9 ms·

U.S. cancels program aimed at identifying potential pandemic viruses

56 points by we_never_see_it 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fategrilter 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
voz_ 3y ago
[flagged]
- omginternets 3y ago
  The most disappointing part of the pandemic has been the utter lack of curiosity and professional duty displayed by journalists. The only other time I can think of such blatant dereliction of duty was the beginning of the war in Iraq.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    China is very impenetrable. Too much of that line of inquiry discredits itself with speculation.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      I don’t disagree with you, but it’s precisely the journalists job to lay bare these opacities and contradictions. What happened instead is that the lab leak hypothesis was treated as mere conspiracy theory. Edit: your comment also ignores the involvement of the USA in the purported lab leak. That’s easier to investigate. There is no excuse for the collective behavior of journalists.
      - op00to 3y ago
        If it’s so easy, why is no one doing it?
        omginternets 3y ago
        I suspect it’s easier not to do it. Rather than grind at an investigative journalism piece, it’s easier (and likely more beneficial to one’s career) to cultivate a network of influential persons and to churn out “exclusive quotes”. Nothing about investigative journalism is easy. I am lamenting that our journalists have no sense of duty.
  - jakderrida 3y ago
    What would you have them do? Go sneaking around the Chinese Science Academy in Wuhan trying to find hard evidence in the dumpsters 4 years later? I'm not a fan of some "journalists" saying, "it's just the flu" and worried more about Trump's re-election than those that they no doubt killed, but I'm actually not sure what real journalists should have done either. Also, people were crying out for their blood while indulging in deranged conspiracies against them just for pointing a camera at their master and letting him talk. Even if they could fly over to China and investigate, being caught in Wuhan investigating would have both the Chinese government and the deranged conspiracy nuts crying out for your death, the latter claiming they found it too "suspicious" you were in Wuhan at all.
    - cameldrv 3y ago
      They have tried something similar (getting to the bat cave in Yunnan), but the Chinese put literal roadblocks in their way (parking a truck in the middle of the road to stop them from getting to the cave) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-scientists-hope-coronavirus-clues-inside-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-sci... Getting any information from China has been made extremely difficult. I think it's reasonable to draw some conclusions from that.
      - omginternets 3y ago
        Yes, and at a minimum, this is evidence of a literal conspiracy.
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
        Why can't they sanction China for obstructing this effort? They've got a real nice economy, it would be a shame if we piled on sanctions to help compound their current economic woes if they refus to allow this work to be done. That they were already read to go in blocking that cave suggests they already knew and are being obstructive.
        callalex 3y ago
        Because, frankly, they have won the economic war. Every modern country is 100% reliant on the manufacturing that happens in China.
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  > It is blatantly and patently clear that is where the virus came from. I don't think it's so clear. However, rejecting the lab leak is deeply unscientific. From a Bayesian standpoint, before anything was known, it was silly to dismiss the probability. Estimates from before the pandemic suggested the annual risk was ~2.4% [1], or roughly less than a 50-year recurrence interval. Compare that to the base-rate of roughly 1% of natural spill-over once-every-hundred-year pandemics and it seems foolish to dismiss it. I tended to think the escape estimates were a bit overstated and so I reduced that to ~1% which puts it at about 50/50 without much additional knowledge. After all the information to date has come in, there's circumstantial evidence in favor of both hypotheses. Unfortunately, it's quality is such that I doubt it pushes my truth estimate much beyond 60/40 one way or the other, so 50/50 remains a decent educated guess. The US top intelligence agencies mostly came to exactly the same conclusion. [1] https://sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116 https://sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116
  - voz_ 3y ago
    The vehement rejection of it out of not wanting to anger China speaks volumes to its credibility. The truth is always the opposite of what that regime says. Nothing happened in Tiananmen Square -> We massacred pro democracy students There is no food shortage -> There is a food shortage We are not interning Uighers in concentration camps -> We are doing ethnic cleansing on native populations Taiwan is not a country -> Taiwan is a fully sovereign state So, applying that same logic, it's pretty easy to figure this one out. On top of that, people trying to somehow decry that this is "republican" or "racist" are ignorant themselves, facts stand on their own merit, and there is nothing racist about any of these accusations. It is a pathetic appeal to partisan identity politics where there should be none.
- regularjack 3y ago
  Please do share the evidence.
matt3210 3y ago
Typical… during peace time nations often get complacent. During healthy time, nations often get complacent. I thought it would take longer given just two years ago most stuff was shut down.
- sp332 3y ago
  Still over 100 deaths per day in the US. And those are official numbers, certainly an undercount.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    We haven't been over excess mortality since January according to the CDC. People will always be dying of something, today it's with covid.
    - jwineinger 3y ago
      How often do they update their baseline?
      - psychlops 3y ago
        Their website has their charts and methodology pointing out the good and bad: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#techNotes https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm...
    - belltaco 3y ago
      Do they account for the covid deaths during the pandemic? Since a lot of vulnerable people died early, the number of deaths due to other causes like heart attacks, cancer, old age, diabetes etc. would be lower now than if covid never had happened.
      - psychlops 3y ago
        I mostly look at the total deaths as a benchmark. The way they counted covid deaths changed and had new financial incentives which impacts numbers. Also, I would personally question the early accuracy of false/positive covid testing. The numbers you suggest gets complicated by the fact that many people delayed care due to fear of leaving their houses, much less going to a covid-infested hospital.
kevlened 3y ago
This is fantastic news. I recommend listening to Rob Reid's interview with Kevin Esvelt on the topic. The gist is the program was designed to find potential viruses, then share them openly so countries without resources for this research could still prepare for future viruses. Obviously, open access to recipes for pandemic-grade viruses means they could also be used for nefarious means. It's worth listening to the analysis as Rob Reid is an excellent interviewer and Kevin Esvelt is an expert in the field (he's at the forefront of gene drives). YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr28XeVYm8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr28XeVYm8U Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5qWiCan9lAMnVrWqzpdHoI?si=0c55dc047923498c https://open.spotify.com/episode/5qWiCan9lAMnVrWqzpdHoI?si=0...
- Kerb_ 3y ago
  China hiding evidence of a pandemic-grade virus is exactly why it spread globally before anyone was able to do Jack shit about it
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    And why did the U.S. never restrict flights from China until months later?
we_never_see_it 3y ago
[flagged]
- decremental 3y ago
  [dead]
- dang 3y ago
  We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of who or what you're for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Ditto for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with; it will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> DEEP VZN drew especially sharp scrutiny because the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that specializes in sampling animals in attempts to prevent emerging diseases, played a central role in the PREDICT consortium. (EcoHealth also had a long-standing collaboration with the Wuhan lab at the center of the lab-leak theory.) This is why it actually matters to try to figure out if the lab leak is the most probably cause, taking into account adverse interference based on the Chinese government's massive destruction of evidence. If the lab leak was the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, then it is very reasonable to shut down related programs.
- we_never_see_it 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    Please stop injecting political tribalism into this discussion.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - findalex 3y ago
    > proven in science What does this mean?
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    I get trolling can be fun for some people but I genuinely don't understand what you get out of it in this case.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Regardless of whether it is, even if the probability of a leak is in general low, we have seen that the expected number of deaths is likely in the millions. Airplanes had far far fewer deaths for the aerospace industry to reach current safety regulations and requirements. Given that, the regulations and requirements when dealing with pathogens should increase accordingly to match the potential damage.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fategrilter 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

voz_ 3y ago

[flagged]

omginternets 3y ago
The most disappointing part of the pandemic has been the utter lack of curiosity and professional duty displayed by journalists. The only other time I can think of such blatant dereliction of duty was the beginning of the war in Iraq.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  China is very impenetrable. Too much of that line of inquiry discredits itself with speculation.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    I don’t disagree with you, but it’s precisely the journalists job to lay bare these opacities and contradictions. What happened instead is that the lab leak hypothesis was treated as mere conspiracy theory. Edit: your comment also ignores the involvement of the USA in the purported lab leak. That’s easier to investigate. There is no excuse for the collective behavior of journalists.
    - op00to 3y ago
      If it’s so easy, why is no one doing it?
      - omginternets 3y ago
        I suspect it’s easier not to do it. Rather than grind at an investigative journalism piece, it’s easier (and likely more beneficial to one’s career) to cultivate a network of influential persons and to churn out “exclusive quotes”. Nothing about investigative journalism is easy. I am lamenting that our journalists have no sense of duty.
- jakderrida 3y ago
  What would you have them do? Go sneaking around the Chinese Science Academy in Wuhan trying to find hard evidence in the dumpsters 4 years later? I'm not a fan of some "journalists" saying, "it's just the flu" and worried more about Trump's re-election than those that they no doubt killed, but I'm actually not sure what real journalists should have done either. Also, people were crying out for their blood while indulging in deranged conspiracies against them just for pointing a camera at their master and letting him talk. Even if they could fly over to China and investigate, being caught in Wuhan investigating would have both the Chinese government and the deranged conspiracy nuts crying out for your death, the latter claiming they found it too "suspicious" you were in Wuhan at all.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    They have tried something similar (getting to the bat cave in Yunnan), but the Chinese put literal roadblocks in their way (parking a truck in the middle of the road to stop them from getting to the cave) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-scientists-hope-coronavirus-clues-inside-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-sci... Getting any information from China has been made extremely difficult. I think it's reasonable to draw some conclusions from that.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      Yes, and at a minimum, this is evidence of a literal conspiracy.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Why can't they sanction China for obstructing this effort? They've got a real nice economy, it would be a shame if we piled on sanctions to help compound their current economic woes if they refus to allow this work to be done. That they were already read to go in blocking that cave suggests they already knew and are being obstructive.
      - callalex 3y ago
        Because, frankly, they have won the economic war. Every modern country is 100% reliant on the manufacturing that happens in China.
Enginerrrd 3y ago
> It is blatantly and patently clear that is where the virus came from. I don't think it's so clear. However, rejecting the lab leak is deeply unscientific. From a Bayesian standpoint, before anything was known, it was silly to dismiss the probability. Estimates from before the pandemic suggested the annual risk was ~2.4% [1], or roughly less than a 50-year recurrence interval. Compare that to the base-rate of roughly 1% of natural spill-over once-every-hundred-year pandemics and it seems foolish to dismiss it. I tended to think the escape estimates were a bit overstated and so I reduced that to ~1% which puts it at about 50/50 without much additional knowledge. After all the information to date has come in, there's circumstantial evidence in favor of both hypotheses. Unfortunately, it's quality is such that I doubt it pushes my truth estimate much beyond 60/40 one way or the other, so 50/50 remains a decent educated guess. The US top intelligence agencies mostly came to exactly the same conclusion. [1] https://sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116 https://sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116
- voz_ 3y ago
  The vehement rejection of it out of not wanting to anger China speaks volumes to its credibility. The truth is always the opposite of what that regime says. Nothing happened in Tiananmen Square -> We massacred pro democracy students There is no food shortage -> There is a food shortage We are not interning Uighers in concentration camps -> We are doing ethnic cleansing on native populations Taiwan is not a country -> Taiwan is a fully sovereign state So, applying that same logic, it's pretty easy to figure this one out. On top of that, people trying to somehow decry that this is "republican" or "racist" are ignorant themselves, facts stand on their own merit, and there is nothing racist about any of these accusations. It is a pathetic appeal to partisan identity politics where there should be none.
regularjack 3y ago
Please do share the evidence.

matt3210 3y ago

Typical… during peace time nations often get complacent. During healthy time, nations often get complacent. I thought it would take longer given just two years ago most stuff was shut down.

sp332 3y ago
Still over 100 deaths per day in the US. And those are official numbers, certainly an undercount.
- psychlops 3y ago
  We haven't been over excess mortality since January according to the CDC. People will always be dying of something, today it's with covid.
  - jwineinger 3y ago
    How often do they update their baseline?
    - psychlops 3y ago
      Their website has their charts and methodology pointing out the good and bad: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#techNotes https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm...
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Do they account for the covid deaths during the pandemic? Since a lot of vulnerable people died early, the number of deaths due to other causes like heart attacks, cancer, old age, diabetes etc. would be lower now than if covid never had happened.
    - psychlops 3y ago
      I mostly look at the total deaths as a benchmark. The way they counted covid deaths changed and had new financial incentives which impacts numbers. Also, I would personally question the early accuracy of false/positive covid testing. The numbers you suggest gets complicated by the fact that many people delayed care due to fear of leaving their houses, much less going to a covid-infested hospital.

kevlened 3y ago

This is fantastic news. I recommend listening to Rob Reid's interview with Kevin Esvelt on the topic. The gist is the program was designed to find potential viruses, then share them openly so countries without resources for this research could still prepare for future viruses. Obviously, open access to recipes for pandemic-grade viruses means they could also be used for nefarious means. It's worth listening to the analysis as Rob Reid is an excellent interviewer and Kevin Esvelt is an expert in the field (he's at the forefront of gene drives). YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr28XeVYm8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr28XeVYm8U Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5qWiCan9lAMnVrWqzpdHoI?si=0c55dc047923498c https://open.spotify.com/episode/5qWiCan9lAMnVrWqzpdHoI?si=0...

Kerb_ 3y ago
China hiding evidence of a pandemic-grade virus is exactly why it spread globally before anyone was able to do Jack shit about it
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  And why did the U.S. never restrict flights from China until months later?

we_never_see_it 3y ago

[flagged]

decremental 3y ago
[dead]
dang 3y ago
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of who or what you're for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Ditto for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with; it will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> DEEP VZN drew especially sharp scrutiny because the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that specializes in sampling animals in attempts to prevent emerging diseases, played a central role in the PREDICT consortium. (EcoHealth also had a long-standing collaboration with the Wuhan lab at the center of the lab-leak theory.) This is why it actually matters to try to figure out if the lab leak is the most probably cause, taking into account adverse interference based on the Chinese government's massive destruction of evidence. If the lab leak was the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, then it is very reasonable to shut down related programs.

we_never_see_it 3y ago
[flagged]
- anonporridge 3y ago
  Please stop injecting political tribalism into this discussion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- findalex 3y ago
  > proven in science What does this mean?
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  I get trolling can be fun for some people but I genuinely don't understand what you get out of it in this case.
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Regardless of whether it is, even if the probability of a leak is in general low, we have seen that the expected number of deaths is likely in the millions. Airplanes had far far fewer deaths for the aerospace industry to reach current safety regulations and requirements. Given that, the regulations and requirements when dealing with pathogens should increase accordingly to match the potential damage.