COVID The Evolution of the SARS-COV-2 virus

[atyy]

In post #79 I explained why I thought a letter co-signed by Lipsitch was illogical and poorly judged.

Here are interesting comments by Michael Worobey, another co-author, that the letter may have backfired.

"...“I always thought that the lab leak was a long shot, but I thought it was worth investigating. I did then, and I do now,” he said.
...
He knew he was sticking his neck out by signing onto the letter published in Science, but he hoped it would give researchers some cover to continue exploring every possible explanation — no matter how unlikely or unpopular — for how the pandemic began.

Shortly after the letter came out, though, the Biden administration announced a renewed push to investigate the lab-leak theory, angering the Chinese government and dimming the prospects for unfettered scientific cooperation between the two countries.

Worobey said he doesn’t regret signing it, but “it’s possible the letter actually backfired in that sense.”
“We may have lost an opportunity to engage with scientists (in China) who are now feeling defensive,” he said. ..."

Another co-author of that letter Pamela Bjorkman, has also stated that the effects of the letter were contrary to what she intended.

"I thought the letter would have the effect of prompting more funding for searching for natural viruses in animal reservoirs, which I personally have always assumed represent the origin of SARS-CoV-2 infections in humans. Perhaps naively, I did not anticipate that the letter would be used to promote the lab origin hypothesis. Looking back on the wording of the letter, however, I now think that I should have realized this would happen and should have been more proactive — either not signed the letter at all or else requested more wording changes to make my position clear."

 

[Phil Core]

What I mean is that the present state of the evidence renders a lab leak very unlikely unless Shi Zhengli has lied. Some news reports make it seem that we only have circumstantial evidence against a lab leak. However, Shi Zhengli has reported active investigations into the possibility of a lab leak including negative serology tests and a quite thorough search of her samples that turned up no sequence close enough. She has published the full details of that closest sequence, and the fact that a part of this sequence had been published earlier (not hidden) are consistent with open publication of the lab's research over many years. So it is not only that we have no evidence for a lab leak. We have very strong evidence against a lab leak, unless her reports of the results of active investigations into the possibility of a lab leak are not true.

Alina Chan (and DRASTIC that she has praised) have supposedly uncovered evidence of secrecy or cover-up by Shi Zhengli and her colleagues. At this stage, with none of the people related to the lab coming forward with statements to the contrary, they would have to be in a conspiracy to hide information. So Chan's and DRASTIC's theories are literally conspiracy theories. None of the evidence put forth by Chan and DRASTIC support secrecy or cover-up by the WIV. Although there may be incidental details uncovered by DRASTIC not available in the international journals, all of their major conclusions can be obtained by examination of the WIV's published papers.

"We have very strong evidence against a lab leak, unless her reports of the results of active investigations into the possibility of a lab leak are not true."

I do not find the evidence that strong. Your evidence seems to be that a few people were tested for exposure to Covid and that Shi published some data on some sequencing she had done.

No one has had complete access to the day to day records of what when on in the lab during 2019 - 2020. There is no day to day account of what was done each day in the lab and who was doing it.

1. What was being done in the lab on a day to day basis? Work log
2. Number of people involved? Personnel log
3. Inventory of supplies?
4. Lots of other day to day records that would support the individual reports of parts of the project.

An idea that you have never seemed to have considered is that perhaps additional research was done somewhere else rather than in Shi's level 4 WIV lab and she really did not know the full extend of the work. It is like working on a need to know, compartmentalized project.

I have some idea of how a virus could be influenced in a lab and I don't think that Shi has the necessary skills. Source of bats yes. Source of ideas no.

 

[Laroxe]

Its really a puzzle as to why this is still an issue, certainly trying to trace the origin has a function in understanding the virus, but this is known to be quite difficult, even the evolutionary history of the influenza virus that caused the 1918 pandemic remains a mater of debate. It seems in the USA this has become a way of discrediting the Chinese Government rather than understanding the disease. The original WHO team that went to China had limited time to do their work but still had access to masses of data, they intended to go back and this was not considered to be a problem until the political blame game started. It's interesting that at the G7 summit when Pr. Biden tried to involve the European countries in these attacks, he was politely ignored.

As in most of these situations, that involve biological organisms, there are lots of pieces of information that muddy the water. We still have very limited information about coronaviruses in the wild, despite the massive impetus in research caused by Covid, but it has become clear that small clusters of Coronavirus infections have been occurring in rural areas for decades, we simply don't know which coronaviruses caused them.
It is really fairly common for viruses to jump species, it doesn't just affect humans, in fact currently there is also a pandemic among amphibians and another among plants but no one seems to be blaming a Chinese lab for those. There is also the fact that virtually all the common viral infections seen in humans, originated in other animals, becoming established in humans only when the situations facilitated these infections. Despite the frequency of how often cross species infections happen, there are significant barriers to them becoming established as a human pathogen. The last Coronavirus to jump species, such a close relative of Covid 19 it earned it its name of SARS-Cov 2, failed at the last hurdle, effective transmission. SARS has disappeared, which is just as well considering its severity.

I just think that if this virus was created in a lab, that would make it truly unique in the history of human disease. If it was a deliberate creation it's difficult to see any possible purpose, if it escaped, then presumably it must have still had a natural source, and it would make no sense to start trying to manipulate an unclassified virus with no knowledge of its "abilities". This is a situation in which a variant of Occams Razor could be a useful guide.

 

[Phil Core]

The reason the origin question is of concern is that a very large segment of the scientific community was cock sure that the only explanation for the origin of the SARS-Cov 2 was some strange bat - pangolian union. COVID-19: Time to exonerate the pangolin from the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to humans - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7405773/ The reason being that similar parts of the virus could be found in Nature. They made it sound like a lab leak was preposterous.

And then to defend the WHO's recent report is beyond the pale. Where, when, how, who was all monitored.

Here is a You Tube video that is very interesting - It gives some clues as to what people where really doing.

Daszak does ramble for quite some time but around the 28 min mark - Daszak notes that “coronaviruses are pretty good… you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily… the spiked proteins drive a lot about what happens. You can get the sequence you can build the protein, we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this, insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in a lab.”

FYI - Baric was working with mice whose ACE receptors had been "humanized". The virility of the SARS-Cov 2 virus is attributable to its binding strength with human ACE receptors.

A related article is https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4104828 It is published in the Taiwan News but it does provide new information especially with respect to the time line of events.

 

[russ_watters]

No one has had complete access to the day to day records of what when on in the lab during 2019 - 2020. There is no day to day account of what was done each day in the lab and who was doing it.

1. What was being done in the lab on a day to day basis? Work log
2. Number of people involved? Personnel log
3. Inventory of supplies?
4. Lots of other day to day records that would support the individual reports of parts of the project.

One hallmark of conspiracy theories is that claimants tend to demand extreme and impossible to acquire evidence to disprove them while leaning on thin evidence at best to support them. You want to look at their timesheets to prove there is no project called "Coronavirus Bioweapon Research" on it? Seriously? That request is wholly unreasonable and wouldn't prove anything anyway. And you know it doesn't prove anything, so it's not a serious request: it's made because you know it isn't attainable, so it provides a permanently open door.

An idea that you have never seemed to have considered is that perhaps additional research was done somewhere else rather than in Shi's level 4 WIV lab and she really did not know the full extend of the work. It is like working on a need to know, compartmentalized project.

...and if it wasn't done there, then an unidentified lab somewhere else could have been doing the work? That's well beyond "thin evidence", it's whole-cloth fantasy.

 

[russ_watters]

Here is a You Tube video that is very interesting - It gives some clues as to what people where really doing.

Daszak does ramble for quite some time but around the 28 min mark - Daszak notes that “coronaviruses are pretty good… you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily… the spiked proteins drive a lot about what happens. You can get the sequence you can build the protein, we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this, insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in a lab.”

I didn't hear that quote at that timestamp, maybe you could try again with where it is because I don't want to listen to him ramble for half an hour. What I did hear from about 27:30-29 is him talk about just how common coronaviruses are in bat populations and how there is also a lot of human exposure (not to mention the prior SARS outbreak itself). This is building the environment/groundwork for natural causes of this. Frankly, it tells us we haven't been paying enough attention to these diseases and the likelihood of a pandemic like the one we're in.

[edit] Found it, it's more like 29:50. I don't know exactly what you think he's saying there (some vague conspiracy theory implication surely), but what he is actually saying is that it should be possible to develop vaccines. He back-handedly predicted the vaccine success (this interview was in May of 2020). [edit] Actually, that's just when it was posted. It's actually from Dec of 2019.

To paraphrase, what he said was: There's lots of coronaviruses out there, constantly jumping back and forth between animals and humans, so we need to work on protecting from future pandemics. The virus is easy to manipulate in the lab, so we should be able to produce vaccines for them.

And yet you (evidently) heard: The virus is easy to manipulate in the lab, so we should be able to create a bioweapon.

 

[Phil Core]

I apologize. The quote can be found around the 30:04 mark.

He says this. If you think that supports a Nature only origin must be the new math.

“coronaviruses are pretty good… you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily… the spiked proteins drive a lot about what happens. You can get the sequence you can build the protein, we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this, insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in a lab.”

Are you familiar with Baric's work. Very interesting.

"One hallmark of conspiracy theories is that claimants tend to demand extreme and impossible to acquire evidence to disprove them while leaning on thin evidence at best to support them."

Wow! All I am asking for is the daily logs that should be readily available in any research lab. Have not been able to get the daily Wuhan logs for 2019-2020. To call asking for the daily logs extreme and impossible is ??

Perhaps you have never worked on a need to know, departmentalized study. They do exist. If I was doing suspect research I would not do all of it at a location that everyone is familiar with.

Why would it be impossible to do some of the research here - State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Beijing, China?

Danzak does justify the need for research as a means of developing vaccines. Perhaps something when awry? Regardless they were manipulating virus sequences that had been adapted for humans in labs.

 

[russ_watters]

I apologize. The quote can be found around the 30:04 mark.

He says this. If you think that supports a Nature only origin must be the new math.

Ok, that's enough. You're ignoring the context of what he's saying. The question asked - the words immediately before that quote - were: "You can't vaccinate against them...what do we do?" And the quote you provided continues on with discussion about how to create vaccines.

Thread closed. No more conspiracy theories please.