RE: Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 9, 2020
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I had a lot of problems with the @RT article you cite, which is why I didn't cite it in a post myself.
A few of the issues are it's assumption of a zoonotic source for the pandemic, which numerous highly credential researchers have contradicted, despite risk to their careers, freedom, and even their lives. While there is no proof of lab engineering, the circumstantial evidence for it is very strong, and far stronger than evidence of a zoonotic source. One of the most striking evidences for SARS2 having been engineered is that the infection entered the human population only once, and has since only been transmitted from person to person.
This is not known from zoonotic pathogens to my knowledge.
Other issues I had with the article include neglecting SARS2's many separate pathways of morbidity, such as lymphopenia, sterility, and latency in neural tissues that permit re-emergence after apparent recovery. Also, I dispute the CFR reported for flu as ~5 times too high. The CFR of infuenza is not .5%, but .1%, unless referring to specific strains like the Spanish Flu of 1918. Neither does SARS2 have a lower R0 than the flu. First, we don't even have a hard R0 we know, and high estimates for SARS2 R0 range above 7. No competent research claims R0 for SARS2 below 4 presently. R0 for influenza is below 2, except for the Spanish Flu, which is 2 precisely.
Given the extreme degree to which coronavirii have been studied in labs around the world, and gain of function research that largely prefigures the pathogenic effects of SARS2, it's locality of origin, the nature of it's attacks on humans alone, in addition to it's being introduced only once into human populations, it is highly unlikely that SARS2 originated from a natural, unmodified source. Multiple highly unlikely mutations specifically tailored to humans would have had to have occurred in a wild setting that somehow involved Malaysian pangolins and Chinese bats thousands of miles away in order for SARS2 to have a zoonotic origin.
Two labs in Wuhan were studying gains of these specific functions in SARS and CoV mere yards from ground zero of the start of the pandemic, and researchers from those labs were also sending home similar work from labs in Canada, N. Carolina, and Australia concurrently. SARS also has escaped from labs multiple times in China in previous years from similar research. Employees of such labs have been known to sell carcasses in wet markets rather than incinerating them, violating safety protocols, in the past.
The preponderance of the evidence strongly supports lab origins for SARS2.
Thanks for the reply!
I'm still refraining from judgement as to the origin of the virus, but I agree that I was put off by the article's level of confidence on that topic. As far as I can tell, it's still an open question. I do think that the research lab's proximity to Wuhan should raise eyebrows.
The stats that you point out also surprised me because they were inconsistent with other sources that I've read. With the probable politicization of data in some countries along with the likely number of mild and unreported cases, I really doubt if anyone has accurate numbers at this point.
But, I like to come at things from as many perspectives as possible, and I thought the descriptions of the stages of progression for the illness in the article were interesting. That description is not something that I've read elsewhere.