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I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doe

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the world in every airport before anyone has even identified it. So in the big picture this type of outbreak seems inevitable, not anomalous or inherently preventable. Understanding the origin, either by cross-species origination or a laboratory containment breach, is indeed important and significant and should be pursued, but I also understand why the search for that answer isn't at the top of the 24-hour news cycle.

Trufa 4y ago
Concerning number 1) that is doesn’t change the Consequence I agree, but the response I thoroughly disagree unless you means strictly short term. Came or not from a lab, SynBio and gain of functions experiments have the potential of re-doing this of way worse. So basically the only truly important response that is not damage containment is to prevent this from happening (or happen again). Honestly beside fringe groups I don’t see any initiatives happening, if it was up to me I’d kick gain of function experiments into the same realm as chemical weapons.
- closeparen 4y ago
  There are a variety of natural phenomena and human activities that are liable to create new dangerous viruses and/or bring humans into contact with them. Gain of function research presumably belongs in this category; so do certain food and livestock handling practices, development at the wildland-urban interface, climate change, and a host of other things. The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating. Nature breeds extremely serious viruses all by herself; a depressing possibility here is that humans just don't have that much influence over the risk of another pandemic no matter what we do.
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    > The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating. If only we had responded this way to the virus.
- stetrain 4y ago
  I meant how we were dealing with COVID-19 as it spread, not future consequences which I agree do matter. Once we identified and sequenced the virus, knowing the origin wasn't going to change how many people were on ventilators in hospitals.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
user3939382 4y ago
I guess I'm more cynical, maybe even conspiratorial. My theory is that NIH was possibly, even if indirectly, contributing funding to the research that caused the outbreak, and that the major corporate media networks are there to shill for the establishment forces in the government and hushed this story as not to humiliate Fauci and the NIH. I've seen Rand Paul credibly grilling Fauci on this issue a number of times and each time, the propaganda machine on reddit came out to damage control for Fauci. The larger problem, beyond whether we funded this or not, whether or not it was a bat, is that the media and leaders in the government have repeatedly shown themselves to be completely undeserving of trust and so you're left guessing what the truth is with whatever limited information you have access to.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- generj 4y ago
  Rand Paul isn’t credible on nearly any topic, but especially not SARS-CoV-2. We are talking about a man who proposed banning masks on public transit, knew he had COVID but didn’t inform anyone but instead spread COVID amongst a bunch of elderly Senators, and spent time railing against vaccines for children. The man is a non-practicing eye doctor who pretends to medical knowledge he doesn’t have.
  - slater 4y ago
    Especially when you look into how he got his license. IIRC, something about a layman/self-appointed board, or something similar (allegedly!)
  - user3939382 4y ago
    When you're an MD for eyes or anything else, you can criticize his medical knowledge. Who cares if he specialized in eyes? He spent 2 decades as a surgeon. He obviously has more medical knowledge than most of Congress. He's very credible on the discussions I referred to. Fauci basically sat there squirming and splitting hairs and playing semantic games to weasel his way out of admitting the NIH's involvement in the research going on at the Wuhan lab. My guess is you have some ideological axe to grind against Rand Paul or the right, that's just a guess, I could be wrong.
hammock 4y ago
> I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. You list some reasons, and I have in my mind a different reason. There was a media blackout on the lab leak hypothesis because China put the kibosh on it, and since the US is dependent on Chinese exports for healthcare, PPE, defense and other critical supply lines, we did not want to piss them off. Direction to the media for this blackout came from the US State Dept, and Mike Pompeo confirmed as much in semi-public comments that I will link if I ever find them again. edit: this isn't the source I was thinking of, and it fingers the IC not State. I will keep looking https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-lab-leak-cover-1597494 https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-l...
127 4y ago
Wasn't SARS-1 stopped largely with contact tracing? You're saying that understanding the origin of the virus does not help the production of a vaccine in any way?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Big difference between the two: with SARS-1 you first got symptoms then become contagious, with COVID-19 it was the other way around. Obviously the second one is much harder to control, and if that had not been the case there is a fair chance that the pandemic would have been stopped in the initial phase.
- stetrain 4y ago
  Knowing where the virus is, how it spreads, and its genetic sequence are of course important. But I don't think CNN running segments about whether it came from a lab or a bat in 2020-2021 would have helped with any of those points.
ShannonLimiter 4y ago
> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airborne. This ended up being false. If this was a lab leak, it means that this kind of research is far more dangerous than we've been lead to believe and continuing without appropriate safeguards puts us at great risk.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > That could have saved millions of lives But that still doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic. That's coulda-woulda-shoulda reasoning.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    Of course it does. It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research.
    - corrral 4y ago
      > It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research. I think the point is that neither of those would have had an effect on the pandemic. By the time it was major news in the US, it was too late for any of that to matter in terms of what to do about this pandemic. Not the next one, or our future relations with China, but with this pandemic.
      - _aavaa_ 4y ago
        A) I guess I interpreted "consequences" more generally to also include the consequences beyond the disease itself. B) I still believe that it would have been important. If it escaped from a lab, then those working in the lab could potentially have important information to share with the world about it. E.g. is it airborne, how much does it mutate, etc. They would have been studying it for a reason.
fleddr 4y ago
Your "no priority" stance doesn't hold ground if the article is to be believed. The lab leak theory wasn't just low on the agenda, it was actively avoid altogether.
daxfohl 4y ago
I don't even think it's that different from nuclear. The fact that Iraq had no WMDs (and I have doubts that anybody in the intelligence community really thought they did) got swept under the rug too, after a ton of civilian deaths there and military deaths on both sides. People just make stuff up and then it's too late.
dpbriggs 4y ago
We already had intense media speculation about the source of the virus at the start of the pandemic because _people wanted to know_. It would have been nice to have a proper investigation at the start of the pandemic as they may have caught evidence before it could have been destroyed.
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  This proper investigation would never have happened. China started a trade war with Australia for promoting an independent international investigation. I think the fact that China is willing to go to bat (pun intended) over this is a great argument for international sanctions no matter the origin, but I'm just a nobody on the internet.
remflight 4y ago
> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic What??? I honestly expect more from HN readers than blatant china-apologists. OF COURSE it changes the consequences! We tell China to hand over all research and distribute it to scientists around the world so that research doesn’t start from ground 0. If it could have accelerated understanding of the virus by several months, imagine how many lives could have been saved! Instead China deleted all their files and kept quiet. They literally don’t care about millions of deaths.
- stetrain 4y ago
  My understanding is that we did not start from ground zero, already had a large scientific understanding of similar coronaviruses, had the virus sequenced very quickly, and then proceeded to get a vaccine tested and to market in a historic record-breaking amount of time. Of course we should research the origin and, if a research lab was the source, take action to prevent it happening again. I'm not saying there should be no consequences, just countering the article which comes off as "why isn't this the number one priority??"
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
Thank you for posting this. We know that COVID couldn't have come from China. It came to China through frozen meat packages. WHO-China report already stated that fact. Dr. Fauci also believes that. The only reason we can't find evidence because other countries wouldn't collaborate, for obvious reasons. Racists are trying to blame China because of lack of competence of their leaders.
- tgv 4y ago
  > Racists There's the exact reason "why it wasn't a media fixation": people calling anyone a racist for thinking bad of China.
- imiric 4y ago
  > WHO-China report already stated that fact. "China said so, so it must be true."
- kaitaincps 4y ago
  Excellent satire. Please post more.
- stetrain 4y ago
  My comment says nothing about whether or not China or a lab leak was the source.

Trufa 4y ago

Concerning number 1) that is doesn’t change the Consequence I agree, but the response I thoroughly disagree unless you means strictly short term. Came or not from a lab, SynBio and gain of functions experiments have the potential of re-doing this of way worse. So basically the only truly important response that is not damage containment is to prevent this from happening (or happen again). Honestly beside fringe groups I don’t see any initiatives happening, if it was up to me I’d kick gain of function experiments into the same realm as chemical weapons.

closeparen 4y ago
There are a variety of natural phenomena and human activities that are liable to create new dangerous viruses and/or bring humans into contact with them. Gain of function research presumably belongs in this category; so do certain food and livestock handling practices, development at the wildland-urban interface, climate change, and a host of other things. The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating. Nature breeds extremely serious viruses all by herself; a depressing possibility here is that humans just don't have that much influence over the risk of another pandemic no matter what we do.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  > The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating. If only we had responded this way to the virus.
stetrain 4y ago
I meant how we were dealing with COVID-19 as it spread, not future consequences which I agree do matter. Once we identified and sequenced the virus, knowing the origin wasn't going to change how many people were on ventilators in hospitals.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

user3939382 4y ago

I guess I'm more cynical, maybe even conspiratorial. My theory is that NIH was possibly, even if indirectly, contributing funding to the research that caused the outbreak, and that the major corporate media networks are there to shill for the establishment forces in the government and hushed this story as not to humiliate Fauci and the NIH. I've seen Rand Paul credibly grilling Fauci on this issue a number of times and each time, the propaganda machine on reddit came out to damage control for Fauci. The larger problem, beyond whether we funded this or not, whether or not it was a bat, is that the media and leaders in the government have repeatedly shown themselves to be completely undeserving of trust and so you're left guessing what the truth is with whatever limited information you have access to.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
generj 4y ago
Rand Paul isn’t credible on nearly any topic, but especially not SARS-CoV-2. We are talking about a man who proposed banning masks on public transit, knew he had COVID but didn’t inform anyone but instead spread COVID amongst a bunch of elderly Senators, and spent time railing against vaccines for children. The man is a non-practicing eye doctor who pretends to medical knowledge he doesn’t have.
- slater 4y ago
  Especially when you look into how he got his license. IIRC, something about a layman/self-appointed board, or something similar (allegedly!)
- user3939382 4y ago
  When you're an MD for eyes or anything else, you can criticize his medical knowledge. Who cares if he specialized in eyes? He spent 2 decades as a surgeon. He obviously has more medical knowledge than most of Congress. He's very credible on the discussions I referred to. Fauci basically sat there squirming and splitting hairs and playing semantic games to weasel his way out of admitting the NIH's involvement in the research going on at the Wuhan lab. My guess is you have some ideological axe to grind against Rand Paul or the right, that's just a guess, I could be wrong.

hammock 4y ago

> I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. You list some reasons, and I have in my mind a different reason. There was a media blackout on the lab leak hypothesis because China put the kibosh on it, and since the US is dependent on Chinese exports for healthcare, PPE, defense and other critical supply lines, we did not want to piss them off. Direction to the media for this blackout came from the US State Dept, and Mike Pompeo confirmed as much in semi-public comments that I will link if I ever find them again. edit: this isn't the source I was thinking of, and it fingers the IC not State. I will keep looking https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-lab-leak-cover-1597494 https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-l...

127 4y ago

Wasn't SARS-1 stopped largely with contact tracing? You're saying that understanding the origin of the virus does not help the production of a vaccine in any way?

jacquesm 4y ago
Big difference between the two: with SARS-1 you first got symptoms then become contagious, with COVID-19 it was the other way around. Obviously the second one is much harder to control, and if that had not been the case there is a fair chance that the pandemic would have been stopped in the initial phase.
stetrain 4y ago
Knowing where the virus is, how it spreads, and its genetic sequence are of course important. But I don't think CNN running segments about whether it came from a lab or a bat in 2020-2021 would have helped with any of those points.

ShannonLimiter 4y ago

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airborne. This ended up being false. If this was a lab leak, it means that this kind of research is far more dangerous than we've been lead to believe and continuing without appropriate safeguards puts us at great risk.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> That could have saved millions of lives But that still doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic. That's coulda-woulda-shoulda reasoning.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  Of course it does. It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research.
  - corrral 4y ago
    > It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research. I think the point is that neither of those would have had an effect on the pandemic. By the time it was major news in the US, it was too late for any of that to matter in terms of what to do about this pandemic. Not the next one, or our future relations with China, but with this pandemic.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      A) I guess I interpreted "consequences" more generally to also include the consequences beyond the disease itself. B) I still believe that it would have been important. If it escaped from a lab, then those working in the lab could potentially have important information to share with the world about it. E.g. is it airborne, how much does it mutate, etc. They would have been studying it for a reason.

fleddr 4y ago

Your "no priority" stance doesn't hold ground if the article is to be believed. The lab leak theory wasn't just low on the agenda, it was actively avoid altogether.

daxfohl 4y ago

I don't even think it's that different from nuclear. The fact that Iraq had no WMDs (and I have doubts that anybody in the intelligence community really thought they did) got swept under the rug too, after a ton of civilian deaths there and military deaths on both sides. People just make stuff up and then it's too late.

dpbriggs 4y ago

We already had intense media speculation about the source of the virus at the start of the pandemic because _people wanted to know_. It would have been nice to have a proper investigation at the start of the pandemic as they may have caught evidence before it could have been destroyed.

ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
This proper investigation would never have happened. China started a trade war with Australia for promoting an independent international investigation. I think the fact that China is willing to go to bat (pun intended) over this is a great argument for international sanctions no matter the origin, but I'm just a nobody on the internet.

remflight 4y ago

> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic What??? I honestly expect more from HN readers than blatant china-apologists. OF COURSE it changes the consequences! We tell China to hand over all research and distribute it to scientists around the world so that research doesn’t start from ground 0. If it could have accelerated understanding of the virus by several months, imagine how many lives could have been saved! Instead China deleted all their files and kept quiet. They literally don’t care about millions of deaths.

stetrain 4y ago
My understanding is that we did not start from ground zero, already had a large scientific understanding of similar coronaviruses, had the virus sequenced very quickly, and then proceeded to get a vaccine tested and to market in a historic record-breaking amount of time. Of course we should research the origin and, if a research lab was the source, take action to prevent it happening again. I'm not saying there should be no consequences, just countering the article which comes off as "why isn't this the number one priority??"

johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago

Thank you for posting this. We know that COVID couldn't have come from China. It came to China through frozen meat packages. WHO-China report already stated that fact. Dr. Fauci also believes that. The only reason we can't find evidence because other countries wouldn't collaborate, for obvious reasons. Racists are trying to blame China because of lack of competence of their leaders.

tgv 4y ago
> Racists There's the exact reason "why it wasn't a media fixation": people calling anyone a racist for thinking bad of China.
imiric 4y ago
> WHO-China report already stated that fact. "China said so, so it must be true."
kaitaincps 4y ago
Excellent satire. Please post more.
stetrain 4y ago
My comment says nothing about whether or not China or a lab leak was the source.