Top all-time · #4644
Nicholas Wade
Personal blog · nicholaswade.medium.comsciencehealth
Nicholas Wade's personal blog at nicholaswade.medium.com covers science and health. Since 2021, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “Nicholas Wade: Origin of Covid – Following the Clues”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Nicholas Wade's long Medium piece on Covid-19's origins as a detailed yet accessible case for the lab-leak hypothesis, and cite it as a source in lab-leak discussions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Nicholas Wade: Origin of Covid – Following the Clues15 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2021-05-03
- New Routes to Making Covid-19 in the Lab2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-25
What Hacker News says?
This goes a bit more into detail - https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins”Submitted Nicholas Wade: Origin of Covid – Following the Clues as a story · 54 points
HN discussionIt's not in Nicolas Wade's article, which I now see has been unfairly maligned along with David Baltimore who's been selectively quoted to leave out the technical detail of what made the latter say the SARS-CoV-2 is a smoking gun, see the 4) A Question of Codons: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... If correct, that's getting strongly into bioengineering evidence. You are of course more li…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins”Submitted Origin of Covid – Following the Clues as a story · 13 points
HN discussionhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649120 People have asserted in this thread that it would take 30-40 years for the closest known natural covid relative to aquire the necessary 1000 mutations and turn into covid. And yet here we are, almost 2 years since the pandemic started, with no identified natural reservoir for covid. Where is the covid source? ----- Consider https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)009…
Comment linking /new-routes-to-making-covid-19-in-the-lab-f94318cad4de
on “Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research”Submitted Origin of Covid – Following the Clues as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThis article explains in very detailed, yet understandable way why the lab leak is a serious hypothesis: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “The media's lab leak fiasco”Submitted Origin of Covid – Following the Clues as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSome techniques of manipulating the virus would leave "fingerprints". Others would not. My understanding is that the sweeping assertions that COVID-19 would show clear signs of being manipulated have been largely debunked. Many ultimately traced back to a letter written by a group of virologists led by Kristian Andersen and published in Nature, but all that letter did was assert that some techniques (not all!) were…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “The media's lab leak fiasco”Submitted New Routes to Making Covid-19 in the Lab as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFrom Nicholas Wade's article (it's now the canonical reference for this stuff): "Steven Quay, a physician-researcher, has applied statistical and bioinformatic tools to ingenious explorations of the virus’s origin, showing for instance how the hospitals receiving the early patients are clustered along the Wuhan №2 subway line which connects the Institute of Virology at one end with the international airport at the o…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed”Idea 1 wasn't debunked: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... It's a long read but a worthy one. Exploring all the options better than the NYT article. The lack of biomarkers is not proof either way.
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins”I read it in Nicholas Wade's article: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... (long read). Some more reading: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210217/The-origin-of-SAR... All these lines of evidence and reasoning show that the acquisition of the polybasic furin cleavage site by SARS-CoV-2 is a “missing link” in our understanding of its evolutionary history, that can only be addressed throu…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins”As I recall this article by Nicholas Wade goes into why the Furin cleavage site is a strong signal of potential active engineering in the GoF vein. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... As addition of a Furin cleavage site is an old hat acknowledged technique for increasing human infectivity of a virus. The issue with a zoonotic origin though, is that the odds of a mutation is incredibly sm…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins”What do you make of the claim in this article [1], which says that intermediate host species were found within 4 months of SARS1 outbreak, and within 9 months of MERS outbreak? Admittedly I can't find the underlying source for his claims. [1] https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins”Because it's a large article. Apologies, I figured you could find it, there was no deliberate intention to obfuscate anything. So here's the link. It was discussed on HN a few days ago. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Perverse Downstream Consequences of Debunking”I honestly want to know what changed so suddenly such that it's now okay to discuss the lab leak hypothesis in polite company. The proximate cause? Probably the reporting of Nicholas Wade, whose article is targeted at the mainstream and which brings together some pretty hefty and complex topics around lab leaks in an accessible way. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... If you look at the s…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin”Yeah I have heard both sides of the debate. Strongest argument for lab leak seems to sourced here: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Divisive Covid ‘lab leak’ debate prompts dire warnings from researchers”Here's a 2015 paper on successful gain of function work done at the University of North Carolina under the leadership of Ralph Baric. The work involved characterizing a synthetically constructed chimeric virus comprising a SARS-CoV backbone and a bat SARS virus spike. It received special permission to continue despite a prohibition on gain-of-function research (Refer to the section: Biosafety and Security).[0] Quoti…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, U.S. Agency Now Says”This has been written about many times, in 2020, very convincingly in 2021 by Nicholas Wade ( https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... ) and now. It will always be dismissed by those who have a political interest in seeing things differently. Authortiarianism and coordinated censorship between govs, big health and big tech made it so that anything countering the mandated narratives was heavily…
Comment linking /origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
on “Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, U.S. Agency Now Says”
