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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

> and I feel few people actually have legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth

Not to be glib, but what would be a legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth?

That this plausibly could have been of natural origin would seem to override any value in discerning where it actually came from.

If it was a lab leak, "Oops." We hastened it occuring naturally by some amount of time. Lots of people died, but that would have happened in an inevitable spillover event anyway, albeit farther in the future.

If it wasn't a lab leak, well there we are.

Or, in other words, what would we do differently if it were a lab leak? Increase biocontainment protocols? Okay, so we've made human-origin less likely. We still have to deal with naturally-occurring in the future.

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> Or, in other words, what would we do differently if it were a lab leak?

If the virus is a laboratory construct (e.g., a recombinant of two novel natural viruses with a human-chosen FCS; we can argue about how likely that was, but no genomic evidence can exclude that), then it would near-certainly never have existed without that laboratory manipulation. The pandemic could near-certainly have been permanently avoided simply by not constructing it. This was a matter of controversy long before the pandemic; such work was banned in 2014, but the ban expired in 2017:

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-lifts-3-year-ban...

If the virus is naturally-evolved but sampled and released accidentally by scientists, then it might otherwise later have been released accidentally by infected non-scientists. It wouldn't have been necessarily though, especially since WIV researchers sampled remote bat caves that no other humans routinely entered. Sampling of sites with significant existing human traffic (farms, markets, tourism sites, etc.) seems like a clear benefit, a negligible increase in the existing risk of natural spillover. Sampling of remote sites without such traffic seems much less clear.

There's something weird about public attitude to biological risks. When the government did a controlled burn in New Mexico that got out of control and destroyed hundreds of houses, everyone involved recognized that they'd screwed up, even though fires also occur naturally, and even though controlled burns are a valuable tool in controlling natural fires. It seems that intuition doesn't hold for lab-origin pandemics. The 1977 flu originated from scientific research (although the exact nature of that research--whether it was a failed vaccine, or a vaccine challenge trial, or an experiment at the bench--is disputed), and it killed about 700k people. No one seems to care, and I don't really understand why.

I'd argue should be doing more to ensure lab biohazard safety regardless of the origin of COVID-19, which is one reason I don't think knowing the answer has a lot of practical significance.

If you'd like to see greater regulation of biological research, then I'm pretty sure strong evidence that it killed millions of people would help with political support for that? So I'm not sure why we wouldn't look, especially when many obvious paths (e.g. subpoenas for all data potentially containing early viral genomes as contamination, like from Illumina's cloud services) remain unexplored.

I think practically it would be used to generate hostile sentiment between countries and wouldn’t drive good regulations. But maybe I’m just a pessimist!

Hostile sentiment between which countries? The WIV was on Chinese soil, but received American funds and had many American collaborators; so I don't think either country is in a great position to blame the other. On the other hand that gives China and the USA a shared interest in discouraging investigation of the cause, as seems to have occurred.

That's really sad about the 1977 flu. Was there evidence that it was human-caused, and that proper procedures weren't followed? Could local prosecutors have pursued a case based on something like manslaughter or criminal negligence? Would it even be possible to still build such a case? (i.e. maybe the statute of limitations didn't expire yet?)

There's very little question that the 1977 flu pandemic was human-caused. Even Gigi Gronvall opens her paper with:

> The 1977-1978 influenza epidemic was probably not a natural event, [...]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/

She goes on to say it wasn't a "laboratory accident", because it was probably a vaccine accident, either an incompletely attenuated vaccine or a trial in which vaccine recipients were deliberately challenged with live virus to test their immunity. That distinction seems like a legalistic game to me, intended to distract from the lesson that pandemic may teach us about this one; but I believe her historical background is good.

I don't know any mechanism by which those responsible would be punished, even if the exact truth came out, and even if they're still alive. I'm not even sure they should be--virology was still in its infancy then, and the escape presumably really was an honest mistake. Of course the more times this happens, the harder it gets to accept such an excuse, especially when deliberate efforts are made to minimize and distract from the lessons of the past.

>Not to be glib, but what would be a legitimate scientific interest in discovering the truth?

Meaning, someone who didn’t walk in with a bias and look around the room for things that support said bias. This debate is packed with armchair experts who seem to have a larger interest in the politics than the science.

>If it was a lab leak, "Oops." …

Oops?!

>Or, in other words, what would we do differently if it were a lab leak? Increase biocontainment protocols?

If you’re like most of us on HN, at work, when we make big mistakes that cost our companies money and users, we have thorough retrospectives, learn from our mistakes, identify root causes, build for redundancy and high availability, and prevent the same incident from ever happening twice. That’s what I’d expect to see if the lab leak (which you strangely keep calling human origin, as if a naturally occurring virus can’t leak from a lab) were proven.

> Okay, so we've made human-origin less likely. We still have to deal with naturally-occurring in the future.

We have naturally-occurring forest fires, yet as a society, we sure seem to put a lot of effort into stopping “human-origin” fires. This sounds a bit “fuck it, why bother trying to make anything better, something bad will always happen”.

> we sure seem to put a lot of effort into stopping “human-origin” fires

Do we?

After they start, but we are terrible at pretty much every type of prevention.

See: built to burn

> This sounds a bit “fuck it, why bother trying to make anything better, something bad will always happen”.

I agree.

> If you’re like most of us on HN, at work, when we make big mistakes that cost our companies money and users, we have thorough retrospectives, learn from our mistakes, identify root causes, build for redundancy and high availability, and prevent the same incident from ever happening twice.

Depends on the process. If the retrospective process is a big PITA that goes nowhere, and management is only going to support changes that it wanted before the incident, regardless of any knowledge uncovered by the evidence, then minimize the reporting and hide under a rock for a while, try not to get management attention again.

Which scenario seems more applicable to a government lab in Wuhan?

I don't think we're going to get the straight information from the lab, because the incentives aren't there. If they admit they did it, everybody is mad, and CCP has to take action to save face, and the lab team doesn't want to face that. If they admit they didn't do it, nobody believes them.

Outside of finding some lucky samples, like a good match from outside the area in say October or November, I don't think we're going to get anything definitive from forensic analysis of virus DNA. I'm not an expert in the field, but the same sequence gets interpreted different ways by different experts; and usually with some wishy-washyness.

The data quality for the early pandemic isn't getting any better or more independent from the same officials we don't trust.

If we can't get a story we trust from the horse's mouth, and we can't figure it out through forensic analysis, the best way forward is to figure out what interventions would be reasonable if we assume lab origin and what would be reasonable if we assume natural origin and do the practical interventions.

>what would we do differently if it were a lab leak? Increase biocontainment protocols?

Ban gain of function research.

There are many virologists who make compelling arguments that the hypothetical benefits of the research (which have yet to materialize) pale in comparison to the risks.

Every day that goes by that GoF research fails to materialize any of its hypothetical benefits makes the case against it ever stronger.

You underestimate the time value of not having a pandemic today, as opposed to perhaps hundreds of years in the future. Serial passage through humanized mice is not exactly something that happens in nature.

That is a substantial value, to be sure.

But I also look at it the other way: COVID was perhaps the smallest scale event that could produce fundamental change in the way we (as in, humans) approach biodefense and disease control.

If we needed a wakeup call, better to have it now than ~2100, when we're estimated to reach peak population + continued concentration in cities.

Peak population => we didn't figure out population control, so we need a virus to help out.

This is what I've been saying all along. COVID-19 is just about the gentlest possible practice run for a seriously nasty pandemic. From what we've seen so far, if we did encounter something more deadly, we would not do well.

Simple: We don't have infinite funds to guard against both. It helps us decide where to focus our time and money.

Game theory effects on future lab technicians, administrators and security personnel. We punish crime and criminal negligence to deter it in the future by public knowledge that it will be punished.

You raise good points, but note that not everyone is rational here. Covid has in fact shown irrational so many people are, even in the 21st century.

If it were discovered to be a lab leak from something previously discovered in the wild, especially from a NIH funded lab, hell would break lose and it would hurt many aspects of biological and medical research.

If authorities decide based on political considerations to not investigate a mistake that led to millions of deaths and tens of millions more lives destroyed, they lose an enormous amount of credibility in the eyes of the public.

Full integrity is the only chance we have of having a healthy political atmosphere where the public can trust the establishment.

A lab leak would have enormous impact on the way we fund virology research, that's what would change.

There is no way to say if there would have been spillover, or it coming from nature. This feels a bit like the way people have said "every new variant is less dangerous." There are no guarantees on that one, there is equal possibility that COVID turns into something worse. COVID doesn't have to kill you, it just has to copy better.

If it turns out it was a lab leak, from using SCID mice or other human analogues, we might get new systems to prevent such a thing from happening again. Maybe researchers have to work in a diving bell system, who knows. We get to decide! We can create whatever we think we need. The system is not fixed. Look at animal research support systems like IACUC, created in the 80s, and now a useful fixture in biomedical research. In the lab, we lament IACUC sometimes, but they are a good check in the system. Why couldn't someone like IACUC raise the bar?

I agree with you that knowing it was a lab leak does not fix the past, and can increase the blame game near term. On the longer arc, it is important to know.

Perhaps we could hold those responsible accountable? Especially if it came from research Fauci said wasn’t happening but actually was? Specifically gain of function. Look at how BP got hammered for an oil spill. Why wouldn’t China proportional penalties given that if it were a lab leak it lead to a global economic and health disaster. That it was coincidence that the virus happening near a research facility where they were researching similar viruses is beyond belief. The mental gymnastics being used to discredit the lab leak (or intentional release) theory is astounding. People have been sent to prison for life on far weaker circumstantial evidence.

What would we do differently? We put people like Fauci in prison for funding dangerous research that was specifically prohibited by the Obama admin —- then lying about it. We’d defund and disband the WHO for lying to our face while carrying water for China. Even the name “Covid” was made up to protect the Chinese. The WHO didn’t rename MERS, Zika, Ebola or any number of dangerous diseases with a regional connection. But for Covid? They bent over backwards to obfuscate Chinese responsibility. And Fauci? Lying to the American people and Congress over and over again while knowing good and well he helped fund it. And note the NIH and other US federal agencies aren’t required to disclose royalty payments from scientists in their employ. People making decisions about this virus literally got paid from the very corporations creating the treatments. If any scientist that had any influence got paid a single dollar from a company benefiting from their decisions — that’s a conflict of interest of extraordinary proportions. If an Army general gets paid a royalty from a defense contractor that general would be thrown in prison. Rick Marcinko went to federal prison for allegedly doing when happens all the time in our national health agencies.

The world should be outraged and Fauci should be in prison. What would we do differently? Not fund Chinese research. Demand full and absolute transparency from our public health agencies especially when it comes to research funding and financial ties to those who profited immensely from this.

Rand Paul’s questioning of Fauci was spot on. But people are too blinded by political parties to open their eyes.

And if we did all of that, how much would it decrease our future risk of zoonotic spillover?

The comment you are responding to, talks about alleged malfeasance, and morally bankrupt acts.

Your response is, oh well?

In terms of spillover, there is zero guarantee it would happen naturally. For any virus, it could, it may, and for some it has.

But for any specific virus, it is absolutely not guaranteed.

And purposefully training for human compatibility in a lab, clearly makes that maybe, a certainty, and if insufficient precautions are taken, that is a crime against humanity.

This whole thing is absurd. We go after corps for spying on people, governments for bias, but if the truth is a lab leak killed 100s of millions, "Oh well".

Come on!

What's the goal here? Is this some weird US political "my guy vs your guy" thing?

No, my response was not "Oh well."

It was "And if we did all of that, how much would it decrease our future risk of zoonotic spillover?"

And if we banned thalidomide, how much would that help pregnant women with morning sickness? The fact that you're trying to prevent one kind of harm (morning sickness, natural-origin pandemics) doesn't excuse causing unlimited amounts of a different kind of harm (birth defects, research-origin pandemics).

The non-absurd version of this argument is that risky virological research will provide a public benefit offsetting the possible harm. None of its advocates seem able to articulate significant examples of that benefit yet, though, and even a small probability of millions of deaths is quite a lot of harm.

I haven't said it excuses it: I've just said that I don't see blame as productive. Something can be morally wrong and also less important to pursue.

The non-absurd version of this argument is that we can't police everything, everywhere, especially across national borders with sovereign, independent governments in power.

So taking that into account, there's always going to be a fog over truth in certain places.

We can spend substantial amount of effort trying to pierce that, probably fruitlessly, or we can focus that effort on things we can actually change and improve.

>>The non-absurd version of this argument is that we can't police everything, everywhere, especially across national borders with sovereign, independent governments in power.

By that logic, why bother trying to stop human CO2 emissions, or nuclear profileration. Afterall, controlling them requires policing phenomena that occur across international borders under the jurisdiction of numerous independent governments.

It would not, but it would sure as hell reduce the risk of a lab leak. The whole idea of GoF research was to preempt evolution on bad viruses. If instead, the research is causing the evolution of bad viruses, it should be shut down.

It wasn't "Chinese" research. It was Chinese-American research.

Same as how the toxic trash USA sent to China for fake recycling was USA trash, and same as how the outsourced manufacturing of "American" products to American specs is Chinese-American manufacturing.

That would depend on the facts, and who made what decisions, and who had what control when.

at this point, all of that has been scrubbed for good, and nothing factual will ever come out.

Hard to not conclude that in the US with our complete disinterest in finding out what happened.

The whole thing is so strange. I think back to the odd videos from China at the very start of people collapsing in the street. Only the first videos the world seen of the pandemic and they had nothing to do with reality but no one cares. No big deal.

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