32 ms·

The Next ‘Lab Leak’

189 points by johncena33 5y ago

tpmx 5y ago
> Covid might not have come out of a medical research lab It most likely did, though.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Why is that the case? I thought we don’t actually have any real good evidence either way.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    There is no smoking gun kind of evidence because PRC blocked all efforts to properly investigate this. This is obviously a red flag in itself. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence.
    - hh3k0 5y ago
      > There is plenty of circumstantial evidence. Yeah. It doesn't sit right with me that Peter Daszak, who has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was the driving force behind the February 2020 Lancet letter of scientists "strongly condemning conspiracy theories" like the lab-leak theory – all without disclosing that conflict of interest. Daszak should testify before congress.
    - black6 5y ago
      Wuhan has a biolab. That biolab specializes in coronaviruses. That biolab was funded, in part, by the US NIH to conduct gain of function (a rose by any other name...) on coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak was first observed in Wuhan. It's such a logical chain of circumstantial evidence, and They expected everyone to believe that it came from a fucking pangolin?
      - thedorkknight 5y ago
        Who is the "They" that you all keep mentioning? I haven't heard anyone push the pangolin theory since, like, March 2020. I listen to the podcast "This Week in Virology" a lot and can only remember them occasionally addressing it as a discarded theory. It seems to me like people are talking about some Boogeyman here. I need specifics on this "they" because otherwise it just comes across as rhetoric
      - drran 5y ago
        Who will discover a new virus faster? A researcher from a specialized lab or a random guy?
    - bradford 5y ago
      China has routinely been opaque, blocking investigations over all sorts of things. I don't like it either but I think it's premature to use it as evidence of malice on China's part.
      - thereisnospork 5y ago
        > China has routinely been opaque, blocking investigations over all sorts of things. I don't like it either but I think it's premature to use it as evidence of malice on China's part. China (and everyone else) doesn't get to have their cake an eat it too. They want to be opaque as national policy, that's their prerogative, but they don't get to do so and expect positive inference regarding what is behind the curtain. In other words, assuming the worst plausible scenario is the only, or at least a, rational interpretation of possibilities against a policy of intentional opacity.
        vlovich123 5y ago
        Is America going to let Chinese investigators start combing through their labs and almost the populace to see if an alternate domestic theory that it originated in the US earlier (after all, there’s been reports that it was in NYC in fall 2019 already). Can you see how a government might be concerned about keeping an adversary do that because of the sovereignty violation it brings up as well as concerns about spies being part of that group (eg how the CIA used a vaccination program as cover to find Bin Laden in Pakistan)? It’s not the only rational explanation. It’s just the one you choose to prefer (and it might perhaps be the most plausible given how the Chinese government appears to operate, but it’s not beyond reasonable doubt). Heck, this was the theory behind invading Iraq and looks like the US never did find those WMDs.
- readams 5y ago
  I think it's more correct to say that lab leak is a plausible theory. But it's going too far to say it's the most likely theory. I do wish China hadn't clammed up and would have allowed a real investigation. We'll never really know, I suspect.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    we will never really know. But, one of the most damning articles is this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ in which the final claim is "Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2." Er, that's not really strong support for the naturally occurring hypothesis, it's a refutation against 'naturally occurring is impossible'. The spontaneous evolution of furin sites is rare in the specific clade of SARS-CoV-2, so if it's support it's very weak. The phylogenetic trees presented in the paper are VERY much loaded to obscure this fact (omitting betacoronaviruses in the alpha-delta tree, and in the breakout betacoronavirus tree, arbitrarily loading up multiple copies of "basically the same" strains which all present a furin cleavage site to make the pie slice of furin site-presenting sequences bigger). On the other hand, copy-pasting interesting motifs into a different but related genetic entity to achieve GOF is basically "the first strategy you do" as a synthetic biologist. Hell, even I did it (to gain function in a non-pathogenic system) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24934472/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24934472/ "we substituted one of four amino acids (Asp, His, Asn, Gln) at each of the 12 ligating positions because these amino acids are alternative coordinating residues in otherwise conserved-cysteine positions found in a broad survey of NiFe hydrogenase sequences."
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    What's the most likely theory in your opinion? The nearby fish market? What sounds more likely, a bat in the fish market of Wuhan or the influenza lab next to it?
    - smallerfish 5y ago
      Not a fish market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KZ2b0Pc3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KZ2b0Pc3I
hlwez 5y ago
mypalmike 5y ago
This comment section is, at best, 99% speculation by internet detectives and conspiracy theorists.
Mikeb85 5y ago
When mainstream news starts putting 'The Next' without a question mark in headlines it certainly gives conspiracy theories some credibility.
teejmya 5y ago
https://archive.md/8hDJt https://archive.md/8hDJt
nice_byte 5y ago
i don't understand why the so-called "lab leak theory" of origin for sars-cov2 is treated as some sort of conspiracy theory. it is completely plausible, and things like this have happened in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak), not due to malice but due to incompetence.
- gennarro 5y ago
  Presumably people are being more careful now. Would like to see some sort of news or legislation about this but I’m sure it’s unlikely.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    And what kind of legislation would tickle your fancy? Intentional release is already legislated against. How do you legislate the prevention of accidents? Are you specifically talking about disclosure? I can get on board with that, but I'd be shocked if there's not already legislation around that. Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country?
    - tombert 5y ago
      I know basically nothing about foreign policy at all, but just in the "tombert thought experiment" land I'm going to give my "asshole opinion" [1]. ----------- > Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country? Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade agreement/embargo on countries that don't follow a minimum level of disclosure/safety protocol? E.g. if country A is shown to have covered up a massive lab leak, we impose some kind of tariff on them for N days. Obviously there are no easy solutions to problems like this, but I think that would be the place I start, because obviously US law doesn't really apply to places outside of the US; the only thing we could do (at least the only thing that I could think of) that's even close to punitive enforcement would be to apply leverage. [1] "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one and most of them stink"
Kenji 5y ago
Nobody should be afraid. Fear is not an emotion to cultivate. Enjoy your life until you meet the grim reaper, regardless of whether that happens tomorrow or in 50 years.
ramesh31 5y ago
I think we have to accept at this point that pandora's box has been opened with our ability to now directly synthesize genetic material and modify organisms. It wont be long before anarchic hackers can start doing this just to troll the world. There's sort of a parallel with computing, where viruses were never really a problem until everyone had access to the technology. I can see a future where we all need to get regular "security upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an mRNA cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been released.
- uwagar 5y ago
  so ud be walking on your footbridge to work and your eyes start to roll. nothing to fear. you are just being updated :)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    we don't have to crazy and make them Over-the-air updates. unless, the udpates are only going to be applied in sleep mode.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Barrin92 5y ago
  yes honestly I'm surprised that so much attention is devoted to lab leaks and state actors who at least have a self-preservation instinct compared to explicit bioterrorism by groups with an ideological death wish. Not sure we're super far away from the moment where these technologies become cheap and simple enough to cause mayhem. Ever since the sarin gas attack in tokyo in the 90s I've honestly wondered how this isn't already a much bigger issue.
  - JoshuaDavid 5y ago
    I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love. If it ever becomes possible to achieve personal or political gain through the development of bioweapons I suspect we are in extremely deep trouble.
hwers 5y ago
The news have abused my "you should be afraid" notification too many times for me to take this to heart.
- dang 5y ago
  We've taken out the baity bit, as the site guidelines ask. "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Eduard 5y ago
    The new / current title "The Next ‘Lab Leak’" is even more misleading and baity, as it suggests a lab leak just happened or is imminent.
    - dang 5y ago
      It doesn't suggest that, because the phrase is in quotes.
- daenz 5y ago
  What kind of sick editors get off on a headline that starts with "You Should Be Afraid" anyways? There are far more constructive phrasings, but no, they shamelessly want the fearful clickbait.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
peterburkimsher 5y ago
I'm not so worried about humans maliciously trying to destroy the world. There are few who would do so intentionally. Far more worrying is when people do what is easiest for them, regardless of the cost to their neighbour. A mask collects particles, including the COVID-19 virus. Please can we work together to pick up the masks from the street? Worms will eat the masks. Bats will eat the worms. And the bats will give COVID back to us. We're not responsible for world-scale Epic issues: plastic in the ocean, climate change, pandemics. We are fully responsible for the Issues we see. Please, let's clean the streets while we cycle/walk dogs/skateboard and the butterfly effect will help to fix the bigger problems too :)
- msie 5y ago
  People taking shortcuts is the root of so many problems.
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  I haven't seen any science on this, but I'd guess there is about a 0% chance of human->mask->worm->bat covid transmission. Do you have any basis for this fear? Obviously mask pollution is a bit of a problem, but not so much for risk of covid contamination.
- Vecr 5y ago
  Don't worry about worms, it's already in deer and I would assume a large number of other non-human animal populations already. It's obviously still in bats as well, SARS-CoV-3 is inevitable unless there's some sort of mass killing of bats, but it might not end up being very bad or transmissible.
- aisengard 5y ago
  Bats are extremely far down the list of things we have to worry about, when we continue to have millions of infected people who proudly and angrily spew virus-infested air particles uncontrolled into their communities because they think they know better.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Biologists are able to generate highly specialized viruses for research for decades now, i m sure it was possible before covid. I think going forward you should be afraid of nature. We have evolved global transportation / shipping / tourism beyond the carrying capacity of modern epidemiology / bacteriology to keep up with spreading pathogens. SarsCov2 might be just one of many , since human population has not peaked in numbers yet.
paulpauper 5y ago
It has been now almost 2 years and still no closure or definitive explanation about where Covid came from? It would seem as if nothing changed . You have all these investigators ,scientists, and reporters but no progress it seems.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  TBH this is not a scientifically very interesting question. It's quite likely that if one wanted to make this virus they could have. It doesnt appear to be the pinnacle of bioengineering so scientists are not curious to find out how they did it, if they did. And lab standards are already stringent, so leaks will keep happening. I don't believe the virus was leaked, not because it couldn't have but because it's equally probable that it's natural. And i 'd hate to see even slower progress in biology because of new safety standards that limit the number of people who can work in a wet lab. It's a politically interesting question though.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    > And lab standards are already stringent, so leaks will keep happening. I don't believe the virus was leaked, not because it couldn't have but because it's equally probable that it's natural. So you're not interested in knowing whether it was a leak, or if it was, whether it was accidental, and you're not at all interested in making bio labs more secure (which one might be, if one knew it was a lab leak!)?! So... no need to improve, just let it keep happening? And you don't think there's any interest in the science behind making a custom virus, or spreading it? OK, fine, you're not interested. Ah, but: > so scientists are not curious to find out how they did it, if they did All scientists? Most? A significant number of them? Are you saying no one should be curious about this, or just that you aren't? > It's a politically interesting question though. Ah, so do investigate? I can't tell what you meant.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  It took 15 years to find the animal reservoir for the original SARS virus: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
theduder99 5y ago
How many level 4 biosafety labs exist in the world where this type of dangerous research is carried out? 15. How many are in China? 2, one of which is in Wuhan the epicenter of the origination of the virus. Lab leak theory should have been the default root cause until proven otherwise by independent researchers (which China won't allow in).
- drran 5y ago
  > How many are in China? Virus know nothing about countries. Check all 15 labs.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  How many pandemics, out of all the pandemics that have ever happened throughout history, have been due to a lab leak? Wouldn’t the default assumption be the one that had been the cause most of the time? Yes the factors you raise the likelihood of a lab leak theory, or they could just be circumstantial. Without more, the fact that pandemics throughout history have a natural origin weighs heavily in favor of our current pandemic having a natural origin.
  - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    Most pandemics throughout history started when there were no labs at all, so they can be ignored in this calculation.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      Why? You’d need to know the independent probability of a natural origin pandemic to compute this. Surely to figure this out you would need to look at history to make this calculation. How else would you estimate that value?
  - legolas2412 5y ago
    What, why was the black plague not developed in the genetic engineering labs by Genghis Khan.. Maybe because the labs did not exist? How you can compare the history of humanity to the last ten years, the time when we really have started such experiments, is beyond understanding.
tomjen3 5y ago
The only thing I am afraid of is ideas being disregarded because they don't help you politically. Reality is what reality is. Whether this was leaked by a lab in China or not should not depend on which side of the election we are on. Ivermectine is not effective or not based on which side of the political spectrum you are on. And if it doesn't work, that doesn't mean we make fun of those who believe it does, it means we try something else. It took thousand of failed attempts to find the one bacteria that could effectively attack TB. If you want to reject reality and substitute your own, I won't stop you. Don't force it upon me.
Ambolia 5y ago
Nobody took responsibility for the first one nor seem interested in investigating it, but I should worry about the next one?
smsm42 5y ago
If such labs and research are dangerous, shouldn't we, you know, be more careful in working with them, especially in a country which is notorious for hiding data, cutting various corners and preferring good looking lies to the ugly truth, and being in control to doing the right thing? And shouldn't we ensure that people who work with such labs when and if it is necessary to do so are fully, 100% transparent and subject to public oversight? And if they, say, lie to the public and/or use weasel phrasing to hide their actions and mislead the overseers and the public about what kind of research is conducted in the dangerous labs and how it is financed and supported - shouldn't there be some consequences to it? I mean, beyond ones for lying to the Congress, which has become so routine now nobody even bats an eye at it?
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
Regardless of covid's source. Are we ready for something that is truly bad? It sure is a good thing that covid turned out to not be anywhere near as deadly as the spanish flu as they touted it to be. Here's an article from April 1st 2020. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trump-attacks-coronavirus-china-travel-ban https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trum... Trump put in travel restrictions for china in february of 2020 and was called xenophobic and fear mongering over what wasn't yet a pandemic. Sorry but the democrats went on the offensive attacking trump for doing what everyone did. Flipside, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic-playbook-for-trump-administration-officials-confirm https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic... Trump had a pandemic playbook on how to react to a pandemic and didn't use it? Is it possible because of the political attacks on him? It's pretty obvious that politics got in the way bigtime. I have no expectations this will be different next time. Then we had clearly political decisions made all throughout. By May 2020 we had the data in that people like Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College said covid is the equivalent of the Spanish Flu of 1918.That was wrong and we still reacted like it was indeed still dangerous. When in reality it was less dangerous than the normal flu season(largely due young children being unharmed). The number of political abuses is so high that society right now would not accept another pandemic. That they are almost certainly full of shit at this point.
deleted 5y ago
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gootler 5y ago
Oh people of the internets are so smart as shit. Bravo sleuths!
cletus 5y ago
There are many variations of the "lab leak" theory for Covid-19. For example: 1. Was the sample found or engineered? Or found then engineered? 2. Was it a deliberate leak or accidental? Here are some open questions that haven't been answered or examined (at least publicly) to a sufficient degree: 1. If Covid-19 jumped from an animal species to humans, possibly through another animal, then why hasn't it been found in the wild? For example, SARS was relatively quickly found in the wild. To date there's been no equivalent discovery of the lineage of human-transmissible Covid-19. An alternative theory, that Covid-19 spread to humans at a wet market, would strongly suggest that Covid-19 would be found in the wild; 2. The Chinese had a database of Covid strains that was taken offline in late 2019. To the best of my knowledge, no independent third-party has been able to examine the contents of this database and see if it relates to Covid-19; 3. Covid-19 seems to be related to bat coronavirus strains from hundreds of miles away. How was the jump made? Through what species? and 4. We don't really know who Patient Zero was. None of this adds up to positive evidence of any variation of the "lab leak" theory but given that there is no alternative theory that holds up to serious scrutiny or doesn't have serious flaws or unanswered questions, it has to stay in the running. My suspicion is the Chinese government doesn't know either but, more importantly, they don't want to know because absolutely no good can come from that becoming public. There is literally no upside. This applies on the individual level too. If you're a manager of a lab or even just a lab technician, do you really want to be held responsible, even just in the public eye, for "starting" Covid-19? God, no. That may well be bad for you, your family, the government and countless others. So there's a concerted effort to not know. And the WHO's response to all this has been utterly anemic from the early days of the pandemic where China's pronouncements were taken at face value to the late joint investigation with laughably narrow frames of reference.
- PicassoCTs 5y ago
  The whole gain of function boost was created to prevent a 2nd SARS and was shifted to china, as funding dried up, the further the event wandered into the "distant" past. Covid is neither a bioweapon nor a step-ladder for totalitarians worldwide. Its simply necessary un-bribeable politics and change, despite systemic dysfunction. That massive turn-around in society we need, we always demand and secretly fear, its upon us now and no lobbyist can put that djinn permanently back into the bottle. One variant and we are back into our walls, condemned to bread and games and the realization, that infinite growth is unnecessary. So compared to the massive disaster ahead, with billions of dead, this is quite a gentle steering maneuver. Sure those who are mentally not agile enough to travel to this different world currently born, well they will stay behind and swept away with the refugee crisis yet to come. The rest of us - we will stay peaceful, although loosing it all, with just a cellphone to dream and play on in some tattered tent. And this is the best outcome, and if you weight the future billions against the current million dead, even a moral one. Now downvote, the advocate of benevolent diabolo.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I want to take the contrarian take to most people in this thread. Sure, lab leak could be true and with all the available evidence, could very well be true but the confirmation of of it being true may have more far reaching domestic and geopolitical ramifications that may do more harm than good. It seems like there's some game theory going on within the political sphere of many western governments in that increasing anti-China sentiment by confirming lab leak could further put us down the path to an eventual confrontation (read: war) with China, in which we lose a lot more. The only thing we gain by admitting to lab leak is the truth but is the truth (that we've pretty much deduced at this point) worth worsening relations not only politically but gives anti-Chinese factions in the west more evidence as a prelude to war?
- sharperguy 5y ago
  Wasn't the lab in question an internationally funded operation, with many western countries, including the US involved?
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Yes. It’s pretty caustic to build a society on noble lies like you are proposing.
- timeon 5y ago
  I do not know, isn't it already perceived that lab-leak or not - Covid is China's fuckup?
  - opportune 5y ago
    From my perspective China did an amazing job at handling COVID, it is other countries that fucked up by not taking it seriously - not doing quarantining properly, waiting until domestic spread was out of control to take half-hearted and unenforced measures to slow the spread. In comparison China took quarantining and contact tracing very seriously and was effective at stopping their domestic spread early in the pandemic. You could blame China for most hypotheses for Covid’s origins: lab-leak from gain of function research, unsanitary wet markets, or not following proper cleanliness procedures for field research. But I think those things (besides lab leaks) could have happened in literally any developing country, and most probably would have done even worse at containing it than China. What I don’t think you can blame China for is the virus escaping their country. They would be (rightly) be under a ton of fire from the international community if they had not allowed non-citizens to leave their country at the start of the pandemic.
robbmorganf 5y ago
This article briefly mentions SARS-CoV-2, but at length it discusses Ebola and others quite a bit more. This article isn't about what happened with COVID-19, but about whether we should have BL4 labs at all. In my opinion, we absolutely should. Awful diseases like Ebola are effective at what they do, so they're great places to learn about molecular biology and genetics. It seems feasible that we can manage the risk well enough to get a net expected benefit.
hlwez 5y ago
Fauci funded "research" that ripped vocal cords out of puppies so the "scientists" wouldn't have to hear them scream in pain as they were EATEN TO DEATH by horseflies. He also funded "research" that poured acid on monkeys' brains to 'induce terror'. and you people still trust this raging piece of shit? He should be fucking shot.
m0zg 5y ago
LOL, they still are trying to sell the narrative that it "may not have come from a lab" with freaking bat caves a thousand miles away from Wuhan, and confirmed gain of function experiments at the lab. NYT is a joke.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
'Giant Watering Can theory under pressure as more evidence points to clouds'
nomdep 5y ago
How the lab leak is not considered a fact already? Have everyone forgot about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644428 ? The leaked grant plus Peter Daszak Wikipedia page screams “guilty”
- MarcoZavala 5y ago
zanethomas 5y ago
"might not have come out of a medical research lab" uh huh might have come out of a bio-weapons research lab
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Can we have some posts about computers now? (Yeah, yeah, be the change you want to see in the world)
devmunchies 5y ago
I keep seeing more hints of smallpox like media companies are priming the public. It’s really eerie after I noticed it.
eternauta3k 5y ago
I can't find the exact link, but 80000 hours has written about lab safety as a possible high-impact career area. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipice-existential-risk-future-humanity/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipi... https://80000hours.org/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/ https://80000hours.org/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/
djsbs 5y ago
The lab leak theory is taboo because it helps Trump style populism, which elites in China, EU and USA oppose. The lab leak theory also attracts nut job conspiracy theorists because it helps Trump style populism. We might never know what happened, but after two years my money is what a brilliant Chinese colleague (graduated from the top university in China said) told me (before we took COVID seriously) “The bio lab is two miles from the wet market. I’ve worked with Chinese scientists. I’ve worked with US scientists. The safety culture in China is terrible. Its a lab leak” To anyone who thinks thats racist, its not so I don't care. Culture is not race - Ill never forget an Eastern European friend who disabled one of the gas alarms in his lab because they annoyed him when they went off. His excuse: “we didn't have working fume hoods at home”. His PI, from the same country, shrugged the whole thing off with a laugh.
tamaharbor 5y ago
My first thought is why do they seem to locate infectious disease labs in highly populated urban areas?
alok-g 5y ago
Pedantry: COVID or Covid? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/brand-style-guide/writing/grammar/capitalisation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/brand-style-guide/writing/grammar... https://ginsengenglish.com/blog/covid https://ginsengenglish.com/blog/covid
99_00 5y ago
Some people don't believe the 'Lab Leak' explanation. They believe the 'Wet-market' explanation. Well, wet markets are open. Wet markets are weapons of mass destruction. In April 2021, the World Health Organization called for a total ban on the sale of live animals in food markets in order to prevent future pandemics. Hasn't happened. Given the ongoing damage caused by COVID-19, lives lost, economic, mental health, educational, is this OK? I am going to make an extreme suggestion. Given the risks, I don't know what else is feasible: As long as wet-markets are open there needs to be mandatory quarantine of any traveler from China, or traveler from a country that doesn't enforce mandatory quarantines on travelers from China.

The Next ‘Lab Leak’

189 points by johncena33 5y ago

tpmx 5y ago

> Covid might not have come out of a medical research lab It most likely did, though.

vlovich123 5y ago
Why is that the case? I thought we don’t actually have any real good evidence either way.
- tpmx 5y ago
  There is no smoking gun kind of evidence because PRC blocked all efforts to properly investigate this. This is obviously a red flag in itself. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence.
  - hh3k0 5y ago
    > There is plenty of circumstantial evidence. Yeah. It doesn't sit right with me that Peter Daszak, who has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was the driving force behind the February 2020 Lancet letter of scientists "strongly condemning conspiracy theories" like the lab-leak theory – all without disclosing that conflict of interest. Daszak should testify before congress.
  - black6 5y ago
    Wuhan has a biolab. That biolab specializes in coronaviruses. That biolab was funded, in part, by the US NIH to conduct gain of function (a rose by any other name...) on coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak was first observed in Wuhan. It's such a logical chain of circumstantial evidence, and They expected everyone to believe that it came from a fucking pangolin?
    - thedorkknight 5y ago
      Who is the "They" that you all keep mentioning? I haven't heard anyone push the pangolin theory since, like, March 2020. I listen to the podcast "This Week in Virology" a lot and can only remember them occasionally addressing it as a discarded theory. It seems to me like people are talking about some Boogeyman here. I need specifics on this "they" because otherwise it just comes across as rhetoric
    - drran 5y ago
      Who will discover a new virus faster? A researcher from a specialized lab or a random guy?
  - bradford 5y ago
    China has routinely been opaque, blocking investigations over all sorts of things. I don't like it either but I think it's premature to use it as evidence of malice on China's part.
    - thereisnospork 5y ago
      > China has routinely been opaque, blocking investigations over all sorts of things. I don't like it either but I think it's premature to use it as evidence of malice on China's part. China (and everyone else) doesn't get to have their cake an eat it too. They want to be opaque as national policy, that's their prerogative, but they don't get to do so and expect positive inference regarding what is behind the curtain. In other words, assuming the worst plausible scenario is the only, or at least a, rational interpretation of possibilities against a policy of intentional opacity.
      - vlovich123 5y ago
        Is America going to let Chinese investigators start combing through their labs and almost the populace to see if an alternate domestic theory that it originated in the US earlier (after all, there’s been reports that it was in NYC in fall 2019 already). Can you see how a government might be concerned about keeping an adversary do that because of the sovereignty violation it brings up as well as concerns about spies being part of that group (eg how the CIA used a vaccination program as cover to find Bin Laden in Pakistan)? It’s not the only rational explanation. It’s just the one you choose to prefer (and it might perhaps be the most plausible given how the Chinese government appears to operate, but it’s not beyond reasonable doubt). Heck, this was the theory behind invading Iraq and looks like the US never did find those WMDs.
readams 5y ago
I think it's more correct to say that lab leak is a plausible theory. But it's going too far to say it's the most likely theory. I do wish China hadn't clammed up and would have allowed a real investigation. We'll never really know, I suspect.
- dnautics 5y ago
  we will never really know. But, one of the most damning articles is this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ in which the final claim is "Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2." Er, that's not really strong support for the naturally occurring hypothesis, it's a refutation against 'naturally occurring is impossible'. The spontaneous evolution of furin sites is rare in the specific clade of SARS-CoV-2, so if it's support it's very weak. The phylogenetic trees presented in the paper are VERY much loaded to obscure this fact (omitting betacoronaviruses in the alpha-delta tree, and in the breakout betacoronavirus tree, arbitrarily loading up multiple copies of "basically the same" strains which all present a furin cleavage site to make the pie slice of furin site-presenting sequences bigger). On the other hand, copy-pasting interesting motifs into a different but related genetic entity to achieve GOF is basically "the first strategy you do" as a synthetic biologist. Hell, even I did it (to gain function in a non-pathogenic system) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24934472/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24934472/ "we substituted one of four amino acids (Asp, His, Asn, Gln) at each of the 12 ligating positions because these amino acids are alternative coordinating residues in otherwise conserved-cysteine positions found in a broad survey of NiFe hydrogenase sequences."
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  What's the most likely theory in your opinion? The nearby fish market? What sounds more likely, a bat in the fish market of Wuhan or the influenza lab next to it?
  - smallerfish 5y ago
    Not a fish market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KZ2b0Pc3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KZ2b0Pc3I

hlwez 5y ago

mypalmike 5y ago

This comment section is, at best, 99% speculation by internet detectives and conspiracy theorists.

Mikeb85 5y ago

When mainstream news starts putting 'The Next' without a question mark in headlines it certainly gives conspiracy theories some credibility.

teejmya 5y ago

https://archive.md/8hDJt https://archive.md/8hDJt

nice_byte 5y ago

i don't understand why the so-called "lab leak theory" of origin for sars-cov2 is treated as some sort of conspiracy theory. it is completely plausible, and things like this have happened in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak), not due to malice but due to incompetence.

gennarro 5y ago
Presumably people are being more careful now. Would like to see some sort of news or legislation about this but I’m sure it’s unlikely.
- dylan604 5y ago
  And what kind of legislation would tickle your fancy? Intentional release is already legislated against. How do you legislate the prevention of accidents? Are you specifically talking about disclosure? I can get on board with that, but I'd be shocked if there's not already legislation around that. Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country?
  - tombert 5y ago
    I know basically nothing about foreign policy at all, but just in the "tombert thought experiment" land I'm going to give my "asshole opinion" [1]. ----------- > Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country? Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade agreement/embargo on countries that don't follow a minimum level of disclosure/safety protocol? E.g. if country A is shown to have covered up a massive lab leak, we impose some kind of tariff on them for N days. Obviously there are no easy solutions to problems like this, but I think that would be the place I start, because obviously US law doesn't really apply to places outside of the US; the only thing we could do (at least the only thing that I could think of) that's even close to punitive enforcement would be to apply leverage. [1] "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one and most of them stink"

Kenji 5y ago

Nobody should be afraid. Fear is not an emotion to cultivate. Enjoy your life until you meet the grim reaper, regardless of whether that happens tomorrow or in 50 years.

ramesh31 5y ago

I think we have to accept at this point that pandora's box has been opened with our ability to now directly synthesize genetic material and modify organisms. It wont be long before anarchic hackers can start doing this just to troll the world. There's sort of a parallel with computing, where viruses were never really a problem until everyone had access to the technology. I can see a future where we all need to get regular "security upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an mRNA cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been released.

uwagar 5y ago
so ud be walking on your footbridge to work and your eyes start to roll. nothing to fear. you are just being updated :)
- dylan604 5y ago
  we don't have to crazy and make them Over-the-air updates. unless, the udpates are only going to be applied in sleep mode.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Barrin92 5y ago
yes honestly I'm surprised that so much attention is devoted to lab leaks and state actors who at least have a self-preservation instinct compared to explicit bioterrorism by groups with an ideological death wish. Not sure we're super far away from the moment where these technologies become cheap and simple enough to cause mayhem. Ever since the sarin gas attack in tokyo in the 90s I've honestly wondered how this isn't already a much bigger issue.
- JoshuaDavid 5y ago
  I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love. If it ever becomes possible to achieve personal or political gain through the development of bioweapons I suspect we are in extremely deep trouble.

hwers 5y ago

The news have abused my "you should be afraid" notification too many times for me to take this to heart.

dang 5y ago
We've taken out the baity bit, as the site guidelines ask. "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Eduard 5y ago
  The new / current title "The Next ‘Lab Leak’" is even more misleading and baity, as it suggests a lab leak just happened or is imminent.
  - dang 5y ago
    It doesn't suggest that, because the phrase is in quotes.
daenz 5y ago
What kind of sick editors get off on a headline that starts with "You Should Be Afraid" anyways? There are far more constructive phrasings, but no, they shamelessly want the fearful clickbait.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

peterburkimsher 5y ago

I'm not so worried about humans maliciously trying to destroy the world. There are few who would do so intentionally. Far more worrying is when people do what is easiest for them, regardless of the cost to their neighbour. A mask collects particles, including the COVID-19 virus. Please can we work together to pick up the masks from the street? Worms will eat the masks. Bats will eat the worms. And the bats will give COVID back to us. We're not responsible for world-scale Epic issues: plastic in the ocean, climate change, pandemics. We are fully responsible for the Issues we see. Please, let's clean the streets while we cycle/walk dogs/skateboard and the butterfly effect will help to fix the bigger problems too :)

msie 5y ago
People taking shortcuts is the root of so many problems.
jakeinspace 5y ago
I haven't seen any science on this, but I'd guess there is about a 0% chance of human->mask->worm->bat covid transmission. Do you have any basis for this fear? Obviously mask pollution is a bit of a problem, but not so much for risk of covid contamination.
Vecr 5y ago
Don't worry about worms, it's already in deer and I would assume a large number of other non-human animal populations already. It's obviously still in bats as well, SARS-CoV-3 is inevitable unless there's some sort of mass killing of bats, but it might not end up being very bad or transmissible.
aisengard 5y ago
Bats are extremely far down the list of things we have to worry about, when we continue to have millions of infected people who proudly and angrily spew virus-infested air particles uncontrolled into their communities because they think they know better.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Biologists are able to generate highly specialized viruses for research for decades now, i m sure it was possible before covid. I think going forward you should be afraid of nature. We have evolved global transportation / shipping / tourism beyond the carrying capacity of modern epidemiology / bacteriology to keep up with spreading pathogens. SarsCov2 might be just one of many , since human population has not peaked in numbers yet.

paulpauper 5y ago

It has been now almost 2 years and still no closure or definitive explanation about where Covid came from? It would seem as if nothing changed . You have all these investigators ,scientists, and reporters but no progress it seems.

cblconfederate 5y ago
TBH this is not a scientifically very interesting question. It's quite likely that if one wanted to make this virus they could have. It doesnt appear to be the pinnacle of bioengineering so scientists are not curious to find out how they did it, if they did. And lab standards are already stringent, so leaks will keep happening. I don't believe the virus was leaked, not because it couldn't have but because it's equally probable that it's natural. And i 'd hate to see even slower progress in biology because of new safety standards that limit the number of people who can work in a wet lab. It's a politically interesting question though.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  > And lab standards are already stringent, so leaks will keep happening. I don't believe the virus was leaked, not because it couldn't have but because it's equally probable that it's natural. So you're not interested in knowing whether it was a leak, or if it was, whether it was accidental, and you're not at all interested in making bio labs more secure (which one might be, if one knew it was a lab leak!)?! So... no need to improve, just let it keep happening? And you don't think there's any interest in the science behind making a custom virus, or spreading it? OK, fine, you're not interested. Ah, but: > so scientists are not curious to find out how they did it, if they did All scientists? Most? A significant number of them? Are you saying no one should be curious about this, or just that you aren't? > It's a politically interesting question though. Ah, so do investigate? I can't tell what you meant.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
It took 15 years to find the animal reservoir for the original SARS virus: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

theduder99 5y ago

How many level 4 biosafety labs exist in the world where this type of dangerous research is carried out? 15. How many are in China? 2, one of which is in Wuhan the epicenter of the origination of the virus. Lab leak theory should have been the default root cause until proven otherwise by independent researchers (which China won't allow in).

drran 5y ago
> How many are in China? Virus know nothing about countries. Check all 15 labs.
ModernMech 5y ago
How many pandemics, out of all the pandemics that have ever happened throughout history, have been due to a lab leak? Wouldn’t the default assumption be the one that had been the cause most of the time? Yes the factors you raise the likelihood of a lab leak theory, or they could just be circumstantial. Without more, the fact that pandemics throughout history have a natural origin weighs heavily in favor of our current pandemic having a natural origin.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  Most pandemics throughout history started when there were no labs at all, so they can be ignored in this calculation.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Why? You’d need to know the independent probability of a natural origin pandemic to compute this. Surely to figure this out you would need to look at history to make this calculation. How else would you estimate that value?
- legolas2412 5y ago
  What, why was the black plague not developed in the genetic engineering labs by Genghis Khan.. Maybe because the labs did not exist? How you can compare the history of humanity to the last ten years, the time when we really have started such experiments, is beyond understanding.

tomjen3 5y ago

The only thing I am afraid of is ideas being disregarded because they don't help you politically. Reality is what reality is. Whether this was leaked by a lab in China or not should not depend on which side of the election we are on. Ivermectine is not effective or not based on which side of the political spectrum you are on. And if it doesn't work, that doesn't mean we make fun of those who believe it does, it means we try something else. It took thousand of failed attempts to find the one bacteria that could effectively attack TB. If you want to reject reality and substitute your own, I won't stop you. Don't force it upon me.

Ambolia 5y ago

Nobody took responsibility for the first one nor seem interested in investigating it, but I should worry about the next one?

smsm42 5y ago

If such labs and research are dangerous, shouldn't we, you know, be more careful in working with them, especially in a country which is notorious for hiding data, cutting various corners and preferring good looking lies to the ugly truth, and being in control to doing the right thing? And shouldn't we ensure that people who work with such labs when and if it is necessary to do so are fully, 100% transparent and subject to public oversight? And if they, say, lie to the public and/or use weasel phrasing to hide their actions and mislead the overseers and the public about what kind of research is conducted in the dangerous labs and how it is financed and supported - shouldn't there be some consequences to it? I mean, beyond ones for lying to the Congress, which has become so routine now nobody even bats an eye at it?

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

Regardless of covid's source. Are we ready for something that is truly bad? It sure is a good thing that covid turned out to not be anywhere near as deadly as the spanish flu as they touted it to be. Here's an article from April 1st 2020. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trump-attacks-coronavirus-china-travel-ban https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-media-change-tune-trum... Trump put in travel restrictions for china in february of 2020 and was called xenophobic and fear mongering over what wasn't yet a pandemic. Sorry but the democrats went on the offensive attacking trump for doing what everyone did. Flipside, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic-playbook-for-trump-administration-officials-confirm https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic... Trump had a pandemic playbook on how to react to a pandemic and didn't use it? Is it possible because of the political attacks on him? It's pretty obvious that politics got in the way bigtime. I have no expectations this will be different next time. Then we had clearly political decisions made all throughout. By May 2020 we had the data in that people like Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College said covid is the equivalent of the Spanish Flu of 1918.That was wrong and we still reacted like it was indeed still dangerous. When in reality it was less dangerous than the normal flu season(largely due young children being unharmed). The number of political abuses is so high that society right now would not accept another pandemic. That they are almost certainly full of shit at this point.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gootler 5y ago

Oh people of the internets are so smart as shit. Bravo sleuths!

cletus 5y ago

There are many variations of the "lab leak" theory for Covid-19. For example: 1. Was the sample found or engineered? Or found then engineered? 2. Was it a deliberate leak or accidental? Here are some open questions that haven't been answered or examined (at least publicly) to a sufficient degree: 1. If Covid-19 jumped from an animal species to humans, possibly through another animal, then why hasn't it been found in the wild? For example, SARS was relatively quickly found in the wild. To date there's been no equivalent discovery of the lineage of human-transmissible Covid-19. An alternative theory, that Covid-19 spread to humans at a wet market, would strongly suggest that Covid-19 would be found in the wild; 2. The Chinese had a database of Covid strains that was taken offline in late 2019. To the best of my knowledge, no independent third-party has been able to examine the contents of this database and see if it relates to Covid-19; 3. Covid-19 seems to be related to bat coronavirus strains from hundreds of miles away. How was the jump made? Through what species? and 4. We don't really know who Patient Zero was. None of this adds up to positive evidence of any variation of the "lab leak" theory but given that there is no alternative theory that holds up to serious scrutiny or doesn't have serious flaws or unanswered questions, it has to stay in the running. My suspicion is the Chinese government doesn't know either but, more importantly, they don't want to know because absolutely no good can come from that becoming public. There is literally no upside. This applies on the individual level too. If you're a manager of a lab or even just a lab technician, do you really want to be held responsible, even just in the public eye, for "starting" Covid-19? God, no. That may well be bad for you, your family, the government and countless others. So there's a concerted effort to not know. And the WHO's response to all this has been utterly anemic from the early days of the pandemic where China's pronouncements were taken at face value to the late joint investigation with laughably narrow frames of reference.

PicassoCTs 5y ago
The whole gain of function boost was created to prevent a 2nd SARS and was shifted to china, as funding dried up, the further the event wandered into the "distant" past. Covid is neither a bioweapon nor a step-ladder for totalitarians worldwide. Its simply necessary un-bribeable politics and change, despite systemic dysfunction. That massive turn-around in society we need, we always demand and secretly fear, its upon us now and no lobbyist can put that djinn permanently back into the bottle. One variant and we are back into our walls, condemned to bread and games and the realization, that infinite growth is unnecessary. So compared to the massive disaster ahead, with billions of dead, this is quite a gentle steering maneuver. Sure those who are mentally not agile enough to travel to this different world currently born, well they will stay behind and swept away with the refugee crisis yet to come. The rest of us - we will stay peaceful, although loosing it all, with just a cellphone to dream and play on in some tattered tent. And this is the best outcome, and if you weight the future billions against the current million dead, even a moral one. Now downvote, the advocate of benevolent diabolo.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

I want to take the contrarian take to most people in this thread. Sure, lab leak could be true and with all the available evidence, could very well be true but the confirmation of of it being true may have more far reaching domestic and geopolitical ramifications that may do more harm than good. It seems like there's some game theory going on within the political sphere of many western governments in that increasing anti-China sentiment by confirming lab leak could further put us down the path to an eventual confrontation (read: war) with China, in which we lose a lot more. The only thing we gain by admitting to lab leak is the truth but is the truth (that we've pretty much deduced at this point) worth worsening relations not only politically but gives anti-Chinese factions in the west more evidence as a prelude to war?

sharperguy 5y ago
Wasn't the lab in question an internationally funded operation, with many western countries, including the US involved?
foobiekr 5y ago
Yes. It’s pretty caustic to build a society on noble lies like you are proposing.
timeon 5y ago
I do not know, isn't it already perceived that lab-leak or not - Covid is China's fuckup?
- opportune 5y ago
  From my perspective China did an amazing job at handling COVID, it is other countries that fucked up by not taking it seriously - not doing quarantining properly, waiting until domestic spread was out of control to take half-hearted and unenforced measures to slow the spread. In comparison China took quarantining and contact tracing very seriously and was effective at stopping their domestic spread early in the pandemic. You could blame China for most hypotheses for Covid’s origins: lab-leak from gain of function research, unsanitary wet markets, or not following proper cleanliness procedures for field research. But I think those things (besides lab leaks) could have happened in literally any developing country, and most probably would have done even worse at containing it than China. What I don’t think you can blame China for is the virus escaping their country. They would be (rightly) be under a ton of fire from the international community if they had not allowed non-citizens to leave their country at the start of the pandemic.

robbmorganf 5y ago

This article briefly mentions SARS-CoV-2, but at length it discusses Ebola and others quite a bit more. This article isn't about what happened with COVID-19, but about whether we should have BL4 labs at all. In my opinion, we absolutely should. Awful diseases like Ebola are effective at what they do, so they're great places to learn about molecular biology and genetics. It seems feasible that we can manage the risk well enough to get a net expected benefit.

hlwez 5y ago

Fauci funded "research" that ripped vocal cords out of puppies so the "scientists" wouldn't have to hear them scream in pain as they were EATEN TO DEATH by horseflies. He also funded "research" that poured acid on monkeys' brains to 'induce terror'. and you people still trust this raging piece of shit? He should be fucking shot.

m0zg 5y ago

LOL, they still are trying to sell the narrative that it "may not have come from a lab" with freaking bat caves a thousand miles away from Wuhan, and confirmed gain of function experiments at the lab. NYT is a joke.

somewhereoutth 5y ago

'Giant Watering Can theory under pressure as more evidence points to clouds'

nomdep 5y ago

How the lab leak is not considered a fact already? Have everyone forgot about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644428 ? The leaked grant plus Peter Daszak Wikipedia page screams “guilty”

MarcoZavala 5y ago

zanethomas 5y ago

"might not have come out of a medical research lab" uh huh might have come out of a bio-weapons research lab

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Can we have some posts about computers now? (Yeah, yeah, be the change you want to see in the world)

devmunchies 5y ago

I keep seeing more hints of smallpox like media companies are priming the public. It’s really eerie after I noticed it.

eternauta3k 5y ago

I can't find the exact link, but 80000 hours has written about lab safety as a possible high-impact career area. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipice-existential-risk-future-humanity/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipi... https://80000hours.org/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/ https://80000hours.org/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/

djsbs 5y ago

The lab leak theory is taboo because it helps Trump style populism, which elites in China, EU and USA oppose. The lab leak theory also attracts nut job conspiracy theorists because it helps Trump style populism. We might never know what happened, but after two years my money is what a brilliant Chinese colleague (graduated from the top university in China said) told me (before we took COVID seriously) “The bio lab is two miles from the wet market. I’ve worked with Chinese scientists. I’ve worked with US scientists. The safety culture in China is terrible. Its a lab leak” To anyone who thinks thats racist, its not so I don't care. Culture is not race - Ill never forget an Eastern European friend who disabled one of the gas alarms in his lab because they annoyed him when they went off. His excuse: “we didn't have working fume hoods at home”. His PI, from the same country, shrugged the whole thing off with a laugh.

tamaharbor 5y ago

My first thought is why do they seem to locate infectious disease labs in highly populated urban areas?

alok-g 5y ago

Pedantry: COVID or Covid? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/brand-style-guide/writing/grammar/capitalisation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/brand-style-guide/writing/grammar... https://ginsengenglish.com/blog/covid https://ginsengenglish.com/blog/covid

99_00 5y ago

Some people don't believe the 'Lab Leak' explanation. They believe the 'Wet-market' explanation. Well, wet markets are open. Wet markets are weapons of mass destruction. In April 2021, the World Health Organization called for a total ban on the sale of live animals in food markets in order to prevent future pandemics. Hasn't happened. Given the ongoing damage caused by COVID-19, lives lost, economic, mental health, educational, is this OK? I am going to make an extreme suggestion. Given the risks, I don't know what else is feasible: As long as wet-markets are open there needs to be mandatory quarantine of any traveler from China, or traveler from a country that doesn't enforce mandatory quarantines on travelers from China.