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This particular research helps to understand how important this particular variant of the spike protein is. When future virus variants are discovered and seque

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
        > 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." And people on either end of that spectrum should be expected to have substantial evidence to support their position since the far simpler and common scenario is that it wasn't leaked from the lab at all. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" applies much more to the government bio-weapon crowd, but it still absolutely applies to the 'employee mistake' theory too.
  - 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.

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
        > 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." And people on either end of that spectrum should be expected to have substantial evidence to support their position since the far simpler and common scenario is that it wasn't leaked from the lab at all. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" applies much more to the government bio-weapon crowd, but it still absolutely applies to the 'employee mistake' theory too.
- 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.