This doesn't discount the possibility of a lab leak if you take into account that some sequences appear to have been deleted[1].
We shouldn't make assumptions based on lack of evidence if that evidence was tampered with. And given China's history of deliberately concealing facts to save face, this raises far more questions than it answers. We need a serious and trustworthy investigation into what happened that puts politics aside. Alas my hopes for that happening are slim to none.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/science/coronavirus-seque...
That is a completely unrelated issue. The sequences you're talking about are sequences from patients (obtained in February 2020, I believe). They are not bat coronavirus sequences, which is what the poster above you is referring to. The Wuhan Institute of Virology publishes the sequences it discovers. RaTG13, the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, was published in 2016, for example.
Even if we're talking about the patient data, even though the authors withdrew their raw data from a database, they still published the most important information in a paper: the genetic sequences.
(some details - they even tried to hide the original sequence which our vaccines are based on. When a lab released it against orders they closed the lab. When Australia suggested an independent investigation they put 80bn of trade sanction on them. When a doctor at the start warned his colleagues privately to be careful as the vaccine was contagious they arrested him and made him sign a confession etc etc...)
> they even tried to hide the original sequence which our vaccines are based on.
By the accounts I've read, there was rivalry between the China CDC and researchers at different institutions to publish the genome first, not to hide it. The China CDC was taking longer to validate the genetic sequence and write up a publication, and they didn't want to be scooped. But regardless of the delay this caused, the genome was published extraordinarily quickly - less than two weeks after the first patient test results even suggested that there might be a new virus.
Unfortunately any claims pointing in the direction of a zoonotic transfer or lab leak is speculation at this point until serious research is done. And even then the extent of data manipulation might be so deep that drawing any conclusions might be impossible. It's an absolute disgrace that science has become so entrenched with politics that more than a year later we're still not clear on the origins of a world disrupting pandemic.
> they still published the most important information in a paper
Could you link to this please?
> Could you link to this please?
It's in Table 1 of their June 2020 paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smll.202002...
> If the patient data had links to unpublished bat sequences the lab was working on, it would certainly be motivation to get rid of both.
The patient data had nothing to do with bat sequences. The paper we're talking about was a methodology paper, in which the authors were trying to test a new sequencing technology using recent patient samples. They were not focusing on SARS-CoV-2 origins, and they certainly weren't working with bat coronavirus sequences. I don't even think there's any connection to the WIV here: the corresponding authors don't appear to be affiliated with the institute.
The author is also puzzled why this was done if the data matches the published summary in the Wang et al. 2020b paper, but hasn't received any replies from the authors.
This is also interesting:
> Particularly in light of the directive that labs destroy early samples (Pingui 2020) and multiple orders requiring approval of publications on COVID-19 (China CDC 2020; Kang et al. 2020a), this suggests a less than wholehearted effort to maximize information about viral sequences from early in the Wuhan epidemic.
> I don't even think there's any connection to the WIV here: the corresponding authors don't appear to be affiliated with the institute.
The authors of the nanopore paper are associated with Wuhan University. Since the CCP controls all aspects of Chinese research it's safe to say that a connection with the WIV certainly exists and they would be in a position to control the output of both.
Again, the reason behind this will likely never be known to the outside world. But to take anything coming from Chinese researchers as evidence for a narrative that exculpates China from any fault would be extremely naive. Or do we really believe there's nothing suspicious about a country of 1.4bn people having 5,508 reported deaths from COVID-19[2]?
[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v2....
> Since the CCP controls all aspects of Chinese research
Not everything in China is automatically connected to everything else. People working on a new medical diagnostic tool at one university are not automatically related to people doing bat coronavirus research at another institute.
> Or do we really believe there's nothing suspicious about a country of 1.4bn people having 5,508 reported deaths from COVID-19[2]?
I'm sure there are lots of people here on HN who live in China, and who can explain the extremely strict and effective measures China took in early 2020 to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 from within their borders. China had a first wave that was largely confined to one city, and has had no large outbreak since. It's had small, local outbreaks that have been quickly contained. There's really no mystery about this at all.
You're referring to something completely different, which has nothing to do with bat coronavirus research or the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A group of researchers working on new sequencing techniques for patient samples (not bat coronaviruses) withdrew their raw data from a database. They then published the key data in a peer-reviewed journal.[1] It's better to have the raw data, but it's not as if the researchers hid their results. And again, this has nothing to do with bat coronaviruses or the WIV.
The WIV publishes the viruses it discovers. They published RaTG13, which is now recognized as the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 (but not the progenitor), in 2016. WIV scientists regularly publish papers, give talks at scientific conferences, and collaborate with international scientists. We have a very good idea of what they had and what viruses they were working with. Nobody from the WIV ever mentioned anything that looks like SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic began.
March 2020:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destro...
That's standard biosecurity when a new, dangerous pathogen is discovered. Regulatory agencies in other countries would have done the same thing.
A bunch of patient samples were sent out to diagnostic labs before anyone knew they contained a novel coronavirus. You can imagine regulators freaking out when they discover those samples contain a new, possibly dangerous virus.
And you are talking about something else.
From the Nature article you link to:
> The sequences were associated with a paper in which researchers used nanopore-sequencing technology to detect SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in samples from people. That study was published in the journal Small in June 2020, having been posted on bioRxiv in March of that year.
> the sequences Bloom recovered were not hidden: they are described in detail, with enough sequence information to know their evolutionary relationship to other early SARS-CoV-2 sequences, in the Small paper.
> The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1
We know, for example, that the WIV has three live coronaviruses that it works with. None of them is close to SARS-CoV-2.
We also know about a whole range of other viruses they've discovered (by sequencing RNA fragments), but which they haven't been able to culture in the lab. These include RaTG13, which they first published on in 2016. It's significant that among all these viruses they've published on over the years, none is similar enough to SARS-CoV-2 to be its ancestor.
I'll just add that some of the people we're talking about here, like Dr. Shi Zhengli, are very highly respected scientists who have contributed a huge amount to the field of virology. Just accusing them of lying with zero evidence is in pretty poor taste.
Google a reference for my first sentence.
Capabilities. Not motivations. Never ever lose sight of that. You will never know what makes another human being tick or do what they do, but you can definitely establish an upper bound on the trouble they can get themselves in to.
It seems that even of this were manufactured, it is not likely intentional.
>The Chinese research did not have the specific goal of making the viruses more deadly, and rather than SARS itself, it used SARS’s close cousins, whose real-world risk to humans was unknown—in fact, determining the risk was the point of the research. Just as when you trade in part of a poker hand for fresh cards, there was no way of knowing whether the final chimeras would be stronger or weaker.
https://archive.is/tpxg1 Nicholas Wade's excellent medium post, one hundred percent worth the read, Possibly duped in the Bulletin of atomic scientists shtick floating around right now.)
>https://archive.is/ONgMa Yuri Deigin's excellent write-up
I'm hedging the percents because my quick reference of previous post's substances is on my other phone, which died horribly, and having to play the "Dude, I had it elsewhere card, I swear" card is my punishment for shitty backup hygiene.
These are two of the better write-ups I've seen and deep dove into, and project evidence is a staple that's only gotten more and more confirmed with the number of eyes that have gone into it despite their initial total flub up of picking a name for it.
There is more than enough know-how condensed between Baric and Zengli Shi to swap RBD's and insert Furin cleavage sites without leaving traces of having done so. I had one paper that went into a hypothetical process for doing so, but I was an idiot and can't remember the author, and it wasn't the most straightforward search engine query because it was one of those middle of the night, just got done reading another paper, saw a query string that looked promising, did it, and pay dirt. Great when looking for a dopamine hit and ego boost for "haha I found it!"; Not so much for when life happens and you suddenly have to rewalk that mental path.
>_<
This is why I'm not an academic... Or more precisely, this is what happens when you let habits you built during college atrophy because you have a day job now.
Baric, Shi and others use particular reverse-genetics systems, which are well known to the outside world. Developing a new system is a significant effort. They don't just swap RBDs or spike proteins into random viruses that nobody has ever heard of before.
SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely new virus, different throughout its entire genome from any previously known virus. An engineered virus would use a known backbone, such as SARS-CoV or WIV-1.
Keep in mind that neither Wade nor Deigin actually has any expertise in virology, and it shows. Rather than listening to laypeople shooting from the hip, listen to what actual virologists have to say. Here's Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry on TWiV: https://youtu.be/Hez3xNv2ido
https://newrepublic.com/article/162689/bats-covid-19-lab-lea...
1) Researchers easily found multiple naturally occurring coronaviruses that seemed likely to be able to jump into humans. In fact that is why they were so eager to conduct that lab research: the natural threat seemed imminent.
2) The sequence of COVID-19 does not yet resemble any of the sequences associated with the lab research that was being conducted.