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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

724 points by BellLabradors 5y ago

recursivedoubts 5y ago
if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  It is reasonable & responsible to downplay theories that get constructed in absence of sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence.
  - dabbledash 5y ago
    GP didn’t say “if you thought there was insufficient evidence before, you have some reflecting to do!”
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      I'm advocating a principle that applies well to the OP.
      - dabbledash 5y ago
        Then your comment would make more sense as a response to the OP. If anything it seems like you would agree that in the absence of evidence humility is appropriate. People who acted like only fringe conspiracy theorists would even consider lab origins should reflect on their overconfidence and arrogance. It’s not a slam dunk either way and probably never will be, if i had to guess.
  - jtdev 5y ago
    Animal origin theory/wet market/etc. have zero "meaningfully qualified evidence", are you as skeptical about those theories?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Such as the theory, presented often without evidence, that Sars-Cov-2 came from an imaginary population of bats in Wuhan?
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      I mean, if it's a random comment on the Internet that makes a claim without presenting evidence, yet evidence does exist and is readily available, I don't have much of a problem with that. After all, you just made the claim that the theory is often present without evidence without actually presenting evidence of that claim. The real question is what evidence exists, not what evidence may or may not be presented with every online comment you may come across.
    - andyxor 5y ago
      there is a lab called "Wuhan Coronavirus Research Lab" in the epicenter of coronavirus pandemic ground zero, and there is evidence of lab members seeking (and getting) grants in the US for dangerous gain-of-function research in the last few years, doesn't it make you stop and think?
    - jayd16 5y ago
      Its fine to call someone crazy if they're posting about some coverup about bats without any evidence too, no?
      - iammisc 5y ago
        Except there was no bat coverup. The american media bought into that theory without any evidence while simultaneously castigating and ridiculing the lab leak one. The coverup of the lab leak theory in the press was thus in plain sight.
    - tootie 5y ago
      The evidence is that every other coronavirus ever studied was zoonotic. It's still the most reasonable explanation. This story doesn't really move the needle.
  - 015a 5y ago
    Ok, but to play in this space for a second: toward the beginning of the pandemic when these theories were flying left and right, where exactly was the "sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence" to assert that it had natural origins? Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved? In the modern era we're in, I'm not convinced that is a sensible default. The most sensible default is to say we don't know, and all reasonable possibilities are being explored. That is not the same as saying that its reasonable and responsible to downplay a completely reasonable theory; for all that's holy, the virus was first discovered in the same city as China's only L4 biohazard lab studying human pathogens, literally that evidence alone is enough to say the lab-leak theory is "reasonable". Not a smoking gun! But REASONABLE and not worthy of downplay.
    - mr_toad 5y ago
      > Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved? Unless you’re a creationist, then yes?
- martythemaniak 5y ago
  I've asked people to explain to me why I should care one way or another, beyond curiosity, and no one has been able to answer yet. That is to say, is there an actual person who is perfectly fine with all the terrible things the CCP plainly does, but finding out that they've been incompetently handling research will suddenly make them change their views?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Yes... Many people claim 'global warming' or 'globalization' make pandemics more frequent and more likely and want us to spend lots of money preparing for pandemics. However, if this pandemic turned out to be engineered or modified, then there is a political solution to this enhanced likelihood of pandemics from rogue nations.
  - 015a 5y ago
    The reason why you need to care is because this isn't a CCP problem; its a global problem. Sure, maybe the CCP screwed up containment, and that mistake cost millions of lives. Every single major government around the planet has facilities like the one we're discussing. Every single one has made mistakes like the CCP possibly did. The CCP were just unlucky in that their mistake wasn't confined to one person or the welcome lobby. Knowing it was engineered in a lab would put a bigger spotlight on facilities like these. Unfortunately, its most likely to only result in sanctions against China, but if the people in charge could summon an ounce of sense, it could also mean more of these facilities being shut down, their research suspended, and the live cultures of humanity-destroying plagues in their vaults destroyed.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
      > it could also mean more of these facilities being shut down ... which is a critical thing to consider when reading virologists' opinions claiming that it couldn't be a lab leak. There is a very obvious conflict of interest here. I don't have a good answer how to deal with this conflict, since it is hard for non-virologist to judge the arguments, but ignoring the conflict of interest entirely is not the solution.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- speed_spread 5y ago
  My problem with people saying "but it was engineered!" is that it the origin does not change what our reaction should be. The virus is here and now we have to face it. Whether it's a natural mutation, part of a big masterplan, or an accidental release is a matter of international politics, in which most of us have very little, if anything to contribute.
  - baja_blast 5y ago
    yes, but if this research continues we are all at risk of another highly contagious human adapted virus escaping again. The goal should be to try and ban this type of research worldwide. While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are far easier to contain due to the time it takes for a virus to gain enough mutations to be easily infectious to other humans such as what happened with SARs1 and MERS. Researchers developing viruses to be highly adapted for humans just creates viruses that are impossible to contain like COVID.
    - mr_toad 5y ago
      > While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are far easier to contain Coronaviruses have never been easy to contain. Not this one, nor any of the many other coronaviruses that have been endemic in humans for thousands of years. We call the common cold common for a reason.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    If we go back to business as usual, covid will be far from the last allegedly engineered virus to kill millions. The health sciences establishment is in dire need of a reality check, their actions have consequences reaching well beyond petty grant politicking.
    - Factorium 5y ago
      Its unlikely the virus was engineered expressly to kill millions - it seems increasingly likely that the virus was engineered to drive mRNA vaccine sales, as well as to disrupt the 2020 American election (by forcing an unprecedent switch to mail-in paper ballots and upending a vibrant US economy - at the same time as China was struggling under international tariffs). Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done if you bought in October 2019: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y You'd be 25x in less than 2 years. How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55 million in September 2019! https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-announces-new-collaboration-develop-hiv-and https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det... The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This presumably means much cheaper manufacturing. Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by these leaky vaccines.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  "Suggesting this as a possibility" is a pretty weak statement. But it's actually good to criticize someone for claiming that it happened without having any evidence, even if there happens to later be evidence that it happened.
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    Depends on whether your criticism was "we don't know for sure whether it happened" or "it did not happen".
  - bopbeepboop 5y ago
    You’re assuming that because you were unaware of that evidence, that others were as well. But we’ve known since the COVID outbreak that there was experiments making novel corona viruses infect humanized mice in Wuhan just before two of the WIV researchers got sick and a nearby military event also got sick. We’ve further known that COVID-19 has a DNA structure unlike natural viruses — matching a bat virus except for a single protein that appears to be from a pangolin virus. It was always clear the preponderance of evidence pointed towards a lab leak — and that claims of a natural virus were special pleading by interested parties or a political stunt by media parties. You were always irrational and acting based on propaganda to question a lab leak — it was the only reasonable and supported-by-evidence hypothesis the entire time.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Let's not confuse the issue. Evidence is a method of confirmation. Motives, incentives and suspicious evasions can help us form hypotheses to evaluate. Dismissing a hypothesis as something unworthy of examination may fall under the 'suspicious evasion' subheading.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  There's a difference between outright rejection and calling BS on obviously conclusion-driven argument from people playing politics.
jtdev 5y ago
Go back and listen to the exchanges between Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci... Fauci repeatedly lied before Congress regarding funding for this GoF research which now appears to have been the source of the virus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue... trust the science.
jasonlaramburu 5y ago
Was EcoHealth Alliance, the group referenced in the article, working in Wuhan?
- jtdev 5y ago
  Yes, they funded GoF research at WIV. And it's founder Peter Daszak worked to undermine the lab leak theory as a member of the WHO COVID19 origins investigation team... can you say "conflict of interest"?
- AlbertoGP 5y ago
  Yes they were, in particular with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Peter Daszak himself was in Wuhan in October 2019. EcoHealth just got defunded by the US Congress with bipartisan support: https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/1441221447528030209 https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/144122144752803020...
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    This grant proposal, in particular, however, was to do work in North Carolina.
    - AlbertoGP 5y ago
      Citing from the grant application, page 12: > We will conduct in vitro pseudovirus binding assays, using established techniques, and live virus binding assays (at WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] to prevent delays and unnecessary dissemination of viral cultures) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal#document/p12 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    In addition there was some controversy as they were behind the Lancet open letter that first renounced the idea of a lab origin. They got a bunch of scientists associated with their organisation to sign it, without mentioning EcoHealth by name or stating competing interest. My spidey sense is certainly tingling, though of course no smoking guns. But the jigsaw pieces fit. Can’t get the funding in North Carolina? Let’s try Wuhan.
ryeights 5y ago
Why is this being flagged? Genuinely asking.
- Invictus0 5y ago
  HN has lots of quiet pro-China readers
- meibo 5y ago
  Every anti-chinese story on here usually gets flagged into oblivion(or page 2, even with plenty of upvotes), be it by bots or Chinese tech workers.
  - president 5y ago
    HN (Y Combinator) has an incentive to curb posts that could potentially make China angry. Being a forefront Silicon Valley investment company, they have to play the globalist game. Therefore, I suspect there may be policies in place, whether spoken or unspoken to suppress these types of posts. I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that also downvote/flag these posts as well.
    - dang 5y ago
      I can assure you with high confidence—since I'm the person making these calls—that this has nothing to do with how we moderate HN. I mean, it's possible that you know more about my unconscious than I do - but I think the odds are low. I'm pretty sure we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck and don't give a shit about the "globalist game". Re "I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that also downvote/flag these posts as well" - would you mind reviewing the site guidelines, which specifically ask you not to post like that?
      - xqcgrek2 5y ago
        Interesting. You don't actually refute any of his arguments.
chrsw 5y ago
I could be missing something but this isn't exactly the smoking gun the title makes it seem. I'm sure there are proposals, plans and applications for all types of things. What I'm waiting for, perhaps naively, is strong evidence, revelated an independent investigation, that there was some foul business going on here. Until I see that, I'm more inclined to rely on the word of experts who have no connection to any of this. A novel aspect of a viral genome isn't enough for me to leap to the conclusion that it's human made.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  there will never be an independent investigation
  - chrsw 5y ago
    If this is true, then I think we have a bigger problem on our hands. Even if there's no lab connection to the COVID-19 outbreak.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Is China a bigger problem than the pandemic? Hmmmm….
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    This is correct. China delayed a site visit for more than a year. And then when it happened they controlled what was said. And on top of that the only US representative was Daszak, since the WHO rejected a few other candidates from the Trump administration and picked someone who was seemingly favorable to the outcome they (or perhaps China?) desired. It is incredible that all these countries around the world didn’t immediately implement sanctions and a maritime blockade after such obviously untrustworthy actions in an incident that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
    - adflux 5y ago
      Like sending a murderer to investigate his own murders
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
Even with this one bit of evidence (assuming it actually indicates what we think it might) we aren't there yet. We might be eventually but not today.
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
I agree with the comment from justapassenger. The title has been altered from the headline into inflammatory clickbait.
- BellLabradors 5y ago
  The article has been previously submitted with and has languished without interest, I think that the Intercept's headline alone is underplaying it a little and is not suited to this forum. I think if you read the article, the HN headline above is accurate. What specifically do you think is inaccurate? Even in tone?
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    That's a reasonable question. First - my understanding is that we're expected to repost headlines verbatim, even if they kind of suck. It's not some unbreakable rule but it's an objective we should commit to. Past that, I offer that headlines that will lead the public we have toward thoughtful, measured, conclusions (that reflect where we actually are) - this would seem to be our best goal.
    - BellLabradors 5y ago
      Fair enough, it seems I can't edit it now, Dang obviously feel free to do so.
- willupowers 5y ago
  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.
- dang 5y ago
  (We've since changed the title - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742.)
AlbertoGP 5y ago
There is a live stream right now by Dr. Kevin McCairn (neuroscientist) commenting on this paper, a grant application from EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak) detailing what they were going to do in Wuhan: https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- taurusnoises 5y ago
  "Video removed by uploader." Is there anything about this virus that isn't suspicious!? Like, can't even a YouTube video stay up when it's supposed to?
  - xenophonf 5y ago
    I only have the GP's word that the removed video was about the topic they claim it was. For all I know, this video could have been a rickroll.
    - AlbertoGP 5y ago
      You are right to be skeptical. It would be nice if they could be left up in YouTube, but it’s either removing them right after the stream ends, or YouTube takes it down and blocks his account, which has happened multiple times in the last 18 months. You can find all of them in his website after registration (e-mail and password): https://www.mccairndojo.com/ https://www.mccairndojo.com/ Some of the videos are still available in YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q His surviving Twitter account: https://twitter.com/w_mccairn https://twitter.com/w_mccairn
phkahler 5y ago
Some people: >> Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, was adamant that the proposal did not change his opinion that the pandemic was caused by a natural spillover from animals to humans. “There are zero data to support a lab origin ‘notion,’” Racaniello wrote in an email. There seems to be zero data to support his spillover idea too. But now we have documentation of people wanting to do the exact experiments that could lead to this, and he's still sticking to his fantasy. I dont think the point here is to definitively determine the origin of this virus, it's to point to the fact that unchecked scientists are wanting to do exactly the kind of experiments that could kill us all. IIRC an Ebola gene was successfully put in a flu virus years ago but contained - hemorrhagic influenza anyone? This stuff needs to stop.
- phreeza 5y ago
  The question is if it is possible to stop this kind of research at all, given the potential military applications. Will it not just push research from publicly known and inspected (like Wuhan) into secret military labs?
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    Perhaps the US could start by not funding the labs in question.
- novaRom 5y ago
  Daszak in a famous interview has said: "You can manipulate coronaviruses in a lab quite easily". It was a month or two before COVID outbreak in Wuhan.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    Do you have a link to a source?
    - novaRom 5y ago
      December 9, 2019 Interviewer: You say these are diverse coronaviruses and you can’t vaccinate against them, and no anti-virals — so what do we do? Daszak: Well I think…coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w more info: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
andyxor 5y ago
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck
- mhh__ 5y ago
  The difference is that I'm guessing 99% of people reading this (myself include) have no idea what a duck is, let alone how it quacks. Merely the amount of "gotcha!"-ing that happens as the news-pendulum swings from each side of this debate suggests to me that this in large part driven by emotions and tribalism rather than solely an honest desire for the truth.
  - radus 5y ago
    Strongly agree with this. Sure seems like a lot of people have become duck experts overnight though.
Consultant32452 5y ago
My hypothesis on this whole mess. China was going to do bioweapon research and there was nothing we or anyone else could do about it. Quietly funding research in Wuhan was a way for the US IC to keep an eye on what China was doing. Something from that lab escaped. It's not clear or particularly relevant to me whether what escaped was directly involved in the particular experiments we funded. In my mind if the US funded 50 experiments and China funded 50 other experiments of categorically the same type, and one of those 100 escaped, both are culpable regardless of whether it was on of our 50 or their 50. Fauci and other officials can't just come out and say "This is part of a top secret weapons/intelligence program where we were using this funding to spy on China." And so they will lie in public. They will lie under oath. And there will be no consequence because the people (Congress/Presidents/etc) with the classified truth are all similarly culpable (they probably okayed/funded it).
- dosman33 5y ago
  This train of thought is entirely too charitable. The US has the NSA, CIA, NRO, etc. for a reason and it's not to combat domestic terrorism. We don't have to be sponsoring their work to find out what they were doing. But I can understand the need to rationalize this somehow.
roca 5y ago
Daszak should be compelled to reveal everything he knows and all relevant evidence --- all proposals, all emails, all files, any other documentation. I'm mystified why this hasn't already happened. I mean, his career depends on government largesse so it shouldn't even require coercion. Full cooperation or no cash.
- pishpash 5y ago
  You're assuming the government has a different interest than him.
- someguydave 5y ago
  what he knows might embarrass or reveal dishonesty from others in the government or those seeking positions in the government
  - roca 5y ago
    The government is not a monolith. The US Congress could do this and individual Congresspeople don't have an obvious interest in covering this up. Edit: the problem looks like partisan politics to me. Republicans have been agitating to pressure Daszak, and therefore Democrats are against it.
    - someguydave 5y ago
      I agree I think it is partisan. My take is that Democrats and the media built up Fauci’s credibility during the 2020 election and don’t want to see it be demolished by what could obviously be a massive scandal. If Daszak goes down it would ruin the credibility of the entire government on the subject of pandemics.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I've been extremely wary of how some of the evidence of Covid-19 origins have come about, particular because so much of it has been presented as "Well, we've never seen this before, so it must have lab origins." That said, I think the context around this is extremely damning for Daszak. I didn't realize this until reading the Wikipedia article on Daszak, but he was the one that organized the Feb 2020 letter in the Lancet condemning suggestions of a lab origin for Covid-19 as conspiracy theories. But how could he do this while conveniently leaving out that his own organization was involved in highly risky coronavirus research? Again, I don't think this news puts us much closer to uncovering the origins of Covid-19, but it does show how some of these folks leading the charge of "it had to be natural" were at the very least being duplicitous in their communications.
lamontcg 5y ago
1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites 5. Furin cleavage sites have independently evolved in multiple different branches of coronaviruses, probably a dozen times that we know of now. 6. The furin cleavage site is short and can easily happen through recombination with another virus due to coinfection. 7. This is very likely what happened due to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 ancestor and an HKU9-like virus. It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is the thing which actually happened.
- createdapril24 5y ago
  These are all very compelling claims. I am wondering if you can provide at least one reference for each. E.g. "There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites" is a claim that can be referenced pretty easily with a link to papers reporting said sarbecoviruses.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1 https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeographic-mapping-of-newly-discovered-coronaviruses-pinpoints-direct-progenitor-of-sars-cov-2-as-originating-from-mojiang/ https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeo... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.584717/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.5847... https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-871965/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-871965/v1
twobitshifter 5y ago
Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus origins, but this did not get mentioned in any reports. Instead he warns other not to discuss it. He does not include notes that research was done on modifying bat viruses to make them infectious to human cells. These behaviors look like a guilty person, do they not? The wuhan and eco-health researchers had already started work on the furin cleavage sites and why would they stop when DARPA blocked it? Funding can’t only come from the US. Did CCP also block this research? > there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North Carolina could easily be used in China.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  > why would they stop when DARPA blocked it Because the Trump administration decided that along with a bunch of other offshore collaboration funding decided to pull the money (America First!). There's a Vincent Racaniello episode on Microbe TV that explained what happened there. I don't remember the episode but here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos I think if folks would listen more to virologists than the press they'd find out that it's incredibly difficult to engineer new viruses (that's actually in his coursework - also on his channel), but it's also incredibly difficult to create stable "gain of function" (for weaponising) which has been suggested as the source of SARS2 and that whole Wuhan conspiracy theory thing.
  - gojomo 5y ago
    But why would one denial from one particularly finicky funding source (Trump-era US agencies) make researchers – who thought they were doing essential work – stop such essential work? Why wouldn't they use other funding, possibly from overhead funding or prior grants, or from other less-finicky funders? And in a jurisdiction – China – where many of the same limits or reporting-requirements might not exist? Are virologists the only humans who, thwarted by one jurisdiction's limits, give up without considering doing their career-making, essential-to-humanity work elsewhere? > …it's incredibly difficult to engineer new viruses… [and] …also incredibly difficult to create stable "gain of function"… Indeed, but humans do incredibly difficult things all the time. In fact, they're often attracted to the challenge, and seek funding to help them do it, and often don't let a 'no' from any one funder stop them from bootstrapping work in other ways. It's also incredibly difficult to engineer & get approval for vaccines to a brand-new disease, but that got done, recently, faster than ever before. It was incredibly difficult to create nuclear weapons, but a lot of countries have done it independently. Given the significant number of dangerous pathogen escapes from disease labs, it's also "incredibly difficult" to keep dangerous contagions safely contained. It's comparatively easy to accidently let them out!
endisneigh 5y ago
[deleted]
- boolean 5y ago
  > Why can't we just assume the worst and take action based on that? Because they might require vastly different actions?
- newswasboring 5y ago
  1. We can do two things at a time. Investigation of origins does not block anyone from making and following policies to stop the spread. 2. I don't know about you but I have lost more than 1.5 years of my life to this. World around me has changed fundamentally in many ways. Just for closures sake I would like to know why this happened to me.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    2. It has more to do with your country’s government than the source of the virus, hence my comment Even if you knew would anything change? I’m not advocating for ignorance, rather that it’s impossible to know conclusively without full cooperation and it’s in the interest of all parties to deflect
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      > Even if you knew would anything change? Yes. Closure. I know it's a vague human need, but it is a need at least I have. It will definitely be good for my mental health. And why do you want people to cease just because something is hard? All criminal cases are hard. Some are solved. Let's try to solve this one.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      Why put a murderer in jail? It won't bring the victim back.
- sayonaraman 5y ago
  you mean figuring out what caused a global pandemic, deaths of millions of people and trillions dollars of economic damage is of no consequence?
missinfo 5y ago
Check out this prescient article from 2017, when the ban was lifted: Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic... Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small step forward.” Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.” Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels would turn down such work. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...
- tootie 5y ago
  Prescient how? This article is about a rejected proposal. Not only did the research not happen, we have no reason to believe this type of research caused the pandemic.
  - echelon 5y ago
    There's more evidence for this type or research happening where the pandemic arose than there is for natural origin.
    - tootie 5y ago
      There's some evidence this kind of research happens. There's not really evidence it was happening in Wuhan nor evidence that the virus we have is the result of experimentation. Historically lab leaks are vanishingly rare and acquisition from animals is extremely common. For lab leak to be even a plausible story the evidence would have to be very strong and it is nowhere near convincing right now.
      - TheTester 5y ago
        Lab leaks are not rare the actual thing is that lab leaks that turn into pandemics are an anomaly but only because pandemics are an anomaly statistically speaking
forgotmypw17 5y ago
I'll just leave this here... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 (July 2020)
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I would like to see an international body of scientists from all countries regulating, and monitoring, all biologicals research around the world. Think of it being an requirement to join the United Nations. Those countries that arn't in the UN, or don't want moderation; well let's say let the CIA do their dirty work, or outright tariff/humanitarian wars. (I don't have a clue to the origin of this mutating virus, but letting any lab anywhere experiment on biologicals does not seem prudent.)
somewhereoutth 5y ago
Fairytales about lab leaks won't absolve us of our abject failure to deal with this novel pathogen, nor will they help us prepare for the next.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the experience of the current situation is not helping us prepare for the next either. That's the sad part to me.
- rhino369 5y ago
  Refusal to investigate whether this is the biggest disaster in scientific history is odd. If dangerous research killed 15 million people we need to know.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Even if it did and we do know, do you honestly think it would stop rather than be moved to secret bio weapons research facilities?
    - rhino369 5y ago
      Yes, because the type of research that would have led to covid-19 was public health research, not weapons research. Gain-of-function research is done to help learn about pandemics so we can prevent them.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Actually given people like you seem insistent that such lab leaks cannot happen, having it proven as such would help us prepare for the next because it would force us to listen to the people who have been warning us it will happen for years.
- postingawayonhn 5y ago
  Reducing the frequency of these leaks would seem like a good idea.
- 5y ago
jml7c5 5y ago
Note that the leaked documents were released three days ago, and this is just The Intercept's reporting on them. They can be found here: https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-documents/ https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-do...
giardini 5y ago
My first question is "What is China's next move?" But there are so many other questions: - intentional release? If so why? - any other viruses/bacteria under study(almost undoubtedly, "Yes")? - if so, where and what is planned? China makes plans(written plans) for everything. Even if the release was an accident, there were reasons for doing the studies. What were/are they? -What other viruses and/or bacteria are undergoing similar study in China? Are there any bacteriological production facilities in place now (as are present yet in Russia IIRC)? - Can we count on Russia's past actions, facilities and quite clear warnings to provide a sufficient counterweight to China's fiddling in the lab? Or should we return to full scale biological warfare research ourselves? We can undoubtedly outpace both given time but at this point I see a need for some reasonable planning or we're likely to worsen the situation. We still haven't considered non-governmental entities that may have an interest in biological warfare, ranging from the MIT grad student with a gene lab in his basement to the environmental organization that believes reducing the world's human population is a necessity.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Reminder that the NIH and NIAID (which Fauci leads) systematically undermined oversight processes meant to flag dangerous research for additional review. See https://dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih-gain-of-function-anthony-fauci-review-board-wuhan-lab/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih-gain-of-function-anth...
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Is the Daily Caller a reliable source?
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    They are reasonably reliable. I am by no means a regular or even occasional reader, but it is very difficult to find left biased news sources covering this lab leak story with any degree of honesty and professionalism. You can verify the claims in this particular article by visiting the Twitter feed of the Professor they mention.
trhway 5y ago
That is the same EcoHealth which was doing it in Wuhan : https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699 https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699 "That organization - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance - was awarded grants strating 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses from bats. EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology." So, in early 2018 they propose specific modifications to the virus, and in the end of 2019 such a modified virus emerges right near their lab... Btw, in their first $666K (with Wuhan getting $160K) 2014 tranche of the $3.3M grant award, the "Are Human Subjects Involved" is already "Yes" with IRB review already pending - see p.13 here https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understanding-risk-bat-coronavirus-emergence-grant-notice https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understandi... I from the start (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340283) was saying that one of main reasons of doing it in Wuhan was the human testing.
willupowers 5y ago
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 https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ https://youtu.be/JfoZHX-BJzQ
StrangeClone 5y ago
Chinese propaganda it seems
reilly3000 5y ago
If you are an expert in virology I’d love to know the answer to this question: If given the right resources, would it be feasible to synthesize a pandemic-inducing virus in a lab setting? If so, a general question: why haven’t the villains of the world done so already?
- shadilay 5y ago
  The villains already have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-personnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-person...
- jpollock 5y ago
  Isn't the stated response from several countries that the response to something like that is nuclear?
- MaxDPS 5y ago
  At the moment, that type of research takes a lot of resources. In the future, I’m sure that will change, which is a bit worrying.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  Not an expert, but this has more or less already been done [1] and led to a temporary moratorium on this research. To your last question, releasing such a thing would basically assure your (and your people's) own destruction in addition to your target's, as we've seen by how difficult it has been to control COVID. So you'd have to want everyone dead, and generally speaking the people who would be willing to actually do something like that don't have the resources and knowledge to make it happen. [1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/fouchier-study-reveals-changes-enabling-airborne-spread-h5n1 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/fouchier...
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  To answer your final question: That’s more of a doomsday terrorist fantasy than viable bio weapons research.
jcoq 5y ago
Cc It would,
arthurcolle 5y ago
If this is true, Peter Daszak and any implementers should get the death penalty for such a cavalier attitude towards these activities. It is such a willfully negligent set of actions and this looks extremely bad for him and his acolytes.
ffggvv 5y ago
either way china covered it up and owes us repararions. atleast 10T worth
mitjam 5y ago
Honest question: Could Daczak be held liable for damages if lab origin was verifyable or is that even then not possible?
Aeolun 5y ago
I don’t buy this. This proposal had been reviewed by someone (probably multiple someones) in 2018, and when a year later we get a human transmission coronavirus that sweeps the entire globe nobody remembers this thing immediately (even vaguely)? I can’t say if it’s a setup, but I’d be very sceptical of this proposals origins.
Gatsky 5y ago
I don’t think there is ever going to be any satisfaction on this issue. A lab leak is pretty unlikely, has nonzero probability and will never be falsified or proven. The pandemic has happened. The seeming weirdness from virologists is understandable because they don’t want to be stigmatised/regulated more/defunded/have their labs moved to the dark side of the moon. If you doubt this explanation then you must not hang out with academics very much, their capacity for self-interest is astounding. In fact they see the pandemic as a huge opportunity to get a lot more funding, and wouldn’t be so foolish to derail that by engaging with the lab leak issue in the slightest.
ImaCake 5y ago
I don't find this evidence compelling. Also did any of you read the leaked proposal? [0] It would have been super useful to fund this! The intercept has done a massive disservice to the grant proposal here with their poor portrayal of it. Reading the introduction, it looks like it would have been incredibly useful data to have for the origins of COVID-19 since much of the work looks like it would have been surveillance for bat coronaviruses. I note that the second work program would be research on effectively vaccinating bats to prevent spread of coronaviruses. Australia did something similar by vaccinating horses against Hendra virus. Unfortunately it doesn't matter in the end what evidence is put forth. People are going to believe the lab escape hypothesis because there are powerful interests intent on pushing that narrative. The arguments in favour of lab escape seem plausible, even if they conflict with the molecular evidence. Most people don't know enough about the arcanery of molecular biology to trust it over the hearsay of documents and politicians. 0. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...
- rmu09 5y ago
  Relevant interview with peter daszak https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ recorded at the december 2019 nipah conference in singapure.
phreeza 5y ago
I really hate the way everything around the coronavirus has been politicized. It is a very important question to investigate the lab leak hypothesis thoroughly. However, the hypothesis seems to have gone from "the virus leaked from a lab" to "the virus has leaked from a lab and thus the chinese communist party is responsible for any and all consequences", which drives people into their political camps depending on who they want to assign blame to, which is a total mind killer.
qaq 5y ago
I have no clue what actually happened but this sequence looks weird to me: * Event occurs * Access to investigate is limited * A deep independent investigation is blocked *Internet is flooded with msging that unless there are hard facts uncovered by independent investigation some of the origin theories are def conspiracy theories
- mannanj 5y ago
  Unless there are hard facts and proven evidence claiming you are not a quack and a conspiracy theorist, you sir, are a conspiracy theorist. /sarcasm (I am mocking the contradictory perspective people take on anyone even thinking differently about things)
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? About 18 months.
throaway6679 5y ago
The stridency with which people attempt to shut down discussion of a lab origin points in the direction of a coverup. An example of this happening is on Wikipedia where one editor in particular seems to have declared it to be a “conspiracy theory” and scrubs every mention of it. The editor in question scrubs talk pages and their own talk page, thus effectively preventing any kind of consensus forming, which is out of the ordinary for Wikipedia. They have remarkable stamina, and thus can our out-wait other editors. Wikipedia seems to be one example of a much bigger effort to suppress discussion of a potential lab leak.
- bondarchuk 5y ago
  Link to the editor?
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  Wikipedia Talk pages are an underrated venue for restrained flame wars. If you’re looking for your two minutes of hate today, just go to any Talk page for a controversial subject that’s been “debunked” in the last year or so.
tikiman163 5y ago
Guys, two points here. One, this proposal was rejected. This did not happen! Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of an existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus shows was not the case. This has nothing to do with the corona virus strains we are currently dealing with, and more importantly, there has never been any credible research proving that Covid was made in a lab. The only paper that got any traction suggested it was non-manipulation based gain of function research, but that was disproved only a few weeks after the paper's release as well. I know we all want to know where it came from, but the odds against us ever having actual evidence of it being from a lab are virtually zero. And no, rejected research proposals do not constitute proof of anything.
- dash2 5y ago
  The fact that the grant proposal was rejected does not mean the research didn’t happen. They could have got alternative funding. This happens a lot.
  - sgt101 5y ago
    They would have had to be very quick though. Submission was end of march 2018, there would have been a review process and I think it's unrealistic to put that at under six weeks. So that takes us to mid may 2018. Then they would have to have got some money and ask someone else - again that's going to take three months or so unless they had the money in their account. Then the project would have to be stood up - lab space sorted and so on so that takes us to 2019 even on an express train. I think that the Darpa projects in this call were aimed at start in 2019 btw. So then the work would have to have happened and the virus escape happened in 10 months. In the proposal they are looking at q5 of the project for the genetic engineering to happen. I don't think that the time lines work - also the genetic engineering was slated to happen in North Carolina...
    - madamelic 5y ago
      > also the genetic engineering was slated to happen in North Carolina... This is honestly the most damning part of evidence. China has shown over and over their current strategy is to snap up resources, countries and partnerships that the West, and specifically the United States, refuse or ignore. China would have strong motivation to have SARS related research considering SARS originates in their country. So we have a country with strong motivation, lots of money and a repeated willingness to ignore ethical & safety concerns... I don't see how it isn't a big question mark. Especially considering how quickly and forcefully China shut down the conversation and refuse to allow in investigators.
jwhite_nc 5y ago
Simultaneous Invention is possible.
jgalt212 5y ago
Why is lab leak vs zoonotic a front in the culture war rather than a question for which we should see the truth in a dispassionate manner?
- mannanj 5y ago
  My opinion is the same reason other topics of discussion in society become culture wars. Why do they really? - Gay vs straight: religious and political beliefs - Abortion: same reasons IMO - Left vs right: politics that self propagate and stay in power with division What what some other examples that we can try to isolate the causes for and extrapolate to here. My opinion on the reasons for this theory being a culture war is the government and its predominate scientists have pushed a “hero” or “patriot” perspective onto one class of its citizens that if you’re not devoting your energy towards increased vaccine engagement or government policies towards containment of this virus you are doing something wrong. Everyone else is a villain or bad guy or extremist conspiracy theorist.
AcerbicZero 5y ago
I don’t know if Covid19 came from a lab but I’m becoming fairly confident the next Covid will.
amai 5y ago
„And scientists interviewed for this article agreed that often researchers do some of the science they describe in proposals before or after they submit them.“ That sentence should be written in bold.

724 points by BellLabradors 5y ago

recursivedoubts 5y ago

if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
It is reasonable & responsible to downplay theories that get constructed in absence of sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence.
- dabbledash 5y ago
  GP didn’t say “if you thought there was insufficient evidence before, you have some reflecting to do!”
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    I'm advocating a principle that applies well to the OP.
    - dabbledash 5y ago
      Then your comment would make more sense as a response to the OP. If anything it seems like you would agree that in the absence of evidence humility is appropriate. People who acted like only fringe conspiracy theorists would even consider lab origins should reflect on their overconfidence and arrogance. It’s not a slam dunk either way and probably never will be, if i had to guess.
- jtdev 5y ago
  Animal origin theory/wet market/etc. have zero "meaningfully qualified evidence", are you as skeptical about those theories?
- iammisc 5y ago
  Such as the theory, presented often without evidence, that Sars-Cov-2 came from an imaginary population of bats in Wuhan?
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I mean, if it's a random comment on the Internet that makes a claim without presenting evidence, yet evidence does exist and is readily available, I don't have much of a problem with that. After all, you just made the claim that the theory is often present without evidence without actually presenting evidence of that claim. The real question is what evidence exists, not what evidence may or may not be presented with every online comment you may come across.
  - andyxor 5y ago
    there is a lab called "Wuhan Coronavirus Research Lab" in the epicenter of coronavirus pandemic ground zero, and there is evidence of lab members seeking (and getting) grants in the US for dangerous gain-of-function research in the last few years, doesn't it make you stop and think?
  - jayd16 5y ago
    Its fine to call someone crazy if they're posting about some coverup about bats without any evidence too, no?
    - iammisc 5y ago
      Except there was no bat coverup. The american media bought into that theory without any evidence while simultaneously castigating and ridiculing the lab leak one. The coverup of the lab leak theory in the press was thus in plain sight.
  - tootie 5y ago
    The evidence is that every other coronavirus ever studied was zoonotic. It's still the most reasonable explanation. This story doesn't really move the needle.
- 015a 5y ago
  Ok, but to play in this space for a second: toward the beginning of the pandemic when these theories were flying left and right, where exactly was the "sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence" to assert that it had natural origins? Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved? In the modern era we're in, I'm not convinced that is a sensible default. The most sensible default is to say we don't know, and all reasonable possibilities are being explored. That is not the same as saying that its reasonable and responsible to downplay a completely reasonable theory; for all that's holy, the virus was first discovered in the same city as China's only L4 biohazard lab studying human pathogens, literally that evidence alone is enough to say the lab-leak theory is "reasonable". Not a smoking gun! But REASONABLE and not worthy of downplay.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved? Unless you’re a creationist, then yes?
martythemaniak 5y ago
I've asked people to explain to me why I should care one way or another, beyond curiosity, and no one has been able to answer yet. That is to say, is there an actual person who is perfectly fine with all the terrible things the CCP plainly does, but finding out that they've been incompetently handling research will suddenly make them change their views?
- iammisc 5y ago
  Yes... Many people claim 'global warming' or 'globalization' make pandemics more frequent and more likely and want us to spend lots of money preparing for pandemics. However, if this pandemic turned out to be engineered or modified, then there is a political solution to this enhanced likelihood of pandemics from rogue nations.
- 015a 5y ago
  The reason why you need to care is because this isn't a CCP problem; its a global problem. Sure, maybe the CCP screwed up containment, and that mistake cost millions of lives. Every single major government around the planet has facilities like the one we're discussing. Every single one has made mistakes like the CCP possibly did. The CCP were just unlucky in that their mistake wasn't confined to one person or the welcome lobby. Knowing it was engineered in a lab would put a bigger spotlight on facilities like these. Unfortunately, its most likely to only result in sanctions against China, but if the people in charge could summon an ounce of sense, it could also mean more of these facilities being shut down, their research suspended, and the live cultures of humanity-destroying plagues in their vaults destroyed.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    > it could also mean more of these facilities being shut down ... which is a critical thing to consider when reading virologists' opinions claiming that it couldn't be a lab leak. There is a very obvious conflict of interest here. I don't have a good answer how to deal with this conflict, since it is hard for non-virologist to judge the arguments, but ignoring the conflict of interest entirely is not the solution.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
speed_spread 5y ago
My problem with people saying "but it was engineered!" is that it the origin does not change what our reaction should be. The virus is here and now we have to face it. Whether it's a natural mutation, part of a big masterplan, or an accidental release is a matter of international politics, in which most of us have very little, if anything to contribute.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  yes, but if this research continues we are all at risk of another highly contagious human adapted virus escaping again. The goal should be to try and ban this type of research worldwide. While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are far easier to contain due to the time it takes for a virus to gain enough mutations to be easily infectious to other humans such as what happened with SARs1 and MERS. Researchers developing viruses to be highly adapted for humans just creates viruses that are impossible to contain like COVID.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > While zoonotic viruses are always a risk, they are far easier to contain Coronaviruses have never been easy to contain. Not this one, nor any of the many other coronaviruses that have been endemic in humans for thousands of years. We call the common cold common for a reason.
- angelzen 5y ago
  If we go back to business as usual, covid will be far from the last allegedly engineered virus to kill millions. The health sciences establishment is in dire need of a reality check, their actions have consequences reaching well beyond petty grant politicking.
  - Factorium 5y ago
    Its unlikely the virus was engineered expressly to kill millions - it seems increasingly likely that the virus was engineered to drive mRNA vaccine sales, as well as to disrupt the 2020 American election (by forcing an unprecedent switch to mail-in paper ballots and upending a vibrant US economy - at the same time as China was struggling under international tariffs). Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done if you bought in October 2019: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y You'd be 25x in less than 2 years. How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55 million in September 2019! https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-announces-new-collaboration-develop-hiv-and https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det... The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This presumably means much cheaper manufacturing. Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by these leaky vaccines.
tshaddox 5y ago
"Suggesting this as a possibility" is a pretty weak statement. But it's actually good to criticize someone for claiming that it happened without having any evidence, even if there happens to later be evidence that it happened.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  Depends on whether your criticism was "we don't know for sure whether it happened" or "it did not happen".
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  You’re assuming that because you were unaware of that evidence, that others were as well. But we’ve known since the COVID outbreak that there was experiments making novel corona viruses infect humanized mice in Wuhan just before two of the WIV researchers got sick and a nearby military event also got sick. We’ve further known that COVID-19 has a DNA structure unlike natural viruses — matching a bat virus except for a single protein that appears to be from a pangolin virus. It was always clear the preponderance of evidence pointed towards a lab leak — and that claims of a natural virus were special pleading by interested parties or a political stunt by media parties. You were always irrational and acting based on propaganda to question a lab leak — it was the only reasonable and supported-by-evidence hypothesis the entire time.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Let's not confuse the issue. Evidence is a method of confirmation. Motives, incentives and suspicious evasions can help us form hypotheses to evaluate. Dismissing a hypothesis as something unworthy of examination may fall under the 'suspicious evasion' subheading.
mhh__ 5y ago
There's a difference between outright rejection and calling BS on obviously conclusion-driven argument from people playing politics.

jtdev 5y ago

Go back and listen to the exchanges between Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci... Fauci repeatedly lied before Congress regarding funding for this GoF research which now appears to have been the source of the virus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue... trust the science.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

Was EcoHealth Alliance, the group referenced in the article, working in Wuhan?

jtdev 5y ago
Yes, they funded GoF research at WIV. And it's founder Peter Daszak worked to undermine the lab leak theory as a member of the WHO COVID19 origins investigation team... can you say "conflict of interest"?
AlbertoGP 5y ago
Yes they were, in particular with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Peter Daszak himself was in Wuhan in October 2019. EcoHealth just got defunded by the US Congress with bipartisan support: https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/1441221447528030209 https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/144122144752803020...
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  This grant proposal, in particular, however, was to do work in North Carolina.
  - AlbertoGP 5y ago
    Citing from the grant application, page 12: > We will conduct in vitro pseudovirus binding assays, using established techniques, and live virus binding assays (at WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] to prevent delays and unnecessary dissemination of viral cultures) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal#document/p12 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  In addition there was some controversy as they were behind the Lancet open letter that first renounced the idea of a lab origin. They got a bunch of scientists associated with their organisation to sign it, without mentioning EcoHealth by name or stating competing interest. My spidey sense is certainly tingling, though of course no smoking guns. But the jigsaw pieces fit. Can’t get the funding in North Carolina? Let’s try Wuhan.

ryeights 5y ago

Why is this being flagged? Genuinely asking.

Invictus0 5y ago
HN has lots of quiet pro-China readers
meibo 5y ago
Every anti-chinese story on here usually gets flagged into oblivion(or page 2, even with plenty of upvotes), be it by bots or Chinese tech workers.
- president 5y ago
  HN (Y Combinator) has an incentive to curb posts that could potentially make China angry. Being a forefront Silicon Valley investment company, they have to play the globalist game. Therefore, I suspect there may be policies in place, whether spoken or unspoken to suppress these types of posts. I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that also downvote/flag these posts as well.
  - dang 5y ago
    I can assure you with high confidence—since I'm the person making these calls—that this has nothing to do with how we moderate HN. I mean, it's possible that you know more about my unconscious than I do - but I think the odds are low. I'm pretty sure we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck and don't give a shit about the "globalist game". Re "I don't doubt that there are bots or Chinese nationals that also downvote/flag these posts as well" - would you mind reviewing the site guidelines, which specifically ask you not to post like that?
    - xqcgrek2 5y ago
      Interesting. You don't actually refute any of his arguments.

chrsw 5y ago

I could be missing something but this isn't exactly the smoking gun the title makes it seem. I'm sure there are proposals, plans and applications for all types of things. What I'm waiting for, perhaps naively, is strong evidence, revelated an independent investigation, that there was some foul business going on here. Until I see that, I'm more inclined to rely on the word of experts who have no connection to any of this. A novel aspect of a viral genome isn't enough for me to leap to the conclusion that it's human made.

baja_blast 5y ago
there will never be an independent investigation
- chrsw 5y ago
  If this is true, then I think we have a bigger problem on our hands. Even if there's no lab connection to the COVID-19 outbreak.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Is China a bigger problem than the pandemic? Hmmmm….
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  This is correct. China delayed a site visit for more than a year. And then when it happened they controlled what was said. And on top of that the only US representative was Daszak, since the WHO rejected a few other candidates from the Trump administration and picked someone who was seemingly favorable to the outcome they (or perhaps China?) desired. It is incredible that all these countries around the world didn’t immediately implement sanctions and a maritime blockade after such obviously untrustworthy actions in an incident that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
  - adflux 5y ago
    Like sending a murderer to investigate his own murders

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

Even with this one bit of evidence (assuming it actually indicates what we think it might) we aren't there yet. We might be eventually but not today.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

I agree with the comment from justapassenger. The title has been altered from the headline into inflammatory clickbait.

BellLabradors 5y ago
The article has been previously submitted with and has languished without interest, I think that the Intercept's headline alone is underplaying it a little and is not suited to this forum. I think if you read the article, the HN headline above is accurate. What specifically do you think is inaccurate? Even in tone?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  That's a reasonable question. First - my understanding is that we're expected to repost headlines verbatim, even if they kind of suck. It's not some unbreakable rule but it's an objective we should commit to. Past that, I offer that headlines that will lead the public we have toward thoughtful, measured, conclusions (that reflect where we actually are) - this would seem to be our best goal.
  - BellLabradors 5y ago
    Fair enough, it seems I can't edit it now, Dang obviously feel free to do so.
willupowers 5y ago
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.
dang 5y ago
(We've since changed the title - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647742.)

AlbertoGP 5y ago

There is a live stream right now by Dr. Kevin McCairn (neuroscientist) commenting on this paper, a grant application from EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak) detailing what they were going to do in Wuhan: https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE https://youtu.be/ayNMSFp7pOE

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
taurusnoises 5y ago
"Video removed by uploader." Is there anything about this virus that isn't suspicious!? Like, can't even a YouTube video stay up when it's supposed to?
- xenophonf 5y ago
  I only have the GP's word that the removed video was about the topic they claim it was. For all I know, this video could have been a rickroll.
  - AlbertoGP 5y ago
    You are right to be skeptical. It would be nice if they could be left up in YouTube, but it’s either removing them right after the stream ends, or YouTube takes it down and blocks his account, which has happened multiple times in the last 18 months. You can find all of them in his website after registration (e-mail and password): https://www.mccairndojo.com/ https://www.mccairndojo.com/ Some of the videos are still available in YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2-l7Y87DC_3SBAKPk2M1Q His surviving Twitter account: https://twitter.com/w_mccairn https://twitter.com/w_mccairn

phkahler 5y ago

Some people: >> Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, was adamant that the proposal did not change his opinion that the pandemic was caused by a natural spillover from animals to humans. “There are zero data to support a lab origin ‘notion,’” Racaniello wrote in an email. There seems to be zero data to support his spillover idea too. But now we have documentation of people wanting to do the exact experiments that could lead to this, and he's still sticking to his fantasy. I dont think the point here is to definitively determine the origin of this virus, it's to point to the fact that unchecked scientists are wanting to do exactly the kind of experiments that could kill us all. IIRC an Ebola gene was successfully put in a flu virus years ago but contained - hemorrhagic influenza anyone? This stuff needs to stop.

phreeza 5y ago
The question is if it is possible to stop this kind of research at all, given the potential military applications. Will it not just push research from publicly known and inspected (like Wuhan) into secret military labs?
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  Perhaps the US could start by not funding the labs in question.
novaRom 5y ago
Daszak in a famous interview has said: "You can manipulate coronaviruses in a lab quite easily". It was a month or two before COVID outbreak in Wuhan.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Do you have a link to a source?
  - novaRom 5y ago
    December 9, 2019 Interviewer: You say these are diverse coronaviruses and you can’t vaccinate against them, and no anti-virals — so what do we do? Daszak: Well I think…coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w more info: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

andyxor 5y ago

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck

mhh__ 5y ago
The difference is that I'm guessing 99% of people reading this (myself include) have no idea what a duck is, let alone how it quacks. Merely the amount of "gotcha!"-ing that happens as the news-pendulum swings from each side of this debate suggests to me that this in large part driven by emotions and tribalism rather than solely an honest desire for the truth.
- radus 5y ago
  Strongly agree with this. Sure seems like a lot of people have become duck experts overnight though.

Consultant32452 5y ago

My hypothesis on this whole mess. China was going to do bioweapon research and there was nothing we or anyone else could do about it. Quietly funding research in Wuhan was a way for the US IC to keep an eye on what China was doing. Something from that lab escaped. It's not clear or particularly relevant to me whether what escaped was directly involved in the particular experiments we funded. In my mind if the US funded 50 experiments and China funded 50 other experiments of categorically the same type, and one of those 100 escaped, both are culpable regardless of whether it was on of our 50 or their 50. Fauci and other officials can't just come out and say "This is part of a top secret weapons/intelligence program where we were using this funding to spy on China." And so they will lie in public. They will lie under oath. And there will be no consequence because the people (Congress/Presidents/etc) with the classified truth are all similarly culpable (they probably okayed/funded it).

dosman33 5y ago
This train of thought is entirely too charitable. The US has the NSA, CIA, NRO, etc. for a reason and it's not to combat domestic terrorism. We don't have to be sponsoring their work to find out what they were doing. But I can understand the need to rationalize this somehow.

roca 5y ago

Daszak should be compelled to reveal everything he knows and all relevant evidence --- all proposals, all emails, all files, any other documentation. I'm mystified why this hasn't already happened. I mean, his career depends on government largesse so it shouldn't even require coercion. Full cooperation or no cash.

pishpash 5y ago
You're assuming the government has a different interest than him.
someguydave 5y ago
what he knows might embarrass or reveal dishonesty from others in the government or those seeking positions in the government
- roca 5y ago
  The government is not a monolith. The US Congress could do this and individual Congresspeople don't have an obvious interest in covering this up. Edit: the problem looks like partisan politics to me. Republicans have been agitating to pressure Daszak, and therefore Democrats are against it.
  - someguydave 5y ago
    I agree I think it is partisan. My take is that Democrats and the media built up Fauci’s credibility during the 2020 election and don’t want to see it be demolished by what could obviously be a massive scandal. If Daszak goes down it would ruin the credibility of the entire government on the subject of pandemics.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I've been extremely wary of how some of the evidence of Covid-19 origins have come about, particular because so much of it has been presented as "Well, we've never seen this before, so it must have lab origins." That said, I think the context around this is extremely damning for Daszak. I didn't realize this until reading the Wikipedia article on Daszak, but he was the one that organized the Feb 2020 letter in the Lancet condemning suggestions of a lab origin for Covid-19 as conspiracy theories. But how could he do this while conveniently leaving out that his own organization was involved in highly risky coronavirus research? Again, I don't think this news puts us much closer to uncovering the origins of Covid-19, but it does show how some of these folks leading the charge of "it had to be natural" were at the very least being duplicitous in their communications.

lamontcg 5y ago

1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses 4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites 5. Furin cleavage sites have independently evolved in multiple different branches of coronaviruses, probably a dozen times that we know of now. 6. The furin cleavage site is short and can easily happen through recombination with another virus due to coinfection. 7. This is very likely what happened due to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 ancestor and an HKU9-like virus. It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is the thing which actually happened.

createdapril24 5y ago
These are all very compelling claims. I am wondering if you can provide at least one reference for each. E.g. "There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites" is a claim that can be referenced pretty easily with a link to papers reporting said sarbecoviruses.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1 https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeographic-mapping-of-newly-discovered-coronaviruses-pinpoints-direct-progenitor-of-sars-cov-2-as-originating-from-mojiang/ https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeo... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.584717/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.5847... https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-871965/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-871965/v1

twobitshifter 5y ago

Daczak serves on the WHO team to investigate the virus origins, but this did not get mentioned in any reports. Instead he warns other not to discuss it. He does not include notes that research was done on modifying bat viruses to make them infectious to human cells. These behaviors look like a guilty person, do they not? The wuhan and eco-health researchers had already started work on the furin cleavage sites and why would they stop when DARPA blocked it? Funding can’t only come from the US. Did CCP also block this research? > there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North Carolina could easily be used in China.

teh_klev 5y ago
> why would they stop when DARPA blocked it Because the Trump administration decided that along with a bunch of other offshore collaboration funding decided to pull the money (America First!). There's a Vincent Racaniello episode on Microbe TV that explained what happened there. I don't remember the episode but here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos I think if folks would listen more to virologists than the press they'd find out that it's incredibly difficult to engineer new viruses (that's actually in his coursework - also on his channel), but it's also incredibly difficult to create stable "gain of function" (for weaponising) which has been suggested as the source of SARS2 and that whole Wuhan conspiracy theory thing.
- gojomo 5y ago
  But why would one denial from one particularly finicky funding source (Trump-era US agencies) make researchers – who thought they were doing essential work – stop such essential work? Why wouldn't they use other funding, possibly from overhead funding or prior grants, or from other less-finicky funders? And in a jurisdiction – China – where many of the same limits or reporting-requirements might not exist? Are virologists the only humans who, thwarted by one jurisdiction's limits, give up without considering doing their career-making, essential-to-humanity work elsewhere? > …it's incredibly difficult to engineer new viruses… [and] …also incredibly difficult to create stable "gain of function"… Indeed, but humans do incredibly difficult things all the time. In fact, they're often attracted to the challenge, and seek funding to help them do it, and often don't let a 'no' from any one funder stop them from bootstrapping work in other ways. It's also incredibly difficult to engineer & get approval for vaccines to a brand-new disease, but that got done, recently, faster than ever before. It was incredibly difficult to create nuclear weapons, but a lot of countries have done it independently. Given the significant number of dangerous pathogen escapes from disease labs, it's also "incredibly difficult" to keep dangerous contagions safely contained. It's comparatively easy to accidently let them out!

endisneigh 5y ago

[deleted]

boolean 5y ago
> Why can't we just assume the worst and take action based on that? Because they might require vastly different actions?
newswasboring 5y ago
1. We can do two things at a time. Investigation of origins does not block anyone from making and following policies to stop the spread. 2. I don't know about you but I have lost more than 1.5 years of my life to this. World around me has changed fundamentally in many ways. Just for closures sake I would like to know why this happened to me.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  2. It has more to do with your country’s government than the source of the virus, hence my comment Even if you knew would anything change? I’m not advocating for ignorance, rather that it’s impossible to know conclusively without full cooperation and it’s in the interest of all parties to deflect
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    > Even if you knew would anything change? Yes. Closure. I know it's a vague human need, but it is a need at least I have. It will definitely be good for my mental health. And why do you want people to cease just because something is hard? All criminal cases are hard. Some are solved. Let's try to solve this one.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Why put a murderer in jail? It won't bring the victim back.
sayonaraman 5y ago
you mean figuring out what caused a global pandemic, deaths of millions of people and trillions dollars of economic damage is of no consequence?

missinfo 5y ago

Check out this prescient article from 2017, when the ban was lifted: Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic... Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small step forward.” Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.” Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels would turn down such work. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...

tootie 5y ago
Prescient how? This article is about a rejected proposal. Not only did the research not happen, we have no reason to believe this type of research caused the pandemic.
- echelon 5y ago
  There's more evidence for this type or research happening where the pandemic arose than there is for natural origin.
  - tootie 5y ago
    There's some evidence this kind of research happens. There's not really evidence it was happening in Wuhan nor evidence that the virus we have is the result of experimentation. Historically lab leaks are vanishingly rare and acquisition from animals is extremely common. For lab leak to be even a plausible story the evidence would have to be very strong and it is nowhere near convincing right now.
    - TheTester 5y ago
      Lab leaks are not rare the actual thing is that lab leaks that turn into pandemics are an anomaly but only because pandemics are an anomaly statistically speaking

forgotmypw17 5y ago

I'll just leave this here... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758 (July 2020)

hellbannedguy 5y ago

I would like to see an international body of scientists from all countries regulating, and monitoring, all biologicals research around the world. Think of it being an requirement to join the United Nations. Those countries that arn't in the UN, or don't want moderation; well let's say let the CIA do their dirty work, or outright tariff/humanitarian wars. (I don't have a clue to the origin of this mutating virus, but letting any lab anywhere experiment on biologicals does not seem prudent.)

somewhereoutth 5y ago

Fairytales about lab leaks won't absolve us of our abject failure to deal with this novel pathogen, nor will they help us prepare for the next.

dylan604 5y ago
Unfortunately, the experience of the current situation is not helping us prepare for the next either. That's the sad part to me.
rhino369 5y ago
Refusal to investigate whether this is the biggest disaster in scientific history is odd. If dangerous research killed 15 million people we need to know.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Even if it did and we do know, do you honestly think it would stop rather than be moved to secret bio weapons research facilities?
  - rhino369 5y ago
    Yes, because the type of research that would have led to covid-19 was public health research, not weapons research. Gain-of-function research is done to help learn about pandemics so we can prevent them.
gfodor 5y ago
Actually given people like you seem insistent that such lab leaks cannot happen, having it proven as such would help us prepare for the next because it would force us to listen to the people who have been warning us it will happen for years.
postingawayonhn 5y ago
Reducing the frequency of these leaks would seem like a good idea.
5y ago

jml7c5 5y ago

Note that the leaked documents were released three days ago, and this is just The Intercept's reporting on them. They can be found here: https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-documents/ https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-do...

giardini 5y ago

My first question is "What is China's next move?" But there are so many other questions: - intentional release? If so why? - any other viruses/bacteria under study(almost undoubtedly, "Yes")? - if so, where and what is planned? China makes plans(written plans) for everything. Even if the release was an accident, there were reasons for doing the studies. What were/are they? -What other viruses and/or bacteria are undergoing similar study in China? Are there any bacteriological production facilities in place now (as are present yet in Russia IIRC)? - Can we count on Russia's past actions, facilities and quite clear warnings to provide a sufficient counterweight to China's fiddling in the lab? Or should we return to full scale biological warfare research ourselves? We can undoubtedly outpace both given time but at this point I see a need for some reasonable planning or we're likely to worsen the situation. We still haven't considered non-governmental entities that may have an interest in biological warfare, ranging from the MIT grad student with a gene lab in his basement to the environmental organization that believes reducing the world's human population is a necessity.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Reminder that the NIH and NIAID (which Fauci leads) systematically undermined oversight processes meant to flag dangerous research for additional review. See https://dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih-gain-of-function-anthony-fauci-review-board-wuhan-lab/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih-gain-of-function-anth...

mhh__ 5y ago
Is the Daily Caller a reliable source?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  They are reasonably reliable. I am by no means a regular or even occasional reader, but it is very difficult to find left biased news sources covering this lab leak story with any degree of honesty and professionalism. You can verify the claims in this particular article by visiting the Twitter feed of the Professor they mention.

trhway 5y ago

That is the same EcoHealth which was doing it in Wuhan : https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699 https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699 "That organization - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance - was awarded grants strating 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses from bats. EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology." So, in early 2018 they propose specific modifications to the virus, and in the end of 2019 such a modified virus emerges right near their lab... Btw, in their first $666K (with Wuhan getting $160K) 2014 tranche of the $3.3M grant award, the "Are Human Subjects Involved" is already "Yes" with IRB review already pending - see p.13 here https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understanding-risk-bat-coronavirus-emergence-grant-notice https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understandi... I from the start (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340283) was saying that one of main reasons of doing it in Wuhan was the human testing.

willupowers 5y ago

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

StrangeClone 5y ago

Chinese propaganda it seems

reilly3000 5y ago

If you are an expert in virology I’d love to know the answer to this question: If given the right resources, would it be feasible to synthesize a pandemic-inducing virus in a lab setting? If so, a general question: why haven’t the villains of the world done so already?

shadilay 5y ago
The villains already have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-personnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Anti-person...
jpollock 5y ago
Isn't the stated response from several countries that the response to something like that is nuclear?
MaxDPS 5y ago
At the moment, that type of research takes a lot of resources. In the future, I’m sure that will change, which is a bit worrying.
mdorazio 5y ago
Not an expert, but this has more or less already been done [1] and led to a temporary moratorium on this research. To your last question, releasing such a thing would basically assure your (and your people's) own destruction in addition to your target's, as we've seen by how difficult it has been to control COVID. So you'd have to want everyone dead, and generally speaking the people who would be willing to actually do something like that don't have the resources and knowledge to make it happen. [1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/fouchier-study-reveals-changes-enabling-airborne-spread-h5n1 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/fouchier...
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
To answer your final question: That’s more of a doomsday terrorist fantasy than viable bio weapons research.

jcoq 5y ago

Cc It would,

arthurcolle 5y ago

If this is true, Peter Daszak and any implementers should get the death penalty for such a cavalier attitude towards these activities. It is such a willfully negligent set of actions and this looks extremely bad for him and his acolytes.

ffggvv 5y ago

either way china covered it up and owes us repararions. atleast 10T worth

mitjam 5y ago

Honest question: Could Daczak be held liable for damages if lab origin was verifyable or is that even then not possible?

Aeolun 5y ago

I don’t buy this. This proposal had been reviewed by someone (probably multiple someones) in 2018, and when a year later we get a human transmission coronavirus that sweeps the entire globe nobody remembers this thing immediately (even vaguely)? I can’t say if it’s a setup, but I’d be very sceptical of this proposals origins.

Gatsky 5y ago

I don’t think there is ever going to be any satisfaction on this issue. A lab leak is pretty unlikely, has nonzero probability and will never be falsified or proven. The pandemic has happened. The seeming weirdness from virologists is understandable because they don’t want to be stigmatised/regulated more/defunded/have their labs moved to the dark side of the moon. If you doubt this explanation then you must not hang out with academics very much, their capacity for self-interest is astounding. In fact they see the pandemic as a huge opportunity to get a lot more funding, and wouldn’t be so foolish to derail that by engaging with the lab leak issue in the slightest.

ImaCake 5y ago

I don't find this evidence compelling. Also did any of you read the leaked proposal? [0] It would have been super useful to fund this! The intercept has done a massive disservice to the grant proposal here with their poor portrayal of it. Reading the introduction, it looks like it would have been incredibly useful data to have for the origins of COVID-19 since much of the work looks like it would have been surveillance for bat coronaviruses. I note that the second work program would be research on effectively vaccinating bats to prevent spread of coronaviruses. Australia did something similar by vaccinating horses against Hendra virus. Unfortunately it doesn't matter in the end what evidence is put forth. People are going to believe the lab escape hypothesis because there are powerful interests intent on pushing that narrative. The arguments in favour of lab escape seem plausible, even if they conflict with the molecular evidence. Most people don't know enough about the arcanery of molecular biology to trust it over the hearsay of documents and politicians. 0. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...

rmu09 5y ago
Relevant interview with peter daszak https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ recorded at the december 2019 nipah conference in singapure.

phreeza 5y ago

I really hate the way everything around the coronavirus has been politicized. It is a very important question to investigate the lab leak hypothesis thoroughly. However, the hypothesis seems to have gone from "the virus leaked from a lab" to "the virus has leaked from a lab and thus the chinese communist party is responsible for any and all consequences", which drives people into their political camps depending on who they want to assign blame to, which is a total mind killer.

qaq 5y ago

I have no clue what actually happened but this sequence looks weird to me: * Event occurs * Access to investigate is limited * A deep independent investigation is blocked *Internet is flooded with msging that unless there are hard facts uncovered by independent investigation some of the origin theories are def conspiracy theories

mannanj 5y ago
Unless there are hard facts and proven evidence claiming you are not a quack and a conspiracy theorist, you sir, are a conspiracy theorist. /sarcasm (I am mocking the contradictory perspective people take on anyone even thinking differently about things)
TechBro8615 5y ago
What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? About 18 months.

throaway6679 5y ago

The stridency with which people attempt to shut down discussion of a lab origin points in the direction of a coverup. An example of this happening is on Wikipedia where one editor in particular seems to have declared it to be a “conspiracy theory” and scrubs every mention of it. The editor in question scrubs talk pages and their own talk page, thus effectively preventing any kind of consensus forming, which is out of the ordinary for Wikipedia. They have remarkable stamina, and thus can our out-wait other editors. Wikipedia seems to be one example of a much bigger effort to suppress discussion of a potential lab leak.

bondarchuk 5y ago
Link to the editor?
TechBro8615 5y ago
Wikipedia Talk pages are an underrated venue for restrained flame wars. If you’re looking for your two minutes of hate today, just go to any Talk page for a controversial subject that’s been “debunked” in the last year or so.

tikiman163 5y ago

Guys, two points here. One, this proposal was rejected. This did not happen! Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of an existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus shows was not the case. This has nothing to do with the corona virus strains we are currently dealing with, and more importantly, there has never been any credible research proving that Covid was made in a lab. The only paper that got any traction suggested it was non-manipulation based gain of function research, but that was disproved only a few weeks after the paper's release as well. I know we all want to know where it came from, but the odds against us ever having actual evidence of it being from a lab are virtually zero. And no, rejected research proposals do not constitute proof of anything.

dash2 5y ago
The fact that the grant proposal was rejected does not mean the research didn’t happen. They could have got alternative funding. This happens a lot.
- sgt101 5y ago
  They would have had to be very quick though. Submission was end of march 2018, there would have been a review process and I think it's unrealistic to put that at under six weeks. So that takes us to mid may 2018. Then they would have to have got some money and ask someone else - again that's going to take three months or so unless they had the money in their account. Then the project would have to be stood up - lab space sorted and so on so that takes us to 2019 even on an express train. I think that the Darpa projects in this call were aimed at start in 2019 btw. So then the work would have to have happened and the virus escape happened in 10 months. In the proposal they are looking at q5 of the project for the genetic engineering to happen. I don't think that the time lines work - also the genetic engineering was slated to happen in North Carolina...
  - madamelic 5y ago
    > also the genetic engineering was slated to happen in North Carolina... This is honestly the most damning part of evidence. China has shown over and over their current strategy is to snap up resources, countries and partnerships that the West, and specifically the United States, refuse or ignore. China would have strong motivation to have SARS related research considering SARS originates in their country. So we have a country with strong motivation, lots of money and a repeated willingness to ignore ethical & safety concerns... I don't see how it isn't a big question mark. Especially considering how quickly and forcefully China shut down the conversation and refuse to allow in investigators.

jwhite_nc 5y ago

Simultaneous Invention is possible.

jgalt212 5y ago

Why is lab leak vs zoonotic a front in the culture war rather than a question for which we should see the truth in a dispassionate manner?

mannanj 5y ago
My opinion is the same reason other topics of discussion in society become culture wars. Why do they really? - Gay vs straight: religious and political beliefs - Abortion: same reasons IMO - Left vs right: politics that self propagate and stay in power with division What what some other examples that we can try to isolate the causes for and extrapolate to here. My opinion on the reasons for this theory being a culture war is the government and its predominate scientists have pushed a “hero” or “patriot” perspective onto one class of its citizens that if you’re not devoting your energy towards increased vaccine engagement or government policies towards containment of this virus you are doing something wrong. Everyone else is a villain or bad guy or extremist conspiracy theorist.

AcerbicZero 5y ago

I don’t know if Covid19 came from a lab but I’m becoming fairly confident the next Covid will.

amai 5y ago

„And scientists interviewed for this article agreed that often researchers do some of the science they describe in proposals before or after they submit them.“ That sentence should be written in bold.