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Comment by actually_a_dog | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Let's also not forget that for this virus to have escaped, there would have had to have been incredibly lax safety procedures. That doesn't mean that wasn't the case, just that we would have had trained researchers and technicians working with viruses similar to other viruses that have jumped species and caused serious disease under the equivalent of BSL-1 (i.e. no precautions). BSL-2 is required for procedures where a potentially human-infectious virus may be aerosolized.

For the zoonotic leap hypothesis, all you need is for some people to be near some sick bats. Which one is simpler?

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Coronaviruses were being studied in a BSL-4 lab in Wuhan. That is ~100 metres from the meat market which was supposedly the epicentre of the original outbreak. Theoretically the safety standards would be very high. But all it takes is one slip-up. And it wouldn't be the first time that has happened. Seems pretty simple to me.

The zoonotic leap is definitely plausible too. But there you have to explain how the virus mutated to be infectious to humans. Whereas the lab is known to have intentionally modified the coronaviruses it was studying to be infectious to humans.

Sure, I'm not denying the plausibility of either scenario. But, which one is more likely: a virus jumped from animal to human, just as has happened many times before in history (and, without our help, for that matter), or safety procedures were not being followed in a lab that studies viruses with the very highest level of safety controls? How many times has the latter happened compared to the former?

Only SARS was studied at BSL-4.

Bat coronaviruses were studied at BSL-2 as they were not believed to be dangerous to humans. Reference: the head of the WIV covid lab. https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-bat-woman-center-pandemic-1814... “ Shi said that bat viruses in China could be studied in BSL-2 labs because there was no evidence that they directly infected humans, a view supported by some other scientists.”

Biosecurity incidents are common, there were about 17 in the last decade [0]. Just SARS-CoV-1 leaked from the lab 4 times [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

A few incidents with excessively dangerous stuff like smallpox aside, most laboratory security incidents are essentially no worse than what millions of people experience on any given day. Scratched by sick animals, tick bites, mosquitos, bites larger animals, eating sick animals, getting blood from a different animal in an open (perhaps tiny) wound, breathing the air of densely held animals, leeches, etc etc etc.

I mean, not saying labs shouldn't be extremely careful, especially if the pathogen isn't unusually dangerous - but the outside world generally contains quite a few dangerous pathogens too, any more more (and more intense) interactions between host and human in which bad things can happen.

To be clear, these issues are serious and need addressing, but nevertheless the sheer numbers involved would suggest that the security incidents by themselves are unlikely to cause this kind of pandemic. We'd need some additional ingredient, like intention infection with multiple human subjects over a prolonged period, or extremely successful gain-of-function... something that can shift those otherwise billion-to-one odds very, very far.

Out of a kind of morbid fascination if indeed it turns out this long shot actually happened it would be really interesting to read the post-mortem as to which factors contributed, because it kind of has to be a list of bad luck and poor decisions.

(But to reiterate: it's not OK to ignore risks even if they aren't the most likely source of pandemic outbreaks, that's a way too low bar!)

> incredibly lax safety procedures.

Or someone having a bad day. Human beings are not robots. In fact they are quite opposite, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

> all you need is for some people to be near some sick bats.

Seems that there are multiple problems with that..

1. High level of optimisation for Human transmission, without many mutations indicating the possibility that it was pre-optimised somewhere before making the jump.

2. Presense of double `CGG` which is left as a common market to denote lab insertions.

>The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG. That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it. An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-la...

So on the other hand, for lab leak, only these needs to be satisfied.

1. They were doing GoF research on viruses trying optimise for human transmission.

2. Someone had a bad day and didn't follow the strict procedures, and ended up getting infected with a super charged virus.

What makes the above far fetched is only if you take the chinese researcher's word for granted, and accpet that there was no such research being conducted there, and no virus that was close enough was stored in the lab to start the research with. But without that, I think the lab leak is much more probably, and I think most experts will agree as well (They don't because they have a hard time doubting fellow reserchers without evidence).

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