An Analysis of the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

An Analysis of the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic [pdf]

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24 pointsJaxkr44 comments

I've been following this discussion from the start, and this report presents the clearest and most compelling summary of the evidence I've seen so far.

Excerpt from the conclusion on p.26:

"Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident. New information, made publicly available and independently verifiable, could change this assessment. However, the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy."

>Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.

I knew it from the day 1; my layman understanding was that Covid variants in nature are not that virulent as Covid-19. Covid-19 was GOF experiment which went wrong in a sense that it lab leaked. Lab leaks happen all the time but not as impactful as this one. We should learn from our mistakes not sweep them under the carpet.

> Lab leaks happen all the time

Honestly, that's terrifying to read. Do you have references to numbers of leaks or other information on the subject?

There you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

You can also search previous Covid related discussions here on HN for more information.

Interesting that the 1989 Reston, VA release was not included...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone

Page says: "The list is grouped by the year in which the accident or incident occurred and does not include every reported laboratory-acquired infection. This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources."

Wikipedia is crowd-sourced project, anyone can edit it if he or she thinks it is necessary(either something might be missing or something might be wrong).

Also useful to look at a list of known LAIs (Lab-acquired infections): https://my.absa.org/LAI

Most of these don't spread beyond the initially infected lab workers, but the sheer number is staggering.

>We should learn from our mistakes not sweep them under the carpet.

My understanding is that at the start of COVID19 scientists in related fields immediately assumed that a lab leak was the likely cause, and were dumbfounded to hear such a strong and immediate consensus (the Nature letter, for example) against such.

As pointed out on HN yesterday, it’s the Republicans in the Senate. It’s political. When will we learn?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33365683

Joe Biden ordered a report into this and the intelligence community concluded lab leak was a viable possibility, so I don't see how this is political. Both parties agree lab leak is a possibility (well, now they do, after Democrats called it racist).

Wholehearted agreement, but that leaves two interesting questions:

1) Is the report substantially correct?

2) Why do the Republicans think that this message will help them politically?

Bonus points to anyone who gets through that minefield insulting the intelligence of their political opposition.

They covered all the bases so it’s impossible to be wrong.

“More likely than not..”

“More information is needed…”

“As noted by the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, the COVID- 19 Lancet Commission, and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence 90-Day Assessment on the COVID-19 Origins, more information is needed to arrive at a more precise, if not a definitive, understanding of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how the COVID-19 pandemic began”

I'll try to answer #2 in good faith - people have a limited amount of anger and hostility, and a limited memory. This could get people riled up against China, and against anyone who had been skeptical of a lab leak, two weeks before midterm elections.

Ad hominem fallacy.

You could also easily claim the inverse: the lack of Democrats shows that the refusal to contemplate a lab leak is political.

Besides, since when is something being political a problem? You'd expect the party in opposition to investigate the wrongdoings of the government, that's part of their job.

It’s easy to offer innuendo.

“The voting machines are rigged…”

I like Bill Barr’s answer: “It’s all bullshit”

Going from one BS story to the next, seeing what sticks then saying “see we were right” is growing old.

How about providing evidence with each new theory.

Now did China engineer the virus, or was it one that they were studying and it escaped? I’m having a hard time keeping up.

You demand evidence, but the report is a review of the evidence, so they're doing exactly what you ask.

Are you sure you're not the one who is offering innuendo here? You were insinuating and now outright stating that the entire theory is politically motivated bullshit, but that's not true. There have been people around the world, unaffiliated with US politics, digging up evidence for this for the last two years, always being shouted down by people who don't seem to want to face the possibility that "science", "expertise" and the state science bureaucracy were directly responsible for COVID.

"Now did China engineer the virus, or was it one that they were studying and it escaped? I’m having a hard time keeping up."

Why not read the report and let us know what it says on that question? Those two possibilities aren't mutually exclusive after all.

The report is noise:

“More likely than not..”

“More information is needed…”

Regardless of their political party, the potential that it was created from researchers/labs has been discussed here, and I recall the evidence slightly suggests that it could be true (if not coincidental).

So completely dismissing a report just because it “might” be politically motivated or came from 1 party shows your bias. HN usually dismisses the content of a report, not the author’s affiliations. When will we learn to stop picking sides?

Don't you need two examples in order to confirm political bias?

No. You could just say “I’m biased in favor of the Green Party” or “against the Pirate Party”

> It’s political. When will we learn?

Since most of academia is liberal, aren't practically all the byproducts of that sphere inherently majorly biased? And no, the Stephen Colbert "reality has a liberal bias" line is a cheap and slimy holier-than-thou cop-out. If we use any of the standards that left-leaning people cleaved to for the entire pandemic and even before, i.e. how society is systemically (evil from) X or Y, how is that the most powerful institutions completely ignore their own flagrant systemic bias?

> Since most of academia is liberal, aren't practically all the byproducts of that sphere inherently majorly biased?

This assumes that most people let their ideology drive their science. And also, what is the source of the claim that most of academia is in fact liberal? Any hypothesis why? Liberals ganging up and pushing out conservatives, or voluntary non-participation by conservatives, or what?

Again I'm just saying that by the standards of most people at a college campus, student, faculty or otherwise, they love the idea of implicit, systemic bias, etc.

> And also, what is the source of the claim that most of academia is in fact liberal?

Primary source: my own experience. And any data I've come across.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/02/conservat...

Well, there's some article out there from pre pandemic where Fauci asays that the risk if a pandemic is acceptable in studying gain of function. It's not like He is a trustworthy advocate. Or would you trust the Chinese government?

Everything is political when you're trying to figure out why this disease was encouraged

(Torturing those who warn us of it is encouraging spread, no? Ignoring warnings from competent authorities is encouraging spread, no? Twitting out that there's no evidence of human to human spread while not verifying the claim is encouraging spread, no?

I mean, it was such a shitshow by the 10s of thousands of public officials whose job is to safeguard us from such an outcome that there's no way CYA isn't going to be the dominant motivation from those officials and they're superiors)

Ironically, my distrust of China is why I don’t think it was a lab leak. If it were, they’d have every ancestor strain logged and could trivially infect a wild animal and present it as proof that it was a wild strain. If you think they’re willing to lie to avoid blame, the fact that they haven’t done this, suggests that they can’t.

What period of time could a less severe variant(s) have escaped into the wild before the more severe 'Alpha' variant gained traction? AFAIK, China, & others, were treating non-influenza, flu-like cases months before they cancelled Chinese New Year 2020. The timeline may not have been as short as a Stephen King novel and, perhaps, it was even prior to Oct/Nov 2019. My question is this: Are there any frequent/infrequent travelers to China familiar with non-asian visitors getting severe influenza(or other) infections when they 1st visit? I know one such traveler who spent 3 months in a "ghost room"(1) suffering from a lung infection back in early 2019.

(1) Hospice; he reported it as called the 'ghost room' as the rest of the occupants were terminal cancer patients.

Why is this flagged? It's a report from the US Senate.

It reports a significant finding:

> Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.

Look at all of the cautionary language in this statement. This isn't a group of Republicans fear mongering. It's a group trying to make sense of the information that currently exists.

Knowing the origin of the pandemic is the only way we can hope to prevent the next one. This topic is not a political issue, it's a scientific and humanitarian one.

It's STILL flagged because OP hasn't contacted moderators to get a specific look. Anybody above a certain karma threshold can derail conversation, its incumbent on interested parties to doxx themselves with an email address if they want to unflag a story.

It's a report from the minority senate staffers, aka the republican staffers. It's a political ploy filled with uncertain language yet proclaiming a certain verdict. These types of things are constantly being flagged on HN (for good reason).

What's the political angle then?

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377145 where Pro Publica digs in and essentially agrees with their conclusions as to the likelihood of a lab leak origin.

In these circumstances, does it matter to public safety whether it did or didn't? It seems more important to me whether it COULD or COULD NEVER originate like this. I think things are tilted pretty heavily towards the COULD side. So if we, as a species, continue research like this (and I think we need to), it needs to be strictly quarantined. If you set foot in a facility like this, you don't get to rejoin the rest of society until you go through a multi-week quarantine site. It's remote work.

"COULD" is a certainty, so quarantine measures are already in place. The question is, are the quarantine measures sufficient?

The answer to that is "we don't know". And the corollary, unfortunately, is "... but we can make a lot of political hay out of taking guesses."

The general impression, which I haven't really seen challenged, is that these lab employees take precautions while in the lab, or maybe while leaving the building. I think the default sensible stance is that they're not sufficient, now that we've seen how the world is capable of reacting to an outbreak.

Can we actually discuss this, or are people still freaking out? This was incredibly obvious, even early, early on. Suppression isn’t good, folks.

This is not a real report. I very much suspected this is what happened but the trustworthy peer-reviewed studies have disavowed it. If you trust this study over those, you probably should refuse emergency medical care and read everything backwards.

Which ones have disavowed this (very real) reports findings? As far as I've seen, there is a false dichotomy between the first spreading event being source and lab being source. Angela Rasmussen for instance is well known for her detailed studies around the live animal market but it doesn't make sense to proclaim that because it spread there that it precludes coming there via a lab worker over a game hunter.

What is a "real report" by your definition? The word report is a very general one.

Peer-review studies are not exactly trustworthy on this topic, are they? The peers in question are virologists and others who directly enabled their work.

Unfortunately it became political, so all rational discussion became impossible.

No no, it's a combination of:

- impossible to have ONLY rational discussion

- Unfashionable points of view being suppressed on HN by those with the numbers/power.

Here's some rational discussion which I was originally unable to post because the submission had been reflexively flagged and killed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33370251

I agree with that point you made. For me personally, if it turns out to have been a lab leak then it wouldn't really move the needle for me much. Now, if it were leaked on purpose now we have a pretty big problem.

But absent a deliberate act, I still think it's valid to talk about whether gain-of-function research has sufficient value to outweigh the risks, and if so, what we can do to mitigate those risks. Whether covid was a leak or not. Next time maybe it's captain trips.

I agree that suppression isn't good. But there still needed to be thorough investigations. It being "obvious" isn't enough.

That being said, the corporate media and the politicians (mostly Democrats) who called this theory "preposterous" and a conspiracy deserve to be thrown out on their asses. Because those were talking points that had nothing to back them up. But when you're dealing with the "pandemic", what else is new?

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