5 ms·

Which is simulating what could and probably will happen in nature, before it really happens

by clint 4y ago

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.
      - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        There are two indicators, one simply how close it was to a virus lab doing similar studies, and two how immediately and blindly people denied that they could be any connection. They'd have had to investigate before making a claim, and had not, so obviously they're lying. A concerted conspiracy to deny an option is some evidence for that option being true. I don't claim it did come from a lab, but that anyone stating categorically that it did not is lying.
      - JamesBarney 4y ago
        Why is - a virus unusually adapted to being transmitted between people - which was released next to one of a handful of labs on earth that studied it - that the Chinese government and several American scientists tried to cover up - normally found a thousand of miles away - that we can't find an origin for unlike SARS and MERS (with far more looking) isn't also an at least equally extraordinary claim?
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    How would we know if there would be a genomic signature if the database of viruses Wuhan worked with wasn't opened up? There is not plausible mechanism for anyone from the Wuhan laboratory to get sick with a virus they are studying? This happened several times, and happens 100's of times a year (not Wuhan specifically but labs). There is some circumstantial evidence it was a lab leak. Like the virus doesn't naturally occur in the Wuhan district, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the few in the world that study coronaviruses and do gain of function research. Unlike SARS and MERS where we discovered the origins quickly, we still don't know the origins of covid-19. I don't know how you leap to the conclusion it was of natural origins when we don't even know what those natural origins are. We don't know if it's a lab leak or not, but they do happen and they've fairly common. (10's-100's per year)
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      The Virus has been sequenced to death. Gene editing technology leaves traces. Hard to explain, but it's partly because of the technology and partly because evolution erodes statistical anomalies in a certain way. There is no plausible way to "gain of function" your way into a pandemic Virus. Researchers can make a Virus gain a function. Usually by making it lose a few others. There is also no plausible way that an unmodified Virus collected from labs just happens to be the next hot shit on the pandemic scene. If there is a Virus with that potential, you wouldn't need researchers and a leak from a BSL-3 lab to make it go viral, it would just happen on its own.
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.

Which is simulating what could and probably will happen in nature, before it really happens

by clint 4y ago

Which is simulating what could and probably will happen in nature, before it really happens

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.
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      There are two indicators, one simply how close it was to a virus lab doing similar studies, and two how immediately and blindly people denied that they could be any connection. They'd have had to investigate before making a claim, and had not, so obviously they're lying. A concerted conspiracy to deny an option is some evidence for that option being true. I don't claim it did come from a lab, but that anyone stating categorically that it did not is lying.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      Why is - a virus unusually adapted to being transmitted between people - which was released next to one of a handful of labs on earth that studied it - that the Chinese government and several American scientists tried to cover up - normally found a thousand of miles away - that we can't find an origin for unlike SARS and MERS (with far more looking) isn't also an at least equally extraordinary claim?
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  How would we know if there would be a genomic signature if the database of viruses Wuhan worked with wasn't opened up? There is not plausible mechanism for anyone from the Wuhan laboratory to get sick with a virus they are studying? This happened several times, and happens 100's of times a year (not Wuhan specifically but labs). There is some circumstantial evidence it was a lab leak. Like the virus doesn't naturally occur in the Wuhan district, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the few in the world that study coronaviruses and do gain of function research. Unlike SARS and MERS where we discovered the origins quickly, we still don't know the origins of covid-19. I don't know how you leap to the conclusion it was of natural origins when we don't even know what those natural origins are. We don't know if it's a lab leak or not, but they do happen and they've fairly common. (10's-100's per year)
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    The Virus has been sequenced to death. Gene editing technology leaves traces. Hard to explain, but it's partly because of the technology and partly because evolution erodes statistical anomalies in a certain way. There is no plausible way to "gain of function" your way into a pandemic Virus. Researchers can make a Virus gain a function. Usually by making it lose a few others. There is also no plausible way that an unmodified Virus collected from labs just happens to be the next hot shit on the pandemic scene. If there is a Virus with that potential, you wouldn't need researchers and a leak from a BSL-3 lab to make it go viral, it would just happen on its own.

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.