The “Lab Leak”: It’s Not Enough to Say Accidents Happen
nautil.us
nautil.us
Another perspective: try applying the same standard to the zoonotic hypothesis, and (last I heard anyway) you will find the same void of specific data. This is again of no use for discriminating between our hypotheses.
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-long-histo...
There is a coherent theory of how this might've happened. It rests on the lab's own papers. That's not proof, but there's plenty of investigation going on here and so far we're not finding wild animal reservoirs. If that happened, it might change things.
That news came out early last year[1] but was mostly ignored by mainstream media (and the general public). China themselves disavowed the wet market theory rather quickly.[2] That disavowal was also mostly ignored.
[1]March 2020 "But no one has yet found evidence that pangolins were at the Wuhan market, or even that venders there trafficked pangolin" https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/from-bats-to-huma...
[2]May 2020 "The coronavirus didn't really start at that Wuhan 'wet market'" https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...
Moreover, I have a hard time seeing how this could have happened, provided the requirement of some considerable exposure (viral load) over a considerable time. (A COVID-19 infection is not a matter of a short contact for a few seconds or even minutes.) Personally, I'd say, there is no coherent theory, just politics.
There is a trail, though. A cluster in a straight line along Wuhan subway Line 2 connecting the lab with the PLA hospital.
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210605182232if_/https://zenodo...
Disclaimer: I studied social research and related statistics.
I am not a biologist, but AIUI the gain-of-function research (allegedly?) being done involved intentionally infecting various animals. Those animals would have been alive, not in a freezer.
It’s not that hard to imagine an error that would allow a lab worker to catch an airborne virus from, say, a humanized mouse.
Edit: I'm rather critical of gain-of-function experiments myself, but such concerns shouldn't provide any reason for any further assumptions. The discussion of a particular, empirical case is entirely different from any concerns based in principles.
It seems to me that a better approach would be for the lab to sequence all the virus samples they surely kept and see how similar they are to SARS-nCoV-2.
You really have to come up with a theory that may explain this very selective and peculiar pattern of spreading. Otherwise you may turn your interest towards an entirely different theory of origin.
What (if anything) is really at stake here?
It clearly could have so it's a possibility for future research too. It isn't even more likely to happen if this was a lab leak.
Scientific results are very commonly misapplied in political arguments. Politicians often find scary numbers to push whatever policy they already believe is best. I often hear them throw out numbers or scientific results and think "is that number connected to the policy, or are they jumping to conclusions, or did the completely misapply the data".
The idea of not wanting to know is just bizarre to me.
I feel like people are so wrapped up in the political sport/game that it is almost like people who lean Democrat don't want to investigate this further because they don't want the Republicans who questioned this at the start to look good if it did happen to come from a lab. As if you can only lose from further investigation.
As someone who doesn't really care for either party, that is a completely insane.
To say it will be inconclusive so why bother, again, a bizarre line of thinking to me.
I don't believe that.
Even if there’s only a 5 or 10% chance that this led to the covid-19 pandemic, it calls for action to update safety standards globally.
More useful research would just be additional studies testing various breach scenarios.
If this has a zoonotic origin then we don't really have the evidence that our current methods are as terribly insufficient. We do have a record of occasional lab leaks, but nothing disastrous as a result.
If it wasn't a lab leak then we should be asking questions along the lines of how to reduce future zoonotic transfer. Should we be pressuring China and others to curtail "wet markets"?
Either way, it's interesting as a scientific question. To look at the origins of one of the most impactful global events of the last year and just shrug strikes me as strangely incurious.
Of course, in reality I don't expect the US government will do anything productive and even if we knew the origins of the virus conclusively I doubt they'd do anything.
And then the next time the source is India. There's plenty of examples worldwide of biological research being handled poorly, if China was responsible for the worst result it doesn't mean they were less responsible.
>Should we be pressuring China and others to curtail "wet markets"?
Should we stop eating pigs? As swine flu had the potential to be comparatively catastrophic.
Your entire post is filled with "blame China" when everything involved is an international issue. This is exactly why I don't care about where it came from, too many people will push for that information to be used to "punish those responsible" rather than actually try to limit future outbreaks.
Obviously, if we have evidence that we need better safety protocols in labs then we should expect India, as well as every other country on Earth, to follow them. What coronavirus may mean though is that China is demonstrably dangerously lacking and cannot be trusted to implement sufficient safety protocols. We have no such evidence about India or other countries.
Why shouldn't hold accountable the people responsible for killing millions with dangerous research and substandard safety protocols? (Assuming the truth of the lab leak hypothesis)
From another post, the US had 1100 reported incidents in a four year period involving biologically risky agents. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/report... I don't assume the US is particularly bad about this, so I expect other countries have similar rates, I only picked India to escape claims of "whataboutism."
Dangerous research with a sketchy safety record happens worldwide. That the worst outcome potentially came from a Chinese incident does not mean they're the only ones at fault, and punishing them does little to prevent future outbreaks.
Answer: use this information to guide policy changes. This is how incident response works. You don’t just ignore what happened and spray a bunch of bruteforce measures that miss the point; you root cause it.
D.R.A.S.T.I.C. and others working towards this effort are definitely interested in it because of its value for guiding prevention.
Example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/30/scientist...
I see it as more likely they use this information to punish the responsible source and ignore all other potential sources.
> we should try to limit the possibility of either happening in the future.
And scientists and researchers claim that to do this, we need to determine the root cause of the initial spread:
> [Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine and a leading expert on the virus,] said coming to firm conclusions about how the virus emerged was “absolutely essential” in preventing future pandemics.
But we shouldn't do that, because China might suffer political consequences if it turns out that negligence or irresponsible behavior lead to the outbreak.
In other words: We should try to limit the possibility of this happening in the future. But, the search for the source of the pandemic, that scientists and researchers suggest are needed to prevent future pandemics, and indeed would follow standard incident response protocol in virtually any situation, is "political." But, the notion that we shouldn't do that because it might harm China from a political standpoint is not political.
On the other hand, it sounds a lot like doing the wrong thing in order to avoid causing an unwanted political outcome, such as creating justification for actions that a political adversary might want taken. It comes off a bit like this tweet:
> David Hogg @davidhogg111
> I feel the need to continue wearing my mask outside even though I’m fully vaccinated because the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative
This is absolutely benign since wearing a mask is actually not a bad idea and stops the spread of flus and common colds. However, consider the reverse of not wearing a mask despite not being fully vaccinated, because you don't want to appear liberal. This is not making a decision because it is the right or logical thing to do. This is making a decision out of fear that it might come to a conclusion, or have optics that don't support your political causes.
This is, of course, hot garbage, and if we wind up with another serious viral outbreak, I'm sure we can all be glad that at least China didn't face unfair political retribution while huge portions of the population are dying.
And Biden himself called in February 2020 for US investigators to be let into China.
The entire politicization of this has been disappointing to see.
However, at this point I find it hard to believe if there was actually any evidence of a lab leak that it hasn’t been disappeared by China. We will probably never know unless further research does turn up increasing evidence for a zoonotic origin - on the other hand such research will likely involve the WIV themselves and be viewed with suspicion, I suppose.
And this is actually how people think. I have no idea what's wrong with them, but it's completely f-ing crazy. A CNN staffer was wishing that the death toll was higher just to say that they were right and the Republicans were wrong.
https://nypost.com/2021/04/14/cnn-staffer-tells-project-veri...
I also remember some interview, that I probably won't be able to find, where some left-wing protester was also saying something like he wants the country to fall apart, because if it doesn't then that'd mean that Trump was right. Or something along these lines.
The WHO and NIH also deserve scrutiny. And the press and social media companies for censoring discussions that could have pushed for transparency and investigations sooner.
Accountability will help us handle future situations better, and will help us get back to valuing civil discourse and freedom of expression. Beyond that, what’s at stake is safety from dangerous research. Maybe that means a ban on gain of function work, or updated protocols, or independent audits of BSL labs by an international team like we have for nuclear controls. Just a week ago Nate Silver of 538 wrote (https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1398678561599508480), "it seems very warped that a bunch of prominent scientists are saying we shouldn't investigate the claims for reasons that have little to do with science and lots to do with politics". This author it seems, is one of those pushing this warped position.
Of course the virus most likely came from the lab, and had been engineered to be particularly effective against human cells. The burden of proof is one anyone else to show how it possibly evolved a furin cleavage site and many other odd sequences not seen in naturally occurring coronaviruses. And don't forget to explain why the outbreak started right next to the only lab doing gain of function research on coronaviruses, rather than near the bats thousands of miles away.
The dark truth is the "public health establishment" is happy there was an outbreak, anything to pretend they're the least bit important (they're not, and they got every single decision wrong during the pandemic).
I agree with a substantial part of this article, but just like I roll my eyes when I read articles in favor of the lab leak hypothesis that are clearly trying hoist blame onto "liberals" for ignoring this last spring/summer, I had to roll my eyes when I read this: "If true, it would mean the 600,000 Americans who have died, mostly on Trump’s and the GOP’s watch, were victims of actions taken by a handful of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
I have PLENTY of problems with how Trump and the GOP handled Covid, but trying to blame them for the deaths at this point is just plain stupid. I haven't seen any reasonable hypotheses how this could have been prevented, furthermore there are many many other states that have fared much worse, and hardly any that have similar demographics that have fared better that are not islands.
Honestly, even on HN which I find the place where flamewars are tapped down better than any other forum on the Internet, I find it impossible to have a discussion about this without the underlying motivation of "I'm trying to blame the other side" shining through.
I don't think we're going to get conclusive proof either way without the research records being released, and even then, maybe not.
But I don't see how any of this is anything to do with Trump, or that the theory was primarily used to deflect attention from Trump's scandalous mismanagement.
Is he saying that US media was/is so anti Trump that they buried this whole argument out of spite or to paint Trump as a ludicrous conspiracicst (they probably didn't need to try so hard)?
I’m not sure why knowing the exact mechanism of the leak is relevant. Lab leaks happen and it is enough to say so. SARS (the first one) leaked from well-run labs multiple times. The leak from the Beijing lab even led to deaths. Given WIV has papers (example https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.02582-15) claiming they developed infectious clones of SARS like viruses (AKA gain of function) in the last few years, it doesn’t seem outlandish at all that a new leak would happen. WIV also has not just BSL4 labs but lesser controlled labs too. But even leaving that aside, consider the diplomatic cables indicting a lack of trained staff at Wuhan to operate such a lab at an appropriate safety level (https://www.ibtimes.sg/shocking-diplomatic-cables-reveal-saf...).
To put it another way, this is a game of probabilities. There are numerous factors that make the case for a lab leak more likely. This is also why Nate Silver updated his priors (https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1396550770368172033) in response to the recent WSJ exclusive on WIV researchers falling ill.
This article seems to completely ignore the brazen contempt from the political left in 2020 for any legitimate hypothesis about origins. The vicious attacks against the lab leak hypothesis, the lack of coverage from news media, and censorship from tech companies were all in service of keeping a negative focus on Trump. This happened because it was an election year where the Democrats were expected to lose, and this pandemic was the only available political opportunity at the time. This artificial interference with free discourse allowed the CCP and WHO to avoid transparency. We COULD have potentially had harder evidence, except that these actions delayed discussion of lab leaks and now we are some 18 months past when an independent international site visit should have taken place. So forgive me if I find the sneering demand for “extraordinary evidence” to be just completely tone deaf and absurd.