A simpler explanation is that Trump just surrounded himself with sycophants and incompetents who just said the things he wanted to hear. Even if those things were not supported by any credible evidence.
Where is the credible evidence that it came from wildlife? Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border. And also in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which performed gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
The core argument in favor of crossover from wildlife is that scientists don't think many of the mutations in the virus's genome make sense as engineered changes. That is a straight-up argument from ignorance, not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional, and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten. It only does because lots of people accept an argument from authority. The "wildlife crossover" argument relies on logical fallacies.
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
How would anyone ever travel hundreds of kilometers? Horses just don't go that far do they?
Is your theory is that someone went to a fairly remote cave in Yunnan, caught the virus from bats there, traveled to Wuhan, and only started infecting other people after arriving in Wuhan?
If only there were some way to substantiate this kind of theory. For example, if the Chinese government would let independent scientists see the actual records of early cases. But they did not [nytimes.com], instead pressuring the WHO investigators to simply echo what the CCP said. That suggests some kind of remaining cover-up by the
No, I don't think the very first infected person caught it at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, but that may have been the first "mass spreader" event.
I ask again: Is your theory that someone caught it near the closest known wild relative, quite far from Wuhan, and then did not transmit it until they traveled to the city of Wuhan? Why did you invoke people traveling, if not to suggest than an infected person brought it to Wuhan?
Is your theory that we should have found all the cases along the way? Because that's equally as absurd as your other theories.
Even now we cant find all the cases and we've spent a lot of money and effort developing tests specifically to find it.
It commonly spreads without symptoms, there were no tests in the beginning, And worse than that, nobody at all anywhere was even looking for cases.
Pretty disingenuous of you to claim we should have found all the cases along the way.
It's extremely disingenuous of you to argue against a straw man. My theory is that, if the disease was carried by a person or animal from Yunnan province to Wuhan city -- as you suggested -- that we would have seen some other infections along the way. There's no reason to think we should "have found all the cases along the way", but finding at least one or two cases somewhere along the way would go a long way to supporting that hypothesis. Otherwise, you are just claiming it jumped almost 2000 km and, fr
Now who's building a strawman?
We know it can spread without symptoms.
We didn't even have a test for it at that time.
We didn't even know the virus existed at that time.
We know nobody was looking for cases before the superspreading incident in the Wuhan market.
You're claiming we didn't find any of the thing that's very hard to find when we weren't even looking for it anyway. So that means there weren't any?
Do you idiots ever go back and listen to yourselves?
It seems to me that surveying the coronavirus reservoirs, and characterizing their transmissibility between host species, should be a much higher priority.
Is your theory is that someone went to a fairly remote cave in Yunnan, caught the virus from bats there, traveled to Wuhan, and only started infecting other people after arriving in Wuhan?
No his theory is people can travel hundreds of kilometers these days. I believe he referring to things called "cars" and "trains" and even "airplanes". Your singular supposition since no bats live near Wuhan, therefore bats and humans could not have never come into contact outside Wuhan. Have you thought about that?
Yes that much was implicit in the "traveled to Wuhan" (from Yunnan province) part of my comment. Would you care to address more than three words of my comment?
Yes that much was implicit in the "traveled to Wuhan" (from Yunnan province) part of my comment. Would you care to address more than three words of my comment?
Yes are you also aware that bats "fly". I have seen it my own eyes that on a nightly basis they leave their roosts and magically take to the sky. Sometimes they also travel hundreds of kilometers.
Again your limited and narrow supposition: No bats live near Wuhan; therefore no one could have been affected by a bat. That's like saying bears live in the woods; I live in the city---therefore I have never seen a bear. That's some ironclad logic there.
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan
I find this claim highly dubious. Bats live fucking everywhere.
and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
So? The closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-1 was located in Yunnan, *thousands* of kilometers from Guangdong, where the outbreak originated.
This is because while bats are the reservoir for SARS-CoV like viruses, it requires some kind of interspecies jump or recombination to become virulent in humans.
The core argument in favor of crossover from wildlife is that scientists don't think many of the mutations in the virus's genome make sense as engineered changes. That is a straight-up argument from ignorance
No, it is not. An argument from ignorance would be claiming that "we don't see evidence that the changes were engineered, therefor they are not."
They are claiming that the evidence suggests the changes are natural. Evidence to the contrary is not the same thing as a lack of evidence.
You're misconstruing their argument.
not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional
There is a mountain of evidence that SARS-CoV viruses can jump from their bat reservoirs to various other mammals, and then on to humans.
Literally every single SARS-CoV variants was "man-made" in that we provided the opportunity for the viruses to recombine.
and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten. It only does because lots of people accept an argument from authority.
Accepting the word of someone is not accepting an argument from authority.
The "wildlife crossover" argument relies on logical fallacies.
I wish I could say your argument relied on logical fallacies, but it does not. It relies on outright falsehoods.
Shame on you, shithead.
An argument from ignorance would be claiming that "we don't see evidence that the changes were engineered, therefor they are not."
I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit, but let me address this. This paper [nature.com] was cited earlier in the thread, and it's a good example of the genre. Why do they dismiss the lab origin theory?
As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for binding to human ACE2 with an efficient solution different from those previously predicted[7,11]. Furthermore, if gen
I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit, but let me address this. This paper [nature.com] was cited earlier in the thread, and it's a good example of the genre. Why do they dismiss the lab origin theory?
They don't.
They claim, and I quote: "This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."
and
"It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus."
And they're correct.
Purposeful manipulation would have resulted in a *good* ACE2 binding protein. This is well within current capabilities.
They then go on to say that the natural origins are more plausible.
Again, they're correct.
Since there is evidence supportin
The first part I quoted is where they discussed "purposeful manipulation". The second part I quoted is where they dismiss the idea of an accidental lab escape. And if you actually read:
However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone[20]. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonot
However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone[20]. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.
This does not say it couldn't have come from a lab.
It says, matter of factually- that it doesn't come from any previously used virus backbone, thus a natural origin is more likely. This is exactly what I said before.
Because nobody used this virus backbone in previously published research, it must not have been done on purpose! So they offer two other ideas, each with their own problems.
They don't say that.
They say that since it hasn't been used in published research, it's more plausible to be natural in origin.
They never once say it could not.
This is dishonest bullshit.
That's pretty rich, after the intentional mischaracterizations above. Seriously. You've got to be trolling.
The closest known wild variant was kept at WIV.
Citation needed.
WIV did gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
The exact origin of the new coronavirus remains a mystery to this day, but the search for answers is not just about assigning blame. Unless the source is located, the true path of the virus canâ(TM)t be traced, and scientists canâ(TM)t properly study the best ways to prevent future outbreaks.
So: we do not really know where it came from, yet. And that is all.
But the whole point of this discussion is that people like you are trying to shut down the debate and investigation into where the virus came from. The whole point in this discussion other people have with you, is: you are an utter fail at logic.
> I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit
This audience doesn't usually have a good working knowledge of genetics or genetic engineering so they'll believe the dominant narrative, even when it contains glaring scientific and logic errors. Gell-Mann amnesia strikes again!
They don't even know who illegally funded GoF at the Wuhan BS4 and why that creates the Mother of All conflicts of interest. cf. TFS
Even if you wrote up the entire argument, succinctly and without error, they wouldn't re
So? The closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-1 was located in Yunnan, *thousands* of kilometers from Guangdong, where the outbreak originated.
Worth noting since I don't see this mentioned much, Humans from Yunnan were infected with a bat strain of Coronavirus a few years ago and were then taken (both dead and alive) to WIV for research. So the idea that the bats were thousands of miles away therefore is impossible holds no water.
That the changes were natural does not preclude dinking around in a laboratory.
I think it probably went like this:
Routine research finds novel virus in bats (probably not so novel, just happened to be the first place they'd noticed it), and takes it home to play with in the lab. Given it's China, both government meddling and poor procedures happen. China has a known interest in bioweapons, and such side research is probably routine with any virus studied there.
That the changes were natural does not preclude dinking around in a laboratory.
It does not. Just as the complete lack of evidence of it having been in a laboratory does not indicate that it may have been in a laboratory.
It does suggest which is more probable though.
Routine research finds novel virus in bats (probably not so novel, just happened to be the first place they'd noticed it), and takes it home to play with in the lab. Given it's China, both government meddling and poor procedures happen. China has a known interest in bioweapons, and such side research is probably routine with any virus studied there.
Sure. Except there's precisely no reason to suspect that. This disease's initial vectoring isn't far removed from SARS-CoV-1. Was the Wuhan BSL 4 lab involved in that one too?
Doesn't require that changes be engineered, just that their everyday research went awry, in part because China is more interested in how they can weaponize such stuff than they are in pure research. And I think that's what the guy was referring to. (Yes, I saw the clip.)
It does require engaging in conspiracy theories and arguing for "possibilities" that are in no way required for a theory to fit, or even probable.
I'
That is a straight-up argument from ignorance, not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional, and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten.
What??? Here I’ve been relishing in the new vaccine technology, those chips they implant are out of this world - suck it AMD! Now you tell me that bioengineers can just craft flawless new zero day flaws into an operating system with millions of years of patches?!? When will modern wonders ever cease?
Where is the credible evidence that it came from wildlife?
If only we had some way to search for that . . . Maybe like a scientific journal [nature.com]:"hus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
Because bats and humans are never known to travel hundreds of kilometers . . . oh wait, they totally do.
My current understanding is that many gain of function researchers (such as Andersen) are saying this couldn't have been made in a lab, but they don't address animal passage techniques. Of course, they have an incentive to downplay the likelihood that this came out of a lab since gain of function research is controversial. Some scientists think it should be abandoned, and if it was concluded
My current understanding is that many gain of function researchers (such as Andersen) are saying this couldn't have been made in a lab, but they don't address animal passage techniques.
What do mean "don't address"? I would be you money there are scores of researchers right now working on "animal passage techniques". We do not currently know != we are not trying to find out.
Some scientists think it should be abandoned, and if it was concluded that covid-19 was a result of this type of research, gain of function research would likely be banned.
There is limited time and money for research for scientists. Are those resources spent in trying to find the most likely cause of cross-over. Or an investigation (which is not done by scientists) that it was man made?
What do mean "don't address"? I would be you money there are scores of
researchers right now working on "animal passage techniques". We do
not currently know != we are not trying to find out.
I don't understand what you are trying to say. The context is are
researchers addressing the question of whether covid-19 could be the
result of animal passage gain of function research. This is a
question not research. The article I cited asked some researchers,
and those promoting the idea that covid-19 couldn't
This is a question not research. The article I cited asked some researchers, and those promoting the idea that covid-19 couldn't come from a lab did not respond. Are you saying that they do not know and are actively researching whether it's possible?
So you are questioning why scientist do not address a hypothetical that they do not consider a reality or practicality? That's like asking Egyptologist why they do not address the possibility that the pyramids could have been built by aliens.
I'm a bit lost as to your purpose for saying this. In many ways, this is not a purely scientific issue. One question is whether we should stop gain of function research. If it was determined that covid-19 was a result of gain of function research, I'm pretty sure it would be banned (or at least defunded) by many governments. Of course, this is difficult to answer without China's help.
No I am pointing out that virologists studying and researching viruses that occur in the wild are not the expertise is determine to investigate if it was man made. Police do not routinely ask family doctors to become a pathologist suddenly for a case.
So you are questioning why scientist do not address a hypothetical
that they do not consider a reality or practicality? That's like
asking Egyptologist why they do not address the possibility that the
pyramids could have been built by aliens
Animal passage techniques is a published technique for gain of
function. These are people who do gain of function research. It is
reasonable to ask them this question.
No I am pointing out that virologists studying and researching viruses
that occur in the wild are n
The range for horseshoe bats and other bat species covers virtually all of China including the Wuhan province. Secondly Wuhan (and many Asian cities) have or had have so-called wet markets. It is not the first time diseases have started this way and a disease could have travelled from bat, pangolin, civet or some other animal in such a place like it did with SARS. It needn't even have traveled in a single transmission and might have had a few faltering starts. I've never been to one in China but I have in T
Felson's Law:
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:1, Flamebait)
Where is the credible evidence that it came from wildlife? Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border. And also in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which performed gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
The core argument in favor of crossover from wildlife is that scientists don't think many of the mutations in the virus's genome make sense as engineered changes. That is a straight-up argument from ignorance, not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional, and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten. It only does because lots of people accept an argument from authority. The "wildlife crossover" argument relies on logical fallacies.
Re: (Score:2)
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
How would anyone ever travel hundreds of kilometers? Horses just don't go that far do they?
Though it seems strange that 50k people have died from it in California [worldometers.info] if it can't travel very far.
And California is 10,000 kilometers away from China. [google.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Is your theory is that someone went to a fairly remote cave in Yunnan, caught the virus from bats there, traveled to Wuhan, and only started infecting other people after arriving in Wuhan?
If only there were some way to substantiate this kind of theory. For example, if the Chinese government would let independent scientists see the actual records of early cases. But they did not [nytimes.com], instead pressuring the WHO investigators to simply echo what the CCP said. That suggests some kind of remaining cover-up by the
Re: (Score:2)
Because we already know that is false.
Re: (Score:2)
No, I don't think the very first infected person caught it at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, but that may have been the first "mass spreader" event.
I ask again: Is your theory that someone caught it near the closest known wild relative, quite far from Wuhan, and then did not transmit it until they traveled to the city of Wuhan? Why did you invoke people traveling, if not to suggest than an infected person brought it to Wuhan?
Re: (Score:2)
Is your theory that we should have found all the cases along the way? Because that's equally as absurd as your other theories.
Even now we cant find all the cases and we've spent a lot of money and effort developing tests specifically to find it.
It commonly spreads without symptoms, there were no tests in the beginning, And worse than that, nobody at all anywhere was even looking for cases.
Pretty disingenuous of you to claim we should have found all the cases along the way.
There were other confirmed cases
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
It's extremely disingenuous of you to argue against a straw man. My theory is that, if the disease was carried by a person or animal from Yunnan province to Wuhan city -- as you suggested -- that we would have seen some other infections along the way. There's no reason to think we should "have found all the cases along the way", but finding at least one or two cases somewhere along the way would go a long way to supporting that hypothesis. Otherwise, you are just claiming it jumped almost 2000 km and, fr
Re: (Score:2)
only became transmissible in Wuhan.
Now who's building a strawman?
We know it can spread without symptoms.
We didn't even have a test for it at that time.
We didn't even know the virus existed at that time.
We know nobody was looking for cases before the superspreading incident in the Wuhan market.
You're claiming we didn't find any of the thing that's very hard to find when we weren't even looking for it anyway. So that means there weren't any?
Do you idiots ever go back and listen to yourselves?
It seems to me that surveying the coronavirus reservoirs, and characterizing their transmissibility between host species, should be a much higher priority.
You think it's more important to see how it sp
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is your theory is that someone went to a fairly remote cave in Yunnan, caught the virus from bats there, traveled to Wuhan, and only started infecting other people after arriving in Wuhan?
No his theory is people can travel hundreds of kilometers these days. I believe he referring to things called "cars" and "trains" and even "airplanes". Your singular supposition since no bats live near Wuhan, therefore bats and humans could not have never come into contact outside Wuhan. Have you thought about that?
Re: (Score:1)
Yes that much was implicit in the "traveled to Wuhan" (from Yunnan province) part of my comment. Would you care to address more than three words of my comment?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes that much was implicit in the "traveled to Wuhan" (from Yunnan province) part of my comment. Would you care to address more than three words of my comment?
Yes are you also aware that bats "fly". I have seen it my own eyes that on a nightly basis they leave their roosts and magically take to the sky. Sometimes they also travel hundreds of kilometers.
Again your limited and narrow supposition: No bats live near Wuhan; therefore no one could have been affected by a bat. That's like saying bears live in the woods; I live in the city---therefore I have never seen a bear. That's some ironclad logic there.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't?
Here's a study about Leptospira in bats from Hubei province [nih.gov].
Here's another study [asm.org] from 14 years ago about SARS in bats, including bats from Hubei.
Here's the range of the Chinese rufous horseshoe bat [wikipedia.org], note it includes Hubei province.
Re: (Score:2)
Bats DO live around Wuhan. Not the Giant Horseshoe Bat that harbors similar viruses. You know, there are different species of bat.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the bat population with the most closely related virus was something like a thousand miles away?
That's consistent with either animal transmission or a lab mishap.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan
I find this claim highly dubious. Bats live fucking everywhere.
and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
So? The closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-1 was located in Yunnan, *thousands* of kilometers from Guangdong, where the outbreak originated.
This is because while bats are the reservoir for SARS-CoV like viruses, it requires some kind of interspecies jump or recombination to become virulent in humans.
The core argument in favor of crossover from wildlife is that scientists don't think many of the mutations in the virus's genome make sense as engineered changes. That is a straight-up argument from ignorance
No, it is not. An argument from ignorance would be claiming that "we don't see evidence that the changes were engineered, therefor they are not."
They are claiming that the evidence suggests the changes are natural. Evidence to the contrary is not the same thing as a lack of evidence.
You're misconstruing their argument.
not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional
There is a mountain of evidence that SARS-CoV viruses can jump from their bat reservoirs to various other mammals, and then on to humans.
Literally every single SARS-CoV variants was "man-made" in that we provided the opportunity for the viruses to recombine.
and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten. It only does because lots of people accept an argument from authority.
Accepting the word of someone is not accepting an argument from authority.
The "wildlife crossover" argument relies on logical fallacies.
I wish I could say your argument relied on logical fallacies, but it does not. It relies on outright falsehoods.
Shame on you, shithead.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit, but let me address this. This paper [nature.com] was cited earlier in the thread, and it's a good example of the genre. Why do they dismiss the lab origin theory?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit, but let me address this. This paper [nature.com] was cited earlier in the thread, and it's a good example of the genre. Why do they dismiss the lab origin theory?
They don't.
They claim, and I quote: "This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."
and
"It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus."
And they're correct.
Purposeful manipulation would have resulted in a *good* ACE2 binding protein. This is well within current capabilities.
They then go on to say that the natural origins are more plausible.
Again, they're correct.
Since there is evidence supportin
Re: (Score:2)
The first part I quoted is where they discussed "purposeful manipulation". The second part I quoted is where they dismiss the idea of an accidental lab escape. And if you actually read:
Re: (Score:2)
However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone[20]. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.
This does not say it couldn't have come from a lab.
It says, matter of factually- that it doesn't come from any previously used virus backbone, thus a natural origin is more likely. This is exactly what I said before.
Because nobody used this virus backbone in previously published research, it must not have been done on purpose! So they offer two other ideas, each with their own problems.
They don't say that.
They say that since it hasn't been used in published research, it's more plausible to be natural in origin.
They never once say it could not.
This is dishonest bullshit.
That's pretty rich, after the intentional mischaracterizations above. Seriously. You've got to be trolling.
The closest known wild variant was kept at WIV.
Citation needed.
WIV did gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
Citation n
Re: (Score:2)
WIV did gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
Citation needed.
You didn't even read huh? [politico.com]. This is my surprised face.
Re: (Score:2)
"Weird"
Let's not let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud, eh, Judith?
Re: (Score:2)
Second paragraph of your link:
The exact origin of the new coronavirus remains a mystery to this day, but the search for answers is not just about assigning blame. Unless the source is located, the true path of the virus canâ(TM)t be traced, and scientists canâ(TM)t properly study the best ways to prevent future outbreaks.
So: we do not really know where it came from, yet. And that is all.
Re: (Score:2)
According to this paper, there is some evidence that it was genetically manipulated [nih.gov]. I personally have no ability to evaluate the evidence, so I am waiting, but it seems there is a growing discussion in the scientific community [nih.gov].
A lot of people don't want to talk about it because they don't want to encourage racism against Chinese people, which is a valid goal.
Re: (Score:2)
But the whole point of this discussion is that people like you are trying to shut down the debate and investigation into where the virus came from.
The whole point in this discussion other people have with you, is: you are an utter fail at logic.
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit
This audience doesn't usually have a good working knowledge of genetics or genetic engineering so they'll believe the dominant narrative, even when it contains glaring scientific and logic errors. Gell-Mann amnesia strikes again!
They don't even know who illegally funded GoF at the Wuhan BS4 and why that creates the Mother of All conflicts of interest. cf. TFS
Even if you wrote up the entire argument, succinctly and without error, they wouldn't re
Re: (Score:1)
So? The closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-1 was located in Yunnan, *thousands* of kilometers from Guangdong, where the outbreak originated.
Worth noting since I don't see this mentioned much, Humans from Yunnan were infected with a bat strain of Coronavirus a few years ago and were then taken (both dead and alive) to WIV for research. So the idea that the bats were thousands of miles away therefore is impossible holds no water.
Re: (Score:2)
That the changes were natural does not preclude dinking around in a laboratory.
I think it probably went like this:
Routine research finds novel virus in bats (probably not so novel, just happened to be the first place they'd noticed it), and takes it home to play with in the lab. Given it's China, both government meddling and poor procedures happen. China has a known interest in bioweapons, and such side research is probably routine with any virus studied there.
And at some point this dinking around in the la
Re: (Score:2)
That the changes were natural does not preclude dinking around in a laboratory.
It does not. Just as the complete lack of evidence of it having been in a laboratory does not indicate that it may have been in a laboratory.
It does suggest which is more probable though.
Routine research finds novel virus in bats (probably not so novel, just happened to be the first place they'd noticed it), and takes it home to play with in the lab. Given it's China, both government meddling and poor procedures happen. China has a known interest in bioweapons, and such side research is probably routine with any virus studied there.
Sure. Except there's precisely no reason to suspect that. This disease's initial vectoring isn't far removed from SARS-CoV-1. Was the Wuhan BSL 4 lab involved in that one too?
Doesn't require that changes be engineered, just that their everyday research went awry, in part because China is more interested in how they can weaponize such stuff than they are in pure research. And I think that's what the guy was referring to. (Yes, I saw the clip.)
It does require engaging in conspiracy theories and arguing for "possibilities" that are in no way required for a theory to fit, or even probable.
I'
Re: (Score:2)
That is a straight-up argument from ignorance, not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional, and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten.
What??? Here I’ve been relishing in the new vaccine technology, those chips they implant are out of this world - suck it AMD! Now you tell me that bioengineers can just craft flawless new zero day flaws into an operating system with millions of years of patches?!? When will modern wonders ever cease?
Re: (Score:2)
Where is the credible evidence that it came from wildlife?
If only we had some way to search for that . . . Maybe like a scientific journal [nature.com]:"hus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
Because bats and humans are never known to travel hundreds of kilometers . . . oh wait, they totally do.
Re: (Score:2)
I think https://www.newsweek.com/contr... [newsweek.com] does a decent job of covering the issues with gain of function research.
My current understanding is that many gain of function researchers (such as Andersen) are saying this couldn't have been made in a lab, but they don't address animal passage techniques. Of course, they have an incentive to downplay the likelihood that this came out of a lab since gain of function research is controversial. Some scientists think it should be abandoned, and if it was concluded
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My current understanding is that many gain of function researchers (such as Andersen) are saying this couldn't have been made in a lab, but they don't address animal passage techniques.
What do mean "don't address"? I would be you money there are scores of researchers right now working on "animal passage techniques". We do not currently know != we are not trying to find out.
Some scientists think it should be abandoned, and if it was concluded that covid-19 was a result of this type of research, gain of function research would likely be banned.
There is limited time and money for research for scientists. Are those resources spent in trying to find the most likely cause of cross-over. Or an investigation (which is not done by scientists) that it was man made?
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I don't understand what you are trying to say. The context is are researchers addressing the question of whether covid-19 could be the result of animal passage gain of function research. This is a question not research. The article I cited asked some researchers, and those promoting the idea that covid-19 couldn't
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This is a question not research. The article I cited asked some researchers, and those promoting the idea that covid-19 couldn't come from a lab did not respond. Are you saying that they do not know and are actively researching whether it's possible?
So you are questioning why scientist do not address a hypothetical that they do not consider a reality or practicality? That's like asking Egyptologist why they do not address the possibility that the pyramids could have been built by aliens.
I'm a bit lost as to your purpose for saying this. In many ways, this is not a purely scientific issue. One question is whether we should stop gain of function research. If it was determined that covid-19 was a result of gain of function research, I'm pretty sure it would be banned (or at least defunded) by many governments. Of course, this is difficult to answer without China's help.
No I am pointing out that virologists studying and researching viruses that occur in the wild are not the expertise is determine to investigate if it was man made. Police do not routinely ask family doctors to become a pathologist suddenly for a case.
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Animal passage techniques is a published technique for gain of function. These are people who do gain of function research. It is reasonable to ask them this question.
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