Hacker News Reader

Comment by suzumer | Hacker News Reader

Saying COVID-19 leaked from a lab with zero evidence is different than waiting for evidence and then saying it leaked from a lab.

View on HN

There were very good arguments that Covid (probably) leaked from a lab as early as April 2020 at the latest (and in January if you were a virologist included in top-level NIAID emails). HN largely went along with the shunning of debate, which helped give everyone the impression there was "zero evidence" of a lab leak compared to solid evidence of zoonotic origin, which was simply never true.

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

Censoring views that it came from a lab leak with zero evidence isn't any better. In fact I remember being lied to by major news outlets at the time saying that the evidence points to a non lab origin.

It did though. Animal origin only stopped being the most favored explanation because we haven't found the link in 5 years.

There was a nucleotide sequence in the covid strain that did not show up in any of the proposed hosts or progenitor viral sequences, which is where leaked documents showed NIH (Fauci included I believe) discussing the non-natural origin of the nucleotide sequence. It's possible to search for articles about the Fauci NIH emails, and whether they mean anything scandalous.

Here's a technical article at NIH discussing the theory of no known natural origin for a nucleotide subsequence

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8209872/

This is an open access journal by two people whose publication history you can look up if you want to draw your own conclusions. Read the disclaimer at the top of the link. Don’t bootstrap its credibility by linking it to being at NIH (which does mean something) anymore than saying something found on Google is from the company itself.

Don’t imagine any bootstrapping of credibility is stated. It’s a citation to one article of many with no assertion otherwise. That’s how science discussions work.

This is interesting, thanks for sharing.

I'm confused, do you mean the animal origin had no evidence either, but was favoured? But not having evidence for 5 years suddenly makes the other theory favoured instead?

So basically neither had real evidence, but one was favoured?

False equivalence. Zoonotic diseases have precedent (SARS, MERS) and SARS-CoV-2 most closely resembles BANAL-52, a bat Coronavirus.

Animal origin still seems more likely to me, but less than 5 years ago, since we have a missing link one would expect to see.

Animal origin does not contradict a lab leak however. Especially if you have a biolab studying coronaviruses in bats in the city identified as ground zero.

It does favor an accidental lab leak over a targeted weaponization and release, but it doesn't contradict a lab origin.

Coronavirus lab leaks in China also had precedent. What's your point?

There was no evidence for a zoonotic origin other than it was possible.

There was little evidence for a lab leak other than it was possible, but at least there was some.

That is not true at all. Some scientists at the time suspected a lab leak, talk of which was deliberately shut down.

"Dr Robert Redfield, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, told Vanity Fair that he received death threats from fellow scientists when he backed the Wuhan lab leak theory last spring. "I was threatened and ostracised because I proposed another hypothesis," Dr Redfield said. "I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science."[1]"

The US State Department were told to not to explore claims of Gains of Function research:

"According to an investigation in Vanity Fair magazine published on Thursday, Department of State officials discussed the origins of coronavirus at a meeting on 9 December 2020. They were told not to explore claims about gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to US government funding of such research, reports Vanity Fair.[2]"

We may never know the truth, but its clear that there was politics being played since the beginning of the pandemic to obscure the truth, and not just by China.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57352992

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

A lot of careers are tied up in research that isn't gain of function officially, but sure looks like it.

Yes, but the rush to the wet market theory was no better.

Wasn't it? Most of the earliest cases had a link to the market, many of whom were vendors including the very first known case. The early cases which had no known link lived/stayed clustered around the market. The market sold live wild animals which were known reservoirs for the previous coronavirus break (SARS).

How can following a trail possibly be no better?

There was also no evidence against it. If there is neither solid evidence for nor against something I find it perfectly reasonable to apply the balance of probabilities. At least as long as you qualify your statement with a "probably".

And with the main competing theory (covid spreading from a wet market in a city that contains a biolab) also being consistent with the hypothesis that it was an accidental lab leak, to me the balance of probabilities always seemed to favor the lab leak hypothesis.

Yet saying that Covid probably originated from a lab leak was once branded as dangerous misinformation, with seemingly no evidence to support that claim

At the time, there was essentially a 50/50 chance it was a lab leak or from a wet market. The issue with saying it was a lab leak at that time is that you are essentially gambling the US's relationship with China should it come out that it was a from a wet market. Also, a lot of the discussion regarding the lab leak theory early on seemed to me like it wouldn't be sated even if the US presented sufficient evidence that it was from a wet market.

But we can say it leaked from wet market without evidence!

The lab leak theory was started by Chinese netizens. It was mentioned on Chinese media. Hell the name Wu Flu came from Chinese media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com