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Comment by danw1979 | Hacker News Reader

danw1979

> The study also doesn’t clarify how a progenitor of the virus could have travelled to Wuhan, in central China, where the first known cases of COVID-19 were identified — or whether the virus hitched a ride on an intermediate animal.

“The main problems that the Institute of Virology has is that the outbreak occurred in close proximity to that Institute. That Institute has in essence the best collection of virologists in the world that have gone out and sought out, and isolated, and sampled bat species throughout Southeast Asia. So they have a very large collection of viruses in their laboratory. And so it’s — you know — proximity is a problem. It’s a problem.” - Ralph Baric

(https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...)

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Remember that bat cave in Yunnan (specifically Mojiang) which supposedly had also similar viruses? Right on the border of Laos.

What's weird is that nobody talks about WHY Shi Zheng-Li/"Bat Woman" was digging around random caves in Yunnan.

She was sent to investigate a lethal outbreak with CFR of 50%.

"Lethal Pneumonia Cases in Mojiang Miners (2012)" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.7021...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bat-cave-solves-m...

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

I'm still surprised very few sources are talking about the third possible origin - WIV scientist(s) contracted COVID19 when doing research in/near bat caves with insufficient PPE. You see researchers wearing what look like surgical masks, which is likely insufficient. And this is post-Covid Chinese media, so it's probably sugar coated. I remember reading a translated article (sadly can't find it at the moment) which reported lab techs in Yunnan working in terrible conditions, getting bat urine and blood on them trying to catch bats, with barely adequate masks and goggles.

https://algulf.net/2021/06/09/2019-video-shows-wuhan-scienti...

>What's weird is that nobody talks about WHY Shi Zheng-Li/"Bat Woman" was digging around random caves in Yunnan.

She is an expert on SARS-like viruses, and her research focus is on the threat of zoonotic spillover from bats. One would expect her to be involved in the investigation of an apparent zoonotic spillover from bats that causes SARS-like symptoms. Hell, it would be weird if she wasn't part of the investigation.

Of course she was involved. She published a paper on it.

The weird part is how hushed up it is. Nobody talks about the 2012 outbreak, even though it was supposedly a very similar virus, and they already talked about the Yunnan caves.

Just can't talk about the outbreak? Why?

Just a day ago or so, DRASTIC released [1] DARPA funding proposals for Coronavirus research project from 2018. They were released by a whistleblower. They basically outline how to create COVID-19. Incidentally, DARPA refused to fund it because it's GoF research but someone else did fund it. It's a fascinating read.

[1] https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-do...

"Someone" else...

Are you implying anything?

She’s “implying” something alright

Pretending that everything you state is true (a seemingly unsubstantiated conclusion), why does it matter?

If a lab did in fact accidentally leak the virus, what more can we gain at this point? Isn’t the cat out of the bag? We all agree that gain of function research is a bad idea. What’s so interesting about this beside some rather bland historical footnote?

Confirming a lab origin would create vastly more political will to oppose GoF research, and potentially prevent another cataclysmic pandemic (which has directly killed 4 million people) and pandemic-response (which has corresponded with a 23.8% increase in obesity/overweightedness in children 5 - 11, led to over 100 million children missing out on meaningful education for upwards of a year, and destroyed innumerable businesses, and in doing so, massively exacerbated poverty).

Your idea sounds nice, but it doesn't really make sense. Consider that terrorists can easily do GoF and release the product - no research necessary. On the other hand, when scientists do GoF research, our virological knowledge may be furthered, possibly with applications to making new vaccines and similar.

That isn't a sufficient reason not to scrutinize the process by which this research is conducted if the origin of the virus is from the lab. It matters if this virus was of natural origin or was leaked from research going on at the lab, altered or not. It should inform us better on safety for researchers, or caution us about avoiding contact with certain animals and help us learn more about how viruses jump from one species to another. There is valuable information to be discovered in the investigation of the origins of this pandemic. It's only rational to be interested in that if we want to be better prepared to prevent future pandemics.

For anyone who really cares about pursuit of truth or the scientific process (and how it tends to be ignored even by science institutions) this would actually be earth-shattering.

I guess for other people who don't care about those things it will be a footnote.

It’s earth-shattering because of some coverup?

I suppose that would in and of itself be quite a story, but my question was why would this accidental release through a lab, so far an unsubstantiated and not necessarily conspiracy linked event, be so important that one would state things like “someone else” funded a program that didn’t receive funding?

> For anyone who really cares about pursuit of truth or the scientific process (and how it tends to be ignored even by science institutions) this would actually be earth-shattering.

I wonder how much is this due to this noble pursuit of truth and the scientific process, and how much is due to having an axe to grind and desperately seeking any scapegoat to be sacrificed in the altar of self-righteousness.

Even your justification reeks of "you're with us or against us" mob mentality.

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about

Why would it be "earth-shattering"? virus leaks from labs around the world are rather common.

Because for many months the scientific community aggressively asserted it was not a lab leak and demonized anyone claiming otherwise.

I think the better question would be: Why shouldn't we want to know as much as possible? I can only come up with one answer - the truth may embarrass powerful people.

I agree with you. If only we cared as much to solve the problem as we do to point fingers.

because the widespread, active, and largely successful effort to suppress consideration of both the lab-leak and gain-of-function hypotheses shows that we cannot trust the most important people in this field, which means we can't trust their word that they "all agree that gain of function research is a bad idea".

> We all agree that gain of function research is a bad idea.

Who is "we" here? Fear of GoFR is similar to the fear of nuclear power - there are obvious risks, but people don't think about the benefits.

Please explain the benefits in detail

> Fear of GoFR is similar to the fear of nuclear power - there are obvious risks, but people don't think about the benefits.

You should explore this comparison more deeply.

How many people has nuclear power killed in the past 20 years? How many people has SARS-CoV-2 killed in the past two?

When something so consequential happens we have to determine how and why it happened.

We have to prevent such mistakes in the future, and if this was an accidental leak due to carelessness then there is reparations to be paid.

We can gain the knowledge of how to fix it in the future and take action against entities that aren’t taking those precautions as well as creating the political will to do so.

This is similar to how after the titanic we identified why it sank, and why after it sank so many people died.

There is no proof that anyone else funded it yet.

But it's the first piece of concrete evidence that people were in fact doing what has been claimed.

Also remember that there are two virus labs in Wuhan. One is WIV, but the other is across the street from the wet-market (as I understand it).

At some point the evidence crosses the line of "beyond all reasonable doubt" and SARS-CoV-2 itself becomes the proof.

The virus was already looking suspiciously engineered, in ways that you wouldn't expect from natural evolution. It appeared right next to a lab doing virus work. Now there's a document saying they wanted to engineer a CoV in the exact same way that SARS-CoV-2 appears to have been changed. The question is not "did they get funding to do the work" at this point but rather "who funded it" (assuming it needed explicit funding in the end and wasn't simply creamed off another project).

> The main problems that the Institute of Virology has is that the outbreak occurred in close proximity to that Institute.

The first outbreak occurred in Wuhan, but there's no proof that the first cases were in Wuhan. In fact there's genetic evidence indicating there may have been earlier cases 600 miles to the south [0], where the bats are.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

They could have been infected by locals in regions they've been travelling to. Many possibilities. Why do we have to speculate? Let's just wait for more data.

The timeline of HIV pandemic has been established decades after pandemic started. This will take time.

I'd assume that virus originating anywhere in SEA region would be detected in China first. Just like many other viruses originating in America continent would be first detected in USA.

We may have to wait for the fall of chinese communism to know what happened though, like for Katyn. Might take a few decades.

And assuming the chinese haven't destroyed the relevant Wuhan lab samples. That's what I would do in their place. Better never know than take the risk that a technician leak such sensitive information.

Soviets had a number of either accidents or sabotage incidents with lethal biological agents.

Afaik, there was zero additional clarity around those after USSR dissolved, so don't hold your breath.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/sverdlovs...

There are actually 2 virology institutions in Wuhan. WIV is fairly far from the neighborhood where things got going.

Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention is a 5 minute walk from the wet market. And went through the disruption of a move just before COVID broke out.

See https://nypost.com/2021/08/13/who-scientist-eyes-on-wuhan-la... for more.

>WIV is fairly far from the neighborhood where things got going.

Still closer than Southeast Asia, though.

First cases to show up in the Bay Area were in late Jan 2020. That's only 6 weeks after the Chinese figured out they had a problem on their hands.

WIV, the seafood market, and the airport are all on the same subway line. The topology of disease spread in cities is only approximated by physical distance.

That I hadn't known. Thanks.

Does it matter that they're on the same subway line? Do all people only travel on one subway line each and never change trains?

Yes it matters.

>Do all people only travel on one subway line each and never change trains?

It's not what all people do that matters when trying to find the origin of a highly contagious virus. It only takes one person going from point A to point B to cause a pandemic.

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