Comment by pacala | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pacala | Hacker News Reader

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Do you have a source for how many research labs in China were actively working on bat coronaviruses? From what I can garner in the Western press, WIV is their #1 such research lab.

If a new flu virus, quite more virulent that the usual flu, popped up in Atlanta 10 miles from the BSL4 facility and the closest known relative is endemic in polar bears, yeah, I'd be asking questions. Both about BSL4 and about the zoo. And maybe there are private citizens raising polar bears in Atlanta. I'd ask about them too. Especially if it were already known that polar bear viruses can be quite dangerous, see SARS episode 1.

But then again, these discussions are by now futile. It is obvious that the conversation has been politicized. One side will try its best to dismiss and discredit the slightest mention that there was ongoing bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, including WTF moments like creating chimera viruses for the specific purpose of infecting humans. The other will overhype all the scary innuendo that can possibly be created around WIV, whether it relates even remotely to SARS-CoV-2 or not.

I don't have the energy to elaborate the full decision tree in every post. Have fun!

Much like smallpox isn't equivalent to a flu-like virus, polar bears aren't equivalent to bats/civets/pangolins in terms of how close they are to Atlanta. I don't know why you feel the need to exaggerate every time you compare to Wuhan, but it isn't interesting.

The bats from which RaTG13, the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, was isolated, live in a cave in Yunnan, 1000 miles from Wuhan. To the best of my knowledge, they do not naturally occur anywhere near Wuhan. Pick your own North American animal that satisfies this constraint and answer the question.

Couple more points:

* Asking questions is a legitimate activity, even if the answer turns out to be negative. It's the fundamental mechanism for truth finding. I'm appalled, but not surprised, at the aggressive censorship strain that is spreading like wildfire in our society. Not only some people know all the correct answers, they know all the correct questions as well.

* Think hard about the wisdom of proliferating BSL4 centers in the middle of population centers of the size of NYC. That single fact is a scandal in itself.

> Asking questions is a legitimate activity

Yes, but "just asking questions"[0] is also a rhetorical trick common enough to have a name, especially when the questions are leading, as some of yours are. That isn't to say that you're intentionally being nefarious, but hiding behind "I'm just asking questions" doesn't absolve one of responsibility for applying their own logical thinking.

> To the best of my knowledge, they do not naturally occur anywhere near Wuhan.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is exactly the same story as with SARS-CoV-1. Bats from Yunnan are the source of a virus first found in humans in Guangdong, around 1000 miles away. So we have literally the exact same thing happening, in essentially the same area, in modern times. Given that, I have a question for you:

Which is more likely: that SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 had essentially the same transmission path, or that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a government lab, but as far as we know, none of the early infections were related to said lab, meaning that it would have had to spread into the community without any of the lab employees getting infected (this reduces the reasonable escape paths significantly)

> * Think hard about the wisdom of proliferating BSL4 centers in the middle of population centers of the size of NYC. That single fact is a scandal in itself.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the issue here. We stick nuclear reactors in population centers, and I'm unaware of any known leaks from BSL-4 labs anywhere ever, so they have a better track record.

The wisdom, by the way, is that you need researchers and infra to support BSL-4 labs. You can't stick them out in the middle of nowhere, they usually need things like attached universities.

[0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

I'm on record in this very comment section of pointing out that the SARS-CoV-2 transmission paths is likely via a non-bat species traveling between Yunnan and Wuhan. That doesn't mean that WIV gets a cart blanche or that asking for transparency and independent verification of their activity is a 'rhetorical trick' or a 'conspiracy theory'. The impact is too large to leave stones unturned.

Your turn.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23072574

> As of your first point, there may be another natural virus, as of yet unidentified, possibly carried by a different species, that brought the disease to Wuhan. From the virologist chatter I hear, the genetic difference between RaTG13 is too large to have RaTG13 a recent direct precursor of SARS-CoV-2, either through genetic manipulation, or via culturing.

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