[fdgsdfogijq]

True story, in early January of 2020, on an academic virology forum, which I wont link, it was known the virus was synthetic. Before the story hit the mainstream media, professors were sharing data about the virus fingerprint. There were concerns about the integrity of the data shared by the Chinese. One specific comment I will never forget by a Harvard professor when discussing the implications:

"Should we turn on the bat signal"

Which I always interpreted it to mean should we alert the authorities. A week later all posts were deleted and nothing could be found.

[shikshake]

> which I wont link

Why not? HN promotes logical evidence-backed discussion. The least you can do is link the forum.

[mikeyouse]

He's talking about virological and making up threads that never existed. There was a lot of discussion in the early days about how it seemed possible it was synthetic based on the binding site affinity but as scientists do, they researched the literature, conferred with their colleagues and almost all came around to the virus arising via natural origin.

The early threads are super interesting in an anthropological sense:

https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-or...

[fdgsdfogijq]

You can claim whatever you want, I'm just sharing what I discovered

[chrisbrandow]

This is super interesting but without any sort of substantiation it is indistinguishable from rumor-mongering.

I would truly love to hear more.

[Dig1t]

Is there a wayback machine archive of that conversation?

[sneak]

“it was known” are weasel words on wikipedia.

Known by whom? Why? Based on what evidence? Can we know it, too?