What’s as interesting as whether or not this narrative is true (unlikely but possible) is considering who desperately wants it to be true and why. — Baden
Upon the basis of what information would you consider it unlikely, rather than likely? Note: I think it neither likely nor unlikely, on account of what I consider to be not enough information.
Simple mathematical analysis gives real reason for concern about the handling of these dangerous viruses. Consider the probability for escape from a single lab in a single year to be 0.003 (i.e., 0.3 percent), an estimate that is conservative in light of a variety of government risk assessments for biolabs and actual experience at laboratories studying dangerous pathogens. Calculating from this probability, it would take 536 years for there to be an 80 percent chance of at least one escape from a single lab. But with 42 labs carrying out live PPP research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years, a time interval smaller than those that have separated influenza pandemics in the 20th century. This level of risk is clearly unacceptable.
Yes, there was (is) this narrative going on that to utter the Lab-leak hypothesis, you were racist pizzagate-level conspiracist Trump-supporter and only now thanks to "new" information is this is a respectful hypothesis. This is a way for some parts of the media to start looking at the possibility (and forget how they wrote about it in the past). That the hypothesis has always been plausible, just like and others remarks, is denied. Just as talking about the possibility didn't make you a Trump supporter in the first place.The misinformation and censorship regarding the lab theory is quite the scandal. Facebook went so far as to ban any discussion of the theory on its platform, ironically to protect the public from misinformation. And these measures were all based on poor science. One has to wonder what sort of information and evidence has been lost during that time. — NOS4A2
There won't be any progress on the matter like this. — Benkei
(See The Lancet (February 2018), Ban on gain-of-function studies ends)The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports.
On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process has now concluded. It was spearheaded by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and led to the development of a new framework for assessing funding decisions for research involving pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential. The release of the framework by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which NIH is part, signalled the end of the funding pause.
The situation has its roots in 2011, when the NSABB suppressed two studies involving H5N1 viruses that had been modified to allow airborne transmission from ferret to ferret. They worried that malign actors could replicate the work to deliberately cause an outbreak in human beings. After much debate, the studies were published in full in 2012. HHS subsequently issued guidelines for funding decisions on experiments likely to result in highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses transmissible from mammal to mammal via respiratory droplets. The guidelines were later expanded to include H7N9 viruses.
In 2014, several breaches of protocol at US government laboratories brought matters to a head. The news that dozens of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) might have been exposed to anthrax, that vials of smallpox virus had been left lying around in an NIH storeroom, and that the CDC had unwittingly sent out samples of ordinary influenza virus contaminated with H5N1, shook faith in the country's biosafety procedures. Over 200 scientists signed the Cambridge Working Group declaration arguing for a cessation of experiments creating potential pandemic pathogens “until there has been a quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation, as well as comparison against safer experimental approaches”.
The debate is focused on a subset of gain-of-function studies that manipulate deadly viruses to increase their transmissibility or virulence. “This is what happens to viruses in the wild”, explains Carrie Wolinetz, head of the NIH Office of Science Policy. “Gain-of-function experiments allow us to understand how pandemic viruses evolve, so that we can make predictions, develop countermeasures, and do disease surveillance”. Although none of the widely publicised mishaps of 2014 involved such work, the NIH decided to suspend funding for gain-of-function studies involving influenza, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV.
(27th May 2021) The US Senate has passed an amendment by Republican Senator Rand Paul to permanently ban the National Institutes of Health and any other federal agency from funding gain-of-function research in China.
“We don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally,” Senator Paul said in a statement.
“While many still deny funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan … the passage of my amendment ensures that this never happens in the future.”
The amendment defined gain-of-function research as “any research project that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity or transmissibility in mammals”.
The Senate chamber cheered after the amendment was passed.
I think the real debate ought to be on the safety of the gain of function research, — ssu
Upon the basis of what information would you consider it unlikely, rather than likely? — Janus
7. A new study claims that researchers have found ‘unique fingerprints’ in Covid-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory. — Apollodorus
Interesting. The "prima facie" is a disclaimer on their evidence though and after the study that said it couldn't have been engineered I'm going to say, let's wait and see. — Benkei
Upon the basis of what information would you consider it unlikely, rather than likely? — Janus
What I've read concerning the genetic make-up of the disease. I could look it up but tbh, I'm not so interested in debating this aspect of it in the absence of further evidence because a) We have, as yet, no reliable or scientific way of apportioning probability here — Baden
Why? Haven’t you ever thought something unlikely without recourse to scientific method? — Baden
What’s as interesting as whether or not this narrative is true (unlikely but possible) is considering who desperately wants it to be true and why. — Baden
If, as I have, you’ve been paying attention to these things for a number of years, you know that, whenever there is a major outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic of infectious disease, one conspiracy theory always—and I do mean always—arises.
See Inside the Early Days of China’s Coronavirus Cover-UpSeasoned journalists in China often say “Cover China as if you were covering Snapchat”—in other words, screenshot everything, under the assumption that any given story could be deleted soon. For the past two and half months, I’ve been trying to screenshot every news article, social media post, and blog post that seems relevant to the coronavirus. In total, I’ve collected nearly 100 censored online posts: 40 published by major news organizations, and close to 60 by ordinary social media users like Yue. In total, the number of Weibo posts censored and WeChat accounts suspended would be virtually uncountable. (Despite numerous attempts, Weibo and WeChat could not be reached for comment.)
Taken together, these deleted posts offer a submerged account of the early days of a global pandemic, and they indicate the contours of what Beijing didn’t want Chinese people to hear or see. Two main kinds of content were targeted for deletion by censors: Journalistic investigations of how the epidemic first started and was kept under wraps in late 2019 and live accounts of the mayhem and suffering inside Wuhan in the early days of the city’s lockdown, as its medical system buckled under the world’s first hammerstrike of patients.
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