Feds lift gain-of-function research pause, offer guidance (2017)
cidrap.umn.edu
cidrap.umn.edu
What exactly is the benefit to public health? Serious question.
There is no way to rush the rest of the process, unless you want to deliberately expose people to artificially created viruses that don't exist in the wild.
Small upside vs large downside of potentially creating a global pandemic.
Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You would think this would be their time to shine but where was their help?
Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again
Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again"
This is by far the best take on this topic I've seen IMO. I've been so busy thinking about whether or not the WHV was ground zero for the pandemic, I forgot that the whole point of GOF SHOULD have made it ground zero for the cure.
Moderna was given $1 billion for the vaccine development, or about $3 per person, and then $1.5 billion for 100 million doses, or $15 per dose, totaling about $48 for 3 doses at that rate.
You can dig into the other rounds of funding if you're still skeptical, but clearly the vaccines were much cheaper than 6 months of the type of masks that, unlike the vaccines, are actually effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/13/health/covid-19-vaccines-...
In the first months of the pandemic, healthcare workers spent 14-hour shifts surrounded by deathly ill patients and still only rarely caught it themselves thanks to their PPE, in particular the masks that were invented for this very purpose.
It's obvious what could actually eradicate this virus that has multiplied the flu (which was already an annual crisis) ten-fold. Maybe next time a rapidly developed and deployed vaccine will do it, but not this time.
Adjusting for population, the US peaked at the equivalent of 15,000/day after vaccination was underway and most places got rid of mask mandates, followed by a peak at the equivalent of 8,500/day after more than half the population was vaccinated, and another one around 12,000/day with 2/3 to 3/4 of the population being partially to fully vaccinated. Now it's been steadily the equivalent of 1,200 to 2,000/day going on 9 months even though almost everyone should have plenty of immunity from both vaccination and repeated exposure. The numbers are lower than they would be without vaccination, but this isn't sustainable. We know what does work.
AFAIK countries that effectively masked and distanced until they had a vaccine flattened the curve significantly and their medical system was never overwhelmed. The US is a terrible example because they failed to follow their own pandemic guidelines (Africa did and fared better if I recall correctly).
With vaccines you can be more cavalier with masks - even if you don’t wear it and are near someone with COVID you’re less likely to get it. And when you do, you weather it significantly better. Even ignoring problems of comfort and fit that continue to plague although the “duck” masks with over head loops instead of over ear I’ve found to be reasonably comfortable. Masks are challenging logistically in various environments like dining and just from a social bonding / nicety.
It’s also important to remember that there’s a significant anti-vax movement in the States so no. We’re not fully vaccinated. And the virus mutates like the flu. So you need to keep up to date with shots. Yes. It’s not 100% effective. But it’s an added security measure because perfect masking just doesn’t happen and logistically isn’t possible. With a pandemic (now epidemic) like this you have to deploy multiple measures (masks, vaccines, social distancing), not just one I think - multi pronged battle. The interesting part is that people are reverting to pre-COVID behaviors which makes sense since pre-COVID is the same as post-Spanish flu so COVID is here to stay permanent I think.
... don't exist. There is still not enough production of the types of masks that are known and shown to be effective.
> even if you don’t wear it and are near someone with COVID you’re less likely to get it.
That was the hope, but it's not nearly as true as it needs to be.
> And when you do, you weather it significantly better.
And continue spreading it.
> So you need to keep up to date with shots.
And keep up with producing and distributing N95 masks to actually solve the problem.
> With a pandemic (now epidemic)
Wordplay with no bearing on reality.
> you have to deploy multiple measures (masks, vaccines, social distancing)
Sure. Defense in depth. Vaccines, especially vaccines that grossly fail to live up to expectations, aren't enough.
> pre-COVID is the same as post-Spanish flu
Blatantly false. It's still killing several multiples of the flu. And now the flu is back on top of that.
> COVID is here to stay permanent I think.
Probably true. People are stupid.
Except:
Look at this analysis [1] of different country responses. Note that masking is only part of the strategy. Plenty of countries managed to effectively flatten the curve regardless of the availability of N95 masks (eg banning surgical mask exports, using effective contact tracing for quarantining and enforcing quarantine aggressively).
> Statistical analysis showed that the odds of infection were about half for people who reported wearing a mask in public compared with people who didn’t. (Results of this study are reported in terms of “odds ratios” which are related to relative risk, but not quite the same thing.) For people who wore masks “all of the time” (instead of “some of the time” or “most of the time”) the estimated effect was even more significant.
And
> A second part of the study sought to differentiate between cloth masks, surgical masks, and N95/KN95 respirators. Not unexpectedly, N95/KN95s were found to reduce the odds of infection compared with people who didn’t wear any mask. To me, the surprising thing is how effective they were, reducing the relative odds by 83%. Cloth masks and surgical masks were found to be less effective.
Who cares about absolutes. All masks provide some non-trivial amount of protection. Certainly better than not doing anything, especially if you do so consistently.
[2]
> even if you don’t wear it and are near someone with COVID you’re less likely to get it. That was the hope, but it's not nearly as true as it needs to be.
Except I’ve been at parties where people with COVID showed up and no one else got sick. Not even the partner living with them. Now this was earlier so it was the first strain where maybe efficacy was better. And this is anecdotal and not quantitatively scientific. But certainly my anecdote seems to line up with the evidence I read (initially very good at stopping transmission and even today effective at it quite a bit but only for a few months). I don’t know what your threshold is for “as it needs to be”. Mine is “the healthcare system doesn’t fall apart”. AFAICT states and countries that are doing vaccinations effectively seem to be there even after abandoning masks and social distancing guidelines.
> Vaccines, especially vaccines that grossly fail to live up to expectations, aren't enough.
The grossness of the failure to live up to expectations is kind of mostly on you based on what expectations you chose to set I think. People were hopeful but I think realistically we knew it wasn’t going to be a silver bullet. A) we already had other variants by the time the vaccine started to get rolled out B) we didn’t try to stockpile the vaccine and roll it out “instantaneously” en masse. This gives the virus a perfect environment to evolve a resistance. We know this from evolutionary biology and I was fully expecting this result, so I don’t feel underwhelmed by the vaccine. To me I expected the vaccine to cut mortality rates for hospitals and reduce transmission rates for the virus. The latter may not be as effective but we know the former has been ridiculously effective. The amount of deaths is a fraction of the amount that test positive (and most positive cases aren’t even reported anywhere anymore). Same for the need for respirators.
> And keep up with producing and distributing N95 masks to actually solve the problem.
I see the problem. You’re again setting unrealistic expectations. N95 masks aren’t necessarily comfortable and people will avoid wearing them even when there’s a mandate. Half the time I saw people with masks covering just the mouth. And at the end of the day, your eyes and nose are likely other vectors for infection (eg studies that showed that people with glasses had a statistically significant lower rate of infection). And this all also ignores the problem of children playing together. What I’ve heard from people with kids is that kids are an amazing infection vector for the whole family for any disease, COVID included. I fully expect that even with an over abundance of masks, nothing actually meaningfully changes. You may disagree with that conclusion, but I think that’s a problem of expectation setting correctly. My expectations have generally been met by
mask efficacy: N95 would be nice, but any and all masks, especially if worn correctly and consistently, offer meaningful statistically significant reduction in transmission rates
and vaccines: evolution tells us the virus will have pressures from immune systems and vaccines so it’ll probably evolve (few viruses these days can be fully and permanent eliminated by a vaccine). However, I did think that transmission rates will be reduced at least a little bit (statistically appears true although with high enough variance that it can feel false) and more importantly death rate from COVID will plummet (also true).
And social distancing: as rules relaxed COVID rates spiked. But also most places generally paired this with vaccination rates so overall things stayed at least pretty flat or shrunk for the most part.
> Blatantly false. It's still killing several multiples of the flu. And now the flu is back on top of that.
Huh? Aren’t you basically agreeing with me then? To me, the flu returning and COVID running more rampant is a clear sign that people stopped masking and socially distancing (vaccination and natural immunity being roughly equivalent probably and cancel out I think). These two very effective behaviors that are kind of characteristic of a good COVID response, were kind of widely deployed in 2020 when the flu disappeared, and now have been largely abandoned as impractical for day to day living (Asian countries I think does this part better because of better social cohesion and previous experience with SARS).
> Probably true. People are stupid
This we mostly agree on. But also I think even a perfect COVID response sees it sticking around. It’s simply too virulent to not become endemic. Add onto the fact that people make mistakes, we don’t know what the 100% ideal response looks like, and this can’t be globally coordinated because each jurisdiction will enact their own policy which means 100% isn’t attainable anyway. Eg look at the countries that had the best COVID response and they’re still having to deal with neighbors and international travelers bringing variants back anyway.
[1] https://time.com/5851633/best-global-responses-covid-19/
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2022/02/04/the-real-w...
Never said it wasn't.
> Plenty of countries managed to effectively flatten the curve regardless of the availability of N95 masks
"Flatten the curve" is a post-failure strategy to minimize secondary losses due to overwhelming the hospitals until we have a vaccine with enough efficacy to reach herd immunity and eradicate the virus. That latter part never happened.
> Statistical analysis showed that the odds of infection were about half for people who reported wearing a mask in public compared with people who didn’t.
Sure, and that's not even limiting the scope to N95-level masks.
> For people who wore masks “all of the time” (instead of “some of the time” or “most of the time”) the estimated effect was even more significant.
Naturally.
> Not unexpectedly, N95/KN95s were found to reduce the odds of infection compared with people who didn’t wear any mask. To me, the surprising thing is how effective they were, reducing the relative odds by 83%. Cloth masks and surgical masks were found to be less effective.
Sounds about right.
> All masks provide some non-trivial amount of protection. Certainly better than not doing anything, especially if you do so consistently.
Never said they didn't.
> Except I’ve been at parties where people with COVID showed up and no one else got sick.
Useless anecdote.
> And this is anecdotal and not quantitatively scientific.
Correct.
> I don’t know what your threshold is for “as it needs to be”.
Enough to reduce the effective "R" rate of transmission to below 1 and to keep outbreaks ever smaller and more localized.
> Mine is “the healthcare system doesn’t fall apart”.
Post-failure strategy.
> [Describing how the vaccine could have been rolled out more effectively.]
Yes, it could have been. But even so, by now almost everyone has been immunized either by the vaccine or prior infection and it's still killing huge numbers.
> N95 masks aren’t necessarily comfortable and people will avoid wearing them even when there’s a mandate.
I don't advocate for a mandate. Mandates lead to malicious compliance and people rebelling whenever they can to prove they still have autonomy.
> Half the time I saw people with masks covering just the mouth.
Like that. Fortunately, N95 are thicker and less likely to droop.
> And at the end of the day, your eyes and nose are likely other vectors for infection (eg studies that showed that people with glasses had a statistically significant lower rate of infection).
Practically insignificant.
> What I’ve heard from people with kids is that kids are an amazing infection vector for the whole family for any disease, COVID included.
Yes, household transmission is still an issue. We need to guarantee that people with Covid in the household can quarantine without repercussions.
> I fully expect that even with an over abundance of masks, nothing actually meaningfully changes. You may disagree with that conclusion
I do.
> N95 would be nice, but any and all masks, especially if worn correctly and consistently, offer meaningful statistically significant reduction in transmission rates
The difference between N95 and a surgical mask is far more than statistically significant. (See your own link.)
> Evolution tells us the virus will have pressures from immune systems and vaccines so it’ll probably evolve (few viruses these days can be fully and permanent eliminated by a vaccine).
A virus filtered out before it can enter the host never has a chance to evolve.
> However, I did think that transmission rates will be reduced at least a little bit (statistically appears true although with high enough variance that it can feel false) and more importantly death rate from COVID will plummet (also true).
No argument on the "little bit".
>> Blatantly false. It's still killing several multiples of the flu. And now the flu is back on top of that.
> Huh? Aren’t you basically agreeing with me then?
No.
> To me, the flu returning and COVID running more rampant is a clear sign that people stopped masking and socially distancing
Well, I agree with that. Masks also help prevent the flu better than the vaccines, and we don't even need to develop new masks every year. Just produce enough of the right types of masks that they're free/effectively free so they can do the bulk of the work, and all the other layers of defense can have the best foundation to start from.
Whew, that was a tiring Gish Gallop. Got any more?
Many people working in hospital environments wore N95 masks, gowns, and face shields. You might as well just say that vaccines were a failure because we could have just asked the world public to go on a diet and lose weight. It would be about as likely as getting the whole world to walk around in hazmat suits.
Where indeed. What a crazy coincidence that they were proposing to edit the the furin cleavage site on the coronavirus's spike protein, and several months later a coronavirus emerged at that location with a novel furin cleavage site on its spike protein.
They should have been in a better position to help than anybody else, but perhaps their efforts were instead focused on distancing themselves from it. For some reason.
In GOF you speed that process up by orders of magnitude. You arrive at the viable mutation sooner, possibly infinitely sooner if random mutation would never have arrived. If you engineered part of it, there's a good chance it would never have emerged naturally. It might have come into the world in a few decades or centuries, or it might never have. But you have it now, and have to guard it perfectly as long as it remains in your lab.
Bottom line, it probably won't escape, but it probably never would have emerged naturally either. IMO, to make GoF a beneficial trade-off, it should be focused on viral species that are close to emerging naturally and do not need their genomes to be artificially manipulated in order to become dangerous.
In seriousness though, there's a strong evolutionary incentive that acts on organizations to not eliminate their raison d'être. Perhaps gain-of-function is some version of that because it ensures that there's something to do even when there's nothing to do.
What could possibly go wrong?
The other comments and this post’s title seem to imply this could relate to COVID-19.
If that’s the case, then why doesn’t the article discuss COVID or even international relationships or funding, or even China for that matter.
Further, the date of 2017 would imply the Trump administration itself holds some degree of responsibility, if Americans were funding Gain of Function research in Wuhan.
The lab was located in Wuhan strategically because it's a very central transit hub but also very close to the bat caves where thousands of coronavirus varieties are believed to emerge from. As one of the leading coronavirus focused virology labs in the world, they collaborated with universities, governments, and corporations to advance related research. Fauci's name was one the check for some US grant money connected with research that included Gain of Function practices, but again that was in the open, and one of many sponsors of this work.
The "wet market" theory is politically useful to many parties, but scientifically unlikely. There is precedent for coronaviruses crossing to humans in public markets that sell live animals, sometimes closely packed together, notably SARS. The big question is: where are all the dead bats? There has been little evidence to support any lineage between a wet market and the outbreak. It's pretty tricky because they are within walking proximity of each other.
I have no reason to think that this virus was engineered to cause a pandemic and intentionally released. Why would China use a super-virus in their own population first, right next to the wet market and coronavirus lab? Who would gain from this? Sure drug and testing companies did well, but why would they release a virus that they don't have a cure for? No one company had some monopoly on the cure- it was a global collaboration that brought forth several approaches and massive distribution/manufacturing. It wasn't some crackpot in a basement that put it together. The equipment needed to manipulate 100nm species doesn't come cheap, nor the people who know how to use them to engineer coronaviruses. None of these scenarios or others make sense to me relative to the Occam's razor version:
Despite the rigorous controls associated with level 4 gain-of-function research, cleaning procedures, airlocks, etc someone made a mistake. Maybe someone had caught their hazmat suit on loose nail that ripped a small hole, then a few minutes later some shelf fell over, knocking over a bunch of crates that shattered some virus vial. The researcher rushed to clean up the mess and forgot about their breached gear. The walk home from work, fall ill a few days later and the rest is history.
The fact is, whomever is to blame faces the weight of millions of deaths and trillions of losses of various currencies. If it's that scenario I just made up, who would be to blame? The researcher, or the facility? China didn't want to be liable for the insane damage, and it may not have been any one person or organization's fault. The GOF research was dangerous, they did it anyways, in the open, and got a lot of people killed. That was poor outcomes for a program that was intended to prevent pandemics, and there are a lot of people that could be blamed. At this point though, would anyone gain anything from a real smoking gun, other than poetic resolution?
This alone is enough to explain a lab leak if they were sampling a lot of bats to look for viruses and someone was careless. Unless there's a genetic smoking gun or someone admits it, I think it's a big leap to assume gain-of-function research is to blame. But in the off chance it does turn out to be a result of such research, we should probably take another look at the original SARS and MERS and any other related outbreaks.
Important to note that COVID-19 is not believed to have come from the caves close to Wuhan, but from the caves in the south of China, very far from Wuhan.
That doesn't contradict anything you posted, just an added level of detail.
Oh, maybe humanity could put a stop to gain of function research forever? That would be at least some compensation for this colossal error.
If only we took it as seriously as we take nuclear bombs, which are far less deadly in comparison.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2022/10/24/gain-...
It's because the article was written before Covid