4 ms·

GoF on pathogens that couldn't possibly cause a human pandemic (including viruses that don't infect humans, or anything replication-incompetent) seems much less

GoF on pathogens that couldn't possibly cause a human pandemic (including viruses that don't infect humans, or anything replication-incompetent) seems much less risky to me, and I believe that was excluded from the 2014 restrictions. It may still present some risk, to the extent it would guide later practitioners working in replication-competent human pathogens, with or without malicious intent. I generally dislike the framing of the debate in terms of a "GoF ban", which is why I chose the phrase "high-risk research" and qualified GoF to potential pandemic pathogens. I'm aware that very few people are going to understand this nuance; but that's the reason why practitioners need to competently regulate themselves, instead of leaving this to an uninformed mob. That said, there's zero question that DEFUSE proposed to collect and enhance replication-competent potential human pandemic pathogens. That proposal wasn't funded, and that proposal indeed anticipated that the GoF work would be done at UNC; but the WIV seems clearly capable of that work too. We don't know what happened next, and I believe we should do everything in our power to find out. If possible, that would occur with China's cooperation; but since that seems impossible for now, it should proceed without. For example, large amounts of raw sequencer reads exist on the servers of American and European research groups and their service providers. Those should be subpoenaed, and searched for evidence of early SARS-CoV-2 genomes as contamination, similar to that found in the Antarctic soil samples. Do you disagree? I also dislike the framing in terms of "GoF ban" because I agree fully that nature may present a greater risk than anything we could make in a lab. It seems entirely plausible to me that right now, there are viruses deep inside some cave that could end human life as we know it, but that we've simply been lucky enough that the virus has never left the cave. But how could that possibly be a reason to send some grad student into the cave? From pictures and videos of WIV sampling trips, they were sending researchers in with no protection beyond a surgical mask and nitrile gloves. That seems insane to me. If humans will be entering an area regardless--for agriculture, or tourism, or whatever else--then I agree we should be sampling it. But why should we go looking for trouble in areas that no other human is likely to approach? You keep saying that virology brings potential benefits, and that's obviously true. It also brings potential detriments though, including research-origin pandemics, and it's done so at least once in the past. I see no evidence that you're making anything like a cost/benefit tradeoff here; you're simply disregarding all the costs, somehow classifying deaths quite directly caused by research activities as "natural" and thus unimportant. That's not how anything else in life works--if I'm careless with my campsite, then the resulting wildfire may be indistinguishable from one set by lightning, but the ranger is still going to say it's my fault. I have no special affection for Ridley, though I still prefer him to the author of the article you linked, who called Alina Chan a "moronic psychopath"[1]. In any case, the messenger shouldn't matter. As to the narrow question of investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2, I believe Ridley is right and you're dangerously wrong. You've correctly shut down some genuine nonsense here (e.g., Moderna patents on the sequence). You've also posted at least two unequivocal falsehoods yourself though (WIV situated based on diversity of nearby relevant viruses, no prior unnatural pandemic), and presented other evidence in much stronger terms than any scientific consensus (e.g., the two lineages; George Gao[2] thinks they probably evolved in humans, and I presume you're not going to call him a lab leak conspiracist). I don't see how that enhances public knowledge. 1. https://twitter.com/PhilippMarkolin/status/1520857511296999424 https://twitter.com/PhilippMarkolin/status/15208575112969994... 2. https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1497627179965845506?lang=en https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1497627179965845506?la...

mikeyouse 4y ago
Gao's work on the location of samples was greatly helpful - his other work...eh... in that paper you linked, he actually references papers speculating that Covid was in Brazil in 2019 and to a paper that takes seriously the idea that Covid was in Barcelona in March 2019 (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...). I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the world, and acknowledging that the animal trade caused yet another pandemic would be politically damaging. WIV was established before the concept of of bat coronaviruses could exist - so technically they are in Wuhan because some cutting edge communist insect research was there -- but in the support for the lab post-SARS, they were repeatedly promoted (mainly by the Chinese government so take with a grain of salt) due to their expertise, familiarity and proximity to bat populations. Hubei is consistently listed in the lists of areas with needs for increased viral surveillance alongside Yunnan and Guangong -- the earliest post-SARS work all shows this. As recently as 2019, scientists from the WIV were researching Hubei bat populations... people are acting like it would be completely impossible for betacoronaviruses to show up in Wuhan but it's a misconception that dishonest people are happy to promote. There are tons of coronaviruses in China, and tons of them in Hubei/Henan/Shaanxi area, it's clearly more likely that a new strain comes out of the Laos/Yunnan area since that's where SARS1 came from and they seem better adapted to human crossover, but with migration patterns and the history of virus collection there, it's not that unlikely for a Hubei-centered virus to exist and it only takes a single strain to cause a pandemic. The fire analogy is a good one -- of course it's your fault if your campsite causes a wildfire -- but now we're talking about the nuts and bolts of forest management to prevent any fire from turning into a wildfire. Loosely, much GoF work is akin to controlled burns, or maybe closer to studying fire dynamics by burning overgrown areas. Potentially dangerous but likely useful when "the real thing" happens. In any case, this thread is a bit stale, but I'm sure it'll just be a few weeks before some new conspiracy theory has started and all of the same tired tropes get to be knocked down again.
- tripletao 4y ago
  > I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the world, [...] George Gao is clearly beholden to the CCP's official story that SARS-CoV-2 originated outside China. I don't see why that would require him to disregard strong genomic evidence for two introductions into the market, though--he could simply propose two packages of frozen fish, or two of whatever other story they're claiming now. In my own limited judgment, I don't see what in the genomic evidence excludes evolution of the two lineages in humans--it seems entirely possible to me that sampling of human cases simply wasn't thorough enough to pick up all intermediates (if they even exist). None of your responses address that question of sampling coverage. I also see many highly-credentialed experts who consider evolution in humans to be possible. This makes me believe that you, Worobey, and quite a lot of media headlines are greatly over-representing the significance of two lineages separated by two SNPs. > As recently as 2019, scientists from the WIV were researching Hubei bat populations... people are acting like it would be completely impossible for betacoronaviruses to show up in Wuhan but it's a misconception that dishonest people are happy to promote. Non-specialists often use sloppy language, but the important question is clearly one of probabilities, not of possibility vs. impossibility. The greatest diversity of SARS-like viruses lies in SW China and SE Asia, including BANAL-20-52 with its extremely close spike, closer than omicron is to the original Wuhan virus. That SARS-CoV-2 spilled over in Wuhan certainly isn't dispositive evidence of unnatural origin, but it's not what anyone expected. It would be nice if you could make that clear when you correct people. > Loosely, much GoF work is akin to controlled burns, I used that analogy in another comment here--when a recent controlled burn in New Mexico got out of control and destroyed hundreds of homes, everyone involved realized they'd screwed up. They're forming committees to understand what went wrong, and to compensate the victims, and to change their practices so this doesn't happen again. If a disastrous controlled burn somehow killed 700k people, then I'm not sure the practice would ever be re-attempted. And yet the 1977 flu pandemic did just that, and no one really noticed or cared. Don't you find that remarkable?

mikeyouse 4y ago

Gao's work on the location of samples was greatly helpful - his other work...eh... in that paper you linked, he actually references papers speculating that Covid was in Brazil in 2019 and to a paper that takes seriously the idea that Covid was in Barcelona in March 2019 (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...). I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the world, and acknowledging that the animal trade caused yet another pandemic would be politically damaging. WIV was established before the concept of of bat coronaviruses could exist - so technically they are in Wuhan because some cutting edge communist insect research was there -- but in the support for the lab post-SARS, they were repeatedly promoted (mainly by the Chinese government so take with a grain of salt) due to their expertise, familiarity and proximity to bat populations. Hubei is consistently listed in the lists of areas with needs for increased viral surveillance alongside Yunnan and Guangong -- the earliest post-SARS work all shows this. As recently as 2019, scientists from the WIV were researching Hubei bat populations... people are acting like it would be completely impossible for betacoronaviruses to show up in Wuhan but it's a misconception that dishonest people are happy to promote. There are tons of coronaviruses in China, and tons of them in Hubei/Henan/Shaanxi area, it's clearly more likely that a new strain comes out of the Laos/Yunnan area since that's where SARS1 came from and they seem better adapted to human crossover, but with migration patterns and the history of virus collection there, it's not that unlikely for a Hubei-centered virus to exist and it only takes a single strain to cause a pandemic. The fire analogy is a good one -- of course it's your fault if your campsite causes a wildfire -- but now we're talking about the nuts and bolts of forest management to prevent any fire from turning into a wildfire. Loosely, much GoF work is akin to controlled burns, or maybe closer to studying fire dynamics by burning overgrown areas. Potentially dangerous but likely useful when "the real thing" happens. In any case, this thread is a bit stale, but I'm sure it'll just be a few weeks before some new conspiracy theory has started and all of the same tired tropes get to be knocked down again.

tripletao 4y ago
> I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the world, [...] George Gao is clearly beholden to the CCP's official story that SARS-CoV-2 originated outside China. I don't see why that would require him to disregard strong genomic evidence for two introductions into the market, though--he could simply propose two packages of frozen fish, or two of whatever other story they're claiming now. In my own limited judgment, I don't see what in the genomic evidence excludes evolution of the two lineages in humans--it seems entirely possible to me that sampling of human cases simply wasn't thorough enough to pick up all intermediates (if they even exist). None of your responses address that question of sampling coverage. I also see many highly-credentialed experts who consider evolution in humans to be possible. This makes me believe that you, Worobey, and quite a lot of media headlines are greatly over-representing the significance of two lineages separated by two SNPs. > As recently as 2019, scientists from the WIV were researching Hubei bat populations... people are acting like it would be completely impossible for betacoronaviruses to show up in Wuhan but it's a misconception that dishonest people are happy to promote. Non-specialists often use sloppy language, but the important question is clearly one of probabilities, not of possibility vs. impossibility. The greatest diversity of SARS-like viruses lies in SW China and SE Asia, including BANAL-20-52 with its extremely close spike, closer than omicron is to the original Wuhan virus. That SARS-CoV-2 spilled over in Wuhan certainly isn't dispositive evidence of unnatural origin, but it's not what anyone expected. It would be nice if you could make that clear when you correct people. > Loosely, much GoF work is akin to controlled burns, I used that analogy in another comment here--when a recent controlled burn in New Mexico got out of control and destroyed hundreds of homes, everyone involved realized they'd screwed up. They're forming committees to understand what went wrong, and to compensate the victims, and to change their practices so this doesn't happen again. If a disastrous controlled burn somehow killed 700k people, then I'm not sure the practice would ever be re-attempted. And yet the 1977 flu pandemic did just that, and no one really noticed or cared. Don't you find that remarkable?