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Comment by null_object | Hacker News Reader

> There is a lot of evidence that points to the virus spreading from a wet market in the city, not the Wuhan lab. But proving something didn’t happen three years after the fact is a challenge that may be impossible to meet.

I find the anxious disclaimer about the Wuhan lab interesting, because of course there were a lot of things the lab itself could have done to clear any doubt at the time, including not muzzling researchers who worked there, and even releasing their virus database (which had been taken offline a couple months earlier, under the pretext that 'someone' had attempted to 'hack' it and has still not been made available three years later).

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That's probably true, but so is what's written in the article. A much bigger factor in the lab leak theory is that it played into various conspiracy theories and, for some people, was convenient politically. It's much easier to believe that someone you don't like created covid maliciously than that it evolved naturally thanks to a huge number of factors no one person can control.

In the voice of superintendent Chalmers: A rare novel bat Coronavirus

Emerged in Wuhan.

Down the street from a virology institute

That was studying coronaviruses

That was studying novel bat Coronaviruses

That had multiple breaches of safety protocol in the years leading up to it

Is not where the virus originated?

Skinner: Um yes

"Can we inspect the site freely?"

"No"

"CCP a global pandemic is destroying the world."

"That's just misinformation mother"

But you can do this too for the Chinese version of the conspiracy too.

——

Emerged after military games in Wuhan.

Where the US competed.

Who is a geopolitical rival of China.

With soldiers that work at a military biolab.

That had a major biosafety breach the same year.

And the US doesn’t let the site be inspected freely.

——

Each of these are true on their own, that doesn’t mean we can conclude the implied conclusion is true.

But the military games happened in October, the previously public database of the WIV was taken down in September a month prior due to "hacking" which why would someone hack a publicly available database is hard to imagine. And why has the database not been shared via database dumps or uploaded somewhere else since? Also if the outbreak occurred in the US there would have been major spikes in hospitalizations months earlier in the US than what happened in Wuhan.

Also animal-to-human viruses usually go over two phases: first animal to human contagion is possible but human to human is hard, then human to human gets easier as the virus evolves.

If Covid-19 started in the wet market it went over the first phase very quickly.

Part of fighting disinformation and conspiracy theories is also learning to distinguish when things are just lies (eg. sandy hook was an hoax) or truish but misused (eg. chemical waste in river does affect the sex of frogs).

It is also important not o make a strawman of the opponent. For some people the "Lab Theory" is "The CCP was trying to exterminate the US but failed" for others it is "A researcher got bit by a bat in a lab". The former is paranoid, the latter is completely plausible.

Overall there is good circumstantial evidence for both, and reasonable people can disagree.

Except substitute “down the street” with “30 km away on the other side of a river”, and notice that everybody who got sick initially was next to the market, none of them anywhere near the lab.

So the lab-leak hypothesis is: this virus created at the lab accidentally escaped to someone who subsequently only infected people on the other side of town.

It’s certainly a possibility (viral transmission is irregular with high variance, and people can easily travel that distance), and the lack of transparency by the government is alarming (though not particularly surprising to folks studying China), but most of the experts who have studied it still think it’s relatively unlikely.

> Except substitute “down the street” with “30 km away on the other side of a river”, and notice that everybody who got sick initially was next to the market, none of them anywhere near the lab. > So the lab-leak hypothesis is: this virus created at the lab accidentally escaped to someone who subsequently only infected people on the other side of town.

But this isn't necessarily how it works, at all.

The Wuhan market is one of Wuhan's most population-dense areas, in close proximity to three hospitals where the first cases were identified, and was therefore the concentration for infection-tracing.

In other words, the dataset for early cases was based on a belief that the market was where the infection was spreading, rather than the location of a spreading event that came from elsewhere in the city. Even pneumonia cases that were reported were only post-hoc assigned as probably covid if they were in close proximity to the market.

Again, it’s not impossible or even implausible that the spread could have happened like that, or that there were cases elsewhere that went unrecognized. But that’s not nearly the same as flippantly describing this as the lab just “down the street” from the market.

The possibility hasn’t been incontrovertibly ruled out (and maybe never can be at this point), and it’s important to do independent investigations and examine the lab’s research, etc. It’s just not considered by most experts to be the most likely possibility.

As a geographical comparison, it would be like having a new disease outbreak where all of the known cases for the first several weeks were in Brooklyn, NY and concluding that the source could have been a lab in Newark, NJ. It’s possible, but not the first place to look.

The “lab leak hypothesis” refers to the lab literally down the street, as per the WHO report. The lab was moved to that location about a week before the outbreak at the wet market. The WHO report speculates perhaps an accident occurred during the move.

It does not refer to the WIV as you think, again as per the WHO report.

This entire conversation (the article, the posts here, and in general the speculation about a lab leak possibility, comments about US grant money, etc. etc.) is explicitly about the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Which WHO report are you thinking of? The 2021 WHO report called the lab leak possibility “extremely unlikely”. This more recent report from 4 months ago merely calls for more investigation into laboratories in the area and more transparency: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/scientific-adv...

If you are interested in Covid origins look at this NPR story from March https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751...

Which refers to this paper in Science, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/

Maybe one of the people who works at the lab lives/works close to the market.

It's frustrating that people make the argument that the lab leak theory is "politically convenient" and that it "played into various conspiracy theories" and then go on to list ridiculous things that no one here is arguing. A lot of people look at covid, which was first seen in wuhan, and think "hmm, it seems like there's a good chance it came from the lab in wuhan that studies coronaviruses." You don't have to involve politics at all for it to be easy to believe.

Unfortunately the politics makes it comforting to believe (even though all the evidence points to natural origin - explained at length here and elsewhere).

It is so much easier to believe that the bad thing was made by bad people somewhere else, instead of confronting the reality that in fact we did it with our ever greater encroachment on the last remaining natural reservoirs - and will do it again, probably soon.

Why did the lab in Wuhan study coronaviruses? Is it that there are convenient natural reservoirs nearby?

It is not. In the words of Dr. Shi herself:

> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien...

Coronaviruses are basically everywhere, as are bats. The greatest abundance of sarbecoviruses is far from Wuhan, though. The closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were found in Yunnan and surroundings, near Kunming or Pu'er, and now in Laos.

I'm not really familiar with Dr Shi or your source (seems a bit obfuscated via archive.org), but it does seem like a very sober and careful analysis from an expert.

Also, she says what I always assumed was the case:

> Scientists from around the world have overwhelmingly concluded that SARS-CoV-2 originated naturally rather than from any institution.

An expert indeed; Dr. Shi discovered the bat virus ancestors of SARS-1. Her subsequent research at the WIV is the matter of controversy here, as to whether that could have caused the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The interview is with Science, the well-known academic journal. That journal seems to have reorganized their website recently and broken my old link, so I used archive.org instead of hunting down the new URL.

So Dr. Shi is obviously going to say the pandemic is of natural origin. Even if she personally believes otherwise, she's under the physical control of the PRC government, and would suffer grave consequences if she went against their official story. My point is that not even she thinks spillover in Wuhan is likely, though. The idea that the WIV was situated in Wuhan because of an abundance of nearby sarbecoviruses is bizarrely common, but it's neither anti-lab-origin nor pro-lab-origin, just wrong.

Indeed, I really don't know why there is a virology lab in Wuhan, or why they would be located in any given part of the world.

I tend to assume that covid-19 came about like (presumably) every other virus since time eternal; through random mutation in the wild. What I don't really understand is any sort of singular alternative theory of how it arose - it seems that every alternative is anomaly hunting or god of the gaps type arguments in search of some greater meaning behind it.

I agree there's no conclusive evidence for any specific origin of SARS-CoV-2, unnatural, natural, or otherwise. I don't see the "god of the gaps" analogy, though. There's no evidence that god exists, and attributing actions to god has no predictive or practical benefit. But there's certainly evidence that virologists exist, and were collecting and manipulating novel SARS-like viruses near the origin of a novel SARS-like pandemic. (Are you familiar with the DEFUSE grant proposal?)

So with millions dead, shouldn't we investigate? There are many paths unexplored within reach of American or European subpoena, both in the WIV's collaborators and in sequencer reads from unrelated work that may contain early viral genomes as contamination.

What would you like to investigate? This is what I don't understand - what is the alternative to a natural origin?

That researchers at the WIV collected two novel viruses from nature, built a chimera with a synthetic FCS, infected themselves by accident, and spread the virus into the world? The first two steps are exactly what they proposed in DEFUSE; that proposal got rejected, but it's still an indication of the work they might have continued with other funders.

Or that they collected one naturally-evolved virus, got infected in the field, and spread it from there? The WIV sent grad students into remote caves that no other humans routinely entered, specifically selected for their abundance of novel potential pandemic pathogens, with nothing more than nitrile gloves and a surgical mask. So while there are far more farmers and guano collectors (and others creating risk of natural spillover) than WIV grad students, the risk per WIV grad student seems orders of magnitude higher.

I'm not really familiar with the acronyms, but I wonder if it would be possible to prove that the virus is not artificially constructed? The other theory just sounds like natural origin with an extra step.

But what I wonder most would be, say that it was proven that covid-19 was artificially constructed through some method or other - what would it matter? I wonder if more people would get vaccines? Would China now know that they can unleash something like this on the world with relative impunity? Would it incentivize further research into biological weapons?

It's usual to investigate after a disaster, to seek the cause and try to prevent future similar disasters; we do it after plane crashes, or building collapses, or nuclear reactor explosions. A pandemic seems to me like the same basic category. If wildlife traffickers are taking actions that we know have caused past pandemics, then I believe those should be restricted. Likewise, if virologists are taking actions that we know have caused past pandemics, then those should also be restricted. This is true regardless of whether the mechanism is simple (like a researcher infected in the field) or complex (like genetic engineering).

The DEFUSE proposal was described in this Intercept article:

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

For the previous two coronaviruses that emerged in humans (SARS-1 and MERS), animal hosts (civet cats and camels) were found within about a year. That's pretty good evidence of natural origin. For SARS-CoV-2, no such animal has yet been found, excluding animals known to be infected by humans like housecats or mink. That's not proof of unnatural origin--for example, Ebola is unquestionably natural but its zoonotic hosts remain mysterious. That's not what anyone expected, though.

For overall background, Alina Chan has a book. I haven't read it myself, but I've found her comments elsewhere to be cautious and reasonable.

And what ability do you see us as having to restrict Chinese viral research?

I imagine telling an American that they are not allowed to hunt wildlife and sell it at market, and I don't think that would work. I wonder if China really has a much greater ability to enforce such a provision?

That seems out of our control, but I wonder what would be? Would preparations include mask stockpiles, and can we force people to wear them? It seems that mRNA vaccines can be created quickly, but can we mandate that people get them?

> And what ability do you see us as having to restrict Chinese viral research?

The ability to appeal to their self-interest? I doubt that any evidence would cause the CCP to deviate from its preferred story (which I think now is natural zoonosis outside China, then import on frozen food?), but they don't want a pandemic any more than I do.

So I'd guess that given evidence that certain research activities likely caused this pandemic, the Chinese government would quietly act to restrict them, all while publicly denying that they're doing so. Indeed, they might have already--Dr. Shi's group hasn't published anything even as dangerous as these BU researchers' experiment since before the pandemic.

Is the work complete then? Or would the investigation need to continue? And what sort of evidence would it take to conclude?

I do think it's possible that Chinese virology is safer than American virology now. The latter doesn't seem too safe though, judging from the work at BU that we're discussing here.

As noted above, I believe that subpoenas should be obtained for all relevant records of the WIV's collaborators, and for any sequencer reads that potentially contain early viral genomes as contamination. The evidence for a lab origin so far is scattered and circumstantial, but that's just from various leaks and amateur open source intelligence; perhaps a formal investigation with subpoena power could learn more.

We’ve restricted Chinese nuclear weapons tests just fine.

Have we? I'm far from an expert, but doesn't China have a mature nuclear program that includes enough of an arsenal for their strategic purposes?

It does not seem that we've been able to contain the ambitions of North Korea, and Iran isn't looking so good either.

Wuhan is a global biotech hub. There’s a bunch of R&D and manufacturing there.

nope. hundreds of miles away actually.

You have to ignore all the evidence and data that makes this extremely unlikely.

Just as someone might want to believe the moon is made from cheese. It looks a bit like it, after all. But to believe that, you have to ignore all that scientists have uncovered about the moon.

What data makes this extremely unlikely? Worobey and Pekar are hardly convincing.

Just google it. There's enough out there, but you don't want to believe the experts even though you don't know the science. There is no signature of manipulation in the Genome. Zero sign of it being "recombined". Experts just don't see a clear way it could have happened. Just the inability to say it's impossible and will never happen is seen as confirmation of the hypothesis.

Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis often believe the researchers have somehow enhanced the virus. The only way we actually know to do this is through evolution in lab animals. And even then it's pretty damn hard. Maybe multiple industrial-scale facilities could evolve a threatening Virus. At horrendous cost. Maybe. And even China couldn't hide that.

The most likely research-origin scenario is either a naturally-evolved novel virus collected and accidentally released by the WIV, or a chimera of multiple such viruses. No genomic evidence could distinguish that from natural spillover. For example, here's David Relman back in 2020:

> This argument [that SARS-CoV-2 must be natural since it doesn't use a known backbone] fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2021133117

The WIV had the world's largest effort to collect novel sarbecoviruses from nature, often from remote caves that no other humans would routinely visit; so I don't see any reason to discount that possibility.

You don't see the reason because you think like a computer scientist. Having two NPM packages whose versions interfere with each other is often called "dependency hell". But it is way worse for proteins in a Virus.

In order to make a pandemic Virus the components must be finely tuned to each other. That is only possible through massively parallel evolution. A lab can't do that. When a lab combines Viruses, it's mostly to learn the individual contributions of the proteins. These Viruses are way less "fit" overall.

Except that we're currently discussing an article about researchers who achieved gain-of-function in a laboratory recombinant of a pandemic virus? Their chimera has the immune escape of omicron, with most of the mortality of the Wuhan wild type. The decrease in mortality compared to the Wuhan wild type is both statistically insignificant and irrelevant regardless; the correct comparison is against natural omicron, since that's the only natural virus with the omicron spike's immune escape properties.

A subsequent BU press release denies that the research involved gain of function, with bizarre arguments including the fact that since it's never been tested in humans (good?) we can't know it's actually more lethal in humans. This is obviously wrong, as many people have pointed out. For example, here's Marc Lipsitch at Harvard:

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1582574061062098946?cxt...

My original quote is from David Relman, a professor of microbiology at Stanford who I wouldn't expect to "think like a computer scientist". Laboratories have been enhancing potential human pandemic pathogens for literally decades now, as measured by reproduction rates in vitro, mortality in their lab animals, and other similar metrics, and publishing in the open literature. For example, here's Relman asking Baric a question back in 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s

If you were really unware that labs are successfully enhancing potential human pandemic pathogens, then a Google Scholar search for Baric will find many examples.

Anyways, even if you believe (quite falsely) that laboratory gain-of-function on such pathogens is impossible, that doesn't exclude a research-related origin for SARS-CoV-2. That could be a naturally-evolved virus, but one that was sitting harmlessly in a remote cave until the WIV sampled and accidentally released it. The WIV sampled remote areas that no other humans routinely entered, so it's possible in that scenario that the lineage would have died out in bats (or other zoonotic hosts) if the WIV hadn't released it into humans.

Nobody is asserting that genomic evidence shows SARS-CoV-2 to be natural anymore. Even the strongest proponents of zoonotic origin have moved on, to more complicated epidemiological and phylogenetic arguments like Pekar's paper.

>all the evidence and data that makes this extremely unlikely.

Please, do share.

> It's much easier to believe that someone you don't like created covid maliciously than that it evolved naturally

Ah! and there you did that thing to make an accidental lab-leak a crazy nut job conspiracy theory.

Important underline: the lab database is not available to us.

> Important underline: the lab database is not available to us

Genuine question, as I'm not aware that it's been made externally available to anyone - do you mean it's available to researchers around the world but not the general public? Or do you mean it's available to Chinese labs?

It's a dumb conspiracy theory about a rarely-used database that "went down" in September 2019 which was a smoking gun about how the Chinese knew about Covid. Except it turns out that it only came online in June 2019, it went down all the time from the view of the tracking website, was available into 2020, and has absolutely nothing useful to say about SarsCov2;

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1577401140345507859

I'm certain that everyone who used this as a prominent 'datapoint' for the LL hypothesis will immediately reconsider and update their priors.

The thread you've linked is deliberately misleading, refuting a strawman version of the "conspiracy theory". Everyone has always agreed that the server was intermittently available until Feb 2020. It's a particular database that went unavailable in Sep 2019, not the whole server. Quoting from a document written by the "conspiracy theorists" more than a year before that thread:

> Batvirus.whiov.ac.cn had been online for a few years, saw a version 2 released in June 2019, went inactive for a week during the second half of August 19, before becoming definitely inaccessible (out of the WIV at least) on the 12th Sep 19. It was online intermittently after this date from mid-December 2019, and occasionally until February 2020, but was not accessed from outside of the WIV after 12 September 2019.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_invest...

Were you aware of that? If not, then you might update your priors yourself.

The disappearance of that database obviously isn't proof that the WIV did anything nefarious. It continues their pattern of zero transparency, though. That might just be the reflexive secrecy of an authoritarian state; but the nature of zero transparency is that we don't know.

I think the GP's point is that it's a dumb conspiracy theory data-point that would be incredibly easy to eliminate, and it's frustrating that it's not.

Their own evidence shows the September 2019 date is correct, and that it wasn't just flakiness like previously, it stayed down for months.

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