Doesn't seem likely they'll voluntarily publish a paper on a virus they used as the backbone to manufacture SARS-CoV-2...
Even if it was a lab leak, it's unlikely RaTG13 was the progenitor.
Nobody seriously suspects WIV engineered the SARS-CoV2 to deliberately cause a pandemic, but negligently letting it escape is itself obviously worth covering up. Whether that happened or not, it is their misfortune that it doesn't look more like a natural chimera.
I have assumed early insistence that it was natural was considered necessary to get any possibility of cooperation from the Chinese gov't. Now that they have become uncooperative, there is no more reason to maintain the fiction.
Shi and WIT are not related to WIV, are they? This could be independent and without explicit consent of WIV?
The original article, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation comments, and "urban" food security arguments, which rate near the necessity of cannibalism, distract from continuing to ban the most likely sources of zoonotic diseases and wildlife smuggling that are the wet markets.
Hopefully we can invest in more research to reduce and remove the ecological burden of dams.
And if you follow through, at least a couple of the four retractions mentioned on Wikipedia appear to be nothing but some acknowledgment/funding related trivia.
This is ad hominem. The link provided only supports the accusation with previous accusations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
It appears that the original comment was valid ad hominem, but still ad hominem.
Both were ad-hominem. The first one also suffers from a pompous bias: What does it even matter if the submission is not peer-reviewed? It could have been posted on a blog! It is dropping little seeds of doubt, to weaken and attack something you don't want to attack directly:
"A warning to everyone that the linked website does not adhere to Wikipedia guidelines for being a credible source."
Expect better. If you demand peer-review, then review the contents as a peer! You have the opportunity to get what you want, instead of needlessly attacking a fellow scientist' credibility.
Surely a distinction can be made between attacking someone's character and attacking their claim to authority. Within every scientific paper there's an implicit claim to authority and here the track record has weight alongside whatever qualifications they may have.
This paper is not peer-reviewed. It should end there.
>This paper is not peer-reviewed. It should end there.
So you think scientists aren't allowed to communicate with one another and the public except through peer reviewed articles? 'Tis absurd. Anyway, peer review means very little nowadays. I publish 3-5 papers per year in top journals in my field, and many of the referee reports I see are hilariously insignificant, effortless, and/or just totally off the point.
FTFY
True enough.
On the other hand, they did publish it, which I'm positive they don't do with letters they believe are pure crackpottery, or otherwise without merit (of which I'm sure they get their share).
He posted a dismissive snark about my (substantive) comment, and I replied in kind.
Edit: For the record, I've read plenty of papers in both Nature and Science, so his claim that I haven't is objectively incorrect.
My response stands: he doesn't know what he's talking about.
1. Fauci runs funding for gain of function research 2. Attributing COVID-19 to gain of function research hurts future gain of function research 3. Cui bono
Some context: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/
(Maybe I'm misunderstanding the posited conspiracy and the idea is that if the NIH doesn't fund something, Fauci pockets the unspent money?)
Fauci has denied multiple times that they funded gain of function research. Please cite your sources.
The SARS2 quite likely isn't based on an existing human virus but on a bat coronavirus.
The NIH has been apparently funding modifying bat coronaviruses in Wuhan with minimal guardrails as to be able to infect humanized lab mice but that's not gain of function as per that definition.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by NIH grants R01AI089728; (to F.L.) and R01AI110700 (to R.S.B. and F.L.).
"To evaluate the potential genetic changes required for HKU4 to infect human cells, we reengineered HKU4 spike, aiming to build its capacity to mediate viral entry into human cells."
Fauci has been director of NIAID since 1984, which is excessive.
I trust Fauci to not lie in a public hearing and to know what he is saying.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
I think most of us don't care who he is, only whether what they say is true. The claims in this article aren't actually new anyway, it was all covered in Wade's article already. So if it's wrong, let's hear why. That would certainly be interesting.
People also didn't listen to him about wind turbines causing cancer. Or about vaccines causing autism. Or about global warming being a hoax by the Chinese to harm US manufacturing. Or about injecting disinfectants to fight COVID.
There was not (and still isn't) any indication that he had any more evidence to back up his COVID origin claims than he had for any of those other claims. All you can safely conclude is that Trump saw a YouTube video or a website or TV commentator that claimed that, and uncritically accepted it.
Asked why he was not in favor of wind mills, Trump answered once, that "they say" it can cause cancer. "They say" is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_syndrome
> Or about vaccines causing autism
Trump sues outlets for speculating one of his sons has autism. "Many such cases" may hit close to home here. And a cute test: how much are you willing to bet (hard $) to back this a-causality? Didn't the general courts had to make a special vaccine court to deal with many such (autism) claims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
> Or about global warming being a hoax by the Chinese to harm US manufacturing.
Global warming is used by the Chinese, in the sense that they completely ignore it, while fostering climate change activism in Western countries, so to reduce their energy footprint from within, and gain unfair advantage.
> All you can safely conclude is that Trump saw a YouTube video or a website or TV commentator that claimed that, and uncritically accepted it.
Trump was clearly not the best to give that conference. He was leaning towards his science advisors, to fill in the gaps. They told Trump about potential methods using UV-rays or disinfectants.
I too would tell the president if I knew about advances in research such as https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8346001/ (Inactivation of respiratory syncytial virus by detergents and disinfectants, 1993), but still hope that he does not run with it and shoots it from the hip. Maybe that was too much to hope for. But don't let people 20 years later remember the lie that "Trump said to inject people with bleach to cure COVID". There is plenty of other embarassing true stuff.
Yeah, I can't tell if the biology paper is credible or not, but I smell crap when reading that institute's program. I think whether Covid is lab-engineered or natural doesn't affect me that drastically, the reality has been what this last year and more has been. My interest in the virus' origin is mainly in the popcorn-worthy political drama.
But after reading that institute blurb I'll just set aside the popcorn because this work doesn't seem to be the smoking gun that will set off popcorn-worthy political consequences. Unless someone else who I judge more credible endorses that letter to the editor...
1. This is a letter to the editor, and is not peer-reviewed[1]
2. This author does not have what some would consider a sterling history of submitted papers[2]
[1] - Difference between Letters and Letters to the Editor: https://pubs.acs.org/page/amclct/about.html
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ariel_Fernandez&o...