5 ms·

An epidemiological nexus is much smaller than an entire city and the details of the early cases matter. Aside from the contact-tracing, investigators were able

An epidemiological nexus is much smaller than an entire city and the details of the early cases matter. Aside from the contact-tracing, investigators were able to get positive PCR recovery of sars-cov-2 from -environmental samples- at the wet markets, indicating an incredible degree of contamination there. If the nexus were in fact WIV we'd expect a very different pattern of early cases (eg conference travel - a lot of researchers from WIV were at a Nipah conference in Singapore just before the outbreak!) You could of course argue that the authorities just covered up any damning links, but the early outbreak was pretty chaotic and information wasn't well controlled... and in any case at that point we're not longer capable of arguing based on any evidence at all. My point is simply that a lack of fully verified lineage analysis is completely unsurprising and not at all evidence in favor of conspiracy. I used to engineer viruses... By natural standards the Laos samples are extremely close - the mosaicity of coronaviruses in these bats complicate matters - but likely within a decade of a common ancestor to sars-cov-2. Closer than any other sample that we know WIV were working with beforehand (again, people claim they were hiding what they were doing, except there was no reason whatsoever to do so before the pandemic). Though "not close" for sure in the sense that even if they did have these strains, you would never evolve sars-cov-2 from them in a dish, there simply wouldn't be enough passages to do so. And that's sort of the point - the evolutionary "risk surface area" of zoonosis is many orders of magnitude larger than this nutty lab-leak idea, and we know that these coronaviruses jump all the time from close animal contacts, having caused two other epidemics in the last 20 years...

timr 5y ago
> Aside from the contact-tracing, investigators were able to get positive PCR recovery of sars-cov-2 from -environmental samples- at the wet markets, indicating an incredible degree of contamination there. So? It's a market. People go there, in large numbers. Is it really surprising that you'd find traces of a widely circulating respiratory virus in a place where large numbers of people congregate? > By natural standards the Laos samples are extremely close RaTG13 is closer than the BANAL viruses, and we already knew about it. You have to look at specific genes and squint and make hand-wavy arguments about how SARS-CoV2 evolved from recombination of ~5 different viruses to make any sort of claim that this is strong evidence of natural evolution. I'll give you this: the RBD of BANAL-20-52 is the closest match yet for the RBD of SARS-CoV2. Still no furin cleavage site, though. https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-871965/v1/986c09ca-d494-4a7c-a65b-9eec9c0a06b8.pdf https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-871965/v1/986c09c... > the evolutionary "risk surface area" of zoonosis is many orders of magnitude larger than this nutty lab-leak idea I love this. The evolutionary story is too complicated and improbable to imagine, but sure, the idea of making a few relatively simple additions to a known virus is "nutty". And hey...it's not like there was a lab in Wuhan writing grants about similar transformations or anything. You have to be kidding. Look, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but you're simply in love with a theory and dismissing all evidence to the contrary.
- dnautics 5y ago
  The furin cleavage site looks suspiciously like a hallmark cut-and-paste operation that is exactly what I would do as a genetic engineer.
  - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
    Really? I'd like to hear more about this. What exactly looks so "suspicious" that it can't be explained by typical recombination events that are known to occur naturally in RNA viral genomes?
    - dnautics 5y ago
      The beta coronavirus class has a paucity of naturally occurring furin cleavage sites relative to the other coronavirus clades. I'm just saying that copying sequence from genomes a few species over is very common strategy for engineering projects. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ Irony is that this paper is highly doctored to make it look (from the figures) like the opposite point, without outright lying, like they loaded the dendrogram of beta coronaviruses with a ton of sequences that are distinct but "basically from the same collection", to make the pie slice of betas with furin cleavage sites look much much bigger than it should be. Also, the betas are excerpted from the dendrogram of all coronaviruses... Do you believe the DRASTIC leaked document? https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-document-preempt-volume-1-no-ess-hr00118s0017-ecohealth-alliance.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-doc... It's pretty complete, and exactly like what I would expect a DARPA/NIH grant to look like, having helped prepare one in my career (and one DOE grant). I can't imagine a group of nonexperts drafting this document - correctly - just to make up a conspiracy theory - I'm not a virologist but I am a molecular biologist and biochemist and skimming the leaked document all of the technobabble looks correct to my understanding of science.
      - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
        umm. a paucity. So like, you admit that betacoronaviruses naturally do indeed sometimes have furin cleavage sites? I have no opinion on DRASTIC.
jacquesm 5y ago
Thank you for bringing some perspective to the discussion, at the same time, I have no illusion that it is going to help to convince people that want to believe in the lab leak theory of anything else. Wanting to assign blame for all this is a very strong desire in many and the Chinese government through its acts and omissions has unfortunately made it a lot easier for people to continue to be deluded about this. Some of the arguments made are so incredibly weak that they shouldn't be made at all, and yet, they are supporting this whole house of cards of criminal intent gone wrong. It's a pretty sad statement as to the degree of understanding that people in general have about these matters, if they studied the subject (by reading textbooks, not watching youtube videos) we might be able to sidestep some of this.
- timr 5y ago
  > Wanting to assign blame for all this is a very strong desire in many and the Chinese government through its acts and omissions has unfortunately made it a lot easier for people to continue to be deluded about this. Some of the arguments made are so incredibly weak that they shouldn't be made at all, and yet, they are supporting this whole house of cards of criminal intent gone wrong. Nobody so far in the thread has said anything about "criminal intent". That's just you, interjecting your pre-existing biases into the discussion. It's entirely possible that a laboratory was doing completely legal experiments with no malicious intent, and an accident happened. In fact, it's so possible, that reasonable people who understand the evidence have concluded that we're unlikely to ever know the truth. That's where I sit on the matter. > It's a pretty sad statement as to the degree of understanding that people in general have about these matters, if they studied the subject (by reading textbooks, not watching youtube videos) we might be able to sidestep some of this. Maybe you should look at my profile.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I wasn't talking to you.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
landemva 5y ago
I'm uncertain why it does not seem to be discussed that maybe the leak was sabotage by a lab worker who got paid really well by a foreign service to take it from the lab and disperse it.
inciampati 5y ago
Environmental samples from the wet market only show that infected humans were there. Given the centrality of markets in human social networks it seems very normal that an outbreak in the city would eventually focalize in the market. Without samples from animals in the market, the evidence for spillover happening there is extremely weak, and not even circumstantial, because it's indistinguishable from what we would expect given a spillover anywhere in Wuhan.

timr 5y ago

> Aside from the contact-tracing, investigators were able to get positive PCR recovery of sars-cov-2 from -environmental samples- at the wet markets, indicating an incredible degree of contamination there. So? It's a market. People go there, in large numbers. Is it really surprising that you'd find traces of a widely circulating respiratory virus in a place where large numbers of people congregate? > By natural standards the Laos samples are extremely close RaTG13 is closer than the BANAL viruses, and we already knew about it. You have to look at specific genes and squint and make hand-wavy arguments about how SARS-CoV2 evolved from recombination of ~5 different viruses to make any sort of claim that this is strong evidence of natural evolution. I'll give you this: the RBD of BANAL-20-52 is the closest match yet for the RBD of SARS-CoV2. Still no furin cleavage site, though. https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-871965/v1/986c09ca-d494-4a7c-a65b-9eec9c0a06b8.pdf https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-871965/v1/986c09c... > the evolutionary "risk surface area" of zoonosis is many orders of magnitude larger than this nutty lab-leak idea I love this. The evolutionary story is too complicated and improbable to imagine, but sure, the idea of making a few relatively simple additions to a known virus is "nutty". And hey...it's not like there was a lab in Wuhan writing grants about similar transformations or anything. You have to be kidding. Look, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but you're simply in love with a theory and dismissing all evidence to the contrary.

dnautics 5y ago
The furin cleavage site looks suspiciously like a hallmark cut-and-paste operation that is exactly what I would do as a genetic engineer.
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Really? I'd like to hear more about this. What exactly looks so "suspicious" that it can't be explained by typical recombination events that are known to occur naturally in RNA viral genomes?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    The beta coronavirus class has a paucity of naturally occurring furin cleavage sites relative to the other coronavirus clades. I'm just saying that copying sequence from genomes a few species over is very common strategy for engineering projects. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ Irony is that this paper is highly doctored to make it look (from the figures) like the opposite point, without outright lying, like they loaded the dendrogram of beta coronaviruses with a ton of sequences that are distinct but "basically from the same collection", to make the pie slice of betas with furin cleavage sites look much much bigger than it should be. Also, the betas are excerpted from the dendrogram of all coronaviruses... Do you believe the DRASTIC leaked document? https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-document-preempt-volume-1-no-ess-hr00118s0017-ecohealth-alliance.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-doc... It's pretty complete, and exactly like what I would expect a DARPA/NIH grant to look like, having helped prepare one in my career (and one DOE grant). I can't imagine a group of nonexperts drafting this document - correctly - just to make up a conspiracy theory - I'm not a virologist but I am a molecular biologist and biochemist and skimming the leaked document all of the technobabble looks correct to my understanding of science.
    - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
      umm. a paucity. So like, you admit that betacoronaviruses naturally do indeed sometimes have furin cleavage sites? I have no opinion on DRASTIC.

jacquesm 5y ago

Thank you for bringing some perspective to the discussion, at the same time, I have no illusion that it is going to help to convince people that want to believe in the lab leak theory of anything else. Wanting to assign blame for all this is a very strong desire in many and the Chinese government through its acts and omissions has unfortunately made it a lot easier for people to continue to be deluded about this. Some of the arguments made are so incredibly weak that they shouldn't be made at all, and yet, they are supporting this whole house of cards of criminal intent gone wrong. It's a pretty sad statement as to the degree of understanding that people in general have about these matters, if they studied the subject (by reading textbooks, not watching youtube videos) we might be able to sidestep some of this.

timr 5y ago
> Wanting to assign blame for all this is a very strong desire in many and the Chinese government through its acts and omissions has unfortunately made it a lot easier for people to continue to be deluded about this. Some of the arguments made are so incredibly weak that they shouldn't be made at all, and yet, they are supporting this whole house of cards of criminal intent gone wrong. Nobody so far in the thread has said anything about "criminal intent". That's just you, interjecting your pre-existing biases into the discussion. It's entirely possible that a laboratory was doing completely legal experiments with no malicious intent, and an accident happened. In fact, it's so possible, that reasonable people who understand the evidence have concluded that we're unlikely to ever know the truth. That's where I sit on the matter. > It's a pretty sad statement as to the degree of understanding that people in general have about these matters, if they studied the subject (by reading textbooks, not watching youtube videos) we might be able to sidestep some of this. Maybe you should look at my profile.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I wasn't talking to you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

landemva 5y ago

I'm uncertain why it does not seem to be discussed that maybe the leak was sabotage by a lab worker who got paid really well by a foreign service to take it from the lab and disperse it.

inciampati 5y ago

Environmental samples from the wet market only show that infected humans were there. Given the centrality of markets in human social networks it seems very normal that an outbreak in the city would eventually focalize in the market. Without samples from animals in the market, the evidence for spillover happening there is extremely weak, and not even circumstantial, because it's indistinguishable from what we would expect given a spillover anywhere in Wuhan.