Yuri Deigin

Not just the media, folks, also the rest of our "sense making apparatus".

Wikipedia has been suppressing lab leak discussion, and still to this moment will not allow the old Lab Leak Hypothesis page back. It still redirects to a declared "Misinformation!" page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_lab_leak_hypothesis

And guess where else lab leak was suppressed? Here on HN. Yes, dang, you suppressed discussion of a perfectly reasonable hypothesis many times.

So, while I have your attention, the real problem vis a vis Covid19 is not the lab leak. The real problem is "gain of function" research, using gene splicing to make more virulent-to-humans pathogens. And don't read into anything I'm saying, please pay attention to literally what I say here; if you have to reword what I say to cast doubt, you're not playing fair.

This virus was likely man-made because gain of function man made viruses are quite common in research; and this is not a coverup conspiracy caused by the Chinese tendency for face-saving, swept under the carpet, "truths", though there is plenty of that. This scandal was caused by western experts: our best virologists are themselves engaging in gain of function research right here in our very own cities. If you ask them, as the media did, "what likely happened here", their answer is not going to point the finger at themselves, too much funding is at stake.

Good background and in-depth research on the gain of function and lab leak hypotheses was…

I too am disappointed at how politicized this is. That includes the Vanity Fair article, which was mostly about press coverage, funding, memos, and circumstantial evidence.

Here's some good science sources:

- Comprehensive reddit post [0] from a virologist (table of contents, also linked as a 34 page pdf), referencing over 150 sources, with several sections going into the details of the genetic evidence, also interesting to read the comments.

- Here's an article [1] talking about different origin theories and the related genetic evidence, having a section I was interested in about the cleavage site and o-linked glycan, something apparently that has to develop in an animal with an immune system (this is something I haven't seen any lab-made proponents speak to yet).

- Lastly, here is an article [2], much more scientific than the Vanify Fair article, in favor of a lab connection (unfortunately, for me, this article doesn't mention the o-linked glycan, nor the genetic evidence that covid-19 may have originated hundreds of miles from Wuhan [3])

That's as far as I've gotten so far following the science. I'm hoping there will be more virologist commentary as more data comes out, perhaps something based on the full WHO report/data that I heard was released last week. I'd like to think that science will give us more definite answers eventually. It could take years.

I'm not so much interested in conjecture from politicians and journalists. I'm really taken back by all the…

The lab leak was a valid hypothesis since early 2020 and credible scientists had been warning about the possibility of a leak, specifically from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, well before that. By April, there were long arguments with evidence being published, such as here https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748. These were not "China==bad" arguments. Just people willing to look at the facts. If anything, they were "gain-of-function research==bad" but the Obama administration had put the kibosh on funding GoF research in the US for similar concerns, so surely that was acceptable criticism. When Trump took office, it appears that Fauci took advantage of the chaotic transition period to quietly lift those prohibitions.

Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to support that the virus was in fact "designed in the lab by humans" so not sure why you're lumping that in with "conspiratorial reasoning".

Meanwhile, there was what looks like an actual conspiracy by prominent scientists led by Peter Daszak to mislead the public about the possible origins of the virus. These scientists intentionally, collectively, misled the public and hid their obvious conflicts of interests. Wouldn't that qualify as a conspiracy?

History and the nature of the spread did not support a zoological origin of the virus. The likelihood of zoological vectors is an over-stated fever dream of gain-of-function grant seekers. If…

I'm not sure whether on the balance gain of function research is a good idea or not. The point of my comment was just that discussing the impact is highly relevant, and isn't "putting the cart before the horse". But I guess I should expand on it.

Regarding whether gain of function research is a good idea: Creating synthetic variants (to see if there is gain or loss in function) is very helpful in that it allows well-controlled experiments, which is necessary to establish causation. As I said elsewhere, I don't think the risk is appreciably different whether the lab's collection of dangerous viruses is all-natural or not. That is, if we ban gain of function research we should probably stop studying the unmodified variants also. There have been near-misses with accidental releases of SARS-CoV-1 and Guanarito [0]; no gain of function required. And the 1977 release of H1N1 came from vaccine development.

Regarding describing the net impact of gain of function research as one pandemic, zero help:

I don't know what would be different if gain of function research had been banned. The underlying methods have been used since at least 1999 on, among other things, MERS and SARS-2003 [0], so they have contributed to the general knowledge base that permitted extremely rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine. This was a significant help, not zero help. On a technical and scientific level we were very well prepared for COVID-19. Its biology was well-understood almost…

The WIV published lots of gain-of-function research, but all by genetic engineering and not serial passage. Ralph Baric's group has published on coronavirus gain-of-function by serial passage though:

> We adapted the SARS-CoV (Urbani strain) by serial passage in the respiratory tract of young BALB/c mice. Fifteen passages resulted in a virus (MA15) that is lethal for mice following intranasal inoculation.

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748

So it doesn't seem implausible to me that the WIV would bring up a similar program. The lack of any public record doesn't seem like it requires any conspiracy to me, just for them not to have published yet (especially since they only got the BSL-4 lab where they'd likely be doing that work in 2018).

I think I probably understated the plausibility of a genetically-engineered origin in my comment above, too. I've just re-read Andersen's reasoning in the Nature article, and it's based heavily on the dissimilarity of SARS-CoV-2 from previously-known viruses. But we know the WIV had a private database--for example, RaTG13 was allegedly collected in 2013, but not published until after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

Honestly this whole area of research seems terrifying to me. Regardless of whether it's eventually shown to have caused this pandemic or not, I see no indication that this work is delivering any benefit commensurate to its risk. Many prominent…

I think this is the relevant line of inquiry.

>We know what viruses the lab was working with, and SARS-CoV-2 wasn't one of them.

Do we really know what was being worked with at the time of outbreak?

Plenty of published literature exists for the years leading up to the outbreak.
It shows that they were working with viruses with all of the component parts of CoV-19. Their published research also shows that they were genetically combing these viruses so that they can cross species barriers and testing their ability to infect and spread in living models.

There were publications as recent as October 2019 where they were modifying chicken corona viruses with engineered furian binding sites very similar to that of CoV-19 so that they could cross the species barrier.

The question then becomes how much data typically gets shared for projects in progress before publication. I don't know what this standard practice is here.

The most informative post I have seen on the topic was shared back in April 2020 here on HN [1]

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748