5 ms·

In Dr. Birx's recently released book she claims to have known it came from a lab origin from the start, based on evolutionary reasoning. As she describes: A vir

In Dr. Birx's recently released book she claims to have known it came from a lab origin from the start, based on evolutionary reasoning. As she describes: A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. But covid was extremely effective at infecting humans "right out of the box." In a lab environment the virus is repeatedly exposed to human cells and gets better at infecting human cells with each iteration. Evolutionary biologist Heather Heying similarly reasoned the origin of the virus through an understanding of evolution. Covid doesn't appear to transmit outside. If covid evolved naturally, it would be capable of spreading outside, where animals live. Instead, it appeared to evolve to spread in lab-like air conditioned conditions only.

lamontcg 4y ago
> In a lab environment the virus is repeatedly exposed to human cells and gets better at infecting human cells with each iteration. That is just replicating what nature does when it hops from individual to individual. Nature has billions of animals to do serial passage through. And we still don't know that the species jump happened in the market, and I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims of this author. I tend to think it was circulating in rural Hubei, probably coinfecting domestic animals and people, getting better and better at infecting people until the market event happened which was where it found a densely packed human population where it spread with R0 significantly greater than 1 and took off. There's no evidence of that though because when the grandparents of farmers in rural villages die of pneumonia nobody bothers collecting samples because that's normal. And we only noticed it when it started to efficiently infect human beings because that is when the pandemic started. The initial poor cryptic spread between humans and animals before that wouldn't have been detected because poor spreading couldn't cause the pandemic to start. And we know that its possible for the virus to jump backwards and forwards between humans and minks, so the idea that an intermediate animal reservoir would have been infected with this virus and would have repeatedly attempted to jump to farm workers until it finally got good at spreading in humans is not that far fetched at all. Then the intermediate animal host becomes a massive bioreactor in close contact with humans, giving it many opportunities to roll the dice until it finds a combination that unlocks its pandemic potential, and then the first time it was transported into a dense human population it takes off. There could be a hundred other viruses in animals in China all knocking on the door, occasionally infecting humans and not being good at it all right now, happening every day in China. This one was very good at infecting humans, along with being very good at infecting all kinds of other animals (mink, deer, dogs, cats, etc) because in order to cause a pandemic it had to be good at that, if it was bad at that it wouldn't have happened. It is like the anthropic principle--the virus seems incredibly lucky, because it had to be.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  It would actually be extremely unlikely for a virus that is "medium good at spreading to humans" to stay in an isolated location, especially one that spreads asymptomatically.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    If it spreads asymptomatically though isn't that "good" at spreading rather than "medium"? SARS-1 disn't have a presymptomatic infectious phase and the peak of symptoms was roughly the peak of infectiousness, and it was mostly severely virulent, and it didn't produce a global pandemic and was controllable. To have an uncontrollable pandemic you really need that silent spreading, so the pandemic virus that emerges necessarily has that property from the "start".
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      How does a virus that's pretty good at spreading through humans but not yet amazing at spreading through humans stay in an isolated region for months or even years?
      - mcguire 4y ago
        What does "isolated region" mean to you?
        Consultant32452 4y ago
        The example given by the other poster is rural Hubei.
      - lamontcg 4y ago
        I don't think it would, and I don't know why you'd think I'm suggesting that.
        4y ago
sigma_ligma 4y ago
> A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. This sounds like pure speculation. How much actual data do we have on viruses that just made the jump from animals to humans? Probably nowhere near the amount needed to confidently say that the original Wuhan strain was somehow too infectious to realistically be of natural origin. As for getting better at infecting humans over time, covid _has_ done that. Whatever omicron subvariant we're on could run circles around the original strain without breaking a sweat. > If covid evolved naturally, it would be capable of spreading outside, where animals live. Instead, it appeared to evolve to spread in lab-like air conditioned conditions only. Did she make an actual quantitative comparison between the infectiousness of covid and other respiratory viruses, inside versus outside?
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  Before her book was released, when Dr. Birx was going along with the natural origin story that was being pushed by the government, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has recently been saying in interviews that the only masks that work are N95/KN95. When he was pushing cloth masks, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has said, under oath, that when he was saying the vaccines would stop the spread he was just expressing a hope that would be the case. Dr. Birx says in her book she knew it would not stop the spread. When they were saying it would stop the spread, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?"
  - sigma_ligma 4y ago
    Why are replies like this so frustratingly common when I engage with the "covid conspiracy theorist" crowd? I asked for empirical evidence and you responded with a massive self-righteous rant calling me a hypocrite because you _think_ I hold certain views. So what if I'm a hyprocrite, does that mean they're right? No, it doesn't, so your comment is nothing more than a drawn-out ad hominem attack.
    - Consultant32452 4y ago

lamontcg 4y ago

> In a lab environment the virus is repeatedly exposed to human cells and gets better at infecting human cells with each iteration. That is just replicating what nature does when it hops from individual to individual. Nature has billions of animals to do serial passage through. And we still don't know that the species jump happened in the market, and I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims of this author. I tend to think it was circulating in rural Hubei, probably coinfecting domestic animals and people, getting better and better at infecting people until the market event happened which was where it found a densely packed human population where it spread with R0 significantly greater than 1 and took off. There's no evidence of that though because when the grandparents of farmers in rural villages die of pneumonia nobody bothers collecting samples because that's normal. And we only noticed it when it started to efficiently infect human beings because that is when the pandemic started. The initial poor cryptic spread between humans and animals before that wouldn't have been detected because poor spreading couldn't cause the pandemic to start. And we know that its possible for the virus to jump backwards and forwards between humans and minks, so the idea that an intermediate animal reservoir would have been infected with this virus and would have repeatedly attempted to jump to farm workers until it finally got good at spreading in humans is not that far fetched at all. Then the intermediate animal host becomes a massive bioreactor in close contact with humans, giving it many opportunities to roll the dice until it finds a combination that unlocks its pandemic potential, and then the first time it was transported into a dense human population it takes off. There could be a hundred other viruses in animals in China all knocking on the door, occasionally infecting humans and not being good at it all right now, happening every day in China. This one was very good at infecting humans, along with being very good at infecting all kinds of other animals (mink, deer, dogs, cats, etc) because in order to cause a pandemic it had to be good at that, if it was bad at that it wouldn't have happened. It is like the anthropic principle--the virus seems incredibly lucky, because it had to be.

Consultant32452 4y ago
It would actually be extremely unlikely for a virus that is "medium good at spreading to humans" to stay in an isolated location, especially one that spreads asymptomatically.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  If it spreads asymptomatically though isn't that "good" at spreading rather than "medium"? SARS-1 disn't have a presymptomatic infectious phase and the peak of symptoms was roughly the peak of infectiousness, and it was mostly severely virulent, and it didn't produce a global pandemic and was controllable. To have an uncontrollable pandemic you really need that silent spreading, so the pandemic virus that emerges necessarily has that property from the "start".
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    How does a virus that's pretty good at spreading through humans but not yet amazing at spreading through humans stay in an isolated region for months or even years?
    - mcguire 4y ago
      What does "isolated region" mean to you?
      - Consultant32452 4y ago
        The example given by the other poster is rural Hubei.
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      I don't think it would, and I don't know why you'd think I'm suggesting that.
      - 4y ago

sigma_ligma 4y ago

> A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. This sounds like pure speculation. How much actual data do we have on viruses that just made the jump from animals to humans? Probably nowhere near the amount needed to confidently say that the original Wuhan strain was somehow too infectious to realistically be of natural origin. As for getting better at infecting humans over time, covid _has_ done that. Whatever omicron subvariant we're on could run circles around the original strain without breaking a sweat. > If covid evolved naturally, it would be capable of spreading outside, where animals live. Instead, it appeared to evolve to spread in lab-like air conditioned conditions only. Did she make an actual quantitative comparison between the infectiousness of covid and other respiratory viruses, inside versus outside?

Consultant32452 4y ago
Before her book was released, when Dr. Birx was going along with the natural origin story that was being pushed by the government, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has recently been saying in interviews that the only masks that work are N95/KN95. When he was pushing cloth masks, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?" Dr. Fauci has said, under oath, that when he was saying the vaccines would stop the spread he was just expressing a hope that would be the case. Dr. Birx says in her book she knew it would not stop the spread. When they were saying it would stop the spread, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?"
- sigma_ligma 4y ago
  Why are replies like this so frustratingly common when I engage with the "covid conspiracy theorist" crowd? I asked for empirical evidence and you responded with a massive self-righteous rant calling me a hypocrite because you _think_ I hold certain views. So what if I'm a hyprocrite, does that mean they're right? No, it doesn't, so your comment is nothing more than a drawn-out ad hominem attack.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago