7 ms·

I mean it could evolve to be airborne in the wild or in a research lab doing intentional gain of function research (a practice for which funding was temporarily

by throwaway920102 4y ago

I mean it could evolve to be airborne in the wild or in a research lab doing intentional gain of function research (a practice for which funding was temporarily halted by Obama) and hybridization much like has been done at BSL-4 facilities worldwide unchecked including by EcoHealth alliance with bat coronaviruses via US funding at the WIV prior to the Covid outbreak in Wuhan. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-failed-report-experiment-wuhan-created-bat-virus-made-mice-sicker https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01209-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01209-w https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu... But it's probably fine and we probably shouldn't worry about the possibility of a global pandemic or of mutation of Ebola into a more transmissible form.

benreesman 4y ago
Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do exactly what Covid19 did.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I think there is a lot more controversy than you’re implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN comment thread is probably not the right place to litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan political football. I’ll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do their own research on this and try to look past the elephant in the room of the politics angle.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even educated!) person is to "do their own research" on something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering. Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the advance of the most recent bombshell paper that supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab origin missed obvious tells that completely invalidated the authors' claims. E.g. this thread; https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1587090507288776704 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/15870905072887767... If people do want to make up their own minds on this - I'd encourage you to track down people making falsifiable claims and then changing their priors based on the results of that research instead of people jumping from one conspiracy theory to the next to avoid changing their views. As one data point, several prominent "lab leakers" on Twitter are now insisting that prior strains are fake and were invented by virologists since those strains disprove recent papers instead of considering that maybe those recent papers were flawed. It's bizarre to watch. (One of the authors of the most recent 'bombshell' LL paper claiming that two related field-collected coronaviruses are fake / manipulated: https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248 https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248)
      - benreesman 4y ago
        No layperson is qualified to understand any advanced technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of us aren’t lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them. This is the dilemma inherent in not having a /u/PhdInEverything. But the answer isn’t “go away and let the grownups decide”, the answer is to try to learn what constitutes an expert, try to understand what degree of consensus does or does not exist amongst those experts, try to ferret out some obvious biases (e.g. red team / blue team idiocy) and be as informed as possible. The standard model of particle physics, or Wiles FLT proof, or 1000 other things are every bit as technical as anything in virology, but you’ll notice the mathematicians all agree: the layperson doesn’t have to look very hard to know what the takeaway is there. It’s medicine’s (including virology’s) job to get its shit together on the public’s behalf, not the other way around. This kind of condescension infuriates me, I’m working hard to be as polite as possible here.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Gain function is only way to research pathogens.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    No it isn't.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      To study how they evolve and their potential to become a problem? Yeah, that’s the only way to go. And given how fast viruses evolve, there’s no real alternative.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        I think everyone agrees that observing live virus in the lab is a critical (if dangerous) part of studying them. Intentionally engineering them as high as possible on transmissibility and morbidity is bioweapon development being money laundered through conventional science: it’s an insane thing to do. Leaving SARS-COV-2 out of it completely: there have indisputably been other leaks. It’s the height of irresponsibility and shortsightedness to engineer civilization-ending viruses, which is why it’s banned under multiple international conventions that GoF is a workaround for. You don’t need a vaccine for the fucking superflu if you never develop the fucking superflu.
        justapassenger 4y ago
        And you assume that flu won’t evolve in nature? And can only start to learn about superflu once everyone is locked down at home? Also, gain function refers to basically any change to pathogen. Banning it is like banning 5G, because it could be used to steer nano bots. And you also heavily overstate our abilities to actually mutate viruses in a way we’d want.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      Nature has no qualms about performing GOF research if we don't do it. How do we protect ourselves from future viral and biological evolution otherwise? Virus's evolve literally every day, and if we don't find a way to build tools, processes, and countermeasures, we will absolutely be strongly harmed by a future one. This always feels like the "we can't afford to fix climate change so we just will ignore the problem" take.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  It's a hell of a leap to go from gain of function research has ever happened at all to gain of function specifically on Ebola is a near-term serious risk. Is there any evidence that gain of function has ever been conducted on Ebola? I've never heard of it, and don't know where to look other than a search engine, and conducting a search there returns exactly two sources making that claim, one called "scamdemic" and one called "goldismoney." Neither seems like a particularly reputable source.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  >The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. So is denying climate change or the moon landings...
  - thedorkknight 4y ago
    Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Despite actual pictures taken recently...
      - postalrat 4y ago
        You are claiming 6% is mainstream?
        LatteLazy 4y ago
        I will say that the evidence is the same for either. What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will leave up to you...
        serf 4y ago
        let's leave it up to the word definitions instead : mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts. So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke books and parody.
      - thedorkknight 4y ago
        Interesting! I honestly would not have guessed it was that high
- chimprich 4y ago
  > The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics. > a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of function research could potentially predict or help mitigate.
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    >but lacking in evidence so anything short of a public confession by a CCP spokesman isn't enough?
  - throwaway1777 4y ago
    The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue here is that we didn’t get to hear real investigation of it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers with varying level of credibility.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      China was never going to let a legitimate investigation happen, no matter what. They have nothing to gain by letting people know exactly what happened (because they think they can manage things on their own) and everything to lose by letting someone prove that wet markets are horrific or that bio labs in china have terrible safety.
  - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
    > but lacking in evidence Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- timr 4y ago
  I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely, tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-CoV2 engineering, and the differences of type required to aerosolize a filiovirus. Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying that sharks are going to evolve wings and start flying around eating people.
  - harvey9 4y ago
    But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and deposited on Los Angeles?
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Now we have the basis of a movie.
      - gatane 4y ago
        Better, a one hit song (8 years ago) https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo
uoaei 4y ago
Ebolavirus and coronavirus are very, very different. There is little in the way of comparison, transmissibility being only one of many differences.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  He didn't say that ebolavirus is similar to coronavirus. He said that Nurgle worshiping virologists are probably hard at work trying to 'enhance' ebola to be more transmissible, which is probably true.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    The point is, assuming that gain-of-function would have a viable path at turning a bloodborne pathogen into an airborne pathogen, rather than simply making an airborne pathogen more transmissible, is disappointing in its complete misunderstanding of virology. It de-legitimizes the point they're trying to make. Lab leak theory is more than a big "what if", it has merit to it. To try to make an analogous argument toward how ebola might become more transmissible in a similar manner ruins their credibility.
antupis 4y ago
I think more plausible is sexual transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111642/
duxup 4y ago
It could evolve is a big if. A lot of viruses could and become disastrous, but that’s a long shot.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  "It's a long shot" except for the several times in the past few hundred years they have done just that? We can do statistics on how often this happens. We know that we should expect it periodically. Even Obama, while on his way out, was able to tell Trump "hey expect a pandemic event soon". We literally knew this was coming.
  - duxup 4y ago
    > except for the several times in the past few hundred years they have done just that? Compared to what? The times it didn’t?

benreesman 4y ago

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

mikeyouse 4y ago
It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do exactly what Covid19 did.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I think there is a lot more controversy than you’re implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN comment thread is probably not the right place to litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan political football. I’ll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do their own research on this and try to look past the elephant in the room of the politics angle.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even educated!) person is to "do their own research" on something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering. Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the advance of the most recent bombshell paper that supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab origin missed obvious tells that completely invalidated the authors' claims. E.g. this thread; https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1587090507288776704 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/15870905072887767... If people do want to make up their own minds on this - I'd encourage you to track down people making falsifiable claims and then changing their priors based on the results of that research instead of people jumping from one conspiracy theory to the next to avoid changing their views. As one data point, several prominent "lab leakers" on Twitter are now insisting that prior strains are fake and were invented by virologists since those strains disprove recent papers instead of considering that maybe those recent papers were flawed. It's bizarre to watch. (One of the authors of the most recent 'bombshell' LL paper claiming that two related field-collected coronaviruses are fake / manipulated: https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248 https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248)
    - benreesman 4y ago
      No layperson is qualified to understand any advanced technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of us aren’t lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them. This is the dilemma inherent in not having a /u/PhdInEverything. But the answer isn’t “go away and let the grownups decide”, the answer is to try to learn what constitutes an expert, try to understand what degree of consensus does or does not exist amongst those experts, try to ferret out some obvious biases (e.g. red team / blue team idiocy) and be as informed as possible. The standard model of particle physics, or Wiles FLT proof, or 1000 other things are every bit as technical as anything in virology, but you’ll notice the mathematicians all agree: the layperson doesn’t have to look very hard to know what the takeaway is there. It’s medicine’s (including virology’s) job to get its shit together on the public’s behalf, not the other way around. This kind of condescension infuriates me, I’m working hard to be as polite as possible here.
justapassenger 4y ago
Gain function is only way to research pathogens.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  No it isn't.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    To study how they evolve and their potential to become a problem? Yeah, that’s the only way to go. And given how fast viruses evolve, there’s no real alternative.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      I think everyone agrees that observing live virus in the lab is a critical (if dangerous) part of studying them. Intentionally engineering them as high as possible on transmissibility and morbidity is bioweapon development being money laundered through conventional science: it’s an insane thing to do. Leaving SARS-COV-2 out of it completely: there have indisputably been other leaks. It’s the height of irresponsibility and shortsightedness to engineer civilization-ending viruses, which is why it’s banned under multiple international conventions that GoF is a workaround for. You don’t need a vaccine for the fucking superflu if you never develop the fucking superflu.
      - justapassenger 4y ago
        And you assume that flu won’t evolve in nature? And can only start to learn about superflu once everyone is locked down at home? Also, gain function refers to basically any change to pathogen. Banning it is like banning 5G, because it could be used to steer nano bots. And you also heavily overstate our abilities to actually mutate viruses in a way we’d want.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Nature has no qualms about performing GOF research if we don't do it. How do we protect ourselves from future viral and biological evolution otherwise? Virus's evolve literally every day, and if we don't find a way to build tools, processes, and countermeasures, we will absolutely be strongly harmed by a future one. This always feels like the "we can't afford to fix climate change so we just will ignore the problem" take.
nonameiguess 4y ago
It's a hell of a leap to go from gain of function research has ever happened at all to gain of function specifically on Ebola is a near-term serious risk. Is there any evidence that gain of function has ever been conducted on Ebola? I've never heard of it, and don't know where to look other than a search engine, and conducting a search there returns exactly two sources making that claim, one called "scamdemic" and one called "goldismoney." Neither seems like a particularly reputable source.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
LatteLazy 4y ago
>The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. So is denying climate change or the moon landings...
- thedorkknight 4y ago
  Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Despite actual pictures taken recently...
    - postalrat 4y ago
      You are claiming 6% is mainstream?
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        I will say that the evidence is the same for either. What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will leave up to you...
        serf 4y ago
        let's leave it up to the word definitions instead : mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts. So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke books and parody.
    - thedorkknight 4y ago
      Interesting! I honestly would not have guessed it was that high
chimprich 4y ago
> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics. > a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of function research could potentially predict or help mitigate.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  >but lacking in evidence so anything short of a public confession by a CCP spokesman isn't enough?
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue here is that we didn’t get to hear real investigation of it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers with varying level of credibility.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    China was never going to let a legitimate investigation happen, no matter what. They have nothing to gain by letting people know exactly what happened (because they think they can manage things on their own) and everything to lose by letting someone prove that wet markets are horrific or that bio labs in china have terrible safety.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
  > but lacking in evidence Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
timr 4y ago
I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely, tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-CoV2 engineering, and the differences of type required to aerosolize a filiovirus. Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying that sharks are going to evolve wings and start flying around eating people.
- harvey9 4y ago
  But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and deposited on Los Angeles?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Now we have the basis of a movie.
    - gatane 4y ago
      Better, a one hit song (8 years ago) https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo

uoaei 4y ago

Ebolavirus and coronavirus are very, very different. There is little in the way of comparison, transmissibility being only one of many differences.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
He didn't say that ebolavirus is similar to coronavirus. He said that Nurgle worshiping virologists are probably hard at work trying to 'enhance' ebola to be more transmissible, which is probably true.
- uoaei 4y ago
  The point is, assuming that gain-of-function would have a viable path at turning a bloodborne pathogen into an airborne pathogen, rather than simply making an airborne pathogen more transmissible, is disappointing in its complete misunderstanding of virology. It de-legitimizes the point they're trying to make. Lab leak theory is more than a big "what if", it has merit to it. To try to make an analogous argument toward how ebola might become more transmissible in a similar manner ruins their credibility.

antupis 4y ago

I think more plausible is sexual transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111642/

duxup 4y ago

It could evolve is a big if. A lot of viruses could and become disastrous, but that’s a long shot.

mrguyorama 4y ago
"It's a long shot" except for the several times in the past few hundred years they have done just that? We can do statistics on how often this happens. We know that we should expect it periodically. Even Obama, while on his way out, was able to tell Trump "hey expect a pandemic event soon". We literally knew this was coming.
- duxup 4y ago
  > except for the several times in the past few hundred years they have done just that? Compared to what? The times it didn’t?