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Wuhan lab samples hold no close relatives to virus behind Covid
- platz 2y agoI remember reading something about a data wipe or loss of information from the lab after the outbreak. Anyone remember this?
- stogot 2y agoAnd Zhang Yong-Zhen (who released the genome to the benefit of the world ) was interrogated by police and is now being persecuted (locked out of his lab, denied recognition, etc). Makes you wonder why
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoThe Chinese government doesn't want public scientific criticism about anything, including its COVID response. But in 2020 Yong-Zhen was outspoken, complaining to journalists that the government wasn't listening to him back in January when he warned about an uncontrollable epidemic. He has continued to post on Weibo about fighting for the truth. Seems like standard authoritarianism to me, and there's nothing really to wonder about: China persecutes internal critics. It is empty-brained to assume China must be hiding some deeper, darker secret. China spent six months hoping COVID was overblown and would just go away on its own. They do not want people on social media asking questions about this.
- lazyeye 2y ago"Because they do this one bad thing it is 'empty-brained' to think they are capable of doing something worse" Pretty strange logic there...
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoMaybe that's because you're attacking a dumb strawman instead of addressing my actual point. The comment I'm responding to said "makes you wonder why" Yong-Zhen was being persecuted and no it doesn't, we have a very good explanation as to why.
- stogot 2y agoHe released the genome, got on a plane, and upon landing he was immediately interrogated by police. That’s a fast and immediate response. This was before his social media posts. Also, stop calling people empty brained. Shows immaturity.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lazyeye 2y agoOr alternatively Yong-Zhen was being targeted as part of a cover-up and he was shut-down much faster than typically happens in China. And it's completely reasonable to wonder why that was. Oh yeah...and your dumb etc.....
- tim333 2y agoI think it's not exactly like that. There was a virus database that was taken offline a while before the outbreak and that they refuse to share to this day. After the outbreak the Chinese government asked for the destruction of covid samples. More recently Daszak said Shi Zhengli had a personal virus database but had deleted it. Overall they have not been very cooperative with data. But it seems the lab does covert military bioweapons type research so they may have reason to be secretive about everything without actually having caused covid.
- sxp 2y agoThis report doesn't include the DNA sequences that were deleted from databases soon after the outbreak. https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2021/07/deleted-coronavirus-sequences.html https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2021/07/delete...
- dredmorbius 2y agoFrom that reference: “These data provide no direct evidence to favor either a lab accident or a natural zoonosis,” said Bloom by email, with more explanation in a Twitter thread. “However, they do indicate the importance of continuing to seek new data about the origins and early spread of SARS-CoV-2.” That is, recovered data from the deleted samples also show no close relation between strains from the lab and the COVID-19 outbreak.
- mgraczyk 2y agoI think you're confused about which samples you are talking about. The samples discussed in the article you linked to did not come from the lab. You can read your own link to see "They do not provide evidence either for or against either a natural animal origin for the virus or an accidental lab leak"
- patrickhogan1 2y agoWhy would we trust data authored by the lab leader who would be severely punished by China if she were to release data implicating China and therefore contradicting the CCP? It’s as though we would trust [athlete accused of doping] of publishing results from a blood test they performed on themselves to confirm the accusations. 3rd party lab inspectors were restricted from the lab for a significant time.
- Clubber 2y ago"The police investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing."
- mgraczyk 2y agoYou can read the actual scientific content of the article and decide for yourself EDIT: When it released, seems like they have not published yet
- y-c-o-m-b 2y agoThis and the fact that the initial WHO research team was closely regulated in their activities by the Chinese government, with the WHO later being denied access to data and further analysis. China has delayed and denied independent analysis. They burned trust when it was most important to the investigation. They are not to be trusted. I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is, but it must be absolutely astronomical considering China has only 2 such labs in a country that spans 3.6 million square miles. EDIT: Correction, looks like there's 4 (now?) BSL-4 facilities: https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map My point still stands
- viraptor 2y ago> I don't know what the chances of a catastrophic viral outbreak being located next to a BSL-4 lab is Much higher than random. The location of the laboratory was close to the researched organisms, specifically bats. It also means that people had close contact with bats, on purpose, much more than in other areas. This does not make any source more likely by itself. But there's a decent correlation why we see research on X right next to where we find X.
- alyx 2y ago4 years later? lol
- seventytwo 2y ago[flagged]
- InTheArena 2y agoEspecially when steps have been taken to ensure that the truth - no matter what is it - is undiscloseable.
- reocha 2y agoThis is the case with most conspiracy theories
- tripletao 2y agoThe proximal animal hosts of SARS-1 and MERS were both discovered within about a year of the first human infections. This provides strong evidence of their natural zoonotic origin. Such a host for SARS-CoV-2 would falsify theories of research-related origin. None has been found, despite the much greater effort to search. That doesn't mean it's certainly unnatural, but it's surprising.
- stogot 2y agoThey also have no evidence of any massacre at Tianemen (purposeful typo!)
- andrewclunn 2y ago[flagged]
- riiii 2y agoNeither do I, but it's equally pointless to state that.
- thegrim33 2y agoPretty coincidental timing that they publish the article 4 days after the Committee On Oversight and Accountability released their two year investigation results which concluded "COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China." https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
- tedd4u 2y ago[offtopic] From the report, these two findings: > OPERATION WARP SPEED: President-elect Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — which > encouraged the rapid development and authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine > — was highly successful and helped save millions of lives. > > RUSHED COVID-19 VACCINE APPROVAL: The FDA rushed approval of the COVID-19 > vaccine in order to meet the Biden Administration’s arbitrary mandate > timeline. Two leading FDA scientists warned their colleagues about the > dangers of rushing the vaccine approval process and the likelihood of > adverse events. They were ignored, and days later, the Biden > Administration mandated the vaccine. So, which is it?
- dgfitz 2y agoWhere is the discrepancy?
- tedd4u 2y agoFirst point lauds rapid approval which it claims was successful and saved millions of lives. Second point criticizes a "rushed" and "dangerous" approval.
- dgfitz 2y agoNo it doesn’t. Trump started it, Biden finished it. The only negative is “Biden didn’t listen to two people” which I think we all agree is a good thing.
- cassepipe 2y agoBefore you start promoting your opinion, there actually was a very interesting debate in order to test the lab-leak theory. Here is a review of this debate : https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...
- tripletao 2y agoThis was a terrible debate. The winner claimed that it was implausible that the WIV had unpublished viruses, so the absence of published sequences was strong evidence of their innocence. The WIV just published 56 new sequences, proving him wrong (but still exonerating themselves per the headline). So I guess now it's implausible that they actually had 57? The debate also relied heavily on Pekar's argument that the polytomy structure of SARS-CoV-2 proves it arose from multiple zoonotic introductions. The form of this argument was always suspect, since it's a high-dimensional model with no history of successful predictions; but beyond that, researchers replicating it found basic logic errors that greatly weaken the result: https://x.com/nizzaneela/status/1686105717135097862 https://x.com/nizzaneela/status/1686105717135097862 The paper was eventually corrected, but the authors haven't changed their exaggerated claims to the popular press, which already went beyond the original claims of their peer-reviewed paper. It seems like no one on the other side of the debate had the mathematical background to raise these issues, with the unfortunate result you see above. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337
- nearbuy 2y ago> The WIV just published 56 new sequences, proving him wrong (but still exonerating themselves per the headline) You're picking out one point from a 15 hour debate. A much larger fraction of the debate was spent debunking false points made by the lab leak theory side. But it's also not even clear whether the zoonosis guy was wrong. He argues that the WIV didn't secretly have BANAL-52, but not that they didn't have any unpublished or unsequenced viruses collected any time up to 2021.
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- rich_sasha 2y agoI'm genuinely curious what happened, with some positive prior probability on all hypothesis, and I'm sad that in all likelihood I will never find out.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y agoIf you're going to take into account prior probability you should consider the fact that every single pandemic and disease that has ever infected humans did not leak from a lab and instead evolved in nature, usually in animals. In other words: Prior probability of zoonotic provenance: 100% Prior probability of lab leak: 0%
- tripletao 2y agoThe 1977 flu killed about 700k people, and is uncontroversially accepted to have arisen from a failed vaccine trial. I've seen legalistic attempts to define that as something other than a lab accident, but there's no question that the virus spent 1957 to 1976 in a lab freezer. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/936217 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/936217 No prior pandemic is known to have arisen from a genetically engineered virus, but the technology for that has only recently come to exist. No one had ever died in a plane crash before the Wright brothers, but the risk was obviously still there.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y agoThe 1977 virus was already circulating in the population, hence why it ended up as a vaccine. Therefore, it was not a lab leak (or any human-driven mechanism; nobody's certain) that first caused humans to be infected with the virus but good, old fashioned, zoonotic transmission. >> No prior pandemic is known to have arisen from a genetically engineered virus, but the technology for that has only recently come to exist. No one had ever died in a plane crash before the Wright brothers, but the risk was obviously still there. Unlike plane accidents, diseases and pandemics happened way before labs that could leak them. We're talking about prior probabilities here, yes? "How often has something happened in the past". Whether the probability of lab leaks increases now that there's a possibility of a lab leak is a conditional probability: "given that a lab leak is now possible, what is its probability?". And btw that will remain very low because of the infinitesimally low prior probability of a lab leak.
- lazyeye 2y agoLike referencing an article in Pravda as evidence about something...
- gary_0 2y agoThe lab-leak issue is missing the bigger picture. The question we should be contemplating is if, the next time a country like China becomes ground zero for the spread of a novel pathogen, they will be fully cooperative and transparent with other countries. I think the answer here is "NO". This answer is somewhat obvious given the nature of China's Communist government. Another important question is if most major Western countries are going to handle any future nascent pandemics with competence and due caution. All this finger-pointing over COVID's origins is a disappointing signal that nothing has been or will be learned regarding preparedness, so personally I think the answer here is also "NO". Responsible individuals and organizations should plan and act accordingly.
- jokethrowaway 2y agoMhmm let's see what's more likely... Zoonosis right next to a lab that does gain of function research on flu viruses - and not anywhere else in the world OR Lab leak covered by the CCP
- selimthegrim 2y agoThis is also a good paper on the phylogeny - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216242v5 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216242v5