New evidence undermines the Covid lab-leak theory | Hacker News Reader

New evidence undermines the Covid lab-leak theory

latimes.com

23 pointssaalweachter56 comments

There's no new evidence presented here. A paper found a SARS-COV-2-like virus in bats, but if you read the paper, it admits that the virus is less similar than RaTG13, which was already known well before the lab leak hypothesis became prominent (and samples of which existed in WIV). It states that transmission at a wet market is coincidence enough to prove that it came from animals, ignoring the consensus view that the Huanan wet market was simply a superspreader event and that the origin likely occurred elsewhere in Wuhan — which even the WHO supports [1], and at the same time downplaying the coincidence of the close proximity to a lab researching coronaviruses in bats (and tries to over-generalize that WIV was studying "bat viruses" — technically true, but certainly less damning than the fact that they were studying bat coronaviruses and intentionally modifying them to be similar to SARS, to study human transmission of SARS-like coronaviruses). One of the other two "new" papers is just an analysis (from May) of the WHO findings. The only new information is contained in the third paper — which if you read it, doesn't downplay the lab leak hypothesis, and partially refutes the idea of multiple origins by claiming that it is likely that two of the four supposed early strains in fact never circulated and were simply mistakes in sequencing or bioinformatics.

It honestly seems like the journalist didn't bother reading the papers and just parroted quotes about what was supposedly in them, which is becoming less and less surprising to me with science journalism these days.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/02/9837738...

This is the type of voice used to railroad people into a certain point of view. It's trying to stonewall and invalidate and gaslight anyone who dare even consider the possibility of the lab leak. As an American in my 30s I've grown up used to seeing this tactic anytime Israel is mentioned in the news (until the last few years). Hopefully we are at a point where people are becoming more sensitive to this kind of tactic, especially in the mass media.

As other people have noted, there isn't much new here. The findings about potential origins in Laos are still in preprint AFAIK, much as all information (real or not) has been throughout the pandemic.

It’s obviously important to understand the origins of the pandemic for pragmatic reasons but I don’t get why people seem to be so invested in one outcome or the other, as if definitive proof that it did or didn’t start in a lab will validate or invalidate their comprehensive political worldview.

I think the article has a persuasive reason why beyond politics: not knowing the origin reason means policies might be written that don't actually prevent another pandemic. There's no reason to more stringently regulate wet markets if the belief was that it came out of a lab, and vice versa.

This doesn’t really make sense - irrespective of where this particular virus came from, we need to re-think regulations for all potential future sources.

Best policy is to do both. Ban dangerous research and regulate markets/factory farming and step up monitoring for potential zoonosis transfers.

It goes roughly like: It's the fault of the Chinese and possibly an anti-America bioweapon; therefore it isn't the fault of Trump for ignoring, minimizing and dawdling in the hopes it would preserve his electoral chances (and wipe out Democrat voting demographics in blue states).

The A, therefore not B structure of this isn't particularly valid, but this is excuse making, not sense.

I'm not personally invested, but I think some people are motivated by wanting vindication. "I was right and the talking heads were wrong". I think it's more about that than about the issue itself.

And I mean, learning about which authorities are more and less reliable is important, and so is scoring track record points, so I don't want to be too dismissive of that attitude.

We're all locked inside a high-stakes thriller novel, we don't know if we're halfway through the book, at the start, or near the finale. We don't know how many volumes there are. We all want some answers. And for sure, how the story unfolds affects us all in the most direct of ways (lab leak or not). If this were a box set, by now everyone would have googled for spoilers, as the tension is unbearable.

So yeah, lab leak or not may not make much difference to the hard reality, but 18 months of lockdowns displaced reality, some time ago already.

America needs a big bad.

It's not even "political" in the sense of domestic conflict, it's the consensus.

I think it's because people sense there's a big lie being perpetrated, and they want the truth. Or that they really hope there is no lie and people (especially scientists!) are always good and innocent afterall.

The article itself obviously takes sides, so I won't ask inconvenient questions like how the virus got from Laos to Wuhan more plausibly than from the two labs there. One of which is right across from the seafood market, where lab workers presumably would have shopped, as well as at other markets.

The only reason why the closest related coronavirus besides RaTG13 was found in Laos is due to the fact no researchers are allowed to sample any caves in Yunnan china due to government ban. And all research done by Chinese scientists must be reviewed and approved prior to publishing.

One thing I wish could be shared would be the formally publicly accessible viral database the lab had taken down in September of 2019 and refuses to share with anyone even scientists behind closed doors. Right now RaTG13 is the only known virus closest to SARS-COV-2 but no one is allowed to check and verify.

I can see that the idea that it was a lab leak could be _reassuring_ to people; "this just happened and could happen again at any time" is a way scarier prospect than "this happened due to negligence and can be prevented from happening again with better procedures", and people do tend to over-index on explanations which offer solutions.

Notably, you got a lot of the same sort of thing (albeit way more conspiracy-ish, because HIV's origins were far clearer) for HIV.

> "The question of the origin of COVID-19 isn’t of merely academic interest. The answer could guide the world’s preparation for future pandemics; if the virus emerged from a laboratory, then improving lab safety measures will be prioritized. If scientific opinion continues to coalesce around animal-to-human transmission, that will underscore the importance of regulating contact between humans and wildlife."

So I think the difference is, in the lab leak scenario, that's relatively _easy_ to solve; it's just a case of increasing standards in a rather small number of facilities. If it's zoonotic transition, well, it's all very well to say "underscore the importance of regulating contact between humans and wildlife", but, er, good luck with that. That doesn't offer a real solution.

> I can see that the idea that it was a lab leak could be _reassuring_ to people;

To me its less reassuring. It tells me that us humans actively sought out pathogens in spaces where it was unlikely that humans would encounter them otherwise. Then took those pathogens to a lab, experimented on them a bit perhaps making them more deadly, have shitty security protocols for the experiment, and thereby releasing them accidentally into a large population.

A lab leak makes it our fault and speaks to the stupidity of us humans. A zoological origin makes it natures fault. I’d much rather nature kill me by accident (besides I think our odds are better).

Sure, but all of that is _addressable_, via improved standards. That is, if one buys the lab leak theory, it's practical to stop it happening again. But if it was normal zoonotic transmission, well, there are ways to make that somewhat less likely, but it will happen again; diseases make the jump from time to time, and realistically this avenue for new diseases can't be shut down.

Improved standards may help some, but that’s not the real issue. If I, a virologist, enter a remote cave system that no other human would likely ever enter specifically looking for an undiscovered virus to study, I have already tipped the scales significantly to the likelihood that the unknown virus will infect humans by a huge scale over nature.

Then, by experimentation, I make said virus even more infectious or deadly…I have even further increased that likelihood of it infecting humans by a huge factor.

Then, by performing that experiment in an area with a dense 11M population, I have further increased that likelihood of human transmission so far beyond where it was when that virus sat in that remote cave and had a unlikely path to humans.

So you better hope like hell that your lab security is bulletproof, because you have removed virtually every layer of protection that nature has provided us humans from the bug.

Hand wave away the "coincidence" that the virus most likely originated nearby the Wuhan Institute of Virology, because a CNN report was "presented with portentous music on the soundtrack, suggesting subliminally that something sinister is going on there".

China is "shopping" articles that absolve the lab and are actively interfering with investigation- Occam's razor starts to come into play here.

My theory is that there must be someone who works at the lab and disposes of animals.

Considering that theres a wet market nearby and the person disposing of animal corpses is likely not earning much money they flogged them through the market as a side hussle.

Wildly speculative and nothing to back it up, but that makes more sense to me than some severe breach of protocol by staff actively working with samples etc.

We have the same thing in the U.S., where people paid to dispose of people's dead pets just dump them on the side of the highway to save money. E.g.: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/07/11/dead-animals-found-i...

It is terribly possible. As a 20 year old kid I was part of a two man crew responsible for transporting dead research animals. I have no idea what credentials the guy I was with had. But its not like this was even the only thing he did. When we were done with animal duty it was off to haul recycled books. That man possessed high degree of trust from the University authorities, I wonder if it was formalized in any way. To be very clear, this guy had an unbelievable character and work ethic. I've maybe met a dozen guys who just oozed it and he was one of them.

Occam's razor says it came from the same place as bird flu and SARS -- animal contact.

A lab leak is possible, it can't be disproved. But the fact is that people want it to be true in excess of the evidence we have.

Lab leak and animal contact can both be true. Lab tech gets infected during animal experiments/sample collecting due to not following procedures and infects others in the lab. They carry infection out into the population, and you're off.

There are many, many more human-animal contacts outside of that lab than inside it. It's literally a billion to one.

A scientist or lab tech specifically working with virus infected bats will spend a lot more time in close contact with virus infected bats than most.

Sure, but we're back to "I want this to be true" at this point. It's possible. But there are a billion rural Chinese who also could have gotten it naturally. Add a 1000x coefficient and you're down to a million to one.

so would someone mining bat poop for fertilizer.

The article states that the first cases were connected to the wet market in Wuhan. But there is some evidence of earlier infections (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/sars-cov-2s-spread...). Not sure how credible that evidence is, but IF someone tried to cover up a lab leak, it would also make sense to claim that the first infections have been found at the wet market in Wuhan.

Personally I think we will never find out what happened, at least not in the next decades, unless there is some whistleblower leaking confidential government communication.

Even the WHO agrees that the Huanan market was not the origin, and was simply a superspreader event: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/02/9837738...

I'm surprised the article tries to push the debunked claim that wet markets were an origin, rather than simply being early superspreader events.

We'll never know what happened because the time for properly investigating has long since past. There was plenty of political stonewalling early on. I know I don't trust governments or the media to properly get to the bottom of it, because if something did leak, it would be detrimental to them at this point (government/NGOs want funding without oversite, media towed the line of these entities early on).

The media has a long, long way to go to regain trust.

> ... Gupta says, “It’s a likely probability that this one originated from animals as well. But the possibility also remains that the virus leaked from a lab.”

> By posing these two theories as simply two equally plausible solutions to a mystery ...

How are “probable” and “possible” equal? The author seems to be doing the same thing they’re complaining about.

This seems to be a column under "business", apparently out of the reporter's blog hosted by latimes.

I do think it's new information to me at least that the original research proposal was actually denied AND that Covid-19 similar viruses had already been found in nature when the previous thought was that those specific mutations could only be man-made.

Unpopular comment on HN I'm sure, but I know a few people who work in various infectious diseases labs - one of which sits in with policy makers and is one of the referred to when those officials talk about their "expert advisors".

None of them believe it was a lab leak. All of them believe it was a spill over or a wet market incident.

Anecdotal, I'm aware. But I'm personally yielding to those people who work in the same building as the world's deadliest diseases, who have all of the information and have all of their (usually multiple) degrees.

Lab leak is juicy. It would give us someone to blame. That's human nature to want it to be true. But nothing I've heard aside from news outlets and conspiracy theorists gives me any reason to believe it's a lab leak.

Lab leak, if true, would be damaging to the flexibility of their work and bring further scrutiny toward future funding of said work.

They have incentive for it to not be true.

No, it wouldn't. They're not the ones who had the leak, if true.

yes it would, just because it just so happened to take place at another lab does not mean the public and regulators are going to ignore the dangerous research other labs are conducting. No one wants to be the next Wuhan, but it's only a matter of time until the next coincidence happens in a city with a major lab.

A lab origin could not only tank their future prospects due to massive restrictions and funding bans, but it would also severely stigmatize their profession. They'll be viewed as Frankenstiens

I think you grossly misunderstand how infectious disease research works.

I already have someone to blame and it was a President too stupid to wear a mask that sent thousands to their deaths. A president that instigated an era of not believing the news or experts and introduced a culture of “alternate facts”, otherwise known as lies, that have caused the current anti-vaccine idiocy.

695,000 Americans dead so far.

That has nothing to do with my point.

Maybe if news weren't hell bent on personal attacks disregarding any truth things might be different... I entirely blame media, I think most of them should be banned from operating.

There's an alleged whistleblower that says it's a lab leak. Someone that was on the ground and had access to information. That's not a conspiracy theory. Whether or not you believe this person, that's up to you.

Let's break down the phrase:

"Conspiracy": A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful; the action of plotting or conspiring.

"Theory": A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

What you're offering is a conspiracy theory. It's a possible explanation for an event that alleges a conspiracy (either the cover up of an accidental leak or malicious intentional leak).

Adding "do your own research/it's up to you to believe" at the end of a conspiracy theory doesn't make it not a conspiracy theory.

The phrase "conspiracy theory" carries baggage beyond that of the individual definitions of the two words.

Oh I get that, but that's my point.

Saying "this isn't a conspiracy theory because that phrase has negative connotations I don't want associated with MY conspiracy theory" isn't going to make it not a conspiracy theory.

I firmly believe Epstein didn't kill himself. I'm aware it's a conspiracy theory. Let's call a spade a spade.

Here's a 'conspiracy theory:' I think org XYZ is doing nefarious things because X happened and it's in their best interest to cover it up.

See, there's no first hand evidence, there's just raw speculation.

A whistleblower, on the other hand, claims to have a 1st hand account of nefarious or at the least misleading actions of a particular entity.

I didn't offer any theories. The person making the claim isn't offering theories, they're offering first hand accounts. If you say this person is lying for political purposes, it's you who's creating a conspiracy theory.

Sometimes I like to use the following example when it comes to semantics and discourse: If you start a sentence with the phrase "This isn't a sex thing, but..." no matter what you say afterwards will be interpreted as having possible sexual meanings.

If you want to frame something by saying it's not something else, people will make the connection. Why? Because you made it for them.

The first one to mention conspiracy theory was the poster I originally responded to (possibly you?). When I read "conspiracy theory" I think to myself "this person gets their facts from CNN and no place else." Just ignore the man behind the curtain.

Contrary to popular belief (it seems), not all scientists are in cahoots with all other scientists worldwide. Especially not those in China.

So yes, I believe this person (these people, actually) as they are both close friends and some of the smartest people I know.

Just because you believe them and they're smart, doesn't mean they have all the information. So, you can take the opinion of people that weren't physically present at the lab, or you can take the account of a whistleblower who claims to have been physically present and part of an investigation.

That's a bizarre and entirely unrealistic dichotomy. I could make a similar one for the other side of the debate, too. But I'll refrain because it's not how scientific discourse should work.

You're choosing to ignore a whistle blower because it conflicts with your friends opinions, opinions that aren't most likely 1st hand accounts.

If you're expecting an organization to just willfully admit negligence or wrong doing, especially if they took actions to cover it up (according to the whistle blower), when has that EVER happened?

Do we have the lab records and transaction logs? Are those records able to be tampered with easily? Who, that has subpoena power, is actually investigating? Does anyone have the power to carry out an actual investigation?

I don't understand why you're placing your faith in a political system.

> You're choosing to ignore a whistle blower

I'm choosing to be skeptical of a single person's claim. I never said I ignored them.

> because it conflicts with your friends opinions

No, because my friends' expert conclusions based on all of the available data conflicts with the "word" of a single, anonymous source. There's nothing that states whistleblowers are telling the truth or that they can be trusted.

> If you're expecting an organization to just willfully admit negligence or wrong doing, especially if they took actions to cover it up (according to the whistle blower), when has that EVER happened?

That's beside the point I made to begin with. I don't see how it's relevant. The dealings of the CCP do not change how SARS-COVID-2 is structured.

> I don't understand why you're placing your faith in a political system.

I am, expressly, not doing that. I'm placing faith in people who understand infectious diseases more than some random person on Hacker News - and more than myself, at that.

The whistle blower is named and public, not anonymous.

> I'm placing faith in people who understand infectious diseases more than some random person on Hacker News - and more than myself, at that.

You're choosing to listen to your friend's opinion, who probably doesn't possess any material facts.

> how SARS-COVID-2 is structured

That's really not at issue here, I think you're addressing a strawman that I didn't make.

> The whistle blower is named and public, not anonymous.

Okay, and my point still stands.

> who probably doesn't possess any material facts.

Why do you make such strong assertions/assumptions when you have no idea to whom I'm referring?

> That's really not at issue here, I think you're addressing a strawman that I didn't make.

Not really, no. I don't think you're really making good points to begin with.

> Why do you make such strong assertions/assumptions when you have no idea to whom I'm referring?

Because you could have already easily said "I know someone with 1st hand information from the place in question" but you didn't, so it seems strongly likely you don't.

What information would you actually be willing to consider to change your point of view? It seems unlikely at this point anything resembling an actual investigation will ever take place, so the best we have is a whistle blower.

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