*** OFFICIAL *** COVID-19 CoronaVirus Thread. Fresh epidemic fears as child pneumonia cases surge in Europe after China outbreak. NOW in USA (15 Viewers)

[quick-hands]

Take a step back for a minute and consider this: If SARS-CoV2's origin was zoonotic, there is literally no one on earth who knows that with 100% certainty. If it was man-made, then that fact might be known to a small number of scientists in Wuhan and, depending on how conspiratorial you want to get, a number of researchers and/or government officials in China and possibly other countries as well.

But one thing we can say with almost 100% certainty is that nobody posting in this thread (myself very much included), and nobody any of us encounters on a regular basis, has any concrete knowledge of the virus' origin. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say none of us has nearly enough knowledge of how viruses operate to even understand how one would go about answering that question.

What that means is that, whatever you believe about SARS-CoV2's origins, your certainty about that belief is entirely reflective of your own biases rather than any discernible facts on the ground. If you're sure it was zoonotic, or if you're declaring the lab-leak hypothesis to be "fact", all you're really doing is confessing that's what you wish to be true

There would be tells all over the "virus"...it would be obvious. Every single strand that has been studied is void of ANY of those tells. It's not man-made.

There has been discussion about the sequence of a furin cleavage site in the spike protein, which some have used as support for a bioengineered virus. Others have dismissed the validity of those assertions, but unless you’re a molecular virologist with specific background in coronaviruses, it’s hard to know what to believe.

These links are great.

This article is easier to follow, and is written by a reputable source - who co-wrote a book exploring the lab leak theory. It helps answer questions raised on this page.

To Terminalxylem’s point, it best to balance this by exploring best arguments supporting the wet market origin.

it didn't come from the markets. it wasn't spread thru the markets. except person to person.

And you know this for certain how?

the bat the virus came from a cave hundreds of miles away it was not food in the market. when they went thru the market they couldn't find the animal that was the source of the virus.

and they have the Wuhan Institute of Virology right next door. but yea wet markets.

you would have to be a crazy conspiracy guy to believe that.

 

[ZADO]

Take a step back for a minute and consider this: If SARS-CoV2's origin was zoonotic, there is literally no one on earth who knows that with 100% certainty. If it was man-made, then that fact might be known to a small number of scientists in Wuhan and, depending on how conspiratorial you want to get, a number of researchers and/or government officials in China and possibly other countries as well.

But one thing we can say with almost 100% certainty is that nobody posting in this thread (myself very much included), and nobody any of us encounters on a regular basis, has any concrete knowledge of the virus' origin. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say none of us has nearly enough knowledge of how viruses operate to even understand how one would go about answering that question.

What that means is that, whatever you believe about SARS-CoV2's origins, your certainty about that belief is entirely reflective of your own biases rather than any discernible facts on the ground. If you're sure it was zoonotic, or if you're declaring the lab-leak hypothesis to be "fact", all you're really doing is confessing that's what you wish to be true

There would be tells all over the "virus"...it would be obvious. Every single strand that has been studied is void of ANY of those tells. It's not man-made.

There has been discussion about the sequence of a furin cleavage site in the spike protein, which some have used as support for a bioengineered virus. Others have dismissed the validity of those assertions, but unless you’re a molecular virologist with specific background in coronaviruses, it’s hard to know what to believe.

These links are great.

This article is easier to follow, and is written by a reputable source - who co-wrote a book exploring the lab leak theory. It helps answer questions raised on this page.

To Terminalxylem’s point, it best to balance this by exploring best arguments supporting the wet market origin.

it didn't come from the markets. it wasn't spread thru the markets. except person to person.

And you know this for certain how?

the bat the virus came from a cave hundreds of miles away it was not food in the market. when they went thru the market they couldn't find the animal that was the source of the virus.

and they have the Wuhan Institute of Virology right next door. but yea wet markets.

you would have to be a crazy conspiracy guy to believe that.

these are the facts - and it doent look good for CHIna
1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.

• The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
  
  
  
• WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.
  
  
  https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html

 

[quick-hands]

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The lab leak still ties to the wet market, doesn't it?

no

Depending on what version of lab leak you believe, it certainly can be tied to the markets. For example, a lab worker may have sold animals to wet markets, with or without knowledge of the infectious risk they posed.

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The lab leak still ties to the wet market, doesn't it?

no

Depending on what version of lab leak you believe, it certainly can be tied to the markets. For example, a lab worker may have sold animals to wet markets, with or without knowledge of the infectious risk they posed.

a lab worker selling lab animals to a wet market is something you believe?

how about the Chinese scientist who said it was intentional release.

the word "may" is useful.

 

[Blick]

lt seems funny that this report is released at the same time tensions are ratcheting up with China over Ukraine given that it didn't include any new information.

 

[3C's]

Dear lord, we are actually arguing with each other over where Covid originated , thats where we are now .
Who cares who`s right or wrong, all that matters is we find the truth so we can take measures to prevent it from ever happening again.

When all is said and done thats ALL that matters ....the truth

Some good and interesting info on this page but this post nails it. Too much "I'm right, you're wrong" BS in here.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The difference is there was a certain someone who right about #2 and some people don't want to admit it.

Yes, and we all know that that's the problem. Some Bad People, including one Bad Person in particular, kind of glommed onto the lab leak theory, and now people who crafted their entire identity around Resisting The Bad People are stuck.

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

 

[The Commish]

lt seems funny that this report is released at the same time tensions are ratcheting up with China over Ukraine given that it didn't include any new information.

This was exactly my first thought as well.

 

[Desert_Power]

lt seems funny that this report is released at the same time tensions are ratcheting up with China over Ukraine given that it didn't include any new information.

This was exactly my first thought as well.

Also, why is the Energy Department involved?

 

[Battersbox]

So, yes, my fear is that those who continue to mask will convince those in authority to mask our kids all day

Don't sit on your toilet at night. The monster will get you.

Some of us can respect others' concerns, some of us less so.

Be well.

 

[RCon]

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The difference is there was a certain someone who right about #2 and some people don't want to admit it.

Yes, and we all know that that's the problem. Some Bad People, including one Bad Person in particular, kind of glommed onto the lab leak theory, and now people who crafted their entire identity around Resisting The Bad People are stuck.

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

I'll admit that I didn't pay that much attention to one particular person's unhinged rantings in real time, but I wonder if this isn't revisionist history. I can't remember a single quote from said person that cogently "glommed onto the lab leak theory", especially distinct from "intentionally created in a lab" or more simply "China bad". I know that some actual scientists proposed the lab leak theory, but I truly can't remember any of the "Bad People" doing so in a cogent fashion. I'd be happy to proven incorrect, of course.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but GoF research seeks to force those mutations to occur in a controlled lab setting so that scientists can study how it happened, right?

If it was conclusively shown that something in that process went awry and led to the pandemic, I suspect the vast majority of people would conclude that the virus was "man-made". If the lab had never existed, the pandemic wouldn't have happened, at least not when it did.

Although I do agree with the broader point that a lot of these definitions are kind of blurry and can't be so neatly divided into one or two simple categories.

Still, if researchers could conclusively demonstrate that the virus developed zoonotically in the wild, they would have every incentive to publish that evidence. The fact that they haven't very strongly suggests that evidence does not (yet?) exist.

There are many different things that science looks at in GoF research. What they were actually DOING in the lab with the virus (whether straight-up testing the effects of a non-manipulated virus or testing what happens when one manipulates the virus) really only explains why the virus was in the lab in the first place. It's really not relevant to how/why the virus was able to get out of containment.

OK, we're reaching the outer limits of my understanding of this subject, but it sounds like what you're positing is a version of the LLH where scientists could have performed GoF research where they observed the virus' natural mutations in a lab, and one of those mutations produced SARS-CoV2, and then that somehow accidentally escaped from the lab. Is that right? And in such a situation, would we say that the virus was "man-made" or "zoonotic"? I feel like it would be the former, but again, I admit this is way above my pay grade.

And ultimately, I'm far less interested in labels -- or in I-told-you-so's -- than I am in understanding exactly what happened, what went wrong, and how we ensure that never happens again

 

[Chadstroma]

lt seems funny that this report is released at the same time tensions are ratcheting up with China over Ukraine given that it didn't include any new information.

This was exactly my first thought as well.

Also, why is the Energy Department involved?

They actually have multiple labs across the country and some that actually do 'advanced biological research' (my assumption tied mostly into biofuel type of research). Apparently this was direction from the Biden Administration for national labs to research this.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

OK, so where is the data that proves proponents of the zoonotic theory were deliberately lying?

 

[IvanKaramazov]

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

OK, so where is the data that proves proponents of the zoonotic theory were deliberately lying?

We've known this for quite some time, but here's a relatively recent article to get you started.

That said, I'm not playing dueling-citations with people over this stuff. It's fine if you want to disagree -- I won't try to deplatform you just for being wrong about an empirical issue, and it doesn't matter to me if somebody from the internet is mistaken about something.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

OK, so where is the data that proves proponents of the zoonotic theory were deliberately lying?

We've known this for quite some time, but here's a relatively recent article to get you started.

That said, I'm not playing dueling-citations with people over this stuff. It's fine if you want to disagree -- I won't try to deplatform you just for being wrong about an empirical issue, and it doesn't matter to me if somebody from the internet is mistaken about something.

Hadn't seen that. I will check it out.

 

[The Commish]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but GoF research seeks to force those mutations to occur in a controlled lab setting so that scientists can study how it happened, right?

If it was conclusively shown that something in that process went awry and led to the pandemic, I suspect the vast majority of people would conclude that the virus was "man-made". If the lab had never existed, the pandemic wouldn't have happened, at least not when it did.

Although I do agree with the broader point that a lot of these definitions are kind of blurry and can't be so neatly divided into one or two simple categories.

Still, if researchers could conclusively demonstrate that the virus developed zoonotically in the wild, they would have every incentive to publish that evidence. The fact that they haven't very strongly suggests that evidence does not (yet?) exist.

There are many different things that science looks at in GoF research. What they were actually DOING in the lab with the virus (whether straight-up testing the effects of a non-manipulated virus or testing what happens when one manipulates the virus) really only explains why the virus was in the lab in the first place. It's really not relevant to how/why the virus was able to get out of containment.

OK, we're reaching the outer limits of my understanding of this subject, but it sounds like what you're positing is a version of the LLH where scientists could have performed GoF research where they observed the virus' natural mutations in a lab, and one of those mutations produced SARS-CoV2, and then that somehow accidentally escaped from the lab. Is that right? And in such a situation, would we say that the virus was "man-made" or "zoonotic"? I feel like it would be the former, but again, I admit this is way above my pay grade.

And ultimately, I'm far less interested in labels -- or in I-told-you-so's -- than I am in understanding exactly what happened, what went wrong, and how we ensure that never happens again

Many forms of "gain of function" to be talked about. The most popular is the path of genetically modifying viruses to see the changes and what happens. It's basically forcing the mutations instead of waiting for them to do it on their own.

 

[Battersbox]

This is why it's better just to look at data and quit worrying about who believes what.

OK, so where is the data that proves proponents of the zoonotic theory were deliberately lying?

We've known this for quite some time, but here's a relatively recent article to get you started.

That said, I'm not playing dueling-citations with people over this stuff. It's fine if you want to disagree -- I won't try to deplatform you just for being wrong about an empirical issue, and it doesn't matter to me if somebody from the internet is mistaken about something.

Great read.

As is often the case, in some ways it just adds frustration because I want to know what emails we can't see, rather than those we can.

Interesting the lack of comments from all the authors of the Proximal Origin paper to the reporter. Why would all refuse comment? Are they fearing legal jeopardy?

 

[jamny]

Personally, I think it was an accidental lab leak that China hoped to contain and failed but then couldn't admit what happened. I am open to a different reason and wish an investigation would have been started already. We're 3 years in and no closer to an answer than we were in 2020. It's falling into "the coverup is worse than the crime" territory.

 

[LawFitz]

Gain of function + accidental leak + massive multifront coverup b/c the first step was (not very) covertly funded by Fauci's NIH. This was apparent YEARS ago.

 

[ZADO]

Gain of function + accidental leak + massive multifront coverup b/c the first step was (not very) covertly funded by Fauci's NIH. This was apparent YEARS ago.

Summed it up in one sentence , end of conversation (at least it should be , but it wont be ), now lets move on to what we do about it so it doesnt happen again

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Personally, I think it was an accidental lab leak that China hoped to contain and failed but then couldn't admit what happened. I am open to a different reason and wish an investigation would have been started already. We're 3 years in and no closer to an answer than we were in 2020. It's falling into "the coverup is worse than the crime" territory.

Didn't Biden order an investigation last year that produced this latest DOE report?

Also, it is my understanding that tracing the origin of a viral outbreak is often a laborious process that can take years. It's plausible that the investigation has been slowed down -- or made impossible -- by Chinese stonewalling and destruction of evidence. But it is also plausible that this investigation is not moving any more slowly than those for previous outbreaks

 

[Doug B]

We've known this for quite some time, but here's a relatively recent article to get you started.

That said, I'm not playing dueling-citations with people over this stuff. It's fine if you want to disagree -- I won't try to deplatform you just for being wrong about an empirical issue

It's not as pat as all that. At least going by that article and the emails cited. There was no point, among those early researchers, that the lab-leak hypothesis was treated as a conclusively proven thing.

What that article does establish, though, is that there was a political "rooting interest" against the lab-leak hypothesis among some (not all) of those early researchers. And that some of those researchers bit hard on the pangolin virus data.

I don't think withholding early speculation rises to the level of 'knowing something concrete, then asserting the opposite publicly'.

 

[Nathan R. Jessep]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

 

[ZADO]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

You cant handle the truth

 

[Doug B]

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities.

Quoted for truth. It's not an either-or thing by any means.

 

[quick-hands]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think every6thone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the got

got me ZADO.

 

[Doug B]

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

Now, on this ... it kind of depends on what's meant by "man-made".

Physically "re-assembling" virions like Tinkertoys or Legos? Nah.

Running the virions through mice over and over and over and over until certain mutations showed up? Yes.

 

[Scoresman]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

 

[Sand]

Take a step back for a minute and consider this: If SARS-CoV2's origin was zoonotic, there is literally no one on earth who knows that with 100% certainty. If it was man-made, then that fact might be known to a small number of scientists in Wuhan and, depending on how conspiratorial you want to get, a number of researchers and/or government officials in China and possibly other countries as well.

But one thing we can say with almost 100% certainty is that nobody posting in this thread (myself very much included), and nobody any of us encounters on a regular basis, has any concrete knowledge of the virus' origin. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say none of us has nearly enough knowledge of how viruses operate to even understand how one would go about answering that question.

What that means is that, whatever you believe about SARS-CoV2's origins, your certainty about that belief is entirely reflective of your own biases rather than any discernible facts on the ground. If you're sure it was zoonotic, or if you're declaring the lab-leak hypothesis to be "fact", all you're really doing is confessing that's what you wish to be true

There would be tells all over the "virus"...it would be obvious. Every single strand that has been studied is void of ANY of those tells. It's not man-made.

There has been discussion about the sequence of a furin cleavage site in the spike protein, which some have used as support for a bioengineered virus. Others have dismissed the validity of those assertions, but unless you’re a molecular virologist with specific background in coronaviruses, it’s hard to know what to believe.

These links are great.

This article is easier to follow, and is written by a reputable source - who co-wrote a book exploring the lab leak theory. It helps answer questions raised on this page.

To Terminalxylem’s point, it best to balance this by exploring best arguments supporting the wet market origin.

The US Senate also did a report which was pretty short and easy to consume.

There was another report released that talked about all the steps the Chinese govt. took afterward and that is as damning as anything I've seen. If I find the link I'll post.

 

[Nathan R. Jessep]

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

Now, on this ... it kind of depends on what's meant by "man-made".

Physically "re-assembling" virions like Tinkertoys or Legos? Nah.

Running the virions through mice over and over and over and over until certain mutations showed up? Yes.

Just going off of my memory here, but It was my understanding from what they presented (in 2020) that in a normal scenario where they were engineering a new virus for research (or, I suppose, even for nefarious purposes), the process would be to basically, in layman's terms, make a structural copy of an existing virus and then modify it. The structure of SARS-CoV-2 was not similar in structure to any existing, known virus structure.

 

[ZADO]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

CHIna didnt force mask mandates in the United States
But the entire world should sue CHIna for the millions of dead ,sick, mental trauma and lives that were destroyed

 

[Doug B]

Just going off of my memory here, but It was my understanding from what they presented (in 2020) that in a normal scenario where they were engineering a new virus for research (or, I suppose, even for nefarious purposes), the process would be to basically, in layman's terms, make a structural copy of an existing virus and then modify it.

I would like to read more. Do you have any information about the part in bold? You're not talking about the "Proximal Origin" paper, are you?

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

You cant handle the truth

Here's a live look at NRJ and Zado writing their most recent posts

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

That was good. I also thought that the article she linked to by Dr. Rivers made an excellent point as well: We don't need to wait until we know conclusively how SARS-CoV2 originated before taking actions. If there are problems in how labs are operated that could lead to a future lab leak, we should address those now regardless of whether they had anything to do with Covid-19.

ETA: I should also point out that the same is true of zoonotic origins of viruses. I recall a lot of people saying that we may be at risk of future zoonotic outbreaks because of how human development is expanding. We should worry about that as well even if it wasn't a factor in Wuhan.

 

[Nathan R. Jessep]

Just going off of my memory here, but It was my understanding from what they presented (in 2020) that in a normal scenario where they were engineering a new virus for research (or, I suppose, even for nefarious purposes), the process would be to basically, in layman's terms, make a structural copy of an existing virus and then modify it.

I would like to read more. Do you have any information about the part in bold? You're not talking about the "Proximal Origin" paper, are you?

You mean this? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

It could have been a follow-up piece referring to that one. I remember there being quite a bit of discussion. Fuzzy memory now, but seems like there was a "deep dive" piece that included the above paper as well as some others. May have been early '21. Can't recall for sure at this point.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

We've known this for quite some time, but here's a relatively recent article to get you started.

That said, I'm not playing dueling-citations with people over this stuff. It's fine if you want to disagree -- I won't try to deplatform you just for being wrong about an empirical issue

It's not as pat as all that. At least going by that article and the emails cited. There was no point, among those early researchers, that the lab-leak hypothesis was treated as a conclusively proven thing.

What that article does establish, though, is that there was a political "rooting interest" against the lab-leak hypothesis among some (not all) of those early researchers. And that some of those researchers bit hard on the pangolin virus data.

I don't think withholding early speculation rises to the level of 'knowing something concrete, then asserting the opposite publicly'.

Yeah, of course.

This isn't a "conspiracy" of evil people sitting around a table, twirling their mustaches, and trying to come up with novel ways to increase human misery. The people in these emails are mostly a bunch of academics who are scared ****less that they or their colleagues may have accidentally sparked a global catastrophe, and who are also worried about their research funding (and thus, careers) being taken away. If we had given serious consideration to the possibility of a lab leak back in 2020, does anybody really think that Peter Daszak would still be receiving funding from the NIH? The rooting interest here is just ordinary self-interest, not anything political. You guys just turned into something political, and Daszak thanks for you for that.

 

[Doug B]

You mean this? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

That's the one (the 'Proximal Origin' paper) -- those are the authors mentioned in Ivan's The Intercept link.

 

[Nathan R. Jessep]

There was also some discussion on after-the-fact wastewater sampling from other (than China) areas that indicated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 prior to the Wuhan lab timeline. Northern Italy, IIRC was one area that registered positves in wastewater. But I've not seen any more sources along those lines. I'll see if I can dig up that source as well.

 

[Doug B]

You guys just turned into something political ...

I won't cop to that.

EDIT: While I appreciated your overall response, I dispute that last sentence.

 

[Doug B]

There was also some discussion on after-the-fact wastewater sampling from other (than China) areas that indicated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 prior to the Wuhan lab timeline. Northern Italy, IIRC was one area that registered positves in wastewater. But I've not seen any more sources along those lines. I'll see if I can dig up that source as well.

I remember those stories about early traces of COVID, as well.

 

[Chadstroma]

Personally, I think it was an accidental lab leak that China hoped to contain and failed but then couldn't admit what happened. I am open to a different reason and wish an investigation would have been started already. We're 3 years in and no closer to an answer than we were in 2020. It's falling into "the coverup is worse than the crime" territory.

China would NEVER admit any wrongdoing. That isn't how that country is run and there is no power in that country to counter whatever the Communist Party decides.

I always thought that it was highly improbable that there would be no connection to the origination being in Wuhan and that there is a Wuhan Institute of Virology right there with a known propensity to be lacking in it's security protocols. But it became so politicized so quickly that someone like me that doesn't have any specific knowledge in any area that would help me wade through the crap narratives being thrown out there could really come to a conclusion one way or another.

From what I have read the DoE is the second government body to have come to a 'soft' conclusion that it is most likely started as a leak from Wuhan with the FBI being the other. I have no doubt that the Chinese government knows the truth one way or another but we will just never know from them.

 

[Whyatt]

COVID-19 Origin Debate

I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.​

​

SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered (her evidence mentioned above )

There was also early evidence published in 2020 (in Nature publication, IIRC) that pretty much debunked the man-made claims.

oh my, "debunked" is a very bad take already called out multiple times in the comments section.

 

[Terminalxylem]

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The lab leak still ties to the wet market, doesn't it?

no

Depending on what version of lab leak you believe, it certainly can be tied to the markets. For example, a lab worker may have sold animals to wet markets, with or without knowledge of the infectious risk they posed.

Another way to look at it is that in April 2020, we (collectively) held two beliefs about covid that we now know to be false:

1) Covid is spread mainly by surface transmission, and it isn't airborne.
2) Covid almost certainly emerged from a wet market, not an accidental lab leak.

Nobody gets mad at the people who told us (1), and lots of us are mad at the people who told us (2). Why the difference?

Because the people who said that covid isn't airborne were arguing in good faith. They were mistaken, but they were acting on what they genuinely believed to be true at the time. They didn't go around censoring people who argued otherwise, and they didn't try to get people fired from their jobs for saying that covid was airborne. They approached it as an open empirical question and followed the evidence where it led. It didn't take long before we got to the bottom of things and updated our view of how covid is spread. So everybody could just say "Whoops, we got that one wrong" and everyone just moved on. We moved on because we all understand that all of us were trying to get it right.

Contrast that with how the "racist conspiracy theory" crowd reacted to the lab leak theory. The people who told us that there's no way covid escaped from a lab knew perfectly well that that was entirely possible. When they said it was almost definitely zoonotic, they were lying. For many of the virology researchers involved in this, they were lying for professional reasons. People who do virology research aren't going to want people thinking that their work might cause a global pandemic -- this isn't anything political, just boring, ordinary self-interest. But there was a also a very strong political reason that we all understand for nearly every media outlet and most tech companies to push the "conspiracy theory" line as well. So we got a bunch of gaslighting backed up by censorship, when it should have been obvious from the get-go that it might be more than a weird coincidence that the bat coronavirus lab just happened to be located a couple of miles from an outbreak of a bat coronavirus.

Those of us who treated both (1) and (2) as non-political empirical issues got both of them right at or around the same time. The rest of you were right there with us on (1), but if you got your news from places like NPR and Slate (lol) you were a couple of years behind everyone else on (2). And we remember how we were treated for being right a little ahead of schedule.

The lab leak still ties to the wet market, doesn't it?

no

Depending on what version of lab leak you believe, it certainly can be tied to the markets. For example, a lab worker may have sold animals to wet markets, with or without knowledge of the infectious risk they posed.

a lab worker selling lab animals to a wet market is something you believe?

how about the Chinese scientist who said it was intentional release.

the word "may" is useful.

I don’t know, maybe? It’s not too hard to imagine poorly paid lab or janitorial staff selling an unwanted animal for cash, instead of disposing it correctly.

It’s also easy to imagine a lab worker getting sick and unknowingly beginning the chain of person-to-person spread.

But the easiest scenario of all, the default mechanism which was assumed, is a natural species jump due to viral evolution, in a place where humans interact with the virus’ (as yet undetermined) intermediary host. Why is that easiest to imagine? Many other zoonotic infections have occurred in this fashion. But it often takes years-decades to pinpoint the exact source, if it is identified at all.

It’s a lot more difficult to comprehend intentional release on the Chinese people, unless one believes extremely nefarious things about the people who did so, including a desire to kill a bunch of fellow countrymen. Or perhaps they thought they had an antidote, that ended up not working. Maybe they underestimated its virulence? Still, seems like they could have conducted bioterrorism experiments in a different setting, like a prison. Or Taiwan.

The point is, we don’t (and probably never will) have a smoking gun that conclusively provides an answer. While I think the lab leak argument is compelling (and never discounted the possibility), it is hard to imagine us forcing a confession, if the Chinese government is behind the pandemic.

What do you think the US should do to China now, based on the circumstantial evidence we have? What if they don’t comply?

 

[The Commish]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

CHIna didnt force mask mandates in the United States
But the entire world should sue CHIna for the millions of dead ,sick, mental trauma and lives that were destroyed

Curious what mechanism you think the world needs to use to accomplish this.

 

[Terminalxylem]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but GoF research seeks to force those mutations to occur in a controlled lab setting so that scientists can study how it happened, right?

If it was conclusively shown that something in that process went awry and led to the pandemic, I suspect the vast majority of people would conclude that the virus was "man-made". If the lab had never existed, the pandemic wouldn't have happened, at least not when it did.

Although I do agree with the broader point that a lot of these definitions are kind of blurry and can't be so neatly divided into one or two simple categories.

Still, if researchers could conclusively demonstrate that the virus developed zoonotically in the wild, they would have every incentive to publish that evidence. The fact that they haven't very strongly suggests that evidence does not (yet?) exist.

There are many different things that science looks at in GoF research. What they were actually DOING in the lab with the virus (whether straight-up testing the effects of a non-manipulated virus or testing what happens when one manipulates the virus) really only explains why the virus was in the lab in the first place. It's really not relevant to how/why the virus was able to get out of containment.

OK, we're reaching the outer limits of my understanding of this subject, but it sounds like what you're positing is a version of the LLH where scientists could have performed GoF research where they observed the virus' natural mutations in a lab, and one of those mutations produced SARS-CoV2, and then that somehow accidentally escaped from the lab. Is that right? And in such a situation, would we say that the virus was "man-made" or "zoonotic"? I feel like it would be the former, but again, I admit this is way above my pay grade.

And ultimately, I'm far less interested in labels -- or in I-told-you-so's -- than I am in understanding exactly what happened, what went wrong, and how we ensure that never happens again

Technically, zoonotic means transmissible between animals and humans under normal conditions - those encountered in nature. A bioengineered virus able to make the jump doesn’t exactly qualify, though if a cycle that perpetuates human spread remains in animals, the disease can be classified as a zoonosis. “Man-made” isn’t a scientific label. You may see the term “chimeric“ to describe frankenviruses composed of multiple viral parts, which can occur naturally, or in a lab. Not sure what you call a virus observed to evolve in a lab, as the environment is anything but natural, with different selective pressures, even if the genes aren’t directly manipulated by scientists.

IMO, SARS-CoV-2 is best classified as an emerging infectious disease of probable animal origin, based on what know about other coronaviruses. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where it officially is designated “man-made”.

 

[ZADO]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

CHIna didnt force mask mandates in the United States
But the entire world should sue CHIna for the millions of dead ,sick, mental trauma and lives that were destroyed

Curious what mechanism you think the world needs to use to accomplish this.

who knows , its an overwhelming situation, but letting CHIna walk away unscathed is insane

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

CHIna didnt force mask mandates in the United States
But the entire world should sue CHIna for the millions of dead ,sick, mental trauma and lives that were destroyed

Curious what mechanism you think the world needs to use to accomplish this.

Jacoby and Meyers?

 

[IvanKaramazov]

who knows , its an overwhelming situation, but letting CHIna walk away unscathed is insane

Hypothetically, let's say we launch a full investigation that conclusively demonstrates how the pandemic started. Namely, some researcher at WIV got accidentally infected with covid in a lab, didn't realize it, and spread it to others when he or she went shopping at the local wet market. Also, that researcher was a co-PI on another subaward involving EcoHealth Alliance, which received NIH funding for a related but technically separate line of research on bat coronaviruses.

Still think it's hard to understand why virology researchers who rely on NIH funding all circled the wagons on this one?

Edit: Seriously, this is at best really awkward for NIH. We know with 100% certainty that NIH sponsored research at WIV on bat coronaviruses. Obviously NIH did not fund all research at WIV. We don't even have a ballpark estimate of how much NIH contributed to WIV's total research expenditures. It might have been 0.1%, or it might have been 10%. Maybe that information is available someplace, but I doubt it. But regardless, I would be willing to bet nearly any amount of money that there is some NIH-funded project out there that a person with an axe to grind to plausibly argue was at least indirectly responsible for the pandemic. Such an argument might be wildly unfair -- think of an NIH grant that pays for lab equipment to study treatments for bat coronaviruses, and two years later that equipment is repurposed to study how to make bat viruses more infectious in humans -- but people get their careers ended over wildly unfair stuff all the time. If you're an NIH-funded virologist, it's all too easy to imagine the public coming for you with torches and pitchforks. So much better just to tell a noble lie and get back to the lab.

Edit 2: And keep in mind, this awkward for NIH at best. At worst, the folks at EcoHealth Alliance took NIH funding and used it to create exactly the type of virus that they openly said they wanted to create. That would be catastrophically bad for NIH. Like, move aside Tuskegee Experiment bad. To be clear, we have no reason to suspect that this happened. Except that if somebody proposed repainting the town hall pink, and then two years later we all wake up and the town hall is now pink, we might want to have a chat with that person.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Maybe all you guys can sue China now for all the miserable, torturous, pain and suffering you went through having to wear a mask.

CHIna didnt force mask mandates in the United States
But the entire world should sue CHIna for the millions of dead ,sick, mental trauma and lives that were destroyed

Curious what mechanism you think the world needs to use to accomplish this.

Jacoby and Meyers?

Well, they do have more Adidas sneakers than a plumber's got pliers.

 

[Terminalxylem]

who knows , its an overwhelming situation, but letting CHIna walk away unscathed is insane

Hypothetically, let's say we launch a full investigation that conclusively demonstrates how the pandemic started. Namely, some researcher at WIV got accidentally infected with covid in a lab, didn't realize it, and spread it to others when he or she went shopping at the local wet market. Also, that researcher was a co-PI on another subaward involving EcoHealth Alliance, which received NIH funding for a related but technically separate line of research on bat coronaviruses.

Still think it's hard to understand why virology researchers who rely on NIH funding all circled the wagons on this one?

100% agree that (some) virologists have vested interest in sweeping this under the carpet.

But how likely is it we'll get to the bottom of this potential lab leak? How should we move forward to maximize those chances?