zlacker

But they have found the virus in bats... it’s not engineered. Yes there are lots of legitimate reasons to study viruses.

>>onetho+(OP)
No, they haven't found the exact virus in bats in the wild, yet. They've found some relatives, but not the virus. There's still no strong empirical evidence one way or another for the zoonotic vs. lab leak hypothesis.

>>onetho+(OP)
They haven't found the virus in bats. The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 found in the wild was a different virus found in bats, RaTG13. As you wrote above yourself, there's no known animal reservoir for SARS-CoV-2. Laboratory attempts to infect bat cells (e.g. [1]; but there have been many others) with SARS-CoV-2 have been unsuccessful.

This was the significance of the pangolins, which were initially proposed to be the proximal animal host. But while it initially seemed that multiple infected pangolins from different sources had been found, it later turned out multiple seemingly independent papers had been written based on the same pangolins[2]. This means it's much more likely that something else infected those pangolins, in the same way e.g. that some housecats have been infected by their owners.

Nature has added an editor's note[3] to one of the pangolin papers, and even Daszak and the Chinese have pretty much abandoned the pangolins. So for now, there's no known animal host for SARS-CoV-2, unlike for the original SARS-CoV (palm civets) or MERS-CoV-2 (camels). Perhaps the animal reservoir just hasn't been found yet; but it's also possible that animal reservoir doesn't exist, because SARS-CoV-2 originated from serial passaging in a WIV lab. That's just natural evolution under unusually fast selective pressure, so any arguments that SARS-CoV-2 shows no evidence of genetic engineering are inapplicable to that theory.

1. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/12/20-2308_article

2. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x

>>meowfa+jo
Even the lab leak is zoonotic. Because 100% it was from the bats... you are right it might have gone via the lab or via a wet market... what’s the difference though?

(Yes it isn’t 100% match, but it’s 100% an ancestor... so not engineered)

>>triple+Io
None of those citations indicate engineering of the virus. Am I missing something?

>>onetho+H01
The main lab leak hypothesis posits a gain-of-function research origin rather than a zoonotic origin. (Meaning, taking a coronavirus found in the wild, then manipulating its structure to study the effects and potentially devise remedies.)

Here's an article mentioning this hypothesis: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/coronavir...

SARS-CoV-2 has not yet been found in bats or any other animal. Relatives have been found, but relatives with key differences. It certainly could be found, and if it's correct then it'll still probably be very difficult to find due to being a needle in a haystack, but so far it hasn't been found.

I'm certainly not arguing it's true and the zoonotic origin is false (and I have no clue where to allocate the confidence values, myself), but your repeated insistence that it's "100% zoonotic" is puzzling because that hasn't even been claimed by any experts yet. The jury is still out.

Sure, the ultimate origin of the virus - tracing its full lineage - will have been from an animal no matter what. But if it were substantially modified by deliberate RNA manipulation in the lab after being collected from an animal, potentially increasing its lethality or contagiousness in the process and resulting in the pathogen we now call SARS-CoV-2, that would mean this particular virus isn't zoonotic. If true, it would totally change the discussion into one about the safety of such gain-of-function research and this particular lab.

Almost any engineered pathogen of any kind (protozoon, bacterium, virus) in any scenario will likely ultimately have been derived from something already living. But once the pathogen is experimentally modified to add, remove, or alter its functioning, it's no longer accurate to describe the modified pathogen as being zoonotic. By that logic, even engineered bioweapons would be considered zoonotic (and no one is claiming in this case it's a bioweapon; the lab leak hypothesis posits benign gain-of-function research and an accidental escape). Frankenstein's monster is no longer just some guy.

It's like saying the origin of the domestic dog is 100% natural because, look, you find its close ancestor the wolf everywhere in the wild. It omits the hypothesis that some wolves were taken and deliberately shaped and molded by humans to produce something new.

>>onetho+011
You're using the word "engineering" without defining it, and thereby conflating two things:

1. Direct artificial manipulation of a virus's genetic sequence.

2. Laboratory culture and passaging of a virus, allowing evolution due to natural mutations to proceed under artificial selective constraints.

No one serious is focusing on (1). The people bringing it up most often are either uneducated cranks, or zoonotic origin proponents using it as a strawman to refute.

The serious concern is that SARS-CoV-2 originated due to (2). In that case, since it's a natural evolutionary process, there would be no indication in the virus's genetic sequence of human tampering, because no direct human tampering occurred. The only evidence would be the absence of any animal reservoir of the virus. Perhaps that will eventually be found; but so far--unlike for SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV--it hasn't been.

As I note elsewhere in this thread, the discovery of a proximal animal host would convince me that the virus is probably of natural origin. Is there any evidence short of a direct admission from the people responsible that would convince you it might have escaped from a lab?

>>onetho+H01
First, even genetically-engineered viruses (i.e., viruses whose nucleic acid sequence was directly manipulated by scientists) are genetically similar to natural viruses--scientists lack the knowledge to design a viral genome entirely de novo, so such activity starts with one or more natural genomes. I believe other evidence makes such an origin for SARS-CoV-2 unlikely, but the existence of natural relatives means nothing.

Second, are you really saying that if we somehow later confirm that SARS-CoV-2 is a naturally-evolved virus sampled and accidentally released by the WIV, we should just shrug and do nothing? Even before the pandemic, there was a debate over whether deliberately seeking out novel pathogens (especially for gain-of-function experiments, but even just for collection and sequencing) brought sufficient benefit to justify the risk. If it turned out that such activity started a pandemic that killed millions of people, wouldn't it perhaps be worth revisiting that tradeoff?

>>triple+h52
As far as I have seen, there is no evidence they were allowing the virus to mutate. Do you have a reference to that?

>>onetho+FN2
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-throug...

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 epidemiologists vocally opposed the lifting of the 2018 ban on funding of gain-of-function research (e.g., Marc Lipsitch at Harvard), and I agree with them.