7 ms·

Why the pandemic probably started in a lab, in 5 key points

26 points by jashkenas 2y ago

r721 2y ago
>OPINION >By Alina Chan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Chan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Chan
yawpitch 2y ago
And yet, shockingly, the consensus of the actually qualified remains that it didn’t start in a lab.
- mharig 2y ago
  Who are the "actually qualified"?
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    Im guessing its people with vested interests.
  - defrost 2y ago
    You may or may not enjoy reading through a full and lively debate that was well refereed with clear rules in advance with all the known and verified facts from all sides to hand in advance. It went down like this: Lableak truther loses $100,000 in his own debate https://www.protagonist-science.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-100000-in-his https://www.protagonist-science.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-... Sure, a lableak origin is "possible" .. just very very very unlikely.
  - whatthesmack 2y ago
    The people who claim to be "actually qualified" are the same people who run (ran?) the show at the NIH that have been actively covering up their own opinion that the lab leak of the research they were funding is the most likely source of COVID-19.
    - HelloNurse 2y ago
      What about actually fun conspiracy theories? Wouldn't any plot trying to reduce population with an artificial coronavirus push lab leak theories in order to depress virus research? If you prefer Big Pharma as the bad guys, wouldn't Western pharmaceutical cartels attempting to earn billions selling vaccines attempt to discredit China as a diversion?
  - daly 2y ago
    Vincent Racaniello https://microbiology.columbia.edu/faculty-vincent-racaniello https://microbiology.columbia.edu/faculty-vincent-racaniello He does not think this started in a lab.
    - mharig 2y ago
      So you refer to a consensus of the thinking of one person? I estimate the probability that the virus is 100% of natural origin to 3.21 ×10−11. And I am backed by one widely ignored article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.8348...
      - RecycledEle 2y ago
        Help me understand your math: 3.21 ×10−11 Do you mean 3.21*(-1)=-3.21 Do you mean a number between 32,100,000,000 and 321,000,000,000? Do you mean odd between 3.21:10 and 3.21:11? Thanks
        mharig 2y ago
        Sorry. Copy'n'paste crap. But it should be obvious, and from the linked article clear, that it should be 3.21*10E-11.
  - yawpitch 2y ago
    Virologists and epidemiologists, as opposed to a molecular biologist with no particular specialized training in either of those topics. Well, that was easy.
    - tim333 2y ago
      Like the virologist who was head of the CDC at the time of the outbreak? https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=117 https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=117
- baja_blast 2y ago
  And what is this consensus based upon outside of what is most beneficial for their field of study? As stated in the article we have not found any infected animals, no antibodies or samples pointing to infected animals, no precursor viruses found circulating in any animals species, no separate spillover events nothing. This is something we find for all spillovers and all of this evidence was uncovered almost immediately for SARS1/MERS. Take a look at the current bird flu situation cropping up, whenever we find a case, we find infected animals at the farm, we find the virus in animals during random sampling, we find the virus in raw milk, we observe many independent outbreaks etc. How is it that such an infectious virus no longer exists in any animal population? It's as if after the first human got infected the virus simply vanished off the face of the Earth like some sort of immaculate infection. Now how come when humans infected cats/dogs/deer etc. via reverse zoonosis that SARS2 didn't stop circulating in humans?
  - yawpitch 2y ago
    Likely precursors have been known in both bats and pangolins since virtually the start of the pandemic (see below) and are widely found in those populations to this day; the entire catalogue of possible precursor genomes in both wild bats and pangolins is (and likely will remain) extremely undersampled (to the degree we barely see any of the current picture of the wild viral load of these animals), so your apparent expectation of them being found in anything like the population of almost entirely domesticated populations of Arabian dromedaries (MERS) and entirely domesticated commercial cattle (current H5N1 spillover risk) is quite simply ludicrous. As it’s entirely possible the spillover mutation was either within a single, long-eaten, animal sample or occurred in a single human post-infection there’s no reason to assume the original lineage of SARS-CoV-2 itself would ever be captured in any wild animal population. I don’t even know how to speak to the bizarre (but possibly simply badly communicated on your part) assertion that human -> animal re-transmission events either should (or even could) result in a magic cessation of circulation in humans, as that’s just nonsensical. Post human SARS-CoV-2 lineage infections still persist in animal populations (mink, for example) and likely will continue to do so essentially forever… there’s literally nothing immaculate about this entire situation. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
- tim333 2y ago
  Citation might be needed on that one. I mean fair enough at the start but the evidence has been accumulating. Also in the Sachs video I linked elsewhere there's quite a nice bit on the consensus of the actually qualified from here for about 3 mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=7205s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=7205s
  - yawpitch 2y ago
    Sachs (an economist) is not and never has been amongst the actually qualified to speak on virology. Formal graduate level research work in virology / epidemiology is the minimum qualification.
    - tim333 2y ago
      True he's not a virologist but being chairman of the Covid-19 Commission probably gives him some qualification to talk about the goings on, if more on the political side. Here's his take on what happened there: In 2001 the US defence department changed and put it's entire research budget through Tony Fauci's NIH. Since then it's been doing secretive bio defence work. When covid broke out the scientists got together to write a paper about it and privately thought they couldn't see how it happened naturally and it was "so frigging likely it came from the lab" (Andersen). But they they met with Fauci, put out the Proximal Origins paper in Nature saying it was natural, after which Andersen got an $8m grant from Fauci. There was also a letter in the Lancet saying "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin". Qualified virologist of the kind you mention are almost entirely funded from government or similar sources and letters like that pretty much say that if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job. Science is supposed to be about the truth about nature found through experiment, not via politics. The whole thing is totally corrupted and Proximal Origins a fraud.
      - yawpitch 2y ago
        > if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job. And, absent actual hard physical evidence, not the slightest amount of which exists, you should be labeled a conspiracy theorist, because that is exactly what you are. Further if your job is in direct virology / epidemiology and you’re such a theorist — which, again, pretty much does not exist, hence precisely why the actually qualified write letters trying to counter the not-actually qualified — then you absolutely should lose your grant and your job. Science is about discovering the consensus on what the truth is… the truth is SARS-CoV-2 had animal origins in the wet market where all the original cases arose, full stop. But please, go on believing your conspiracy theory.
ethagnawl 2y ago
I'm curious to know to what extent these sorts of data-rich stories are templatized. My guess is that they're to the point where the components used in this piece were pulled from an existing widget library. Otherwise, that'd be a lot of effort for ... such an opinion piece. Also, the native reading experience on Android is surprisingly bad. The content was scrolling out from under me unexpectedly and other times -- reminiscent of the old FOUC on the web. I also felt "stuck" while trying to navigate through some of the dataviz components.
robocat 2y ago
I thought this was a great summary of the "debate": https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...
- baja_blast 2y ago
  And here is the alternative perspective https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-probability-v57 https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-proba...
tim333 2y ago
Jeffrey Sachs is quite entertaining on similar points https://youtu.be/JS-3QssVPeg?t=6500 https://youtu.be/JS-3QssVPeg?t=6500 He was Chairman of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, and originally a believer that it didn't come from a lab, now flipped. Sorry the interview is with Tucker. Quite a lot more on the politics of the thing and why it would have happened than the nyt article.

26 points by jashkenas 2y ago

r721 2y ago

>OPINION >By Alina Chan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Chan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Chan

yawpitch 2y ago

And yet, shockingly, the consensus of the actually qualified remains that it didn’t start in a lab.

mharig 2y ago
Who are the "actually qualified"?
- lazyeye 2y ago
  Im guessing its people with vested interests.
- defrost 2y ago
  You may or may not enjoy reading through a full and lively debate that was well refereed with clear rules in advance with all the known and verified facts from all sides to hand in advance. It went down like this: Lableak truther loses $100,000 in his own debate https://www.protagonist-science.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-100000-in-his https://www.protagonist-science.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-... Sure, a lableak origin is "possible" .. just very very very unlikely.
- whatthesmack 2y ago
  The people who claim to be "actually qualified" are the same people who run (ran?) the show at the NIH that have been actively covering up their own opinion that the lab leak of the research they were funding is the most likely source of COVID-19.
  - HelloNurse 2y ago
    What about actually fun conspiracy theories? Wouldn't any plot trying to reduce population with an artificial coronavirus push lab leak theories in order to depress virus research? If you prefer Big Pharma as the bad guys, wouldn't Western pharmaceutical cartels attempting to earn billions selling vaccines attempt to discredit China as a diversion?
- daly 2y ago
  Vincent Racaniello https://microbiology.columbia.edu/faculty-vincent-racaniello https://microbiology.columbia.edu/faculty-vincent-racaniello He does not think this started in a lab.
  - mharig 2y ago
    So you refer to a consensus of the thinking of one person? I estimate the probability that the virus is 100% of natural origin to 3.21 ×10−11. And I am backed by one widely ignored article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.8348...
    - RecycledEle 2y ago
      Help me understand your math: 3.21 ×10−11 Do you mean 3.21*(-1)=-3.21 Do you mean a number between 32,100,000,000 and 321,000,000,000? Do you mean odd between 3.21:10 and 3.21:11? Thanks
      - mharig 2y ago
        Sorry. Copy'n'paste crap. But it should be obvious, and from the linked article clear, that it should be 3.21*10E-11.
- yawpitch 2y ago
  Virologists and epidemiologists, as opposed to a molecular biologist with no particular specialized training in either of those topics. Well, that was easy.
  - tim333 2y ago
    Like the virologist who was head of the CDC at the time of the outbreak? https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=117 https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=117
baja_blast 2y ago
And what is this consensus based upon outside of what is most beneficial for their field of study? As stated in the article we have not found any infected animals, no antibodies or samples pointing to infected animals, no precursor viruses found circulating in any animals species, no separate spillover events nothing. This is something we find for all spillovers and all of this evidence was uncovered almost immediately for SARS1/MERS. Take a look at the current bird flu situation cropping up, whenever we find a case, we find infected animals at the farm, we find the virus in animals during random sampling, we find the virus in raw milk, we observe many independent outbreaks etc. How is it that such an infectious virus no longer exists in any animal population? It's as if after the first human got infected the virus simply vanished off the face of the Earth like some sort of immaculate infection. Now how come when humans infected cats/dogs/deer etc. via reverse zoonosis that SARS2 didn't stop circulating in humans?
- yawpitch 2y ago
  Likely precursors have been known in both bats and pangolins since virtually the start of the pandemic (see below) and are widely found in those populations to this day; the entire catalogue of possible precursor genomes in both wild bats and pangolins is (and likely will remain) extremely undersampled (to the degree we barely see any of the current picture of the wild viral load of these animals), so your apparent expectation of them being found in anything like the population of almost entirely domesticated populations of Arabian dromedaries (MERS) and entirely domesticated commercial cattle (current H5N1 spillover risk) is quite simply ludicrous. As it’s entirely possible the spillover mutation was either within a single, long-eaten, animal sample or occurred in a single human post-infection there’s no reason to assume the original lineage of SARS-CoV-2 itself would ever be captured in any wild animal population. I don’t even know how to speak to the bizarre (but possibly simply badly communicated on your part) assertion that human -> animal re-transmission events either should (or even could) result in a magic cessation of circulation in humans, as that’s just nonsensical. Post human SARS-CoV-2 lineage infections still persist in animal populations (mink, for example) and likely will continue to do so essentially forever… there’s literally nothing immaculate about this entire situation. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
tim333 2y ago
Citation might be needed on that one. I mean fair enough at the start but the evidence has been accumulating. Also in the Sachs video I linked elsewhere there's quite a nice bit on the consensus of the actually qualified from here for about 3 mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=7205s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=7205s
- yawpitch 2y ago
  Sachs (an economist) is not and never has been amongst the actually qualified to speak on virology. Formal graduate level research work in virology / epidemiology is the minimum qualification.
  - tim333 2y ago
    True he's not a virologist but being chairman of the Covid-19 Commission probably gives him some qualification to talk about the goings on, if more on the political side. Here's his take on what happened there: In 2001 the US defence department changed and put it's entire research budget through Tony Fauci's NIH. Since then it's been doing secretive bio defence work. When covid broke out the scientists got together to write a paper about it and privately thought they couldn't see how it happened naturally and it was "so frigging likely it came from the lab" (Andersen). But they they met with Fauci, put out the Proximal Origins paper in Nature saying it was natural, after which Andersen got an $8m grant from Fauci. There was also a letter in the Lancet saying "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin". Qualified virologist of the kind you mention are almost entirely funded from government or similar sources and letters like that pretty much say that if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job. Science is supposed to be about the truth about nature found through experiment, not via politics. The whole thing is totally corrupted and Proximal Origins a fraud.
    - yawpitch 2y ago
      > if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job. And, absent actual hard physical evidence, not the slightest amount of which exists, you should be labeled a conspiracy theorist, because that is exactly what you are. Further if your job is in direct virology / epidemiology and you’re such a theorist — which, again, pretty much does not exist, hence precisely why the actually qualified write letters trying to counter the not-actually qualified — then you absolutely should lose your grant and your job. Science is about discovering the consensus on what the truth is… the truth is SARS-CoV-2 had animal origins in the wet market where all the original cases arose, full stop. But please, go on believing your conspiracy theory.

ethagnawl 2y ago

I'm curious to know to what extent these sorts of data-rich stories are templatized. My guess is that they're to the point where the components used in this piece were pulled from an existing widget library. Otherwise, that'd be a lot of effort for ... such an opinion piece. Also, the native reading experience on Android is surprisingly bad. The content was scrolling out from under me unexpectedly and other times -- reminiscent of the old FOUC on the web. I also felt "stuck" while trying to navigate through some of the dataviz components.

robocat 2y ago

I thought this was a great summary of the "debate": https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...

baja_blast 2y ago
And here is the alternative perspective https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-probability-v57 https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-proba...

tim333 2y ago

Jeffrey Sachs is quite entertaining on similar points https://youtu.be/JS-3QssVPeg?t=6500 https://youtu.be/JS-3QssVPeg?t=6500 He was Chairman of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, and originally a believer that it didn't come from a lab, now flipped. Sorry the interview is with Tucker. Quite a lot more on the politics of the thing and why it would have happened than the nyt article.