Covid 19 origin(s)

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

I will say another thing I find disturbing about Nicholas Wade's article (and a non-trivial number of people consider him just a quack journalist) is that he says there's a big conspiracy or mass denial by the virology community to hide the truth.

He's basically setting up a reverse halo effect among the general population towards researchers. Oh no, researchers are biased, we can't trust any of them! Except there are plenty of researchers who have been opponents of GoF research who still don't think the leak-coverup story is plausible. Not to mention some of the lab-leak proponents have questionable political affiliations themselves.

I really don't think this is the path we want to go down as a society. In the modern world, we have no choice but to trust experts on most things, because there is too much complexity for any person to learn fully. The whole point of public universities, public research, peer reviewed open journals, is so that the process is as open as possible while keeping out people who haven't made the personal investment in gaining enough knowledge. Science can be political and the integrity of research has been a mixed bag, but it is definitely positive information value overall, and I definitely do not want laymen's opinions to be trusted over scientific consensus even when it can be wrong at times (especially in the medical field), because laymen's opinions are usually even more wrong.

I suspect most folks haven't heard of Thucydides much less read about his trap but considering the current drum beats it bears thinking about. The last administration set us on a highly volatile course in relations with China. That administration's minions together with a number of overly credulous, if not sycophantic, journalists are pushing us ever closer to a very dangerous precipice.

And, in doing may be playing into China's hand.

[weederr33]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

I suspect most folks haven't heard of Thucydides much less read about his trap but considering the current drum beats it bears thinking about. The last administration set us on a highly volatile course in relations with China. That administration's minions together with a number of overly credulous, if not sycophantic, journalists are pushing us ever closer to a very dangerous precipice.

And, in doing may be playing into China's hand.

China's rise to the number one super power has been one which would most certainly happen. But I believe the pandemic and our leaderships' method's of handling it may have improved those odds but a substantial margin.

[Lantanafrs2]

China has been on the rise for decades. Every administration uses them as a talking point but the globalized economy dictates hands off status quo.

[weederr33]

Originally Posted by Lantanafrs2

China has been on the rise for decades. Every administration uses them as a talking point but the globalized economy dictates hands off status quo.

Wrong.

[wbradley]

Somebody fucked up. They cleaned up any possible evidence and no conclusion can ever be made without casting doubt.
Best we can do going forward is use heightened precautions dealing with countries that operate biocontainment labs. Perhaps China can build space stations and land probes on the Moon and beyond. But they can't prevent pandemics exploding from their still unknown source. So there should be regulation put on China to keep a watchful eye there in the future involving experts from outside China.

[Lantanafrs2]

Originally Posted by wbradley

Somebody fucked up. They cleaned up any possible evidence and no conclusion can ever be made without casting doubt.
Best we can do going forward is use heightened precautions dealing with countries that operate biocontainment labs. Perhaps China can build space stations and land probes on the Moon and beyond. But they can't prevent pandemics exploding from their still unknown source. So there should be regulation put on China to keep a watchful eye there in the future involving experts from outside China.

I wish that were possible.

[Lantanafrs2]

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...offer-guidance


Oops

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by wbradley

But they can't prevent pandemics exploding from their still unknown source. So there should be regulation put on China to keep a watchful eye there in the future involving experts from outside China.

The reality is in the age of air travel, no one can prevent pandemics, unless there is somehow a coordinated system where all travel can be shut down worldwide. The Obama administration did much less to control the spread of swine flu for example. It takes a few weeks or months to notice an outbreak, while it takes 12 hours for a disease to fly all the way around the world.

A complete moratorium on GoF research might not be a terrible idea considering the possibility of bioterrorism in the future (my impression is currently, it's very difficult for a rogue actor to cook up viruses since you can't just make DNA sequences however you want yet, but one day machines that do that will become easy to obtain). One step below that would be to confine the research to BSL4 labs and have international safety inspections of all BSL-4 labs.

I kind of expect there to be an international treaty on this signed. If scientists can't publish papers on it, almost all the research will stop since most of it is public research (might continue in military settings, but military control would add extra security safeguards). I know you're already pretty sure who is to blame and what happened but there is certainly a diplomatic way to prevent that hypothetical scenario in the future.

Honestly, speaking as someone kind of familiar with the field, AI has the same problem...the research coming out of FAIR and Google Brain strongly suggests to me that it's possible we're only say 10-20 years away from AGI. If they continue with all their open source research, we're probably screwed. If they start to keep the research private, we're still screwed. You can't really ban research that only takes a few people and some computers to do. The idea that you can have "good guys with AI" to fight "bad guys with AI" is kind of ludicrous, as attacking soft targets is much easier than defending them, and we're not even getting into the situation where the AI decides to turn on its creators.

What I find more terrifying than the idea that this could have been a lab leak is that now there is a precedent for who gets blamed and suspected for such a thing...what if someone decides to plant a virus in the US next time around to make the US look bad? It would be extremely easy to go to a crowded place near a high biosafety level lab and spray some virus in the air. It's clear which countries have the stomach to do proper quarantines and which don't. What if this was planted by the CIA in Wuhan, and now China is planning revenge by planting another mild but infectious disease in the US? (in case it's not clear, I don't think that's likely, because it would do more targeted damage to the US if they just produced evidence that it was a CIA operation, but you can imagine that this is now an option that some people out there are considering)

[soundman98]

[wbradley]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

The reality is in the age of air travel, no one can prevent pandemics, unless there is somehow a coordinated system where all travel can be shut down worldwide. The Obama administration did much less to control the spread of swine flu for example. It takes a few weeks or months to notice an outbreak, while it takes 12 hours for a disease to fly all the way around the world.

A complete moratorium on GoF research might not be a terrible idea considering the possibility of bioterrorism in the future (my impression is currently, it's very difficult for a rogue actor to cook up viruses since you can't just make DNA sequences however you want yet, but one day machines that do that will become easy to obtain). One step below that would be to confine the research to BSL4 labs and have international safety inspections of all BSL-4 labs.

I kind of expect there to be an international treaty on this signed. If scientists can't publish papers on it, almost all the research will stop since most of it is public research (might continue in military settings, but military control would add extra security safeguards). I know you're already pretty sure who is to blame and what happened but there is certainly a diplomatic way to prevent that hypothetical scenario in the future.

Honestly, speaking as someone kind of familiar with the field, AI has the same problem...the research coming out of FAIR and Google Brain strongly suggests to me that it's possible we're only say 10-20 years away from AGI. If they continue with all their open source research, we're probably screwed. If they start to keep the research private, we're still screwed. You can't really ban research that only takes a few people and some computers to do. The idea that you can have "good guys with AI" to fight "bad guys with AI" is kind of ludicrous, as attacking soft targets is much easier than defending them, and we're not even getting into the situation where the AI decides to turn on its creators.

What I find more terrifying than the idea that this could have been a lab leak is that now there is a precedent for who gets blamed and suspected for such a thing...what if someone decides to plant a virus in the US next time around to make the US look bad? It would be extremely easy to go to a crowded place near a high biosafety level lab and spray some virus in the air. It's clear which countries have the stomach to do proper quarantines and which don't. What if this was planted by the CIA in Wuhan, and now China is planning revenge by planting another mild but infectious disease in the US? (in case it's not clear, I don't think that's likely, because it would do more targeted damage to the US if they just produced evidence that it was a CIA operation, but you can imagine that this is now an option that some people out there are considering)

You make it sound as though the US was the sole intended target, just stating the obvious. . So, does that make the world aside from the US collateral damage? And what about all the deaths in China? The only thing an intentional release would accomplish is disrupting EVERYBODY. Not the ideal act of bioterrorism. This looks like an accident or was set up to look like one. Either way, there are much more virulent organisms that would be far quicker and create much more widespread damage such as anthrax. Pretty sure China did not do this intentionally.

It is interesting how the western countries talk about how China inevitably will be the top threat and greatest power eventually, knowing darn well we will continue to pump a huge percentage of our money there as long as they continue to be the cheapest manufacturers of consumer goods. On the other hand there has been a continuous extreme buildup of military bases surrounding China. Not that this has anything to do with the pandemic, but what a strange relationship. We distrust them, we resent their increasing wealth which they acquired by earning our business for years and years, but so long as the price is right we will keep doing business.
It's a free market system we live by, and they have a huge labour pool.
Can't have it both ways.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by wbradley

You make it sound as though the US was the sole intended target, just stating the obvious. ... Pretty sure China did not do this intentionally.

...

We distrust them, we resent their increasing wealth which they acquired by earning our business for years and years, but so long as the price is right we will keep doing business.

We're fully on the same page, I am extremely sure China did not intentionally "let it spread" (common conservative talking point backed up by fake news like "they allowed people to fly internationally during lockdown" when a few charter flights requested by foreign governments were allowed to leave after much warning against it).

Whether some lab worker decided to delete a bunch of records, maybe... But again certain reporting suggesting some certain lab workers disappeared were all debunked (not that it stops some people from insisting on believing it).

As a funny anecdote, in Reno Walmart parking lots, I see a lot of cars proudly advertising the owners' politics...I thought people of that certain political view usually are saying we should not trade with China.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

We're fully on the same page, I am extremely sure China did not intentionally "let it spread" (common conservative talking point backed up by fake news like "they allowed people to fly internationally during lockdown" when a few charter flights requested by foreign governments were allowed to leave after much warning against it).

Whether some lab worker decided to delete a bunch of records, maybe... But again certain reporting suggesting some certain lab workers disappeared were all debunked (not that it stops some people from insisting on believing it).

As a funny anecdote, in Reno Walmart parking lots, I see a lot of cars proudly advertising the owners' politics...I thought people of that certain political view usually are saying we should not trade with China.

Right?? As Yul Brynner in his role as the King of Siam in The King and I noted, "It is a puzzlement."

[serialk11r]

Oh, I noticed you can download all the data that nextstrain uses and also their phylogenetic analysis function. Hmmm...I am starting to get a little curious about finding those December samples from France/Italy/US/etc. and comparing them to see a priori how feasible it is virus actually existed in Italy in September. Eh, too lazy lol.

[Irace86.2.0]

East Asia was hit by another coronavirus epidemic 20,000 years ago, new study shows

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/healt...scn/index.html

Over the past 20 years, people have faced a series of outbreaks caused by coronaviruses, including SARS, MERS, and Covid-19. But humans may have faced the disease millennia ago, new research suggests.

A team of researchers from Australia and the United States has found evidence of a coronavirus epidemic that broke out more than 20,000 years ago in East Asia, according to a study published in the Current Biology scientific journal on Thursday.
In the study, the researchers studied the genomes of more than 2,500 people from 26 different populations around the world. They pinpointed the earliest interaction of the human genome with coronaviruses, which left genetic imprints on the DNA of modern-day people in East Asia…