The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know | Hacker News Reader

The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know

livescience.com

10 pointsthrowkeep12 comments

> Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found.

The above is the primary takeaway from the report.

> If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work.

I'm not addressing the whole SARS-CoV-2 story but just this sentence. That seems like an incredibly naive view of "scientists". If you're trying to engineer a virus, erasing your traces is the most important thing. Testing things rejected by computer models in hope of finding one that works and thus would lead to skeptism in the scientific community could be a way to erase your traces.

Yea, agreed that it doesn't prove it wasn't man-made, but per baye's theorem, it decreases the likelihood.

I don't buy this argument. If you look at how GoF research is performed, serial passage[1] is the usual method and in that case you just use what works, you don't 'choose' specific mutations.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_passage

But wasn't the concern that it leaked from the lab, and not engineered in a lab?

Maybe poster wanted to show 1 year ago it was clear that it wasn't made in a lab and now everything "changed".

Especially when you see editor's note telling readers that US government is investigating.

Anyway it just looks like propaganda vs propaganda.

>Anyway it just looks like propaganda vs propaganda.

Exactly, and let's face it: we will never know the truth.

I understood the 'lab made' argument is a strawman. Much more realistic is a scenario where someone messed up either transport or storage of a real, natural bat virus at the Wuhan lab.

When you call an option/possibility a myth, your article is biased and not scientific. I'll not even bother to read the argument.

This detracts, via a strawman argument, from the more pressing concerns: was it leaked from a lab? Or, given this evidence, was it evolved/mutated in a lab?

If it was leaked from a lab, what would you propose be done about it? Why do you feel this is a pressing concern? I could totally believe that it was a lab leak, but I suspect that could happen in many labs.

> If it was leaked from a lab, what would you propose be done about it? Why do you feel this is a pressing concern?

Not the grandparent, but if one believes that the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab, surely that means their containment protocolos are deficient or not adequately followed. That is an actionable price of information, especially if they are handling other strains of viruses that could leak in the future. Whatever lessons can be learned from that can also be exported to other similar labs around the world.

I have no idea of whether that was the case, though.

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