19 ms·

Politicians, scientists spar over alleged NIH coverup using COVID19 origin paper

61 points by peanutcrisis 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago
[flagged]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> This remains the only scientifically supported theory for how the virus emerged. I am not so sure about this assertion. And definitely, the lab leak hypothesis should not have been so forcefully suppressed as a conspiracy theory.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  It's not the only scientifically supported theory, it's the only Scientifically supported theory. science is the thing you do. Science is the thing you trust.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    Are you talking about a lab-leak hypothesis? When did it became a theory?
    - telmo 3y ago
      How could lab-leak ever become a theory? A theory is an explanation of some repeatable pattern of phenomena that is observed in nature and that can be empirically verified. "Lab-leak" is a single possible event, that may or not have happened. The most that can happen is for strong evidence to emerge for or against the hypothesis that this specific event occurred.
      - Retric 3y ago
        There’s plenty of debated scientific theories around single events such as what killed off the dinosaurs or how old the universe is etc. Testability happens when you accurately predict what evidence will be found, ie there’s excess iridium globally at the K-T boundary. Similarly there’s theories around collections of events such as the timing of the ice ages which are collectively significant.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        There is, but all possibly viable theories will have to incorporate the available evidence.
        Retric 3y ago
        Mostly, some of the available evidence in any domain will come from experimental error etc. Even the hard sciences gets messy at the edges.
        telmo 3y ago
        That is a very good point, you have convinced me.
      - eimrine 3y ago
        > "Lab-leak" is a single possible event I don't agree because there are plethora of possible details depending on level of conspiracy. Was the virus synthesized at least partly? Was the virus selected from a number of not so harmful viruses? Was the virus went from naively non-infected bat when the fact is that it was infected? Was the lab-leak done intentionally, kind of something able to pause WW3? And so on and on.
    - spamizbad 3y ago
      It didn’t. There’s some evidence (taken in isolation) that might point to such a thing could potentially occur but data and historic evidence points to the wet market. At this point I feel like the argument is over some broader meta-argument that the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed too aggressively and the consensus formed too quickly over the wet market.
      - stringsandchars 3y ago
        > but data and historic evidence points to the wet market Because almost no-one has covered this news, you may have missed that the data pointing at the wet-market (from Worobey et al) has been thoroughly debunked using solid scientific data.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      You empiricists often loose the plot when it comes to these sort of matters. A thought experiment: A murder during a fancy dinner party. Victim was shot in the head with a 9mm round. Guest A is very evasive and was in the vicinity where the body was found. Guest A is known to have a 9mm handgun. Guest A quickly destroys his handgun and forensics cannot recover any information from it. Guest A writes a letter explaining that the shot came from outside the house, without any mention of his potential role in the murder, and his friends at the local newspaper not only run the letter, citing him as a expert, but run hit pieces that anyone claiming otherwise is a racist. Reason allows us to know Guest A was involved. In the absence of evidence sometimes reason is all you have. This is one of those cases, no science is required just a little life experience.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        This analogy gets a little strained when wild Glocks breed in the vicinity of the home, and have randomly shot people fairly regularly over the course of the house's existence. "Guest A quickly destroys his handgun" is, thus far, not supported by evidence in the lab leak hypothesis, which posits but has never proven the existence of samples of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab.
  - dragonelite 3y ago
    Science and theories has been used politically for centuries. Such as malthusian theory and Darwin's survival of the fittest to support colonialism. To free market and competitive advantages as a way to destabilise domestic economics in global south. western people will believe in the wuhan virus leak and some others will believe in Fort detrick virus leak theories. You also had Russians finding a lot of virus labs in ukraine etc. The world will split into multiple realities and histories.
  - SantalBlush 3y ago
    >science is the thing you do. Not really. We can build vinegar and baking soda volcanoes in our kitchens, but we can't build particle accelerators. You will never personally prove where COVID-19 originated, so if you don't want to rely on trusting other accounts, you'll need to permanently abstain from holding an opinion either way.
  - paulsutter 3y ago
    I think you're saying - science is the methodology, - Science is the institution that requires trust to be believed? Folks might interpret your comment to mean we should trust the institution, when of course we all know it's a grave error to trust institutions. Institutions get captured, usually by low-iq lifers Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts... science - a.k.a. research - is in the making, belongs to the (unknown, yet to be discovered) future, while expertise is based on the past, with in-built obsolescence"
  - fluidcruft 3y ago
    It's always interesting that the conspiracy theorists go after their own government and don't seem to stop and think how easily all of Science can be manipulated by a motivated intelligence service. It's easy enough for actual scientists to get away with fabricating data. Imagine what a motivated adversary could do to misdirect Science. Scientists can be far too trusting.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I'm not sure why it's supposed to matter. In both cases, China did a bad thing; in both cases, it's a good idea to review and possibly improve biolab safety protocols and also to end wet markets as the latter were obviously a biohazard even before the pandemic.
  - metalspot 3y ago
    > China did a bad thing The WIV lab was built by the French with money from many different countries and the research was being done by EcoHealth Alliance with US funding so blaming it on the Chinese is probably not the whole picture. EcoHealth alliance made a grant application to DARPA and DARPA turned them down because it was too risky but it seems pretty obvious that they got the money somewhere else. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    China? Look into Peter Daszak, he even mentioned his bias when the WHO sent him to investigate his own lab. Fauci was involved in funding the research via NIH, and he didn't mention this when shit hit the fan. The goal of the research was to manipulate the virus to see if it could transfer to humans, ie gain-of-function. There's a reason it was conducted in China and it's not the chinese. And it gets worse, even though EcoHealth Alliance lied in their books they recently received another grant to keep doing similar research. It was discussed here at the time. What could go wrong? It's a rabbit hole but you might be surprised how corrupt it looks. Don't get fooled by those trying to shift your focus to China.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      "Here look instead at the other people who did bad things too" is a great way to repeat every disaster and accident across history and learn zero lessons. The government of any place gets to take the blame for things happening in that place, even in more extreme cases where deeds were fully funded by a hostile government who sent in secret agents. ("The buck stops here"). So, if you want to blame $meme_de_jour as well, then go for it — but even if guilty, regardless of whether that's malice or incompetence or bad luck or a novel failure that nobody could have foreseen, that doesn't exonerate anyone else who dropped a ball, which China absolutely did more than once regardless of the origin, as they also tried to downplay the initial infections.
- _notreallyme_ 3y ago
  Technically, the lab leak hypothesis has not officially been suppresssed as a conspiracy theory. It is has been ranked from "extremely unlikely" to "likely with low confidence". The reason why you may think it has been suppressed as a conspiracy theory is probably because the people pushing the more for it actually use conspiracy theory patterns. In reaction, report about these loud yeller providing out-of-context, with often ridicule arguments, are dismissed as conspiracy theories. There is nonetheless some objective reports a lab leak hypotheses and how improving lab security is important to prevent this kind of things either way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - walleeee 3y ago
    It absolutely was suppressed at the beginning. A small cadre of scientists, in coordination with a high-level government official, published claims they knew or suspected to be unsupported or misleading in a leading medical journal. This is public knowledge now.
  - SamPatt 3y ago
    This feels misleading. Social media platforms were removing content discussing lab leak theories, and there's enough evidence of government officials colluding with those platforms generally to suspect they could have played a role in that. That's apart from the scientific community itself, which is what this hearing is ostensibly about.
    - simonh 3y ago
      The problem was that a lot of the 'evidence' of a lab leak and genetic engineering of the virus was contrived, exaggerated misinformation. So if you want to exclude contrived exaggerated deliberate misinformation from your platform, what are you going to do? Personally I have been from the start saying that a lab leak was possible, on the basis that lab leaks have happened before, and should be investigated. That makes me a lab leak theory supporter as a possibility from day one. I've never got silenced, banned, insulted or de-platformed for saying so. I have no common cause or sympathy for people knowingly spreading lies and contrived 'evidence' to push the lab leak hypothesis though.
- cwmma 3y ago
  part of the problem here is that when people say "lab leak" they are talking about two different theories 1. that the lab "created" the virus via genetic engineering or something. 2. the virus was natural but the lab was studying it and it escaped. The paper is explicitly about case one, saying the virus seems completely natural, they explicitly say case two is not off the table.
- pcrh 3y ago
  The key part is "scientifically supported". There's no science supporting the lab leak theory, i.e. actual scientific data linking the lab with SARS-CoV2.
conception 3y ago
Standard reminder that it took years to find SARS. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 There are lots and lots of bat caves.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That, plus that the ease with which the virus jumped back to animals (deer, hamsters, mice, ferrets, cats, dogs) makes the search for a reservoir animal very difficult, as well as the fair chance that there were few enough of those (possibly only one) that that part of the evidence chain may well remain broken.
  - jahnu 3y ago
    Wouldn't our extensive records of the variants so far make it possible to see if a variant discovered in bats tomorrow is newer than the one that started the original outbreak in humans?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      If the differences are large enough: yes. If not then it may remain undecided. The closest match found in the wild so far is 96% or so, which is good but not good enough (and it was found in a bat, but relatively far away from the spot where it was first found in humans). I think that is the most recent state of affairs.
      - stringsandchars 3y ago
        > but relatively far away from the spot where it was first found in humans But not far away from humans who had been to where the bat virus was found to bring back samples for analysis and experimentation in their laboratory [1] [1] spoiler alert: the Wuhan Institute of Virology
        jacquesm 3y ago
sigmar 3y ago
>Research scientist said he and his colleagues wanted to “disprove any type of lab leak theory.” So some members of Congress took this to mean they had a motive, rather than an attempt to 'disprove the null hypothesis'... and that's the entire basis for calling this a "cover-up"?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Same organization whose members bring a snow ball into the Senate to disprove climate change. Zero genuine interest in how the science is conducted.
elicash 3y ago
The only thing I find somewhat frustrating about this is that lab leak is nearly impossible to disprove. Because even if you can convince folks that the science shows it was natural in origin, that still doesn't mean it wasn't being studied in a lab somewhere. I agree with the other commenter who says that "it's a good idea to review and possibly improve biolab safety protocols and also to end wet markets as the latter were obviously a biohazard even before the pandemic." I see at least some discussion of the former, but almost none of the latter. Is there anything we can do about wet markets? Use trade negotiations as leverage? I don't even see a discussion.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  Asking another culture to their way? Could luck w/ that. There's nothing stopping us from bringing it up but I can't picture a diplomat hinging a deal on wet markets.
- jghn 3y ago
  I had some relatives ask me about this at the time. My work is tangential to the biological sciences so sometimes they think I know things I don't :) I always chose my words carefully. To them, when they'd ask me if it was a "lab leak" they always meant something untoward was happening at the lab. Researchers studying artificial superbugs, etc. But there's a very big difference between "natural phenomena that found its way to a lab and then out" and "artificial phenomena created in a lab and then out". So I'd respond with things like "probably not man-made", which they often took as me saying not a "lab leak". EDIT: to be more clear about the point I was raising, I was agreeing with the parent's point. Some of this language is politically/socially charged, and one needs to take that into account when discussing the matter.
  - baja_blast 3y ago
    But lots of aspects and features of SARS-CoV2 point to it being a natural virus with a human specific furin cleavage site inserted into it. In fact it looks almost exactly what you would expect from the type of experiments outlines in the DEFUSE Proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... The fact that the location happens to be in the exact location proposed in experiments and commonly used in virology, and the fact that SARS-CoV2 binds to Human ACE2 more efficiently than any other species really stands out: > Spike protein exhibited the highest binding to human (h)ACE2 of all the species tested. . . > These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ > Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 Not to mention that it's absurd to think that such an infectious virus would have been circulating in Raccoon Dogs or Civets and just simply disappear after the first human was infected with zero traces to be found. Like when humans passed covid to white tailed deer that did not stop the virus from circulating in humans. Are we supposed to just accept SARS-CoV2 spillover was the result of an "Immaculate Infection">?
stringsandchars 3y ago
Really setting aside the divisive political positions that have poisoned the debate in the US, I find it really interesting that really solid science has been done by scientists truly studying the data with appropriate scepticism and the scientific method, while proponents of the zoonosis origin of Covid have characteristically lied and manipulated data, and also generally addressed the scientific findings that contradict their standpoint with personal insults and ad hominem attacks. Here are just a few of the people that have studied the data scientifically - and have destroyed the supposed 'raccoon dog' theory, the cherry-picked and manipulated data used by Worobey et al, and obviously the lies that went into the infamous 'Proximal Origin' document - which the authors themselves did not believe: https://nitter.net/gdemaneuf https://nitter.net/gdemaneuf https://nitter.net/mbalter https://nitter.net/mbalter https://nitter.net/jbloom_lab https://nitter.net/jbloom_lab https://nitter.net/R_H_Ebright https://nitter.net/R_H_Ebright https://nitter.net/EmaNymton90 https://nitter.net/EmaNymton90 PS: please at least spend a few seconds looking at the links here as it's disheartening that there are so many negative responses within a few seconds of my posting this in good faith. None of these experts are fringe activists or crackpots.
- ftxbro 3y ago
  > Really setting aside the divisive political positions that have poisoned the debate in the US yeah but if you believe lab leak then you are probably also an anti-fauci anti-vax anti-masker qanon trumper who gets all your news from tucker carlson and laura ingraham
  - postalrat 3y ago
    And if you believe that then you've been brainwashed into ignoring inconvenient truths.
  - stringsandchars 3y ago
    > yeah but if you believe lab leak then you are probably also an anti-fauci anti-vax anti-masker qanon trumper who gets all your news from tucker carlson and Laura ingraham I can't tell whether this is sarcasm? I don't even know who Laura Ingraham is and though I've heard of Tucker Carlson I've never seen or read anything he's written or said (on TV?). I'd characterize myself as a normal, left-wing European who initially totally believed the zoonosis origin of covid. But being genuinely curious about the science, I've read more and more of the abstracts analising the available data, and gradually realized that all the actual facts - even though some of them circumstantial - point with much higher likelihood towards an accidental lab-leak (which incidentally happen all the time), than the very unlikely 'double jump' of two separate lineages infecting people at the market - but not infecting anyone else in the entire delivery chain from capture or animal farming, to the market itself.
ftxbro 3y ago
It's sad that it's so politicized, because there was definitely a coverup of at least the appearance of a lab leak and probably of a lab leak itself, but I disagree with the politics of basically everyone with that opinion. I know you guys probably haven't read the Vanity Fair reporting by Katherine Eban because I mean what hackers would read Vanity Fair but it was pretty convincing, especially if you read the supplementary materials and if you have any background in life sciences.
- e40 3y ago
  There was a recent NYT article about this (why ppl believe the lab leak hypothesis). Was eye opening for me. I read the Vanity Fair article and believed it, too.
- wredue 3y ago
  The only evidence I’ve seen is -some US agencies don’t outright reject it -labs around the world work on SARS viruses -early people said it may have leaks (and these people subsequently retracted those statements after research) -china And that’s literally it. What exactly is so convincing? People who actually study virus origins still seem to believe that Covid has markers of natural evolution. Lab leak theory tends to side step that fact though. The lab leak conspiracy theorists put more weight in to a head of department of energy over the virologists who state that he’s probably wrong. Do you have any papers from scientists that back up the lab leak?
  - potatototoo99 3y ago
    The matter at hand is not how Covid originated but whether there was pressure to rush to the conclusion that it wasn't man-made.
    - vibrio 3y ago
      “Man-made”: What exactly does that mean? Creation of a virus de novo? A natural isolate passaged a couple of times? Somewhere in between?
pcrh 3y ago
Many in this thread have remarked on there being two version of "lab leak", 1) that it was manipulated in a lab, then escaped, or 2) that it was a natural virus that escaped from the lab. The evidence is that it is a natural virus, so 1) is excluded by scientific data. As to 2), the problem is that there is no evidence that SARS-CoV2 was ever at the Wuhan Lab before the pandemic, and also that the first people to become infected were also not at the lab. There is however evidence that the market was the origin of the pandemic. So, there's no evidence for either version of "lab leak", and evidence against them. It's as simple as that.
ftxbro 3y ago
> In a back-and-forth with Andersen that sounded something like a rudimentary lesson in scientific hypotheses, Representative Jamie Raskin (D–MD) brought up an email in which the Scripps Research scientist said he and his colleagues wanted to “disprove any type of lab leak theory.” Republican members assert that this betrayed Andersen’s ill intent. “You meant pursuing the scientific process by which you have a hypothesis, which stands unless it’s disproven, is that right?” Raskin asked Andersen. “That is correct,” Andersen said. “I’m referring to the concept of what’s called falsification.” If any scientist reads this, if someone privately says they want to "disprove any type of lab leak theory" then they aren't talking about a good faith experiment. That's not how scientists talk about questions they are trying to find the actual answers to. But on the other hand I wouldn't want some guys in suits and American flag lapel pins subpoenaing my DMs or all up in my FOIA requests every time I did a research on a politically adjacent research topic, and if they were then I'd certainly make the argument that these guys are making, that they are humble scientists doing the scientific method just like Bill Nye says on TV.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  >But on the other hand I wouldn't want some guys in suits and American flag lapel pins subpoenaing my DMs or all up in my FOIA requests every time I did a research on a politically adjacent research topic Agreed, but when the research topic at hand involves millions of deaths worldwide sometimes it is necessary. Especially when said scientists openly discussed how to deceive journalists asking questions.
motohagiography 3y ago
Next question is whether the pandemic scenario was exploited by a coalition of interests to push their narrow agendas (digital id, privacy law exceptions, data collection and surveillance, mail-in voting, censorship, undermining of fundamental freedoms of movement and association, etc.) These also absolutely occurred and cannot be denied rationally. The real question of the pandemic that I think people need to ask themselves is, did you demonstrate courage and compassion? If you fell for it all and became a persecutor of others, consider the capacity of courageous and compassionate people to forgive, and take some time to reckon how you would act if you had the chance to make those choices again. I'm pretty sure you're going to get the opportunity soon.
CiteXieAlAlyEtc 3y ago
The primary thing I don't understand about lab leak and bioweapon theories surrounding SARS-Cov-2 (And if you're an advocate of ideas in this vicinity I'd love a deeper explanation) is this: If this disease has human origins, accidental or otherwise, why allow it to spread unrestrained? We know the disease spreads through aerosol transmission. We know that it presents serious long term risks for people who catch it, even those who only have a mild asymptomatic case. Hazard ratios for most "scary" health impacts (strokes, heart attack, diabetes, etc) sit anywhere from 1.75 to near 3, even in broader meta analyses. We know that reinfection can magnify the risk profile of the disease. Estimates for pasc/long covid sit any where between 10 and 30% of all cases for at least 6 months after infection. Community transmission, as measured by waste water numbers, has been at or above the levels observed during the delta wave for more than half of the months since the omicron wave. We've abandoned masking, destroyed testing infrastructure, indoor air quality is still not substantially better than it was pre 2019, and we have done nothing to bring ANY interventions back. Isn't all of this just a failure? Or at least a contradiction? If you believe that this disease originated in a lab, why does it make sense to welcome it into your body without any protective measures? Every person on this subcomittee is talking about this lab leak while making sure that they take no visible measures to protect themselves from it, at a time when there's still nonzero community transmission. And now, of course, wastewater numbers are increasing and we are on the precipice of another period of delta-wave-level community transmission. If this was some nefarious bioweapons play, isn't the response to let it spread and to give up on the disease a confirmation that that such bioweapons are a viable strategy? Why aren't rational actors that believe in these theories of covid's origins doing everything to ensure that they do not get the disease and in turn everything to bring transmission of the disease down to 0? Someone, please, make it make sense to me.
- Forgotthepass8 3y ago
  It doesn't matter because you'll get it no matter what. It would just be nice if the government and institutions would admit that they censored a quite plausible theory. Just admit it was because you needed to keep people from panicking. Also lab leak<>lab made
  - 3y ago

61 points by peanutcrisis 3y ago

[flagged]

> This remains the only scientifically supported theory for how the virus emerged. I am not so sure about this assertion. And definitely, the lab leak hypothesis should not have been so forcefully suppressed as a conspiracy theory.

willcipriano 3y ago
It's not the only scientifically supported theory, it's the only Scientifically supported theory. science is the thing you do. Science is the thing you trust.
- eimrine 3y ago
  Are you talking about a lab-leak hypothesis? When did it became a theory?
  - telmo 3y ago
    How could lab-leak ever become a theory? A theory is an explanation of some repeatable pattern of phenomena that is observed in nature and that can be empirically verified. "Lab-leak" is a single possible event, that may or not have happened. The most that can happen is for strong evidence to emerge for or against the hypothesis that this specific event occurred.
    - Retric 3y ago
      There’s plenty of debated scientific theories around single events such as what killed off the dinosaurs or how old the universe is etc. Testability happens when you accurately predict what evidence will be found, ie there’s excess iridium globally at the K-T boundary. Similarly there’s theories around collections of events such as the timing of the ice ages which are collectively significant.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        There is, but all possibly viable theories will have to incorporate the available evidence.
        Retric 3y ago
        Mostly, some of the available evidence in any domain will come from experimental error etc. Even the hard sciences gets messy at the edges.
      - telmo 3y ago
        That is a very good point, you have convinced me.
    - eimrine 3y ago
      > "Lab-leak" is a single possible event I don't agree because there are plethora of possible details depending on level of conspiracy. Was the virus synthesized at least partly? Was the virus selected from a number of not so harmful viruses? Was the virus went from naively non-infected bat when the fact is that it was infected? Was the lab-leak done intentionally, kind of something able to pause WW3? And so on and on.
  - spamizbad 3y ago
    It didn’t. There’s some evidence (taken in isolation) that might point to such a thing could potentially occur but data and historic evidence points to the wet market. At this point I feel like the argument is over some broader meta-argument that the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed too aggressively and the consensus formed too quickly over the wet market.
    - stringsandchars 3y ago
      > but data and historic evidence points to the wet market Because almost no-one has covered this news, you may have missed that the data pointing at the wet-market (from Worobey et al) has been thoroughly debunked using solid scientific data.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    You empiricists often loose the plot when it comes to these sort of matters. A thought experiment: A murder during a fancy dinner party. Victim was shot in the head with a 9mm round. Guest A is very evasive and was in the vicinity where the body was found. Guest A is known to have a 9mm handgun. Guest A quickly destroys his handgun and forensics cannot recover any information from it. Guest A writes a letter explaining that the shot came from outside the house, without any mention of his potential role in the murder, and his friends at the local newspaper not only run the letter, citing him as a expert, but run hit pieces that anyone claiming otherwise is a racist. Reason allows us to know Guest A was involved. In the absence of evidence sometimes reason is all you have. This is one of those cases, no science is required just a little life experience.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      This analogy gets a little strained when wild Glocks breed in the vicinity of the home, and have randomly shot people fairly regularly over the course of the house's existence. "Guest A quickly destroys his handgun" is, thus far, not supported by evidence in the lab leak hypothesis, which posits but has never proven the existence of samples of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab.
- dragonelite 3y ago
  Science and theories has been used politically for centuries. Such as malthusian theory and Darwin's survival of the fittest to support colonialism. To free market and competitive advantages as a way to destabilise domestic economics in global south. western people will believe in the wuhan virus leak and some others will believe in Fort detrick virus leak theories. You also had Russians finding a lot of virus labs in ukraine etc. The world will split into multiple realities and histories.
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  >science is the thing you do. Not really. We can build vinegar and baking soda volcanoes in our kitchens, but we can't build particle accelerators. You will never personally prove where COVID-19 originated, so if you don't want to rely on trusting other accounts, you'll need to permanently abstain from holding an opinion either way.
- paulsutter 3y ago
  I think you're saying - science is the methodology, - Science is the institution that requires trust to be believed? Folks might interpret your comment to mean we should trust the institution, when of course we all know it's a grave error to trust institutions. Institutions get captured, usually by low-iq lifers Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts... science - a.k.a. research - is in the making, belongs to the (unknown, yet to be discovered) future, while expertise is based on the past, with in-built obsolescence"
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  It's always interesting that the conspiracy theorists go after their own government and don't seem to stop and think how easily all of Science can be manipulated by a motivated intelligence service. It's easy enough for actual scientists to get away with fabricating data. Imagine what a motivated adversary could do to misdirect Science. Scientists can be far too trusting.
ben_w 3y ago
I'm not sure why it's supposed to matter. In both cases, China did a bad thing; in both cases, it's a good idea to review and possibly improve biolab safety protocols and also to end wet markets as the latter were obviously a biohazard even before the pandemic.
- metalspot 3y ago
  > China did a bad thing The WIV lab was built by the French with money from many different countries and the research was being done by EcoHealth Alliance with US funding so blaming it on the Chinese is probably not the whole picture. EcoHealth alliance made a grant application to DARPA and DARPA turned them down because it was too risky but it seems pretty obvious that they got the money somewhere else. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...
- worksonmine 3y ago
  China? Look into Peter Daszak, he even mentioned his bias when the WHO sent him to investigate his own lab. Fauci was involved in funding the research via NIH, and he didn't mention this when shit hit the fan. The goal of the research was to manipulate the virus to see if it could transfer to humans, ie gain-of-function. There's a reason it was conducted in China and it's not the chinese. And it gets worse, even though EcoHealth Alliance lied in their books they recently received another grant to keep doing similar research. It was discussed here at the time. What could go wrong? It's a rabbit hole but you might be surprised how corrupt it looks. Don't get fooled by those trying to shift your focus to China.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    "Here look instead at the other people who did bad things too" is a great way to repeat every disaster and accident across history and learn zero lessons. The government of any place gets to take the blame for things happening in that place, even in more extreme cases where deeds were fully funded by a hostile government who sent in secret agents. ("The buck stops here"). So, if you want to blame $meme_de_jour as well, then go for it — but even if guilty, regardless of whether that's malice or incompetence or bad luck or a novel failure that nobody could have foreseen, that doesn't exonerate anyone else who dropped a ball, which China absolutely did more than once regardless of the origin, as they also tried to downplay the initial infections.
_notreallyme_ 3y ago
Technically, the lab leak hypothesis has not officially been suppresssed as a conspiracy theory. It is has been ranked from "extremely unlikely" to "likely with low confidence". The reason why you may think it has been suppressed as a conspiracy theory is probably because the people pushing the more for it actually use conspiracy theory patterns. In reaction, report about these loud yeller providing out-of-context, with often ridicule arguments, are dismissed as conspiracy theories. There is nonetheless some objective reports a lab leak hypotheses and how improving lab security is important to prevent this kind of things either way.
- deleted 3y ago
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- walleeee 3y ago
  It absolutely was suppressed at the beginning. A small cadre of scientists, in coordination with a high-level government official, published claims they knew or suspected to be unsupported or misleading in a leading medical journal. This is public knowledge now.
- SamPatt 3y ago
  This feels misleading. Social media platforms were removing content discussing lab leak theories, and there's enough evidence of government officials colluding with those platforms generally to suspect they could have played a role in that. That's apart from the scientific community itself, which is what this hearing is ostensibly about.
  - simonh 3y ago
    The problem was that a lot of the 'evidence' of a lab leak and genetic engineering of the virus was contrived, exaggerated misinformation. So if you want to exclude contrived exaggerated deliberate misinformation from your platform, what are you going to do? Personally I have been from the start saying that a lab leak was possible, on the basis that lab leaks have happened before, and should be investigated. That makes me a lab leak theory supporter as a possibility from day one. I've never got silenced, banned, insulted or de-platformed for saying so. I have no common cause or sympathy for people knowingly spreading lies and contrived 'evidence' to push the lab leak hypothesis though.
cwmma 3y ago
part of the problem here is that when people say "lab leak" they are talking about two different theories 1. that the lab "created" the virus via genetic engineering or something. 2. the virus was natural but the lab was studying it and it escaped. The paper is explicitly about case one, saying the virus seems completely natural, they explicitly say case two is not off the table.
pcrh 3y ago
The key part is "scientifically supported". There's no science supporting the lab leak theory, i.e. actual scientific data linking the lab with SARS-CoV2.

conception 3y ago

Standard reminder that it took years to find SARS. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 There are lots and lots of bat caves.

jacquesm 3y ago
That, plus that the ease with which the virus jumped back to animals (deer, hamsters, mice, ferrets, cats, dogs) makes the search for a reservoir animal very difficult, as well as the fair chance that there were few enough of those (possibly only one) that that part of the evidence chain may well remain broken.
- jahnu 3y ago
  Wouldn't our extensive records of the variants so far make it possible to see if a variant discovered in bats tomorrow is newer than the one that started the original outbreak in humans?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    If the differences are large enough: yes. If not then it may remain undecided. The closest match found in the wild so far is 96% or so, which is good but not good enough (and it was found in a bat, but relatively far away from the spot where it was first found in humans). I think that is the most recent state of affairs.
    - stringsandchars 3y ago
      > but relatively far away from the spot where it was first found in humans But not far away from humans who had been to where the bat virus was found to bring back samples for analysis and experimentation in their laboratory [1] [1] spoiler alert: the Wuhan Institute of Virology
      - jacquesm 3y ago

sigmar 3y ago

>Research scientist said he and his colleagues wanted to “disprove any type of lab leak theory.” So some members of Congress took this to mean they had a motive, rather than an attempt to 'disprove the null hypothesis'... and that's the entire basis for calling this a "cover-up"?

ceejayoz 3y ago
Same organization whose members bring a snow ball into the Senate to disprove climate change. Zero genuine interest in how the science is conducted.

elicash 3y ago

The only thing I find somewhat frustrating about this is that lab leak is nearly impossible to disprove. Because even if you can convince folks that the science shows it was natural in origin, that still doesn't mean it wasn't being studied in a lab somewhere. I agree with the other commenter who says that "it's a good idea to review and possibly improve biolab safety protocols and also to end wet markets as the latter were obviously a biohazard even before the pandemic." I see at least some discussion of the former, but almost none of the latter. Is there anything we can do about wet markets? Use trade negotiations as leverage? I don't even see a discussion.

mdgrech23 3y ago
Asking another culture to their way? Could luck w/ that. There's nothing stopping us from bringing it up but I can't picture a diplomat hinging a deal on wet markets.
jghn 3y ago
I had some relatives ask me about this at the time. My work is tangential to the biological sciences so sometimes they think I know things I don't :) I always chose my words carefully. To them, when they'd ask me if it was a "lab leak" they always meant something untoward was happening at the lab. Researchers studying artificial superbugs, etc. But there's a very big difference between "natural phenomena that found its way to a lab and then out" and "artificial phenomena created in a lab and then out". So I'd respond with things like "probably not man-made", which they often took as me saying not a "lab leak". EDIT: to be more clear about the point I was raising, I was agreeing with the parent's point. Some of this language is politically/socially charged, and one needs to take that into account when discussing the matter.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  But lots of aspects and features of SARS-CoV2 point to it being a natural virus with a human specific furin cleavage site inserted into it. In fact it looks almost exactly what you would expect from the type of experiments outlines in the DEFUSE Proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... The fact that the location happens to be in the exact location proposed in experiments and commonly used in virology, and the fact that SARS-CoV2 binds to Human ACE2 more efficiently than any other species really stands out: > Spike protein exhibited the highest binding to human (h)ACE2 of all the species tested. . . > These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ > Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 Not to mention that it's absurd to think that such an infectious virus would have been circulating in Raccoon Dogs or Civets and just simply disappear after the first human was infected with zero traces to be found. Like when humans passed covid to white tailed deer that did not stop the virus from circulating in humans. Are we supposed to just accept SARS-CoV2 spillover was the result of an "Immaculate Infection">?

stringsandchars 3y ago

Really setting aside the divisive political positions that have poisoned the debate in the US, I find it really interesting that really solid science has been done by scientists truly studying the data with appropriate scepticism and the scientific method, while proponents of the zoonosis origin of Covid have characteristically lied and manipulated data, and also generally addressed the scientific findings that contradict their standpoint with personal insults and ad hominem attacks. Here are just a few of the people that have studied the data scientifically - and have destroyed the supposed 'raccoon dog' theory, the cherry-picked and manipulated data used by Worobey et al, and obviously the lies that went into the infamous 'Proximal Origin' document - which the authors themselves did not believe: https://nitter.net/gdemaneuf https://nitter.net/gdemaneuf https://nitter.net/mbalter https://nitter.net/mbalter https://nitter.net/jbloom_lab https://nitter.net/jbloom_lab https://nitter.net/R_H_Ebright https://nitter.net/R_H_Ebright https://nitter.net/EmaNymton90 https://nitter.net/EmaNymton90 PS: please at least spend a few seconds looking at the links here as it's disheartening that there are so many negative responses within a few seconds of my posting this in good faith. None of these experts are fringe activists or crackpots.

ftxbro 3y ago
> Really setting aside the divisive political positions that have poisoned the debate in the US yeah but if you believe lab leak then you are probably also an anti-fauci anti-vax anti-masker qanon trumper who gets all your news from tucker carlson and laura ingraham
- postalrat 3y ago
  And if you believe that then you've been brainwashed into ignoring inconvenient truths.
- stringsandchars 3y ago
  > yeah but if you believe lab leak then you are probably also an anti-fauci anti-vax anti-masker qanon trumper who gets all your news from tucker carlson and Laura ingraham I can't tell whether this is sarcasm? I don't even know who Laura Ingraham is and though I've heard of Tucker Carlson I've never seen or read anything he's written or said (on TV?). I'd characterize myself as a normal, left-wing European who initially totally believed the zoonosis origin of covid. But being genuinely curious about the science, I've read more and more of the abstracts analising the available data, and gradually realized that all the actual facts - even though some of them circumstantial - point with much higher likelihood towards an accidental lab-leak (which incidentally happen all the time), than the very unlikely 'double jump' of two separate lineages infecting people at the market - but not infecting anyone else in the entire delivery chain from capture or animal farming, to the market itself.

ftxbro 3y ago

It's sad that it's so politicized, because there was definitely a coverup of at least the appearance of a lab leak and probably of a lab leak itself, but I disagree with the politics of basically everyone with that opinion. I know you guys probably haven't read the Vanity Fair reporting by Katherine Eban because I mean what hackers would read Vanity Fair but it was pretty convincing, especially if you read the supplementary materials and if you have any background in life sciences.

e40 3y ago
There was a recent NYT article about this (why ppl believe the lab leak hypothesis). Was eye opening for me. I read the Vanity Fair article and believed it, too.
wredue 3y ago
The only evidence I’ve seen is -some US agencies don’t outright reject it -labs around the world work on SARS viruses -early people said it may have leaks (and these people subsequently retracted those statements after research) -china And that’s literally it. What exactly is so convincing? People who actually study virus origins still seem to believe that Covid has markers of natural evolution. Lab leak theory tends to side step that fact though. The lab leak conspiracy theorists put more weight in to a head of department of energy over the virologists who state that he’s probably wrong. Do you have any papers from scientists that back up the lab leak?
- potatototoo99 3y ago
  The matter at hand is not how Covid originated but whether there was pressure to rush to the conclusion that it wasn't man-made.
  - vibrio 3y ago
    “Man-made”: What exactly does that mean? Creation of a virus de novo? A natural isolate passaged a couple of times? Somewhere in between?

pcrh 3y ago

Many in this thread have remarked on there being two version of "lab leak", 1) that it was manipulated in a lab, then escaped, or 2) that it was a natural virus that escaped from the lab. The evidence is that it is a natural virus, so 1) is excluded by scientific data. As to 2), the problem is that there is no evidence that SARS-CoV2 was ever at the Wuhan Lab before the pandemic, and also that the first people to become infected were also not at the lab. There is however evidence that the market was the origin of the pandemic. So, there's no evidence for either version of "lab leak", and evidence against them. It's as simple as that.

ftxbro 3y ago

> In a back-and-forth with Andersen that sounded something like a rudimentary lesson in scientific hypotheses, Representative Jamie Raskin (D–MD) brought up an email in which the Scripps Research scientist said he and his colleagues wanted to “disprove any type of lab leak theory.” Republican members assert that this betrayed Andersen’s ill intent. “You meant pursuing the scientific process by which you have a hypothesis, which stands unless it’s disproven, is that right?” Raskin asked Andersen. “That is correct,” Andersen said. “I’m referring to the concept of what’s called falsification.” If any scientist reads this, if someone privately says they want to "disprove any type of lab leak theory" then they aren't talking about a good faith experiment. That's not how scientists talk about questions they are trying to find the actual answers to. But on the other hand I wouldn't want some guys in suits and American flag lapel pins subpoenaing my DMs or all up in my FOIA requests every time I did a research on a politically adjacent research topic, and if they were then I'd certainly make the argument that these guys are making, that they are humble scientists doing the scientific method just like Bill Nye says on TV.

baja_blast 3y ago
>But on the other hand I wouldn't want some guys in suits and American flag lapel pins subpoenaing my DMs or all up in my FOIA requests every time I did a research on a politically adjacent research topic Agreed, but when the research topic at hand involves millions of deaths worldwide sometimes it is necessary. Especially when said scientists openly discussed how to deceive journalists asking questions.

motohagiography 3y ago

Next question is whether the pandemic scenario was exploited by a coalition of interests to push their narrow agendas (digital id, privacy law exceptions, data collection and surveillance, mail-in voting, censorship, undermining of fundamental freedoms of movement and association, etc.) These also absolutely occurred and cannot be denied rationally. The real question of the pandemic that I think people need to ask themselves is, did you demonstrate courage and compassion? If you fell for it all and became a persecutor of others, consider the capacity of courageous and compassionate people to forgive, and take some time to reckon how you would act if you had the chance to make those choices again. I'm pretty sure you're going to get the opportunity soon.

CiteXieAlAlyEtc 3y ago

The primary thing I don't understand about lab leak and bioweapon theories surrounding SARS-Cov-2 (And if you're an advocate of ideas in this vicinity I'd love a deeper explanation) is this: If this disease has human origins, accidental or otherwise, why allow it to spread unrestrained? We know the disease spreads through aerosol transmission. We know that it presents serious long term risks for people who catch it, even those who only have a mild asymptomatic case. Hazard ratios for most "scary" health impacts (strokes, heart attack, diabetes, etc) sit anywhere from 1.75 to near 3, even in broader meta analyses. We know that reinfection can magnify the risk profile of the disease. Estimates for pasc/long covid sit any where between 10 and 30% of all cases for at least 6 months after infection. Community transmission, as measured by waste water numbers, has been at or above the levels observed during the delta wave for more than half of the months since the omicron wave. We've abandoned masking, destroyed testing infrastructure, indoor air quality is still not substantially better than it was pre 2019, and we have done nothing to bring ANY interventions back. Isn't all of this just a failure? Or at least a contradiction? If you believe that this disease originated in a lab, why does it make sense to welcome it into your body without any protective measures? Every person on this subcomittee is talking about this lab leak while making sure that they take no visible measures to protect themselves from it, at a time when there's still nonzero community transmission. And now, of course, wastewater numbers are increasing and we are on the precipice of another period of delta-wave-level community transmission. If this was some nefarious bioweapons play, isn't the response to let it spread and to give up on the disease a confirmation that that such bioweapons are a viable strategy? Why aren't rational actors that believe in these theories of covid's origins doing everything to ensure that they do not get the disease and in turn everything to bring transmission of the disease down to 0? Someone, please, make it make sense to me.

Forgotthepass8 3y ago
It doesn't matter because you'll get it no matter what. It would just be nice if the government and institutions would admit that they censored a quite plausible theory. Just admit it was because you needed to keep people from panicking. Also lab leak<>lab made
- 3y ago