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Comment by lowdose | Hacker News Reader

This virus looks engineered.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcT58R...

Nothing in this image looks engineered. In fact, this is an illustration of a comparatively messy virus particle. Other viruses look a lot more regular and “artificial”. Check out the pictures (including actual SEM pictures) on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus. And if that doesn’t convince you, here’s what bacteriophages look like: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bacteriophage.jpg — Clearly nanobots, right?

>In fact, this is an illustration of a comparatively messy virus particle. Other viruses look a lot more regular and “artificial”.

Notwithstanding the main point you are making, why do you expect an engineered virus to look LESS messy? I would expect it to be a kludged-together frankenstein of different parts.

I’m assuming that the comment I was replying to was using the perceived “tidiness” of the picture as the sole evidence for their claim that it looks engineered. What else could they mean? — Of course you’re right that an engineered virion wouldn’t necessarily look tidier than a natural one. My comment wanted to point out that the perceived tidiness isn’t evidence of engineering.

If its engineered as a bioweapon, it is a very terrible design. It kills old people and people with pre-existing health issues. The flu already does that.

Does the typical flu spread as quickly or easily?

H1N1 infected at least 100mm people in 2009 and antibody studies says it maybe much higher. H1N1 wasn’t that deadly compared to spanish flu, or bird flu.

Preface: I am not a virologist. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I would like to spark a discussion.

https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899

This 2007 paper from the Wuhan Institute of Virology claims that an "HIV-based psuedovirus system" could be used to enable SARS-Like CoVs to jump to human hosts. As we recently discovered, SARS-CoV-2 has 4-5 "HIV inserts."

Is it possible that SARS-CoV-2 was a byproduct virus engineered from this research?

I don't buy the bioweapon theory, I don't think there is any hard evidence to prove that. What I do buy is that there were two different labs doing work on coronaviruses near the seafood market attributed to the breakout (and we now know a dozen or so patients did not visit the market, meaning it came from somewhere else...), and it is entirely possible that a failure in safety protocol could have led to an accidental release of research samples into the real world. It would not be the first time it has happened.

I do still think it's entirely possible for it to have originated "in the wild" as well, but it would have to be a hell of a coincidence given the facts at hand.

On the HIV inserts, may I point you to this informative comment from a previous thread? I'm afraid it's not good information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206393

Thank you for the correction. I do see OP's points. This however does not invalidate the alternative theory that the virus was extracted from a bat in the wild and somehow escaped.

I wish there was a way to prove definitively if it escaped or not. Without the cooperation of the CCP or whistleblowers, we will never know for sure, at least until it can be traced to an exact animal at the market.

Do you have a source for the 4-5 HIV insert claim? Was it the paper referred to here?

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/retraction-faulty-corona...

> (and we now know a dozen or so patients did not visit the market, meaning it came from somewhere else...)

Somewhere else, as in, the people who did visit the market?

Entirely possible! But the main point is that these cases started to show at relatively the same time. That would mean that these 14 people would have all had to have close contact with the seafood market visitors almost immediately after they visited the market. Which is totally possible! But very unlucky.

> failure in safety protocol could have led to an accidental release of research samples into the real world

Geez. Now you’re just spreading conspiracy level nonsense, to find a convenient way to peg this on China’s government.

HN moderators, you need to filter this guy’s Reddit-level nonsense.

This is not the proper way to discuss safety. Protocols and regulations are responsible, not just people and organizations. When aviation accidents happen, the broader goal of agencies such as the FAA/NTSB is to identify what to change, not who to blame.

The broader point of my discussion is that this could have happened to any biolab, and it is important to figure out what happened so that if it did come from this lab, the proper measures can be taken to make sure it doesn't happen again.

If you want to talk about China specifically, here is a key Nature article: https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...

> But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says.

Also, biolab incidents are as much of a conspiracy theory as historical events.

The article I link itself mentioned the SARS outbreaks in Beijing, indicating a previous safety issue.

In 1971 a Soviet bioweapon facility conducted an open air test of smallpox and accidentally infected 10 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_smallpox_incident

At some point in the 1970s a Soviet bioweaponeer named Nikolai Ustinov accidentally injected himself with an extremely viral load of Marburg virus and died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus#Biological_weapo...

In 1978 a British photographer was "accidentally exposed to a strain of smallpox virus that had been grown in a research laboratory on the floor below her workplace": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_...

In 1979 a Soviet bioweapon facility accidentally released anthrax into the open air and killed 100 people (officially): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

In 2004 a Russian scientist died of Ebola after accidentally injecting herself with it: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/world/russian-scientist-d...

In 2009 an American researcher came down with the Plague and died after being exposed to it in his lab: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6007a1.htm

Want more? Here's 450 (!!!) results from the CDC itself for the query "Laboratory-Acquired Infection": https://search.cdc.gov/search/index.html?query=Laboratory-Ac...

Countries range from the United States to India. To believe that China is somehow immune from human error is naive.

Two of these people injected themselves with things? Is it common practice to administer your own vaccines while in a biolab or something?

Working with viruses entails working with needles, so it's not ridiculous to foresee an event where a shaky hand or muscle memory could fail and cause you to inject yourself. In the case of the Ustinov incident, he was attempting to inject a guinea pig with an engineered version of what the Soviet Union had acquired from Kenya, and the guinea pig squirmed at just the wrong moment. Historically it may have been the highest viral load of Marburg Fever a human being has ever been exposed to. Ustinov took notes of his own deteriorating condition while his wife, who was also a researcher at the same lab, watched from outside the quarantine ward as his own organs liquefied into black goo. Eventually he was no longer able to use his own hands to write, fading in and out of consciousness, and he died two weeks later after the Soviet Union had exhausted its entire stock of Marburg antiserum. It was not a pleasant time.

Working on animals also entail working with needles, since in most cases you need to inject them with things that aren't airborne or aerosolized.

This sounds like Ebola.

Very much so. It's in the same class of viruses (filoviruses) as Ebola. It can only be handled in BSL-4 labs, but even then, there can be accidents.

> The virus can be transmitted by exposure to one species of fruit bats or it can be transmitted between people via body fluids through unprotected sex and broken skin. The disease can cause bleeding (hemorrhage), fever and other symptoms similar to Ebola.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae

Anecdotal: I had a discussion yesterday with someone who has very close connection to someone inside one U.S. intelligence agency. I asked him about the circumstantial evidence of virus engineering.

He told me that he recently directly asked his contact "is this virus engineered?" His contact could have answered "I can't discuss that", but the contact's answer was a direct "No".

There's already scientific research on whether it is engineered or not and the evidence so far is a strong no.

http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...

Which must mean that it was engineered by the agency that his contact works for. ;)

It looks about as engineered as a jellyfish looks engineered. Stop spreading nonsense.

Any particular reason we shouldn't dismiss you as a nutty conspiracy theorist, bot, shill, or other purveyor of BS?

(The picture shows nothing. If you have anything besides crazy FUD, here's your chance to tell us about it.)

Based on what? Gut feeling?

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