9 ms·

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you can work with is _difficult_. They aren't out collecting bats in the morning and whipping up live novel virus backbones in the evening. And if they actually carried out the research in this grant proposal you don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are all SARS-1-like. It is research that "sounds like" what happened with the SARS-CoV-2 zoonotic spillover, but that isn't a strange coincidence. They were researching the thing they were worried about happening, and then it happened. Their research proposals naturally rhyme with what actually occurred because they had studied and understood the problem enough to guess more or less accurately what the process would be. There are still massive gaps in between this proposal and SARS-CoV-2 that you could fly a plane through.

willupowers 5y ago
Calm down dude. Clearly you have some attachment to one theory over another, which is poor science. The investigation will continue and those missing items you mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak that there are might be a significant number of unpublished sequences at WIV and EHA, etc. If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions however.
createdapril24 5y ago
The specific claims here that are most compelling to me are: "The grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2." The counterargument is "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." The takeaway is that it is not likely this specific proposal was funded elsewhere, leading to SARS-CoV-2. "If they actually carried out the research in this grant proposal you don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are all SARS-1-like." I do not personally know how to evaluate the accuracy of this claim, but if true, it resonates with the first claim: this proposal funded elsewhere would not lead to SARS-CoV-2. The argument claims about it being hard/expensive I think are less compelling, as there is a lead time of several years with experts in field performing research. A more compelling version of this argument would look like (completely making up numbers): "On average, it takes 4.5 years to develop the first samples of a novel virus using a selected backbone, CRISPR technology, and gain-of-function culturing. Therefore, even if this research was funded in 2018 we would not expect it to have led to SARS-CoV-2". I'm not saying that argument is accurate at all, just saying it's more specific than "it's difficult". The argument claims about the evidence being missing I think isn't going to be motivating for a person who has a reasonable expectation that secret research is done and does not have trust in government transparency (either US, China, or otherwise). I'm not making a point here that evidence isn't needed (far from it, evidence IS needed). I'm evaluating from a polemic perspective what kinds of claims and arguments are useful for advancing the conversation with someone who holding a dissonant viewpoint. Thank you by the way for making specific claims that can be fact checked such as the two referenced at the top of this comment.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." It isn't as simple as altering the proposal. You're speculating a very large and hidden process using sequences that were kept perfectly secret and have not been leaked, with virus backbones that would take considerable effort to create but which were never shared publicly (and kept perfectly secret before SARS-CoV-2 happened before there was any need for perfect secrecy). We have this leaked information from 2018 about the proposal with the WIV1/SHC014 backbones which leaked because it was not kept with perfect secrecy. Yet they managed to do all that work in perfect secrecy without any leaks. That is the hallmark of a conspiracy theory. It requires a bit of a time machine because Daszak would have to have known in 2018 to tighten up his "OpSec" in response to the pandemic that hadn't happened yet and leaks that hadn't yet occurred. Things are also getting worse for the lab leak theory on other fronts, I just stumbled across this a few minutes ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 If there's multiple lineages from multiple zoonotic spillover events that makes the lab leak theory a poor fit and will require a lot more mental gymnastics.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    ... but then you'd have to explain the infection geography in humans with two events. Not saying it's not possible, but lining it up with what's known epidemiologically speaking is different. Also, I'm not sure why the lab leak hypothesis is suddenly trickier. They had all sorts of samples. Labeling this all as "mental gymnastics" as in the article, or "a dagger in the heart of the lab leak hypothesis" is just the sort of motivated analysis confirmatory bias that caused all this in the first place. I'm not sure how arguing that SARS-CoV-2 involved two spillover events with crossover from multiple species is less mental gymnastics than "a lab had multiple samples". Honestly I'd like to see more dispassionate discussion of this. That Nature piece is shameful. At some level I don't care if it was a lab leak or not but I wish there wasn't this level of motivation behind both sides. In any event, the grant proposal should raise a lot of red flags regardless. What bothers me often is this implied assumption that if the lab leak hypothesis is false, everything else is fine. It's all fine that a plausible biosecurity failure scenario was ridiculed, that major research groups clearly lied about and tried to cover up conflicts of interest, that we can trust these (GoF) lines of research are safe, that we can just trust the authority figures to not cause another pandemic, etc. etc. etc.
stablechaos 5y ago
"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as closely as possible for the research to be successful... It's like seeing smoke billowing out of a building and refusing to accept that there's a fire until you see the flames. Very convenient that your standard of evidence surpasses anything we can possibly obtain after the CCP scrubbed everything.
- fsh 5y ago
  SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim. It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel coronaviruses? I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it is not so clear if more human-animal contact happens in rural areas or in big population centers. SARS was eventually traced back to palm civets which are farmed animals. In this industry wild animals, many of which are susceptible to SARS-like coronaviruses, are being bred in large numbers. To me this sounds like a perfect breeding ground for the viruses as well.
  - stablechaos 5y ago
    It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a series of things to be considered independently. When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no serious investigation by the people in charge of something so significant, an injustice is being done. Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and centered in Wuhan, wet-markets and exotic animal markets are the likely culprit.
    - phreeza 5y ago
      Which other coincidence is there apart from the proximity of the lab to the initial detection site?
inciampati 5y ago
These researchers were apparently simulating the process of spillover and host adaptation of recombinant coronavirus in the lab. Of course this process will resemble a natural event in some respects. In a natural event, we would expect some traces of the adapting virus to be left in the world. Here, there are none. The virus appears having already adapted completely to it's new host.
mcherm 5y ago
At the end of the day we also have zero evidence of the animal transfer hypothesis. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was never documented in bats (prior to its spread among humans). No one has been able to demonstrate the capability of the virus to acquire it's current features in vivo in bats. But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis. Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for various possibilities. This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The existence of this grant application is evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic, about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to what we have observed in the virus. [1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/ https://xkcd.com/263/
avereveard 5y ago
Interesting that the no lab peole keep beating the same "evidence" drum, conflating to the public eye evidence and proof meaning. Every single denial comment around here hinges on this confusion in terms and then tries to stick the "no proof" meaning to all the evidence, instead of bringing whatever evidence there is that it was a natural strain evolution or debating the various points. Funny how instead a meta analysis of the discussion show one side piling up evidences while the other insists in trying to convince people that no proof equals no evidence.
dash2 5y ago
You sound knowledgeable. Can you point us to any long-form discussions on these topics? As a layperson I’d like to know more.
Justin_K 5y ago
The only evidence that exists is indirect because of China's stonewalling. When International researchers are denied access to the EpiCentre of a global pandemic, you cannot use the argument that there is no evidence.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  It's even worse than that. They did actually given access to Wuhan lab to WHO investigation team tasked with studying the possibility of lab leak, back in February/March last year. The team concluded that that it could not have leaked from Wuhan lab. The name of the lead investigator of the team? Peter Daszak, the very same one. I'm not making this up.
  - Justin_K 5y ago
    Yes - 60 minutes had a great piece on this
kcplate 5y ago
People without something to hide don’t go to the lengths of coverup and propaganda campaigns that we have seen here. Perhaps Covid-19 was fully natural in origin, but what appears to be fairly obvious to me is that there are certain actors within the viral research community that are doing some things that the general worldwide public would view as extraordinarily dangerous. Things that might also be considered illegal in countries that are providing funds. Things that might be viewed reasonably by the general public as a possible cause of a worldwide pandemic. There seems to be an extraordinary amount of CYA here.

willupowers 5y ago

Calm down dude. Clearly you have some attachment to one theory over another, which is poor science. The investigation will continue and those missing items you mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak that there are might be a significant number of unpublished sequences at WIV and EHA, etc. If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions however.

createdapril24 5y ago

The specific claims here that are most compelling to me are: "The grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2." The counterargument is "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." The takeaway is that it is not likely this specific proposal was funded elsewhere, leading to SARS-CoV-2. "If they actually carried out the research in this grant proposal you don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are all SARS-1-like." I do not personally know how to evaluate the accuracy of this claim, but if true, it resonates with the first claim: this proposal funded elsewhere would not lead to SARS-CoV-2. The argument claims about it being hard/expensive I think are less compelling, as there is a lead time of several years with experts in field performing research. A more compelling version of this argument would look like (completely making up numbers): "On average, it takes 4.5 years to develop the first samples of a novel virus using a selected backbone, CRISPR technology, and gain-of-function culturing. Therefore, even if this research was funded in 2018 we would not expect it to have led to SARS-CoV-2". I'm not saying that argument is accurate at all, just saying it's more specific than "it's difficult". The argument claims about the evidence being missing I think isn't going to be motivating for a person who has a reasonable expectation that secret research is done and does not have trust in government transparency (either US, China, or otherwise). I'm not making a point here that evidence isn't needed (far from it, evidence IS needed). I'm evaluating from a polemic perspective what kinds of claims and arguments are useful for advancing the conversation with someone who holding a dissonant viewpoint. Thank you by the way for making specific claims that can be fact checked such as the two referenced at the top of this comment.

lamontcg 5y ago
> "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." It isn't as simple as altering the proposal. You're speculating a very large and hidden process using sequences that were kept perfectly secret and have not been leaked, with virus backbones that would take considerable effort to create but which were never shared publicly (and kept perfectly secret before SARS-CoV-2 happened before there was any need for perfect secrecy). We have this leaked information from 2018 about the proposal with the WIV1/SHC014 backbones which leaked because it was not kept with perfect secrecy. Yet they managed to do all that work in perfect secrecy without any leaks. That is the hallmark of a conspiracy theory. It requires a bit of a time machine because Daszak would have to have known in 2018 to tighten up his "OpSec" in response to the pandemic that hadn't happened yet and leaks that hadn't yet occurred. Things are also getting worse for the lab leak theory on other fronts, I just stumbled across this a few minutes ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 If there's multiple lineages from multiple zoonotic spillover events that makes the lab leak theory a poor fit and will require a lot more mental gymnastics.
- derbOac 5y ago
  ... but then you'd have to explain the infection geography in humans with two events. Not saying it's not possible, but lining it up with what's known epidemiologically speaking is different. Also, I'm not sure why the lab leak hypothesis is suddenly trickier. They had all sorts of samples. Labeling this all as "mental gymnastics" as in the article, or "a dagger in the heart of the lab leak hypothesis" is just the sort of motivated analysis confirmatory bias that caused all this in the first place. I'm not sure how arguing that SARS-CoV-2 involved two spillover events with crossover from multiple species is less mental gymnastics than "a lab had multiple samples". Honestly I'd like to see more dispassionate discussion of this. That Nature piece is shameful. At some level I don't care if it was a lab leak or not but I wish there wasn't this level of motivation behind both sides. In any event, the grant proposal should raise a lot of red flags regardless. What bothers me often is this implied assumption that if the lab leak hypothesis is false, everything else is fine. It's all fine that a plausible biosecurity failure scenario was ridiculed, that major research groups clearly lied about and tried to cover up conflicts of interest, that we can trust these (GoF) lines of research are safe, that we can just trust the authority figures to not cause another pandemic, etc. etc. etc.

stablechaos 5y ago

"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as closely as possible for the research to be successful... It's like seeing smoke billowing out of a building and refusing to accept that there's a fire until you see the flames. Very convenient that your standard of evidence surpasses anything we can possibly obtain after the CCP scrubbed everything.

fsh 5y ago
SARS was first discovered in a major city too. This makes a lot of sense. If there is an outbreak in a rural village, the chances of it spreading worldwide are slim. It is quite possible that small outbreaks happen occasionally without anyone noticing. Who is going to test a few villagers that got pneumonia for novel coronaviruses? I would also argue that in the age of factory farming it is not so clear if more human-animal contact happens in rural areas or in big population centers. SARS was eventually traced back to palm civets which are farmed animals. In this industry wild animals, many of which are susceptible to SARS-like coronaviruses, are being bred in large numbers. To me this sounds like a perfect breeding ground for the viruses as well.
- stablechaos 5y ago
  It's the totality of the evidence taken together, not a series of things to be considered independently. When a lot of "coincidence" add up, they cease being coincidences. Or, at the very least, if there's no serious investigation by the people in charge of something so significant, an injustice is being done. Also, factory farming is far safer than all other forms of farming. If the outbreak was unrelated to WIV and centered in Wuhan, wet-markets and exotic animal markets are the likely culprit.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    Which other coincidence is there apart from the proximity of the lab to the initial detection site?

inciampati 5y ago

These researchers were apparently simulating the process of spillover and host adaptation of recombinant coronavirus in the lab. Of course this process will resemble a natural event in some respects. In a natural event, we would expect some traces of the adapting virus to be left in the world. Here, there are none. The virus appears having already adapted completely to it's new host.

mcherm 5y ago

At the end of the day we also have zero evidence of the animal transfer hypothesis. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was never documented in bats (prior to its spread among humans). No one has been able to demonstrate the capability of the virus to acquire it's current features in vivo in bats. But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis. Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for various possibilities. This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The existence of this grant application is evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic, about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to what we have observed in the virus. [1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/ https://xkcd.com/263/

avereveard 5y ago

Interesting that the no lab peole keep beating the same "evidence" drum, conflating to the public eye evidence and proof meaning. Every single denial comment around here hinges on this confusion in terms and then tries to stick the "no proof" meaning to all the evidence, instead of bringing whatever evidence there is that it was a natural strain evolution or debating the various points. Funny how instead a meta analysis of the discussion show one side piling up evidences while the other insists in trying to convince people that no proof equals no evidence.

dash2 5y ago

You sound knowledgeable. Can you point us to any long-form discussions on these topics? As a layperson I’d like to know more.

Justin_K 5y ago

The only evidence that exists is indirect because of China's stonewalling. When International researchers are denied access to the EpiCentre of a global pandemic, you cannot use the argument that there is no evidence.

xyzzyz 5y ago
It's even worse than that. They did actually given access to Wuhan lab to WHO investigation team tasked with studying the possibility of lab leak, back in February/March last year. The team concluded that that it could not have leaked from Wuhan lab. The name of the lead investigator of the team? Peter Daszak, the very same one. I'm not making this up.
- Justin_K 5y ago
  Yes - 60 minutes had a great piece on this

kcplate 5y ago

People without something to hide don’t go to the lengths of coverup and propaganda campaigns that we have seen here. Perhaps Covid-19 was fully natural in origin, but what appears to be fairly obvious to me is that there are certain actors within the viral research community that are doing some things that the general worldwide public would view as extraordinarily dangerous. Things that might also be considered illegal in countries that are providing funds. Things that might be viewed reasonably by the general public as a possible cause of a worldwide pandemic. There seems to be an extraordinary amount of CYA here.