> Pangolins and bats don't usually cohabitate, making this somewhat unlikely in nature.
Horseshoe bats are nocturnal animals that roost in caves during the day but sometimes practice perch feeding at night [1]:
> The other strategy is known as perch feeding: Individuals roost on feeding perches and wait for prey to fly past, then fly out to capture it.
Pangolins [2] and palm civets [3] are nocturnal and arboreal. The bat viral RNA sequences come from anal swabs of netted animals so they are primarily gastrointestinal infections. All of these animals are found in the Lancang/Mekong [4] catch basin. Bat guano seems like a good vector for the virus.
Gain-of-function experiments require two viral isolates that recombine during passage. The lab theory assumes that the RNA sequence of the original viral isolates were never shared. I find this scenario unlikely but I am open to changing my mind based on evidence. SARS-1 is evidence of a very similar zoonotic scenario.
Humans that encounter bat guano in this region also seem like a good host for a recombination event.
SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination.
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground).
My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.
It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates...
Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?
In the US, it's because this claim, or rejection of it, is strongly tied to political identity. Because the US is highly polarized right now, once political identity comes into play, you've left the realm of rationality and entered the realm of tribalism.
It's a geopolitical matter. China doesn't want to be seen as the culprit. It goes against its global ambition.
Internally they are heavily pushing the preposterous claim that the virus is of foreign origin, possibly imported via frozen food.
Objectively lab origin seems likely. The virus started in the city housing the only P4 laboratory in China. This laboratory is known for its lax security (see the 2018 American embassy cables and the declarations of multiple sources in France who participated in its construction) and research on bat coronavirus transmission to humans were conducted there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if an accident didn't happen especially considering that we still can't find the missing link which would firmly establish a zoonotic origin.
Of course, as China is extremely uncooperative on this question, we will probably never know.
> Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.
it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.
Viruses used for gain of function research are selected for high rates of mutation and adaption. If we had known this from day one we would likely have made several changes to how to protect against it in the long term, especially with regards to cross-species transmission.
Because it would make China liable, and for the majority of individuals, their stance on China as a good actor in global matters is now linked to their American political allegiance. It is hard for many folks to reconcile both.
I'm also curious about that. HN has very strong opinions about China especially about the Xinjiang re-education camps and/or the organ harvesting in China YET for some reason can't believe that the same country would lab make a virus like this.
> evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground
What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses:
> Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came from bats, mice, or domestic animals.
> More so, bats are the source of the Ebola virus, rabies, Nipah ad Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and influenza A virus.
> An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin (1,2). Globally, infectious diseases account for 15.8% of all deaths and 43.7% of deaths in low-resource countries (3,4). It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year (5).
I'm going to go ahead and be the "crazy" person in this thread.
In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators.
So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic character and more a brutal practicality. In this worldview, the operating paradigm is not essentially civil. It is "might makes right".
Now if you go further and put the deployment of nuclear weapons into that context, you will have an even more "extreme" worldview.
So in this paradigm, China may, like other countries before it, seek to improve it's access to resources and general power. And like other countries before it, it would be operating in the "brutally practical" paradigm.
So if one was brave and "crazy" then one could speculate that the Covid-19 event may have been the Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. And even if it wasn't intentional, it could be said to serve that purpose.
Even "crazy" people hope that isn't truly part of the paradigm now. But some of the braver "crazies" might still be able to admit some slight possibility.
I believe it is because a lab origin would mean that we, humans, are not just the subject of the arbitrariness of nature. The virus exemplifies that we do not have control over everything. And that is a truth which is hard to accept.
> ... whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market
Maybe this is pedantic, but the introduction to humans could have happened in a wet market whether the virus itself originated in a lab (where bats could have escaped or been smuggled out and sold, etc.) or zoonotically.
Really? I usually see a lot of plain disagreement based on reasonable lines of thinking, but only a very small proportion of "_extremely_ strong" wording. Are you sure you're not just interpreting a multitude of similar opinions as creating a feeling of that opinion being "extremely strong"? Or that you're not just thinking of the cases where people are responding to the overtly political conspiracy hyperbole that sometimes comes as a wrapper around the proposal?
The liability of China is the main question here.
If it was released from a lab (and I don't think it was), China is liable to this world pandemic which is a huge thing.
Because people want someone to blame, a villian to hold responsible, for whom they can call out for blood. Bats can't be morally culpable; other humans can be.
If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.
Having the origin be China is bad enough for the CCP but if it’s caused by some kind of accident sloppiness that can somehow be tied to lack of government regulations or something, they’re looking at serious domestic problems. Even if it did happen the CCP would never admit that and will seek to censor any claims to that effect.
That’s why both conspiracy theories about this being a man-made conspiracy of the USA/China stem from the populist camps (ie Trump and Xi).
Its simple. Humans are addicted to blame thinking. People instinctively expect a just world, where bad things are a consequence of some form of sin from bad people and good things are a consequence of some virtue from good people and all problems are some sinners fault. A large fraction of people can't comprehend a world where bad things happen to them and nothing/no one is to blame. In the absence of reason they invent one. My kid got autism? I bet it was the vaccine shots. School shooting? I bet it was those violent video games. Internet connection went down? I bet it was because I just tried to scan a document (yes this is a real example). Any explanation, no matter how spurious, is more palpable to the human mind than "this is random and out of our control".
Throw some confirmation bias on top of it. The easiest group to blame for bad things is the group you already disliked. Traditionally this means foreigners, other races, and heretics. Blaming China both let's people have their imagined just world and vindicates whatever pre-existing hard-line stance they had on China. It's no secret that a lot of people already had a hard-lie stance on China for unrelated reasons (Eg the trade war).
In conclusion the human logical apparatus is bugged, no one is releasing any patches, and the whole issue is emotional because who you blame is tribal signaling dressed up as rational interest.
Entertaining the question is dangerous (I don’t believe it, but for the sake of argument)...
My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus?
Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable?
Is it to prevent another MERS SARS?
Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troublesome minority populations, as long as they have some amount of deniability to rely on.
Is it to stress test global medical science and institutions?
I’ll keep an open mind in that if (and it’s a large if) there are respected scientists who present evidence of it being a lab modified virus, then the motive must be understood and fast.
Edit: I will say that China isn’t helping its case by impeding research and publishing of any studies simply trying to establish whether COVID even crossed from local (wild) bat populations; and promoting only theories that claim COVID came from elsewhere.
It would have vast consequences if this came from a lab. It would be the most deadly example of "science gone wrong" ever: 1.8 million deaths, comparable to the Holocaust, from a single disaster in a single lab. We would seriously have to rethink how we did virus biology. And probably there would be repercussions throughout the whole of science. We might e.g. start to worry much more about the risks of many kinds of scientific experimentation.
This is the virus that has probably received the most attention by the largest number of global experts in history, or close to.
If there was anything that showed it was in any way artificial it would have been detected by all mainstream experts by now and that information would have been publicised one way or another. Yet these claims and 'evidence' are only reported as coming from fringe people if not likely paid 'agents' (I'm thinking about that HK 'scientist' girl that fled and is in the US now, doing the rounds of all tabloids on the planet).
On the other hand, there are known virii extremely similar to it in the mild (90-95% similar and related).
I don't know if the hypothesis that it may be artificial is plausible to start with, but the facts seem to weigh heavily against it while the interests of some to create this "conspiracy theory" is pretty obvious as are the interests of some to expose China if they had actual evidence.
Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance researching the origins of pandemics, pointed out in April that nearly 3% of the population in China's rural farming regions near wild animals already had antibodies to coronaviruses similar to SARS. "We're finding 1 to 7 million people exposed to these viruses every year in Southeast Asia; that's the pathway. It's just so obvious to all of us working in the field..."
Yeah, I initially thought having a big bio lab in the city where the pandemic started, in a country with a history of managing security in their bio labs poorly, in a lab known for studying sars like coronaviruses, including gain of function research to better bind to human ace2 receptors was just too many coincidences. You have to admit it's believable. But then when you realize how many people in rural China have been infected with sars like viruses, you start to understand that the whole country is like the ideal breeding ground for a bat virus to adapt to spreading in humans.
SARS was a thing in China, so that's not surprising. The discussion is about SARS-CoV2. Now they are a few small mutations away that would be significant.
It would make a lot of sense that SARS-COV2 was spreading in Southern China for a while, but going unnoticed, due to immunity. Then, as soon as one of those rural workers visits another major city further up north, it gets a chance to spread in a more susceptible population.
Unfortunately, I do not have the chops to debate against this, but the political ramifications would be immense. The bet (https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge) requires that (a) you have $100k (b) are able to successfully debate it.
I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and validate that this is actually refutable). This is valid until 2021-03-01.
For what it is worth, they say there is an 81% probability, based on their analysis, that it was a lab leak. That is not the same thing as "claims COVID-19 originated in a lab" - so I think the title is a little misleading - which is probably why the title actually seems to be "What is the source of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2)?"
1. This isn't the product of researchers. It's the product of an algorithm that also happens to be a product that is being advertised.
From the "About Rootclaim" page:
"Proven probabilistic inference models – The model breaks down highly complex issues into small questions that are each answerable by humans, and then uses these answers to reach mathematically indisputable conclusions.
Openly crowdsourced evidence and claims – Anyone can impact an analysis by contributing evidence, rational explanations, past examples and statistics. Unlike polling or voting, a strong claim by one person can beat many widely supported weaker claims."
2. Reputable researchers publish before going to the media. Would this analysis pass peer review?
3. The company is a startup, and is looking for press.
4. Like many conspiracy theories, this claim is not easily falsifiable. No matter how transparent the Wuhan Institute of Virology tries to be, as an institution associated with the Chinese government, accusations of a coverup will be nearly impossible to conclusively refute. International trust in anything related to the Chinese government is currently very low.
For those interested, the specific breakdown is on this page [1].
I don’t know what good will come of this discussion, unless all countries are willing to discontinue gain-of-function research if this claim is found to be true. However that’s a lot of “ifs” and there is too much opportunity to simply place blame, which won’t help anyone.
This is nothing more than cheap (effective!) content marketing for the prediction platform (rootclaim) that it is on.
I ran a large forecasting research project for 4 years so know this field quite well.
The "willing to bet" thing seems nonsense - there are no bet resolution criteria stated anywhere I can see.
They seem to be using a "Superforecaster"-like method of breaking down a prediction into smaller parts, and trying to work out the liklihood of each.
But their approach for doing it is crazy. The "escaped from lab" odds increase the most because they guess (and it is a guess) that the Wuhan lab does "20% of the gain-of-function research in the world"
That only makes anything resembling sense if they can establish that C19 is caused by gain-of-function research - but they haven't done that.
The whole hypothesis chain is full of this weak reasoning. For example the "lab dissociated itself from bat research" claim uses an unreferenced article by Miranda Devine in the NYPost as a source. Devine is an Australian columnist who left Australia after being forced to apologise for making up a story that a 9yo boy with dwafism was running a scam[1]. If this site was being honest in their approach they'd include that as evidence her claims on this story might be made up too.
Edit: and in (sarcasm) astonishing news, they also think the Syrian chemical attacks weren't carried out by the Syrian regime[2].
It's remarkable how little discussion there is about where SARS-CoV-2 actually came from. Yes, there is some. But it's a tiny fraction of the overall amount of digital ink that has been spilled over this during the past year.
The potential cost of a new virus is so enormous that measures reducing the probability of its occurrence, even marginally, are ridiculously cheap bargains even if they're expensive in absolute terms. But we need to know what really happened in order to take the right measures.
I admit that I do find the lab-escape hypothesis plausible. I'm not certain of it, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction. Perhaps one reason this hypothesis hasn't been publicized more is that those most qualified to assess it aren't eager to learn that some of the research they do is insanely dangerous, and that members of their profession may have committed a screwup of world-historical proportions.
I've only read this [1] before, and its not a bad story, but I wonder how sure you can be without knowing every corona virus strain in the region, it can still be from a strain we haven't sequenced.
Also, it is more likely a something like this gets discovered in a major city vs some rural backwater, because they have more educated doctors there and more patience to detect a pattern.
I really like the way they lay out the probability factors that contributed to their conclusions - it's easy to follow, at least.
I'm glad they put money behind it, but dislike that they're expecting $10,000-$100,000 in risk from submissions. They hyped up the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, but - as far as I can tell - that challenge didn't require the applicants to take on such risk.
I get that they want to stem the tide of low-quality submissions, but doing it this way really takes the wind out of their James Randi spiel.
With the paranormal challenge, you could say "the lack of applicants indicates they know the claim is false." With this, the lack of applicants could just as easily indicate a lack of funds/risk tolerance.
Where do they offer $100K to anyone who debunks their hypothesis?
How can someone "prove" it is Zoonotic in origin, to "win" the bet?
Is this a false challenge; Someone may be able to prove that this started in a lab, but no one can prove the opposite. Free publicity.
As an aside, it looks like they list "No whistleblowers" and "No reported infections at WIV" as increasing the odds it is not Zoonotic, which makes no sense.
Please don't take this as science. This is a marketing gag.
I am not a virologist but not far away from it. It is well possible that the virus escaped from a lab. But never claim maliciousness for something that can be easily explained by stupidity. When working with Chinese in the lab I experienced them as never working very clean (e.g. with radioactive stuff).
This alone shows the guys don't know what they are talking about.
There is no evidence that the virus was artificially altered (But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
This being said, it seems to me that Corona COULD be used as a weapon. China is coping much better then the EU or the US with the virus. We know this now. How about 3 more viruses in the next three years? Will the west survive this? While I STRONGLY believe that China is not really to blame for the outbreak, I am sure the development has raised eyebrows in China.
Oh 2020. It's a crazy thing to say out loud (or even to type), but there is substantial doubt about the origin story of this virus in mainstream scientific circles.
The National Academy of Sciences published an opinion piece from a reputable scientist containing fairly strongly worded (for PNAS, anyway) conjecture regarding a possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. [0]
(you might recognize Relman's name from his work on identifying the human gut microbiome.)
This is particularly strongly worded for this publication:
"""
Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory. Alternatively, the complete SARS-CoV-2 sequence could have been recovered from a bat sample and viable virus resurrected from a synthetic genome to study it, before that virus accidentally escaped from the laboratory.
"""
It would be very interesting to do this same study earlier than December 2019, since quite a lot of bood from donors in that month tested positive already
Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020
Even if covid came out of a wild animal market the simple fact that "gain of function" research on coronaviruses was getting funded in the first place should be be cause for concern.
[+] [-] sradman|5 years ago|reply
> Pangolins and bats don't usually cohabitate, making this somewhat unlikely in nature.
Horseshoe bats are nocturnal animals that roost in caves during the day but sometimes practice perch feeding at night [1]:
> The other strategy is known as perch feeding: Individuals roost on feeding perches and wait for prey to fly past, then fly out to capture it.
Pangolins [2] and palm civets [3] are nocturnal and arboreal. The bat viral RNA sequences come from anal swabs of netted animals so they are primarily gastrointestinal infections. All of these animals are found in the Lancang/Mekong [4] catch basin. Bat guano seems like a good vector for the virus.
Gain-of-function experiments require two viral isolates that recombine during passage. The lab theory assumes that the RNA sequence of the original viral isolates were never shared. I find this scenario unlikely but I am open to changing my mind based on evidence. SARS-1 is evidence of a very similar zoonotic scenario.
Humans that encounter bat guano in this region also seem like a good host for a recombination event.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_bat#Diet_and_foragin...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin#Behavior
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_palm_civet#Feeding_and_d...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|5 years ago|reply
So are you proposing that a pangolin from Lancang was transported more than 2000km to a seafood wetmarket in Wuhan?
At face value, this sounds like a very unlikely scenario for a zoonotic event/origin.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/04/coronavir...
[+] [-] frombody|5 years ago|reply
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4
[+] [-] bearbin|5 years ago|reply
My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.
It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates...
Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?
[+] [-] cle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brmgb|5 years ago|reply
Internally they are heavily pushing the preposterous claim that the virus is of foreign origin, possibly imported via frozen food.
Objectively lab origin seems likely. The virus started in the city housing the only P4 laboratory in China. This laboratory is known for its lax security (see the 2018 American embassy cables and the declarations of multiple sources in France who participated in its construction) and research on bat coronavirus transmission to humans were conducted there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if an accident didn't happen especially considering that we still can't find the missing link which would firmly establish a zoonotic origin.
Of course, as China is extremely uncooperative on this question, we will probably never know.
[+] [-] rcpt|5 years ago|reply
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
> Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.
[+] [-] krona|5 years ago|reply
Viruses used for gain of function research are selected for high rates of mutation and adaption. If we had known this from day one we would likely have made several changes to how to protect against it in the long term, especially with regards to cross-species transmission.
[+] [-] DevKoala|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haunter|5 years ago|reply
idk I'm just an outsider
[+] [-] js2|5 years ago|reply
What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses:
> Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came from bats, mice, or domestic animals.
> More so, bats are the source of the Ebola virus, rabies, Nipah ad Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and influenza A virus.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-1...
> An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin (1,2). Globally, infectious diseases account for 15.8% of all deaths and 43.7% of deaths in low-resource countries (3,4). It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year (5).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711306/
[+] [-] ilaksh|5 years ago|reply
In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators.
So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic character and more a brutal practicality. In this worldview, the operating paradigm is not essentially civil. It is "might makes right".
Now if you go further and put the deployment of nuclear weapons into that context, you will have an even more "extreme" worldview.
So in this paradigm, China may, like other countries before it, seek to improve it's access to resources and general power. And like other countries before it, it would be operating in the "brutally practical" paradigm.
So if one was brave and "crazy" then one could speculate that the Covid-19 event may have been the Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. And even if it wasn't intentional, it could be said to serve that purpose.
Even "crazy" people hope that isn't truly part of the paradigm now. But some of the braver "crazies" might still be able to admit some slight possibility.
[+] [-] knowhy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcbits|5 years ago|reply
Maybe this is pedantic, but the introduction to humans could have happened in a wet market whether the virus itself originated in a lab (where bats could have escaped or been smuggled out and sold, etc.) or zoonotically.
[+] [-] happytoexplain|5 years ago|reply
Really? I usually see a lot of plain disagreement based on reasonable lines of thinking, but only a very small proportion of "_extremely_ strong" wording. Are you sure you're not just interpreting a multitude of similar opinions as creating a feeling of that opinion being "extremely strong"? Or that you're not just thinking of the cases where people are responding to the overtly political conspiracy hyperbole that sometimes comes as a wrapper around the proposal?
[+] [-] addicted|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delbarital|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bawolff|5 years ago|reply
If it turns out the party to blame is a geopolitical frenemy, all the better for the people who thirst for vengence.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vlovich123|5 years ago|reply
That’s why both conspiracy theories about this being a man-made conspiracy of the USA/China stem from the populist camps (ie Trump and Xi).
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|5 years ago|reply
Throw some confirmation bias on top of it. The easiest group to blame for bad things is the group you already disliked. Traditionally this means foreigners, other races, and heretics. Blaming China both let's people have their imagined just world and vindicates whatever pre-existing hard-line stance they had on China. It's no secret that a lot of people already had a hard-lie stance on China for unrelated reasons (Eg the trade war).
In conclusion the human logical apparatus is bugged, no one is releasing any patches, and the whole issue is emotional because who you blame is tribal signaling dressed up as rational interest.
[+] [-] nobodyandproud|5 years ago|reply
My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus?
Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable?
Is it to prevent another MERS SARS?
Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troublesome minority populations, as long as they have some amount of deniability to rely on.
Is it to stress test global medical science and institutions?
I’ll keep an open mind in that if (and it’s a large if) there are respected scientists who present evidence of it being a lab modified virus, then the motive must be understood and fast.
Edit: I will say that China isn’t helping its case by impeding research and publishing of any studies simply trying to establish whether COVID even crossed from local (wild) bat populations; and promoting only theories that claim COVID came from elsewhere.
[+] [-] dash2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ssss11|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|5 years ago|reply
I'm not a virologist, but the stories about reinfection are weird too.
I don't believe in those theories, I just think "what if?".
[+] [-] yters|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mytailorisrich|5 years ago|reply
If there was anything that showed it was in any way artificial it would have been detected by all mainstream experts by now and that information would have been publicised one way or another. Yet these claims and 'evidence' are only reported as coming from fringe people if not likely paid 'agents' (I'm thinking about that HK 'scientist' girl that fled and is in the US now, doing the rounds of all tabloids on the planet).
On the other hand, there are known virii extremely similar to it in the mild (90-95% similar and related).
I don't know if the hypothesis that it may be artificial is plausible to start with, but the facts seem to weigh heavily against it while the interests of some to create this "conspiracy theory" is pretty obvious as are the interests of some to expose China if they had actual evidence.
[+] [-] MilnerRoute|5 years ago|reply
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296...
[+] [-] eloff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incrudible|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sargun|5 years ago|reply
I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and validate that this is actually refutable). This is valid until 2021-03-01.
[+] [-] stanrivers|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beloch|5 years ago|reply
1. This isn't the product of researchers. It's the product of an algorithm that also happens to be a product that is being advertised.
From the "About Rootclaim" page:
"Proven probabilistic inference models – The model breaks down highly complex issues into small questions that are each answerable by humans, and then uses these answers to reach mathematically indisputable conclusions.
Openly crowdsourced evidence and claims – Anyone can impact an analysis by contributing evidence, rational explanations, past examples and statistics. Unlike polling or voting, a strong claim by one person can beat many widely supported weaker claims."
2. Reputable researchers publish before going to the media. Would this analysis pass peer review?
3. The company is a startup, and is looking for press.
4. Like many conspiracy theories, this claim is not easily falsifiable. No matter how transparent the Wuhan Institute of Virology tries to be, as an institution associated with the Chinese government, accusations of a coverup will be nearly impossible to conclusively refute. International trust in anything related to the Chinese government is currently very low.
[+] [-] chris5745|5 years ago|reply
I don’t know what good will come of this discussion, unless all countries are willing to discontinue gain-of-function research if this claim is found to be true. However that’s a lot of “ifs” and there is too much opportunity to simply place blame, which won’t help anyone.
[1] https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/what-is-the-source-of-cov...
[+] [-] benjohnson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|5 years ago|reply
I ran a large forecasting research project for 4 years so know this field quite well.
The "willing to bet" thing seems nonsense - there are no bet resolution criteria stated anywhere I can see.
They seem to be using a "Superforecaster"-like method of breaking down a prediction into smaller parts, and trying to work out the liklihood of each.
But their approach for doing it is crazy. The "escaped from lab" odds increase the most because they guess (and it is a guess) that the Wuhan lab does "20% of the gain-of-function research in the world"
That only makes anything resembling sense if they can establish that C19 is caused by gain-of-function research - but they haven't done that.
The whole hypothesis chain is full of this weak reasoning. For example the "lab dissociated itself from bat research" claim uses an unreferenced article by Miranda Devine in the NYPost as a source. Devine is an Australian columnist who left Australia after being forced to apologise for making up a story that a 9yo boy with dwafism was running a scam[1]. If this site was being honest in their approach they'd include that as evidence her claims on this story might be made up too.
Edit: and in (sarcasm) astonishing news, they also think the Syrian chemical attacks weren't carried out by the Syrian regime[2].
[1] https://junkee.com/miranda-devine-apology-quaden-bayles/2715...
[2] https://www.rootclaim.com/claims/who-carried-out-the-chemica...
[+] [-] 015UUZn8aEvW|5 years ago|reply
The potential cost of a new virus is so enormous that measures reducing the probability of its occurrence, even marginally, are ridiculously cheap bargains even if they're expensive in absolute terms. But we need to know what really happened in order to take the right measures.
I admit that I do find the lab-escape hypothesis plausible. I'm not certain of it, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction. Perhaps one reason this hypothesis hasn't been publicized more is that those most qualified to assess it aren't eager to learn that some of the research they do is insanely dangerous, and that members of their profession may have committed a screwup of world-historical proportions.
[+] [-] wrnr|5 years ago|reply
Also, it is more likely a something like this gets discovered in a major city vs some rural backwater, because they have more educated doctors there and more patience to detect a pattern.
[1] https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
[+] [-] dash2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] typenil|5 years ago|reply
I'm glad they put money behind it, but dislike that they're expecting $10,000-$100,000 in risk from submissions. They hyped up the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, but - as far as I can tell - that challenge didn't require the applicants to take on such risk.
I get that they want to stem the tide of low-quality submissions, but doing it this way really takes the wind out of their James Randi spiel.
With the paranormal challenge, you could say "the lack of applicants indicates they know the claim is false." With this, the lack of applicants could just as easily indicate a lack of funds/risk tolerance.
[+] [-] skinkestek|5 years ago|reply
How did the UK virus suddenly get 17 mutations at once if it's not a new engineered release by someone?
I'm not a biologist, but that part had me wondering.
Any biologists here who want to explain for a layman?
[+] [-] sam_goody|5 years ago|reply
How can someone "prove" it is Zoonotic in origin, to "win" the bet?
Is this a false challenge; Someone may be able to prove that this started in a lab, but no one can prove the opposite. Free publicity.
As an aside, it looks like they list "No whistleblowers" and "No reported infections at WIV" as increasing the odds it is not Zoonotic, which makes no sense.
[+] [-] newdude116|5 years ago|reply
I am not a virologist but not far away from it. It is well possible that the virus escaped from a lab. But never claim maliciousness for something that can be easily explained by stupidity. When working with Chinese in the lab I experienced them as never working very clean (e.g. with radioactive stuff).
"There is some weak evidence regarding lax security and procedures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." No, there is actually strong evidence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...
This alone shows the guys don't know what they are talking about.
There is no evidence that the virus was artificially altered (But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
This being said, it seems to me that Corona COULD be used as a weapon. China is coping much better then the EU or the US with the virus. We know this now. How about 3 more viruses in the next three years? Will the west survive this? While I STRONGLY believe that China is not really to blame for the outbreak, I am sure the development has raised eyebrows in China.
[+] [-] jMyles|5 years ago|reply
The National Academy of Sciences published an opinion piece from a reputable scientist containing fairly strongly worded (for PNAS, anyway) conjecture regarding a possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. [0]
(you might recognize Relman's name from his work on identifying the human gut microbiome.)
This is particularly strongly worded for this publication:
""" Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory. Alternatively, the complete SARS-CoV-2 sequence could have been recovered from a bat sample and viable virus resurrected from a synthetic genome to study it, before that virus accidentally escaped from the laboratory. """
0: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
[+] [-] pengaru|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a0-prw|5 years ago|reply
Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
So maybe the lab theory is true and it was a leak from a US lab
[+] [-] rcpt|5 years ago|reply