Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I can't find it now, but I saw someone on Twitter point out the slight corrections Fact Check sites have made in response to the lab leak hypothesis. They added a few words to hedge their bets (e.g. "appears to have come from" as opposed to "came from").

Pentagon Papers were released in 1971 and discussed events from 1945-1967. But now everything seems to move so much faster. I remember specifically reading about how practically all scientists were certain that this was not a lab leak, even before they knew anything about the virus. It was the one thing we did know.

It's fine that journalists and scientists get things wrong or change their minds. I object to the faux certainty and politicization, on both sides. I'm sure there will be no apologies or consequences from those that have actively suppressed any discussion on this topic.

It says something that even with a horrific virus that has killed millions, we can't collectively get together and agree that we should probably find out where this thing came from.

It took 15 years to find the origin of SARS-Cov-1 and it turned out it came from a colony of bats a thousand km away from the first detected outbreak, which also occurred at the end of the year (My guess is that the massive number of people travelling around China in October every year is to 'blame').

If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2?

It's much more difficult to have a quiet analysis this time, though, because the China-US relations and the scale of the pandemic are such that this topic has been geopolitically weaponised on all sides.

SARS-Cov-1 leaked from the lab 4 (yes, four) times [0].

If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

I'm no expert at all, but I think one of the major differences between SARS-Cov-1 and SARS-Cov-2 origin was within months animals were identified as the carrier of SARS-Cov-1, specifically in May 2003 bats and masked palm civets.

To date, I'm not sure we've found bats with SARS-Cov-2, or even know what secondary host animal made the jump to humans. Obviously China (and the whole world) would be highly motivated to find these sources, and it's been over 15 months.

What you're implying is that not only SARS-Cov-2 comes from a lab leak but that it is also artificial. That is quite a claim.

I believe that for SARS they did find it in civets sold in markets or other animals. But since that was after the epidemic in humans had started it's not clear to me if civets contaminated humans or the other way round (we've found Covid in cats and minks, maybe more, and they were all contaminated by humans).

But they only found SARS-like virii in bats, same as now there are Covid-like virii bats, and as far as I know and it did take them 15 years to find the one that gave SARS.

I think the problem is the question is being weaponized in US-China relations in a really pernicious way - essentially, it isolates China, makes them feel unfairly treated - in a way that's actually really dangerous.

An incumbent power feeling threatened by a rising power is a very dangerous situation, and pushing polarizing narratives escalates the danger.

The fact is, if it did come from a lab, what difference would it make? Everybody does gain-of-function research. Everybody has lab accidents. The only reason why anybody is pushing this idea is as a geopolitical stalking horse designed to make China seem like a legitimate target for agression.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of China - but I think deteriorating relations between the US and China open the door to the possibility of war, which is a prospect that is so horrible coronavirus totally pales in comparison. People carelessly fanning tensions to pursue their own limited domestic political objectives has led to devastating wars before, and I don't think sane adults should amplify these people's narratives.

> The fact is, if it did come from a lab, what difference would it make?

It means that the CCP knew about it, yet refused to admit or acknowledge it. They should have immediately shut down borders and informed other countries.

If it does turn out to be a lab leak, the simpleton answer would be to just blame China and that would be extremely dangerous. They are not alone in the world of virus studies and lab leaks.

As for what difference would it make, I would hope in a rational world, it would change the culture that allows these lab leaks to happen throughout the world. We need to take this more seriously and better question the purpose of some of these studies and allow rigorous international monitoring.

If we can accept a combined human guilt and take steps to never allow it to happen again, we might be able to eliminate lab leaks.

Unfortunately, the world will probably just blame China and there will be fallout.

In a rational world, the takeaway would be that western countries were unprepared for a pandemic. If the whole world reacted like East Asia, coronavirus would have been last year's niche issue.

Even if it does turn out to have come from a lab leak, diseases like this come from natural reservoirs every decade or so. We need to take public health and government preparedness more seriously, otherwise no matter what, we will be in this situation again, sooner rather than later.

I don't think there is that much chance of shooting war, both sides have too much to lose.

On the other hand I do think the intelligence services on both sides are shameless liars and this is a fight over China becoming the "world leader". Meanwhile I don't care who wins. I just want google services on my next Huawei phone.

> I don't think there is that much chance of shooting war, both sides have too much to lose.

Everybody always thinks that, but unfortunately, these things sometimes happen, even by accident. Sane and reasonable people consistently and massively overestimate the high level decision-making around this kind of thing. James Mattis, for example, was quite keen on a war on Iran, which any reasonable person could tell you would be an absolute debacle, worse than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. MacArthur wanted to nuke China. A half-century earlier, Japan invaded China largely against the government's will, mostly due to a group of junior officers, and declared war on America essentially because what had started out as a worst-case contingency plan / way to get naval funding gained a life of its own.

If the American state ever decides that a war is preferable to the loss of global primacy, a war could happen. People will convince themselves it will be short, the loss of life will be minimal, and if they convince everybody else, then you have your awful, monstrous disaster - just like the Japanese had, or the Iraqis had, or every state that ever stumbled into something that ended up totally out of their control.

> The fact is, if it did come from a lab, what difference would it make? Everybody does gain-of-function research. Everybody has lab accidents. The only reason why anybody is pushing this idea is as a geopolitical stalking horse designed to make China seem like a legitimate target for agression.

I don't see how this follows. Yes, other countries do GoF research, and accidents have happened in the past. It appears that this lab was doing some particularly risky things by handling these Coronaviruses in BSL-2 labs.

The real difference though is that the Chinese government's actions after the outbreak are shown in a new light if it was in fact a leak. You'd have the first cases presenting in November, with the government having a very good idea what the cause was. However, China was denying human-human transmission until Jan 21. China also lobbied heavily to keep international air traffic moving and borders open. The Chinese government also appears to have tried to suppress the publication of the sequence of the virus -- the lab that uploaded it was subsequently closed for "rectification."

In the context of an evolving situation with an unknown virus, these actions would be more excusable. In the context of a leak that had been going on for two months, it starts to look like China would bear some liability, in the same way that a hit-and-run is treated differently from accidentally hitting someone and stopping to render aid.

Maybe you mean this tweet:

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/139658174966514073...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com