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Well the mice the researchers used were genetically modified mice to have human ACE2 receptors which is standard practice in Virology. But! I will say it 100% i

Well the mice the researchers used were genetically modified mice to have human ACE2 receptors which is standard practice in Virology. But! I will say it 100% is not worth the risk, just last year a researcher in Taiwan got infected with the delta variant in the same level lab BSL3, so any dangerous or novel virus they create has a real possibility of escaping. Also it's not like this type of research helped us predict or even fight the pandemic. Millions have been spent on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to predict this pandemic, but none of the research helped in anyway combating it. For example the Ecohealth Alliance the main collaborators with the WIV has still to this day refused to share research and data they have collected over the years. So either the research is worthless and thus why are we funding it despite the dangers, or they have something they want to hide.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
This particular research helps to understand how important this particular variant of the spike protein is. When future virus variants are discovered and sequenced, this information helps understand what to expect. Because the virulence of new Variants can't be estimated for months after their first detection.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  This particular variant that didn't exist until humans combined two variants into a new one?
  - clint 4y ago
    Which is simulating what could and probably will happen in nature, before it really happens
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      Or could cause it to happen. There's still a decent chance the original covid wouldn't have happened if people weren't doing this type of research.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        There is zero indication of the Virus having originated in a lab. Some hand-waving, no actual evidence. No genomic signature. No merging of known lineages (which would happen). No plausible mechanism (to those who know the subject). Much more likely: This Virus originated just like the thousands before it. From ordinary Human-to-animal contact. Virus particles pass from animals to Humans trillions of times a year. Most of the time exactly nothing happens at all. Even rarer are actual transmissions. Still rarer are chains of transmission that allow the Virus to evolve into an actual threat.
        buscoquadnary 4y ago
        I love how everyone involved always jumps on the most extreme version of the lab leak hypothesis "Chinese government made COVID super weapon" and then use that to discount everything else instead of admitting the much more nuanced reality of the situation. The lab leak hypothesis has a range from "This virus was created and released by the Chinese government as a bio-weapon against the US and to kill off their own aging population" at the extreme. To the "The virus was being studied at the Wuhan Virology Institute and someone one got lax on safety protocols got exposed accidentally and then took the train home." Most people that seem to argue against lab leak, seem to assume everyone ascribes to the first position, whereas the majority of the people that believe in the lab leak subscribe to the later position, including myself.
        throwawayxxcf 4y ago
        The conflation and smearing that happens whenever an accidental lab leak is brought up, makes me suspicious. As an example, I used to edit Wikipedia articles in the area, but I gave up, because some editors made a concerted effort to discredit it as a "conspiracy theory" and had boundless energy to shut it down. It seems to be the opposite to the much vaunted "fearless scientific transparency" that's sold to the public as a hallmark of science. I guess that in a generation or two, when vested interests move on, there may be more willingness to explore this.
        autoexec 4y ago
    - dTal 4y ago
      Except it's not a simulation, it is causing it to "really happen". The only difference hinges on the ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which at the very least we have reason to be concerned about.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        A pandemic virus circulating in the wild is an incredibly fine-tuned machine. Just mashing together integral parts from two quite different genomes is not going to result in a Variant that is tuned enough. In order to make a Virus virulent and transmissive, it needs to evolve through multiple, probably dozens of hosts, and only if that is on a broad scale, like thousands of such lineages, does it have a chance of success. Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most likely die out on its own, if not it would get outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth mentioning.
        d0mine 4y ago
        Do we have definite proof that the original SARS-CoV-2 hasn't escaped the lab?
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        To what standard? It's the same game with climate change. When only 1% of the scientists dissent, that gives certain people enough confidence to believe the opposite of what the 99% believe.
        xupybd 4y ago
        I'm always skeptical when people say x% of scientists agree or disagree with a given hypothesis. Most of the time these numbers are flat out wrong or misleading. Most scientists have very complex views on their own domain. Those complexities lead to a very nuanced understanding of topics that we lay people don't fully understand. Most have subtle disagreements on most topics.
  - sampo 4y ago
    > This particular variant that didn't exist until humans combined two variants into a new one? Nature created a very similar hybrid earlier: "Deltacron" was in the news in March 2022. The gene that encodes the virus’s surface protein — known as spike — comes almost entirely from Omicron. The rest of the genome is Delta. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/deltacron-coronavirus-variant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/deltacron-coronav... His team described three patients in France infected with a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines the spike protein from an Omicron variant with the "body" of a Delta variant. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/variant-that-combines-delta-omicron-identified-dogs-sniff-out-virus-with-high-2022-03-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      And apparently the combined Virus was outcompeted by other Omicron lineages. Otherwise that "Deltacron" would have become a prominent or at the very least an extant variant.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  If this research does help us to understand that, it should be done in the highest level safety protocol labs, which this was not. If it is not able to get funding for being done in such a lab, that's probably because the potential learning does not justify such $$ cost. Which means it's also not worth the risk. You are correct that the virulence of new variants is hard to predict. That very fact means you shouldn't be making new ones, and assuming you can predict how virulent your new one is going to be (and thus how hard it will be to contain).
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    The safety protocols have been deemed satisfactory. You overestimate the risk. New variants are created all the time by natural transmission. Including the recombination of two different strains. So the controlled, artificial recombination is like a grain of sand in a bucket of sand. And even if it "escapes", the escaped variant would still have to evolve and prove itself. Experts don't see this as a risk.
foobarian 4y ago
I read this and dream of the day where the common cold is cured. And it makes it all seem worth it.
- ZoomerCretin 4y ago
  There is no common cold. There are over 200 distinct viruses that cause the illness we call "a cold."
  - foobarian 4y ago
    s/common cold/over 200 distinct viruses that cause the illness we call "a cold."/
    - echelon 4y ago
      Sure, but investigators need to treat this subject with reverence. Unlike pretty much every other discipline on earth, this one has the potential to disrupt billions of lives from a single mistake. Virologists were the first ones that jumped to say Covid wasn't a lab leak, yet what they should have been saying was, "we'll get to the bottom of this and then, even if wasn't a lab leak, work to make sure that outcome never comes to pass." Instead we got a blame game, accusations of racism, and everyone not in their field was called stupid or incapable of understanding the situation if we asked for more light to be shed in the subject. Also, what happened to the scientific method? There was a whole lot of certainty being prematurely thrown around. This hubris won't do. I don't know how Covid came about, and at this point the only reason to know is to prevent the next one. But no matter the case, whatever is next better not be from a lab.
      - varelse 4y ago
    - John23832 4y ago
      You want a global replace, so the end is "/g"... but I feel you lol.
dilap 4y ago
> or they have something they want to hide. Indeed. I recommend this interview with Jeffrey Sachs, who headed Lancet's commision to investigate Covid-19. https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/jeffrey-sachs-lessons-from-covid.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/jeffrey-sachs-lessons-... You may find your eyebrows a couple inches higher after listening :-)
- beebmam 4y ago
  No thanks, I'd rather trust virologists and the people who are doing the actual engineering. I don't trust directors/executives, by definition. They have ZERO idea about nearly anything, other than sounding confident.
- throwaway1248 4y ago
  Another interview that Jeffrey Sachs did: https://youtu.be/morj-3rdWwM https://youtu.be/morj-3rdWwM
- harry8 4y ago
  sibling throwaway youtube link to interview with Jeffrey Sachs should not be dead. Disagree as much or as little as you see fit with him. Nothing there needs to be suppressed. How did it get to be dead? Seems odd.
heavyset_go 4y ago
> Also it's not like this type of research helped us predict or even fight the pandemic. Millions have been spent on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to predict this pandemic, but none of the research helped in anyway combating it. I was under the impression this research was partly responsible for quickly identifying parts of the virus that are conserved in evolution, thus making them good targets for mRNA vaccines. If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins that have high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to evade vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines useless by the time they were actually rolled out.
- Izkata 4y ago
  The spike protein was selected because the virus was already well-adapted to humans and they assumed changes to the spike protein would make it less-fit and not able to infect as readily. They were wrong. > If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins that have high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to evade vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines useless by the time they were actually rolled out. This is what happened - the variant later named Delta was first identified in Oct 2020, long before the vaccines were released. If anything the vaccines helped it become the dominant one.
  - cdtwigg 4y ago
    I guess I would have assumed the opposite? A virus that just jumped from bats to humans is expected to evolve pretty quickly in the binding domain as it “learns” to better target human ACE2. I thought the reason they targeted spike was that it’s on the surface of the virus and so an obvious target for antibodies to attach, whereas if you target some structural proteins deep inside the viral structure you’re taking a risk that the antibodies won’t be able to reach them.
  - peter422 4y ago
    The spike protein was selected because prior research into SARS and MERS showed that vaccines targeting the spike had the best immune response as compared to other proteins. They were aware it could mutate because the spike of SARS2 was different than SARS or MERS. Also vaccines against the ancestral stain are still quite effective at preventing serious disease against every variant we've seen so far. I don't know what point you are trying to make but you are basing it on incorrect information.
kadoban 4y ago
> Millions have been spent on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to predict this pandemic [...] Huh? Coronaviruses have been pointed out as a big area of concern for decades, at least. What would you have expected as a prediction, exact date and time and genetic sequence?
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  If they had predicted it with any high degree of accuracy, many people would've considered that as proof that they caused it anyway.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

This particular research helps to understand how important this particular variant of the spike protein is. When future virus variants are discovered and sequenced, this information helps understand what to expect. Because the virulence of new Variants can't be estimated for months after their first detection.

TechBro8615 4y ago
This particular variant that didn't exist until humans combined two variants into a new one?
- clint 4y ago
  Which is simulating what could and probably will happen in nature, before it really happens
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    Or could cause it to happen. There's still a decent chance the original covid wouldn't have happened if people weren't doing this type of research.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      There is zero indication of the Virus having originated in a lab. Some hand-waving, no actual evidence. No genomic signature. No merging of known lineages (which would happen). No plausible mechanism (to those who know the subject). Much more likely: This Virus originated just like the thousands before it. From ordinary Human-to-animal contact. Virus particles pass from animals to Humans trillions of times a year. Most of the time exactly nothing happens at all. Even rarer are actual transmissions. Still rarer are chains of transmission that allow the Virus to evolve into an actual threat.
      - buscoquadnary 4y ago
        I love how everyone involved always jumps on the most extreme version of the lab leak hypothesis "Chinese government made COVID super weapon" and then use that to discount everything else instead of admitting the much more nuanced reality of the situation. The lab leak hypothesis has a range from "This virus was created and released by the Chinese government as a bio-weapon against the US and to kill off their own aging population" at the extreme. To the "The virus was being studied at the Wuhan Virology Institute and someone one got lax on safety protocols got exposed accidentally and then took the train home." Most people that seem to argue against lab leak, seem to assume everyone ascribes to the first position, whereas the majority of the people that believe in the lab leak subscribe to the later position, including myself.
        throwawayxxcf 4y ago
        The conflation and smearing that happens whenever an accidental lab leak is brought up, makes me suspicious. As an example, I used to edit Wikipedia articles in the area, but I gave up, because some editors made a concerted effort to discredit it as a "conspiracy theory" and had boundless energy to shut it down. It seems to be the opposite to the much vaunted "fearless scientific transparency" that's sold to the public as a hallmark of science. I guess that in a generation or two, when vested interests move on, there may be more willingness to explore this.
        autoexec 4y ago
  - dTal 4y ago
    Except it's not a simulation, it is causing it to "really happen". The only difference hinges on the ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which at the very least we have reason to be concerned about.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      A pandemic virus circulating in the wild is an incredibly fine-tuned machine. Just mashing together integral parts from two quite different genomes is not going to result in a Variant that is tuned enough. In order to make a Virus virulent and transmissive, it needs to evolve through multiple, probably dozens of hosts, and only if that is on a broad scale, like thousands of such lineages, does it have a chance of success. Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most likely die out on its own, if not it would get outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth mentioning.
      - d0mine 4y ago
        Do we have definite proof that the original SARS-CoV-2 hasn't escaped the lab?
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        To what standard? It's the same game with climate change. When only 1% of the scientists dissent, that gives certain people enough confidence to believe the opposite of what the 99% believe.
        xupybd 4y ago
        I'm always skeptical when people say x% of scientists agree or disagree with a given hypothesis. Most of the time these numbers are flat out wrong or misleading. Most scientists have very complex views on their own domain. Those complexities lead to a very nuanced understanding of topics that we lay people don't fully understand. Most have subtle disagreements on most topics.
- sampo 4y ago
  > This particular variant that didn't exist until humans combined two variants into a new one? Nature created a very similar hybrid earlier: "Deltacron" was in the news in March 2022. The gene that encodes the virus’s surface protein — known as spike — comes almost entirely from Omicron. The rest of the genome is Delta. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/deltacron-coronavirus-variant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/science/deltacron-coronav... His team described three patients in France infected with a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines the spike protein from an Omicron variant with the "body" of a Delta variant. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/variant-that-combines-delta-omicron-identified-dogs-sniff-out-virus-with-high-2022-03-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    And apparently the combined Virus was outcompeted by other Omicron lineages. Otherwise that "Deltacron" would have become a prominent or at the very least an extant variant.
rossdavidh 4y ago
If this research does help us to understand that, it should be done in the highest level safety protocol labs, which this was not. If it is not able to get funding for being done in such a lab, that's probably because the potential learning does not justify such $$ cost. Which means it's also not worth the risk. You are correct that the virulence of new variants is hard to predict. That very fact means you shouldn't be making new ones, and assuming you can predict how virulent your new one is going to be (and thus how hard it will be to contain).
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  The safety protocols have been deemed satisfactory. You overestimate the risk. New variants are created all the time by natural transmission. Including the recombination of two different strains. So the controlled, artificial recombination is like a grain of sand in a bucket of sand. And even if it "escapes", the escaped variant would still have to evolve and prove itself. Experts don't see this as a risk.

foobarian 4y ago

I read this and dream of the day where the common cold is cured. And it makes it all seem worth it.

ZoomerCretin 4y ago
There is no common cold. There are over 200 distinct viruses that cause the illness we call "a cold."
- foobarian 4y ago
  s/common cold/over 200 distinct viruses that cause the illness we call "a cold."/
  - echelon 4y ago
    Sure, but investigators need to treat this subject with reverence. Unlike pretty much every other discipline on earth, this one has the potential to disrupt billions of lives from a single mistake. Virologists were the first ones that jumped to say Covid wasn't a lab leak, yet what they should have been saying was, "we'll get to the bottom of this and then, even if wasn't a lab leak, work to make sure that outcome never comes to pass." Instead we got a blame game, accusations of racism, and everyone not in their field was called stupid or incapable of understanding the situation if we asked for more light to be shed in the subject. Also, what happened to the scientific method? There was a whole lot of certainty being prematurely thrown around. This hubris won't do. I don't know how Covid came about, and at this point the only reason to know is to prevent the next one. But no matter the case, whatever is next better not be from a lab.
    - varelse 4y ago
  - John23832 4y ago
    You want a global replace, so the end is "/g"... but I feel you lol.

dilap 4y ago

> or they have something they want to hide. Indeed. I recommend this interview with Jeffrey Sachs, who headed Lancet's commision to investigate Covid-19. https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/jeffrey-sachs-lessons-from-covid.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/jeffrey-sachs-lessons-... You may find your eyebrows a couple inches higher after listening :-)

beebmam 4y ago
No thanks, I'd rather trust virologists and the people who are doing the actual engineering. I don't trust directors/executives, by definition. They have ZERO idea about nearly anything, other than sounding confident.
throwaway1248 4y ago
Another interview that Jeffrey Sachs did: https://youtu.be/morj-3rdWwM https://youtu.be/morj-3rdWwM
harry8 4y ago
sibling throwaway youtube link to interview with Jeffrey Sachs should not be dead. Disagree as much or as little as you see fit with him. Nothing there needs to be suppressed. How did it get to be dead? Seems odd.

heavyset_go 4y ago

> Also it's not like this type of research helped us predict or even fight the pandemic. Millions have been spent on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to predict this pandemic, but none of the research helped in anyway combating it. I was under the impression this research was partly responsible for quickly identifying parts of the virus that are conserved in evolution, thus making them good targets for mRNA vaccines. If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins that have high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to evade vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines useless by the time they were actually rolled out.

Izkata 4y ago
The spike protein was selected because the virus was already well-adapted to humans and they assumed changes to the spike protein would make it less-fit and not able to infect as readily. They were wrong. > If vaccine manufacturers had targeted proteins that have high rates of mutation, it would allow the virus to evade vaccine immunity faster, potentially making vaccines useless by the time they were actually rolled out. This is what happened - the variant later named Delta was first identified in Oct 2020, long before the vaccines were released. If anything the vaccines helped it become the dominant one.
- cdtwigg 4y ago
  I guess I would have assumed the opposite? A virus that just jumped from bats to humans is expected to evolve pretty quickly in the binding domain as it “learns” to better target human ACE2. I thought the reason they targeted spike was that it’s on the surface of the virus and so an obvious target for antibodies to attach, whereas if you target some structural proteins deep inside the viral structure you’re taking a risk that the antibodies won’t be able to reach them.
- peter422 4y ago
  The spike protein was selected because prior research into SARS and MERS showed that vaccines targeting the spike had the best immune response as compared to other proteins. They were aware it could mutate because the spike of SARS2 was different than SARS or MERS. Also vaccines against the ancestral stain are still quite effective at preventing serious disease against every variant we've seen so far. I don't know what point you are trying to make but you are basing it on incorrect information.

kadoban 4y ago

> Millions have been spent on studying and modifying wild coronaviruses and it not only failed to predict this pandemic [...] Huh? Coronaviruses have been pointed out as a big area of concern for decades, at least. What would you have expected as a prediction, exact date and time and genetic sequence?

SantalBlush 4y ago
If they had predicted it with any high degree of accuracy, many people would've considered that as proof that they caused it anyway.