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The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that binds to human ACE-2 receptors, out of Wuhan, China, directly next to the lab where they were studying this. What are the chances? We know what they were studying because all of the grants, emails, and other information from NIH to EcoHealth Alliance have been acquired via the Freedom of Information Act: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23793974-tobias-v-hhs-21-cv-02805-42823-partial-production_redactedpdf-may-1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23793974-tobias-v-hh...

Klinky 3y ago
Neither of those are definitive sources of evidence. Grant proposals that were denied and statements that the furin site could've evolved naturally or been lab manipulated, aren't really evidence that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Definitive proof? No. Damning evidence? Yes.
  - Klinky 3y ago
    It's not damning evidence either.
- rekttrader 3y ago
  That’s absurd.
  - Klinky 3y ago
    No, absurdity is citing sources that say "maybe it was, maybe it wasn't" then claiming they mean it "definitely was".
- asynchronous 3y ago
  I wish I had your faith.
  - Klinky 3y ago
    I am not relying on faith, I am reading the cited sources.
- whodidntante 3y ago
  definitive sources of evidence ? no statements about furin sites being evidence of a lab leak ? no But clearly enough for quite a number of people in scientific leadership positions to state publicly that any discussion of a lab leak is a conspiracy theory and to ridicule and censor anyone who thought so. In fact, these scientific leaders were so good, and so on top of things, that they were able to do the research and examine the evidence, and come up with these strong unequivocal conclusions only a few weeks after covid started to spread worldwide (feb 2020) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  - Klinky 3y ago
    We agree that it's not definitive evidence. You typing a lot of words and citing another non-definitive source doesn't make it more definitive.
- kcplate 3y ago
  Ok, so? This is inference from a bunch of connected but circumstantial evidence. Can someone explain to me what the harm is in this practice?
  - Klinky 3y ago
    Speculate all you want, just don't make definitive claims using non-definitive evidence.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      Even if you had literal witnesses it wouldn't be 'definitive' evidence, I'm not sure why you're using this argument as if you can't make claims about things you didn't directly observe.
      - Klinky 3y ago
        Well I don't even think there's enough evidence here to win a civil trial where the bar is lower than criminal. Don't act like you have the answer while citing sources that literally say your claim might not be what happened. Y'all just want to jump to a conclusion.
        BasedAnon 3y ago
        You realise you don't have to agree with everything in a source you cite, right?
        Klinky 3y ago
        Why would I ignore the parts of a cited source they don't agree with or that's counter to the claim being made? You don't think that's important?
    - kcplate 3y ago
      Ok…but why is that so important to you? I guess I am trying to understand the motivation behind people who are insisting on splitting hairs to downplay or denigrate the circumstantial evidence that points toward a lab leak. I mean I can understand if there was an accidental lab leak of an engineered virus that killed millions was created in a Chinese lab with American tax dollars why those involved might want that information suppressed and to go away but why is it important to Klinky to take up that cause?
noncoml 3y ago
> What are the chances? No matter if it was lab leak or not, my problem with the Chinese government is the way they tried to handle it. Can help but draw parallels to the Chernobyl accident.
dannyz 3y ago
It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study
- EMM_386 3y ago
  > It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study The lab was nowhere near the site of what they were studying. The coronavirus strains came from a cave 600 miles away and brought to Wuhan for further study. Again, none of these viruses have a unique furin cleavage site for ACE-2. If you read the FOIA document requests, one of the people who got grant money said "I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . it’s stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”. This person afterwards did a complete u-turn and signed onto the infamous publication in The Lancet. A lot of people quickly did a u-turn around the exact same time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    > The lab was nowhere near the site of what they were studying. > The coronavirus strains came from a cave 600 miles away and brought to Wuhan for further study. The best theory I've come across is that patient zero was a person collecting bats in caves for the lab in Wuhan. By all records, they wore woefully inadequate PPE (unlike the people in the lab itself who had well-established procedures). This theory explains the jump from animal to human, the geographic origin, the reason why China didn't allow any outside investigations, and why most geneticists believe it likely had a zoological origin. (Yes, that last bit remains true no matter how badly the conspiracy theorists want it to be false.)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
      > why most geneticists believe Whenever I see a claim of this type, I always wonder how you back it up? I'm not saying that most geneticists don't believe what you're saying, because I have no clue what most members of any profession believe about anything. I have plenty of gut feelings, but how do you go beyond that? Did you mean most geneticists that you know? That you've seen articles from?
crazygringo 3y ago
Can you point to a non-biased source that explains this in more detail? I'm not a biologist, I don't have the slightest idea what the heck a furin cleavage site is, and so whether this is a red herring or a smoking gun. But if you think this is such a smoking gun, can you point to somebody who explains in detail for a general audience what it means, why it's true, and how statistically unlikely it would be for it to be natural? I just don't have anywhere near the background to know whether your comment is valid, but would like to know more.
- BryantD 3y ago
  The furin cleavage theory is fairly controversial: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    If it were fairly controversial, why are you citing a paper in PNAS, the Journal Of Last Refuge for shitty science? The only benefit of being a member of the academy of sciences is that you can dump into PNAS whatever hot trash you couldn't sell to any other journal, because they almost never reject papers from members.
    - BryantD 3y ago
      Sorry, not going to do the “your cite doesn’t count because I don’t like some ineffable thing about it” game. There’s a scientific claim in there; I will freely admit that I don’t know enough about viral genetics to have a valid opinion about it. What I do know is that people disagree about the implication of the furin cleavage site and it’s poor form not to acknowledge that.
stevenAthompson 3y ago
Unique furin cleavage sites are very common in coronaviruses (see below paper). In fact, one of the papers linked from the intercept article you posted even mentions HCoV-HKU1 which also has a unique furin cleavage site at s1/s2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... I found all of this in about 10 minutes of googling and 15 minutes of reading. Which means I’m as qualified to weigh in on the subject as anyone else here now.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- streptomycin 3y ago
  There are other coronaviruses (broad category) with furin cleavage sites, but there are not other sarbecoviruses (more narrow category) with furin cleavage sites. What those two facts tell you about the origin of Covid-19 is beyond my pay grade.
- EMM_386 3y ago
  They are not common, and "10 minutes of googling" isn't going to get you anywhere. Read my link to the FOIA documents. There are many redacted, for "national security". Why would they be redacted for US national security if this came from a natural animal origin? It should at least give you pause to think. Possibly because the US was funding it via NIH grants to EcoHealth Alliance, which puts everyone in quite the bind? 6+ million dead and finger pointing between global superpowers probably isn't the outcome they had in mind. "In April 2020 correspondence with EcoHealth Alliance, NIH wrote that it "received reports that the Wuhan Institute of Virology ... has been conducting research at its facilities in China that pose serious bio-safety concerns." Page 54. Or this, where the NIH is requesting the location of a scientist who disappeared? Page 235. "The Wuhan institute sequenced the genome of the new virus in January after receiving patient samples. In addition to requiring EcoHealth Alliance provide a sample of the sequenced coronavirus, the NIH said in its letter that EcoHealth Alliance must “explain the apparent disappearance” of a scientist who worked in the Wuhan lab." There are too many other pages (between all the pages of redactions) worth reading to mention them all.
tmaly 3y ago
Are you saying the virus did not originate from a wet market?

Klinky 3y ago

Neither of those are definitive sources of evidence. Grant proposals that were denied and statements that the furin site could've evolved naturally or been lab manipulated, aren't really evidence that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 3y ago
Definitive proof? No. Damning evidence? Yes.
- Klinky 3y ago
  It's not damning evidence either.
rekttrader 3y ago
That’s absurd.
- Klinky 3y ago
  No, absurdity is citing sources that say "maybe it was, maybe it wasn't" then claiming they mean it "definitely was".
asynchronous 3y ago
I wish I had your faith.
- Klinky 3y ago
  I am not relying on faith, I am reading the cited sources.
whodidntante 3y ago
definitive sources of evidence ? no statements about furin sites being evidence of a lab leak ? no But clearly enough for quite a number of people in scientific leadership positions to state publicly that any discussion of a lab leak is a conspiracy theory and to ridicule and censor anyone who thought so. In fact, these scientific leaders were so good, and so on top of things, that they were able to do the research and examine the evidence, and come up with these strong unequivocal conclusions only a few weeks after covid started to spread worldwide (feb 2020) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- Klinky 3y ago
  We agree that it's not definitive evidence. You typing a lot of words and citing another non-definitive source doesn't make it more definitive.
kcplate 3y ago
Ok, so? This is inference from a bunch of connected but circumstantial evidence. Can someone explain to me what the harm is in this practice?
- Klinky 3y ago
  Speculate all you want, just don't make definitive claims using non-definitive evidence.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    Even if you had literal witnesses it wouldn't be 'definitive' evidence, I'm not sure why you're using this argument as if you can't make claims about things you didn't directly observe.
    - Klinky 3y ago
      Well I don't even think there's enough evidence here to win a civil trial where the bar is lower than criminal. Don't act like you have the answer while citing sources that literally say your claim might not be what happened. Y'all just want to jump to a conclusion.
      - BasedAnon 3y ago
        You realise you don't have to agree with everything in a source you cite, right?
        Klinky 3y ago
        Why would I ignore the parts of a cited source they don't agree with or that's counter to the claim being made? You don't think that's important?
  - kcplate 3y ago
    Ok…but why is that so important to you? I guess I am trying to understand the motivation behind people who are insisting on splitting hairs to downplay or denigrate the circumstantial evidence that points toward a lab leak. I mean I can understand if there was an accidental lab leak of an engineered virus that killed millions was created in a Chinese lab with American tax dollars why those involved might want that information suppressed and to go away but why is it important to Klinky to take up that cause?

noncoml 3y ago

> What are the chances? No matter if it was lab leak or not, my problem with the Chinese government is the way they tried to handle it. Can help but draw parallels to the Chernobyl accident.

dannyz 3y ago

It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study

EMM_386 3y ago
> It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study The lab was nowhere near the site of what they were studying. The coronavirus strains came from a cave 600 miles away and brought to Wuhan for further study. Again, none of these viruses have a unique furin cleavage site for ACE-2. If you read the FOIA document requests, one of the people who got grant money said "I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . it’s stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”. This person afterwards did a complete u-turn and signed onto the infamous publication in The Lancet. A lot of people quickly did a u-turn around the exact same time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  > The lab was nowhere near the site of what they were studying. > The coronavirus strains came from a cave 600 miles away and brought to Wuhan for further study. The best theory I've come across is that patient zero was a person collecting bats in caves for the lab in Wuhan. By all records, they wore woefully inadequate PPE (unlike the people in the lab itself who had well-established procedures). This theory explains the jump from animal to human, the geographic origin, the reason why China didn't allow any outside investigations, and why most geneticists believe it likely had a zoological origin. (Yes, that last bit remains true no matter how badly the conspiracy theorists want it to be false.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
    > why most geneticists believe Whenever I see a claim of this type, I always wonder how you back it up? I'm not saying that most geneticists don't believe what you're saying, because I have no clue what most members of any profession believe about anything. I have plenty of gut feelings, but how do you go beyond that? Did you mean most geneticists that you know? That you've seen articles from?

crazygringo 3y ago

Can you point to a non-biased source that explains this in more detail? I'm not a biologist, I don't have the slightest idea what the heck a furin cleavage site is, and so whether this is a red herring or a smoking gun. But if you think this is such a smoking gun, can you point to somebody who explains in detail for a general audience what it means, why it's true, and how statistically unlikely it would be for it to be natural? I just don't have anywhere near the background to know whether your comment is valid, but would like to know more.

BryantD 3y ago
The furin cleavage theory is fairly controversial: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  If it were fairly controversial, why are you citing a paper in PNAS, the Journal Of Last Refuge for shitty science? The only benefit of being a member of the academy of sciences is that you can dump into PNAS whatever hot trash you couldn't sell to any other journal, because they almost never reject papers from members.
  - BryantD 3y ago
    Sorry, not going to do the “your cite doesn’t count because I don’t like some ineffable thing about it” game. There’s a scientific claim in there; I will freely admit that I don’t know enough about viral genetics to have a valid opinion about it. What I do know is that people disagree about the implication of the furin cleavage site and it’s poor form not to acknowledge that.

stevenAthompson 3y ago

Unique furin cleavage sites are very common in coronaviruses (see below paper). In fact, one of the papers linked from the intercept article you posted even mentions HCoV-HKU1 which also has a unique furin cleavage site at s1/s2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... I found all of this in about 10 minutes of googling and 15 minutes of reading. Which means I’m as qualified to weigh in on the subject as anyone else here now.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
streptomycin 3y ago
There are other coronaviruses (broad category) with furin cleavage sites, but there are not other sarbecoviruses (more narrow category) with furin cleavage sites. What those two facts tell you about the origin of Covid-19 is beyond my pay grade.
EMM_386 3y ago
They are not common, and "10 minutes of googling" isn't going to get you anywhere. Read my link to the FOIA documents. There are many redacted, for "national security". Why would they be redacted for US national security if this came from a natural animal origin? It should at least give you pause to think. Possibly because the US was funding it via NIH grants to EcoHealth Alliance, which puts everyone in quite the bind? 6+ million dead and finger pointing between global superpowers probably isn't the outcome they had in mind. "In April 2020 correspondence with EcoHealth Alliance, NIH wrote that it "received reports that the Wuhan Institute of Virology ... has been conducting research at its facilities in China that pose serious bio-safety concerns." Page 54. Or this, where the NIH is requesting the location of a scientist who disappeared? Page 235. "The Wuhan institute sequenced the genome of the new virus in January after receiving patient samples. In addition to requiring EcoHealth Alliance provide a sample of the sequenced coronavirus, the NIH said in its letter that EcoHealth Alliance must “explain the apparent disappearance” of a scientist who worked in the Wuhan lab." There are too many other pages (between all the pages of redactions) worth reading to mention them all.

tmaly 3y ago

Are you saying the virus did not originate from a wet market?