willupowers

That and a coupe authors already arrived at contrary conclusions before this nature piece was even released. It fails to even acknowledge their work, compare, or comment why there should be favor in their own claims above others with different approaches that might be better suited (biostatistical methods to model a progenitor and the probable evolution of the lineages).

Right now it looks like the U.S. might have been working with Wuhan on a vaccine. And Wuhan had an oopsies. We just have a confirmation statement from DARPA that they weren't working with WIV. I bet someone knows the rest of the details why we've been watching a circus act for a couple years now.

It's no longer an extraordinary circumstantial claim. It might never have been because this kind of research that very well could cause a COVID pandemic was being concealed by the very people that decided very early that there was no question the origin was natural. They were performing risky and highly similar research and they made huge contradictory statements that conflict with this leaked evidence, and they are very well connected to each other. You are going to need extraordinary reasons why these people don't deserve an investigation into what they had been doing and what they did know that wasn't being shared.

The USA might need to come out and say "we were working on a vaccine with Wuhan." EHA and WIV might need to say "we had an oopsies." I doubt China will admit anything though. So this is the circus we must deal with until people wake up and demand for answers.

I don't endorse this guy since he's a little too political for my taste but it's the best ELI5 of the situation I can find for everyone.

https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ

Not really speculation any longer. Daszak made a bunch of statements that poured water on this potential concern, and so many other contradictor statements to this evidence. When there is a discrepancy or a number of discrepancies (in this case), there is a good chance of a valuable investigation.

I believe the uniqueness has been established by the issue that the specifics of the 12-nt insertion is never found anywhere in a natural setting. Many papers have gone back and forth over this and there's no natural example.

30-40 years difference from SARS-CoV. However, the proposal actually says it would use other unpublished sequences for development. These unpublished sequences may have been much closer to SARS-CoV-2. I think you should read the leaks.

Calm down dude. Clearly you have some attachment to one theory over another, which is poor science.

The investigation will continue and those missing items you mention just might turn up since it appears from the leak that there are might be a significant number of unpublished sequences at WIV and EHA, etc.

If science is unsatisfied by what is found, actual scientists will move on and look elsewhere. This leak evidence is compatible with the man origin suspicions however.

Looks like a pretty probable lead to me to continue investigating, especially since this leak evidence directly conflicts with many previous statements from Daszak and associates.

We already know the NIH partially funded field survey work that appears to be very similar to this. It's pretty obvious to see that they continued applying elsewhere and may have been successful in getting the funding the requested. It just might be from several grants.

The two main points of interest with this leak right now:

Peter Daszak, Peter Daszak's associates and funding partners, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) have all been in tight consensus that this line of manipulation is not of interest in investigation. It was bashed as a conspiracy theory without potential, and listed as a highly unlikely origin. With this leak, all of these statements are in dire conflict. The evidence in the leak shows there may be a severe conflict of interest in protecting themselves over a full scientific investigation.

Anthony Fauci made a very specific statement that it was "molecularly impossible" and thus improbable that the virus could have been created with manipulation instead of nature. I'm giving Fauci the benefit of the doubt at the moment since government officials might be expected play dumb on secrete DARPA proposals, but his statement is none-the-less inaccurate based on the leak. There is probability to create a similar virus to COVID-19 with manipulation.

The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his associates have been aggressively refuting. This information contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.

The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his associates have been aggressively refuting. This information contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.

The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his associates have been aggressively refuting. This information contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.

The leaks reveal the confidence of a proposal and path to accomplish the genetic manipulation that Daszak and his associates have been aggressively refuting. This information contradicts those previous statements. It appears Daszak may have conflicts of interest that need more investigation.

The way the article is written leaves a lot to be desired and it’s apparent that the preferred narrative Anderson puts forward is already fairly contorted, not making for a neutral source. Her bias is obvious to me when I strain to find any evidence of her scientist and researcher perspective in the article. We’re well aware that textbook cases are historically zoonotic, but a scientist must never cling to indoctrinated knowledge or ideologies. A scientist remains open to discovery and uses all emergent evidence to weigh and disprove historical and new explanations. A scientist has no pre-existing preferences for explanation, they follow where the evidence leads them, never being initially presumptive or dismissive. If Anderson wanted to appear more credible or reputable, she could acknowledge several things here that's plainly obvious at this point:

-The article leads people to believe the BSL-4 labs are safe with endless protocols and controls ensuring safety, thus the Wuhan lab is safe. This is presuming everything works as designed following all protocols, and it’s skirting the issue that there are still plenty of ways for a virus to leak out even with those safeguards in place (SARS/coronaviruses have leaked from labs on multiple occasions already, from a general hospital lab, a virology lab in Beijing, and another BSL-4 lab). Not to mention that there seems to be evidence which goes unacknowledged that safety protocols were not adhered to and work has been performed in Wuhan in labs below the recommended safety levels. Anderson’s answers fail to lend any weight here against the less than ideal scenarios outside of how things are supposed to work safely, or an administration that is known to be less than transparent and less concerned with safety compared to western administrations.

-Anderson apparently puts forward the argument that since the reservoir of 2002 SARS was specifically located in Yunnan finally in 2017, that it’s pretty normal to have no evidence for natural origin at this point. In fact there was constant progress being made since ~2003 that continually pointed to a natural reservoir AND a natural intermediate host. Scientists already had the blanks filled in pretty quickly, and what took so long was only finding a specific occurring location and population of the reservoir. The intermediate host was very quickly identified, and scientists identified a species of bat which could act as the reservoir in testing. Yes, finding the virus in the wild in a remote cave in China takes time. What is concerning is that she ignores these inconvenient facts to put forward her odd narrative and equate the 2002 SARS origin search with COVID-19 that has almost no evidence to point to for a natural source. As a scientist, I will not hide facts. So to be fully transparent I will tell you that Ebola also has a challenging lack of evidence to a natural source, which is not quite definitively decided yet (a new finding is currently being peer reviewed). But Ebola had more initial evidence pointing to a natural source than COVID-19, and it’s more rare and something we have much less years of experience with in comparison to SARS and coronaviruses. The emergence of COVID-19 is highly unique in many ways compared to 2002 SARS and other coronaviruses and pandemics in general, and there’s no precedent of an origin search being this difficult for either, or any virus in a similar class except Ebola that I’m aware of. With that noted, that's how a scientist needs to be transparent and asterisk and footnote their statements and there’s little like that from Anderson in this article. This article is quite the opposite of being scientifically transparent.

-Anderson fails to provide more specifics about the lab which could better anchor the facts and support whether her somewhat flimsy accounts are representative of the truth. How big is the lab? How many people were working there? How many different sections or areas were there? How many projects were ongoing at any time? Could she possibly have had enough visibility and oversight of the entire place that would make her account an accurate one as opposed to being just one account as an outsider of many people that work there with more inside knowledge and visibility and oversight than Anderson? It’s as if Anderson is unaware that outsiders can be treated politely by a culture or group, but you are never made aware what insiders are privy.

-It’s also as if Anderson does not question the suspect behavior China exhibits now and before the pandemic, for which there are many examples to point to in many industries and areas of concern. It’s as if Anderson forgot that China suppressed the information of the 2002 SARS outbreak for questionable reasons, without the same politically or racially charged atmosphere of Trump, which is documented history.

-To be more transparent, Anderson should probably disclose that in August 2020 she co-authored a now withdrawn pre-print paper that claimed food origins was more attributable than other vectors to explain the COVID-19 outbreaks in Vietnam, New Zealand, and parts of China. It seems Anderson is just too close to the phenomena; does she see a forest for the trees?

The way it’s written leaves a lot to be desired and it’s apparent that the preferred narrative she puts forward is very contorted and not a very neutral source. Her bias is obvious to me when I strain to find any evidence of her scientist and researcher perspective in the article. We’re well aware that textbook cases are historically a zoonotic, but a scientist must never cling to indoctrinated knowledge or ideologies. A scientist remains open to discovery and uses all emergent evidence to weigh and disprove historical and new explanations. A scientist has no pre-existing preferences for scientific explanation, they follow where the evidence leads them, never being initially presumptive or dismissive.

If she wanted to appear more credible, she could acknowledge several things here:

-The article leads people to believe the BSL4 labs are safe with endless protocols and controls ensuring safety, thus the Wuhan lab is safe. This is presuming everything works as designed and it’s skirting the issue that there are still plenty of ways for a virus to leak out with those safeguards in place. Not to mention that there seems to be evidence that work has been performed in Wuhan in labs below the recommended safety levels, and Anderson’s answers can’t lend any weight against the less than ideal scenarios outside of how things are supposed to work safely, or an administration that is known to be less than transparent and less concerned with safety compared to western administrations.

-Anderson apparently puts forward the argument that since the reservoir of 2002 SARS was specifically located in Yunnan finally in 2017, that it’s pretty normal to have no evidence for natural origin at this point. In fact there was constant progress being made since ~2003 that continually pointed to a natural reservoir AND a natural intermediate host. Scientists already had the blanks filled in pretty quickly, and what took so long was only finding a specific occurring location and population of the reservoir. The intermediate host was very quickly identified, and scientists identified a species of bat which could act as the reservoir in testing. Yes, finding the virus in the wild in a remote cave in China takes time. What is concerning is that she ignores these inconvenient facts to put forward her odd narrative and equate 2002 SARS evidence search with the COVID-19 that has almost no evidence to point to for a natural source. As a scientist, I will not hide facts. So to be transparent I will tell you that Ebola also has a challenging lack of evidence to a natural source, which is not quite definitely decided yet. But Ebola had more initial evidence pointing to a natural source than COVID-19, and it’s more rare and something we have much less years of experience with in comparison to SARS and coronaviruses. The emergence of COVID-19 is highly unique in many ways compared to 2002 SARS and other coronaviruses and pandemics in general, and there’s no precedent of a origin search being this difficult for either or any virus in a similar class except Ebola that I’m aware. That’s how a scientist needs to be transparent and asterisk and footnote their statements and there’s little like that from Anderson in this article. The article is quite the opposite of being scientifically transparent.

-Anderson fails to provide more specifics about the lab which could better anchor the facts and support whether her somewhat flimsy accounts are credible. How big is the lab? How many people were working there? How many different sections or areas were there? Could she possibly have had enough visibility and oversight of the entire place that would make her account an accurate one as opposed to being just one account as an outsider of many, many people that work there with more inside knowledge and visibility and oversight? It’s as if Anderson is unaware that outsiders can be treated politely by a culture or group, but you are never made aware what insiders are privy to.

-It’s also as if Anderson does not question the suspect behavior China exhibits now and before the pandemic, for which there is endless examples to point to in many industries and areas of concern. It’s as if Anderson forgot that China suppressed the information of the 2002 SARS outbreak for questionable reasons, without a similarly politically or racially charged atmosphere, which is documented history.