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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

> Instead, the progenitor of known SARS-CoV-2 sequences likely contained three mutations relative to the market viruses that made it more similar to SARS-CoV-2's bat coronavirus relatives.

So, it came from a bat not a rouge lab experiment, and the early sequences sampled at the seafood market only looked "unusual" because they were not a fully representative sample of the Wuhan epidemic as it later spread out from there. Good to know.

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There are two controversies here:

(1) Were the first human infections of C19 the result of a random zoonotic outbreak (perhaps from a seafood market), or (alarmingly) from samples mishandled in a laboratory?

(2) Was the origin of C19 "naturally" zoonotic, or (alarmingly) was it in some way the product of laboratory manipulation of an existing bat coronavirus?

I don't know that there's much serious evidence for the alarming case on (2). But there's increasing evidence for the alarming case on (1).

I guess I disagree that (1) would be especially alarming. Mishandling of lab samples occurs all the time (even with good precautions), everyone knows this, and this is actually an excellent reason to be all the more cautious about whether GoF research should be allowed. Zoonotics are also a fact of life. Ultimately, it comes down to what one's priors are re: what actually happened in this case; it doesn't really matter much either way.

Mishandling of novel or virulent pathogens that cause widespread outbreaks do not in fact occur all the time. It's not hard to see why it matters how C19 happened: if it was in fact a lab leak, that would suggest strongly that it's problematic to site this kind of research in densely populated areas (contra the stereotypes, Wuhan, "the Chicago of China", is a densely populated metropolis). Had novel coronavirus research been centered in Casper, Wyoming, and an outbreak occurred there, we wouldn't much have to wonder where the virus came from.

You seem be shifting the goal posts.

Do you find it fishy that these early samples were not fully sequenced, and that the parts that were sequenced were later deleted?

Hmmmm...does that follow? I mean the alleged lab source would have been from bat coronaviruses anyway. Is there something about these mutations that would be key to the lab leak theory?

The rouge experiment theory is that the virus is the product of intentional mutations to make it more dangerous to humans. What this paper is saying is that this looks increasingly like a perfectly ordinary bat coronavirus, and what initially looked like unusual mutations actually happened well outside of any lab environment.

I don't think a lab leak needs to be connected in anyway with humans modifying the virus. It could easily been the case that these bats were studied in this lab without modification and a leak occurred.

Please, rouge is red. You meant rogue.

It's a perfectly normal bat virus that has difficulty infecting any mammals other than humans and mice genetically engineered to have human ACE2 receptors lining their respiratory system.

Jon Stewart made a great point:

This is the equivalent of rabidly, aggressively denying the possibility of the Hershey's factory having anything to do with the outbreak of "chocolatey goodness" in Hershey, PA.

The interpretation you stated is very one sided, and doesn't mesh with the author's own writing.

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