Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

My point is it would have required a virtual miracle for the proposed gain of function research to have produced something that could have escaped in the time framed that is possible regarding the rejected grant request. Additionally, good research has proven that Covid couldn't have been due to gain of function research either.

Not to me.

>Actually there are even documentaries from before the pandemic, not sure why this has to be double-emphasized.

Got any names/years so I watch them?

It's the first time I heard of anything of the sort.

Do you have any reference pointing out, or is this just Facebook hearsay?

It's almost like if you move your research to a country who has no regards for safety or ethical concerns, that suddenly isn't a problem.

Suppose something strange happened and there were suspicions that it was CERN that was involved. Now a letter gets penned by the world's top particle physicists saying it's highly unlikely that the experiments at CERN would be involved. What do you suppose the likelihood would be that those particle physicists would have links to the researchers, colleagues or funders of CERN?

From your second link: "Finally, the poly-basic (furin) site present in SARS-CoV-2 is absent in both RshSTT182 and RshSTT200."

Your third link doesn't discuss furin cleavage sites very much.

Your fourth link literally doesn't contain the substring "furin".

Your fifth link literally doesn't contain the substring "furin".

Your sixth link at least partially supports your claim with a single mention of furin, saying "The two viruses shared part of the furin cleavage site unique to SARS-CoV-2", but the whole truth is that while they have insertions at the S1/S2 cleavage site in the spike protein, they do not contain the full furin cleavage site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RmYN02

From your seventh link: "None of these bat viruses harbors a furin cleavage site in the spike."

(Protip: in this claim #4 of yours under discussion, you should change "sarbecoviruses" to "betacoronaviruses".)

Using this figure, we could have some parameters around how much time such a project must have taken and its latest start date (assuming its evolved from known or closely-related-to-known viruses).

Using this figure, and a theoretical timetable, we can also specify how close a cousin virus we would need to have for such a process to develop SAR-CoV-2.

This could give us a more specific understanding of the feasibility of such research.

For example, RaTG13 is closest known virus was discovered in 2013. Does the rate of serial passage enable evolution from RaTG13 over ~7 years? If not, this provides a factual argument allowing us to determine even if gain-of-function research was imposed on RaTG13 the moment of its discovery, it could not have been developed into SARS-CoV-2. (I don't know how to evaluate the actual accuracy of this, but provided as a example of how knowing the serial passage rate would be helpful).

The investigation will continue and those missing items you mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak that there are might be a significant number of unpublished sequences at WIV and EHA, etc.

If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions however.

"The grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2." The counterargument is "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." The takeaway is that it is not likely this specific proposal was funded elsewhere, leading to SARS-CoV-2.

"If they actually carried out the research in this grant proposal you don't get from there to SARS-CoV-2, those are all SARS-1-like." I do not personally know how to evaluate the accuracy of this claim, but if true, it resonates with the first claim: this proposal funded elsewhere would not lead to SARS-CoV-2.

The argument claims about it being hard/expensive I think are less compelling, as there is a lead time of several years with experts in field performing research. A more compelling version of this argument would look like (completely making up numbers): "On average, it takes 4.5 years to develop the first samples of a novel virus using a selected backbone, CRISPR technology, and gain-of-function culturing. Therefore, even if this research was funded in 2018 we would not expect it to have led to SARS-CoV-2". I'm not saying that argument is accurate at all, just saying it's more specific than "it's difficult".

The argument claims about the evidence being missing I think isn't going to be motivating for a person who has a reasonable expectation that secret research is done and does not have trust in government transparency (either US, China, or otherwise). I'm not making a point here that evidence isn't needed (far from it, evidence IS needed). I'm evaluating from a polemic perspective what kinds of claims and arguments are useful for advancing the conversation with someone who holding a dissonant viewpoint.

Thank you by the way for making specific claims that can be fact checked such as the two referenced at the top of this comment.

It's like seeing smoke billowing out of a building and refusing to accept that there's a fire until you see the flames. Very convenient that your standard of evidence surpasses anything we can possibly obtain after the CCP scrubbed everything.

But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis. Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for various possibilities.

This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The existence of this grant application is evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic, about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to what we have observed in the virus.

[1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/

Every single denial comment around here hinges on this confusion in terms and then tries to stick the "no proof" meaning to all the evidence, instead of bringing whatever evidence there is that it was a natural strain evolution or debating the various points.

Funny how instead a meta analysis of the discussion show one side piling up evidences while the other insists in trying to convince people that no proof equals no evidence.

There seems to be an extraordinary amount of CYA here.

You will only accept hard evidence, yet you are aware that parties in China have actively removed some possible evidentiary sources. And others in USA promoted a campaign to shut down lines of enquiry, whilst withholding relevant information.

Many disciplines use Bayesian statistical models. In this case it may be the only way to "prove" a lab leak - assuming that were actually true.

I understand how this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist. I hate that. It would certainly be better to have hard evidence. I belive we have to reserve judgement in it's absence. And keep investigating both avenues.

We don't see adaptation to the new host. This means that either the spillover happened a long time before it was detected (months, years), or the proximal host was a primate. Or, the virus could have been adapted to human cells and their surface proteins in relatively straightforward laboratory experiments. Then, if accidentally released, the phylogeny and virus adaptation process would look exactly like the one we are seeing with hundreds of thousands of viral genomes.

A spillover from nature would look like SARS1. There are rapid phenotypic adaptations in the beginning of the epidemic. The initial virus is infectious, but not anything like SARS2. In SARS2, it takes many months for real phenotypic change to appear. The rate of variation is clock-like because there are few easy phenotypic wins to be made.

This is hard evidence. What do you make of it? Maybe you have to understand genetics and evolution to "read" this material, but that doesn't negate it.

Where did I say it was engineered? We have no evidence of its natural origin either. Can you provide its natural reservoir? An animal sample? Another coronavirus with this furin cleavage site? Anything?

What we are trying to do is ascertain the likelihoods of various scenarios given the evidence we have. Not the evidence we wish we had. I do not believe, nor have I anywhere asserted, that we have proven the virus was unnatural in origin. I also do not believe we have proven that the virus was natural in origin.

What I believe is that the evidence is presently insufficient to determine, and fairly ambiguous. What is unambiguous is the extraordinarily shady and self serving behavior of Peter Daszak. Why it is that he's doing that, I don't know. It could be because he participated in the engineering of this virus, but it could be for entirely separate reasons that pertain to him. I do think we should at least make a serious effort to find out, though.

Personally I think it's naive that people are omitting human and government intentions from all this, as if they are not actors in complex political world. These huge world changing events don't happen in a vacuum, and government actors are usually aware of all these ongoing research efforts for agendas and specific goals, which of course includes misleading the public.

And as far as I understand it, they are correct. Science doesn't convict an effect, it provides a lower bound on the likelihood of the effect's existence.

I've worked with many "real scientists" who will consider possiblity unless they see conclusive evidence against it. On the frontiers, there is very little conclusive evidence; this is why they are the frontiers.

I have also met "real scientists" who actively dismiss conclusive evidence if it doesn't line up with what they think will get funded.

It doesn't seem the first flavor is the one you are talking about.

One of the reasons i despise the Silicon Valley tone of conversation is how naive (read removed from the brutality that exists in the world outside the US' protected borders) the line is.

Like, are you kidding me? - Research Lab near outbreak - Connected to person that proposed a similar GoF research for a grant in the US and was turned down - History of loose ethical standards and evidence of published works connecting the CCP to military usage of viruses - Absolutely no evidence of natural origin circumstantial or otherwise in spite of over 18 months of looking

And we have people here closing their eyes, fingers in their ears going "la la la" with moronic arguments like : "Can you show me the evidence?"

I mean, can you constructively participate in the discussion with an attempt to push it forward and call out the clear risks of weaponizing infectious vectors instead of saying "Nothing to see here, show me more" in the face of all we've seen.

All that does is gives a pass to the people doing this in the dark. Accident or not, that work is ongoing and if a literal global mass casualty event doesn't help regulate it, what will ?

This is honestly the most damning part of evidence.

China has shown over and over their current strategy is to snap up resources, countries and partnerships that the West, and specifically the United States, refuse or ignore.

China would have strong motivation to have SARS related research considering SARS originates in their country.

So we have a country with strong motivation, lots of money and a repeated willingness to ignore ethical & safety concerns... I don't see how it isn't a big question mark. Especially considering how quickly and forcefully China shut down the conversation and refuse to allow in investigators.

There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally.

What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee that other research turns up the opposite.

There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.

If it wasn’t made in the lab, then it was already naturally occurring. Which means it didn’t need to escape anything, on account of it existing in the wild before it ever got near a lab.

(I'm only commenting on the words, I don't think I care where it came from at this point, not sure I could ever really believe it, whatever was concluded. Unless perhaps a bunch of countries/labs agreed, including the blamed one if applicable.)

> It must be combined with other, stronger evidence ...

This sounds like you agree. It's just weak evidence, and that's for darn sure.

Anyway, this was in Lancet, a scientific publisher, not a mass medium, disclosures of interest are mandatory. I know that in today's age it looks like science papers are just mass media because they're so easy to consume and distribute, but they are not. They're supposed to be rigurous, otherwise people would lose trust in them. Which is exactly what happened in this pandemic: it's a worldwide lack of trust in science, scientists, leaders, governments.

E.g. I want to know the different reasonable perspectives on issues/events without entertaining every kooky idea. In this case, I feel like I lumped what seems a plausible concern in with kooky ideas, and so missed the entire non-kooky narrative.

Interviewer: You say these are diverse coronaviruses and you can’t vaccinate against them, and no anti-virals — so what do we do?

Daszak: Well I think…coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w

more info: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

It would be nice if they could be left up in YouTube, but it’s either removing them right after the stream ends, or YouTube takes it down and blocks his account, which has happened multiple times in the last 18 months.

You can find all of them in his website after registration (e-mail and password): https://www.mccairndojo.com/

Some of the videos are still available in YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q

His surviving Twitter account: https://twitter.com/w_mccairn

> We will conduct in vitro pseudovirus binding assays, using established techniques, and live virus binding assays (at WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] to prevent delays and unnecessary dissemination of viral cultures)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...

Oh, that’s right, they didn’t. You can tell that by looking at what they did work on next. Did you look?

Like it says in the article.

The problem with your second statement is that we all of these posts and articles are attempts to throw evidence to support something you have already decided is true. More bad/non evidence does not make an argument and continually citing bad evidence that doesn’t prove your point reduces the credibility of the argument you are making.

Well there you go.

Like me, you probably viewed it as a deliberate attempt to distract from his administration's incompetence. Like me, you probably decided right then and there that it was a natural virus and recognized that a bulk of the people saying otherwise just HAPPENED to be people who wanted Trump re-elected.

There comes a point where you have to recognize that you have made decisions with incomplete information and emotional biases, and that those decisions sometimes need to be completely cast out, with an objective, reasoned look at the latest facts.

At this point, the evidence that you reasonably state needs to be found has long been eradicated by the second most powerful nation state the world has ever seen. An authoritarian one, with the ability to make any critic disappear. There will never be an actual smoking gun, because the CCP had months of knowledge of what they had accidentally released before the rest of the planet knew it existed. All of the evidence was within their borders. The eradication of this evidence is itself an incredibly strong indication of guilt, particularly combined with the mountains of circumstantial evidence that point to this being a lab leak. If a detective walks into a suspected murderers bedroom, and finds that all of the surfaces have been bleached and the carpet has been ripped up, he doesn't have definitive evidence that the suspect is a murderer. But he does have evidence that they are trying to hide something.

I’ve found some hope among opponents with disagreeing beliefs, and I think remaining optimistic (reasonably) is an important piece of retaining the power to drive forward change in this area. Let’s remain supportive and hopeful in ultimately the same goal as our opponents: caring for and providing safety, love and compassion for all humans.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of...

On the other hand, titles changing on the fly isn't that big a headache as far as sanity-affecting headaches go. NYT does it all the time, or used to. The main thing I don't like to do is scold someone for breaking the title guideline and then finding out later that it was the site, not the submitter, that changed it.

Probably not worth the effort on HN to try to automate vs just treating it case by case. It doesn't usually seem to be a problem. "Pre-optimization is the root of all evil" and all that.

Edit: or archive.org as dang says, but I don't know if even they see all versions of a page if there is a simultest situation. Regrettably seems pretty SOP on even reputable places.

I was. I can tell you that all of those quotes require a great deal of inspection and you cannot take them at face value.

At the very least, most scientists speak ultra-confidently about this beliefs (beyond their own internal level of confidence) because they've learned to use narrative techniques to make their beliefs sound true.

Any scientist who is actively speculating that this funding is "strong evidence" rather than saying "it's logically consistent and seems more than coincidental" is just wrong. That's a big mistake a lot of the early folks who claiimed it was human engineered made. The evidence is not strong, but not strong enough to convince a rational person.

Unless you’re a creationist, then yes?

... which is a critical thing to consider when reading virologists' opinions claiming that it couldn't be a lab leak. There is a very obvious conflict of interest here.

I don't have a good answer how to deal with this conflict, since it is hard for non-virologist to judge the arguments, but ignoring the conflict of interest entirely is not the solution.

Coronaviruses have never been easy to contain. Not this one, nor any of the many other coronaviruses that have been endemic in humans for thousands of years.

We call the common cold common for a reason.

Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done if you bought in October 2019:

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y

You'd be 25x in less than 2 years.

How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55 million in September 2019! https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This presumably means much cheaper manufacturing.

Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by these leaky vaccines.

Yes. Closure. I know it's a vague human need, but it is a need at least I have. It will definitely be good for my mental health. And why do you want people to cease just because something is hard? All criminal cases are hard. Some are solved. Let's try to solve this one.