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justdoit

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justdoit ,

No self-respecting scientist concluded that either a natural origin or a lab leak were the definitive cause of the pandemic. This is clear if you actually read scientific literature. It’s why phrases akin to “the most supported hypothesis is X” or “the Y theory is unlikely without more supporting evidence” are used. Both hypotheses were and are still possible explanations.

It’s people who get their scientific info from sources like the Telegraph that keep jumping to conclusions. Or people who don’t understand what a section leader at the NIH does, how research grants work, or what gain of function research is. You know, like yourself.

justdoit ,

The original grant was to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the Wuhan institute to collect wild samples from bats. In other words, the whole point of the research was to try and catalogue viruses that existed in the wild with pandemic potential.

It’s not coincidence that lab samples there or in other facilities exist that are close in sequence to viruses later identified in humans. That was, in fact, the goddamn point of surveying bat coronaviruses: to identify those with spillover potential. And it’s absolutely possible one of these collected samples was mishandled and leaked from the lab. After all, lab leaked viral outbreaks happen almost every other year, and there were already safety concerns at this particular site published long before the pandemic.

But what you and every other mouthbreathing idiot is trying to say is that Fauci, a director of the NIAID at the time, personally directed gain of function research to engineer new viruses to infect humans and then that virus escaped. Which, speaking as a molecular biologist myself, is laughably backwards.

justdoit , (edited )

Grant Project Number: 2R01AI110964-06

“Aim 1. Characterize the diversity and distribution of high spillover-risk SARSr-CoVs in bats in southern China. We will use phylogeographic and viral discovery curve analyses to target additional bat sample collection and molecular CoV screening to fill in gaps in our previous sampling and fully characterize natural SARSr-CoV diversity in southern China. We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations (Aim 3). Aim 2. Community, and clinic-based syndromic, surveillance to capture SARSr-CoV spillover, routes of exposure and potential public health consequences. We will conduct biological-behavioral surveillance in high-risk populations, with known bat contact, in community and clinical settings to 1) identify risk factors for serological and PCR evidence of bat SARSr-CoVs; & 2) assess possible health effects of SARSr-CoVs infection in people. We will analyze bat-CoV serology against human-wildlife contact and exposure data to quantify risk factors and health impacts of SARSr-CoV spillover. Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”

Color me shocked, but that’s the funding proposal and there’s nothing in there even approaching whatever you’re talking about. But hey, maybe you’re referring to the rejected DARPA grant proposal leaked by DRASTIC:

“THE PROPOSAL PLANNED TO INTRODUCE “KEY RBD RESIDUES” INTO LOW RISK STRAINS TO TEST PATHOGENICITY IN HUMAN AIRWAY-CELLS”

Wowie, looks like we have a hit! Rather than reading their spin though, I went and found the REJECTED grant proposal:

“We will sequence spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays, and insert them into bat SARSr-CoV backbones (these use bat-SARSr-CoV backbones, not SARS-CoV, and are exempt from dual-use and gain or function concerns)”

If you’re not aware, these backbones are common lab vectors which aren’t pathogenic themselves, made from different viruses. Their sequences are significantly different than either SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2. So, chimeric receptor/backbone pairs are used to assess viral entry into humanized cells more so than virulence. You may disagree with whether or not that’s still too dangerous of a method, but it’s a moot point here because 1. The backbones proposed here are completely different than COVID, so it can’t be the same viral agent and 2. This is a REJECTED PROPOSAL. None of this was actually done and it’s fantasy to pretend it is.

Next claim: aerosolized droplet for vaccines:

“We will complement [broad scale immune boosting with bat interferon] by coupling agonist treatments with SARSr-CoV recombinant spike proteins to boost pre-existing adaptive immune response in adult bats… we will incorporate [recombinant spike proteins] into nano particles or raccoon pox virus vectors for delivery to bats”

They’re not proposing aerosolizing whole droplets with competent SARS-CoV in them you moron, they’re basically saying “hey, you know those nasal sprays we use for the flu every year? Let’s give that to bats”.

Ooh, my favorite. No scientist with integrity says that the genome wasn’t manipulated.

You’re gonna have to tell that to the couple hundred scientists who have been studying this for a while:

“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an un- usual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering. The only previous studies of artificial insertion of a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 boundary in the SARS-CoV spike protein uti- lized an optimal ‘‘RRSRR’’ sequence in pseudotype systems (Belouzard et al., 2009; Follis et al., 2006). Further, there is no ev- idence of prior research at the WIV involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”

There really isn’t any evidence of manipulation at all. The backbone isn’t a standard lab construct. The cleavage site could have arisen from recombination. In the spirit of good science, I would never rule anything out, but the evidence very much supports a natural origin. Lab leak from a sample? Maybe, but that’s different than genetic engineering. For that you need stronger evidence. The strongest bit of evidence we have is the stonewalling from WIV and China, which is certainly suspicious. But, it’s unfortunately incidental and that isn’t good enough to jump to conclusions.

Try actually reading the text of these proposals before reading someone else’s spin on it.

justdoit ,

Funny, you haven’t “questioned” anything. You’ve just regurgitated your same tired disproven talking points. Then you act like your viewpoint deserves respect. It doesn’t. No sources, no evidence, no respect.

If you’d like my sources, here you go. Let me know when you find the spot that says “I, Fauci, personally oversaw the development of a virus that looks absurdly natural in origin.”

The original grant proposal for EcoHealth Alliance: reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304

Every relevant follow up study produced under that grant proposal:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6171170/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094983/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148670/

justdoit ,

Quite a fast reader, aren’t you?

Please cite the spot in those documents that “prove gain of function research was being performed on SARS in the area the pandemic first started”

justdoit ,

Yeah, it’s pretty sad. But I have fun digging into the sources for the misinformation, so there’s that.

justdoit , (edited )

Oh boy, so this is where you stumbled. I should have known it would be The Intercept article.

The documents are ancillary, huh? You cited the exact same grant proposal I sent you. So is it ancillary or not?

Here are some really critical points I’m willing to bet you misunderstood:

“We will construct chimeric SARSr-CoVs using WIV1 backbone and the S genes of selected SARSr-CoV strains and assess capacity to infect hACE2, bACE2, and cACE2 Vero cells…”

The WIV1 backbone is NOT the backbone found in SARS-CoV-2. It’s from a completely different human-infectious coronavirus strain. Furthermore, the spike proteins they’re studying would be gathered from bat coronaviruses found in the wild. So, this method is NOT considered GoF research by the NIH nor is it even potentially possible it resulted in the pandemic. They proposed assessing transmissibility by using an already known infectious backbone and an uncharacterized spike protein, not engineering a more deadly virus. WIV1 is already infectious in humans. The spike proteins gathered are the exact same sequences as those already present in the wild. You may still have reservations about this approach, but I’d argue it’s actually safer for studying viruses in this way because you use what’s known as a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) to infect the cells rather than live virus. Meaning, no storage, handling, or serial passaging of viral samples is required past the initial isolation and the plaque assessments.

You may argue that any viral research which can result in genetic change should be classified unilaterally as GoF, and is too dangerous to be performed, much less at labs we don’t directly regulate. I would disagree on those points, but you’d join a rich debate on the subject which The Intercept article actually points out as well. But the fact remains that none of the above studies were designed to engineer more deadly pathogens for humans, and is ultimately a red herring for the SARS-CoV-2 debate. We know the backbone sequences and they do not match, so you and The Intercept article are barking up the wrong tree.

The same is true for the PLOS study you cited. Same viral backbone, same process. It’s there to assess transmissibility of a naturally occurring virus and try to predict future pandemic potential (of the original SARS-CoV, in their case), not to engineer more effective viruses. Same misunderstanding on its classification as GoF research, too. Even in the Intercept article you cite it talks about the results of other studies as technically “loss of function” in relation to some strains, which is true. But again, all of this is a red herring. SARS-CoV-2 did NOT use the backbone referenced here, and thus this study did not result in a genetically engineered virus that caused the pandemic.

As for citations, I’d point you to this snippet from a review article in Cell:

A near identical nucleotide sequence is found in the spike gene of the bat coro- navirus HKU9-1 (Gallaher, 2020), and both SARS-CoV-2 and HKU9-1 contain short palindromic sequences immediately up- stream of this sequence that are indicative of natural recombina- tion break-points via template switching (Gallaher, 2020). Hence, simple evolutionary mechanisms can readily explain the evolu- tion of an out-of-frame insertion of a furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2).

You keep insisting that I think a lab leak is impossible, when I’ve made it very clear that a lab leak is still a possibility. There were safety concerns at Wuhan long before this whole thing. But a “lab leak” of a stored sample is completely different than “Fauci paid incompetent Chinese labs to engineer deadly pathogens”, and I’ve never seen evidence for the latter. Yet you’ve stated that sentiment here in the comment section, so somehow that unsubstantiated belief lives on. Until our pool of evidence changes, the most likely scenario is a zoonosis from a natural reservoir, or a lab leak from a gathered or cultured sample.

I’m curious why you seem so insistent that the evidence is being hidden and that everyone is silencing you. You come in here with unsubstantiated accusations, and then get angry when people call you out for it. Had you started with sources for your claims, I would have been happy to engage with you on that level. Acting like an ass in any forum isn’t going to get you far. Stop playing the victim.

justdoit ,

God I would kill for 2 real friends

justdoit ,

I know two things. I really like to be right about stuff and if we’re going by the usual tests a majority of people are going to be near average intelligence.

So I’m most likely average and real smug about it.

justdoit ,

I’m going door to door trying to gather pledges from all technology subscribers.

Will YOU downvote all Musk posts in this community until people post them in their proper place (c/enoughmuskspam)?

justdoit , (edited )

Just a very small correction- as with all biology, natural selection will drive a virus to replicate more effectively, that’s it. This does NOT mean a virus will automatically become less lethal over time. That’s an older hypothesis that scientists found was not in line with observation.

The newer hypothesis is known as “virulence-transmission trade-off”. The oversimplification of the idea is that if a mutation increases both transmission and virulence, it will also tend to be selected for. COVID is inconsistent with both hypotheses in certain ways though, so really predicting its virulence in the short or long term has proven difficult. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10066022/

justdoit , (edited )

The “old idea” is actually baked into one of the parameters of the new model. It’s why I said the old hypothesis “was not in line with observation” rather than being “wrong”. It predicted some trends correctly, but failed to predict many others. Like all science, it needed to update as we gathered more info.

The “new” hypothesis also isn’t perfectly predictive of viral evolution, but it’s more accurate with the observed spread of other diseases. Like all models, it’ll get replaced eventually by something more powerful. Likely sooner rather than later specifically because COVID put a spotlight on a lot of holes in the idea.

justdoit ,

I long so desperately for the days when I didn’t know who Elon Musk was

justdoit ,

I was kinda hoping the enoughmuskspam community would be focused on talking about innovative tech/engineering work happening at other companies. I guess that’s more the point of “futurology”, but still…

But, enoughmuskspam is just… Musk spam

justdoit ,

Is every vaguely prominent leader in Russia dumb as rocks? How did he think he’d get away with an attempted coup while leaving the dictator in power?

Did he expect to get points for being bad at a coup?

X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014 (www.theverge.com)

X, which was formerly known as Twitter until its recent rebranding, is having a problem displaying old posts that came with images attached or any hyperlinks converted through Twitter’s built-in URL shortener. It’s unclear when the problem started, but it was highlighted on Saturday afternoon in a post by Tom Coates, and a...

justdoit ,

Are we referring to Musk as a glitch now?

justdoit ,

Can we take a moment to appreciate the very real possibility that the Soviet space program of the 50s would have been able to land a lunar probe better than the current Russian program?

(Obligatory /s, space is hard and shit goes wrong sometimes)

justdoit ,

We should really have another name other than “think tank” because I’m not convinced there’s a lot of thinking going on here.

Suggestions?

justdoit ,

This is an obvious exaggeration, but I can’t help but feel like we’re witnessing a death match between American democracy and the Republican Party.

justdoit ,

Could you link to said reputable polls? Just for the sake of being thorough

justdoit ,

Good. Here’s hoping for a swift trial.

justdoit ,

Personal favorite is probably Lamarckian Inheritance. Feels like super buff people having wimpy ass babies would key people in that acquired traits weren’t being passed on.

But it’s also the textbook example of how science progresses even when the underlying model being used is incorrect. Darwin credited Lamarck for suggesting a potential mechanism for evolution. Works prior to Mendel were direct tests to Lamarckism. Mendel responded to those, and on and on it goes. Lamarck helped push the field along and that’s great.

Side note, people like to say epigenetics is a continuation of Lamarckism but I’d disagree completely. Heritability of traits is what is important here, and epigenetic marks don’t necessarily tag the genes that contribute to the traits themselves.

justdoit ,

Copium should be a controlled substance

justdoit ,

People who are single in the age of internet dating are single for a reason.

And that reason is EVERYONE ELSE IS WRONG AND I’M NOT GONNA SETTLE FOR THEM MOM

justdoit ,

Biden has had a couple victories, but they’re difficult to conceptualize into headlines. Things like confirming federal judges and jobless rate reductions. Many people, left and right, see his presidential accomplishments as lukewarm at best. Compare that with the current R headlines, striking down affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, and abortion, expanding the “right to refuse service” based on orientation, and future hearings which will likely further strip protections for LGBT people. These are MASSIVE conservative platform victories that have been campaigned on for decades, literally since the civil rights bill. I don’t think it can be stressed enough just how much red meat is in these few rulings for the conservative base. Couple that with stubborn inflation and negative real wage growth, Dems are looking at a very steep hill next year. Counterpoint, Dems have managed to embolden their younger base to mitigate midterm damage. But morale for this base is likely low given the student loan fiasco, LGBT rights, and a difficult economy.

Trump specifically is looking at two major challenges: legally, he has to avoid sentencing before the election. This will likely be something of a cakewalk for the guy. His federal case is currently being overseen by an openly biased judge who previously ruled in his favor on no basis other than “he’s a former president and should get special treatment”. Even with higher courts excoriating this particular justice, they are not likely to change their rulings this time. State charges are more difficult to dodge, but ultimately he will have fall guys and plea deals to fall back on in most if not all of these cases. A majority of Americans see these cases as political attacks anyway, not unbiased justice, so it’s unlikely these even hurt him in the polls.

The more poignant challenge in my opinion is in winning back independents and moderate Rs. He’s the front runner currently for the nomination, but it’s undeniable his antics wore thin on independents. He ran a divisive campaign and a divisive presidency and, well, it divided people. There’s no walking back some of the horrid opinions or outright lies he espoused. And there’s no hiding how ravenous hard conservatives have become in general for extremism and he and DeSantis are in a race to the bottom on appealing to this base. Time will tell whether independents hold their noses again and vote for him over Biden or another conservative in the primary.

Personally, I don’t see a world where he doesn’t win the primary and face off against Biden in the general. No world where the courts actually pin something to him either. If you don’t want to see another Trump presidency, swing state independents are gonna be your best shot.

justdoit ,

Are you telling me… that investors and potential customers… DON’T want to spend money to be imploded thousands of feet below the surface?

God I know nothing about good business.

justdoit ,

Growing evidence that governments/corporations would sooner give up seeing the goddamn sun than get off even a fraction of fossil fuel usage

justdoit OP ,

But my friends and family aren’t real

justdoit ,

Who is this woman and why is she always right about everything

justdoit ,

This isn’t easy to answer for a lot of reasons. People “leave Reddit” in a lot of ways. Some deleted their account. Some nuked all their comments but left the account up. Some just deleted the app. Some stopped using Reddit but will eventually return. Some JOINED Reddit specifically to watch the exodus drama. Some made bot accounts to fuck with the numbers for fun. And of course, some users joined without ever being aware there was drama at all. Looking at the change in the number of users alone won’t yield the answers.

Other useful metrics would be number of posts/comments contributed, and daily active user statistics. But again, engagement may have actually been driven upwards recently because drama is fun to be a part of and redditors are notorious keyboard warriors.

Growth of lemmy and other similar platforms is another metric to use, but that number is affected by the converse of all of the reasons I listed above as well: A lemmy account doesn’t mean they deleted Reddit. It doesn’t mean they’ll stay off it. Not to mention lemmy’s growth is likely inflated by people signing up for multiple instances due to slowdown.

tl;dr: No one is gonna have a good answer to this yet. If they say they do, it’s likely gonna be a pretty inaccurate estimate.

justdoit ,

Oh god, the Nintendo DSi is actually retro now, huh

justdoit ,

So trying out changes to a platform isn’t a bad thing and can lead to a lot of good optimization, but usually you don’t just push them onto the entire user base without testing/marketing research to try and anticipate their effects.

How exactly do these changes make it to production without being evaluated? I know blame is mostly on Musk here but do the software devs really never stand up and say “we’ll look into it and get back to you in a few weeks”?

justdoit ,

Based on how this was (apparently?) an automatic response by the Google search algorithm, seems more like a case of:

Twitter: ”You took everything from me!”

Google: ”I don’t even know who you are”

Probably coulda just like… emailed someone at Google and asked before making the switch.

Don't federated instances just exacerbate already existing problems with places like Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter? Specifically admin/mod abuse, excessive reposting/cross-posting, server lag/issues?

So considering there’s a substantial push to get away from places like Reddit and Twitter, as an outsider I’m wondering how the fediverse is going to actually provide solutions to some already bad problems within higher resource platforms:...

justdoit OP ,

Fair enough- losing a whole platform is the reason a lot of us are here.

Though I do think that smaller instances with flightier admins are going to experience this issue more frequently. This leaves exclusive communities in the lurch for discoverability if the admin pulls the plug. I’m no server admin expert so I have no idea if this is even a thing, but it’d be cool if communities could choose to be hosted under multiple instances at once. Even just one “secondary” instance that only retains a portion of the activity would help, both with engagement and keeping reposts low.

justdoit OP ,

Agreed- an annoyance, sure, but it’d be comparable to moving to a similar subreddit

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