The Covid lab-leak theory goes mainstream
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I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory" bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good faith.
[0]: https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 (thanks to whichever HNer posted this initially - not even sure if it had to do with a covid discussion)
Are you here to have a good faith conversation or not?
The evidence to the contrary would be strong evidence in favor of the other theory. We currently have little evidence to prove either, so dismissing one in favor of the other is foolish.
The Higgs boson was theorized in the mid 60s. Final evidence not found till a few years ago. It's was a valid theory until then. It is exactly how it works: theory is good enough that working to find the evidence pays off.
And there wasn't a strong incentive NOT to find the boson, such in the lab case. Some US institutions and actors, and the CCP, would be hit by liabilities, severely, if the theory is proven true. Not only careers (rightfully) ruined, but heavy sanctions, and international condemnation, given the damage. So there's a strong incentive to shoot down the theory, even if it's the most logical one.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
It appears the US was sponsoring "gain of function" tests on corona viruses at the Wuhan lab as they were banned as too dangerous in the US and EU.
And the "evidence" to the contrary was largely a letter to the editor from people with major conflicts of interest[0]:
>It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”
[0]https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
I still don't understand how they're ready to blame China so viciously for something that they tell us is just a flu and not even worth using face coverings or risking taking a vaccine. Not to mention magic cures like HCQ. All these efforts were just to deflect from the last government's failure to contain the virus. And they're not even internally consistent with each other. "The virus is not dangerous, the left is just hyping and faking it. But the not-dangerous virus is completely China and Fauci's dangerous fault and they must be raked over the coals for it so Trump doesn't have to take any responsibility".
The whole thing is an insult to intelligence for anyone that doesn't just believe what they're told to.
Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics.
This is more a collective inconsistency than an individual inconsistency. But yes these issues when layered with politics tend to just use whichever spaghetto sticks to the wall.
>Regardless of where the virus came from, it'll keep happening like it did in history when there no labs, either naturally, a lab escape or a bio weapon. The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics.
I still think it's important to find out where it came from. If leaked from a lab, what was done wrong that can be avoided in the future? If it really did happen out in the wild, how can monitoring be improved? The Trump administration was wholly ineffective at stopping it, but it's not like decisive action in the US would have stopped it from spreading elsewhere. Bolsonaro would still be president of Brazil. There is utility in getting as close to what really happened as possible and trying to mitigate it.
Maybe virologists working directly with pathogens should have to wear masks out in public all the time.
>The right way is to be prepared for it, and take collective action to stop global pandemics.
I know this whole thing has changed me and I will be continuing to wear a mask in public well after the mask mandates have ended. Possibly forever.
>The Trump administration was wholly ineffective at stopping it, but it's not like decisive action in the US would have stopped it from spreading elsewhere.
As me blaming Trump for the virus affecting the whole world. The Trump administration was responsible for keeping the virus from spreading within the US and they failed to control it.
There are a number of studies where it seems to have been used quite effectively (and other studies with different outcomes). To label it a "magic cure" seems quite ignorant.
https://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/covid1...
At the time of the laboratory's inception as a BSL-4 facility, Nature published an article describing worries that China would be unable to contain pathogens there. Here's a PDF:
https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/t...
The article does mention that some scientists thought the lab leak was a real possibility. They even quote Dr. Fauci saying saying as much (although he made it clear that he thought a natural cause was more likely).
But what the article really says is the hypothesis "that the virus was created or modified intentionally in a lab were dismissed by scientists and U.S. intelligence officials."
That does not preclude it from being leaked from a lab. I find it uncomfortable that they are using crafty wording to jump from "it wasn't created in a lab" to the virus never escaping the lab, which are two entirely different claims.
This post is very comprehensive, including a table of contents and linked references. The other articles I have seen, including this one, don't have a fraction of the documented facts backing them up that this one does. I highly recommend checking it out if interested.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
Obviously Dr. Duehr's paper predates The Bulletin article by almost exactly a year.
[0]: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
The article you linked seemed to mention furin cleavage sites in a hypothetical context, unless I'm missing something.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
In the lab leak scenario, the viruses infection optimality is only relevant insofar as its able to infect at all. The only reason optimality would be brought into question is if it the virus were intentionally designed to hurt millions of people. That's more my question. Why haven't we found the progenitor of the furin cleavage site in one of the mentioned animal populations?
Dr. Duehr links to a reference that talks about the cleavage site [1], which concluded that "Acquisition of the furin cleavage site might be viewed as a ‘gain of function’ that enabled a bat CoV to jump into humans and begin its current epidemic spread"
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
[1] https://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in-th...
I'm also skeptical of other virologists sticking up for WIV due to social pressure. It would be detrimental to virology everywhere if virologists started giving credence to this idea that samples in the lab may not have been handled perfectly. It's a natural social response to try to defend your profession.
What we do have records of is that Shi was researching RaTG13, the closest ancestor we know of to SARS-CoV-2 [1]. A question I want to find the answer to is how samples assumed to have low risk of infectivity to humans were being handled.
[0]: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli...
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...
The Chinese government has a lot to answer to the world. Their cover up in the initial stages costed thousands of lives and unspeakable damage to millions of people. The irony is the world still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them
Even if it were undeniably from a lab leak in China, there is so much infrastructure depending on their manufacturing capacity and competitive pricing that the world probably couldn't stop immediately.
the wolrd might be running out of those.
Some of the discussion on the genetic makeup of the virus was helpful for me
We know the Chinese were unable to culture coronavirus for their ineffectiveness tests and also that the SARS-CoV2 genome has no telltale signs of human editing.
We also know China's Communist party does not respond to shaming with obedience.
What is worst about this idea is how it shamelessly panders to common bias. Instead of believing in natural disasters all events have reasons and are guided by the hands of man. Furthermore, punishment brings justice. Both of these ideas are misguided junk.
Can you source this? It's kind of hard to find information about the lab at the moment so it would be extremely helpful to read about this.
People were concerned about lab leaks from that particular lab in Wuhan (the one close to the market where it supposedly started) before covid. The research on this type of virus was happening at this lab, they had posted a job opening for a researcher some time before.
All the Trump hate going around (an the willingness to go against all-things-Trump) at the time, clouded massively any actions to properly identify the origins and even some preventive actions.
Any traces that could only be identify at the time are gone by now, and as time passes, we may have more information but probably less concrete evidence. Sadly the world may end up with only theories
I wonder how many otherwise rational and educated people here on HN who hold that hatred still would be willing to analyze their intentions deeply enough to figure out why they hate? I am not interested in justifications, just suggesting some multi-level introspection. Most of the time when I discuss this with younger people, asking "why do you feel that way?" at least 3 times results in a complete blank (or violent/emotional reaction), a blatant cognitive fallacy, or simple trend/peer pressure. The ones who can still answer are those with truly unique ideas, in my experience at least.
If anybody reads this and is willing, I'd be glad to hear your take on this.
It's blindingly clear that you can (remarkably this should raise eyebrows, but in this case it's shamefully close to reality) paint with broad brush-strokes that the entire media/tech/creative class making more than the avg household, that lives in cities, etc. effectively out-sourced their judgement to Trump.
The reactions to him were automatic and opposite.
youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU
From what that guy is saying there, there were clear signs of a coverup at that institute very early in 2020.
[HTML]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1.full
[PDF]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/372/6543/694.1.fu...
Thee virus escaped a lab, but not wasn’t actually genetically manipulated - patient zero was exposed to a naturally occurring virus during the course of their work and it mutated to become more transmissible in vivo.
Given the political rancor and most of the world spending the year on social media, those got a lot of traction especially because anyone opposing China had the choice of amplifying them even if they didn’t really believe in them.
...which is especially interesting in that it's going mainstream alongside more serious looks at the gain of function research that was funded there. This is actually more conspiratorial than what people had been saying for the past 14 months.
We know it came from bats. It might of spent time in a building somewhere. It may or may not of escaped from that building. Either way we still would of ended up with a pandemic. It wasn't going to magically stay in bats after it mutated to a form transmissible to humans.
They were Chinese bats. So if we want to hate China for this we still can. Hatred doesn't have to make logical sense.
I was not able to find a reference for that on a quick search. There is a recent paper about gain of function but there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect that gain was artificially induced.
To be fair, a number of suspicions about Covid have turned out to be false alarms as time has gone on, as was always going to be the case. "Fog of war" and all that. But it was clear from the beginning that the lab origin story had potential, precisely because it was so vehemently denied.
If you want to go back to “normal” anytime soon, do your part and get vaccinated.
It’s a basic lab safety scenario and anyone who raised it in good faith, acknowledging the need for actual evidence, etc. didn’t seem to have trouble being heard. I certainly read plenty of people saying the possibility couldn’t be ruled out.