Personally, I think their logic is doesn't work and I would like to see someone credible challenges them.
I don’t know what good will come of this discussion, unless all countries are willing to discontinue gain-of-function research if this claim is found to be true. However that’s a lot of “ifs” and there is too much opportunity to simply place blame, which won’t help anyone.
[1] https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/what-is-the-source-of-cov...
The National Academy of Sciences published an opinion piece from a reputable scientist containing fairly strongly worded (for PNAS, anyway) conjecture regarding a possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. [0]
(you might recognize Relman's name from his work on identifying the human gut microbiome.)
This is particularly strongly worded for this publication:
""" Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory. Alternatively, the complete SARS-CoV-2 sequence could have been recovered from a bat sample and viable virus resurrected from a synthetic genome to study it, before that virus accidentally escaped from the laboratory. """
The whole likelihood basically hinges on the fact that the outbreak occurred in Wuhan and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been working for decades on enhancing coronavirus strains. That's quite strongly circumstantial but it's not evidence. Possible chimerization and furin-cleavage insertion seem a lot more interesting imo but are weighted much lower.
Based on their report [1], most of the likelihood of lab-escape (almost 50x weight) just stems from the fact that the outbreak is in Wuhan. They state that it's because of the proximity to Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the lab's gain-of-function research - only one of 5 locations world-wide.
That single "bullet-point" re-weights zoonotic origin from 97% to 56% and lab-escape from 1.4% to 42%. Otherwise their final likelihoods would be: "zoonotic" 85.5%, "lab-escape" 8.5%, "bioweapon" 6%.
[1] https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/what-is-the-source-of-cov...
> 11 November 2020 Editor's Note: Readers are alerted that concerns have been raised about the identity of the pangolin samples reported in this paper and their relationship to previously published pangolin samples. Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.
What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses:
> Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came from bats, mice, or domestic animals.
> More so, bats are the source of the Ebola virus, rabies, Nipah ad Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and influenza A virus.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/26492/20200717/covid-1...
> An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin (1,2). Globally, infectious diseases account for 15.8% of all deaths and 43.7% of deaths in low-resource countries (3,4). It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year (5).
Also, it is more likely a something like this gets discovered in a major city vs some rural backwater, because they have more educated doctors there and more patience to detect a pattern.
[1] https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
The most interesting - where public opinion was against and Rootclaim was for, and it was later shown Rootclaim was far more likely to be right - seem to be the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman [0] and that MH370 vanished due to pilot suicide [1].
I think where the rubber would meet the road is if they're ever shown to be correct about the Syrian chemical attacks [2], where they draw the opposite conclusion Bellingcat did, and of course about the COVID-19 origin.
If they do turn out to be right about those, that would grant them major credibility points, I think; though the conclusions there may never be known one way or another. If they are right about COVID-19, it would also make me view Bret Weinstein with a lot more credibility, since he's been advocating the likelihood of the lab leak hypothesis for a while.
[0] https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_track_record#barry_and_h...
[1] https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_track_record#MH_370
[2] https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_track_record#syrian_chem...
This was the original link
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
If you Google “lancet ban on gain function” the first link is gone now.
I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and validate that this is actually refutable). This is valid until 2021-03-01.
I ran a large forecasting research project for 4 years so know this field quite well.
The "willing to bet" thing seems nonsense - there are no bet resolution criteria stated anywhere I can see.
They seem to be using a "Superforecaster"-like method of breaking down a prediction into smaller parts, and trying to work out the liklihood of each.
But their approach for doing it is crazy. The "escaped from lab" odds increase the most because they guess (and it is a guess) that the Wuhan lab does "20% of the gain-of-function research in the world"
That only makes anything resembling sense if they can establish that C19 is caused by gain-of-function research - but they haven't done that.
The whole hypothesis chain is full of this weak reasoning. For example the "lab dissociated itself from bat research" claim uses an unreferenced article by Miranda Devine in the NYPost as a source. Devine is an Australian columnist who left Australia after being forced to apologise for making up a story that a 9yo boy with dwafism was running a scam[1]. If this site was being honest in their approach they'd include that as evidence her claims on this story might be made up too.
Edit: and in (sarcasm) astonishing news, they also think the Syrian chemical attacks weren't carried out by the Syrian regime[2].
[1] https://junkee.com/miranda-devine-apology-quaden-bayles/2715...
[2] https://www.rootclaim.com/claims/who-carried-out-the-chemica...
I am not a virologist but not far away from it. It is well possible that the virus escaped from a lab. But never claim maliciousness for something that can be easily explained by stupidity. When working with Chinese in the lab I experienced them as never working very clean (e.g. with radioactive stuff).
"There is some weak evidence regarding lax security and procedures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." No, there is actually strong evidence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...
This alone shows the guys don't know what they are talking about.
There is no evidence that the virus was artificially altered (But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
This being said, it seems to me that Corona COULD be used as a weapon. China is coping much better then the EU or the US with the virus. We know this now. How about 3 more viruses in the next three years? Will the west survive this? While I STRONGLY believe that China is not really to blame for the outbreak, I am sure the development has raised eyebrows in China.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
> Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.
> Pangolins and bats don't usually cohabitate, making this somewhat unlikely in nature.
Horseshoe bats are nocturnal animals that roost in caves during the day but sometimes practice perch feeding at night [1]:
> The other strategy is known as perch feeding: Individuals roost on feeding perches and wait for prey to fly past, then fly out to capture it.
Pangolins [2] and palm civets [3] are nocturnal and arboreal. The bat viral RNA sequences come from anal swabs of netted animals so they are primarily gastrointestinal infections. All of these animals are found in the Lancang/Mekong [4] catch basin. Bat guano seems like a good vector for the virus.
Gain-of-function experiments require two viral isolates that recombine during passage. The lab theory assumes that the RNA sequence of the original viral isolates were never shared. I find this scenario unlikely but I am open to changing my mind based on evidence. SARS-1 is evidence of a very similar zoonotic scenario.
Humans that encounter bat guano in this region also seem like a good host for a recombination event.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_bat#Diet_and_foragin...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin#Behavior
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_palm_civet#Feeding_and_d...
Ironically one of these researchers, Daszak, was politically targeted for his connections to this Wuhan lab [1], even though he and Wuhan scientists have been trying to get the attention to this problem for some time. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02473-4
>Furin cleavage sites are not common in other related coronaviruses.
However, this claim appears to have been investigated and debunked [1]
>Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...
If someone organizes something credible I'd also be in for 10k.
However, I suspect root claim wouldn't go through with it but would just update their model to incorporate more information. They hint at that possibility on their site.
"Looking for an unambiguous calendar-and-clock format that is internationally understood? It’s time for ISO 8601."
"ISO 8601 tackles this uncertainty by setting out an internationally agreed way to represent dates:
YYYY-MM-DD
For example, September 27, 2012 is represented as 2012-09-27."
Australia: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9024311/China-claim...
India: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8993667/Now-Chinese...
Italy: https://www.the-sun.com/news/1824950/china-accuses-italy-sta...
US Army: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-claims-that-the-u...
Since the common belief is that COVID originated in China, they stand to benefit from an independent inquiry that proves any of their above claims.
I believe I originally saw it here on HN.
Will we ever learn the truth about China and the pandemic?
Two inquiries are 'cloaked in secrecy'
WHO lets Beijing vet investigators and it
appoints British scientist with links to Wuhan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
here is an essay written by his guest:
https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/uk-variant-puts-spot...
This technique looks reminiscent of "superforecasting".
Caveat that their conclusion hinges on their assumptions, and we would expect that about 2/10 of their 80% predictions would actually be false if we could score them all.
See "Infectious diseases emerging from Chinese wet-markets: zoonotic origins of severe respiratory viral infections" [2006]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16940861/
So are you proposing that a pangolin from Lancang was transported more than 2000km to a seafood wetmarket in Wuhan?
At face value, this sounds like a very unlikely scenario for a zoonotic event/origin.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/04/coronavir...
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/time-for-a-reality-che...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/europe/coronavirus-...
[3]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/29/8008132...
> The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.
Source: https://archive.is/r4Yac
Now, I don't suggest that the virus was created in the lab, or deliberately leaked. But it had to be brought into Wuhan somehow. I just don't consider it dismissible, yet, that an inadvertent leak from the lab could have been the cause. I look forward to all new evidence that may emerge.
If the market was indeed the cause, then in the interests of global safety, wild animal markets of this nature should be prohibited.
>Since there is no lab test or clear-cut way to determine whether a Rootclaim analysis is correct, we have to rely on outside expert judges.
I haven't been able to find any place where it says who the judges are for this challenge.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296...
With that in mind, I am surprised that no one in this conversation has mentioned Zero Hedge yet. Earlier in the year, Zero Hedge wrote about the possibility that the virus may have originated in a particular Wuhan lab (which was close to wet markets, and advertised research involving bats and coronaviruses). Zero Hedge received a lot of criticism from those who politicized this topic or were anti-Zero Hedge for other reasons. Just like with those other disasters I named above, the critics insisted that there is absolutely no possible way this virus originated from a lab. The same critique then extended to Trump and became further politicized when he correctly suggested halting inbound flights from China as a precaution. The focus on Trump poisoned civil discourse around the coronavirus. In the middle of all this chaos, Zero Hedge was banned from Twitter for "doxxing" researchers at the Wuhan lab (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter...) although if you look at the actual Zero Hedge article in question, the researcher they named listed his contact information publicly, as he's the public face of the lab (so there's no doxxing). Zero Hedge later wrote an article covering the extremely biased attacks they were subject to from news media outlets (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/zerohedge-suspended-twit...), which is worth reading if you're into truth seeking. Embarrassingly, Twitter ultimately reversed their "permanent ban" of Zero Hedge (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-zerohedge/twitter...) but the damage was done.
Remember, we have no reason to believe the Chinese government's claims about the virus. They sought to oppress initial reports of the coronavirus, which delayed the world from knowing about it and being able to take the necessary actions (banning travel from China to their countries). The WHO was complicit in this by blindly relaying the CCP's claim that SARS-nCoV-2 does not transmit between humans (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152), and in refusing to investigate the Wuhan lab themselves (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-world-health-...). And it is remarkable that after all these months of secrecy and denial, the scientists at this lab are only NOW (in December 2020) saying they are open to a visit and probe into the lab - after any evidence would be scrubbed (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445). This is obviously an underhanded offer given that the Chinese government just recently sentenced the Chinese journalist who challenged the government's early coronavirus narrative to 4 years in prison (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zh...).
All that is a long way of saying: please don't politicize this topic. Let's allow the open discussion, investigation, and research into the possibility that this virus originated from a lab or any other source.
> Shi’s team used the antibody test to narrow down the list of locations and bat species to pursue in the quest for genomic clues. After roaming mountainous terrain in most of China’s dozens of provinces, the researchers turned their attention to one spot: Shitou Cave, on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, where they conducted intense sampling during different seasons over five consecutive years.
Distance from Kumming to Wuhan: 1,566 km [2].
Distance from Kumming to Foshan (SARS-1): 1,315 km [3].
I am saying that horseshoe bats, pangolins, palm civets, and humans overlap in Yunnan province and along the Langcang/Mekong. This is the most likely ground zero for a natural recombination event. When and how the first SARS-CoV-2 virus made its way to Wuhan is a separate question; I'd think a human on a train is the most likely vector.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan,+Hubei,+China/Kunming,...
[3] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Foshan,+Guangdong+Province,+...
https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-coronavirus-pandem...
This is a really bad analogy, though.
Seismic lab doesn't contain self propagating "seismic seed" that has the danger of being let loose and spread across the world, whilst virology lab _regularly_ handle dangerous pathogen.
The major reason people suspecting lab origin is not simply due to the existence of WIV next door. It is due to how the ccp purge information on WIV[1], have the lab taken over by the military[2], and the sentencing/disappearance of numerous civil journalists (陈秋实 Chen Qiushi, 李泽华 Li Zehua, 张展 Zhang Zhan are the ones that come to mind).
- [1](https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6181529370001)
- [2, Chinese](https://sa.sogou.com/sgsearch/sgs_tc_news.php?req=gNWjMh9kjp...)
"In May 2020, George Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said animal samples collected from the seafood market had tested negative for the virus, indicating that the market was the site of an early superspreading event, but it was not the site of the initial outbreak.[43]"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-rules-out-animal-market-a...
I can't find references now but the idea that the virus started in Wuhan roughly early November and that the Huanan market was just a notable superspreading event which brought attention to the virus is pretty accepted in scientific circles. The virus was too well adpated to humans initially and has not evolved significantly since its first detection then (D614G and the new variants aside).
The animals that carried the virus in the Huanan market were probably just an infected human, and not particularly close to the origin case.
It was just detected there because it was a superspreading event that happened in the backyard of the nearby lab.
The most plausible explanation I've heard as an origin is that it jumped from bat to human in the process of bat guano farming. This would have obviously happened in the rural area outside of Wuhan, but the virus found its way through spreading events into the higher density city, where it was eventually detected. Cryptic spread would have been happening for at least a month or more as it adapted to humans.
The furin cleavage site may also be the result of a recombination event between two coronaviruses (coronaviruses don't just mutation and reassortment like influenza, they also recombine and dual infection with two coronaviruses in an animal or human can shuffle parts of genes):
https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134?ijkey=b8e66cb01995eeb4...
So if you just assume that trajectory from bat guano farming to city center, along with a missing link to provide the furin cleavage site, then the title articles analysis really falls apart. Not surprising that the bats are far away, the furin cleavage site may be not surprising if we manage to find a similar virus in nature, and mostly what is left is that it wasn't detected until it was right on the doorstep of the virology lab (where the virus found the people who were likely to set off the alarm about it) and the rest some mild cover-your-ass at the lab would be entirely expected.
But that means that there's some bats with answers somewhere outside of Wuhan but China has been stalling efforts to go find them.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavi...
Incidentally, most of Ralph Baric's research ended up in Wuhan with Zhengli-Li Shi and his team, where their research continued.
Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
So maybe the lab theory is true and it was a leak from a US lab
In Italy people were contaminated even earlier than that, apparently [4].
These are not wholly surprising because, again it is likely that the virus had been circulating for some time in humans before it exploded and was detected. It is quite contagious but many people do not experience any symptoms or only mild, common symptoms, which IMO makes it relatively easy to go undetected until it goes out out of hands, as it did in Wuhan first.
It's good to ask for proof but then you should ask for proof of all claims, not only the ones you do not like.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52526554
[2] https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-report...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-evidence-race-find-fr...
[4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...
In France; December 2019: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7196402/
> His previous experience has shown that such antibody tests for the coronavirus' RBD can create a lot of false positives, Rutherford told Live Science. And because this is "such an unexpected finding," it should be confirmed with other antibody tests such as those that look for antibodies against another one of the coronavirus' proteins, an outer coat called a "nucleocapsid," which is also unique to the novel coronavirus, he said.
> Still, "it's not totally outside the realm of possibility," that the virus circulated in Italy earlier than thought. because there is a lot of travel back and forth between China and Italy, especially northern Italy, he said. But considering the earliest COVID-19 case in Wuhan was reported to be in November, "it really gives me pause to say let's really make sure we got this right before we try and explain it," Rutherford said. [0]
[0] https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-circulating-italy-ea...
"The online and print cultural materials of the Confucius Institute present a vision of[1] https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-the-us-targeting-chinas-confuci... [2] http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/27901/1/The_Confucius_Institut...
"'Sinicization' - the thesis that all of the non-Han peoples who have entered the Chinese realm have eventually been assimilated into the Chinese culture--is a twentieth-century Han nationalist interpretation of China's past."