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oilchange 3y ago

> To add to this, most countries have turned away from infectious biological weapons because they are near impossible to control. Most countries ( small to mid-tier ) lack the expertise, will or reason for it. But most major countries are working on biological weapons. If you think the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best or too naive at worst. Or maybe I'm just being too cynical. > The the release of them might harm your enemies, but at a serious cost to yourself. Never prevented intentional disease warfare throughout history. What makes you think leaders aren't willing to hurt their own countries to hurt their enemies? More importantly, what makes you think these countries will develope bio-weapons, but not vaccines for them? > The threat of a infectious weapon is not from other nations, but from a terrorist organization (which of course dramatically reduces risk). Every major terrorist organization is or was created, funded and controlled by major nations. > Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances). And yet, all weapons labs in history were created by big/rich countries. You so desperately want a world without bio-weapons that you are blinded to the contradictions in your argument.

jcranmer 3y ago
> But most major countries are working on biological weapons. If you think the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best or too naive at worst. Or maybe I'm just being too cynical. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch... covers this in some detail (it's geared towards chemical weapons, but biological weapons are the same boat). In short, chemical and biological weapons just aren't useful. For any platform you put it on, conventional explosives will do more damage. For major militaries, there's no point in using them, which is why the "big" military powers have all signed up to the anti-chemical weapons and anti-biological weapons treaties, but not the anti-nuclear or anti-cluster munitions or anti-landmines, etc.
- oilchange 3y ago
  > For major militaries, there's no point in using them, which is why the "big" military powers have all signed up to the anti-chemical weapons and anti-biological weapons treaties If chemical and biological weapons aren't useful, why does one need a treaty to ban them? Makes one wonder? Is there are treaty to ban feathers as weapons? The fact that there is an anti-biological weapons treaty is proof enough that countries are working on biological weapons, just like the anti-nuclear weapons treaty is proof that countries are working on nukes. The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs. Take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs and watch too many silly youtube videos. Also, pretty much every treaty ( international and intranational ) has been broken. Some even say treaties are meant or created to be broken.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    Your attempts at "gotchas" here are unpersuasive. If the point of treaties is to be broken, why bother signing up to them in the first place? Perhaps more interestingly, why would a country sign up to some treaties banning weapons but not others, if its intent were to use all those weapons? Yes, countries can break treaties. But there is a real cost to doing so. The point of treaties (especially the anti-war treaties) is essentially to break a prisoner's dilemma: all parties can agree to do something that is mutually beneficial for everybody, but only when no one defects. The first arms control treaty was the Washington Naval Treaty, which was signed when most countries were literally unable to find the resources to keep up with the naval arms race and proposed by the one country that could. If you read the post I linked (I suspect you did not, as you are only reacting to my comments and not other material within the post), you'll see that there are many other lines of evidence we can use to ascertain the inutility of chemical weapons, not least of which is the lack of its use in conflicts after WWI, even in existential state conflicts like WWII or the Arab-Israel wars. > If chemical and biological weapons aren't useful, why does one need a treaty to ban them? The same reason why we have laws against murder. The existence of the treaty isn't to keep people from doing something useful (indeed, if you look at which treaties are acceded to, it's the treaties that keep people from doing something useful that don't get the signatories). Instead, it's to signal the unwillingness to use it and to pressure others not to consider its use. And if you know sufficiently few people are willing to use it, then you can avoid spending the money on countermeasures to chemical weapons.
    - oilchange 3y ago
      > Your attempts at "gotchas" here are unpersuasive. It's not gotchas. It's just history and reasoning. Logic. It's persuasive to people who are willing to think. But no amount of reason will convince someone with an agenda. > If the point of treaties is to be broken, why bother signing up to them in the first place? As your buddy godelski pointed out, governments do things for optics, political grandstanding, etc. Why did germany and the soviet union sign the nonaggression treaty? Also to appease the naive masses who believe in fairy tales. So that naive people can say nobody is working on chemical or biological weapons since a treaty says so. See, this nonaggression treaty is proof germany and the soviet union will never attack each other. Genius logic. > The first arms control treaty was the Washington Naval Treaty, which was signed when most countries were literally unable to find the resources to keep up with the naval arms race and proposed by the one country that could. No. It was proposed by the one country that had isolationist political pressure against naval buildup due to our history and founding fathers warning against standing armies. It was proposed by the one country to kneecap british attempts to enforce navy limits. Also, the Washington Naval Treaty was a complete failure? It set the stage for japan to build more resentment which led to ww2. > not least of which is the lack of its use in conflicts after WWI, even in existential state conflicts like WWII or the Arab-Israel wars. Chemical weapons were used in iraq-iran war. In the syrian war just a few years ago. > The same reason why we have laws against murder. There are laws against murder because murder exists. People murder. So the treaty against chemical weapons must exist because chemical weapons exist? It would be great if chemical, biological, etc weapons are never used. But you'd have to be absolutely naive to think that every major nation isn't working on chemical or biological weapons. It's like all the naive people who claimed that government agencies stopped collecting our data after getting caught in the 70s. Of course they didn't stop collecting data. They increased the gathering of data. I live in a country where biological weapons wiped out a significant portion of the native population. Do you think such a country is working on biological weapons? If one major country is, then so is every major nation around the world. The real world isn't an utopian fairy tale. No matter how much one wishes it were. But it's a free country. Believe whatever you want.
throwaway2037 3y ago
You wrote: But most major countries are working on biological weapons. And provided no evidence or sources.
godelski 3y ago
> If you think the ... aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best or too naive at worst. No, they are. But that's a bit different. Though I understand the confusion. Gain of function research can be classified as weapons. You got to develop weapons to defend against them. And of course, momentum. Especially in politics, where once funding is given it is hard to take it away, though not hard to reduce. I'm more saying if they would seriously deploy such a weapon and how serious the research is. > What makes you think leaders aren't willing to hurt their own countries to hurt their enemies? Some yes, some no. I think most countries have learned that the Russian strategy doesn't lead to great outcomes. Then again, you think Russia would have learned it too. But most countries realize that you can't rule over the dead. But you're right, that I may be too trusting. As far as vaccines, it is hard to keep those secret. Especially if we're talking about a country like China with a billion people, where you have to distribute at least a few hundred million. You don't think a few are going to fall off the truck? There'd be a lot of money for such a situation. Or even just the recipe. I mean vaccines don't confer 100% immunity so it still comes with big costs to yourself. But you're right, Russia keeps doing the Russian strategy. Though this is more easily done in an authoritative country. This is a lot of what jcranmer is pointing to. One more thing to consider, it is hard to invade this region after. You might think the same thing about nuclear but there's a reason they've focused on increasing the explosion and decreasing the radiation. Same reasons. > Every major terrorist organization is or was created, funded and controlled by major nations. Not quite true, but if they were, then the above arguments would apply there so that no terrorist organization would get the bio weapons from the big countries. You might want to ask why there haven't been any dirty bombs, despite that this should be easier, especially after the collapse of the USSR where many nuclear materials went missing. They all went somewhere (smaller countries and probably bigger countries too, to keep away from smaller countries), but we'll probably never know the full extent. > And yet, all weapons labs in history were created by big/rich countries. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. Not all weapons were created in big countries. But weapons like nuclear, bio, and others were from big countries because to have such a program is quite expensive. Currently bioweapons, of the kind we're discussing, are still fairly expensive. This may change as things become cheaper. But regardless, these types of weapons are more attractive to the crazy anarchist who wants to watch the world burn than the angry dictator. They just aren't practical in the modern globalized world. But there's got to be a logical reason for well over a century of research in the area and not seeing it used in practice. If it were a good weapon, it would have been used.

tripletao 3y ago
Lentiviral vectors are engineered to make them less harmful (and hopefully beneficial) to humans. They're also tested to ensure they're replication-incompetent, so that even if they did turn out to be harmful they couldn't spread from patient to patient. https://www.criver.com/eureka/why-are-lentivirus-vector-safety-tests-so-crucial https://www.criver.com/eureka/why-are-lentivirus-vector-safe... The gain of function research of concern takes viruses already capable of sickening and killing humans (or their close relatives), and deliberately makes them deadlier and easier to spread among humans. This is a tiny fraction of virology, and has yet to deliver any practical benefit. There's a legitimate concern that an overbroad ban on gain-of-function research could restrict safe and beneficial activities. The WIV's work was pretty far at the dangerous extreme, though--Ralph Baric's work was already controversial, and the WIV was working with a greater diversity of viruses, at lower BSL.
- dekhn 3y ago
  While many people define gain-of-function in virology as "enhancing existing attributes which would promote virulence", molecular biologists in general are more open to the idea that other functions, such as gene therapy, would also qualify as gain-of-function. Either way my point was that we actively use a known highly transmissible virus, with some parts removed, under the general assumption that it's safe, and it's been demonstrated to not cause large issues (compared to other problems in gene therapy). I think people should be aware of that and in some sense I am surprised there isn't more attention placed on this practice.
  - tripletao 3y ago
    There's a recording from 2014 where David Relman and Ralph Baric talk about that distinction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black. I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
> Think about it Did you consider that maybe the reason this proposal was written was because this mutation was the most likely way this kind of virus could mutate to infect humans? I don’t understand why people keep throwing around all kind of unsubstantiated facts like if they suddenly made things clearer. The facts are not that complicated. Could the pandemic be linked to an accidental leak from a gain-of-function study at the Wuhan lab? Most certainly. Do we have evidence that it did? No, we don’t. Could it come from somewhere else? Sure, it can. Was there a properly done inquiry with full collaboration from the lab and the host country? Absolutely not, China was extremely uncooperative and did all it could to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic. From that, I conclude that it’s highly unlikely we will ever learn anything definitive. Therefor, discussing this is pretty much pointless.
- HardlyCurious 3y ago
  Discussing this isn't pointless just because we don't have definitive proof. We need to determine what happened based on what we do know. 7+million people are dead. Gain of function is happening in labs all over the world. Humanity can do something here to reduce risk.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - elmolino89 3y ago
    Despite rather intense searching the closest strain to C19 in the wild split ca 50 years ago. Please tell how do you introduce this famous mutation not into any of the commonly found covid viruses but create C19 differing from these. Who in a right mind (just leaving for a moment how) would do that? As: create a separate strain of coronavirus just to introduce one specific mutation.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    > We need to determine what happened based on what we do know. Incorrect. We need to determine what happened based on all the evidence. We can't just make stuff up to fill in the blanks. i.e. If what we know doesn't contain facts essential to the determination, we can't just "think about it" harder.
jasonlotito 3y ago
> Think about it. That's the hard-hitting evidence that was missing. And that's why this topic is so taboo and annoying. People turn coincidence into proof. Clearly, you have an agenda that encourages people to stop looking at facts and instead to make things up they don't have answers for. Think about it. (This means I'm right, right? This means if you don't agree with me, you aren't thinking, right?)
- HardlyCurious 3y ago
  It's an appeal to Occam's razor. The most simple explanation of why a novel virus started infecting people in a city with a virology lab is that the written plan to make covid in that lab was executed.

distortionfield 3y ago
The point is we will never know and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> "Reasonable" could be simply truly accidental like someone carried a vial, drops it and then someone gets sick from that? What you described is still the lab leak theory.
- irjustin 3y ago
  Oh you're right, i'm supposed to support "not lab leak". Bats -> humans in the market. Point remains the same. We're all speculating because I agree with the statement that trying to create foreign policy based on speculation creates so many problems - Iraq war for one (but, being fair, supposedly that was credible).
HardlyCurious 3y ago
Are you of the belief that the lab leak theory implies intention?
- irjustin 3y ago
  i'm of the belief that we only have speculation.
  - HardlyCurious 3y ago
    The fact that we only have speculation is due to yet inability to find a natural source of covid and China's refusal to be a decent member of the world and instead chose to obstruct and hide as much as they could. But, I'm sure china would admit to the world that their research lab was the fuck up that killed millions of people. It isn't like china would ever try to censor and control information that makes them look bad.
    - irjustin 3y ago
      You're complaining to a thread that already knows this. We can complain all we want about lack of transparency and truth. But, it's from where we stand, not where we want to be. We stand in pure speculation, and cannot create foreign policy based on "we're, like, pretty sure you did it... in our heads!" This kind of system of policy creation leads to guantanamo bay and the iraq war. We hold people against their will swearing they have information. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. So we resort to torture and have murdered plenty in the name of it. What if they actually don't have the information? Then we're just torturing/murdering innocents. Is it worth it? Personally I say no. But it won't stop us from parading around the success cases screaming "the ends justify the means".

elmolino89 3y ago
Which mutation are you talking about?
- elmolino89 3y ago
  """However, with analogy to influenza, it was shown many years ago that the simple insertion of a polybasic site into an H3 virus does not result in a high pathogenicity phenotype7 and is likely to only function in the context of a series of other genomic changes provided by a process of natural selection.""" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00174-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
- HardlyCurious 3y ago
  "But what was really notable about this grant proposal was that they proposed to insert cleavage sites, similar to the mystifying furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence, and to insert those into their coronavirus sequences to see if it would make them more infectious. And to many people, when that was exposed, that DARPA grant — and it only got exposed, I believe, last year — that really looked like a kind of smoking gun, which was that the research that was being proposed in the DARPA grant looked like a kind of directional arrow to a SARS-CoV-2-like virus. So that was quite significant." - https://theintercept.com/2022/05/06/deconstructed-lab-leak-covid-katherine-eban/ https://theintercept.com/2022/05/06/deconstructed-lab-leak-c... "Farzan was “bothered by the furin site and has a hard time explaining that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely).” On the question of whether the virus had a natural origin or came from some sort of accidental lab release, Farrar reported that Farzan was “70:30” or “60:40” in favor of an “accidental-release” explanation and that “Bob” — an apparent reference to Robert Garry — was also surprised by the presence of a furin cleavage site in this virus. Farrar quoted Bob saying: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. … it’s stunning.” - https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/
  - cygx 3y ago
    Refutation: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211107119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211107119 I'm not qualified to evaluate these arguments on their merit.
    - HardlyCurious 3y ago
      I'm not qualified to evaluate the claims either, but I'm not convinced the authors are trustworthy. They say: "Harrison and Sachs (1) allege that scientists at NIH and elsewhere, including myself and colleagues, conspired to suppress theories of a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. This is false. A possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 was discussed in our earlier publications" But there absolutely was a conspiracy to suppress the lab leak theory. This conspiracy is why the infamous letter published in the lancet that admonished the lab leak theory as a 'conspiracy theory's was retracted by the lancet. Peter daszak was one of the signers of the letter, but it came out he attempted to avoid signing the letter even though he arranged the entire thing. The reason he didn't want to sign it? In his words: “so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't work in a counterproductive way.” - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/wuhan-lab-collaborator-peter-daszak-recused-from-lancets-covid-19-origins-investigation https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/wuhan-lab-collaborat... Why might he feel that way? Well for one his name was on the DARPA grant proposal from 2018 to engineer a coronavirus with the same mutation covid has.
    - elmolino89 3y ago
      Refutation contains what I also noted: "For the ENaC hypothesis to be true, UNC or WIV researchers would have had to possess the direct SARS-CoV-2 progenitor isolated from another animal—not a bat." COVID-19 is not "some previously known coronavirus strain with furin cleavage site".
  - russdill 3y ago
    Can you explain how "similar to" becomes "identical" in your retelling?
    - HardlyCurious 3y ago
      There are a number of details about it which are the same as the plans from 2018. I don't think it's reasonable to think the plans of scientists don't get revised as they work. And as soon as the virus starts spreading, even in test mice in the lab, it will start to mutate. So it is entirely possible that what leaks from a lab is a natural mutation off of an engineered virus. Trying to use difference in details in this case to sow doubt isn't reasonable in my opinion because it's details that are realistically impossible to nail down.
      - russdill 3y ago
        I personally find it quite unsurprising that researchers in virology might be researching future scenarios that seem like a future possibility.
        HardlyCurious 3y ago
        This is an interesting line of thinking. We can have all the evidence imaginable that scientists did a thing that caused a pandemic, but since they were trying to predict the next pandemic you just dismiss the evidence as meaningless. It seems like the standards applied in this discussion by some are essentially that nothing short of irrefutable proof even qualifies as evidence.

oilchange 3y ago
> No, they are. Okay good, I'm glad we are agreed. > Some yes, some no. If some are, then "everyone" has to, especially major powers. Just think about it. > This is a lot of what jcranmer is pointing to. I debunked what he wrote. > the Russian strategy What's that? > Though this is more easily done in an authoritative country. No. It's done more easily in a democracy. An authoritative country never developed nuked and used it on innocent civilians. It was one of those wonderful democracies. Just like a wonderful democracy and our democratic friends overthrew the ukrainian democracy and now another wonderful democracy is invading ukraine. Most of the horror in this world has been done by democracies. Funny how all parties involved in ukraine are democracies... > Not quite true No. Absolutely true. > I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. You wrote "Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances)." And I was pointing out that all "contagion weapons" were created by big/rich countries. I was simply debunking your claim. > But there's got to be a logical reason for well over a century of research in the area and not seeing it used in practice. Has it not been used "in practice". Biological weapons have been used since ancient times. Biological weapons have been used more often than nuclear weapons. The blind and naive were adamant our agencies don't collect data and spy on us. And were absolutely shocked when it was revealed they do. Of course they do. As I said, people who are too naive or too trusting believe otherwise. I guess the third option are state actors or those who brainwashed by the media. Or maybe I'm just too cynical.
- godelski 3y ago
  > If some are, then "everyone" has to Very clearly false dilemma. > I debunked what he wrote. That's a strong word for what you wrote. > What's that? I'd link it to you, but you said you don't want to read "silly blogs". So I'm not sure how I can communicate anything to you. I don't feel like it'd help. I think we're done here.
  - oilchange 3y ago
    > Very clearly false dilemma. No. It's game theory. It's geopolitics. It's why russia, britain, france and china developed nukes. It's why india and pakistan developed it. > That's a strong word for what you wrote. Not strong or weak. Just reality. > I'd link it to you, but you said you don't want to read "silly blogs". No. What I actually wrote: "The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs. Take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs and watch too many silly youtube videos." What do you think "take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs" means? You aren't going to link to anything I don't already know. As I said, wishing there was no biological weapons is a noble thought. But believing nobody is working on biological weapons is naive. No serious rational intelligent person could believe it. But like I said, maybe life has made me too cynical. Hey chief, these white men aren't going to take any more of our land. Here's the treaty we signed with them proving that. Hey stalin, germany isn't going to attack us. Look at this non-aggression pact we sign with them.
    - godelski 3y ago
      > You aren't going to link to anything I don't already know. >> no amount of reason will convince someone with an agenda. You're exactly right. You already know.
      - oilchange 3y ago
        > You're exactly right. You already know. So do you. But you've got an agenda and a worldview that prevents you from accepting it. Imagine being naive enough to believe that there isn't chemical nor biological weapons in this world. Believe what you want. This discussion is getting pointless and I'll end it here.