41 ms·

Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

417 points by alsodumb 4y ago

kurupt213 4y ago
One of those points could be dismissed as a coincidence… the whole set is what you call a preponderance of evidence.
hayst4ck 4y ago
This github page is the most interesting (fairly apolitical) read on the lab leak hypothesis that I've seen to date: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ After reading it, it seems most likely to me that patient 0 was a person who collected bats for the lab with insufficient safety equipment, but the article itself doesn't really present a strong conclusion.
- bioinformatics 4y ago
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
- kgarten 4y ago
  it's not really apolitical unfortunately. "We believe in holding the Chinese government accountable for changes in regulations and poplicies that can prevent another laboratory accident. " why not focus on international standards?
  - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
    I think you're confusing justice for politics.
    - kgarten 4y ago
      please elaborate... you seem to know more than the Scientific community ... your emphasis on Justice seems you have a direct connection to God and you seem to know what happened + can make moral judgments about people. what to do if your Justice is wrong?
- igouy 4y ago
  "The Contested Origin of SARS-CoV-2" 26 Nov 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2006442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2...
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Curious how we'll go about preventing the NYT from shaming the population with racism next time something starts to not add up: https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-covid-lab-leak-apoorva-mandavilli/ https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-covid-lab-leak-apoorv... . I really doubt we've learned anything at all, even with flaccid left-leaning icon Jon Stewart pointing out the absurdity of the situation.
steve76 4y ago
notananthem 4y ago
LennyHenrysNuts 4y ago
I'm just annoyed that I was villified for saying "I don't know, but surely it's possible that the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute" in early 2021, and now here we all are chattering away about it like it's no big thing.
puffoflogic 4y ago
Anyone who thinks that now is the appropriate time to discuss the lab leak conclusion rather than two years ago when it was still actionable is ipso facto incompetent to do so.
masswerk 4y ago
What has become of early Covid reportings, like the (alleged) Italian finding of Covid-19 in blood samples from Sept. 2019 taken in Lombardy (and similar findings in sewage sampoles from Barcelona)? Has there been any clear proof established, either for the support of this or to the contrary? [1] "Coronavirus emerged in Italy earlier than thought, Italian study shows" (Reuters, 2020-11-15): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idINKBN27V0KH https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim... [2] "Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought" (Reuters, 2020-11-16): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2 https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim... [3] "WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy" (Reuters, 2021-06-01): https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-re-checks-research-when-coronavirus-first-surfaced-italy-2021-06-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
- Genbox 4y ago
  The laboratory leak could have happened anywhere between the first collection of a virus sample from bats in 2017 and up until the pandemic start in end of 2019. It is likely the virus was transmitted by personel from Wuhan Institute of Virology to Italy before the first doctors pushed the big panic button.
  - masswerk 4y ago
    Hum, there are a few things promoters of the lab theory haven't accounted for: meanwhile, strains that are closer related to the wild type have been found in Laos and Vietnam and the Wuhan lab didn't sample there; the (in)famous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is actually quite a distance from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it's about half an hour by car and there's a river in between) and there have been no traces found related to this route or to the geographical and/or social vicinity of the lab. Meanwhile, there has been quite a number of reportings (on two studies) severely undermining the lab leak theory. Generally speaking, these (US) studies claim to have genetic evidence for an animal-human-animal-human transfer in Nov. 2019 at the wet market and swab samples of cages tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Here's a sample: [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 [2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/covid-19-originated-at-wuhan-wet-market-via-raccoon-dogs-and-foxes/140578/ https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/covid-19-originated-at-... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383 [4] https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-undermined-new-research-points-wet-market-1683005 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-undermined-ne... (For me, there are political motives too strong behind the lab leak theory, to accept a mere conjecture that fails to connect the dots. Grave accusations require proof. Especially, if you haven't ruled out contradicting candidates.)
sennight 4y ago
The most effective way to lie is to distract with an embarrassing admission. That is what grabbed my attention months before the US media started covering it, the official "bat soup" wet market narrative coming out of China. The CCP is very sensitive about international ridicule with regard to eating weird things, so it was obvious that something was up when that was the immediate go to. When Wuhan started entering the public consciousness, prior to the systemic censorship that washed over SV, the new position was effectively "Ok, it wasn't the bat soup... a lab employee just admitted to us that a bat peed in his mouth and he kept it a secret." Then the censorship went into effect, undoubtable much to the relief of Chinese officials. That should be the real take away from all this (but it won't be, it'll be forgotten): stop censoring and editorializing platforms, you don't know any more than those you mean to control and the "experts" have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy.
tadfisher 4y ago
So was the first outbreak at the lab or at the wet market? I feel like everything else is circumstantial and conspiracy-laden.
- pragmar 4y ago
  There's evidence that it was neither. Blood tests of athletes that competed in the Wuhan Military games in October 2019 point to the virus circulating earlier. The timeline that much of the conversation rests on feels kind of weak.
- tuetuopay 4y ago
  The two are not necessarily opposed. It can very well be a lab leak that infected the wet market: a scientist visiting the market, a supplier for lab animals getting the virus out to the market, etc, and the market starting the widespread transmission to the general population. Whatever the case is, no, this is not circumstantial. If this is indeed a lab break, then action must be taken immediately for anything like it not to happen again. I don't mean "pointing fingers", but triggering a thorough review of all such labs worldwide and up security measures. This must not happen again. TL;DR if it's a lab leak, it's actionable to us as humans to prevent further occurrences.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Do we have something like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but for biological labs?
- wsc981 4y ago
  The furin cleavage site itself pretty much points to a lab leak.
  - stonogo 4y ago
    No, it doesn't.
- AndrewThrowaway 4y ago
est 4y ago
A picture is worth a thousand words, here is an aerial shot of Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) https://i.imgur.com/v4xg9u1.jpg https://i.imgur.com/v4xg9u1.jpg source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid...
- FortashForhash 4y ago
  thats a lovely campus. very impressed
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tmoravec 4y ago
  Maybe I'm daft but might I ask you to elaborate what you wanted to say with the picture?
  - est 4y ago
    Ctrl+F in this HN comment thread, search for "market", you can see how many people got the wrong idea.
  - 4pkjai 4y ago
    I don't understand it either
    - secretsatan 4y ago
      Is it because they think we think it doesn't exist?
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      The parent is saying that the lab is close to trees, and birds live in trees, and birds have wings, and bats have wings which makes them a bit like birds that way, and bats can harbour coronaviruses. The parent is telling us we need to cut down all the trees before there's another pandemic, clearly.
seydor 4y ago
Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert some beneficial mutations to humanity. In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life, record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-made, then nature may do this again soon with another virus.
- goatcode 4y ago
  In nature, it makes no sense for a virus to be both highly transmissible and highly deadly. Any such virus would cease to exist after having run amok in such a way in its hosts. Therefore, any extremely deadly virus should be looked at with similarly extreme criticism, especially if / when it adapts and becomes a better behaving parasite.
  - tedivm 4y ago
    Nature, and evolution, don't follow motive based logic. Random mutations that are temporarily beneficial but are detrimental to the long term do happen. To put it another way, a cell mutates based off of random chance. It doesn't have desires. We only have to go back as far as 1918 to see an example of a virus that could not have been engineered and was highly transmissible and highly deadly. As you say, in the long term that doesn't work out- the virus in that case mutated to be much more mild- which is why you won't see viruses like that surviving for long. But it still doesn't make sense to assume viruses evolve according to a motivation based logic.
    - Moodles 4y ago
      Obviously the person you’re responding to doesn’t think covid is conscious and has motivations…
    - goatcode 4y ago
      > temporarily beneficial This was the crux of my point.
goblin89 4y ago
It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Obviously flawed logic. Switch COVID lab leak hypothesis to 9/11 inside job, JFK CIA hit, Hitler moon base, and you'll see why.
  - goblin89 4y ago
    For the record, I have come to think I misused the term “prior”. If you consider those as viable hypotheses in the first place then sure. In current context there is a binary choice between two already established and well-informed hypotheses of similarly high likelihoods, and if one of them is significantly more favorable to a party with control over evidence we might expect a stronger proof.
- Garlef 4y ago
  This seems to be a fallacy as it can be applied to anything. Here's an example illustrating how bad of an argument that is: It appears to be reasonable to assign the "your mother is a [insert derogatory term]" hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many familiy members whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (your dad, your uncle, your sister, your grandparents), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
  - dxuh 4y ago
    I fully agree with your point, but I think the example is a bit aggressive towards OP. I'm sure you got a good chuckle of out of this, but I think it would have been better to give an example that did not seem like an attack. For example the earth being flat, the moon landing being fake or something like that.
CraigJPerry 4y ago
I don’t go looking for covid discussions but they arrive in my feeds so i’m conscious i’m seeing a feed that someone(s) else curated for me and wanted me to view. That said… Is there any popular discussion or action regarding mitigation of both lab and natural origins for future? It seems that both avenues are possible. If we know both are possible, that seems like enough knowledge to move forward with exploring possible mitigations for future. I realise there may be hard reasons why no mitigation is possible, but i just never encounter popular discussion of what to do next.
- igouy 4y ago
  "The first obvious corrective action would be to" help China shrink the live animal trade.
- igouy 4y ago
  "A ban publicly endorsed by Xi Jinping was instituted on the consumption of almost all wild animals. … There are risks, however, that the economic pressures these actions place on wildlife farmers and traders will drive the lucrative business farther underground, or induce local officials, eager to spur economic recovery or susceptible to bribery, to tolerate it, as occurred in the wake of SARS. … Outside experts, however, question how well the bans are being enforced, and believe they do not go far enough, as demand is still fuelling a transboundary wildlife supply chain in neighbouring countries." "The Contested Origin of SARS-CoV-2" 26 Nov 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2006442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2...
- troon-lover 4y ago
- chasil 4y ago
  The first obvious corrective action would be to prohibit gain of function research in level-2 labs. The second would be to prohibit gain of function research in general, especially with funds emerging from a country that has implemented such restrictions as the United States did.
- 4y ago
duttonw 4y ago
It is all allege and from a nation that sees saving face above all things. It is not all that surprising. Someone was playing/checkin out a virus, its in a place which exotic animals are sort after to be consumed. It would not surprise me if someone 'pinched' a couple of bat's from the lab to make some $$$ on the side at the markets and then the rest is how its been portrayed (except for the constant finger pointing its from other countries, china knew about it, they blocked local flights but continued to let international flights out, if you put 1 and 1 together, it does make 2. No way around that.
LatteLazy 4y ago
It's really worry watching people start with conclusions and work backwards, doubly so here on HN. There is zero evidence for a lab leak, there is plenty of evidence against it (the randomness of the genetic changes between naturally occurring Covid 19 predecessors being the big piece). Yet people are (with flowery language) pretending that lack of evidence makes the "hypothesis" more likely.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  You'll find some evidence pointing at a high possibility for a lab leak at this link: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 ;) Side note: Not looking at evidence doesn't make it not exist, nor does declaring that there is "zero evidence".
  - barnacled 4y ago
    This is not evidence. It's hand waving 'how do you explain' stuff that has been addressed many times by experts in the field. No credible evidence whatsoever has been presented. If you ignore experts and just keep repeating the same old nonsense of course you claim to have evidence in the same way 9/11 truthers do.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    There is no evidence there at all though is there? First, it's all just Twitter comments. So it's only evidence that someone typed it into Twitter. And second, what happens to overlap with reality isn't evidence of a lab leak. The fact there is a virus lab in Wuhan doesn't mean there was a lab leak, any more than the fact there are labs in Africa proves aids was man made. That's the problem here, people don't understand what evidence is, and they don't understand because making up bullshit is much more fun.
sneak 4y ago
The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of how it started. The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this often does more harm than good. No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be learned now regardless.
- treeman79 4y ago
  If people are creating super viruses. It kind of matters a lot.
  - sneak 4y ago
    People are creating super viruses, regardless of the origin of this one. Act accordingly.
    - rakejake 4y ago
      What exactly are you supposed to do? Move to the middle of the Amazon away from civilization? Knowing the exact sequence of events that led to the pandemic is extremely important, and not only as research for future pandemics. There is reasonable doubt that the Wuhan lab had something to do with the virus. I'm measuring my words carefully here because we don't have incriminating evidence. But there has been enough material published over the last 2 years to warrant suspicion.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  The origin being a lab leak would likely lead to more stringent controls around researchers.
  - pelorat 4y ago
    Yes, but this is China that you're talking about where EVERYTHING is connected to a lying government. Nothing would happen except for a coverup as the Chinese government will never ever come clean.
barnacled 4y ago
The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense that Ebright knows full well has been addressed. It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are going to see a rebuttal like the excellent one from Dr Rasmussen here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1566976441736171520?s=20&t=HCKtsyGdiOUazbDdX14K1g https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15669764417361715... The recent science papers which have been closely peer reviewed and none of these guys have been able to rebut (but oh have they tried, since they are VERY inconvenient for lab leak), instead it's the same tired nit-picking and misunderstanding. For a break down of the science papers read https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1551937826580824070 https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... which goes into painful levels of detail to explain what the paper discovered and why it's so compelling and why it all but rules out lab leak. It's sad to me that somebody with a name and position and blue tick abuses that position to spread what amounts to misinformation, but that's where we are in society I guess. If you want a test, see how these lab leak advocates have reacted to any paper or data that pushes back against their claim. It has been a mad scramble to attack, nit-pick, dismiss and smear (Ebright especially likes confict-of-interest implications). These are not honest people. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
- arisAlexis 4y ago
  Actually all of his claims are facts unless proven otherwise. Do you have proof that these facts (Wuhan playing with these viruses, funding etc) are not true or you would like them to not be true?
  - barnacled 4y ago
    'Claims are facts until proven otherwise' is quite the take, I think Karl Popper would take issue with that. I linked a thorough thread from a domain expert explaining in detail why the claims are false. These things have been addressed/debunked many, many times but still get repeated because the untruths get amplified and the rebuttals not.
nxpnsv 4y ago
A study on motivated reasoning, don’t trust anyone that sure of something this controversial.
hugoromano 4y ago
"science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology" is precisely my concern. It is always a "wait and see", instead of planning in case something goes wrong. Public health is consistently the speciality among medicine students they don't want.
scotchmi_st 4y ago
If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea of this escaping from a lab (a friend who used to work at the CDC told me some rather scary stories about working there), but there's no serious evidence it was the case here. On the other hand, many people would like it to be true, because it feeds into a conspiracy narrative. People can't believe things like global, deadly viral pandemics can occur naturally, even though they do.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Here's some evidence: if you fart in an elevator, it stinks, but if you fart outdoors, not so much. Viruses, as opposed to farts, don't smell, but otherwise they are similar. If someone coughs outdoors, the aerosols containing the viral particles just spread around and soon their concentration becomes negligible. If someone coughs, or just breathes indoors, the aerosols spread, but if the space is not very large, their concentration will stay elevated, enough to infect other people. With this preamble out of the way, what is the hypothetical scenario where the pandemic starts in the market? Covid does not spread from dead meat, it's an airborne disease. Was there some live bat (or pangolin) that was sneezing in some enclosed space, and some people acquired the virus there? A google search shows links with evidence to the contrary ([1], [2]). Here's and NY Times article [3] that's arguing for the non-lab-leak origin, but you'll notice they are using misdirection (e.g. "dozens of species that can carry pathogens that infect humans" -> ok, this says nothing specific about Covid, but is written to prime the reader to think Covid was among those pathogens). Overall, the simplest explanation is that one lab worker acquired the disease from aerosols in the lab produced by the lab mice infected with the virus. The worker then left the lab and stopped here and there (home too) and left aerosols that some other people inhaled. Whenever it was outdoors, the aerosols did not cause infections, but sometimes when it was indoors, they did. Is it possible that that person went to the market nearby to have lunch or dinner and coughed or sneezed while indoors, and some of the market workers, or co-diners got infected? It does not sound outrageous. You can envision tons of plausible scenarios with an initial lab worker getting infected, but you need to get into contorted scenarios to cook up a theory where some bats from a few thousand kilometers away get transported to Wuhan and fail to infect anyone on their way, then the disease explodes like a bomb in Wohan, and then nobody is able to find evidence of those live bats being sold in that market. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 [2] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-have-alibi https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-co... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-markets-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-market... [4]
samwillis 4y ago
Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature editors note on the only sources provided: "Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus."
- blast 4y ago
  Ebright has since posted sources: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1567569831586861056 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1567569831586861056.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  ‘Lab-origin’ and ‘engineered’ are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Did you mean “inclusive”? I’d assume the average covid truther would think of lab-origin and engineered as causal if not identical.
    - kazinator 4y ago
      A lab can accidentally leak a virus that was gathered from the wild, such that all of that virus' attributes, like how infectious it is and all that, are of natural origin.
oxff 4y ago
I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the wet market, but not around the lab, which is more than 10 km away.[0] > a lab that studies the virus The lab did not study SARS-CoV-2. It studied viruses that are about 20% different from SARS-CoV-2. We know what viruses they were working with, because they publish papers, go to scientific conferences, etc. > they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it It took about 10 years to find the bat population that the original SARS came from. In the last two years, researchers have gotten closer to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which appears to be somewhere in southwest China or northern Laos. 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715
  - nostrebored 4y ago
    The cases were very heavily investigated around the wet market — particularly looking at adjacent hospitals. This is an obvious example of a biased sample. If you were doing controversial research using controversial methods how transparent would you be?
  - JetSetWilly 4y ago
    > It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. That's simply not true at all, whatsoever. See for example this paper sequencing early samples of the virus: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?login=false https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?logi... The "wet market" samples are less similar to closely related bat strains than other early samples which are unrelated to the market. The market is close to a major hospital. If the virus was circulating, it is unsurprising that a super spreader event would occur there. But saying that the market is the point of origin, and this this is "very solidly established" simply flies in the face of known facts.
adamaries21 4y ago
[dead]
Annatar 4y ago
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the Huanan wet market, but not around the lab, which is on the other side of the Wuhan, a pretty massive city.[0] If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases to cluster around the lab. Instead, they were centered around a wet market, just like the early cases of the original SARS were back in 2002. This is completely aside from the other reasons that make a lab leak extremely unlikely. It's public knowledge which viruses the lab in Wuhan works with. The lab regularly publishes its work, lab members go to conferences to present their work, there are international researchers at the institute in Wuhan. There would have been no reason at all for them to hide SARS-CoV-2 prior to the pandemic, and there is simply no shred of evidence that they had SARS-CoV-2. Finally, I would just encourage anyone who's wondering how much stock to put in Ebright's claims to scroll through his Twitter account. The online persona he cultivates is, to put it very politely, that of a troll. 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715
- eternalban 4y ago
  As someone else has already pointed out, the provenance of the virus, and its emergence/release location are two distinct matters. There appears to be consensus on the latter: the wet market (although some do wonder about the mystery illness in Summer of 2019, in US). https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/11/2-dead-unknown-respiratory-virus-what-could-it-be-14147 https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/11/2-dead-unknown-respirat... "A news report from Virginia says that two people are dead and 18 have been hospitalized following an outbreak of an unknown respiratory infection at a retirement community. What could it possibly be?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_resumption_of_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_... So, were these "mystery illnesses" caused by vaccinated US military personnel who work in F.D. cranking around Washington DC metro area?
- carrolldunham 4y ago
  >If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases to cluster around the lab. No, because it's not proposed that the virus leaked out of the lab building into the nearby air. I presume it's more like a person who worked at the lab getting infected, and then moving around the city as normal, needing only to infect one other person, anywhere in the city.
exitb 4y ago
What is the motivation behind research that makes viruses more suitable for humans anyway? I assume it's not strictly a military project, since there was international cooperation between countries that aren't allies. What is it we're tying to achieve?
- namose 4y ago
  Same reason black-hat security research exists. By developing a virus in a contained environment, you can study it, model it, potentially develop mitigations or cures.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Better understand the mechanisms involved in order to have better tools to fight against it, or better surveillance tools when sampling? (e.g. have a better idea of whether a wildlife pathogen is approaching zoonoticity)
- npteljes 4y ago
  The military application is the easiest to imagine, but viruses have been made useful in medicine too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_therapy_and_vaccination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_thera...
- jcims 4y ago
  Probably has no relevance for the research in question but viruses are a very effective way to deliver CRISPR-based therapies. It's conceivable to implant the mRNA of a vaccine similar to what was used for COVID-19 into a transmissible virus and inoculate (or kill) large segments of the population.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  They will do it themselves naturally so studying such a change means you are already prepared when they do.
glofish 4y ago
The main point that no scientists seems to want to mention is the clear cut and well defined conflict of interest in determining the origins. How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-science" crowd. In contrast scientists are in the drivers position if the cause was all natural. Then they can propose to be the "defendenders" of the humanity against the next danger. No wonder that there is strong headwind against any other narrative. Remember all it takes a single dissenter to bury a paper. It is the in the vital (short term) interest of every scientist to say that the origin is all natural! If you read the papers that claim natural origin, these turn out to be extremely weakly argued. A heat-map plot here and there, some evasive language when it comes to evidence. But the quotable conclusion is always formulated much more strongly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Scientists are not a monolith. I highly doubt any of them are concerned about the macro level feasibility of science funding. It's fine.
  - b4je7d7wb 4y ago
    They could be subconciously following the herd
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      A scientist could be following a herd, but that is irrelevant to the point.
      - programmarchy 4y ago
        It’s not irrelevant because a herd behaves in a monolithic way.
michelledepeil 4y ago
A lot of the tweet mirrors what is described in more detail, and better sources, by Alina Chan in Viral, Search for the Origin of Covid-19. In my opinion a book worth reading, as it doesn't try too hard to point a finger but raises enough circumstantial arguments to support _anything other than a natural origin_ for Covid-19. Either way, CCP has caused enough damage (in my opinion, again) to never be trustworthy again. Somewhere else in this thread, her medium is linked, and indeed she also writes clear and rational reviews of more recent literature. https://ayjchan.medium.com/ https://ayjchan.medium.com/
zibby8 4y ago
For those looking for more information / sources for these tweets, this Vanity Fair article provides a lot of background information on the circumstantial evidence implicating the WIV and EcoHealth Alliance as the source of the lab leak: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-no...
pelasaco 4y ago
The only thing that it proves is that regardless of how the outbreak happened, if it was a killer virus we would be f*ck. 2 years later, we know few about its origin and we still fight with basic stuff like vaccine, treatment and lockdown.. One could say "well, we learned a lot during this two years", but I doubt that if same happens again, we are able to respond it as we should. Damn, even the question about masks (yes/no/depends) still not sorted out. It is a shame.
- 96llort 4y ago
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > we still fight with basic stuff like vaccine, treatment What exactly are you hoping for?
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    less media, better organization, clear strategy, more transparency and honesty. We saw what we cannot do well. We suffered with many gaps and did so many mistakes that shouldn't be repeated.
    - rhodorhoades 4y ago
      What was showed by the government is that we don’t have transparency and honesty. The head of the CDC essentially said “masks don’t work”, then came out and said “ just kidding, they work but we needed to lie to you so you wouldn’t panic buy all the masks. Go ahead and go panic buy all the masks now” Americans don’t like to be talked at, they like to be talked to. As a country, we want all the information but we want the ability to choose what to do with that information.
      - pelasaco 4y ago
        I think it's ok to change an opinion, that's what science is about. However the tone was really dishonest, right? When it was brought up first time[1][2], it was more important to wall-up then truly communicate... on another hand, maybe it was just too many media coverage, everyone wanting to deliver the last news, demanding answers that weren't available. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/03/826219824/president-trump-says-cdc-now-recommends-americans-wear-cloth-masks-in-public https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... [2] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-says-public-should-wear-masks https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-...
M0r13n 4y ago
I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked and the chemists know something about the long term effects that they do not publicly disclose.
- narwal46 4y ago
- vibrio 4y ago
  Chemists rarely work directly with viruses.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Gareth321 4y ago
  > People infected with SARS-COV-2 had more than three times the risk of dying over the following year compared with those who remained uninfected https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00087-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...
breck 4y ago
This is a very simple question. You just need 1 CSV file. A CSV file with a list of all BioWeaponsLabs and their coordinates. Then for every point on earth compute distance from nearest BioWeaponsLabs. This will give you a heatmap for pr(labLeak|pandemic). Few hrs work. Right? Has anyone done this yet?
- widerporst 4y ago
  This ignores the fact that these labs are often built closely to where the viruses in question naturally occur.
  - breck 4y ago
    Ah that's a good point. So your CSV file would need 1 more column: `type`, `bioWeaponsLab|naturalVirusHotspot`, and then you could have a toggle to see one at a time (or both, overlaid). If anyone makes this CSV with data vis and published to GitHub and it's good I'll send you $500USD worth of NEAR coin or my eternal gratitude and respect (whichever you value more).
- empathy_m 4y ago
  Are you looking for a diagram like this one? https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4454/asset/75c47a64-23ec-4b85-9534-2ea28d37d0a9/assets/graphic/science.abm4454-f1.svg https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4454/asset/75... ( https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 )
  - breck 4y ago
    No (but interesting link, thanks). I want a CSV with locations of biolabs and historical locations of patient zeros. Given that a novel outbreak of any infectious disease occurred, what is the probability that it would be within N miles of a bioweapons lab? If you set N large enough, the Pr goes to 1. An analogy. Given that there was a housefire of a random natural origin, what is the probability that it would have begun 1 inch from an overloaded socket?
  - 4y ago
BrainVirus 4y ago
Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter Daszak and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were involved in nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the lab leak hypothesis when it first popped up? And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing lab leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance? And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team? And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired for this? If you don't admit these (now-obvious) facts, you are not discussing the lab leak hypothesis in good faith.
- albertop 4y ago
  Also it is good to keep in mind the following [0] from Matt Ridley. 0- https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1565242836710309891 https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1565242836710309891
- kurupt213 4y ago
  Fauci was all over this. This is his program.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter Daszak and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were involved in nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the lab leak hypothesis when it first popped up? No idea. > And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing lab leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance? No idea. > And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team? No idea. > And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired for this? No idea. I am not better informed as a result of your comment. Asking questions is not a proper way to educate or inform people. That I don't have answers to your questions doesn't lead to any conclusion, nor does it make me doubt anything. As a general rule: If you want to know if X is true, look for "positive" evidence. Not absence of evidence. Asking questions almost always is merely saying "Hey, I don't have all the answers" - not "Hey, there's no good answer so the answer must be Y".
- jokowueu 4y ago
  This explains the entire issue well https://youtu.be/8cBNyyAGETU https://youtu.be/8cBNyyAGETU
theandrewbailey 4y ago
Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1566826229931524096.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1566826229931524096.html
foreigner 4y ago
What I don't understand about this argument is why does it matter? Even if COVID was created in a lab in Wuhan they obviously didn't release it on purpose as a weapon (if they had they wouldn't have released it in Wuhan). There are any number of other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous research that could get released on accident.
- namose 4y ago
  > There are any number of other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous research that could get released on accident. And you don't see a problem with this? You seem to assume the lab-leak hypothesis assumes malicious intent in creating the virus, but most people are actually concerned about negligence and/or a malicious coverup of the origin. A definitive answer to the origin of covid could help answer the following questions: - How much do I trust U.S. public health institutions? - How much do I trust Chinese public health institutions? - Should gain-of-function and other high-risk virus research be conducted? And what should the safety standards be of such research? - Is there a problem of forced consensus/centralization in the broader scientific community?
- potatototoo99 4y ago
  The point is maybe we shouldn't be doing similarly dangerous research in the first place. The point is maybe banning in the US and funding it overseas is just idiotic.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  It matters if the truth matters to you and it matters because of the highly public discrediting of the lab-leak hypothesis both early in the pandemic and more recently should update your beliefs about a great many institutions.
- eruleman 4y ago
  You answered your own question.
- blast 4y ago
  It has enormous implications for future research and regulation, as well as the reform of scientific and public health institutions. If a plane crash killed a few hundred people, no one would question the need for a thorough investigation, root cause analysis, and preventative measures for the future. Or consider the security reforms put in place after 9/11, which killed thousands. This pandemic killed millions.
throwawaycgfd 4y ago
tehjoker 4y ago
I'm on a mobile device and feel terrible right now do I'm not going to find the sources, but aren't there several papers out there right now from Brazil, Italy, and perhaps Spain showing detection of SARS2 in samples from Nov. 2019? That would wildly change our interpretation of at least COVID's geographic origin.
- shusaku 4y ago
  A lot of that discussion seems to have vanished from the internet. Maybe it’s because people are less interested in talking about their strange cold back in the fall of ‘19, but it could also be that the evidence remains slim enough that contaminated samples is parsimonious.
sinecure 4y ago
I think covid's lasting impact will be one of vastly growing mistrust in the political and scientific organizations that society looks to for guidance. From the CDC's ever changing guidelines, the liability-free, fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission, the labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and any debate as heresy, the effortless militarization of common citizens to socially pressure and attack their neighbors into compliance, and the coordinated "fact checking" campaigns of powerful organizations that have turned out to be complete lies. It's all done lasting damage to societal trust... from our own families and neighbors, to the heights of academic and governmental leadership. People are rightfully asking many questions. Are the FDA, CDC, and the WHO corrupted by big Pharma companies and political groups that care more about saving face and profit than the truth? Is academia similarly corrupted to create research that supports the chosen narrative? Is "trusting the experts" really the embodiment of science... or one of religious zealotry?
- robomartin 4y ago
  - nomel 4y ago
    And, it has reached the top, with the most disturbing phrase I’ve seen come out of the White House [1]: “When you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.” 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dButKWnTmG8&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dButKWnTmG8&feature=emb_title
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      Isn't this just the definition of the word extreme? I mean, I get that maybe they're using the word extreme to equal bad (maybe not), but I think this is just the definition of the word. Why do you think it's bad to have an extreme opinion? I probably have quite a few of extreme opinions. Some wrong, some right, some I cherish, some I dismiss.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
If a real conflict starts over Taiwan those who oppose the lab-leak theory will become the new ‘deniers’; after all we’ve always been at war with East Asia. I get whiplash from watching how rapidly the public gets jawboned. I’ve seen many people, even those close to me, completely switch positions on ‘strongly’ held beliefs. Not only do they not acknowledge the inherent contradictions but they seem to have forgotten holding the original positions in the first place. Those without memory are living in an ever changing present, and those of us with memory are stuck with a past that no longer exists.
dathinab 4y ago
I which they didn't start with 1). Because there is "a" wild life market in Wuhan which does sell wild bats from far away (and many other animals which can get/transmit covid).
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Favorite theory links the two. Animals infected in lab were supposed to be disposed of, but instead sold at the market. It isn’t necessarily that far-fetched: if you are tasked with incinerating a rare animal that you know is going for cash in the nearby market, there is temptation to sell it instead of destroying.
  - dathinab 4y ago
    That is strangely surprisingly way too realistic tbh. ;-)
ok_computer 4y ago
Hi, content aside, tweet chains posts are terrible to read on any device. And twitter bugs me to log in to track me through the browser. To all the people who think this is the best way to deliver information to their audience please stop. 1/1
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  What medium would you recommend Mr. Ebright use to deliver his message to his 50,000 followers, plus the other several hundred thousand who would have seen it given its popularity? He didn't write this for HN users to read, it's pretty unrealistic for us to expect people format their publishing to fit the preferences of nerdy HN readers.
  - xtracto 4y ago
    A Substack/Medium/Wordpress-online-blog URL is less than 280 chars twitter limit.
    - ok_computer 4y ago
      I agree any of those blogging sites would be a better format, even though I'm not a Medium fan. He's also listed Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers and I understand this isn't their official position but there could be a faculty page or some other publication or editorial site. And he could link to the blog article from his tweet. The downside is it wouldn't have as great viral potential but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Any page with all the bullet points in one place would serve better than an ephemeral twitter thread. If his followers regard him they may follow the link.
- dang 4y ago
  "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 4y ago
rhodorhoades 4y ago
I don’t know if it was initial propaganda or what, but literally right before COVID became a thing, there’s was a couple news articles that popped up on HN saying there has been a lab leak from wuhan and the government is locking down the area. Three weeks later there’s this giant pandemic. I remember telling my wife about it in December before Christmas but now I can’t find any articles dating back to that time. My point is not that the lab leak is true, but in this modern world is it literally impossible to know what’s true and what’s propaganda.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  According to hn.algolia.com, the first mention of anything like you describe is from Jan 8, 2020[0], which isn't before Christmas 2019. The first US case was announced two weeks later, and "this giant pandemic" came a bit after that. I think your memory might be slightly off, although in completely understandable ways. Placing events on a personal timeline can be difficult. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989913
  - tomjakubowski 4y ago
    I found one story posted on Jan 1, 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926713 FWIW, I've not found Algoila to be a reliable search engine for HN. In fact, when I narrowed my search down further to link it here, as below - that article disappeared from the results. (Also doesn't help that keyboard input to the date picker is totally broken) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578182400&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1575072000&page=5&prefix=true&query=virus&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578182400&dateRange=custom&...
apeace 4y ago
I'm wondering: what exactly is this virus research for anyways? Whether or not this lab leaked the virus and caused the pandemic, I'm wondering why they are interested in engineering new variants of SARS-like viruses in the first place? Are the detractors of the lab-leak theory saying "Yes, they engineered plenty of coronaviruses in the lab, there's just no evidence that any of them leaked out" or are they saying "No, this lab was never trying to engineer new coronaviruses"?
- kennywinker 4y ago
  Answer is not complicated - the goal is to understand and prevent / treat future outbreaks of emergent diseases like this (and maybe even the common-cold coronaviruses). Just like how security researchers hack things to improve security
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >why they are interested in engineering new variants of SARS-like viruses in the first place? A reason may be so they can know how a similar naturally occurring virus may work.
throwaway23236 4y ago
While I have no basis, this is what I feel happened: WIV Worker - WIVW Janitor/intern/low paid employee - J WIVW to J: Dispose of these bats J: Ok J takes bats to wet market J sells bats for 50 bucks J to WIVW: Got rid of the bats for you. WIVW to J: Thanks.
nullc 4y ago
Their project docs are informative: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... In addition to having research the nearest known ancestor to sars-cov2, and proposing inserting the FCS that distinguishes sars-cov2 from it's ancestors, the project proposed treating bats in the wild with the humanized virus to make the bats immune to it. It's about as close to mad science as you get outside of the movies. I don't really know how much it matters if covid was directly caused by the lab leak when you can look at their actions and say that they would reasonably been expected to cause this outcome. "Mom, I swear, I didn't cause the explosion! yes, I was maxing random chemicals I found in the garage, in violation against the established prohibitions, and the chemicals I was mixing happened to be the exact sort that caused the explosion. But it wasn't me!" The fact that there was a moratorium on gain of function research means that even more of the culpable parties all the way up the funding chain are incentivized to lie about the whole thing.

417 points by alsodumb 4y ago

One of those points could be dismissed as a coincidence… the whole set is what you call a preponderance of evidence.

This github page is the most interesting (fairly apolitical) read on the lab leak hypothesis that I've seen to date: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ After reading it, it seems most likely to me that patient 0 was a person who collected bats for the lab with insufficient safety equipment, but the article itself doesn't really present a strong conclusion.

bioinformatics 4y ago
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
kgarten 4y ago
it's not really apolitical unfortunately. "We believe in holding the Chinese government accountable for changes in regulations and poplicies that can prevent another laboratory accident. " why not focus on international standards?
- boltzmann-brain 4y ago
  I think you're confusing justice for politics.
  - kgarten 4y ago
    please elaborate... you seem to know more than the Scientific community ... your emphasis on Justice seems you have a direct connection to God and you seem to know what happened + can make moral judgments about people. what to do if your Justice is wrong?
igouy 4y ago
"The Contested Origin of SARS-CoV-2" 26 Nov 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2006442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2...

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Curious how we'll go about preventing the NYT from shaming the population with racism next time something starts to not add up: https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-covid-lab-leak-apoorva-mandavilli/ https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-covid-lab-leak-apoorv... . I really doubt we've learned anything at all, even with flaccid left-leaning icon Jon Stewart pointing out the absurdity of the situation.

steve76 4y ago

notananthem 4y ago

LennyHenrysNuts 4y ago

I'm just annoyed that I was villified for saying "I don't know, but surely it's possible that the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute" in early 2021, and now here we all are chattering away about it like it's no big thing.

puffoflogic 4y ago

Anyone who thinks that now is the appropriate time to discuss the lab leak conclusion rather than two years ago when it was still actionable is ipso facto incompetent to do so.

masswerk 4y ago

What has become of early Covid reportings, like the (alleged) Italian finding of Covid-19 in blood samples from Sept. 2019 taken in Lombardy (and similar findings in sewage sampoles from Barcelona)? Has there been any clear proof established, either for the support of this or to the contrary? [1] "Coronavirus emerged in Italy earlier than thought, Italian study shows" (Reuters, 2020-11-15): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idINKBN27V0KH https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim... [2] "Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought" (Reuters, 2020-11-16): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2 https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim... [3] "WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy" (Reuters, 2021-06-01): https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-re-checks-research-when-coronavirus-first-surfaced-italy-2021-06-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

Genbox 4y ago
The laboratory leak could have happened anywhere between the first collection of a virus sample from bats in 2017 and up until the pandemic start in end of 2019. It is likely the virus was transmitted by personel from Wuhan Institute of Virology to Italy before the first doctors pushed the big panic button.
- masswerk 4y ago
  Hum, there are a few things promoters of the lab theory haven't accounted for: meanwhile, strains that are closer related to the wild type have been found in Laos and Vietnam and the Wuhan lab didn't sample there; the (in)famous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is actually quite a distance from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it's about half an hour by car and there's a river in between) and there have been no traces found related to this route or to the geographical and/or social vicinity of the lab. Meanwhile, there has been quite a number of reportings (on two studies) severely undermining the lab leak theory. Generally speaking, these (US) studies claim to have genetic evidence for an animal-human-animal-human transfer in Nov. 2019 at the wet market and swab samples of cages tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Here's a sample: [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 [2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/covid-19-originated-at-wuhan-wet-market-via-raccoon-dogs-and-foxes/140578/ https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/covid-19-originated-at-... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383 [4] https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-undermined-new-research-points-wet-market-1683005 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-undermined-ne... (For me, there are political motives too strong behind the lab leak theory, to accept a mere conjecture that fails to connect the dots. Grave accusations require proof. Especially, if you haven't ruled out contradicting candidates.)

sennight 4y ago

The most effective way to lie is to distract with an embarrassing admission. That is what grabbed my attention months before the US media started covering it, the official "bat soup" wet market narrative coming out of China. The CCP is very sensitive about international ridicule with regard to eating weird things, so it was obvious that something was up when that was the immediate go to. When Wuhan started entering the public consciousness, prior to the systemic censorship that washed over SV, the new position was effectively "Ok, it wasn't the bat soup... a lab employee just admitted to us that a bat peed in his mouth and he kept it a secret." Then the censorship went into effect, undoubtable much to the relief of Chinese officials. That should be the real take away from all this (but it won't be, it'll be forgotten): stop censoring and editorializing platforms, you don't know any more than those you mean to control and the "experts" have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy.

tadfisher 4y ago

So was the first outbreak at the lab or at the wet market? I feel like everything else is circumstantial and conspiracy-laden.

pragmar 4y ago
There's evidence that it was neither. Blood tests of athletes that competed in the Wuhan Military games in October 2019 point to the virus circulating earlier. The timeline that much of the conversation rests on feels kind of weak.
tuetuopay 4y ago
The two are not necessarily opposed. It can very well be a lab leak that infected the wet market: a scientist visiting the market, a supplier for lab animals getting the virus out to the market, etc, and the market starting the widespread transmission to the general population. Whatever the case is, no, this is not circumstantial. If this is indeed a lab break, then action must be taken immediately for anything like it not to happen again. I don't mean "pointing fingers", but triggering a thorough review of all such labs worldwide and up security measures. This must not happen again. TL;DR if it's a lab leak, it's actionable to us as humans to prevent further occurrences.
- amelius 4y ago
  Do we have something like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but for biological labs?
wsc981 4y ago
The furin cleavage site itself pretty much points to a lab leak.
- stonogo 4y ago
  No, it doesn't.
AndrewThrowaway 4y ago

est 4y ago

A picture is worth a thousand words, here is an aerial shot of Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) https://i.imgur.com/v4xg9u1.jpg https://i.imgur.com/v4xg9u1.jpg source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid...

FortashForhash 4y ago
thats a lovely campus. very impressed
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tmoravec 4y ago
Maybe I'm daft but might I ask you to elaborate what you wanted to say with the picture?
- est 4y ago
  Ctrl+F in this HN comment thread, search for "market", you can see how many people got the wrong idea.
- 4pkjai 4y ago
  I don't understand it either
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    Is it because they think we think it doesn't exist?
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    The parent is saying that the lab is close to trees, and birds live in trees, and birds have wings, and bats have wings which makes them a bit like birds that way, and bats can harbour coronaviruses. The parent is telling us we need to cut down all the trees before there's another pandemic, clearly.

seydor 4y ago

Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert some beneficial mutations to humanity. In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life, record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-made, then nature may do this again soon with another virus.

goatcode 4y ago
In nature, it makes no sense for a virus to be both highly transmissible and highly deadly. Any such virus would cease to exist after having run amok in such a way in its hosts. Therefore, any extremely deadly virus should be looked at with similarly extreme criticism, especially if / when it adapts and becomes a better behaving parasite.
- tedivm 4y ago
  Nature, and evolution, don't follow motive based logic. Random mutations that are temporarily beneficial but are detrimental to the long term do happen. To put it another way, a cell mutates based off of random chance. It doesn't have desires. We only have to go back as far as 1918 to see an example of a virus that could not have been engineered and was highly transmissible and highly deadly. As you say, in the long term that doesn't work out- the virus in that case mutated to be much more mild- which is why you won't see viruses like that surviving for long. But it still doesn't make sense to assume viruses evolve according to a motivation based logic.
  - Moodles 4y ago
    Obviously the person you’re responding to doesn’t think covid is conscious and has motivations…
  - goatcode 4y ago
    > temporarily beneficial This was the crux of my point.

goblin89 4y ago

It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.

hackerlight 4y ago
Obviously flawed logic. Switch COVID lab leak hypothesis to 9/11 inside job, JFK CIA hit, Hitler moon base, and you'll see why.
- goblin89 4y ago
  For the record, I have come to think I misused the term “prior”. If you consider those as viable hypotheses in the first place then sure. In current context there is a binary choice between two already established and well-informed hypotheses of similarly high likelihoods, and if one of them is significantly more favorable to a party with control over evidence we might expect a stronger proof.
Garlef 4y ago
This seems to be a fallacy as it can be applied to anything. Here's an example illustrating how bad of an argument that is: It appears to be reasonable to assign the "your mother is a [insert derogatory term]" hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many familiy members whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (your dad, your uncle, your sister, your grandparents), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
- dxuh 4y ago
  I fully agree with your point, but I think the example is a bit aggressive towards OP. I'm sure you got a good chuckle of out of this, but I think it would have been better to give an example that did not seem like an attack. For example the earth being flat, the moon landing being fake or something like that.

CraigJPerry 4y ago

I don’t go looking for covid discussions but they arrive in my feeds so i’m conscious i’m seeing a feed that someone(s) else curated for me and wanted me to view. That said… Is there any popular discussion or action regarding mitigation of both lab and natural origins for future? It seems that both avenues are possible. If we know both are possible, that seems like enough knowledge to move forward with exploring possible mitigations for future. I realise there may be hard reasons why no mitigation is possible, but i just never encounter popular discussion of what to do next.

igouy 4y ago
"The first obvious corrective action would be to" help China shrink the live animal trade.
igouy 4y ago
"A ban publicly endorsed by Xi Jinping was instituted on the consumption of almost all wild animals. … There are risks, however, that the economic pressures these actions place on wildlife farmers and traders will drive the lucrative business farther underground, or induce local officials, eager to spur economic recovery or susceptible to bribery, to tolerate it, as occurred in the wake of SARS. … Outside experts, however, question how well the bans are being enforced, and believe they do not go far enough, as demand is still fuelling a transboundary wildlife supply chain in neighbouring countries." "The Contested Origin of SARS-CoV-2" 26 Nov 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2006442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2...
troon-lover 4y ago
chasil 4y ago
The first obvious corrective action would be to prohibit gain of function research in level-2 labs. The second would be to prohibit gain of function research in general, especially with funds emerging from a country that has implemented such restrictions as the United States did.
4y ago

duttonw 4y ago

It is all allege and from a nation that sees saving face above all things. It is not all that surprising. Someone was playing/checkin out a virus, its in a place which exotic animals are sort after to be consumed. It would not surprise me if someone 'pinched' a couple of bat's from the lab to make some $$$ on the side at the markets and then the rest is how its been portrayed (except for the constant finger pointing its from other countries, china knew about it, they blocked local flights but continued to let international flights out, if you put 1 and 1 together, it does make 2. No way around that.

LatteLazy 4y ago

It's really worry watching people start with conclusions and work backwards, doubly so here on HN. There is zero evidence for a lab leak, there is plenty of evidence against it (the randomness of the genetic changes between naturally occurring Covid 19 predecessors being the big piece). Yet people are (with flowery language) pretending that lack of evidence makes the "hypothesis" more likely.

mandmandam 4y ago
You'll find some evidence pointing at a high possibility for a lab leak at this link: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1566826229931524096 ;) Side note: Not looking at evidence doesn't make it not exist, nor does declaring that there is "zero evidence".
- barnacled 4y ago
  This is not evidence. It's hand waving 'how do you explain' stuff that has been addressed many times by experts in the field. No credible evidence whatsoever has been presented. If you ignore experts and just keep repeating the same old nonsense of course you claim to have evidence in the same way 9/11 truthers do.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  There is no evidence there at all though is there? First, it's all just Twitter comments. So it's only evidence that someone typed it into Twitter. And second, what happens to overlap with reality isn't evidence of a lab leak. The fact there is a virus lab in Wuhan doesn't mean there was a lab leak, any more than the fact there are labs in Africa proves aids was man made. That's the problem here, people don't understand what evidence is, and they don't understand because making up bullshit is much more fun.

sneak 4y ago

The origin does not matter. Nothing changes now, regardless of how it started. The pathological human obsession with narratives such as this often does more harm than good. No useful investigation can now occur. No punishment can be meted out. Any lessons learned from one origin or another can be learned now regardless.

treeman79 4y ago
If people are creating super viruses. It kind of matters a lot.
- sneak 4y ago
  People are creating super viruses, regardless of the origin of this one. Act accordingly.
  - rakejake 4y ago
    What exactly are you supposed to do? Move to the middle of the Amazon away from civilization? Knowing the exact sequence of events that led to the pandemic is extremely important, and not only as research for future pandemics. There is reasonable doubt that the Wuhan lab had something to do with the virus. I'm measuring my words carefully here because we don't have incriminating evidence. But there has been enough material published over the last 2 years to warrant suspicion.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
The origin being a lab leak would likely lead to more stringent controls around researchers.
- pelorat 4y ago
  Yes, but this is China that you're talking about where EVERYTHING is connected to a lying government. Nothing would happen except for a coverup as the Chinese government will never ever come clean.

barnacled 4y ago

The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense that Ebright knows full well has been addressed. It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are going to see a rebuttal like the excellent one from Dr Rasmussen here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1566976441736171520?s=20&t=HCKtsyGdiOUazbDdX14K1g https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15669764417361715... The recent science papers which have been closely peer reviewed and none of these guys have been able to rebut (but oh have they tried, since they are VERY inconvenient for lab leak), instead it's the same tired nit-picking and misunderstanding. For a break down of the science papers read https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1551937826580824070 https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... which goes into painful levels of detail to explain what the paper discovered and why it's so compelling and why it all but rules out lab leak. It's sad to me that somebody with a name and position and blue tick abuses that position to spread what amounts to misinformation, but that's where we are in society I guess. If you want a test, see how these lab leak advocates have reacted to any paper or data that pushes back against their claim. It has been a mad scramble to attack, nit-pick, dismiss and smear (Ebright especially likes confict-of-interest implications). These are not honest people. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

arisAlexis 4y ago
Actually all of his claims are facts unless proven otherwise. Do you have proof that these facts (Wuhan playing with these viruses, funding etc) are not true or you would like them to not be true?
- barnacled 4y ago
  'Claims are facts until proven otherwise' is quite the take, I think Karl Popper would take issue with that. I linked a thorough thread from a domain expert explaining in detail why the claims are false. These things have been addressed/debunked many, many times but still get repeated because the untruths get amplified and the rebuttals not.

nxpnsv 4y ago

A study on motivated reasoning, don’t trust anyone that sure of something this controversial.

hugoromano 4y ago

"science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology" is precisely my concern. It is always a "wait and see", instead of planning in case something goes wrong. Public health is consistently the speciality among medicine students they don't want.

scotchmi_st 4y ago

If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea of this escaping from a lab (a friend who used to work at the CDC told me some rather scary stories about working there), but there's no serious evidence it was the case here. On the other hand, many people would like it to be true, because it feeds into a conspiracy narrative. People can't believe things like global, deadly viral pandemics can occur naturally, even though they do.

credit_guy 4y ago
Here's some evidence: if you fart in an elevator, it stinks, but if you fart outdoors, not so much. Viruses, as opposed to farts, don't smell, but otherwise they are similar. If someone coughs outdoors, the aerosols containing the viral particles just spread around and soon their concentration becomes negligible. If someone coughs, or just breathes indoors, the aerosols spread, but if the space is not very large, their concentration will stay elevated, enough to infect other people. With this preamble out of the way, what is the hypothetical scenario where the pandemic starts in the market? Covid does not spread from dead meat, it's an airborne disease. Was there some live bat (or pangolin) that was sneezing in some enclosed space, and some people acquired the virus there? A google search shows links with evidence to the contrary ([1], [2]). Here's and NY Times article [3] that's arguing for the non-lab-leak origin, but you'll notice they are using misdirection (e.g. "dozens of species that can carry pathogens that infect humans" -> ok, this says nothing specific about Covid, but is written to prime the reader to think Covid was among those pathogens). Overall, the simplest explanation is that one lab worker acquired the disease from aerosols in the lab produced by the lab mice infected with the virus. The worker then left the lab and stopped here and there (home too) and left aerosols that some other people inhaled. Whenever it was outdoors, the aerosols did not cause infections, but sometimes when it was indoors, they did. Is it possible that that person went to the market nearby to have lunch or dinner and coughed or sneezed while indoors, and some of the market workers, or co-diners got infected? It does not sound outrageous. You can envision tons of plausible scenarios with an initial lab worker getting infected, but you need to get into contorted scenarios to cook up a theory where some bats from a few thousand kilometers away get transported to Wuhan and fail to infect anyone on their way, then the disease explodes like a bomb in Wohan, and then nobody is able to find evidence of those live bats being sold in that market. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 [2] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-have-alibi https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-co... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-markets-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-market... [4]

samwillis 4y ago

Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature editors note on the only sources provided: "Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus."

blast 4y ago
Ebright has since posted sources: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1567569831586861056 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1567569831586861056.
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
mensetmanusman 4y ago
‘Lab-origin’ and ‘engineered’ are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Did you mean “inclusive”? I’d assume the average covid truther would think of lab-origin and engineered as causal if not identical.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    A lab can accidentally leak a virus that was gathered from the wild, such that all of that virus' attributes, like how infectious it is and all that, are of natural origin.

oxff 4y ago

I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the wet market, but not around the lab, which is more than 10 km away.[0] > a lab that studies the virus The lab did not study SARS-CoV-2. It studied viruses that are about 20% different from SARS-CoV-2. We know what viruses they were working with, because they publish papers, go to scientific conferences, etc. > they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it It took about 10 years to find the bat population that the original SARS came from. In the last two years, researchers have gotten closer to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which appears to be somewhere in southwest China or northern Laos. 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715
- nostrebored 4y ago
  The cases were very heavily investigated around the wet market — particularly looking at adjacent hospitals. This is an obvious example of a biased sample. If you were doing controversial research using controversial methods how transparent would you be?
- JetSetWilly 4y ago
  > It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. That's simply not true at all, whatsoever. See for example this paper sequencing early samples of the virus: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?login=false https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?logi... The "wet market" samples are less similar to closely related bat strains than other early samples which are unrelated to the market. The market is close to a major hospital. If the virus was circulating, it is unsurprising that a super spreader event would occur there. But saying that the market is the point of origin, and this this is "very solidly established" simply flies in the face of known facts.

adamaries21 4y ago

[dead]

Annatar 4y ago

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the Huanan wet market, but not around the lab, which is on the other side of the Wuhan, a pretty massive city.[0] If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases to cluster around the lab. Instead, they were centered around a wet market, just like the early cases of the original SARS were back in 2002. This is completely aside from the other reasons that make a lab leak extremely unlikely. It's public knowledge which viruses the lab in Wuhan works with. The lab regularly publishes its work, lab members go to conferences to present their work, there are international researchers at the institute in Wuhan. There would have been no reason at all for them to hide SARS-CoV-2 prior to the pandemic, and there is simply no shred of evidence that they had SARS-CoV-2. Finally, I would just encourage anyone who's wondering how much stock to put in Ebright's claims to scroll through his Twitter account. The online persona he cultivates is, to put it very politely, that of a troll. 0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715

eternalban 4y ago
As someone else has already pointed out, the provenance of the virus, and its emergence/release location are two distinct matters. There appears to be consensus on the latter: the wet market (although some do wonder about the mystery illness in Summer of 2019, in US). https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/11/2-dead-unknown-respiratory-virus-what-could-it-be-14147 https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/11/2-dead-unknown-respirat... "A news report from Virginia says that two people are dead and 18 have been hospitalized following an outbreak of an unknown respiratory infection at a retirement community. What could it possibly be?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_resumption_of_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_... So, were these "mystery illnesses" caused by vaccinated US military personnel who work in F.D. cranking around Washington DC metro area?
carrolldunham 4y ago
>If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases to cluster around the lab. No, because it's not proposed that the virus leaked out of the lab building into the nearby air. I presume it's more like a person who worked at the lab getting infected, and then moving around the city as normal, needing only to infect one other person, anywhere in the city.

exitb 4y ago

What is the motivation behind research that makes viruses more suitable for humans anyway? I assume it's not strictly a military project, since there was international cooperation between countries that aren't allies. What is it we're tying to achieve?

namose 4y ago
Same reason black-hat security research exists. By developing a virus in a contained environment, you can study it, model it, potentially develop mitigations or cures.
masklinn 4y ago
Better understand the mechanisms involved in order to have better tools to fight against it, or better surveillance tools when sampling? (e.g. have a better idea of whether a wildlife pathogen is approaching zoonoticity)
npteljes 4y ago
The military application is the easiest to imagine, but viruses have been made useful in medicine too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_therapy_and_vaccination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenoviridae#Use_in_gene_thera...
jcims 4y ago
Probably has no relevance for the research in question but viruses are a very effective way to deliver CRISPR-based therapies. It's conceivable to implant the mRNA of a vaccine similar to what was used for COVID-19 into a transmissible virus and inoculate (or kill) large segments of the population.
LatteLazy 4y ago
They will do it themselves naturally so studying such a change means you are already prepared when they do.

glofish 4y ago

The main point that no scientists seems to want to mention is the clear cut and well defined conflict of interest in determining the origins. How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-science" crowd. In contrast scientists are in the drivers position if the cause was all natural. Then they can propose to be the "defendenders" of the humanity against the next danger. No wonder that there is strong headwind against any other narrative. Remember all it takes a single dissenter to bury a paper. It is the in the vital (short term) interest of every scientist to say that the origin is all natural! If you read the papers that claim natural origin, these turn out to be extremely weakly argued. A heat-map plot here and there, some evasive language when it comes to evidence. But the quotable conclusion is always formulated much more strongly.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Scientists are not a monolith. I highly doubt any of them are concerned about the macro level feasibility of science funding. It's fine.
- b4je7d7wb 4y ago
  They could be subconciously following the herd
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    A scientist could be following a herd, but that is irrelevant to the point.
    - programmarchy 4y ago
      It’s not irrelevant because a herd behaves in a monolithic way.

michelledepeil 4y ago

A lot of the tweet mirrors what is described in more detail, and better sources, by Alina Chan in Viral, Search for the Origin of Covid-19. In my opinion a book worth reading, as it doesn't try too hard to point a finger but raises enough circumstantial arguments to support _anything other than a natural origin_ for Covid-19. Either way, CCP has caused enough damage (in my opinion, again) to never be trustworthy again. Somewhere else in this thread, her medium is linked, and indeed she also writes clear and rational reviews of more recent literature. https://ayjchan.medium.com/ https://ayjchan.medium.com/

zibby8 4y ago

For those looking for more information / sources for these tweets, this Vanity Fair article provides a lot of background information on the circumstantial evidence implicating the WIV and EcoHealth Alliance as the source of the lab leak: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-no...

pelasaco 4y ago

The only thing that it proves is that regardless of how the outbreak happened, if it was a killer virus we would be f*ck. 2 years later, we know few about its origin and we still fight with basic stuff like vaccine, treatment and lockdown.. One could say "well, we learned a lot during this two years", but I doubt that if same happens again, we are able to respond it as we should. Damn, even the question about masks (yes/no/depends) still not sorted out. It is a shame.

96llort 4y ago
spywaregorilla 4y ago
> we still fight with basic stuff like vaccine, treatment What exactly are you hoping for?
- pelasaco 4y ago
  less media, better organization, clear strategy, more transparency and honesty. We saw what we cannot do well. We suffered with many gaps and did so many mistakes that shouldn't be repeated.
  - rhodorhoades 4y ago
    What was showed by the government is that we don’t have transparency and honesty. The head of the CDC essentially said “masks don’t work”, then came out and said “ just kidding, they work but we needed to lie to you so you wouldn’t panic buy all the masks. Go ahead and go panic buy all the masks now” Americans don’t like to be talked at, they like to be talked to. As a country, we want all the information but we want the ability to choose what to do with that information.
    - pelasaco 4y ago
      I think it's ok to change an opinion, that's what science is about. However the tone was really dishonest, right? When it was brought up first time[1][2], it was more important to wall-up then truly communicate... on another hand, maybe it was just too many media coverage, everyone wanting to deliver the last news, demanding answers that weren't available. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/03/826219824/president-trump-says-cdc-now-recommends-americans-wear-cloth-masks-in-public https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... [2] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-says-public-should-wear-masks https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-...

M0r13n 4y ago

I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked and the chemists know something about the long term effects that they do not publicly disclose.

narwal46 4y ago
vibrio 4y ago
Chemists rarely work directly with viruses.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gareth321 4y ago
> People infected with SARS-COV-2 had more than three times the risk of dying over the following year compared with those who remained uninfected https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00087-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...

breck 4y ago

This is a very simple question. You just need 1 CSV file. A CSV file with a list of all BioWeaponsLabs and their coordinates. Then for every point on earth compute distance from nearest BioWeaponsLabs. This will give you a heatmap for pr(labLeak|pandemic). Few hrs work. Right? Has anyone done this yet?

widerporst 4y ago
This ignores the fact that these labs are often built closely to where the viruses in question naturally occur.
- breck 4y ago
  Ah that's a good point. So your CSV file would need 1 more column: `type`, `bioWeaponsLab|naturalVirusHotspot`, and then you could have a toggle to see one at a time (or both, overlaid). If anyone makes this CSV with data vis and published to GitHub and it's good I'll send you $500USD worth of NEAR coin or my eternal gratitude and respect (whichever you value more).
empathy_m 4y ago
Are you looking for a diagram like this one? https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4454/asset/75c47a64-23ec-4b85-9534-2ea28d37d0a9/assets/graphic/science.abm4454-f1.svg https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4454/asset/75... ( https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 )
- breck 4y ago
  No (but interesting link, thanks). I want a CSV with locations of biolabs and historical locations of patient zeros. Given that a novel outbreak of any infectious disease occurred, what is the probability that it would be within N miles of a bioweapons lab? If you set N large enough, the Pr goes to 1. An analogy. Given that there was a housefire of a random natural origin, what is the probability that it would have begun 1 inch from an overloaded socket?
- 4y ago

BrainVirus 4y ago

Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter Daszak and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were involved in nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the lab leak hypothesis when it first popped up? And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing lab leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance? And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team? And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired for this? If you don't admit these (now-obvious) facts, you are not discussing the lab leak hypothesis in good faith.

albertop 4y ago
Also it is good to keep in mind the following [0] from Matt Ridley. 0- https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1565242836710309891 https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1565242836710309891
kurupt213 4y ago
Fauci was all over this. This is his program.
BeetleB 4y ago
> Did someone come up with a good explanation of why Peter Daszak and various affiliates of EcoHealth alliance were involved in nearly all the media "coverage" (dismissals) of the lab leak hypothesis when it first popped up? No idea. > And why The Lancet published the initial letter dismissing lab leak, clearly coordinated by EcoHealth alliance? No idea. > And why Daszak also was on the WHO investigation team? No idea. > And why to this day no one apologized, let alone got fired for this? No idea. I am not better informed as a result of your comment. Asking questions is not a proper way to educate or inform people. That I don't have answers to your questions doesn't lead to any conclusion, nor does it make me doubt anything. As a general rule: If you want to know if X is true, look for "positive" evidence. Not absence of evidence. Asking questions almost always is merely saying "Hey, I don't have all the answers" - not "Hey, there's no good answer so the answer must be Y".
jokowueu 4y ago
This explains the entire issue well https://youtu.be/8cBNyyAGETU https://youtu.be/8cBNyyAGETU

theandrewbailey 4y ago

Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1566826229931524096.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1566826229931524096.html

foreigner 4y ago

What I don't understand about this argument is why does it matter? Even if COVID was created in a lab in Wuhan they obviously didn't release it on purpose as a weapon (if they had they wouldn't have released it in Wuhan). There are any number of other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous research that could get released on accident.

namose 4y ago
> There are any number of other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous research that could get released on accident. And you don't see a problem with this? You seem to assume the lab-leak hypothesis assumes malicious intent in creating the virus, but most people are actually concerned about negligence and/or a malicious coverup of the origin. A definitive answer to the origin of covid could help answer the following questions: - How much do I trust U.S. public health institutions? - How much do I trust Chinese public health institutions? - Should gain-of-function and other high-risk virus research be conducted? And what should the safety standards be of such research? - Is there a problem of forced consensus/centralization in the broader scientific community?
potatototoo99 4y ago
The point is maybe we shouldn't be doing similarly dangerous research in the first place. The point is maybe banning in the US and funding it overseas is just idiotic.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
It matters if the truth matters to you and it matters because of the highly public discrediting of the lab-leak hypothesis both early in the pandemic and more recently should update your beliefs about a great many institutions.
eruleman 4y ago
You answered your own question.
blast 4y ago
It has enormous implications for future research and regulation, as well as the reform of scientific and public health institutions. If a plane crash killed a few hundred people, no one would question the need for a thorough investigation, root cause analysis, and preventative measures for the future. Or consider the security reforms put in place after 9/11, which killed thousands. This pandemic killed millions.

throwawaycgfd 4y ago

tehjoker 4y ago

I'm on a mobile device and feel terrible right now do I'm not going to find the sources, but aren't there several papers out there right now from Brazil, Italy, and perhaps Spain showing detection of SARS2 in samples from Nov. 2019? That would wildly change our interpretation of at least COVID's geographic origin.

shusaku 4y ago
A lot of that discussion seems to have vanished from the internet. Maybe it’s because people are less interested in talking about their strange cold back in the fall of ‘19, but it could also be that the evidence remains slim enough that contaminated samples is parsimonious.

sinecure 4y ago

I think covid's lasting impact will be one of vastly growing mistrust in the political and scientific organizations that society looks to for guidance. From the CDC's ever changing guidelines, the liability-free, fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission, the labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and any debate as heresy, the effortless militarization of common citizens to socially pressure and attack their neighbors into compliance, and the coordinated "fact checking" campaigns of powerful organizations that have turned out to be complete lies. It's all done lasting damage to societal trust... from our own families and neighbors, to the heights of academic and governmental leadership. People are rightfully asking many questions. Are the FDA, CDC, and the WHO corrupted by big Pharma companies and political groups that care more about saving face and profit than the truth? Is academia similarly corrupted to create research that supports the chosen narrative? Is "trusting the experts" really the embodiment of science... or one of religious zealotry?

robomartin 4y ago
- nomel 4y ago
  And, it has reached the top, with the most disturbing phrase I’ve seen come out of the White House [1]: “When you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.” 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dButKWnTmG8&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dButKWnTmG8&feature=emb_title
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Isn't this just the definition of the word extreme? I mean, I get that maybe they're using the word extreme to equal bad (maybe not), but I think this is just the definition of the word. Why do you think it's bad to have an extreme opinion? I probably have quite a few of extreme opinions. Some wrong, some right, some I cherish, some I dismiss.

cjbgkagh 4y ago

If a real conflict starts over Taiwan those who oppose the lab-leak theory will become the new ‘deniers’; after all we’ve always been at war with East Asia. I get whiplash from watching how rapidly the public gets jawboned. I’ve seen many people, even those close to me, completely switch positions on ‘strongly’ held beliefs. Not only do they not acknowledge the inherent contradictions but they seem to have forgotten holding the original positions in the first place. Those without memory are living in an ever changing present, and those of us with memory are stuck with a past that no longer exists.

dathinab 4y ago

I which they didn't start with 1). Because there is "a" wild life market in Wuhan which does sell wild bats from far away (and many other animals which can get/transmit covid).

thehappypm 4y ago
Favorite theory links the two. Animals infected in lab were supposed to be disposed of, but instead sold at the market. It isn’t necessarily that far-fetched: if you are tasked with incinerating a rare animal that you know is going for cash in the nearby market, there is temptation to sell it instead of destroying.
- dathinab 4y ago
  That is strangely surprisingly way too realistic tbh. ;-)

ok_computer 4y ago

Hi, content aside, tweet chains posts are terrible to read on any device. And twitter bugs me to log in to track me through the browser. To all the people who think this is the best way to deliver information to their audience please stop. 1/1

honkdaddy 4y ago
What medium would you recommend Mr. Ebright use to deliver his message to his 50,000 followers, plus the other several hundred thousand who would have seen it given its popularity? He didn't write this for HN users to read, it's pretty unrealistic for us to expect people format their publishing to fit the preferences of nerdy HN readers.
- xtracto 4y ago
  A Substack/Medium/Wordpress-online-blog URL is less than 280 chars twitter limit.
  - ok_computer 4y ago
    I agree any of those blogging sites would be a better format, even though I'm not a Medium fan. He's also listed Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers and I understand this isn't their official position but there could be a faculty page or some other publication or editorial site. And he could link to the blog article from his tweet. The downside is it wouldn't have as great viral potential but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Any page with all the bullet points in one place would serve better than an ephemeral twitter thread. If his followers regard him they may follow the link.
dang 4y ago
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
4y ago

rhodorhoades 4y ago

I don’t know if it was initial propaganda or what, but literally right before COVID became a thing, there’s was a couple news articles that popped up on HN saying there has been a lab leak from wuhan and the government is locking down the area. Three weeks later there’s this giant pandemic. I remember telling my wife about it in December before Christmas but now I can’t find any articles dating back to that time. My point is not that the lab leak is true, but in this modern world is it literally impossible to know what’s true and what’s propaganda.

pwinnski 4y ago
According to hn.algolia.com, the first mention of anything like you describe is from Jan 8, 2020[0], which isn't before Christmas 2019. The first US case was announced two weeks later, and "this giant pandemic" came a bit after that. I think your memory might be slightly off, although in completely understandable ways. Placing events on a personal timeline can be difficult. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989913
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  I found one story posted on Jan 1, 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926713 FWIW, I've not found Algoila to be a reliable search engine for HN. In fact, when I narrowed my search down further to link it here, as below - that article disappeared from the results. (Also doesn't help that keyboard input to the date picker is totally broken) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578182400&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1575072000&page=5&prefix=true&query=virus&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578182400&dateRange=custom&...

apeace 4y ago

I'm wondering: what exactly is this virus research for anyways? Whether or not this lab leaked the virus and caused the pandemic, I'm wondering why they are interested in engineering new variants of SARS-like viruses in the first place? Are the detractors of the lab-leak theory saying "Yes, they engineered plenty of coronaviruses in the lab, there's just no evidence that any of them leaked out" or are they saying "No, this lab was never trying to engineer new coronaviruses"?

kennywinker 4y ago
Answer is not complicated - the goal is to understand and prevent / treat future outbreaks of emergent diseases like this (and maybe even the common-cold coronaviruses). Just like how security researchers hack things to improve security
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>why they are interested in engineering new variants of SARS-like viruses in the first place? A reason may be so they can know how a similar naturally occurring virus may work.

throwaway23236 4y ago

While I have no basis, this is what I feel happened: WIV Worker - WIVW Janitor/intern/low paid employee - J WIVW to J: Dispose of these bats J: Ok J takes bats to wet market J sells bats for 50 bucks J to WIVW: Got rid of the bats for you. WIVW to J: Thanks.

nullc 4y ago

Their project docs are informative: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... In addition to having research the nearest known ancestor to sars-cov2, and proposing inserting the FCS that distinguishes sars-cov2 from it's ancestors, the project proposed treating bats in the wild with the humanized virus to make the bats immune to it. It's about as close to mad science as you get outside of the movies. I don't really know how much it matters if covid was directly caused by the lab leak when you can look at their actions and say that they would reasonably been expected to cause this outcome. "Mom, I swear, I didn't cause the explosion! yes, I was maxing random chemicals I found in the garage, in violation against the established prohibitions, and the chemicals I was mixing happened to be the exact sort that caused the explosion. But it wasn't me!" The fact that there was a moratorium on gain of function research means that even more of the culpable parties all the way up the funding chain are incentivized to lie about the whole thing.