16 ms·

Book Review: “Viral” by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley

360 points by feross 5y ago

dkmn 5y ago
I'm just happy that critical discussion around SARS-nCoV-2 and related politics isn't instantly being flagged on Hacker News anymore ;) There is a lot of brainpower and a surprising variety of experience on this list.
pezzana 5y ago
> Searching my inbox, I found an email from April 16, 2020 where I told someone who’d me asked that the lab-leak hypothesis seemed entirely plausible to me, that in fact I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t being investigated more, but that I was hesitant to blog about these matters. As I wrote seven months ago, I now see my lack of courage as having been a personal failing. Obviously, I’m just a quantum computing theorist, not a biologist, so I don’t have to have any opinion at all about the origin of COVID-19 … but I did, and I didn’t share it only because of the likelihood that I’d be called an idiot on social media. Having now read Chan and Ridley, though, I think I’d take being called an idiot for this book review more as a positive signal about my courage than as a negative signal about my reasoning skills! The groupthink around the lab leak hypothesis, and especially that letter signed by scientists in the early days of the pandemic, has done a lot of damage. The problem is that is isn't just this topic. About a dozen other topics have become minefields of politics and mind control masquerading as science. We only see the idiocy of this approach in the case of the lab leak because the consensus has crumbled. Hopefully, this won't be the last wall to fall under its own weight.
- dnautics 5y ago
  "that letter signed by scientists" does not do justice to the fact that the organizer of that letter had a severe conflict of interest that he failed to disclose. Like why the hell would a scientist not disclose that??! Having been a scientist myself it boggles the mind.
  - zachlatta 5y ago
    Can someone link the mentioned letter? Having trouble finding it.
    - willhinsa 5y ago
      Here is the letter[0], and the researcher in question with a huge conflict of interest is Peter Daszak[1]. [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2414 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2414
      - thedrbrian 5y ago
        It’s not just Daszak either, 26 of the 27 signatories had links. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scientists-dismissed-wuhan-lab-theory-linked-chinese/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scienti...
      - thisoneistheone 5y ago
    - nkurz 5y ago
      I think it's "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19" in the Lancet from Feb 19 2020: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. ... We declare no competing interests. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... They later published an "Addendum: competing interests and the origins of SARS-CoV-2" in June 2021: Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for three pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet—the February, 2020, Correspondence, as well as a Commission Statement and a Comment for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01377-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  I got into a slightly heated argument with my mother when she claimed that "China had manufactured the virus in a lab" - I didn't even consider the possibility of virus manufacture for study and a possible leak happening, I just assumed she was being fed propaganda that this was the beginning of some kind of bio-war being started by China. So that is my failing, and after reading more about the lab-leak hypothesis I learned to hold my tongue and be curious about such left-field claims instead of judgemental
  - johnnylambada 5y ago
    I hope you looped your mother into your new insights!
    - thelittleone 5y ago
      Indeed. one of my favorite learnings in life is the power of admitting when I'm wrong (which is often enough). Quite an empowering decision and also relationahip building. However there are times when people find it so unusual that they see it as weakness and instead of admitting their own wrong, try to capitalise on an opprtunity (perceived weakness). One exception though is playing chess online, where my ego is yet to be mastered.
      - animal_spirits 5y ago
        We can find strength from being vulnerable
      - strictfp 5y ago
        I use self-deprecating humor a lot. And some people, usually the ones who don't pick up on the irony, also use it as an opportunity to attack. It's quite sad when you think about it :)
  - temporalparts 5y ago
    One of my favorite fallacies is the fallacy fallacy. Just because one used fallacious reasoning, doesn't mean they're wrong. e.g. I can give a bad reason for why 16/64 = 1/4, just cross out the 6's, but just because the reason is bad doesn't mean the result is wrong.
- vmception 5y ago
  The intertwined nature of country, financial and personnel relationships is not easy for people to understand. I was just at a gathering the other day where a woman couldn't comprehend that the lab in Wuhan is a joint venture with US public resources, US private sector resources, Chinese resources, and personnel from both countries and others, which includes Dr. Fauci. She had, until that point, mostly been enamored by Dr. Fauci and mostly been quite angry at Wuhan as a general disavowal of the CCP. There is nothing to conclude from any of that observation alone, aside from noticing gaps in US federal oversight. Many people will just spiral into some other rabbit hole since nuance isn't their strongsuit. We still have to react to the pandemic whether that bolsters a lab leak hypothesis, or leads to a smoking gun, or not.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  If only the American president at the time had been more responsible and less inflammatory it would have resulted in a lot less reflexive aggression - asian people beaten in the street included. The CCP is not very responsible if they know and hide it or if they don't and refuse to look, but to their defense, it's also because it will be used and reused to their detriment (possibly deserved) if proven. Having a sound diplomatic strategy would have maybe helped convince them otherwise, but it was apparently more interesting to ALSO play down the virus in the U.S. for whatever reason and make absolutely clear that China would pay a dear price for it. So hard to blame China :s
- specialist 5y ago
  Yes and: I'm done with "hot takes". Yes, we need rapid responses during a crisis. Also yes, there will be both good and bad consequences to every action, or inaction. But ffs give the dust time to settle before doing the after action analysis. -- I mostly blame the popular medias for boosting and accelerating the human tendency for fear, outrage, blame. Knowing this about ourselves, that crap has to be toned down. Writing this now, I guess I'm just repeating the "thinking, fast and slow" critique.
throwaway55421 5y ago
Social media has basically turned the world into a sort of bizarre mob rule situation when it comes to unpopular opinion. I think that we have a responsibility to speak out on matters we believe in and ignore negative pushback. The alternative is that anyone can shut down a viewpoint by simply flooding the opposite side. You don't know whether a poster is a troll, a real person that's simply misguided, or a real person that posts in good faith. You don't even end up with what's merely emotionally satisfying - that would be bad enough - but with the set of events or opinion that wins out purely based on competition.
- umvi 5y ago
  > I think that we have a responsibility to speak out on matters we believe in and ignore negative pushback. You can try, but new "fact checking" norms will ensure unpopular (especially politically unpopular) opinions get censored on social media before anyone sees them
  - throwaway55421 5y ago
    Facebook and friends were screwed before they even got going. I find it amusing that people use "getting news from Facebook" as a slur. It's stupid, but for entirely the opposite reason that they think it is.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      Facebook and friends were screwed before they even got going. I remember seeing a cool SEM micrograph of a violin at the ~10um scale at one meme site, but I'm having trouble finding it now...
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    This is a complicated issue and requires a careful approach. I don't think any serious fact checkers simply declare non-mainstream views as false, rather they would highlight only issues where a clear scientific consensus exist. So you flag an article about masks being ineffective and quote a clear analysis, or you flag an article about the Chinese (or US) government purposefully spreading covid, but you don't flag an article discussing the evidence for and against origin theories. See e.g. also the EU imitative on Russian disinformation: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Would you also support a total ban on hunting wild animals in the West? Or are the animals only "exotic" when they're consumed by Chinese people?
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    We already have a good definition of exotic animal trading so we don't need to strawman any larger scope here. I 100% support the shutdown of exotic animal trading. From the Wuhan wet markets carrying animals from the corners of the globe for supposed medicinal benefits to the idiots in the west with pet tigers.
    - adolph 5y ago
      What do "Wuhan wet markets" have to do with anything? From the article: The seafood market was almost certainly “just” an early superspreader site, rather than the site of the original spillover event. No bats or pangolins at all, and relatively few mammals of any kind, appear to have been sold at that market, and no sign of SARS-CoV2 was ever found in any of the animals despite searching.
      - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
        Widely accepted as the source of the coronavirus outbreak.
        adolph 5y ago
        I wonder how that came to be and retained as the received knowledge? Who was the person or organization who identified which specific market?
ummonk 5y ago
This article is a good counterpoint: https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory-covid-19 https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory... While certainly more plausible than 9/11 conspiracy theories, the lab-leak proponents have the same tendency to put forth several mutually incompatible theories, while believing each has a strong amount of evidence for it.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  It certainly makes a good argument in favor of the "We shouldn't have laid off our editors in the last budget crunch" hypothesis.
- malshe 5y ago
  What a garbage response. The author starts by discrediting both the authors. Next, the smoking gun which it cites repeatedly (The study on Laos bats) is not even peer-reviewed! This is from the articled linked from this article: “The results, which are not peer reviewed, have been posted on the preprint server Research Square.” Sounds like very lazy “journalism” to me.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    It also conflates "lab-engineered" with "lab-leak". How would a disease from a bat from Laos make it to Wuhan? It still could be from the WIV!
    - ummonk 5y ago
      This is what the article authors mean by lab-leak arguments being unfalsifiable. No matter what evidence comes out, it can still be shoe-horned into a lab-leak theory.
      - bpodgursky 5y ago
        That's not really true. You could falsify it by: - Opening the records about which viruses the WIV was storing. It's not a mystery — labs track that kind of thing! But China refused to release any data about which viruses the WIV stored or modified. - Finding a clear chain of infection between a natural source and the outbreak in Wuhan - Finding clear evidence that there was a small outbreak which later spread to Wuhan Nobody has managed any of those.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I’m a flaming liberal but I still thought we should at least pursue the lab leak hypothesis for one simple reason. I was a scientist and I’ve seen the lax way people treat biohazardous samples and just how fallible humans are. After going down a long rabbit hole I lean towards non lab leak, but if we can’t ask questions because of politicization of ideas we are done.
- ralmidani 5y ago
  Does “flaming liberal” === excusing the CCP’s behavior? At least in the US, the CCP is condemned by most politicians from across the classic liberal-conservative spectrum.
  - suction 5y ago
    "Liberal" in the US policy-wise is extremely conservative in most Western European countries, for example Merkel's party CDU is a "right of center conservative" party in Germany but would be far left in the US. Maybe it's not comparable, coming to think of it, because morals and values are so extremely different in Europe and the US.
    - explodingcamera 5y ago
      I don't know why people keep saying this, but there's no way in hell the CDU is far left. The CDU is a historically conservative center to slightly right party, and if they didn't need the votes, the current politicians in charge would go further to the right. A couple of years ago, the CDU lost many voters to the AFD, which is a far right extremist party, and many CDU politicians still sympathize with them, while no other party in Germany collaborates with the AFD. Getting pro gay, trans, and abortion laws through was hell with the CDU in power.
      - reactor4 5y ago
        [...] would be far left in the US.
    - 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
In addition, I also recommend watching 4.5 hours of Jamie Metzl, who is on a first name basis with WHO's director Tedros Adhanom and even talks about how he called Tedros on his cell phone a time when it was urgent to relay the message, describe the insanity of what happened in 2020 with regards to Lab Leak theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I
cjmb 5y ago
> I don’t have to have any opinion at all about the origin of COVID-19 … but I did, and I didn’t share it only because of the likelihood that I’d be called an idiot on social media. This is a great justification for anon accounts -- both "primary anon-only" users and also fully- or semi- anon alts for people who have thoughts like this (which, in my opinion, ought to be every smart intellectual who doesn't make the Culture War their primary stomping ground). Blaming a lack of courage is all well and good after the tides have turned, but courage is slim comfort when the eye of sauron turns on you. You will not feel much better for martyring yourself in service of the beliefs you hold with about-as-much-confidence as Scott expresses here -- and you'd be wise not to do so. If you must put something down in writing that you know has the potential to cause political heat to fall on your shoulders, and it's not something core to your life's work, it's perfectly fine to either a) use a semi-anon alt or b) write in a circumspect manner. Preferably both. Anonymity is a thin shield to hide behind, so I say "semi-anon" in support of the idea that, though the anonymity may be imperfect and the identity may be tied to your own, it can clearly be shown as a vehicle to express thoughts you are less sure of, or that you wish to distance yourself from somewhat. I say all this will the empathy & sympathy of a fellow online writer, though with only a tiny fraction of Scott's reach...
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > it's perfectly fine to either a) use a semi-anon alt or b) write in a circumspect manner. Preferably both. This is the reason I use an anon account but there are still problems on HN. I apologize if I cause some trouble here on HN, but the flagging aspects of HN beyond rude/spam comments (which is what I suspect it is designed for) does a disservice to the community. My comments about inflation were flagged in March 2021 despite of being cordial and respectful. I trusted the scientists and the intellectual community, but I similarly saw some Lab Leak theory comments being flagged on HN. Vouching is a great feature, but not many people know it since it requires a couple of prerequisites - enough karma + settings to show flagged comments. I hope we restrain ourselves to flagging behavior on HN. It also enrages people for trying to be reasonable, but contrarian, and seeing their comments disappear. Now, they're resolute and firmly dug into their contrarian views even if they were false. So, if HN has these issues, the outside world is even worse. Try the same on Twitter and hard echo chambers form (blocking/etc). I am not engaged on Twitter or Reddit, but I occassionally observe this. My 2 cents.
ayjchan 5y ago
Hi Scott, This is Alina Chan, one of the authors of the book. Thank you very much for your thorough review of our book :) On the Laos connection, I made a thread on Twitter to lay out the latest findings about virus samples being sent directly from Laos to Wuhan over several years: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1476231824267485190?s=20 https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1476231824267485190?s=20 I hope this is a good update on that point. Happy new year!
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  > This is Alina Chan, one of the authors of the book. Hey Alina! Welcome to HN! I hope you will stick around and spend some time here with us. This is hands down the best online community I've ever seen in my life.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Thanks for the book, alina. As a former molecular biologist (who worked on non-pathogenic enzyme gain-of-function projects) when the details of the virus came out I looked at it and immediately thought, "huh, that's exactly what I would have done", caveat I wasn't a virologist, of course, but I felt like I was being gaslit for being told that there was "no way" it could have been a lab leak. I know that I am not the only molecular biologist who felt this way. In no small part due to your work I think it's being taken more seriously, and maybe this is selfish in the context of the crazy situation going on worldwide but I feel 'less crazy'.
  - ajross 5y ago
    > I felt like I was being gaslit for being told that there was "no way" it could have been a lab leak Can I say, as someone also looking at this somewhat dispassionately, how upsetting it is that the discourse on this issue has shifted from "It was a lab leak!" (to which strong replies absolutely were "There's no evidence"), to "It might have been a lab leak", now to "People were unfairly treated on the internet for saying it was a lab leak". I mean, it's been two years now, and there's still no evidence beyond the kind of circumstantial stuff detailed by Chan and Ridley (I have the book but haven't read it yet, though I've seen most of Chan's public posts on the subject so I'm pretty sure I know the arc of what's in it). And it seems like everyone has basically conceded that. But instead of just admitting we'll never know with certainty (and that natural evolution remains the most probable origin), everyone wants to talk about meta stuff instead?
throwaway05112 5y ago
themgt 5y ago
The movie "Don't Look Up" but the asteroid scientists funded by NASA create an artificial black hole to pull asteroids towards Earth with sophisticated "gain of destruction" methodology - how better to study the potential civilization-ending power of asteroids? When an asteroid appears from out of nowhere right near the Wuhan Black Hole and on course to kill us all, head scientist DiCaprio dedicates himself to leading the effort to label anyone questioning the natural origins of the asteroid's planet-killing trajectory a conspiracy theorist, and almost everyone goes along and gets those people banned from the internet. The end.
- perihelions 5y ago
  Carl Sagan expressed essentially the same idea in 1994 -- that the development of asteroid-deflecting *nuclear weapons* would be more likely to destroy the world than to save it. That the baseline risk of major asteroid impacts is low enough, that the threat of asteroid-deflecting technology being turned into a weapon -- a loose analogy to "gain-of-function" research, I guess -- is more probable than the natural threat it defends against. >"In our view, development of this asteroid-deflection technology would be premature. Given twentieth-century history and present global politics, it is hard to imagine guarantees against eventual misuse of an asteroid deflection system commensurate with the dangers such a system poses. Those who argue that it would be prudent to prevent catastrophic impacts with annual probabilities of 10^-5 would surely recognize the prudence of preventing more probable catastrophes of comparable magnitude from misuse of potentially apocalyptic technology." https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/368501a0 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/368501a0 ("Dangers of Asteroid Deflection", Carl Sagan & Steven Ostro)
  - retrac 5y ago
    > Carl Sagan expressed essentially the same idea in 1994 -- that the development of asteroid-deflecting nuclear weapons would be more likely to destroy the world than to save it. He also talked about this in his book Pale Blue Dot around the same time. He found it darkly ironic, I think. Technologies like spaceflight and nuclear power and advanced biology are necessary for the long-term survival of the human species. Yet presently, it seems they are more likely to be misapplied and destroy us.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
Considering the current political climate between US and china, supporting a non-lab origin is slowly becoming the contrarian idea. I wonder if the authors discuss the evolution of the virus since it was first leaked/mutated. For example , eventhough it is believed, as the authors say, furin cleavage is a key to the virus' transmissibility, a computational study of the Omicron variant suggests the furin cleavage site has evolved for less efficient replication of the virus[1] (but still more transmissible due to immunity escape). beyond the flashy politics, the lab leak hypothesis is terrifying as it means that someone can create a worldwide crisis by doing relatively well understood modifications to existing viruses, and the world is clearly not prepared for such biodefense attacks. We should be talking about the day-after covid and what measures we need to prevent such rapid worldwide spread of pathogens. [1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472704v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472704v1....
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > beyond the flashy politics, the lab leak hypothesis is terrifying as it means that someone can create a worldwide crisis by doing relatively well understood modifications to existing viruses, and the world is clearly not prepared for such biodefense attacks. We should be talking about the day-after covid and what measures we need to prevent such rapid worldwide spread of pathogens. Scientists have been able to create viruses in a lab for some time now, e.g. it's pretty well-known how to create smallpox from scratch. None of this is new. The point is, as the pandemic has shown, it makes a really lousy bioweapon when the whole world gets infected. Even if you're a psycho and your goal is total world destruction, a pandemic still sucks for your goals because a comparatively teeny percentage of people actually die.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
If the lab leak is not a conspiracy after all then it's safe to say the propaganda behind it's censorship is a conspiracy.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  a conspiracy is just a big word used by the media to describe something that happens all the time: people behind closed doors getting along with a plan to exploit the masses for profit or power.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    There's also the commonly overlooked fact that sometimes people don't even need to get together, they already have aligned interests and go with the flow.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      when it's aligned interests without a formal discussion/agreement between different parties, I don't think it's fair to call it a conspiracy, rather purely selfish incentives at play.
- sgt101 5y ago
  I can't understand why you would complain about censorship when discussing this book on a public forum. Can you explain to me so I can get my head round this?
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Two years ago, suggesting a lab-leak origin would get your comment flagged on most major platforms. It’s now acceptable to discuss it, but such was not the case early on. Hence the claims of censorship.
  - umvi 5y ago
    We weren't allowed to discuss lab leak on social media until the information overlords decided it was ok to do so. And it took them over a year before they gave us permission to discuss it.
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
disambiguation 5y ago
These conversations all miss the single most important underlying detail. Even if covid didn't come from a lab, we clearly possess the technology. The cherry on top is that we're still actively working on said technology. We have collectively and silently learned that we have the technology to end the world, and no one is really shocked by it. This is far worse than nukes because M.A.D. doesn't apply, and it's not resource constrained. Viruses can come from anywhere and be enhanced with the right equipment and knowledge, which probably isn't all that expensive. Why the hell aren't we shutting these labs down, or at the very least this type of research?
- astronautjones 5y ago
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    Why go out of your way to make absolutist claims? you're just setting yourself up to fail. What you really meant to say is, "where is my evidence", and well we've been doing this since 2012, at least. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22722205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22722205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/
    - astronautjones 5y ago
      because you are clueless and/or misinformed as to what separates this virus from other coronaviruses and HOW different it is from other coronaviruses. the technology absolutely does not exist.
      - xyzzy123 5y ago
        Agree, it's not possible to create something like sars-cov2 completely de-novo. I assume this is what you mean? Claims of impossibility here need to be quite specific to be meaningful, I think. On the other hand if you have not read the DEFUSE proposal you are in for a real treat. It is absolutely plausible that sars-cov2 could be an output of this line of research. We also don't really know what backbones they had.
SergeAx 5y ago
> a global pandemic far worse than any in living memory I beleive author means that 1918 Spanish flu, with death toll of 25m to 50m according to different sources, is something no on living today has a memory of. But smallpox death toll in XX century was about 300m, and there are a lot of people alive with memories of it.
- Linosaurus 5y ago
  > smallpox Could have be been classified as an endemic disease in many areas and not a pandemic.
  - SergeAx 5y ago
    Good point, agreed.
- yellowbeard 5y ago
  HIV/AIDS is also bigger if you count that as a pandemic.
throwaway4good 5y ago
For another perspective on this I recommend Peter Daszak etc. in the This Week in Virology podcast explaining their efforts to trace the origin of COVID19: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-760/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-760/ A memorable quote is this: When you mix science with politics, you get politics.
- tux3 5y ago
  The quote is nice, but if there's any argument to be had I'd rather people quote something convincing, not persuasive.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    I linked to the full thing for people with a genuine interest in the subject. Going into tit for tat would not really be helpful nor convince anyone as this is already deeply buried in politics. The people who did the phase 1 report were amongst the best in their fields and did a good faith effort. Unfortunately people did not like their boring conclusion and prefer politics and speculation instead.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  The Peter Daszak who was at the origin of the infamous Lancet hoax ? That guy has lost any credibility he might have ever had.
- christophilus 5y ago
  That’s a great quote. Reminds me a bit of Munger: “If you mix raisins with turds they’re still turds.”
- tim333 5y ago
  >When you mix science with politics, you get politics. True and Daszak has been more guilty of that than most.
indigodaddy 5y ago
Great interview/podcast/discussion with Alina Chan re: the origins from the Stated Clearly/Evolution Podcast: https://youtu.be/IEfpWvQjD0Q https://youtu.be/IEfpWvQjD0Q
jerome-jh 5y ago
The conclusion "we don’t yet live in a post-truth world" is hard to swallow, considering two years after the facts there is no truth about the origin of the pandemic. The reasons for this lack of scientific proof are the subject of the article and the 300 pages reviewed book. The author is once again lacking courage not to admit we do leave in a post-truth world.
- jerome-jh 5y ago
  Expanding a bit on my comment: truth has not been established, that's one thing. The other thing is that there is no significant hope that truth is ever established. It is said that all the archive of Wuhan's P4 have been destroyed. That would not be surprising at all. A large part of the world is under very stringent information control, far more stringent than in the USSR at any period of time. It combines social control, total control over electronic communications, and a huge PR influence thanks to a wide spread diaspora. In this context truth has become relative.
causi 5y ago
The politicization of the pandemic will in the future perhaps be looked upon as our civilization's greatest mistake.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  That's assuming the History books even report it. What matters is who wins the narrative at the end of it all.
- api 5y ago
  We really need to start working to de-politicize as many things as we can. Maybe this one can be a start because the politicization of COVID has a literal body count. Next could be climate change, which should be reframed as an engineering problem not a moral problem or a guilt trip.
  - I-M-S 5y ago
    Saying we need to "de-politicize" things is akin to saying we need to "de-human" them.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Precisely. I used to look at politics as some “side effect” of humans working together when in fact it’s just a necessary component. Politics is simply leadership, persuasion, communication, debate all wrapped up together. It’s neither good nor bad, but just a necessary component to large groups of humans working together.
    - dmatech 5y ago
      Hardly. Humans are not first and foremost political creatures. The notion that "everything is political" didn't get as extreme as it is now until recent years. It's made society far more combative because it's made life revolve around the accumulation of power. There's still room for curiosity. We don't have to focus exclusively on who gains or loses power in every interaction.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Symmetry 5y ago
At the start of the pandemic I thought the leak of a modified virus from a lab was very unlikely and that a naturally occurring virus being brought to Wuhan by lab activities or a natural origin were both far more likely. At this point I think that's the second most significant thing I was wrong about, coming in after my early doubts about aerosol spread.
tartoran 5y ago
I personally think that since all the Wuhan lab info is being suppressed the theory of a lab leak could never be disproved.
- tim333 5y ago
  You could disprove it by finding the non lab animal it came from. For instance with SARS 1, pretty much as soon as they looked they found it had come from palm civets at the local market so no one was hypothesising lab leaks on that one. However this time 80k + animals tested, nothing like that found.
temp8964 5y ago
> And one point Viral makes abundantly clear is that, if our goal is to prevent the next pandemic, then resolving the mystery of COVID-19 actually matters less than one might think. This is because, whichever possibility—zoonotic spillover or lab leak—turns out to be the truth of this case, the other possibility would remain absolutely terrifying and would demand urgent action as well. Read the book and see for yourself. This logic does not convince me. If it did come from lab leak, there are lots of things the scientific community need to do to themselves to prevent the next lab leak from happening. It's defenitely not the same as a zoonotic spillover. Scientists are not wild animals, they can regulate themselves. If the virus did leak from one of the two Wuhan labs, at least these actions need to be taken: * All the Chinese labs doing this kind of research need to be seriously examined by the international community * All the bio research funding from the western countries to China labs need to be stopped and only can be restarted with serious conditions met
- toufka 5y ago
  I think their point is that the leak has a plausible route - and whatever protections we would institute were that to have been true - we still should implement - precisely because they could have been true. In many safety contexts, the strong possibility of an accident is often considered as the failure - not just the accident itself.
odiroot 5y ago
It's this Matt Ridley, from "The Red Queen" fame. Immediate add to my list.
- tim333 5y ago
  There's a good interview with him on this stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRksNG4uvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRksNG4uvU >HJS Virtual Event: "Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19" Streamed live on Dec 13, 2021
tim333 5y ago
>Shi and Daszak have increasingly stonewalled It's really over time that they subpoenaed Daszak and acquired and published all records from EcoHealth. I realize that would be annoying for them but really with millions dead the right to know what went on should take priority.
spookybones 5y ago
Having also read this review ( https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory-covid-19 https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory... ), I don’t know which review/scenario to trust, and virology is well outside my area of expertise.
bioinformatics 5y ago
I was betting on climate change®, bummer.
jacquesm 5y ago
Be sure to read all the comments, which serve as a major expansion on the article content. To call this book 'one of the most important books so far of the twenty-first century' is preposterous.

360 points by feross 5y ago

dkmn 5y ago

I'm just happy that critical discussion around SARS-nCoV-2 and related politics isn't instantly being flagged on Hacker News anymore ;) There is a lot of brainpower and a surprising variety of experience on this list.

pezzana 5y ago

> Searching my inbox, I found an email from April 16, 2020 where I told someone who’d me asked that the lab-leak hypothesis seemed entirely plausible to me, that in fact I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t being investigated more, but that I was hesitant to blog about these matters. As I wrote seven months ago, I now see my lack of courage as having been a personal failing. Obviously, I’m just a quantum computing theorist, not a biologist, so I don’t have to have any opinion at all about the origin of COVID-19 … but I did, and I didn’t share it only because of the likelihood that I’d be called an idiot on social media. Having now read Chan and Ridley, though, I think I’d take being called an idiot for this book review more as a positive signal about my courage than as a negative signal about my reasoning skills! The groupthink around the lab leak hypothesis, and especially that letter signed by scientists in the early days of the pandemic, has done a lot of damage. The problem is that is isn't just this topic. About a dozen other topics have become minefields of politics and mind control masquerading as science. We only see the idiocy of this approach in the case of the lab leak because the consensus has crumbled. Hopefully, this won't be the last wall to fall under its own weight.

dnautics 5y ago
"that letter signed by scientists" does not do justice to the fact that the organizer of that letter had a severe conflict of interest that he failed to disclose. Like why the hell would a scientist not disclose that??! Having been a scientist myself it boggles the mind.
- zachlatta 5y ago
  Can someone link the mentioned letter? Having trouble finding it.
  - willhinsa 5y ago
    Here is the letter[0], and the researcher in question with a huge conflict of interest is Peter Daszak[1]. [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2414 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2414
    - thedrbrian 5y ago
      It’s not just Daszak either, 26 of the 27 signatories had links. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scientists-dismissed-wuhan-lab-theory-linked-chinese/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scienti...
    - thisoneistheone 5y ago
  - nkurz 5y ago
    I think it's "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19" in the Lancet from Feb 19 2020: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. ... We declare no competing interests. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... They later published an "Addendum: competing interests and the origins of SARS-CoV-2" in June 2021: Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for three pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet—the February, 2020, Correspondence, as well as a Commission Statement and a Comment for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01377-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
animal_spirits 5y ago
I got into a slightly heated argument with my mother when she claimed that "China had manufactured the virus in a lab" - I didn't even consider the possibility of virus manufacture for study and a possible leak happening, I just assumed she was being fed propaganda that this was the beginning of some kind of bio-war being started by China. So that is my failing, and after reading more about the lab-leak hypothesis I learned to hold my tongue and be curious about such left-field claims instead of judgemental
- johnnylambada 5y ago
  I hope you looped your mother into your new insights!
  - thelittleone 5y ago
    Indeed. one of my favorite learnings in life is the power of admitting when I'm wrong (which is often enough). Quite an empowering decision and also relationahip building. However there are times when people find it so unusual that they see it as weakness and instead of admitting their own wrong, try to capitalise on an opprtunity (perceived weakness). One exception though is playing chess online, where my ego is yet to be mastered.
    - animal_spirits 5y ago
      We can find strength from being vulnerable
    - strictfp 5y ago
      I use self-deprecating humor a lot. And some people, usually the ones who don't pick up on the irony, also use it as an opportunity to attack. It's quite sad when you think about it :)
- temporalparts 5y ago
  One of my favorite fallacies is the fallacy fallacy. Just because one used fallacious reasoning, doesn't mean they're wrong. e.g. I can give a bad reason for why 16/64 = 1/4, just cross out the 6's, but just because the reason is bad doesn't mean the result is wrong.
vmception 5y ago
The intertwined nature of country, financial and personnel relationships is not easy for people to understand. I was just at a gathering the other day where a woman couldn't comprehend that the lab in Wuhan is a joint venture with US public resources, US private sector resources, Chinese resources, and personnel from both countries and others, which includes Dr. Fauci. She had, until that point, mostly been enamored by Dr. Fauci and mostly been quite angry at Wuhan as a general disavowal of the CCP. There is nothing to conclude from any of that observation alone, aside from noticing gaps in US federal oversight. Many people will just spiral into some other rabbit hole since nuance isn't their strongsuit. We still have to react to the pandemic whether that bolsters a lab leak hypothesis, or leads to a smoking gun, or not.
xwolfi 5y ago
If only the American president at the time had been more responsible and less inflammatory it would have resulted in a lot less reflexive aggression - asian people beaten in the street included. The CCP is not very responsible if they know and hide it or if they don't and refuse to look, but to their defense, it's also because it will be used and reused to their detriment (possibly deserved) if proven. Having a sound diplomatic strategy would have maybe helped convince them otherwise, but it was apparently more interesting to ALSO play down the virus in the U.S. for whatever reason and make absolutely clear that China would pay a dear price for it. So hard to blame China :s
specialist 5y ago
Yes and: I'm done with "hot takes". Yes, we need rapid responses during a crisis. Also yes, there will be both good and bad consequences to every action, or inaction. But ffs give the dust time to settle before doing the after action analysis. -- I mostly blame the popular medias for boosting and accelerating the human tendency for fear, outrage, blame. Knowing this about ourselves, that crap has to be toned down. Writing this now, I guess I'm just repeating the "thinking, fast and slow" critique.

throwaway55421 5y ago

Social media has basically turned the world into a sort of bizarre mob rule situation when it comes to unpopular opinion. I think that we have a responsibility to speak out on matters we believe in and ignore negative pushback. The alternative is that anyone can shut down a viewpoint by simply flooding the opposite side. You don't know whether a poster is a troll, a real person that's simply misguided, or a real person that posts in good faith. You don't even end up with what's merely emotionally satisfying - that would be bad enough - but with the set of events or opinion that wins out purely based on competition.

umvi 5y ago
> I think that we have a responsibility to speak out on matters we believe in and ignore negative pushback. You can try, but new "fact checking" norms will ensure unpopular (especially politically unpopular) opinions get censored on social media before anyone sees them
- throwaway55421 5y ago
  Facebook and friends were screwed before they even got going. I find it amusing that people use "getting news from Facebook" as a slur. It's stupid, but for entirely the opposite reason that they think it is.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Facebook and friends were screwed before they even got going. I remember seeing a cool SEM micrograph of a violin at the ~10um scale at one meme site, but I'm having trouble finding it now...
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  This is a complicated issue and requires a careful approach. I don't think any serious fact checkers simply declare non-mainstream views as false, rather they would highlight only issues where a clear scientific consensus exist. So you flag an article about masks being ineffective and quote a clear analysis, or you flag an article about the Chinese (or US) government purposefully spreading covid, but you don't flag an article discussing the evidence for and against origin theories. See e.g. also the EU imitative on Russian disinformation: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

dustintrex 5y ago
Would you also support a total ban on hunting wild animals in the West? Or are the animals only "exotic" when they're consumed by Chinese people?
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  We already have a good definition of exotic animal trading so we don't need to strawman any larger scope here. I 100% support the shutdown of exotic animal trading. From the Wuhan wet markets carrying animals from the corners of the globe for supposed medicinal benefits to the idiots in the west with pet tigers.
  - adolph 5y ago
    What do "Wuhan wet markets" have to do with anything? From the article: The seafood market was almost certainly “just” an early superspreader site, rather than the site of the original spillover event. No bats or pangolins at all, and relatively few mammals of any kind, appear to have been sold at that market, and no sign of SARS-CoV2 was ever found in any of the animals despite searching.
    - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
      Widely accepted as the source of the coronavirus outbreak.
      - adolph 5y ago
        I wonder how that came to be and retained as the received knowledge? Who was the person or organization who identified which specific market?

ummonk 5y ago

This article is a good counterpoint: https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory-covid-19 https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory... While certainly more plausible than 9/11 conspiracy theories, the lab-leak proponents have the same tendency to put forth several mutually incompatible theories, while believing each has a strong amount of evidence for it.

CamperBob2 5y ago
It certainly makes a good argument in favor of the "We shouldn't have laid off our editors in the last budget crunch" hypothesis.
malshe 5y ago
What a garbage response. The author starts by discrediting both the authors. Next, the smoking gun which it cites repeatedly (The study on Laos bats) is not even peer-reviewed! This is from the articled linked from this article: “The results, which are not peer reviewed, have been posted on the preprint server Research Square.” Sounds like very lazy “journalism” to me.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  It also conflates "lab-engineered" with "lab-leak". How would a disease from a bat from Laos make it to Wuhan? It still could be from the WIV!
  - ummonk 5y ago
    This is what the article authors mean by lab-leak arguments being unfalsifiable. No matter what evidence comes out, it can still be shoe-horned into a lab-leak theory.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      That's not really true. You could falsify it by: - Opening the records about which viruses the WIV was storing. It's not a mystery — labs track that kind of thing! But China refused to release any data about which viruses the WIV stored or modified. - Finding a clear chain of infection between a natural source and the outbreak in Wuhan - Finding clear evidence that there was a small outbreak which later spread to Wuhan Nobody has managed any of those.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

I’m a flaming liberal but I still thought we should at least pursue the lab leak hypothesis for one simple reason. I was a scientist and I’ve seen the lax way people treat biohazardous samples and just how fallible humans are. After going down a long rabbit hole I lean towards non lab leak, but if we can’t ask questions because of politicization of ideas we are done.

ralmidani 5y ago
Does “flaming liberal” === excusing the CCP’s behavior? At least in the US, the CCP is condemned by most politicians from across the classic liberal-conservative spectrum.
- suction 5y ago
  "Liberal" in the US policy-wise is extremely conservative in most Western European countries, for example Merkel's party CDU is a "right of center conservative" party in Germany but would be far left in the US. Maybe it's not comparable, coming to think of it, because morals and values are so extremely different in Europe and the US.
  - explodingcamera 5y ago
    I don't know why people keep saying this, but there's no way in hell the CDU is far left. The CDU is a historically conservative center to slightly right party, and if they didn't need the votes, the current politicians in charge would go further to the right. A couple of years ago, the CDU lost many voters to the AFD, which is a far right extremist party, and many CDU politicians still sympathize with them, while no other party in Germany collaborates with the AFD. Getting pro gay, trans, and abortion laws through was hell with the CDU in power.
    - reactor4 5y ago
      [...] would be far left in the US.
  - 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

In addition, I also recommend watching 4.5 hours of Jamie Metzl, who is on a first name basis with WHO's director Tedros Adhanom and even talks about how he called Tedros on his cell phone a time when it was urgent to relay the message, describe the insanity of what happened in 2020 with regards to Lab Leak theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9fx2I

cjmb 5y ago

> I don’t have to have any opinion at all about the origin of COVID-19 … but I did, and I didn’t share it only because of the likelihood that I’d be called an idiot on social media. This is a great justification for anon accounts -- both "primary anon-only" users and also fully- or semi- anon alts for people who have thoughts like this (which, in my opinion, ought to be every smart intellectual who doesn't make the Culture War their primary stomping ground). Blaming a lack of courage is all well and good after the tides have turned, but courage is slim comfort when the eye of sauron turns on you. You will not feel much better for martyring yourself in service of the beliefs you hold with about-as-much-confidence as Scott expresses here -- and you'd be wise not to do so. If you must put something down in writing that you know has the potential to cause political heat to fall on your shoulders, and it's not something core to your life's work, it's perfectly fine to either a) use a semi-anon alt or b) write in a circumspect manner. Preferably both. Anonymity is a thin shield to hide behind, so I say "semi-anon" in support of the idea that, though the anonymity may be imperfect and the identity may be tied to your own, it can clearly be shown as a vehicle to express thoughts you are less sure of, or that you wish to distance yourself from somewhat. I say all this will the empathy & sympathy of a fellow online writer, though with only a tiny fraction of Scott's reach...

systemvoltage 5y ago
> it's perfectly fine to either a) use a semi-anon alt or b) write in a circumspect manner. Preferably both. This is the reason I use an anon account but there are still problems on HN. I apologize if I cause some trouble here on HN, but the flagging aspects of HN beyond rude/spam comments (which is what I suspect it is designed for) does a disservice to the community. My comments about inflation were flagged in March 2021 despite of being cordial and respectful. I trusted the scientists and the intellectual community, but I similarly saw some Lab Leak theory comments being flagged on HN. Vouching is a great feature, but not many people know it since it requires a couple of prerequisites - enough karma + settings to show flagged comments. I hope we restrain ourselves to flagging behavior on HN. It also enrages people for trying to be reasonable, but contrarian, and seeing their comments disappear. Now, they're resolute and firmly dug into their contrarian views even if they were false. So, if HN has these issues, the outside world is even worse. Try the same on Twitter and hard echo chambers form (blocking/etc). I am not engaged on Twitter or Reddit, but I occassionally observe this. My 2 cents.

ayjchan 5y ago

Hi Scott, This is Alina Chan, one of the authors of the book. Thank you very much for your thorough review of our book :) On the Laos connection, I made a thread on Twitter to lay out the latest findings about virus samples being sent directly from Laos to Wuhan over several years: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1476231824267485190?s=20 https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1476231824267485190?s=20 I hope this is a good update on that point. Happy new year!

simonebrunozzi 5y ago
> This is Alina Chan, one of the authors of the book. Hey Alina! Welcome to HN! I hope you will stick around and spend some time here with us. This is hands down the best online community I've ever seen in my life.
dnautics 5y ago
Thanks for the book, alina. As a former molecular biologist (who worked on non-pathogenic enzyme gain-of-function projects) when the details of the virus came out I looked at it and immediately thought, "huh, that's exactly what I would have done", caveat I wasn't a virologist, of course, but I felt like I was being gaslit for being told that there was "no way" it could have been a lab leak. I know that I am not the only molecular biologist who felt this way. In no small part due to your work I think it's being taken more seriously, and maybe this is selfish in the context of the crazy situation going on worldwide but I feel 'less crazy'.
- ajross 5y ago
  > I felt like I was being gaslit for being told that there was "no way" it could have been a lab leak Can I say, as someone also looking at this somewhat dispassionately, how upsetting it is that the discourse on this issue has shifted from "It was a lab leak!" (to which strong replies absolutely were "There's no evidence"), to "It might have been a lab leak", now to "People were unfairly treated on the internet for saying it was a lab leak". I mean, it's been two years now, and there's still no evidence beyond the kind of circumstantial stuff detailed by Chan and Ridley (I have the book but haven't read it yet, though I've seen most of Chan's public posts on the subject so I'm pretty sure I know the arc of what's in it). And it seems like everyone has basically conceded that. But instead of just admitting we'll never know with certainty (and that natural evolution remains the most probable origin), everyone wants to talk about meta stuff instead?

throwaway05112 5y ago

themgt 5y ago

The movie "Don't Look Up" but the asteroid scientists funded by NASA create an artificial black hole to pull asteroids towards Earth with sophisticated "gain of destruction" methodology - how better to study the potential civilization-ending power of asteroids? When an asteroid appears from out of nowhere right near the Wuhan Black Hole and on course to kill us all, head scientist DiCaprio dedicates himself to leading the effort to label anyone questioning the natural origins of the asteroid's planet-killing trajectory a conspiracy theorist, and almost everyone goes along and gets those people banned from the internet. The end.

perihelions 5y ago
Carl Sagan expressed essentially the same idea in 1994 -- that the development of asteroid-deflecting *nuclear weapons* would be more likely to destroy the world than to save it. That the baseline risk of major asteroid impacts is low enough, that the threat of asteroid-deflecting technology being turned into a weapon -- a loose analogy to "gain-of-function" research, I guess -- is more probable than the natural threat it defends against. >"In our view, development of this asteroid-deflection technology would be premature. Given twentieth-century history and present global politics, it is hard to imagine guarantees against eventual misuse of an asteroid deflection system commensurate with the dangers such a system poses. Those who argue that it would be prudent to prevent catastrophic impacts with annual probabilities of 10^-5 would surely recognize the prudence of preventing more probable catastrophes of comparable magnitude from misuse of potentially apocalyptic technology." https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/368501a0 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/368501a0 ("Dangers of Asteroid Deflection", Carl Sagan & Steven Ostro)
- retrac 5y ago
  > Carl Sagan expressed essentially the same idea in 1994 -- that the development of asteroid-deflecting nuclear weapons would be more likely to destroy the world than to save it. He also talked about this in his book Pale Blue Dot around the same time. He found it darkly ironic, I think. Technologies like spaceflight and nuclear power and advanced biology are necessary for the long-term survival of the human species. Yet presently, it seems they are more likely to be misapplied and destroy us.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cblconfederate 5y ago

Considering the current political climate between US and china, supporting a non-lab origin is slowly becoming the contrarian idea. I wonder if the authors discuss the evolution of the virus since it was first leaked/mutated. For example , eventhough it is believed, as the authors say, furin cleavage is a key to the virus' transmissibility, a computational study of the Omicron variant suggests the furin cleavage site has evolved for less efficient replication of the virus[1] (but still more transmissible due to immunity escape). beyond the flashy politics, the lab leak hypothesis is terrifying as it means that someone can create a worldwide crisis by doing relatively well understood modifications to existing viruses, and the world is clearly not prepared for such biodefense attacks. We should be talking about the day-after covid and what measures we need to prevent such rapid worldwide spread of pathogens. [1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472704v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472704v1....

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> beyond the flashy politics, the lab leak hypothesis is terrifying as it means that someone can create a worldwide crisis by doing relatively well understood modifications to existing viruses, and the world is clearly not prepared for such biodefense attacks. We should be talking about the day-after covid and what measures we need to prevent such rapid worldwide spread of pathogens. Scientists have been able to create viruses in a lab for some time now, e.g. it's pretty well-known how to create smallpox from scratch. None of this is new. The point is, as the pandemic has shown, it makes a really lousy bioweapon when the whole world gets infected. Even if you're a psycho and your goal is total world destruction, a pandemic still sucks for your goals because a comparatively teeny percentage of people actually die.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

If the lab leak is not a conspiracy after all then it's safe to say the propaganda behind it's censorship is a conspiracy.

ekianjo 5y ago
a conspiracy is just a big word used by the media to describe something that happens all the time: people behind closed doors getting along with a plan to exploit the masses for profit or power.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  There's also the commonly overlooked fact that sometimes people don't even need to get together, they already have aligned interests and go with the flow.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    when it's aligned interests without a formal discussion/agreement between different parties, I don't think it's fair to call it a conspiracy, rather purely selfish incentives at play.
sgt101 5y ago
I can't understand why you would complain about censorship when discussing this book on a public forum. Can you explain to me so I can get my head round this?
- christophilus 5y ago
  Two years ago, suggesting a lab-leak origin would get your comment flagged on most major platforms. It’s now acceptable to discuss it, but such was not the case early on. Hence the claims of censorship.
- umvi 5y ago
  We weren't allowed to discuss lab leak on social media until the information overlords decided it was ok to do so. And it took them over a year before they gave us permission to discuss it.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

disambiguation 5y ago

These conversations all miss the single most important underlying detail. Even if covid didn't come from a lab, we clearly possess the technology. The cherry on top is that we're still actively working on said technology. We have collectively and silently learned that we have the technology to end the world, and no one is really shocked by it. This is far worse than nukes because M.A.D. doesn't apply, and it's not resource constrained. Viruses can come from anywhere and be enhanced with the right equipment and knowledge, which probably isn't all that expensive. Why the hell aren't we shutting these labs down, or at the very least this type of research?

astronautjones 5y ago
- disambiguation 5y ago
  Why go out of your way to make absolutist claims? you're just setting yourself up to fail. What you really meant to say is, "where is my evidence", and well we've been doing this since 2012, at least. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22722205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22722205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/
  - astronautjones 5y ago
    because you are clueless and/or misinformed as to what separates this virus from other coronaviruses and HOW different it is from other coronaviruses. the technology absolutely does not exist.
    - xyzzy123 5y ago
      Agree, it's not possible to create something like sars-cov2 completely de-novo. I assume this is what you mean? Claims of impossibility here need to be quite specific to be meaningful, I think. On the other hand if you have not read the DEFUSE proposal you are in for a real treat. It is absolutely plausible that sars-cov2 could be an output of this line of research. We also don't really know what backbones they had.

SergeAx 5y ago

> a global pandemic far worse than any in living memory I beleive author means that 1918 Spanish flu, with death toll of 25m to 50m according to different sources, is something no on living today has a memory of. But smallpox death toll in XX century was about 300m, and there are a lot of people alive with memories of it.

Linosaurus 5y ago
> smallpox Could have be been classified as an endemic disease in many areas and not a pandemic.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  Good point, agreed.
yellowbeard 5y ago
HIV/AIDS is also bigger if you count that as a pandemic.

throwaway4good 5y ago

For another perspective on this I recommend Peter Daszak etc. in the This Week in Virology podcast explaining their efforts to trace the origin of COVID19: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-760/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-760/ A memorable quote is this: When you mix science with politics, you get politics.

tux3 5y ago
The quote is nice, but if there's any argument to be had I'd rather people quote something convincing, not persuasive.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I linked to the full thing for people with a genuine interest in the subject. Going into tit for tat would not really be helpful nor convince anyone as this is already deeply buried in politics. The people who did the phase 1 report were amongst the best in their fields and did a good faith effort. Unfortunately people did not like their boring conclusion and prefer politics and speculation instead.
ekianjo 5y ago
The Peter Daszak who was at the origin of the infamous Lancet hoax ? That guy has lost any credibility he might have ever had.
christophilus 5y ago
That’s a great quote. Reminds me a bit of Munger: “If you mix raisins with turds they’re still turds.”
tim333 5y ago
>When you mix science with politics, you get politics. True and Daszak has been more guilty of that than most.

indigodaddy 5y ago

Great interview/podcast/discussion with Alina Chan re: the origins from the Stated Clearly/Evolution Podcast: https://youtu.be/IEfpWvQjD0Q https://youtu.be/IEfpWvQjD0Q

jerome-jh 5y ago

The conclusion "we don’t yet live in a post-truth world" is hard to swallow, considering two years after the facts there is no truth about the origin of the pandemic. The reasons for this lack of scientific proof are the subject of the article and the 300 pages reviewed book. The author is once again lacking courage not to admit we do leave in a post-truth world.

jerome-jh 5y ago
Expanding a bit on my comment: truth has not been established, that's one thing. The other thing is that there is no significant hope that truth is ever established. It is said that all the archive of Wuhan's P4 have been destroyed. That would not be surprising at all. A large part of the world is under very stringent information control, far more stringent than in the USSR at any period of time. It combines social control, total control over electronic communications, and a huge PR influence thanks to a wide spread diaspora. In this context truth has become relative.

causi 5y ago

The politicization of the pandemic will in the future perhaps be looked upon as our civilization's greatest mistake.

ekianjo 5y ago
That's assuming the History books even report it. What matters is who wins the narrative at the end of it all.
api 5y ago
We really need to start working to de-politicize as many things as we can. Maybe this one can be a start because the politicization of COVID has a literal body count. Next could be climate change, which should be reframed as an engineering problem not a moral problem or a guilt trip.
- I-M-S 5y ago
  Saying we need to "de-politicize" things is akin to saying we need to "de-human" them.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Precisely. I used to look at politics as some “side effect” of humans working together when in fact it’s just a necessary component. Politics is simply leadership, persuasion, communication, debate all wrapped up together. It’s neither good nor bad, but just a necessary component to large groups of humans working together.
  - dmatech 5y ago
    Hardly. Humans are not first and foremost political creatures. The notion that "everything is political" didn't get as extreme as it is now until recent years. It's made society far more combative because it's made life revolve around the accumulation of power. There's still room for curiosity. We don't have to focus exclusively on who gains or loses power in every interaction.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago

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Symmetry 5y ago

At the start of the pandemic I thought the leak of a modified virus from a lab was very unlikely and that a naturally occurring virus being brought to Wuhan by lab activities or a natural origin were both far more likely. At this point I think that's the second most significant thing I was wrong about, coming in after my early doubts about aerosol spread.

tartoran 5y ago

I personally think that since all the Wuhan lab info is being suppressed the theory of a lab leak could never be disproved.

tim333 5y ago
You could disprove it by finding the non lab animal it came from. For instance with SARS 1, pretty much as soon as they looked they found it had come from palm civets at the local market so no one was hypothesising lab leaks on that one. However this time 80k + animals tested, nothing like that found.

temp8964 5y ago

> And one point Viral makes abundantly clear is that, if our goal is to prevent the next pandemic, then resolving the mystery of COVID-19 actually matters less than one might think. This is because, whichever possibility—zoonotic spillover or lab leak—turns out to be the truth of this case, the other possibility would remain absolutely terrifying and would demand urgent action as well. Read the book and see for yourself. This logic does not convince me. If it did come from lab leak, there are lots of things the scientific community need to do to themselves to prevent the next lab leak from happening. It's defenitely not the same as a zoonotic spillover. Scientists are not wild animals, they can regulate themselves. If the virus did leak from one of the two Wuhan labs, at least these actions need to be taken: * All the Chinese labs doing this kind of research need to be seriously examined by the international community * All the bio research funding from the western countries to China labs need to be stopped and only can be restarted with serious conditions met

toufka 5y ago
I think their point is that the leak has a plausible route - and whatever protections we would institute were that to have been true - we still should implement - precisely because they could have been true. In many safety contexts, the strong possibility of an accident is often considered as the failure - not just the accident itself.

odiroot 5y ago

It's this Matt Ridley, from "The Red Queen" fame. Immediate add to my list.

tim333 5y ago
There's a good interview with him on this stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRksNG4uvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRksNG4uvU >HJS Virtual Event: "Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19" Streamed live on Dec 13, 2021

tim333 5y ago

>Shi and Daszak have increasingly stonewalled It's really over time that they subpoenaed Daszak and acquired and published all records from EcoHealth. I realize that would be annoying for them but really with millions dead the right to know what went on should take priority.

spookybones 5y ago

Having also read this review ( https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory-covid-19 https://newrepublic.com/article/164688/viral-lab-leak-theory... ), I don’t know which review/scenario to trust, and virology is well outside my area of expertise.

bioinformatics 5y ago

I was betting on climate change®, bummer.

jacquesm 5y ago

Be sure to read all the comments, which serve as a major expansion on the article content. To call this book 'one of the most important books so far of the twenty-first century' is preposterous.