zlacker

I don't think lab workers getting sick is really a useful data point. People get sick all the time. Could have very easily been seasonal flu or whatever.

It also seems The Lancet letter doesn't actual address the question of lab leak. Only that it wasn't engineered. That was a pretty hot conspiracy theory at the time and one that remains far fetched. They didn't positively say it couldn't be a naturally occurring virus that leaked. I don't know enough to comment on gain of function leaves any hallmarks but I'm guessing it doesn't since it tries to replicate evolution.

>>tootie+(OP)
The lab workers didn't even get sick, it was samples the lab worked on.

>>tootie+(OP)
It's so far fetched to think a lab with known safety issues could be responsible for leaking a virus. We all know that humans are infallible and never make mistakes and accidents rarely occur in place with poor safety standards. Its just so crazy....

>>calsy+t6
I'm not saying it's far-fetched. It's definitely possible. I'm debating whether or not this is any kind of smoking gun. It's circumstantial evidence.

>>tootie+(OP)
Lab workers getting sick should be a starting point to begin analyzing archived blood samples for instance. Also, you don't usually visit a hospital for seasonal flu. And three people from the same lab at the same time suggests a wider outbreak in the lab. Even if it were the seasonal flu, it would have warranted a wider investigation, given what that lab was working on.

>>corty+Bo
Plenty of people visit hospitals for seasonal flu, fyi. They shouldn't, but they do.

>>tootie+(OP)
3/6 fatality rate of researchers dying should be absolutely chilling evidence of something that’s gone wrong.

>>system+mr
Those are miners, not researchers. And it was in 2012.

>>karmas+Qx
Thanks for correction, I think that's still an alarming rate for a specific mission to fetch samples of Bat feces for virology research. That should be a clear, undisputably abnormal indication of something wrong.

>>GavinM+6p
I think lab workers researching viruses are some of the less likely to do so, unless they're in a really bad state. If they were in a very bad state, it's less likely that it was the seasonal flu.

>>corty+Bo
In China, people do. In Pakistan, they would get an injection, even if it wasn’t effective.

Medical practices and norms vary widely depending on the culture you live in.

>>tootie+(OP)
How many times you had three of your colleagues sent to the hospital for a flu they caught at the office?

>>corty+Bo
> you don't usually visit a hospital for seasonal flu

there's numerous posts in previous discussions saying that in China people do, because they don't typically have a GP and so go to the hospital for any acute ailment.

>>tootie+(OP)
I quoted this bit in another comment, but Steven Quay (interviewed by the US gov as mentioned in tfa)

The “engineered” comments refer to common amino acid sequences from lab practices, they leave a signature because ordinary biology is more random.

  The gene sequence for the amino acids in the furin site in CoV-2 uses a very rare set of two codons, three letter words so six letters in a row, that arerarely used individually and have never been seen together in tandem in any coronaviruses in nature. But these same ‘rare in nature’ codons turn out to be the very ones that are always used by scientists in the laboratory when researchers want to add the amino acid arginine, the ones that are found in the furin site. When scientists add a dimer of arginine codons to a coronavirus, they invariably use the word, CGG-CGG, but coronaviruses in nature rarely (<1%) use this codon pair.  For example, in the 580,000 codons of 58 Sarbecoviruses the only CGG pair is CoV-2; none of the other 57 sarbecoviruses have such a pair.

>>eutrop+EW
Perspective on the rarity of the CGG pair:

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1391507272887455746

Basically, it's somewhat rare but not wildly so. FCoV has an RR pair, the first is coded as CGG, and the second as CGA, a difference of one base pair.

>>raphli+b01
I grant it's totally possible for this to occur naturally, at random (thank you, genetics) -- but when we haven't found any intermediate host animals and there's a lab at the outbreak location that:

    Developed chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses
    Conducted ’dangerous’ gain-of-function research on the SARS-CoV-1 virus, some of which had been funded by the US government (Asia Times)
    Established a 96.2% match with SARS-CoV-2 and a virus they sampled from a cave over 1,000 miles away from Wuhan
    Injected live piglets with bat coronaviruses as recently as July 2019
    Published a paper on a close descendant of SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, in November 2019
    Was hiring researchers to work on bat coronaviruses as recently as November 2019

You have to imagine the very real possibility that it was just an accident.

>>eutrop+EW
This kind of pattern hunting easily steps into a logical fallacy where meaning is derived from noise. We also need to know how many other viruses contain codons not typically found in other viruses. If in fact every virus has one or two unique traits, then we could likewise claim that all viruses are engineered. Not saying that is the case, just want to caution against the perils of searching for patterns in large data sets like this.