8 ms·

From the Nature medicine paper: > Editors’ note, [30] March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the no

by srl 5y ago

From the Nature medicine paper: > Editors’ note, [30] March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus. And from "The Scientist": > Update (March 11, 2020): On social media and news outlets, a theory has circulated that the coronavirus at the root of the COVID-19 outbreak originated in a research lab. Scientists say there is no evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab. And an obligatory link to SA's recent post on the phrase "no evidence": https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>Scientists say there is no evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab. Unfortunately there's no evidence it didn't escape from a lab either, but there are many strong indications that it did. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-virology-origins-pandemic-11633462827 https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-v...
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > but there are many strong indications that it did. Nope, there really aren't. We're now finding more and more naturally-evolved viruses in cave-dwelling bats that share plenty of features with SARS-CoV2, including the 'weird' features everyone was talking about at the beginning of the pandemic. All it really takes is to go and look for them. Occam's razor says this virus too is just one of many.
  - spfzero 5y ago
    10's of thousands of animals have been tested for a predecessor to human Covid-19 though, for two years now, and nothing has been found, despite looking very hard and in ways that 'should have' found something had it been there. In all other known zoonotic crossovers, where we had the modern capability to test, the virus or a very close relative was quickly found. Since we have exhaustively eliminated zoonotic origin, whatever is left must be the cause, even if it did not have the preponderance of circumstantial evidence that lab escape does.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    > All it really takes is to go and look for them They did, the closest sample is still Ra4991/RaTG13 which was found in a Wuhan mine and transported to the Wuhan virology lab before the outbreak. Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13
    - caperfee 5y ago
      > Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2 Paraphrasing from this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 > BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2; one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago. > RaTG13 is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 40–70 years ago.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        > The results, which are not peer reviewed, have been posted on the preprint server Research Square It's a CCP propaganda piece. I find that "study" pretty fishy, the results would have been easy to verify if true. Same as the CDC study they tried to use against Israel's study for natural immunity.
        mrtesthah 5y ago
        Once you let ideology infiltrate your reasoning, you’re no longer doing science. Just because you don’t like the implications of a particular piece of research doesn’t mean you get to dismiss it.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        That's not what I said. I said it should be easy to peer review but it hasn't been. That's a very common ask especially among HN, is it not? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=peer%20review&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... From my perspective it looks dubious and the only goal is to shift attention away from the RatG13 sample.
  - himinlomax 5y ago
    An independent inquiry into the lab could settle that quickly.
- black_13 5y ago
deaddodo 5y ago
- coolso 5y ago
  Given that the vast majority of mainstream article posts are from a place of opposite bias, I think it's a breath of fresh air to have a different bias at the forefront every once in a while.
  - shostack 5y ago
    This is a false equivalence. The opinion of someone who does not believe in science is not magically equal to those of people who do and are well versed in it when it comes to debating scientific matters.
    - coolso 5y ago
      Your post is a false equivalence, you can believe in science while not parroting a particular establishment/authoritarian narrative of science (which also includes misinformation/ignoring other science) to further a particular narrative with a particular bias.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
incrudible 5y ago
Scientists believe that scientists are not the most likely source of the coronavirus. Totally unrelated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08
chaostheory 5y ago
There is no way that this is a coincidence: A GRANT PROPOSAL written by the U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research. Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses. Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... There's more evidence that it's lab made. https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug... https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html
- johncena33 5y ago
  The wild speculation that I've read that is somewhat related to the grant proposal, because it was submitted to DARPA. The speculation is following (paraphrasing): > WIV is a dual research institution. What that means is there's been military research done by PLA at WIV. Ecohealth Alliance is a front for two different things: 1. outsource risky pathogens experiments, which is done by NIH, NIAID and other organizations 2. spying on Chinese military operations at WIV, which is done by US military and intelligence organizations. That's why Daszak is intricately linked to US administration and has been untouchable so far. EHA has been essentially voilating NIH grant terms and denied NIH requests to submit all the experiments data. That explains US govt's reluctance to have a proper investigation. I am in no way claiming there's any evidence to it, especially EHA is partially funded by US intelligence operation. You be the judge.
- scotty79 5y ago
  "the SARS-CoV-2 spike, similarly to the more distantly related Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), contains a polybasic CS, characterized as being a suboptimal furin CS. This polybasic CS is absent from the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, although similar polybasic CSs are found in more distantly related coronaviruses"
tinus_hn 5y ago
In other news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29927990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29927990 Top scientists believed COVID leaked from Wuhan lab but feared going public: Emails

by srl 5y ago

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

>Scientists say there is no evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab. Unfortunately there's no evidence it didn't escape from a lab either, but there are many strong indications that it did. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-virology-origins-pandemic-11633462827 https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-v...

zozbot234 5y ago
> but there are many strong indications that it did. Nope, there really aren't. We're now finding more and more naturally-evolved viruses in cave-dwelling bats that share plenty of features with SARS-CoV2, including the 'weird' features everyone was talking about at the beginning of the pandemic. All it really takes is to go and look for them. Occam's razor says this virus too is just one of many.
- spfzero 5y ago
  10's of thousands of animals have been tested for a predecessor to human Covid-19 though, for two years now, and nothing has been found, despite looking very hard and in ways that 'should have' found something had it been there. In all other known zoonotic crossovers, where we had the modern capability to test, the virus or a very close relative was quickly found. Since we have exhaustively eliminated zoonotic origin, whatever is left must be the cause, even if it did not have the preponderance of circumstantial evidence that lab escape does.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  > All it really takes is to go and look for them They did, the closest sample is still Ra4991/RaTG13 which was found in a Wuhan mine and transported to the Wuhan virology lab before the outbreak. Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13
  - caperfee 5y ago
    > Not aware of another confirmed sample found that is closer to SARS-CoV-2 Paraphrasing from this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 > BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2; one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago. > RaTG13 is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 40–70 years ago.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      > The results, which are not peer reviewed, have been posted on the preprint server Research Square It's a CCP propaganda piece. I find that "study" pretty fishy, the results would have been easy to verify if true. Same as the CDC study they tried to use against Israel's study for natural immunity.
      - mrtesthah 5y ago
        Once you let ideology infiltrate your reasoning, you’re no longer doing science. Just because you don’t like the implications of a particular piece of research doesn’t mean you get to dismiss it.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        That's not what I said. I said it should be easy to peer review but it hasn't been. That's a very common ask especially among HN, is it not? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=peer%20review&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... From my perspective it looks dubious and the only goal is to shift attention away from the RatG13 sample.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  An independent inquiry into the lab could settle that quickly.
black_13 5y ago

deaddodo 5y ago

coolso 5y ago
Given that the vast majority of mainstream article posts are from a place of opposite bias, I think it's a breath of fresh air to have a different bias at the forefront every once in a while.
- shostack 5y ago
  This is a false equivalence. The opinion of someone who does not believe in science is not magically equal to those of people who do and are well versed in it when it comes to debating scientific matters.
  - coolso 5y ago
    Your post is a false equivalence, you can believe in science while not parroting a particular establishment/authoritarian narrative of science (which also includes misinformation/ignoring other science) to further a particular narrative with a particular bias.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

incrudible 5y ago

Scientists believe that scientists are not the most likely source of the coronavirus. Totally unrelated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08

chaostheory 5y ago

There is no way that this is a coincidence: A GRANT PROPOSAL written by the U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research. Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses. Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... There's more evidence that it's lab made. https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug... https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html

johncena33 5y ago
The wild speculation that I've read that is somewhat related to the grant proposal, because it was submitted to DARPA. The speculation is following (paraphrasing): > WIV is a dual research institution. What that means is there's been military research done by PLA at WIV. Ecohealth Alliance is a front for two different things: 1. outsource risky pathogens experiments, which is done by NIH, NIAID and other organizations 2. spying on Chinese military operations at WIV, which is done by US military and intelligence organizations. That's why Daszak is intricately linked to US administration and has been untouchable so far. EHA has been essentially voilating NIH grant terms and denied NIH requests to submit all the experiments data. That explains US govt's reluctance to have a proper investigation. I am in no way claiming there's any evidence to it, especially EHA is partially funded by US intelligence operation. You be the judge.
scotty79 5y ago
"the SARS-CoV-2 spike, similarly to the more distantly related Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), contains a polybasic CS, characterized as being a suboptimal furin CS. This polybasic CS is absent from the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, although similar polybasic CSs are found in more distantly related coronaviruses"

tinus_hn 5y ago

In other news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29927990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29927990 Top scientists believed COVID leaked from Wuhan lab but feared going public: Emails