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The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likeliho

by ttul 4y ago

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science from this work. But because this is China, if a lab accident happened, it won’t be getting reported in the media. It’s a state secret. The Energy Department gave a low probability to their assessment, but this is still a bombshell. Imagine the legal liability for China in international courts if the evidence is solid enough for litigation. 1. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/tag/lab-leak-hypothesis/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/tag/lab-leak-hypothesis/

tiahura 4y ago
they produce good science from this work. Other than securing more funding for more research, and trivia for virologists, what good science has come from this lab?
- ttul 4y ago
  I’d have to re-listen to numerous TWiV podcasts, but here is a WaPo article discussing the quality of research at WIV: https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/ https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonp... The Wuhan institute was celebrated as an improvement over the facilities at which dangerous viruses had previously been studied in China. The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development.
    - j_crick 4y ago
      > their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development. On the contrary, look at covid aftermath — it quite did! /s
      - fidgewidge 4y ago
        Touché!
    - cld8483 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - mikem170 4y ago
    > The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab This is news to me. The article you referenced opens by saying [0]: > The World Health Organization has confirmed that breaches of safety procedures on at least two occasions at one of Beijing's top virology laboratories were the probable cause of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) there last month, which infected nine people, one of whom died. This seems to be saying they traced the illness in nine people there at the lab back to two leaks at the lab, not that the entire disease outbreak originated in a lab. There a lot of other studies, referenced in this wikipedia article [1], which explain that the first SARS virus originated in bats: > Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets. > In 2004, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the University of Hong Kong and the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus appearing in civets and humans, confirming claims that the virus might have transmitted from the animal species to humans. In the last 15 years people have fallen ill of the plague, cowpox, meningococcus, h5n1, anthrax, and zika due to lab leaks in the Unites States [2]. These are just the leaks where people got sick and/or died, all lab workers I believe. There were others affecting animals, and others where nobody got sick. None of that means these labs originated these diseases. The origin of a disease is separate from a localized outbreak. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1#Origin_and_evolutionary_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1#Origin_and_evolutio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
lamontcg 4y ago
> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing it. We also know about their SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1 work because they published it. Before the pandemic they had no reason to keep work on RaTG13 secret. This is a case of Schrodinger's BSL4 lab. We know they built chimeras of other viruses because they told the world about that, we know they sequenced RaTG13 because they published that sequence, but there's a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor backbone that they found, which for some reason they picked to be the backbone in a new set of experiments, which they had perfect secrecy over and nobody has ever found any evidence of it.
- smsm42 4y ago
  The obvious solution for this conundrum is that they did study it, but didn't publish it because the screw-up happened and all evidence was promptly destroyed. In a totalitarian state, the secrecy is the default mode. You can get exceptions and publish stuff, sure, but only once you asked and received permission. If you didn't - or in the period between you asking and permission being issued something happened - no evidence will be seen by anybody.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.
    - smsm42 4y ago
      Unfortunately, unless whoever destroyed evidence screwed up (happens all the time, security services have enough idiots and slackers), or somebody kept some evidence and then will defect, yes, it is likely we'll never have the proof. That's why they do it.
      - 4y ago
2-718-281-828 4y ago
[flagged]
- r053bud 4y ago
  Because what good does it do to actually dealing with the outbreak? I assume the government just made a decision that it was politically less desirable to do for a number of reasons. Mainly, probably the continuing attempts at thawing of relations with China.
  - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
    that's not all there is to it. there are deeper relations between the NIH and Wuhan.
  - TearsInTheRain 4y ago
    If China is engaged in a behavior that lead to a global pandemic, we have to know everything about what they were doing so that we can stop this from ever happening again. Who gives a crap about thawed relations after the extraordinary amount of damage this pandemic has done to the world
    - celticninja 4y ago
      What they were doing was downplaying the severity of the problem until it was sufficiently widespread that it was not just a China problem. I'm not saying that was the plan from the start, but it definitely morphed into that.
    - Joeri 4y ago
      The genie is more or less out of the bottle on that one. If it is a lab leak there is no stopping it from happening again and China is not doing anything special. There are hundreds of these labs all over the world, they have containment breaches all the time [1], and given the way of international politics it is effectively impossible to shut them all down. Probably undesirable as well given that labs like those are the reason we had the medical knowledge to create a vaccine. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xyzzy123 4y ago
> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately Bat coronavirus work including chimera creation was done at WIV at BSL-2, not BSL-4.
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  This is the real scandal.
KarlKemp 4y ago
Governments cannot be sued in foreign courts, so there’s no liability.
- csomar 4y ago
  Of course they can. It'll probably be a kangaroo court but you'll need a big global coalition for that.
gregw2 4y ago
It’s weird you mention BSL4 and use present tense about Wuhan when discussing covid origins. The Coronavirus work at Wuhan was done in BSL2 environment; the BSL4 lab was still being built at that time.
himinlomax 4y ago
> it’s most likely a naturally created virus. The lab leak hypothesis doesn't even rule out that it was a natural virus. It just says that the virus leaked from the lab. It could have been: - deliberately created in the lab (gain on function) - accidentally created in the lab through repeated cross-species contamination of lab animals - just stored in the lab from a natural sample - or even not deliberately stored in the lab but acquired through infection of a researcher on a collection mission.

by ttul 4y ago

tiahura 4y ago

they produce good science from this work. Other than securing more funding for more research, and trivia for virologists, what good science has come from this lab?

ttul 4y ago
I’d have to re-listen to numerous TWiV podcasts, but here is a WaPo article discussing the quality of research at WIV: https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/ https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonp... The Wuhan institute was celebrated as an improvement over the facilities at which dangerous viruses had previously been studied in China. The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development.
  - j_crick 4y ago
    > their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development. On the contrary, look at covid aftermath — it quite did! /s
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
      Touché!
  - cld8483 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- mikem170 4y ago
  > The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab This is news to me. The article you referenced opens by saying [0]: > The World Health Organization has confirmed that breaches of safety procedures on at least two occasions at one of Beijing's top virology laboratories were the probable cause of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) there last month, which infected nine people, one of whom died. This seems to be saying they traced the illness in nine people there at the lab back to two leaks at the lab, not that the entire disease outbreak originated in a lab. There a lot of other studies, referenced in this wikipedia article [1], which explain that the first SARS virus originated in bats: > Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets. > In 2004, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the University of Hong Kong and the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus appearing in civets and humans, confirming claims that the virus might have transmitted from the animal species to humans. In the last 15 years people have fallen ill of the plague, cowpox, meningococcus, h5n1, anthrax, and zika due to lab leaks in the Unites States [2]. These are just the leaks where people got sick and/or died, all lab workers I believe. There were others affecting animals, and others where nobody got sick. None of that means these labs originated these diseases. The origin of a disease is separate from a localized outbreak. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1#Origin_and_evolutionary_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1#Origin_and_evolutio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

lamontcg 4y ago

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing it. We also know about their SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1 work because they published it. Before the pandemic they had no reason to keep work on RaTG13 secret. This is a case of Schrodinger's BSL4 lab. We know they built chimeras of other viruses because they told the world about that, we know they sequenced RaTG13 because they published that sequence, but there's a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor backbone that they found, which for some reason they picked to be the backbone in a new set of experiments, which they had perfect secrecy over and nobody has ever found any evidence of it.

smsm42 4y ago
The obvious solution for this conundrum is that they did study it, but didn't publish it because the screw-up happened and all evidence was promptly destroyed. In a totalitarian state, the secrecy is the default mode. You can get exceptions and publish stuff, sure, but only once you asked and received permission. If you didn't - or in the period between you asking and permission being issued something happened - no evidence will be seen by anybody.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Unfortunately, unless whoever destroyed evidence screwed up (happens all the time, security services have enough idiots and slackers), or somebody kept some evidence and then will defect, yes, it is likely we'll never have the proof. That's why they do it.
    - 4y ago

2-718-281-828 4y ago

[flagged]

r053bud 4y ago
Because what good does it do to actually dealing with the outbreak? I assume the government just made a decision that it was politically less desirable to do for a number of reasons. Mainly, probably the continuing attempts at thawing of relations with China.
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  that's not all there is to it. there are deeper relations between the NIH and Wuhan.
- TearsInTheRain 4y ago
  If China is engaged in a behavior that lead to a global pandemic, we have to know everything about what they were doing so that we can stop this from ever happening again. Who gives a crap about thawed relations after the extraordinary amount of damage this pandemic has done to the world
  - celticninja 4y ago
    What they were doing was downplaying the severity of the problem until it was sufficiently widespread that it was not just a China problem. I'm not saying that was the plan from the start, but it definitely morphed into that.
  - Joeri 4y ago
    The genie is more or less out of the bottle on that one. If it is a lab leak there is no stopping it from happening again and China is not doing anything special. There are hundreds of these labs all over the world, they have containment breaches all the time [1], and given the way of international politics it is effectively impossible to shut them all down. Probably undesirable as well given that labs like those are the reason we had the medical knowledge to create a vaccine. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xyzzy123 4y ago

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately Bat coronavirus work including chimera creation was done at WIV at BSL-2, not BSL-4.

seizethecheese 4y ago
This is the real scandal.

KarlKemp 4y ago

Governments cannot be sued in foreign courts, so there’s no liability.

csomar 4y ago
Of course they can. It'll probably be a kangaroo court but you'll need a big global coalition for that.

gregw2 4y ago

It’s weird you mention BSL4 and use present tense about Wuhan when discussing covid origins. The Coronavirus work at Wuhan was done in BSL2 environment; the BSL4 lab was still being built at that time.

himinlomax 4y ago

> it’s most likely a naturally created virus. The lab leak hypothesis doesn't even rule out that it was a natural virus. It just says that the virus leaked from the lab. It could have been: - deliberately created in the lab (gain on function) - accidentally created in the lab through repeated cross-species contamination of lab animals - just stored in the lab from a natural sample - or even not deliberately stored in the lab but acquired through infection of a researcher on a collection mission.