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If it was a lab leak, presumably the people at the Wuhan lab would have DNA sequences on the coronavirus strains they were experimenting with. Even if they were

If it was a lab leak, presumably the people at the Wuhan lab would have DNA sequences on the coronavirus strains they were experimenting with. Even if they weren't doing this on a regular basis one would have to imagine that they would have inventoried and sequenced the coronavirus samples they had in their lab soon after COVID-19 was identified in the public.

dada78641 5y ago
This is what I always found difficult to reconcile with the idea of it being a lab leak. We know what viruses the lab was working with, and SARS-CoV-2 wasn't one of them. If the outbreak came from their lab, why was the virus completely unknown to them? It's a science institute that was openly publishing its findings like any other. It couldn't have been pre-emptively covered up either, unless they knew ahead of time this virus was going to leak (that is to say, they leaked it intentionally) and then we're no longer in reality. Maybe there's something I'm missing, and please explain it to me if you can, but with that in mind I never quite got how the lab leak idea can add up.
- tripletao 5y ago
  Very few research groups in any field have published everything they're working on. Sometimes that's a deliberate choice, to avoid enabling rivals; but even when you're trying to be as open as you can, it takes time to write stuff up. The WIV has claimed that they'd published sequences for all the viruses they were working with. But in the same way that the Hungarian team found SARS-CoV-2 contamination in Antarctic soil just now, a different team found a novel Merbecovirus in a rice dataset from a different group in Wuhan: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01533 https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01533 That Merbecovirus couldn't possibly be an ancestor of SARS-CoV-2; but if the WIV had one unpublished virus, then it gets harder to claim it's ridiculous to think they had more. The WIV also had a database of viral genomes, available as a public website. That website went offline around September 2019. The WIV has cited "hacking attempts" as the reason why access was removed. They've made no attempt to restore access in any form, including those that obviously present no information security risk (e.g., a dump on a flash drive). https://zenodo.org/record/4512260 https://zenodo.org/record/4512260
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I think this is the relevant line of inquiry. >We know what viruses the lab was working with, and SARS-CoV-2 wasn't one of them. Do we really know what was being worked with at the time of outbreak? Plenty of published literature exists for the years leading up to the outbreak. It shows that they were working with viruses with all of the component parts of CoV-19. Their published research also shows that they were genetically combing these viruses so that they can cross species barriers and testing their ability to infect and spread in living models. There were publications as recent as October 2019 where they were modifying chicken corona viruses with engineered furian binding sites very similar to that of CoV-19 so that they could cross the species barrier. The question then becomes how much data typically gets shared for projects in progress before publication. I don't know what this standard practice is here. The most informative post I have seen on the topic was shared back in April 2020 here on HN [1] https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
abracadaniel 5y ago
They would have samples of every step of the experiments, which would also be perfect for faking the discovery of the missing link to the last known wild type. You just take one of the samples and claim to have found it in a pangolin or whatever, and prove your innocence. The fact that they they didn’t do that, suggests they couldn’t.
api 5y ago
Presumably. Have you ever seen what a complete disaster some academic and large corporate projects can be? NASA lost the original Apollo data tapes for example. Large organizations are usually clusterfucks.

dada78641 5y ago

This is what I always found difficult to reconcile with the idea of it being a lab leak. We know what viruses the lab was working with, and SARS-CoV-2 wasn't one of them. If the outbreak came from their lab, why was the virus completely unknown to them? It's a science institute that was openly publishing its findings like any other. It couldn't have been pre-emptively covered up either, unless they knew ahead of time this virus was going to leak (that is to say, they leaked it intentionally) and then we're no longer in reality. Maybe there's something I'm missing, and please explain it to me if you can, but with that in mind I never quite got how the lab leak idea can add up.

tripletao 5y ago
Very few research groups in any field have published everything they're working on. Sometimes that's a deliberate choice, to avoid enabling rivals; but even when you're trying to be as open as you can, it takes time to write stuff up. The WIV has claimed that they'd published sequences for all the viruses they were working with. But in the same way that the Hungarian team found SARS-CoV-2 contamination in Antarctic soil just now, a different team found a novel Merbecovirus in a rice dataset from a different group in Wuhan: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01533 https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01533 That Merbecovirus couldn't possibly be an ancestor of SARS-CoV-2; but if the WIV had one unpublished virus, then it gets harder to claim it's ridiculous to think they had more. The WIV also had a database of viral genomes, available as a public website. That website went offline around September 2019. The WIV has cited "hacking attempts" as the reason why access was removed. They've made no attempt to restore access in any form, including those that obviously present no information security risk (e.g., a dump on a flash drive). https://zenodo.org/record/4512260 https://zenodo.org/record/4512260
s1artibartfast 5y ago
I think this is the relevant line of inquiry. >We know what viruses the lab was working with, and SARS-CoV-2 wasn't one of them. Do we really know what was being worked with at the time of outbreak? Plenty of published literature exists for the years leading up to the outbreak. It shows that they were working with viruses with all of the component parts of CoV-19. Their published research also shows that they were genetically combing these viruses so that they can cross species barriers and testing their ability to infect and spread in living models. There were publications as recent as October 2019 where they were modifying chicken corona viruses with engineered furian binding sites very similar to that of CoV-19 so that they could cross the species barrier. The question then becomes how much data typically gets shared for projects in progress before publication. I don't know what this standard practice is here. The most informative post I have seen on the topic was shared back in April 2020 here on HN [1] https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

abracadaniel 5y ago

They would have samples of every step of the experiments, which would also be perfect for faking the discovery of the missing link to the last known wild type. You just take one of the samples and claim to have found it in a pangolin or whatever, and prove your innocence. The fact that they they didn’t do that, suggests they couldn’t.

api 5y ago

Presumably. Have you ever seen what a complete disaster some academic and large corporate projects can be? NASA lost the original Apollo data tapes for example. Large organizations are usually clusterfucks.