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A comment on Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19.

Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by jerome-jh on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @06:40AM (#24764150)
"Currently, our knowledge on the animal origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains incomplete to a large part."

So we still have no proof of SARS-CoV-2 originating from natural selection, just as we have no proof of human intervention. I often read the first hypothesis is far more likely than the second, but I do not agree. The actual probabilities to be compared are:

- the likelihood of a virus outbreak due to natural selection in Wuhan

- the likelihood of a virus resulting from a gain of function experiment "escapes" from Wuhan BSL4

Note that we are sure that Wuhan BSL4 was doing gain of function experiments. Also note that natural virus outbreaks are quite likely when looking at China as a whole, China is big, or even when looking at the whole world. But that does not answer the question at hand, and that does not make the natural selection hypothesis "far more likely".

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by hef19898 on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @07:39AM (#24764534)
Incomplete knowledge =/= no proof. From what I got, I am no virologist, is that it is experts consense that the virus jumped from animals to humans. It is just the details we don't know yet.

And please, stop spreading this "Wuhan-lab-escaped-engineered-virus" BS.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by jerome-jh on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:05AM (#24764741)
If you read the article carefully, it leaves the two options open, refusing to conclude, with a preference towards a natural mutation. BTW the virus may have jumped from animals to humans inside the lab itself. What is BS is "mutations occur in the wild permanently, so that's the most likely hypothesis". In this particular case, that's unfounded and specifically what I am challenging.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by threatripper on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:12AM (#24764797)
What good does it if we discuss such a sensitive issue without solid proof? There are thousands of other theories that have no supporting evidence. Some of them may even be true but most are just BS that takes up time. So let's wait with this discussion until there really is solid evidence for a theory.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by nradov on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:24AM (#24765322)
We are probably never going to get solid proof either way. The lab origin hypothesis hasn't been ruled out. Yuri Deigin posted an interesting analysis with some circumstantial evidence.

https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throu...

There have been at least four other coronaviruses which crossed over from animals to humans before we had any real viral manipulation technology. So I suspect SARS-CoV-2 followed the same natural pattern. But that's still just a hypothesis, not proof.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by hef19898 on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:26AM (#24765828)
The animal transmission is, as far as I understood, backed up by genetic analysis of the virus. Which beats any circumstantial "evidence" by a long shot if you ask me.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by nradov on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:38AM (#24765968)
Based on genetic analysis there is no doubt that an ancestor of the current SARS-CoV-2 strains originated in animals. What remains unknown is exactly how it crossed over to humans. The index patient hasn't been identified. Some sort of laboratory involvement seems unlikely, but we can't reject any hypothesis without definitive evidence.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by hef19898 on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:43AM (#24766032)
Isn't it ususally that you proof hypothesis are correct instead of proofing them wrong?

This "I'm just asking, because it could theoretically be true" stuff is slowly getting tiresome.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by nradov on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @12:24PM (#24767045)
No that is not at all how it usually works. The essence of the scientific method is formulating a hypothesis and then conducting experiments in an attempt to falsify it. The more experiments that have failed to falsify a hypothesis, the more confidence we can have in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

As a basic matter of epistemology we can almost never really prove a hypothesis. All we can do is agree that it fits the available data until something better comes along.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by hef19898 on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @12:35PM (#24767176)
Until you found proof for a hypothesis to be correct. At witch point you usually stop trying to falsify that hypothesis. Applying that to the Wuhan lab theory, the correct way would be to properly falsify the natural jump from animals to humans first. Scientifically falsifying it. I have yet to see such proof.

EDIT: Of course these proofs have a certain likelihood of being false, hence all the p-value chasing and confidence-level adjusting.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by matthewdgreen on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:10AM (#24765679)
If you demand absolute proof of every (negative) claim, then you're going to be unable to function in the world. In practice, the important question is: "is there enough evidence for this extraordinary hypothesis that it should influence our response going forward." Right now, the answer seems to be negative.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by nradov on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:34AM (#24765916)
Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is irrelevant to how we handle the current pandemic. But it would be useful for reducing the risk of another similar pandemic in the future.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by matthewdgreen on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @03:49PM (#24769561)
Understanding the origin of the pandemic is incredibly valuable. Continuing to moot about the possibility of lab origin in the absence of any positive evidence in favor of that hypothesis, that’s not terribly useful.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by legulere on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @06:50AM (#24764214)
The outbreak happening in Wuhan does not mean that the virus originated there. In the beginning there was more genetic variety seen in Guangdong, which is a sign that the virus originated there and not in Wuhan.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by jerome-jh on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @07:35AM (#24764511)
The outbreak has always been claimed to occur in Wuhan's "wet market". The article only mentions pangolin coronavirus strains in relation to Guangdong. There is no assumption in the article SARS-CoV-2, the human virus, could originate from Guangdong. Should SARS-CoV-2 actually originate from Guangdong would anyway be the sign of a huge dissimulation.
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Re:Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 by matthewdgreen on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:16AM (#24765739)
My understanding is that many scientists have concluded that animal->human adaptation occurred prior to the Wuhan wet market, and the market is basically a red herring. This is based on the relatively low degree of genetic drift that has occurred with SARS-Cov-2 since that time, which indicates that the substantial changes related to human adaptation are likely to have occurred prior to those wet market infections. There are better articles, but here's one [1].

[1] https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...

[ Parent | on HN ]