an open and transparent research into the origin of the pandemic is China - and yet these scientists are afraid to call the Chinese government out for it. I find this very disingenuous.
- kristofferR 5y ago
  Yeah, and if China is so confident about the Wuhan lab not being the source, why prevent an investigation at massive costs to your reputation? Most people now assume that China is "guilty" because they've figuratively "fled from the trial".
Ajay-p 5y ago
"It is time to turn down the heat of the rhetoric and turn up the light of scientific inquiry if we are to be better prepared to stem the next pandemic, whenever it comes and wherever it begins. " This statement sounds very disingenuous. Science should look at all aspects of the virus and consider if it leaked from a laboratory, in addition to other means of transmission. Dismissing one as simply "rhetoric" is antithetical to science.
- Voloskaya 5y ago
  > This statement sounds very disingenuous I don't agree. The lab leak theory has a disproportionate share of the public discourse's space compared to it's scientific plausibility. So it's time to turn down (not off) the rhetoric, and evaluate all hypothesis in a scientific way. You will notice at no point in the article do they say that non-natural hypothesis should not be investigated, quite the opposite: > "[...] whether it occurred wholly within nature or might somehow have reached the community via an alternative route, and prevent future pandemics."
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Science doesn’t happen in a black box. There are no ways to search for answers if powerful governments don’t want certain questions asked.
unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
A request for 'solidarity' is a soft corruption of the scientific method. The word suggests that we pursue something other than the truth. It's intrinsic. That the Lanclet publishes such a request, on a topic of public interest, by authors who are implicated in serious lapses and negligence-- this reflects a shocking lack of judgment by all involved and most notably the journal.
908B64B197 5y ago
Here's a thought experiment. Let's pretend that the virus did origin in the wild. No lab leak, no gain of function. Why would the Chinese authorities try to conceal information about it's origin, apply pressure on the WHO and silence researchers in Wuhan? China is trying really hard to gain a good international reputation right now through "vaccine diplomacy". Giving all available data to international organizations from day one would have given China an excellent reputation. After all, if it did originate in the wild there's nothing to hide; they simply stumbled upon it first. Why is it not the behavior we're seeing from the country's leadership?
gorwell 5y ago
Let's grok these carefully constructed statements. "SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory... We believe the strongest clue from new, credible, and peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature, is that the virus evolved in nature..." This can be completely accurate, yet does not exclude the possibility that the virus, originally from nature, was then imported into a lab that studies Coronaviruses and accidentally leaked from there. They are trying to obscure the latter by focusing on the original origin. This appears to be intentional misdirection and conflation.

42 points by bamboo2 5y ago

Call to action: “”” We welcome calls for scientifically rigorous investigations.10, 11 To accomplish this, we encourage WHO and scientific partners across the world to expeditiously move to continue and further extend their initial investigation with experts in China and the Chinese Government. WHO's report from March, 2021,12 must be considered the beginning rather than the end of an inquiry, and we strongly support the G7 leaders' call for “a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened phase 2 COVID-19 origins study”.13 We also understand that it might take years of field and laboratory study to assemble and link the data essential to reach rational and objective conclusions, but that is what the global scientific community must strive to do “”” They also call to move beyond rhetoric with a goal of ending this pandemic and enacting systemic change to sense and halt the next one. “”” Having robust surveillance and detection systems in place across the globe is essential to detect and report new or evolving pathogens that can potentially unleash the next local or global threat, as required by the International Health Regulations. Equally essential will be ensuring that the field workforce, laboratory facilities, and the health-care community can all work under the safest conditions. Until this pandemic ends, we ask, as we did in February, 2020,1 for solidarity and rigorous scientific data. “””

brodouevencode 5y ago
I'm pretty cynical about this. The CCP hasn't been very forthcoming so far and I don't suspect that to change.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Why limit your cynicism? The US has plenty of motivation as well.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    I assume you're referring to the grants issued by the US to China to work on GoF research?
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      No, I'm referring to generic geopolitical rivalry plus cover for mismanagement of the crisis domestically. If we can make it all China's fault, that's a win for us. Facts, evidence or lack thereof aren't material compared to interests and arguments.
- ianai 5y ago
  But what is the alternative?
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    Short of some sort of global sanctioning I'm not so sure there is one. Hopefully the data that comes out will be useful and honest.
twobitshifter 5y ago
They must be dreaming if they think the CCP will help a fair investigation. If Ecohealth wants to investigate Covid on Norwegian Salmon they might get support, but since Chinese state media now denies that Covid even began in China, they won’t investigate the lab leak, that much is certain. There are good scientists in China who would want to investigate this, but the government will not allow it, and from what we know they are actively working to erase the evidence needed for the scientific process.

yonaguska 5y ago

Ecohealth Alliance with another "peer-reviewed" published paper attempting to quell the lab-leak hypothesis. Peter Daszak being one of the authors of this paper basically removes any shred of credibility for what is effectively an opinion piece.

pfortuny 5y ago
Moreover: no statement on conflicts of interest (at least not readily available), possibly because it is “only” a letter (wish I could get one published in the lancet…). Rubbish.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  You might not agree with what is stated, but the final paragraph is full of clarifications of interests. > PD's remuneration is paid solely in the form of a salary from EcoHealth Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation. EcoHealth Alliance's mission ... Funding for this work comes from ... EcoHealth Alliance's work in China was previously funded by ... PD joined the WHO–China joint global study on the animal origins of SARS-CoV-2 towards the end of 2020 and is currently a member. As per WHO rules ... includes collaboration with a range of universities and governmental health and environmental science organisations, all of which are listed in prior publications, three of which received funding from ... All of EcoHealth Alliance's work is reviewed and approved by ... And so on. This is the longest paragraph by far and goes into considerable detail regarding the contributors, their sources, and the intentions and revenue sources for all involvements.
  - pfortuny 5y ago
    Everywhere I publish, conflicts of interest appear under a specific heading though. Thanks anyway.
m0llusk 5y ago
This doesn't attempt to quell anything, it just points out that being certain of origins is probably going to require rigorous investigation. This is the same as with SARS and MERS which both took around 15 years to fully understand and also did not have full cooperation from the governments involved. Like most science all of the statements here can be verified with respect to the sources cited. Saying that the origins of SARS-CoV2 have not been conclusively established but are of great interest is not controversial. If there is any lack of credibility here it is with lab leak hypothesis enthusiasts failing to supply solid evidence and then claiming that criticism amounts to both censorship and a kind of indirect proof of their assertions.

unanswered 5y ago

Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question.

3pt14159 5y ago
It's not? For example, "Did a nuclear power plant meltdown in Kansas yesterday?" We use science for all sorts of stuff like that.
julienchastang 5y ago
Do you care to elaborate? For example, it was science ex post facto that established Luc Montagnier and not Robert Gallo was the first to isolate HIV [0]. Interestingly, Luc Montagnier has a role in the lab origin theory of SARS-CoV-2. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
- unanswered 5y ago
  > Do you care to elaborate? Not really because my viewpoint is not permitted on HN. Further discussion will likely draw moderator attention.
samatman 5y ago
Strikes me that "radiocarbon dating" is the only thing which need be said to robustly disprove this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Zenst 5y ago
> Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question. But it is used to validate, and without validation you would not have history, only opinions.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Science is not an appropriate epistemic tool to answer an historical question. Historical questions are questions of material fact, science is an appropriate epistemic tool to answer questions of material fact, and, so, I disagree. Some historical questions may not be convenient to investigate scientifically given available tools, but that's a different issue.

julienchastang 5y ago

> SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory Why either or, why not both?

pfortuny 5y ago
Peter Daszak, conflicts of interest, Ecohealth Alliance. That is why.

3pt14159 5y ago

I don't think anyone should be absolutely sure one way or another, but China is a pretty big place and the country only has two labs at that level. Coincidences happen, yes, but this one seems pretty unlikely.

FullStackAda 5y ago
On the other hand where does it make sense to build a lab that studies a pathogen? As far away as possible from pathogen's natural reservoir or close by?
- ChemSpider 5y ago
  The Wuhan lab is more than 1000 km away from related pathogen's natural reservoirs. Shi Zhengli said this herself: Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...

jxramos 5y ago

Can someone substantiate this idea that it's improbable for a virus to surmount these two evolutionary obstacles highlighted below? I'll copy the quote for the idea I've seen circulating, the bold part is the idea I'd like to hear challenged and would like to learn more about what its foundation is predicated upon. For ultimately, in order to create a human pandemic, an animal virus has to accomplish **two very difficult things**. First, it has to successfully infect a person, and then it needs to jump from one person to the next rapidly enough to get ahead of the rate at which sufferers recover or die. SARS2 is a master of this trick, but the closest wild relatives seem to be neutralised, with spike proteins built to invade horseshoe bat cells, not human cells. To trigger a pandemic in people they need substantial evolutionary retooling.

monocasa 5y ago
It's rare in the global sense, but really nasty infections are sort of known for jumping from another mammalian species. AIDS, original SARS, Ebola, etc. all fit that pattern.
- Zenst 5y ago
  When it comes to odds in mammalian species, you can't but help be reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
refenestrator 5y ago
Sars and bird flu both did it in that part of the world quite recently. It's not like the phenomenon is unheard of. Maybe it's unlikely but when you also have a billion people in third world conditions.. it's not that unlikely after all.
- Zenst 5y ago
  I like to think of such unlikely things in the context of winning the lottery, that I find gives a perspective based upon however large the odds are - somebody does win in the end. I didn't see any numbers in the article to give some weight to any probability word usage.

vadansky 5y ago

I recommend reading "Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century", at least the COVID chapter.

hereforphone 5y ago

Awhile back there was an article on the front page of HN which seemed to support the lab leak hypothesis. This was before that hypothesis gained traction. I checked back shortly thereafter and it was gone. I went through the history (scrolled through pages) and couldn't find it. Maybe it was a BS / questionable article. I don't know. But it seems we were eager to squash that line of thinking early on, whereas now it's at least debatable. This is why I'm suspicious of moderation.

baq 5y ago
imagine the bullshit people submit when there's no moderation.
- hereforphone 5y ago
  That's also true, and that's the problem that has yet to be solved IMO. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? As far as I can tell it currently involves a lot of personal opinion and prejudice, and that may be unavoidable at the moment.
munawwar 5y ago
Was it linked to this one? https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
- hereforphone 5y ago
  No idea
heavyset_go 5y ago
There are about a dozen[1] HN submissions from February 2020 alone about a potential lab leak. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=4&prefix=true&query=lab%20leak&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=4&prefix=true&que...

paulpauper 5y ago

so you're telling me for the past 1.5 years, ppl haven't been using science?

ChemSpider 5y ago

> Careful and transparent collection of scientific information is essential Sure, I agree. But they make it sound like this is a global issue. But that is not true, and they know it. Nothing and nobody stops these scientists to check blood samples/animals/whatnot all over the world. The only country in the world that does not allow an open and transparent research into the origin of the pandemic is China - and yet these scientists are afraid to call the Chinese government out for it. I find this very disingenuous.

kristofferR 5y ago
Yeah, and if China is so confident about the Wuhan lab not being the source, why prevent an investigation at massive costs to your reputation? Most people now assume that China is "guilty" because they've figuratively "fled from the trial".

Ajay-p 5y ago

"It is time to turn down the heat of the rhetoric and turn up the light of scientific inquiry if we are to be better prepared to stem the next pandemic, whenever it comes and wherever it begins. " This statement sounds very disingenuous. Science should look at all aspects of the virus and consider if it leaked from a laboratory, in addition to other means of transmission. Dismissing one as simply "rhetoric" is antithetical to science.

Voloskaya 5y ago
> This statement sounds very disingenuous I don't agree. The lab leak theory has a disproportionate share of the public discourse's space compared to it's scientific plausibility. So it's time to turn down (not off) the rhetoric, and evaluate all hypothesis in a scientific way. You will notice at no point in the article do they say that non-natural hypothesis should not be investigated, quite the opposite: > "[...] whether it occurred wholly within nature or might somehow have reached the community via an alternative route, and prevent future pandemics."

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Science doesn’t happen in a black box. There are no ways to search for answers if powerful governments don’t want certain questions asked.

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago

A request for 'solidarity' is a soft corruption of the scientific method. The word suggests that we pursue something other than the truth. It's intrinsic. That the Lanclet publishes such a request, on a topic of public interest, by authors who are implicated in serious lapses and negligence-- this reflects a shocking lack of judgment by all involved and most notably the journal.

908B64B197 5y ago

Here's a thought experiment. Let's pretend that the virus did origin in the wild. No lab leak, no gain of function. Why would the Chinese authorities try to conceal information about it's origin, apply pressure on the WHO and silence researchers in Wuhan? China is trying really hard to gain a good international reputation right now through "vaccine diplomacy". Giving all available data to international organizations from day one would have given China an excellent reputation. After all, if it did originate in the wild there's nothing to hide; they simply stumbled upon it first. Why is it not the behavior we're seeing from the country's leadership?

gorwell 5y ago

Let's grok these carefully constructed statements. "SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory... We believe the strongest clue from new, credible, and peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature, is that the virus evolved in nature..." This can be completely accurate, yet does not exclude the possibility that the virus, originally from nature, was then imported into a lab that studies Coronaviruses and accidentally leaked from there. They are trying to obscure the latter by focusing on the original origin. This appears to be intentional misdirection and conflation.