Scientist Finds Early Virus Sequences That Had Been Mysteriously Deleted (seattletimes.com) 336
UPDATE (7/30): All the missing virus sequences have now been published, with their deletion being explained as just "an editorial oversight by a scientific journal," according to the New York Times.
In Slashdot's original report, an anonymous reader quoted another report from The New York Times: About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples from early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database. Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences -- intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans. The new analysis, released on Tuesday, bolsters earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019. As the Biden administration investigates the contested origins of the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, the study neither strengthens nor discounts the hypothesis that the pathogen leaked out of a famous Wuhan lab. But it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted, and suggests that there may be more revelations to recover from the far corners of the internet.
UPDATE (6/25): The Washington Post notes the data wasn't exactly suppressed. "Processed forms of the same data were included in a preprint paper from Chinese scientists posted in March 2020 and, after peer review, published that June in the journal Small." And in addition: The NIH released a statement Wednesday saying that a researcher who originally published the genetic sequences asked for them to be removed from the NIH database so that they could be included in a different database. The agency said it is standard practice to remove data if requested to do so...
Bloom's paper acknowledges that there are benign reasons why researchers might want to delete data from a public database. The data cited by Bloom are not alone in being removed by the NIH during the pandemic. The agency, in response to an inquiry from The Post, said the National Library of Medicine has so far identified eight instances since the start of the pandemic when researchers had withdrawn submissions to the library.
"This one from China and the rest from submitters predominantly in the U.S.," the NIH said in its response. "All of those followed standard operating procedures."
The New York Times writes: The genetic sequences of viral samples hold crucial clues about how SARS-CoV-2 shifted to our species from another animal, most likely a bat. Most precious of all are sequences from early in the pandemic, because they take scientists closer to the original spillover event. As [Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report] was reviewing what genetic data had been published by various research groups, he came across a March 2020 study with a spreadsheet that included information on 241 genetic sequences collected by scientists at Wuhan University. The spreadsheet indicated that the scientists had uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, managed by the U.S. government's National Library of Medicine. But when Dr. Bloom looked for the Wuhan sequences in the database earlier this month, his only result was "no item found." Puzzled, he went back to the spreadsheet for any further clues. It indicated that the 241 sequences had been collected by a scientist named Aisi Fu at Renmin Hospital in Wuhan. Searching medical literature, Dr. Bloom eventually found another study posted online in March 2020 by Dr. Fu and colleagues, describing a new experimental test for SARS-CoV-2. The Chinese scientists published it in a scientific journal three months later. In that study, the scientists wrote that they had looked at 45 samples from nasal swabs taken "from outpatients with suspected Covid-19 early in the epidemic." They then searched for a portion of SARS-CoV-2's genetic material in the swabs. The researchers did not publish the actual sequences of the genes they fished out of the samples. Instead, they only published some mutations in the viruses.
But a number of clues indicated to Dr. Bloom that the samples were the source of the 241 missing sequences. The papers included no explanation as to why the sequences had been uploaded to the Sequence Read Archive, only to disappear later. Perusing the archive, Dr. Bloom figured out that many of the sequences were stored as files on Google Cloud. Each sequence was contained in a file in the cloud, and the names of the files all shared the same basic format, he reported. Dr. Bloom swapped in the code for a missing sequence from Wuhan. Suddenly, he had the sequence. All told, he managed to recover 13 sequences from the cloud this way. With this new data, Dr. Bloom looked back once more at the early stages of the pandemic. He combined the 13 sequences with other published sequences of early coronaviruses, hoping to make progress on building the family tree of SARS-CoV-2. Working out all the steps by which SARS-CoV-2 evolved from a bat virus has been a challenge because scientists still have a limited number of samples to study. Some of the earliest samples come from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where an outbreak occurred in December 2019. But those market viruses actually have three extra mutations that are missing from SARS-CoV-2 samples collected weeks later. In other words, those later viruses look more like coronaviruses found in bats, supporting the idea that there was some early lineage of the virus that did not pass through the seafood market. Dr. Bloom found that the deleted sequences he recovered from the cloud also lack those extra mutations. "They're three steps more similar to the bat coronaviruses than the viruses from the Huanan fish market," Dr. Bloom said. This suggests, he said, that by the time SARS-CoV-2 reached the market, it had been circulating for awhile in Wuhan or beyond. The market viruses, he argued, aren't representative of full diversity of coronaviruses already loose in late 2019.
UPDATE (7/30): When republishing their sequences, the researchers indicated they actually came from January 30, 2020 (and not "late 2019").
In Slashdot's original report, an anonymous reader quoted another report from The New York Times: About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples from early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database. Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences -- intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans. The new analysis, released on Tuesday, bolsters earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019. As the Biden administration investigates the contested origins of the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, the study neither strengthens nor discounts the hypothesis that the pathogen leaked out of a famous Wuhan lab. But it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted, and suggests that there may be more revelations to recover from the far corners of the internet.
UPDATE (6/25): The Washington Post notes the data wasn't exactly suppressed. "Processed forms of the same data were included in a preprint paper from Chinese scientists posted in March 2020 and, after peer review, published that June in the journal Small." And in addition: The NIH released a statement Wednesday saying that a researcher who originally published the genetic sequences asked for them to be removed from the NIH database so that they could be included in a different database. The agency said it is standard practice to remove data if requested to do so...
Bloom's paper acknowledges that there are benign reasons why researchers might want to delete data from a public database. The data cited by Bloom are not alone in being removed by the NIH during the pandemic. The agency, in response to an inquiry from The Post, said the National Library of Medicine has so far identified eight instances since the start of the pandemic when researchers had withdrawn submissions to the library.
"This one from China and the rest from submitters predominantly in the U.S.," the NIH said in its response. "All of those followed standard operating procedures."
The New York Times writes: The genetic sequences of viral samples hold crucial clues about how SARS-CoV-2 shifted to our species from another animal, most likely a bat. Most precious of all are sequences from early in the pandemic, because they take scientists closer to the original spillover event. As [Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report] was reviewing what genetic data had been published by various research groups, he came across a March 2020 study with a spreadsheet that included information on 241 genetic sequences collected by scientists at Wuhan University. The spreadsheet indicated that the scientists had uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, managed by the U.S. government's National Library of Medicine. But when Dr. Bloom looked for the Wuhan sequences in the database earlier this month, his only result was "no item found." Puzzled, he went back to the spreadsheet for any further clues. It indicated that the 241 sequences had been collected by a scientist named Aisi Fu at Renmin Hospital in Wuhan. Searching medical literature, Dr. Bloom eventually found another study posted online in March 2020 by Dr. Fu and colleagues, describing a new experimental test for SARS-CoV-2. The Chinese scientists published it in a scientific journal three months later. In that study, the scientists wrote that they had looked at 45 samples from nasal swabs taken "from outpatients with suspected Covid-19 early in the epidemic." They then searched for a portion of SARS-CoV-2's genetic material in the swabs. The researchers did not publish the actual sequences of the genes they fished out of the samples. Instead, they only published some mutations in the viruses.
But a number of clues indicated to Dr. Bloom that the samples were the source of the 241 missing sequences. The papers included no explanation as to why the sequences had been uploaded to the Sequence Read Archive, only to disappear later. Perusing the archive, Dr. Bloom figured out that many of the sequences were stored as files on Google Cloud. Each sequence was contained in a file in the cloud, and the names of the files all shared the same basic format, he reported. Dr. Bloom swapped in the code for a missing sequence from Wuhan. Suddenly, he had the sequence. All told, he managed to recover 13 sequences from the cloud this way. With this new data, Dr. Bloom looked back once more at the early stages of the pandemic. He combined the 13 sequences with other published sequences of early coronaviruses, hoping to make progress on building the family tree of SARS-CoV-2. Working out all the steps by which SARS-CoV-2 evolved from a bat virus has been a challenge because scientists still have a limited number of samples to study. Some of the earliest samples come from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where an outbreak occurred in December 2019. But those market viruses actually have three extra mutations that are missing from SARS-CoV-2 samples collected weeks later. In other words, those later viruses look more like coronaviruses found in bats, supporting the idea that there was some early lineage of the virus that did not pass through the seafood market. Dr. Bloom found that the deleted sequences he recovered from the cloud also lack those extra mutations. "They're three steps more similar to the bat coronaviruses than the viruses from the Huanan fish market," Dr. Bloom said. This suggests, he said, that by the time SARS-CoV-2 reached the market, it had been circulating for awhile in Wuhan or beyond. The market viruses, he argued, aren't representative of full diversity of coronaviruses already loose in late 2019.
UPDATE (7/30): When republishing their sequences, the researchers indicated they actually came from January 30, 2020 (and not "late 2019").
Good timing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good timing (Score:4, Informative)
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You think. Do you have evidence, or just making suppositions.
Trump called it, but only by accident. Trump hated China for rebuffing his romantic intentions towards them. We really don't have any evidence that Trump paid any attention whatsoever to intelligence briefings, or even the normal daily executive briefings; Trump was winging it the entire four years. He had family and friends who did the actual work of figuring out what was happening.
Re: Good timing (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, sure. (Score:4, Informative)
Right, an easily commutable disease that can be somewhat lethal could never evolve naturally!
Your whole post is just limp conjecture. I mean...
Trump called it. He must have known something at the time. And now it turns out to be right.
Trump blames everything on anybody not him and most of his rants about Covid and China only came up after he began taking heat for his poor response to the epidemic. Basically, it certainly seems to me he didn't know shit.
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I think the word you want is "communicable", not "commutable".
Re:Good timing (Score:4, Funny)
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The idea that the rural inhabitants didn’t experience the outbreak first or at the same time (like the vendor of the bat and their family and not a customer) is either h
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all too convenient (Score:2)
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Ugh, that is not true at all. Get your news from better sources. There are well known sources of bat coronaviruses quite near Wuhan. Even John Oliver covered this on his "Next Pandemic" [caryinstitute.org]episode.
The reality is that China is not alone in not properly handling integration of human habitat with natural habitat.
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Sigh. The why is not so obvious. Of course, it could correspond with a cover-up - it is a possible explanation. But there are many other explanations. Perhaps they found errors in their data? Perhaps at the time the Chinese government started to get paranoid and the workers at the lab (not the government) decided it was safest for their career to remove anything Covid-related that wasn't officially approved to be published. So the lab worker's personal fear of their own government might have caused them to
Wuhan Wayback (Score:3)
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This may sound silly, but is this something that might exist on The Wayback Machine [archive.org]?
For a BSL-4 facility?
This may sound silly, but that would be called required auditing.
Of course, I'm also talking about US safety standards...
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Samples aren't always handled in a BSL-4 facility. The lab that analyzes your nasal swab isn't BSL-4, it just takes basic microbiological precautions. US research guidelines don't require BSL-4 facilities except for certain highly risky research protocols, like inoculating live animals. Culturing viruses in cells requires BSL-3.
In any case, the auditing in a more secure facility wouldn't necessarily protect the data and analytical products. That kind of stuff is usually held pretty close to the research
Re:Wuhan Wayback (Score:5, Informative)
Adding the SRA to the Internet Archive would be an immense undertaking for several reasons. Not only is it huge (36 PB as of January; the IA is ~50 PB as of April) but a lot of the sequences are not publicly accessible because they can involve data from human subjects. There are two official mirrors (at DDBJ in Japan and EBI in the UK) but AFAIK they would mirror deletions, as well.
Incidentally, to remove something from the SRA requires a written email request sent to the NCBI. It would be very interesting to see the reason given in that email.
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Ideally, all genetic databases (be they for BLAST, the Genbank database, or any of the others you list) should be stored in some form of version control system where it is possible to synthesize any edition from the changes. Ideal is not always practical, and genetic data (through sheer volume) would be incredibly difficult to process. Anyone here familiar with BLAST (not sure if it still is, but it was certainly a free to search database) knows finding anything takes time and processor power.
I'd still say
Re:Wuhan Wayback (Score:5, Funny)
Confirmation bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone will read this post and use it to confirm their own biases.
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Re: Confirmation bias (Score:2)
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I think a bunch of conspiracy theorists will go for the "Proves LIEberals were LYING when they said it wasn't leaked from lab!!!" thing again, then linking to a bunch of cases where the media didn't take seriously the theory that the virus was created in a lab.
Forget the "liberal" label, for a minute, but the above is just plain revisionist history [slashdot.org].
It WAS quite fashionable to conflate "lab leak" with "lab created: in an attempt to discredit anyone raising the possibility, though, just like you're doing above.
Re:Confirmation bias (Score:5, Insightful)
The "lab leak" story seems to serve 2 purposes. First, it gives a way to blame a person, company, or country; having someone to blame is great for politics. Second, it gives a bit of false assurance that once you've figured out the origin that you need no longer fear pandemics in the future and thus do not need to take the necessary steps to try and reduce their likelihood.
All a lab leak shows if proven is that people were sloppy.
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It distracts from the US labs that also research gain of function.
Re: Confirmation bias (Score:5, Insightful)
A year and a half of being lied to from all directions will do that to people.
As far as I can tell, there was never any firm evidence for or against the lab leak or the seafood market. Both were plausible at the outset, but the nonsense from the media that
"lab leak" =
"engineered virus" =
"bioweapon" =
"illuminati" =
"faster download speeds" =
"racist conspiracy theory"
got traction in the media...for transparently cynical political reasons...and tainted the nominally authoritative sources of information to such an absurd degree that I'd be surprised if large numbers of otherwise smart people didn't start latching onto noise and nonsense.
If this were happening in some third world shithole country, we'd all chuckle at the rubes believing their silly superstitions and smugly declare that something like that couldn't happen in a literate, educated, scientific, liberal democracy like ours.
But guess what: the social fabric is fragile. And introducing one element that makes the shithole countries so pungent (for example, putting propaganda up as press) tends to invite the other pathologies in as well.
Re: Confirmation bias (Score:5, Insightful)
It helps to have the "leader" of the free world espousing these stories. It's one thing for crazy uncle Larry to have some nutball ideas, they won't spread too far, but when the president is a nutcase in public with a fan base who believe he was personally annointed by God, those conspiracy theories will spread far and wide. Almost like a pandemic of misinformation.
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True, but you know that everyone, including those that upvoted you, take your comment to mean "the other side's propaganda was dangerous", while remaining convinced that their side's was divine, scientific, and free of bias.
They will offer you example after example of the other side's mistakes and silly claims, but when you ask them to point that critical eye are their own side, they say "well, what do you mean?"
The ability to accept our side as flawed does not exist, and in rare cases in which it does, suc
Just more WTF? (Score:2)
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Yep. Mine is that most people are stupid. Nicely confirmed.
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US controlled database? (Score:2)
scientists had uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, managed by the U.S. government's National Library of Medicine
Surely the data can be recovered from that system then, if it is controlled by the US. From a backup, or if it is still in the database and just flagged as "hidden" or "inactive", or from the server logs containing POSTed data, etc.
China isn't forthcoming, this is why. (Score:2)
In a perfect world everyone would put their cards on the table and cooperate to address the issue. Unfortunately
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I agree, but now we have given them a valid reason to be uncooperative
>Also, if someone tries to kill you, it's perfectly moral and ethical to kill them before they can. Even the Dali Lama thought so.
I assume you are commenting on my signature line. In my view a cannibal is insane, and likewise anybody who would take a life for any reason would also be insane. I doubt you and the Dali Lama are suggesting that if somebody tries to eat you, it is moral and ethica
Jesse Bloom found exactly nothing new that is not (Score:3, Informative)
Dr. Robert F. Garry of Tulane University is the virologist who co-wrote the earliest influential March 2020 paper on SARS-COV2.
Another mistake in the OP is that Bloom is not a virologist but a computational biologist: Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
University of California at San Diego evolutionary biologist Dr. Joel Wertheim, who has studied the emergence of the virus in Hubei province, said, I actually dont think this study adds much to the origins debate.
The NIH released a statement Wednesday saying that a researcher who originally published the genetic sequences asked for them to be removed from the NIH database so that they could be included in a different database. The NIH said it is standard practice to remove data if requested to do so. The NIH statement did not identify the scientist who requested that the material be excised from the agencyâ(TM)s sequence read archive, known as the SRA.
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This is the consequence of... (Score:4, Funny)
you're telling no one every lost a file? (Score:2)
a scientist named Aisi Fu (Score:2)
You tell me "a scientist named Aisi Fu", no way this is a coincidence...
No need to worry (Score:2)
Currently, estimates put the delta variant at over 20% of all
Qdot.org? BS conspiracies now (Score:3)
The sequences were moved to other databases and requested to be deleted for version control. What a garbage dump /. is now.
Keep in mind that China would very much like (Score:4, Interesting)
So yeah, we already know China was covering things up. The question is why. As for me, I find it much more likely that the thing Epidemiologists have been warning us about for 30-40 years (that deforestation was going to lead to new viruses as wild animals were forced out of their habitats) happened like it has many times in the past. But hey, since when have we listened to experts?
Politicizing a critcal safety issue (Score:3)
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True, but we don't know what happened in *this* case. And even though China is covering up, it doesn't necessarily mean there is something *to* cover up.
The crackdown on information started at the local level all the way back in December of 2019, before anyone could possibly have known what they were dealing with. A regime that sensitive to criticism doesn't wait for embarrassing news to come out; it tries to preclude the very possibility.
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True, but we don't know what happened in *this* case. And even though China is covering up, it doesn't necessarily mean there is something *to* cover up.
The crackdown on information started at the local level all the way back in December of 2019, before anyone could possibly have known what they were dealing with. A regime that sensitive to criticism doesn't wait for embarrassing news to come out; it tries to preclude the very possibility.
We do not know if or what China is covering up. The trouble is that without complete and verified transparency there will be a suspicion that there is a cover up and that what is being hidden is bad (who covers up 'good' facts ?). Given the history of the lack of complete openness it will be very hard for China to convince everyone that they have clean hands.
Occam's Razor (Score:2)
China hides stuff for rather trivial reasons also. When you are a despot you get into the habit of manipulating and hiding info because you can and nothing stops you. But that by itself does not mean the virus is lab-made.
Occam's Razor is that they are covering up their early coverup of the spread, not virus making.
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Note that in China, it's often not a centralized effort, but rather individuals all doing their part independently to make sure China doesn't lose face.
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I knew it....those darn Finnish people are always up to no good.
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With their quaint fish slapping customs.
Don't be giving support to conspiracy theories... (Score:3)
...through poor arguments.
You're pulling a fallacy of the undistributed middle there. [wikipedia.org]
Possibility of a cover-up has nothing to do with the origin of the virus - one doesn't prove, cause or directly relate to the other.
E.g. Premise A: People may commit lottery fraud.
Premise B: There are lotteries being run in Paris, Los Angeles and Tokyo.
A conclusion C like "Just because someone wins the lottery in Paris, doesn't mean all Frenchmen are cheaters, people travel around." would be a fallacy.
It doesn't actually es
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Phylogenetic analysis also indicates that a virus from Rhinolophus affinis, collected in Yunnan province and designated RaTG13, has a 96% resemblance to SARSCoV2. The RaTG13 virus sequence is the closest known sequence to SARS-CoV-2
Yunnan province is roughly 2,000 kilometers away from Wuhan.
Re:china is covering things up (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm shocked, SHOCKED to find a lab studying coronaviruses in an area where all sorts of wild coronaviruses are.
Re:china is covering things up (Score:5, Informative)
First, the argument that it didn't come from the lab came chiefly from scientists, backed up by the inevitable investigation by the spy agencies.
Second, epidemics spring up very quickly. The Swine Flu pandemic took a very short time to go from one person on one farm to most of the country, and from there to most of the world.
Ebola outbreaks affect multiple nations and are devastating, but spread like wildfire from a tiny tiny cluster of cases.
The 1918 Flu went from one barracks in the US across the globe in a few months.
This is how diseases work. And the new findings suggest that this had been incubating in rural human populations for a long time before spreading into Wuhan. Which is entirely consistent with what we get with the three examples above.
Re:china is covering things up (Score:5, Insightful)
It was obvious to all that an escape from a lab was a possib le source. No one really denied this, not even the bogeyman of Fauci (for some reason the alt right has turned him into the antichrist). However that does NOT mean the escape was intentional, or that it was a weaponized virus, or the other conspiracy theories. There seems to be a desire to link this accident on China directly with calls from stronger action, including military. This makes no sense, the accident could come from a US lab also.
Outbreaks like this in the future are very likely. Focusing on punishing China does nothing whatsoever to protect against fugure pandemics. You do not need weaponized diseases or labs for any of these pandemics to happen. The reason for the spread is because of increased interconnectivity of the world's populations; and the reason for the quick spread and seriousness of symptoms is because it's a new disease with little immune defenses against it. This is extremely similar to the 1918 flu pandemic in so many ways.
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Careful. This should be treated as completely irrelevant. That the people who blame China want to use it as an excuse to attack China, is no different than the people who believe in global warming want to stop global warming. The truth or falseness of assertions like "covid escaped from a lab" and "global warming is happening" has jack shit to do with political responses to those assertions
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You have evidence of people being banned for suggesting it came from a lab?
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Are you saying the lab leak was an accident or intentional?
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Yes.
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accident or intentional
Yes.
(whoosh)
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A virus with high seasonality, which goes unnoticed in most of its hosts, because it is often asymptomatic.
Sure, not the fact that anyone wants to hear or accept, but it's true.
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Influenza is seasonal, Covid 19 is not seasonal. Yet your comments seem to imply you're talking about covid, so either you are misinformed or intentionally spreading misinformation.
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A biolab engineering coronaviruses was within a few miles of the first outbreak.
And now, we're finding potential evidence that has been deleted.
FTFY.
The first cases were just prototypes. They didn't need to keep the data until they perfected a strain.
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A biolab studying coronaviruses was within a few miles of the first outbreak.
The lab was partially funded by the USA.
So there's at least two nations — the two most powerful nations on the planet, BTW — which might want the information quashed.
There was also a U.S. CDC expert in China that was fired shortly before the outbreak, so that second part may not be such a stretch after all.
Re: The backbending is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
It is ridiculous but a clownshow is only evidence of clowns, not criminality.
There is strong *circumstantial* evidence of a lab leak...like the lab admitting early on they had a probable ancestor virus in their possession in 2013...but that's it.
It's like seeing a murder victim killed with a 9mm bullet and blaming the guy nearest the crime scene who owns a 9mm. It's *reasonable* to suspect him, and it's a blatent lie to claim it isn't reasonable, but it's not enough to convict absent other evidence stronger than one or two coincidences.
The bullets matching his gun would be the smoking gun, so to speak. But a bullet matching 96% isn't quite there.
Reports of WIV employees getting sick in the fall of 2019 is something...but not much when you consider it's flu season.
The coverup is also something...but you have to remember that slap-dash denials of bad news are par for the course in places like the PRC.
So I remain open to the possibility but I don't see dispositive evidence yet.
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I don't think that your 9mm analogy holds up, there are far, FAR too many pistols chambered in 9mm and it's too easy to do ballastics on a recovered 9mm bullet and a pistol.
Re: The backbending is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even that. It's like blaming the first cop with a 9mm who shows up to investigate the murder.
It's a lab that studies coronaviruses. Odds are pretty damn high that it had a sample of the virus or a very close relative. But where did they get that? It would have already been in the wild, unless they were so mind-numbingly stupid to have been actively breeding mutations. In fact, I'd hope that they'd have spotted at least a few variants of this fucker while it was percolating through their population at a low level, because that means they were doing their job. It's not impossible that it might have leaked, but it's practically impossible that it wasn't already out in the wild.
TL;DR the entire question of lab leak versus in the wild is really a "why not both?" situation.
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The US had a moratorium on gain of function research starting in 2014. It was lifted in 2017. One type of gain of function research is animal passage techniques. This amounts to actively breeding mutations to give a virus new properties including making it more dangerous to humans. It would not be surprising if Wuhan was doing this type of research, and they are not the only ones.
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It's like blaming the first cop with a 9mm who was on the scene *and then threw their gun into a river*.
You remember that this whole post is about the viral sequences in question being deleted at the request of Wuhan researchers?
96%, and early origin (Score:2)
According to virologists, 96% is nowhere near as close as it sounds and is a difference it could takes decades of evolution, at the speed of virus reproduction, to bridge.
That's a priori believable given that 98% is how much we have in common with chimpanzees.
Carl Sagan's "Baloney detection kit" includes the technique of building multiple hypotheses for any observation. Even with that discipline, it sure looks like the virus was circulating before December 2019.
Blood samples from Italian cancer patients as
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Coverup of bad news isn't just a PRC thing, it happens in the elsewhere. Trump was bemoaning the fact that the media focuses too much on bad news, with the implication that they did so just to hurt his ratings. Plenty of countries around the world like to clamp down on the bad news, especially if there might be political fallout from it.
Most countries are bad at locking up the leaks though. Even China is bad at it, it may seem at times like China has a strong centralized control but in reality most of th
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The grants to build something exactly like SARS-CoV-2 were paid for by the US NIH, and built in the Wuhan lab.
Re: The backbending is ridiculous (Score:2)
In the hypothetical case of the guy destroying his gun...you might be able to put him away for obstruction...but if he's got a good lawyer, that's still an if.
Again: the distance from "plausible" to "likely" is nonzero, and the distance from "likely" to "almost certainly" is greater still.
Suspicious behavior moves it some ways along toward likely, but isn't enough to get me much past there.
Unless you *know* (as opposed to suspect) something the rest of us don't, we're all stuck.
And you know what...given th
Punishing bad behaviour? (Score:2, Insightful)
We seem to have ever stronger proof that the CCP acting in ways that were destructive, if not murderous, for the rest of the world. This should have consequences. The fact that China is getting away with a vast number of different abuses - Uighurs, Hong Kong, South China Sea reefs to name a few - and these are not getting the response from the rest of planet that it should; instead we stick our heads in the sand and hope it will end well.
Re: (Score:3)
not the least of which is China's coverup attempts like this one.
And aliens exist because the US keeps Area 51 under tight security.
Re:The backbending is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been at least two other coronavirus outbreaks in the past 20 years, and neither of them were particularly close to any lab. As far as the coverup, a lab leak is hardly the only reason to do that. China followed the exact same course of denial during the 2003 outbreak. And they're hardly alone: The heads of state in North Korea, Brazil, and the United States all tried at various points to declare "No problem here!" when they knew it wasn't true.
For the razor to cut in a direction other than it's historically cut would take more than circumstantial evidence. The lab being in the same city is hardly proof positive, when that city also has a wild animal trade exposing the general public to coronaviruses, and that this has already led to outbreaks in the past.
We'll continue to see these pandemics every few decades, lab or no lab, just as we always have. (Even more, with increased global travel.) We certainly won't mitigate them by listening to orangeman, "leftist brains", or anyone foaming at the mouth about either of them. But since you wanted to bring him up, he does have an exceptional (even for a politician) amount of lies in his track record. Counting on him for... well, anything, is more likely to rot brain cells than give any grand insights or useful analysis.
Every Chinese city has a wet market (Score:2)
Every Chinese city has wet markets. Wuhan's wet market is neither unique nor unusual when compared to any other such market in China.
The question is "why Wuhan?" The related question is "why not Wuhan?"
What other locations have seen a pandemic outbreak? Is the presence of a lab significant? Is the present of a wet market significant? Other countries also have wet markets and haven't had a pandemic start there.
Lab safety worth thinking about no matter what (Score:2)
Even without hard evidence, it's prudent to call for safety audits on every virus lab in the world, just in case. We have hundreds of priors where people went to the hospital after incidents at biohazard labs. USA Today did some FOIA work and found that many just in the US.
There have been calls for controlling wild animal markets, which might help.
Re:Link to the paper pre-print (Score:5, Informative)
Stop spreading FUD. Coronaviruses are RNA viruses, which mutate quite quickly. SARS-CoV-2 mutates at about two base pairs per month: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
The delta variant has three or four functional mutations of concern, meaning they're located in just the right places to actually do something that we're worried about.
Re:Link to the paper pre-print (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit.
Here's a graph showing the cov2 phylogeny over time. Note the rate estimate.
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gl... [nextstrain.org]
The variants you're referring to might be variants of concern.
If you're a troll, stop being a dick. If you're a well-meaning person, recognize that you don't know what the hell you're talking about and listen more than you speak. FUD is dangerous.
Re: (Score:3)
So no, I am not going to listen to you, or known liars like Fauci, or agenda-driven legacy media, or ideologically slanted social media.
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That's what you said. Three mutations between a pair of virus samples indicates a couple months of divergence. Not only is it probable, it's entirely consistent with the supposed timeline.
You've got essentially no knowledge even of the high school biology, but your confirmation bias is so strong you'll grasp any twig and try to twist it to supp
Re: (Score:3)
How did this get mod'ed a troll. WTF mods.
I'd hazard a guess it's because of its conspiratorial slant, and the obvious ignorance of the poster, as evidenced by the numerous inaccuracies within so few lines.
"...we only have less than dozen variants...": It is estimated that the virus undergoes a single 'point' mutation per two hosts in the chain of infection. While most of these mutations do not offer competitive advantage each could be described as a strain. That the news has focussed on those strains that are successful / particularly dangerous to
Re: (Score:3)
Thank you for that self correction. To be honest I was not expecting that, nor such a measured response.
Too many people are too politically invested into lab theory being wrong that it is simply unallowable to acknowledge it as the leading hypothesis.
For what it's worth, this I do (mostly) agree with. While there's no 'right' answer to the problem, one of my biggest bugbears with this entire saga has been the 'censorship' by both traditional and social media companies with regards to alternate hypotheses regarding the origin of the virus, 'dissenting' views on how to manage the pandemic response, not to mention simple steps people can take to mitigate
What Luckyo gibberish are you trying to peddle.br (Score:4, Informative)
What Luckyo gibberish are you trying to peddle.
[wikipedia.org]
The Delta/ B.1.617.2 genome has 13 mutations (15 or 17 according to some sources,[which?] depending on whether more common mutations are included) which produce alterations in the amino-acid sequences of the proteins it encodes.[3] Four of them, all of which are in the virus's spike protein code, are of particular concern:
Re: (Score:3)
I'll start by saying, I am in the camp that thinks the preponderance of evidence I am aware of best fists the explanation that it came from the lab, and it leaked. Subsequently various people have attempted to hide that fact. - The specifics of who, when exactly, and to what degree of malice and political strategy was subsequently employed once the serious nature of the problem clear is question.
However to play devils advocate -
The probability of simultaneous three mutations in a virus are extremely low.
That something is very unlikely does not mean it never happens! Reality is ther
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely correct. However, when choosing between multiple hypothesis of the events, would you go with one that is very unlikely or with one that is plausible?
Re: (Score:3)
The probability of simultaneous three mutations in a virus are extremely low.
True. But you accept it's possible. Now, we have no idea how long the 'original' virus has been circulating, jumping from host to host mutating as it goes, but it's reasonable to assume thousands of years at least. Hmm, all of a sudden that improbability doesn't seem that unlikely - except that it (might have) happened to occur right when we're alive. There's probably a term in psychology for scepticism based around that.
I must admit, I'm curious as to why you'd think the '3 mutations' (from a progenitor to
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know if you know this, but lots of people gather in tight quarters in markets like this. If a single human carrier brought it to the market to start the spread, the outbreak still originates at the market. There are several plausible options and few of them have been completely ruled out yet.
Re:Fake news (Score:4, Informative)
it was shown that COVID 19 is not even capable of infecting bats.
Nonsense. [thelancet.com]
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Equally, that means absolutely ANYBODY involved from ANY of the regions involved could be Patient Zero, including vendors, politicians, friends with benefits, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with COVID is that the acute symptoms are pretty generic for respiratory viruses; most infected people never develop the distinctive symptoms. This is the kind of thing that's worth looking into, though; if there are samples taken from these athletes shortly after this incident still around they'd certainly be worth running up the PCR flagpole.
US Intelligence figured out something was spreading in the Wuhan region back in in early November [go.com]. Today, the earliest openly acknowledged case of COVID
Re: (Score:3)
Samples of antibodies aren't a reliable indicator like actual virus being found. There could certainly have been another coronavirus that caused no major illnesses at all but led to similar antibodies being produced. Being infected with that earlier virus may have even been protective against the new one if they are similar enough to create similar antibodies.
Re: (Score:2)
Do not spread unapproved conspiracy theories. But this one received the stamp of approval. So go ahead, now.
Am I supposed to rage about the stupidity of gain-of-function research conducted in a dense urban area and having sloppy safety practices;
Or rage about the NIH providing funding to a lab controlled by the fucking CCP whether they want to deny it was for GoF or not;
Or rage about the show of force displayed by the switch operators that have now graciously allowed discussion and search for truth on the subject without odious censorship?
Which one am I allowed?