56 ms·

New documents reveal early beliefs that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered

94 points by 323 5y ago

wawawawa3 5y ago
wawawawa3 5y ago
The super majority of liberals on this site have been repeatedly flagging/downvoting/censoring this all day long. Why?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
- belter 5y ago
  "Never to be outdone, in May 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that this virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” Could not. He left no room for doubt: "Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species"
  - dionian 5y ago
    If Fauci denies it, and Twitter censors it, it makes me consider it slightly more credible (if unproven)
    - krapp 5y ago
      Why? That's not rational thinking or skepticism, it's just blind tribalism.
    - ummonk 5y ago
      If Fauci told you not to jump off a cliff, and Twitter said the same, would you do it?
      - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
        If he told me the sky was blue, I'd at least go check.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - abletonlive 5y ago
    That's not a refutation to the poster's question. They are asking about the documents linked on that page, not what Dr. Fauci said... In my opinion, anybody can just make documents and stamp some names to make them look credible. Are the documents confirmed sources or not?
    - 323 5y ago
      > These emails were originally produced redacted via the Freedom of Information Act and subsequently to Committee Republicans. At the request of Committee Republicans and pursuant to the Seven Member Rule, the Department of Health and Human Services made unredacted versions available for an in camera review but not available to the public. Committee staff, to the best of their ability, hand transcribed the contents of the emails and excerpts of those transcriptions are reproduced below https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2...
      - lamp987 5y ago
        >Department of Health and Human Services made unredacted versions available for an in camera review but not available to the public. Sus.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Lol this Major Joseph Murphy is, pardon the pun, batshit crazy. He's conflating an aerosol spike protein vaccine administered to bats (i.e. a nasal vaccine) with a a full fledged virus (that he thinks became SARS-CoV-2). He also seems to think that said bat vaccine/virus was based on a nonexistent virus that targeted humans (can't have been SARS, since SARS-CoV-2 is so different from it) which was changed to target bats for the vaccine, and thinks that administration of the vaccines will cause the virus to be selected back into a variant that is deadlier to humans like SARS. Basically he's a conspiracy theorist + anti-vax nutter who has no idea what's going on here.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Hold on there. No one has even established that Maj. Murphy actually wrote the document. Let's see if it's authentic first before we accuse him of anything.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Starting on page 8, there's stuff that he didn't write. It's a funding request that pretty much (to my amateur eye) says the same as what Murphy said. Is that authentic? Because if it is, we don't have to prove that Murphy wrote what the first part claims he wrote. Does it say what Murphy said? If so, then we don't have to worry about whether Murphy is sane.
  - iszomer 5y ago
    Maybe it's just another psyop. Funny that The Intercept_ ran a similar story [1] a few months back somewhat corroborating what PV reported on. [1] https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...
imapeopleperson 5y ago
2 years of our lives, the impact on health, and a ruined economy. We deserve answers, then action.
- _eht 5y ago
  The sooner you realize you do not inherently deserve anything the better this goes.
  - type0 5y ago
    sure, we deserve to stay ignorant to be blissfully happy
    - spicyusername 5y ago
      No, like he said... you don't inherently _deserve_ anything. Answers, non-answers, good luck, bad luck, wealth, happiness, etc, etc, etc. Like my kid's kindergarten teacher always says, you get what you get and you don't fuss a bit. Or from that song "Don't worry be happy": "In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double."
      - rvieira 5y ago
        I would argue that since the dawn of humanity, all advancements were only possible because some people made a fuss. "Don't worry, be happy" seems to be a recipe for accepting things as they are. I much prefer "don't sweat the small things".
        manicdee 5y ago
        Or that old prayer: Lord grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the patience to accept the things I can not, and the wisdom to know the difference.
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    Given nihilism and relativism are both losing hands, this is more of a self-own than anything.
randomlurking 5y ago
I don’t know what’s what, but to add an opinion: the leading expert in Germany (Drosten, who developed the first PCR-Test for Covid) has also stated in various contexts that he heavily doubts the lab-hypothesis. It would be nice to have a somewhat more definite answer to the question, but I’m doubtful we’ll ever know.
- Sparyjerry 5y ago
  To counter this though. The actual inventor of the PCR test and Nobel prize winner in chemistry said Fauci "doesn't know anything about anything" however that was in relation to the HIV virus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJnBSh_gXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJnBSh_gXQ
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    How does Mullis insulting Fauci counter Drosten? Mullis believed everyone who said HIV caused AIDS was lying or incompetent. His opinions about it are worth less than nothing.
fredgrott 5y ago
Be careful here, who remembers the Berkley Biochemist that got laughed out of science concerning his AIDs 'theories'. He got laughed out due to his lack of public health knowledge and viruses. A lab alone cannot engineer a virus any more than a human attempt to create one which given our current lack of knowledge cannot happen either. However, mutations of a current bat virus kept in a lab can and will trigger an out break of something. Everyone see the very subtle difference yet? It's that misunderstanding of the difference they wanted to shut down i.e. misunderstandings...not investigations or science. And despite differences in political systems this was the concern of China scientists and politicians as well.
themgt 5y ago
This is extremely damning. NIAID and NIH directors were exchanging emails in the first days of the pandemic with experts pointing out aspects of SARS-CoV-2 that struck them as tending towards a lab leak rather than natural origin. This would be very bad for NIAID and NIH because they were somewhere between one and a couple steps removed from directly knowingly funding the research creating human pandemic SARS viruses in a BSL-2 lab in Wuhan, China. They then quickly organized a meeting to get everyone on the same page that it was not a lab leak and spent a year telling the public anyone suggesting it might have been a lab leak - based on the very same points they themselves had instantly noticed - was a crazy conspiracy theorist and worse. Then when responding to FOIA requests they redacted the parts of their emails proving what shameless liars they've been. We are only reading these now because congressional staffers were allowed an in camera review and "to the best of their ability, hand transcribed the contents of the emails". These actually aren't unredacted documents but hand transcriptions. How is this such an inconsequential story that it's basically only being covered by an anonymous analyst on Substack?
- encoderer 5y ago
  And their attempt at coverup worked for a while. I am not an avid follower but I know Zerohedge was banned for a time on Twitter after posting about a lab leak, because it was thought to be a fringe conspiracy theory because every doctor signed that damn letter. What a crisis of leadership.
  - throwoutway 5y ago
    Of course Twitter and other tech/media will not take the blame for banning legitimate content, as they did here and on other occasions; thereby creating a bias in their users
- WithinReason 5y ago
  > telling the public anyone suggesting it might have been a lab leak - based on the very same points they themselves had instantly noticed - was a crazy conspiracy theorist and worse. It worked, the public still believes it: The submission was already flagged.
JohnTHaller 5y ago
The source for this is The Reactionary, a right-wing substack blog by "Techno Fog", which has cherry-picked quotes from heavily redacted emails without context of reply thread from very early in the pandemic released by Republicans Jim Jordan and James Comer.
- yucky 5y ago
  Are there any other logical fallacies you want to employ to avoid addressing the actual content?
  - hogrider 5y ago
    - steelstraw 5y ago
      Both do.
      - dang 5y ago
        It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's not allowed on HN, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so accounts that are using HN primarily for that are abusive. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd appreciate it. Past explanations can be found at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bimodal%20battle&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- finite_jest 5y ago
  The emails are actually unredacted [1], and the fact that they are released by the opposition party shouldn't be surprising. I'm not sure they tell us anything new though. We already knew that they were scientists who had this suspicion in the early days of the pandemic (some publicly stated that, e.g. David Baltimore [2]). [1]: See the note in the beginning of Appendix I: https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2... [2]: LA Times: A Nobel laureate backs off from claiming a ‘smoking gun’ for the COVID-19 lab-leak theory https://archive.fo/F440c https://archive.fo/F440c
chmod775 5y ago
A few things are true at the same time: 1. It was statistically extremely likely a virus like COVID would come along soon, and models have predicted such viruses arising naturally for a long time. 2. It is at the same time perfectly possible it was engineered. 3. It is a plain stupid move, politically, to outwardly entertain the idea that COVID was engineered - unless you've got proof so damning not even China could ignore it. Unlikely to exist. And even then it is only going to score you a few feel-good points with the plebeians at home. 4. Either possibility has no impact at all on shorter term decision making. It is stupid to burden people whose immediate goal it is to save lives with even more political minefields they have to navigate.
- hogrider 5y ago
  3 is false, your accusation doesn't need to be real at all yo damage your opponent. China was thee first to say it was the americans using biological warfare and accused them of deploying the virus during some kind of international competition of armed forces.
  - chmod775 5y ago
    This isn't a game where you win if you "damage" your "opponent" a certain degree. Individuals, countries, have goals they are trying to actualize. Accusations are made if the accuser believes it will serve them. Throwing unprovable accusations at China helps with nothing western countries are trying to accomplish. The most you can get out of it is some points during an election - it is helpful in painting a bogeyman draped in Chinese colors. Even if the goal was to reach an international treaty banning such research, it would make no sense to alienate China this way. It would put China in a position where they could not sign such a treaty without appearing weak during a time in which they are putting a lot of effort in appearing strong.
- dariusj18 5y ago
  This is a very good list of things more people need to understand. Could it have been a lab leak? Yes! Could we say with any certainty that it was? No. If we levy such accusations without proof does it provide any benefit? Yes, to politicians with an agenda.
epakai 5y ago
Who cares about early beliefs? We have everything we need to explain a natural origin (see linked thread), and only a bunch of circumstantial evidence spun into a conspiracy theory narrative to prove engineering. https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384 https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-or...
libx 5y ago
tpoacher 5y ago
"flagged" The irony.
marmarama 5y ago
Even if I did believe that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, which I am open-minded about but unconvinced by the evidence for, making an international incident out of it in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century is a terrible idea. Imagine you are the US president: If you believe it was engineered and escaped due to human error, then making a scene risks China cutting off supplies of PPE and essential biotech, of which they are by far the world's largest supplier, leading to much higher mortality in the US. If you believe it was engineered and was spread deliberately (use of a biological WMD!), then making a scene also risks escalating to a war with China, a nuclear-armed power with a highly dangerous military. Personally I still think it's too early to be re-examining these questions. The west still relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to fight COVID. Maybe in 2024?

94 points by 323 5y ago

wawawawa3 5y ago

The super majority of liberals on this site have been repeatedly flagging/downvoting/censoring this all day long. Why?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

belter 5y ago
"Never to be outdone, in May 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that this virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” Could not. He left no room for doubt: "Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species"
- dionian 5y ago
  If Fauci denies it, and Twitter censors it, it makes me consider it slightly more credible (if unproven)
  - krapp 5y ago
    Why? That's not rational thinking or skepticism, it's just blind tribalism.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    If Fauci told you not to jump off a cliff, and Twitter said the same, would you do it?
    - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
      If he told me the sky was blue, I'd at least go check.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- abletonlive 5y ago
  That's not a refutation to the poster's question. They are asking about the documents linked on that page, not what Dr. Fauci said... In my opinion, anybody can just make documents and stamp some names to make them look credible. Are the documents confirmed sources or not?
  - 323 5y ago
    > These emails were originally produced redacted via the Freedom of Information Act and subsequently to Committee Republicans. At the request of Committee Republicans and pursuant to the Seven Member Rule, the Department of Health and Human Services made unredacted versions available for an in camera review but not available to the public. Committee staff, to the best of their ability, hand transcribed the contents of the emails and excerpts of those transcriptions are reproduced below https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2...
    - lamp987 5y ago
      >Department of Health and Human Services made unredacted versions available for an in camera review but not available to the public. Sus.
ummonk 5y ago
Lol this Major Joseph Murphy is, pardon the pun, batshit crazy. He's conflating an aerosol spike protein vaccine administered to bats (i.e. a nasal vaccine) with a a full fledged virus (that he thinks became SARS-CoV-2). He also seems to think that said bat vaccine/virus was based on a nonexistent virus that targeted humans (can't have been SARS, since SARS-CoV-2 is so different from it) which was changed to target bats for the vaccine, and thinks that administration of the vaccines will cause the virus to be selected back into a variant that is deadlier to humans like SARS. Basically he's a conspiracy theorist + anti-vax nutter who has no idea what's going on here.
- nradov 5y ago
  Hold on there. No one has even established that Maj. Murphy actually wrote the document. Let's see if it's authentic first before we accuse him of anything.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Starting on page 8, there's stuff that he didn't write. It's a funding request that pretty much (to my amateur eye) says the same as what Murphy said. Is that authentic? Because if it is, we don't have to prove that Murphy wrote what the first part claims he wrote. Does it say what Murphy said? If so, then we don't have to worry about whether Murphy is sane.
- iszomer 5y ago
  Maybe it's just another psyop. Funny that The Intercept_ ran a similar story [1] a few months back somewhat corroborating what PV reported on. [1] https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

imapeopleperson 5y ago

2 years of our lives, the impact on health, and a ruined economy. We deserve answers, then action.

_eht 5y ago
The sooner you realize you do not inherently deserve anything the better this goes.
- type0 5y ago
  sure, we deserve to stay ignorant to be blissfully happy
  - spicyusername 5y ago
    No, like he said... you don't inherently _deserve_ anything. Answers, non-answers, good luck, bad luck, wealth, happiness, etc, etc, etc. Like my kid's kindergarten teacher always says, you get what you get and you don't fuss a bit. Or from that song "Don't worry be happy": "In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double."
    - rvieira 5y ago
      I would argue that since the dawn of humanity, all advancements were only possible because some people made a fuss. "Don't worry, be happy" seems to be a recipe for accepting things as they are. I much prefer "don't sweat the small things".
      - manicdee 5y ago
        Or that old prayer: Lord grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the patience to accept the things I can not, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  Given nihilism and relativism are both losing hands, this is more of a self-own than anything.

randomlurking 5y ago

I don’t know what’s what, but to add an opinion: the leading expert in Germany (Drosten, who developed the first PCR-Test for Covid) has also stated in various contexts that he heavily doubts the lab-hypothesis. It would be nice to have a somewhat more definite answer to the question, but I’m doubtful we’ll ever know.

Sparyjerry 5y ago
To counter this though. The actual inventor of the PCR test and Nobel prize winner in chemistry said Fauci "doesn't know anything about anything" however that was in relation to the HIV virus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJnBSh_gXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJnBSh_gXQ
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  How does Mullis insulting Fauci counter Drosten? Mullis believed everyone who said HIV caused AIDS was lying or incompetent. His opinions about it are worth less than nothing.

fredgrott 5y ago

Be careful here, who remembers the Berkley Biochemist that got laughed out of science concerning his AIDs 'theories'. He got laughed out due to his lack of public health knowledge and viruses. A lab alone cannot engineer a virus any more than a human attempt to create one which given our current lack of knowledge cannot happen either. However, mutations of a current bat virus kept in a lab can and will trigger an out break of something. Everyone see the very subtle difference yet? It's that misunderstanding of the difference they wanted to shut down i.e. misunderstandings...not investigations or science. And despite differences in political systems this was the concern of China scientists and politicians as well.

themgt 5y ago

This is extremely damning. NIAID and NIH directors were exchanging emails in the first days of the pandemic with experts pointing out aspects of SARS-CoV-2 that struck them as tending towards a lab leak rather than natural origin. This would be very bad for NIAID and NIH because they were somewhere between one and a couple steps removed from directly knowingly funding the research creating human pandemic SARS viruses in a BSL-2 lab in Wuhan, China. They then quickly organized a meeting to get everyone on the same page that it was not a lab leak and spent a year telling the public anyone suggesting it might have been a lab leak - based on the very same points they themselves had instantly noticed - was a crazy conspiracy theorist and worse. Then when responding to FOIA requests they redacted the parts of their emails proving what shameless liars they've been. We are only reading these now because congressional staffers were allowed an in camera review and "to the best of their ability, hand transcribed the contents of the emails". These actually aren't unredacted documents but hand transcriptions. How is this such an inconsequential story that it's basically only being covered by an anonymous analyst on Substack?

encoderer 5y ago
And their attempt at coverup worked for a while. I am not an avid follower but I know Zerohedge was banned for a time on Twitter after posting about a lab leak, because it was thought to be a fringe conspiracy theory because every doctor signed that damn letter. What a crisis of leadership.
- throwoutway 5y ago
  Of course Twitter and other tech/media will not take the blame for banning legitimate content, as they did here and on other occasions; thereby creating a bias in their users
WithinReason 5y ago
> telling the public anyone suggesting it might have been a lab leak - based on the very same points they themselves had instantly noticed - was a crazy conspiracy theorist and worse. It worked, the public still believes it: The submission was already flagged.

JohnTHaller 5y ago

The source for this is The Reactionary, a right-wing substack blog by "Techno Fog", which has cherry-picked quotes from heavily redacted emails without context of reply thread from very early in the pandemic released by Republicans Jim Jordan and James Comer.

yucky 5y ago
Are there any other logical fallacies you want to employ to avoid addressing the actual content?
- hogrider 5y ago
  - steelstraw 5y ago
    Both do.
    - dang 5y ago
      It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's not allowed on HN, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so accounts that are using HN primarily for that are abusive. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd appreciate it. Past explanations can be found at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bimodal%20battle&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
finite_jest 5y ago
The emails are actually unredacted [1], and the fact that they are released by the opposition party shouldn't be surprising. I'm not sure they tell us anything new though. We already knew that they were scientists who had this suspicion in the early days of the pandemic (some publicly stated that, e.g. David Baltimore [2]). [1]: See the note in the beginning of Appendix I: https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2... [2]: LA Times: A Nobel laureate backs off from claiming a ‘smoking gun’ for the COVID-19 lab-leak theory https://archive.fo/F440c https://archive.fo/F440c

chmod775 5y ago

A few things are true at the same time: 1. It was statistically extremely likely a virus like COVID would come along soon, and models have predicted such viruses arising naturally for a long time. 2. It is at the same time perfectly possible it was engineered. 3. It is a plain stupid move, politically, to outwardly entertain the idea that COVID was engineered - unless you've got proof so damning not even China could ignore it. Unlikely to exist. And even then it is only going to score you a few feel-good points with the plebeians at home. 4. Either possibility has no impact at all on shorter term decision making. It is stupid to burden people whose immediate goal it is to save lives with even more political minefields they have to navigate.

hogrider 5y ago
3 is false, your accusation doesn't need to be real at all yo damage your opponent. China was thee first to say it was the americans using biological warfare and accused them of deploying the virus during some kind of international competition of armed forces.
- chmod775 5y ago
  This isn't a game where you win if you "damage" your "opponent" a certain degree. Individuals, countries, have goals they are trying to actualize. Accusations are made if the accuser believes it will serve them. Throwing unprovable accusations at China helps with nothing western countries are trying to accomplish. The most you can get out of it is some points during an election - it is helpful in painting a bogeyman draped in Chinese colors. Even if the goal was to reach an international treaty banning such research, it would make no sense to alienate China this way. It would put China in a position where they could not sign such a treaty without appearing weak during a time in which they are putting a lot of effort in appearing strong.
dariusj18 5y ago
This is a very good list of things more people need to understand. Could it have been a lab leak? Yes! Could we say with any certainty that it was? No. If we levy such accusations without proof does it provide any benefit? Yes, to politicians with an agenda.

epakai 5y ago

Who cares about early beliefs? We have everything we need to explain a natural origin (see linked thread), and only a bunch of circumstantial evidence spun into a conspiracy theory narrative to prove engineering. https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384 https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-or...

libx 5y ago

tpoacher 5y ago

"flagged" The irony.

marmarama 5y ago

Even if I did believe that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, which I am open-minded about but unconvinced by the evidence for, making an international incident out of it in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century is a terrible idea. Imagine you are the US president: If you believe it was engineered and escaped due to human error, then making a scene risks China cutting off supplies of PPE and essential biotech, of which they are by far the world's largest supplier, leading to much higher mortality in the US. If you believe it was engineered and was spread deliberately (use of a biological WMD!), then making a scene also risks escalating to a war with China, a nuclear-armed power with a highly dangerous military. Personally I still think it's too early to be re-examining these questions. The west still relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to fight COVID. Maybe in 2024?