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Comment by raphlinus | Hacker News Reader

I like Carl Bergstrom's take on this:

I have reason to believe that if the outgoing administration claims to have reason to believe something but refuses to provide the evidence behind it, they are lying.

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1350292056782954498

Here's a very serious, legitimate review of the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5

Unfortunately, from my experience, most people are going to believe what they want to believe, based more on political affiliation more than anything else, and the empirical facts don't register too strongly.

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That paper is really frustrating - it seems to be written for laypeople like us, but conflates the theory that humans made a containment mistake and COVID escaped from a lab so (we should make research safer) with "COVID is an intentionally engineered bioweapon, so we should stop researching."

And the most critical claim in the paper is not substantiated in any way:

> Gain-of-function research is also subject to intense scrutiny and governmental oversight, precisely because of the high risk involved in conducting it safely; thus, it is extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar.

Or substantiation is hinted at but never delivered:

> This work produced some of the strongest corroborating evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is a naturally emergent pathogen, as serological surveys demonstrated that people living in close proximity to colonies of bats had antibodies to bat SARS-like coronaviruses. The NIH has since set impossible conditions for restoring the grant, ensuring that this research will never resume.

Maybe the next place to go is learning more about the initial results from the EcoHealth Alliance grant referenced in the above quote. Still, it's a pretty unsatisfying review.

[edit, fixed typo: containement -> containment]

Thank you for writing this, I was just about to start writing up something similar. The linked paper might be 'serious' in tone but the claims are not convincing.

One of the best articles I have seen on the lab-made hypothesis is here:

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

If you want to go down a more skeptical route, closer into conspiracy theories and Chinese politics, you can read some of the writings on this site:

https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/blog/scientific-evidence-and...

Please, when reading these, keep your scientist hat on and evaluate the claims with an open mind.

That being said, if anyone has links to rebuttals of some of the key ideas behind these articles, or further evidence of natural origin beyond the Andersen et al Nature paper, please link it, I'd very much like to change my mind.

Here's one such rebuttal: https://medium.com/@stoilov_77462/response-to-yuri-deigin-th...

Great! Thank you!

This is her entire argument:

"Gain-of-function research is also subject to intense scrutiny and governmental oversight, precisely because of the high risk involved in conducting it safely; thus, it is extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar."

This research was not happening under the radar. WIV has been openly publishing gain of function research on bat Coronaviruses for years. It's quite possible that SARS-CoV-2 was a research project that they fully intended to publish, but was accidentally released during the research.

That seems pretty typical for a paper published in Nature. I thought it was meant to be good but basically every paper to do with disease or biology I've read in Nature over the past 12 months has been like this: it looks superficially scientific and when read carefully it just falls apart. They've also been suppressing critical commentary sent to them. The Flaxman paper was atrocious and they sat on a formal response that was sent to them about it for like 6 months.

Maybe if authorities were a bit more neutral. Some plausible options were ruled out from day 1, without any investigation.

And words like "empirical facts" and "independent review" in context of China, do not add much credibility.

If virus has natural origin, we should be able to find population of infected bats. Until then it is just another unproven theory.

I should clarify, neither I nor Dr. Rasmussen are claiming that we know what the true origin is, or that zoonotic spillover is definitely what happened. There is not enough evidence to make such a definitive conclusion. I can see how people might read my comment as implicitly asserting that if people did understand the empirical facts they would come to the conclusion of zoonotic origin.

That said, there are facts, and they are relevant: the fact that COV RaTG13 has 96.2% similarity to SARS-COV-2. The incredible diversity of bat coronaviruses, and the fact that only fraction are studied and understood, despite serious study by the WIV.

Here's another good quote from another good thread: And investigating zoonotic origins can take decades, and you may NEVER find the "smoking bat" or whatever other intermediate species that may be involved. It's like looking for a needle in a planet-sized haystack. -- https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13497545972759142...

The main point that I was trying to make, which I stand by, is that most people are going to base their beliefs about this question on essentially political considerations: do you trust the CCP or the US State Dept more? Unfortunately, both of those institutions have done terrible damage to objective scientific inquiry, and in my opinion neither one is really deserving of trust. Better to follow the science where it leads, but this is an often frustrating and time consuming process.

I don’t know, there’s really not much concrete information to go off of at this point. I think any reasonable person would naturally side with the people asking for more evidence and/or transparency. In this case that appears to be the State Dept. I’m not sure if you could call that a political consideration, though the question of origin has garnered plenty of attention in our political theater.

Maybe you’re right and most people today will base their beliefs on politics. I’d still hesitate to label anybody when the facts haven’t landed yet, if only to deescalate the present day’s partisanship.

Human share 98.5 percent of DNA with shimpanzee. Percentage is just a pop science. Find the missing link and you have a proof.

But for start we could explain how south china wild bat got into wuhan meat market, 500 km from its origin.

I am not from US or China. From my view Wuhan lab was sponsored by US. My concern is how often will current crisis repeat, every 10 years? Nobody is answering this question.

And we do not need "lab origin" to pin blame on China. Wuhan meat market is open again, more bats sold...

And keep in mind last week Mike Pompous of the State Department released a memo on forming a closer relationship with Taiwan [0].

The Trump administration is stoking the flames against the mainland China on their way out.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706155

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