3 ms·

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 Covi

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?
rory 4y ago
Man, it's really strange that you're spending days late-replying to anyone that voices any idea outside your narrow and unsubstantiated narrative of the pandemic. I'm not going to continue to argue (here or to your replies to my comments) about the science at this point, but I'll say this. There is no question whatsoever that there has been a conspiracy within the Chinese government and institutions to prevent public exposure of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 (whatever that may be). They've destroyed data, halted investigations, literally blocked roads to prevent it from being discovered. So slinging mud around calling hypotheses that involve no additional conspiracy beyond the one we know to exist "conspiracy theories" is completely ridiculous and out of touch with reality. If you actually want to have constructive conversations, start by throwing that garbage out of your replies.

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?

rory 4y ago

Man, it's really strange that you're spending days late-replying to anyone that voices any idea outside your narrow and unsubstantiated narrative of the pandemic. I'm not going to continue to argue (here or to your replies to my comments) about the science at this point, but I'll say this. There is no question whatsoever that there has been a conspiracy within the Chinese government and institutions to prevent public exposure of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 (whatever that may be). They've destroyed data, halted investigations, literally blocked roads to prevent it from being discovered. So slinging mud around calling hypotheses that involve no additional conspiracy beyond the one we know to exist "conspiracy theories" is completely ridiculous and out of touch with reality. If you actually want to have constructive conversations, start by throwing that garbage out of your replies.