Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks | Hacker News Reader

Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks

graphics.reuters.com

49 pointsckastner72 comments

The article never mentions the gain of function research being done internationally where viruses are enhanced with abilities not found in the wild.

This Newsweek article, from almost a year, ago discusses the possibility that this kind of research that was being done at the Wuhan lab was responsible for the outbreak.

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...

I think that the article is very well put together and informative, and has the merit of stirring well clear of 'hypotheses' and other FUD stories like the one you mention in order to stay focussed on facts.

SARS was traced to bats, MERS is probably from bats as well, they've already found bats that harbour virii 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2, and the overwhelming consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 is natural, so it seems logical and prudent to stick to that unless or until factual evidence of the contrary surface. The kind or research carried out at the lab in Wuhan is neither here nor there, really.

My concern is should we, the US and China, be doing gain of function research at all. This research investigates the possible routes/mutations that viruses can use to infect a different species. However, the results of this research are new variants of viruses that are capable of jumping from an animal to a human host. Is it possible to handle these new viruses safely, maybe not considering the worldwide devastation that might be released though a mistake in handling these invisible pathogens.

I understand that the research does aid our understanding of how a virus might perform the difficult act of jumping between host species in the wild; this is important because it does (rarely) happen on its own. Should we be taking chances by creating zoonotic viruses in light of millions of deaths due to this one (regardless of whether it was a lab mistake or a bat sold at a market).

“Utilizing the SARS-CoV infectious clone, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse adapted SARS-CoV backbone”

https://www.med.unc.edu/orfeome/files/2018/03/a-sars-like-cl...

and speaking of Wuhan...

http://ge.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-ins...

The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.

Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.

The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019.

Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

Ecohealth's Peter Daszak led the gaslighting of the scientific community.

This assertion is from FOIA's, not in dispute, and not speculation: 1) https://usrtk.org/biohazards-blog/scientist-with-conflict-of...

and worse, the overt optics-management on same: 2) https://usrtk.org/biohazards-blog/no-need-for-you-to-sign-th...

The most prominent virologists - Daszak, Rasmussen, Andersen, block themselves and consequently their followings from (non-trolling) scientific inquiry:

https://twitter.com/blockedvirology

Please don't conflate a desire to avoid making waves with an intention to determine accurate reality.

The blocking is worrying.

A bat conservationist thinks bats are blamed for viruses because they're sampled more often than other mammals:

"Since 2005, when coronaviruses in horseshoe bats were first hypothesized to be the ancestors of the coronavirus that caused SARS, bats have received far more scrutiny than any other group of animals. For example, in the study on which the scariest headlines were based, researchers sampled nearly twice as many bats as rodents, shrews, and nonhuman primates combined and didn’t even include carnivores or ungulates."

https://issues.org/a-viral-witch-hunt-bats/

On the positive side, the focus on bats has led to a lot of research into their genomics. For example:

* "Comparative Analysis of Bat Genomes Provides Insight into the Evolution of Flight and Immunity": https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1230835

Bats are believed to be the reservoir species for a number of nasty viruses, though. As the abstract of the above paper says, bats are the "reservoir hosts for some of the world's most highly pathogenic viruses, including Nipah, Hendra, Ebola, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)."

I haven't heard any virologists who study bats call for the eradication of bats. In fact, the Ecohealth Alliance, which coordinates a lot of the fieldwork to gather data on viruses in bat populations, says that conservation measures would help reduce the risk of spillover.

meta: wow the colors are so pleasing to the eye. I wish there was a firefox plugin to turn all sites to that (safari reader sepia doesn't quite cut it).

The Acme editor color scheme. It was influenced by some color research being done, Rob Pike mentioned this in an old 9fan email. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acme.png

Try dark reader, it has a sepia setting and works on nearly all sites:

https://darkreader.org/

I want to appreciate how well the infographic article is designed/presented. It is layperson friendly, effective to inform people of a slightly technical knowledge.

Indeed, the design/presentation is what prompted me to share it. I found it spectacular.

The map of which species have spread viruses to other animals is awesome. Also, the restraint in only including 5 data graphics (two of which are illustrations for comparing size, which is as natural as you can get) is commendable. Graphics can be easier to understand than numbers in text, but text is easier to skim while reading.

The only nitpick I'd have is the use of log scale for the body mass to longevity chart. It spreads out the data points, but complicates comparisons. And log scales aren't well understood by most people who don't make charts for a living.

This is a really nice, unbiased and short article to how virus spreads across species and why bats in particular have a higher chance of spreading viruses they carry.

Good read.

This is all fascinating, but apparently the original virus hasn't been yet purified?

https://www.samueleckert.net/isolat-truth-fund/

That's a crank website: it claims that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't even exist.

It claims there's no documented proof of it being isolated and purified.

There are tons of SARS-CoV-2 isolates. It took me about a minute to locate two papers detailing isolation of the virus:

* "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 from Patient with Coronavirus Disease, United States": https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2606.200516

* "Isolation and characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in Turkey": https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238614

The website also has an article titled, "Die Virusexistenzbehauptungen von SARS-CoV-2 sind eindeutig widerlegt," which translates to, "The claims of the existence of the virus SARS-CoV-2 are definitively disproved."

Yeah but their method for proving that you have an isolate is not the same as the one used in academic research.

Typical pseudo-scientific conspiracy theory FUD.

Are you in the field to understand what they are requesting and what the papers you’ve found say? Because I am not making statements here.

The person running that website and making these demands is not in the field. If you want to get a glimpse of a bizarre alternate reality, just take a look at the other articles on that website or scroll through his Twitter feed.

Virology is not my field, but I understand enough to follow the papers I linked to above. They describe the isolation of live/active virus from patient samples. There is active research with cultured SARS-CoV-2 virus in BSL-3 labs around the world. It's just bizarre that there are people who believe the virus doesn't exist, or that it doesn't cause CoVID-19.

This (or a similar project) came up in a discussion i've had last week. After a bit of research my conclusion is that their definition of "publications that scientifically prove the process of isolation of SARS-CoV-2" isn't the same as the one used in academic publishing as there are multiple publications that do that. A german one [1] literally has a section titled "Isolation of an infectious SARS‐CoV‐2 virus".

The one I read required a double blind controlled study that injects the isolated alive virus into multiple humans/at least primates which then have to develop symptoms. I guess if somebody did that they would move the goal posts again.

On your page I can't even find a definition of what they would accept as "scientifically prove the process of isolation".

[1] https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.2020106230

What is the opinion here on the lab leak hypothesis?

I often wonder if it's in the best interest of humans to exterminate bats. Seems like it's only a matter of time until the next horrendous virus, created by bats, wreaks havoc.

Bats are important predators of insects we don't like (mosquitoes, crop pests, etc.) so exterminating all bats would not be a good idea.

Maybe exterminating fruit-eating bats wouldn't be as bad, but why not improve human hygiene practices instead?

> Maybe exterminating fruit-eating bats wouldn't be as bad

Maybe not as bad but still bad because they are pollinators and spread seeds. The article says:

> Bats provide many beneficial ecosystem services. Some bats play important roles such as plant pollination and seed dispersal. Bats can pollinate more than 500 species of plants including avocados, bananas, dates and mangoes.

> In Southeast Asia, durian, a highly valued crop, can be effectively pollinated only by the Dawn Bat. In this sense, bats are important economically for people. Some bats can also play critical roles in spreading seeds and regrowing forests.

The virus really isn't that bad, we have faced vastly worse pandemics in history. The overreaction has been horrendous.

(In the UK which is one of the worst hit countries the death toll is about the same as 2003. https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/)

Yeah that'll probably turn out as well as when the Chinese tried to kill off the sparrows leading to huge insect swarms. (Also Bats are also pollinators that you would've noticed if you'd read the article).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

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