Chinese Virologist post report claiming virus made in Wuhan lab

I'm not going to claim expertise on this but my understanding is engineered viruses isn't indistinguishable from natural evolution. The processes used to engineer a genome using tools like CRSIPR leave markers in the genetic code that don't look natural. Also different labs use different techniques so tracing these things often involves tracing the particular markers that labs use.

This is why many people studying the SARS2 virus don't think it is artificial because they aren't seeing the type of markers that would be used by labs.

 

The last time there was a thread about the lab leak I ended up taking a deep dive into the topic. They use a technique called "serial passage" where they will infect a lab animal or a tissue sample over and over again until the virus mutates and becomes more effective and dangerous. This is what is essentially sped up evolution and a technique they used in Wuhan. "... serial passage should be considered a viable route by which the novel coronavirus arose. The practice of serial passage mimics a natural zoonotic jump" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7435492/,

The usual suspects who claimed it could not have been "engineered" are doing hand wavy stuff. They are implying that no engineering took place while saying their is no sign that certain forms of engineering took place (which is correct) and hoping the media and the public don't catch that their argument is essentially bullshit.

One of the main arguments for the lab leak involves the fact that COVID-19 seemed to right away be able to bind to human ACE2 receptors. And surprise, people dug into research papers and found that virologists working on gain-of-function research have actually written papers about using serial passage to get a virus to bind to ACE2 receptors. These are the same experts who will say the virus could not have possibly been engineered or leaked from a lab.

 

The virus may have originated at a lab but it can not be created by humans. It's a new virus with a new mechanism of action. Humans have not reached the ability to create a new virus from scratch - and if this virus was based on an existing virus, it would be clear from its rna sequence.

 

The lab leak hypothesis does not say the virus was created from scratch. The closest known virus to Covid-19 - RaTG13, which is 96% similar, was at the WIV. How would it be clear from the RNA sequence that Covid-19 came from an existing virus?

 

It would have large parts of it that would match an existing virus. This virus does not. Thus the name, novel coronavirus. It means that it came from nature and is unlike anything we've seen before. If mankind had the ability to construct this kind of virus, we could cure cancer as well.

This coronavirus does not appear to be a spliced chimera of existing viruses which labs do (including the US) in their research to better understand viruses. That same research does create a risk - not just for Chinese labs but US ones as well.

To capture viruses, you have to take samples or capture animals, thus yes there is a risk that the virus could have jumped to one of the researchers.

But is is highly unlikely given the number of contact between humans and bats outside the lab.

 

I read the abstract and introduction of the piece posted and it does present some compelling evidence but it also says that it cannot definitively determine if SARS2 was human created either and certainly doesn't rule out a natural source.

As I've said I'm not denying that this could've came from the Wuhan lab and had been part of an accidental release of something that was created. I'm not convinced though that is the only or most likely explanation.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-who-wuhan-covid.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56054468

Big issues in just how much access and legitimate info china is willing to even share with investigators Another sad part is the politics trumping the details. In america many screamed and shouted as the last administartion blamed Obama's administartion for having funding for bat research for those labs, because...it helps to have people in the ground, helps to be involved, helps that we have skin in the game. In fact Trump's administration renewed this 2 times as well. we removed it right in time to know nothing

 

wow that's absolutely amazing.

Thank you very much for the information you just opened my eyes in a process I absolutely had no clue it was going on.
I have read a ton of articles but noone mentioned this widespread practice.

 

What you're saying could be true, though I'm not sure how this case would be more a matter of malfeasance than outright incompetence.

Given how densely populated China is and how animals are crowding through industrial farming or diminishing habitable areas, it's also possible the breeding grounds for cohabitation are also accelerated.

Either case gives China a bad name. Their lack of cooperation and outright suppression of facts is also making things worse.

As for why researchers are disavowing their own work in this theory, it pretty much makes them look bad with a potential use case for an untraceable dirty bioweapon.

 

So you are saying that to battle racism we should put a stop to research?

Research and science is based on THEORIES. Without many theories that are researched you can't find the truth.

Right this moment the "virus naturally came for bats in the wild" is also a THEORY. Exactly like the theory that came from Wuhan lab.

Unless someone can find evidence that show the intermediate species and the way the virus came to Wuhan it will be just that. A THEORY.

Maybe to battle also anti german racism we should stop reading history and erase all books and documentaries about the nazis?

 

You are wrong.
The virus matches by a large part to a discovered bat virus from a southern China bat cave. And it was collected by researchers in Wuhan

If I remember correctly it matches like 96%. I am too lazy to look it up again now.

It is a NOVEL coronavirus as it has jumped to an intermediate species and then to humans. But it's not called novel because there is no existing virus in the wild that we know of, that it came from. It didn't come from outer space nor did it come from from some undiscovered remote area of the world.
If a virus mutates a bit and jumps species it is also novel.

 

And we have 99% the same DNA as chimps. 96% match is still a big big difference and doesn't mean what you think it does.

It's novel because it is new in humans. And no it's not like other virus we know of in animals in the same sense you are thinking. Here's a good blurb from a nature article

In other words, there's rna sequences which we haven't seen before and not sure how the proteins they encode for work. Good article that talks about the sequencing and compares it to other coronaviruses.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00468-6

 

already posted

 

No it is you who doesn't know what it means.

We are primates with DNA while SARS is a single strand RNA virus.
We have 30 BILLION PAIRS of bases and it only has a measly 30000 single bases.

Our 1% of DNA contains more genetic information than 100% of the genome of a puny RNA virus.

You had just compared the mass of a blue whale with a single granule of sand and claimed that 1% of their mass is the same.

Furthermore the rate of mutation and evolution of a complex DNA organism is not the same as an RNA virus that mutates and creates new strands every other day.

Virus phylogenetics clearly show that the spillover event only happened in November-December 2019
So yes. 96% same RNA for virus means exactly that it just hatched from its bat virus egg.

And the bat virus egg that it hatched from is in Guangdong. Which is in the other side of the country from Wuhan. 600 miles away.


About the article you quoted:
It said: the molecular functions of many accessory proteins remain largely unknown

And you interpreted it as never seen before. Wrong.
Function unknown doesn't mean never observed before. We have seen many proteins and we don't know HOW they work. Heck our own drugs that we make ourselves and we don't know how they work many times.

 

one wonders why you're so eager to carry water for the chinese.

@SamFisher

 

I largely agree with this. Conditions in the PRC around animal raising practices haven't been good and the trade and eating of wildlife, including endangered species, is a big problem. The PRC also certainly isn't transparent and SOP regarding a crisis is to withhold information. We know already that they suppressed information early on and silenced doctors in Wuhan who were raising alarms about this. They even had to apologize to the family of Dr. Li WenLiang who died from COVID-19 in February 2020 after he was silenced.

Even with that that doesn't mean that SARS2 COVID virus didn't arise naturally. Dislike of the PRC isn't evidence that this is a human created virus just as saying that because of Anti-Asian bias is an argument that it is naturally occurring. Those are tangential issues.

All that said I agree the PRC needs to be more open for their own sake but I doubt that is going to happen.

 

One wonders why you think stating scientific facts is carrying water for the Chinese. It's such a sad state of affairs when trying to put the truth forward all of a sudden brings attacks that you are some how in cahoots with a foreign country.

It's pathetic.

 

30k base pairs is a lot. The point is that small changes in the genetic information can result in big differences.

SARS and MARS have a lot of overlap in their genetic code but are completely different viruses.

And we don't know how they work because we haven't had a lot of observation to study and decipher them.

 

Hmm... yes, that would be anti-Asian violence.