Covid-19 likely to be man made

This article from MIT summarizes the history of GOF research on bat coronaviruses in the US (UNC) and at the WIV. The history of this research goes back to 2002 and the first SARS outbreak where we dodged a bullet as if SARS-1 had been as transmissible as SARS-2, we would have had a much worse pandemic than the current one as the fatality rate was 10%.

The WIV have been collecting bat coronaviruses for the past few decades and trying to culture them in the lab. A big breakthrough was made in 2012 when a series of beta coronaviruses were collected in Yunnan (92 out of a total of 170 different SARS like viruses collected across southern China). Culturing them is extremely difficult (this was referenced by Danielle Anderson in her recent article), but this obstacle was overcome in Ralph Baric's UNC lab in 2013 when he developed reverse genetics methods to both build viruses from their genetic code and mix and match sequences from multiple viruses. So it isn't difficult as Anderson claimed, it's been done repeatedly since 2013.

This is where the controversy about GOF begins, Baric and the WIV collaborated in 2014 using one of the WIV's virus sequences to insert it's spike protein into a SARS virus he had in his lab to make a chimera virus and found "robust replication" in human cells. This work was done in a BSL-3 lab which at the time was the highest security.

The NIH then funded the WIV (through EcoHealth) to make similar chimeras with viruses they had collected in China. We now know this work was done in a BSL-2 lab, the security level of a dentist's office, a level of risk described as "insanity" by US researchers. Between 2015 and 2017 the WIV described 8 different chimeric SARS viruses they had created.

There is no known evidence that the WIV were working on or created the SARS-2 virus. One of the issues raising doubt is how secretive the WIV have been, most likely because they were in a race with the US to develop SARS vaccines. Next door to the WIV is the WIBP (Wuhan Institute of Biological Products) where the Sinopharm SARS-2 vaccine was developed, so it's very likely the WIV and WIBP were working on SARS vaccine development.


https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

PintOfView wrote: »

From Bloomberg (dated yesterday)

"The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute."

"If presented with evidence that such an accident spawned Covid-19, Anderson
“could foresee how things could maybe happen,” she said. “I’m not naive enough to say I absolutely write this off.”
And yet, she still believes it most likely came from a natural source.
Since it took researchers almost a decade to pin down where in nature the SARS pathogen emerged,
Anderson says she’s not surprised they haven’t found the “smoking gun” bat responsible for the latest outbreak yet. "

see -> URL="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out"]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out[/URL

I linked to the same article above. The gist is, she thinks lab origin is next to impossible.
During a time that allegedly lab personnel got sick, which the lab denies, she was taking bus journeys with lots of co-workers, and had frequent contact with lots of people in the lab. She did an antibody test before getting vaccinated, and found she never had Covid. Another indicator that goes against the lab origin narrative.

PintOfView wrote: »

From Bloomberg (dated yesterday)
Since it took researchers almost a decade to pin down where in nature the SARS pathogen emerged,
Anderson says she’s not surprised they haven’t found the “smoking gun” bat responsible for the latest outbreak yet. "

Actually civet cats were identified as the source in May 2003 in Guangdong, a few months after the outbreak began, and traders who handled the animals were found to have SARS antibodies. Although it may have been that the civet cats were infected by humans, as researchers did not find widespread infection in the civet cat population.

Since then a lot has been learned about bat coronaviruses, and it may well be that an ancestor of SARS-1 jumped from bats to humans directly and evolved over years or decades to become more infectious. The same thing could have happened with SARS-2, but so far we have found no evidence of anyone infected with SARS-2 or a SARS-2 predecessor before late 2019.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

In the podcast transcript from Drosten that I linked to above, he says the exact same thing, and goes into great detail explaining why.

He doesn't, and it's obvious you haven't much of a notion what he is talking about from your prior comments on these products of GOF emerging from nature a few weeks later. They may or may not, or emerge years from now, or emerge decades from now, or never emerge. He is also talking to a reporter and dumbing it down for him, and it's translated from German. Also, don't assume because you know little about a subject matter that others are the same as you.

This is a good summary of GOF and it's dangers. If you're interested in the detail read the 2015-2017 papers from Ralph Baric's lab and the WIV, obviously what they are doing is not technically easy but it is routine for them. Making a chimeric virus like SARS-2 would be routine in these labs, which is why the US government put a moratorium on this risky work in 2014.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

I can only go on what Anderson has said in her interview, and she has added nothing to what was known in March 2020. Her claim that the WIV labs were safe is flat out wrong and contradicted by numerous leading US virologists, including Ralph Baric himself, and he is the one who trained them. Nothing to do with conspiracy websites.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

You claim to know more than world renowned virologists, and when I call you out on it, you make it about me?? I'm not a virologist. I never claimed to know more than they do.
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I don't make that claim, at all. I also have no idea where you got that idea, as I am quoting leading virologists and molecular biologists. However, I do know my way around genomics and can intelligently comment on what I read from both scientists and laypersons. And I didn't attack you, I attacked your lack of knowledge.

Anderson worked in the newly opened BSL-4 lab, which is a high containment lab. I have no reason to doubt it was state of the art. However that has nothing to do with the issue in question, the work going on in BSL-2 and 3 labs, throughout 2015 to 2019 when the BSL-4 lab was opened. Their process was developing chimeric viruses in BSL-2 and animal experiments in BSL-3. Given they had no idea of the pathogenicity of the experiments conducted in the former, doing it in BSL-2 was insane. This is agreed to by even Ralph Baric.

Dorsten is responding to a question on making the SARS-CoV-2 virus from scratch. Only a moron journalist would frame the question that way and no rational scientist is suggesting that. What is rational is either the virus actually already existed in bats (unlikely) and was collected by the WIV and someone got infected, or an experiment involving genetic engineering and passaging of existing viruses collected in Yunnan lead to a lab leak. The latter is quite plausible as anyone familiar with the work would agree. Dorsten was not asked this question.

Yes, SARS-CoV-2 could have arisen naturally, and that is the explanation I currently favor. There are two hurdles, bat coronaviruses are not adapted to humans, they are adapted to bats. The fact SARS-2 is not well adapted to bats means it has diverged long ago, or that process was accelerated. There are multiple explanations for natural evolution, but we have found no evidence as yet. Recombination involves an intermediary and mutation involves humans. It absolutely can happen but so far on evidence, nada. The second obstacle is time, viruses take time to adapt to any host.

Also, when you and others refer to lab origin hypotheses as conspiracy theories, you are offending many virologists and scientists who now lean that way. It would be good if you and your ilk would actually get up to speed on what lab origin currently means.

geospatial wrote: »

I don't make that claim, at all. I also have no idea where you got that idea, as I am quoting leading virologists and molecular biologists. However, I do know my way around genomics and can intelligently comment on what I read from both scientists and laypersons. And I didn't attack you, I attacked your lack of knowledge.

Anderson worked in the newly opened BSL-4 lab, which is a high containment lab. I have no reason to doubt it was state of the art. However that has nothing to do with the issue in question, the work going on in BSL-2 and 3 labs, throughout 2015 to 2019 when the BSL-4 lab was opened. Their process was developing chimeric viruses in BSL-2 and animal experiments in BSL-3. Given they had no idea of the pathogenicity of the experiments conducted in the former, doing it in BSL-2 was insane. This is agreed to by even Ralph Baric.

Dorsten is responding to a question on making the SARS-CoV-2 virus from scratch. Only a moron journalist would frame the question that way and no rational scientist is suggesting that. What is rational is either the virus actually already existed in bats (unlikely) and was collected by the WIV and someone got infected, or an experiment involving genetic engineering and passaging of existing viruses collected in Yunnan lead to a lab leak. The latter is quite plausible as anyone familiar with the work would agree. Dorsten was not asked this question.

Yes, SARS-CoV-2 could have arisen naturally, and that is the explanation I currently favor. There are two hurdles, bat coronaviruses are not adapted to humans, they are adapted to bats. The fact SARS-2 is not well adapted to bats means it has diverged long ago, or that process was accelerated. There are multiple explanations for natural evolution, but we have found no evidence as yet. Recombination involves an intermediary and mutation involves humans. It absolutely can happen but so far on evidence, nada. The second obstacle is time, viruses take time to adapt to any host.

Also, when you and others refer to lab origin hypotheses as conspiracy theories, you are offending many virologists and scientists who now lean that way. It would be good if you and your ilk would actually get up to speed on what lab origin currently means.

Agreed 100%

Trigger wrote: »

Mod: Cut out the bickering, if you have nothing to add to the topic, don't post.

Posts deleted

Why are we discussing the literal opinions of scientists and major news articles now in the conspiracy theories forum?

When the virologists say that lab origin is extremely unlikely, but should still be investigated, I would argue that the motivation for saying that is not that they give any credibility to the conspiracists, or the half truths of distorted, pseudo-scientific narratives, but rather that looking into an origin of a virus is in itself a perfectly normal thing to do - like it was with SARS1.



So - Covid likely to be man made > conspiracy.
Scientists: let's investigate the origin of a new virus > perfectly normal, common practice, has been done in the past.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

So, virologist Anderson says it is difficult, you say it's not.

You argue with reverse genetics methods, when Drosten addresses exactly that, and explains it's like building a car to test the car radio, you say he wasn't asked the right questions.

Right.

Except it's not me personally arguing about how easy or difficult it is, it's published science. Creating chimeric viruses has been going on for decades, and from a technical perspective it's routine with today's genetic engineering methods.

These are the relevant papers to read if you want to get up to speed. One is from Ralph Baric's lab at UNC and the other from the WIV. Both describe in detail inserting the spike sequence from one bat coronavirus collected in Yunnan into a mouse adapted SARS backbone. The WIV paper describes creating eight different chimeric viruses using samples collected in Yunnan.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708621/

David Relman from Stanford who is involved in the US government investigation was recently interviewed by CBS and stated lab leak hypotheses are "absolute legitimate and plausible" and furthermore that "it is impossible to tell whether the last bit of evolution took place in a laboratory or in nature".

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

When the virologists say that lab origin is extremely unlikely, but should still be investigated, I would argue that the motivation for saying that is not that they give any credibility to the conspiracists, or the half truths of distorted, pseudo-scientific narratives, but rather that looking into an origin of a virus is in itself a perfectly normal thing to do - like it was with SARS1.

Yes but there is an enormous difference of opinion on origin possibilities between scientists. Some argue that lab origin is impossible while others say it is plausible.

On one extreme is Peter Daszak who has stated that SARS-2 could not have come from the WIV because he knew everything they were doing there and they were not studying anything that could be a SARS-2 ancestor. Furthermore he claimed their work was done in high security labs and they have been transparent with their data. We know now that all three statements were false, and that Peter Daszak's sole interest was supporting the lab and the GOF work in question. Which is a perfectly normal human response, but it also means he should not be involved in any investigation, nor should anyone with a conflict of interest.

On the other hand scientists who do not have a conflict of interest are asking for an open and transparent investigation, including an investigation of the work being done at the WIV. Difficult to do I agree given all the relevant data has been hidden and the scientists involved are under threat of imprisonment if they disclose anything.

Lab origin, whether the leakage of a natural virus being studied, or the leakage of a genetically engineered virus, are not conspiracy theories. They are plausible explanations.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

OK, please kindly link to that science.
From what I can tell, you have deliberately tried to misrepresent 'possible' as 'easy'.

I attached two links for you, the creation of chimeric viruses is not just possible, it is done routinely. I have already clarified for you that it is not technically "easy", but it is routine in labs that specialize in it. Nobody sensible is suggesting SARS-2 was built from scratch in a lab.

I am not getting into a waste of time semantic argument with you.

geospatial wrote: »

I attached two links for you, the creation of chimeric viruses is not just possible, it is done routinely. I have already clarified for you that it is not technically "easy", but it is routine in labs that specialize in it. Nobody sensible is suggesting SARS-2 was built from scratch in a lab.

I have to agree with this, my review of the published literature supports this assertion. I feel confident that I could do so without using extra cassettes or particular restriction enzymes given how these seamless kits are available. Usually you'd go with more conventional methods as you'd require more verifiable methods of successful insertion, but with low Kbp organisms like most viruses, it's acceptable to simply have the whole created virus sequenced nowadays, and then used for whatever further experimentation is required.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

You found a link to a DNA cloning kit online - conveniently forgetting that Coronaviruses are RNA viruses. Brilliant.

Well at least you posted this nonsense in the right forum, and have confirmed you have no clue what you are on about.

How does a Covid-19 PCR test work? Given a PCR test only works on DNA and not RNA, and the SARS-CoVCC-2 virus is RNA.

Read the first few sentences.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-biotechnology-revolution-pcr-and-the-use-553/

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

Ah, I see. So, you're now saying that a cloning kit is kind of like the same as a PCR test, that's why Drosten, who developed the Covid PCR test, is wrong, and you're right.
Unrelated links. Shifting goal posts - which you do every single time the BS you post is called into question - is a misinformation tactic.
You clearly stated 'I blame China' before.
Everything else is just nonsense to promote your entirely political narrative.

Bizarre and ignorant outburst.

I have never said "I blame China". I do however hold the CCP responsible for their cover up of the outbreak similar to SARS-1, and their persecution of scientists and doctors who tried to raise the alarm.

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

Apologies, I stand corrected, I confused you saying 'I blame the CCP' with 'I blame China'.



Although, if you consider the context - assigning political blame first, and then trying to construct a pseudo-scientific narrative to validate the claim - it makes absolutely no difference.

Apology accepted.

That's not what I'm doing. I am not claiming the virus originated in the WIV, although I think that is plausible and should be seriously investigated. A separate issue is the CCP covering up the outbreak, resisting access until the virus had already spread worldwide, and not allowing a proper investigation. The reality is the CCP cannot be trusted if a potential pandemic starts in China, which is actually quite scary.