8 ms·

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety L

I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here, but I'd also like an real investigation into whether the virus actually originated from the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory. It's the only level 4 (BSL-4 highest rating) lab in all of China designated to handle the most dangerous pathogens. And it's located 20 miles from the reported epicenter in the wildlife market. It was first opened two years ago and at the time multiple scientists worried that the lack of an open culture could lead to potential security problems. Was there some breach in containment security? Were experimented animals not disposed of properly? We don't know. There might be nothing here, but it's a hell of a coincidence and if there's some broader security problem, it should be acknowledged and fixed. Background on the lab: https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487 https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...

nexuist 7y ago
> >The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Why is Canada sending Ebola to China?
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada So the question is what sort of controls are in place vs what sort of controls should be in place. It isn't Canada sending the samples, it's Canada not preventing them from being sent.
  - endorphone 7y ago
    By all accounts all procedures were followed, beyond that apparently some intellectual property protections weren't. China studies major viruses too. They are a party to the research. That part isn't so insidious.
turk73 7y ago
It's just a coincidence that the apparent origin point, Wuhan, has this scary looking virus laboratory a la Steven King's "The Stand." Just a weird coincidence, right? But also, how bad is China if there is a "wildlife market" in Wuhan where people go to eat exotic animals? WTF, China?
neffy 7y ago
I think it's a perfectly valid question, although the wildlife market is equally valid on the evidence we have. We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting to public information at this point in time - terrible as the published numbers are they are not that out of whack with a normal bad flu epidemic, which also causes significantly higher death rates. So it's either the actual death rates are higher (well, almost certainly), and/or they know or suspect something more serious. Bearing in mind too, that even China doesn't trust China on reporting - witness the central committee order a few days ago to the regions to be accurate with reports or else.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting Do we know that? All of the criticism I've seen has been of the government under-reacting. In fact, in a speech yesterday Xi told the local authorities that they weren't doing enough. Non-Chinese estimates (as of 24 January) are that there's 6,000 people infected vs. 1,300 from the Chinese government. The 6,000 figure comes from the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston: https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html
  - adamiscool8 7y ago
    It seems like the local government under-reacted, and now the central government is (hopefully) over-reacting.
  - dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
    Your statements are too broad. The government actively denies anything is wrong among its own citizens until the disease is spread outside the country. This has been well documented both with this and with SARS. To medical professionals, they have them recommend those sick people stay home and not go out. To the cities where infected people are, it seems they have established some kind of lock down of those areas. Oh, and of course they have spread some anti-american sentiment stating that the United States is somehow responsible. Of course it's hard to tell which story is right, the seafood or the medical facility. And honestly, it doesn't have to be one or the other - it could be both. They could have been practicing the breeding of viruses which had been harvested from local areas known to harbor diseases and infestations. If procedures were in question, or being retested, they might use a novel less deadly virus as a mechanism to practice with. It's plausible. It would be nice if governments didn't blatantly lie to their citizens, but I guess that's what "progress" is in 2020.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
The odds of this naturally occurring in China are probably close to 1 in 4. And the odds of it happening in Wuhan are probably close to 3%. The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim. If this were some super strain of Smallpox, that would make a more convincing conspiracy. The odds of there being some plausible conspiracy by now are high.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim. I don't think anyone is arguing that this is an outbreak of an unusually dangerous virus. It's just an unexpected outbreak of a new flu-levels-of-dangerous virus, and it happened suspiciously close to a BSL-4 facility. A facility like that stores dangerous viruses and works on them, it's not at all implausible somebody fucked up and something escaped containment.
  - verroq 7y ago
    It’s funny because bats (and bat caves) are reservoirs of many viruses contained in BSL-4 facilities and they have no containment and frequently come into human contact.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I didn't even realize that until now.
  - treis 7y ago
    >I don't think anyone is arguing that this is an outbreak of an unusually dangerous virus. It's not unusually dangerous. Viruses kill lots and lots of people every year. This one doesn't seem to be more dangerous than any other. It's just new.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
joeyspn 7y ago
Also from Nature (2017): "Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus — and suggests new outbreak could occur" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 (Wuhan lab apparently carried out the research)
- cheuv 7y ago
  You forget thise one : https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787 https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat... The original paper is provided by virologists researchers and two of them are from Wuhan Biosafety Lab (Zhengli-Li Shi & Xing-Yi Ge)
  - throwawaylolx 7y ago
    This paper claims that their "work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations," which is opposing the theory that the virus originated from Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory.
- throwawaylolx 7y ago
  >and suggests new outbreak could occur An outbreak caused _by bats_, which is opposed to GP's theroy.
Freestyler_3 7y ago
I dont know how much is conspiracy theory at this point, but it was said that they had small sars outbreak there before.
corporateslave5 7y ago
Take this with a grain of salt, copied from reddit: Read this website: http://virological.org/ http://virological.org/ Specifically this one: http://virological.org/t/ncovs-relationship-to-bat-coronaviruses-recombination-signals-no-snakes/331 http://virological.org/t/ncovs-relationship-to-bat-coronavir... and this one: http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 Basically Wuhan virus is essentially SARs http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 "Anyone notice two ‘accessory’ ORFs not annotated in nCoV? Orf13 (aka 9b) (28284:28577) and Orf14 (28734:28955) . One is ~ 70% ID and other ~ 90% to syntenous ORFs in BAT SARS 2017 ?" Translation: Some very specific parts of the genome are matching almost exactly, which only occurs in almost identical viruses. The ORFs are tagged parts of genes, this researcher is discussing how Chinese researchers "omitted" parts of their gene annotation. Some back story is the gene sequences have been shared openly so they can be studied, Chinese messed with how they annotated the sequences. To understand this better, here is the wikipedia definition of 'accessory gene' (ORF is just a chunk of the gene): "The variable or accessory genome (also: flexible, dispensable genome) refers to genes not present in all strains of a species. These include genes present in two or more strains or even genes unique to a single strain only, for example, genes for strain specific adaptation such as antibiotic resistance." The researcher is saying specific strain markers are matching between the 2017 virus and this one. Which is impossible, unless... Not only that, its extremely similar to a SARs taken from bats in 2017! The comment on this linked thread is from a Harvard researcher, she is hinting at a biological link to a lab strain. This virus escaped from Wuhan lab Another hint from another researcher The comment on this page from Kristian G. Andersen is mildly disturbing (http://archive.is/O1vhN http://archive.is/O1vhN)... As Associate Professor, Scripps Research, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, SRTI etc etc I assume he knows what he's talking about when he states: "That means that the outbreak was detected almost immediately after the first case, which - given that this is flu season in China - is just amazing. Detecting an outbreak of pneumonia (similar to flu) of a novel coronavirus that fast is truly impressive." Basically they are saying its weird to have found this to be a novel virus so fast. Its so uncommon, how could they have done this? Its an oddity Washington Times article https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w... UPDATE More evidence this virus came from a lab!!!! Read through this Harvard biologists twitter: https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1220377043210317831 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1220377043210317831 Specifically: "Even has almost identical accessory genes to 2018 bat ‘SARS’ (not all in new database annotations)" Shes saying this virus has already been seen and is logged in a database!
Aperocky 7y ago
> I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here Yes. All of the initial cases are people who have been to a specific seafood market, which also sells wild animals. You would be suggesting that somehow Biosafety Laboratory dropped it's virus specifically in that market, which sold animals known to naturally carry the coronavirus. I call bs based on principal: Simple explanation is almost always right over complex ones.
- moralestapia 7y ago
  Points of view ... for me the simplest explanation seems to be one linked to the other. The good news is that we are rational and able to find explanations based on evidence. Let's see what comes out in a few weeks.
- briandon 7y ago
  "No link with seafood market in first case of China coronavirus, Chinese scientists revealed" https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-link-seafood-market-first-case-china-coronavirus-chinese https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-l...
- sloppycee 7y ago
  > Simple explanation is almost always right over complex ones. What's more likely? An amazing coincidence: - The origin of this novel disease is 20 miles from a research lab. - The research lab is actively studying zoonotic viruses. - The genome suggests a ~10 years lineage from the closest bat coronavirus (96% identical). This strain of Bat coronavirus has gone under the radar for that long? - Despite the numerous mutations it has the exact same envelope protein to that closest bat coronavirus. This is extremely unusual even for closely related viruses. - China is 'overreacting': has quarantined 50 million people, stationed armed guards in hazmat suits and is scrambling to build overflow hospitals. OR Someone responsible for disposing of test animals (bats) decided instead to make a quick buck selling them to a market 20 miles down the street?
  - Natsu 7y ago
    To be fair, it might have been first identified there because there was a lab equipped to isolate it, but I don't really know. I mean, China has had a problem with things like fake eggs, so who knows? Its DNA seems to have been sequenced and made available online. If it's anything that has obviously been tampered with by a lab, I expect someone to point that out sooner or later. That said, I have no idea what sort of thing could be detected in the first place.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
api 7y ago
> Were experimented animals not disposed of properly? It's not inconceivable that a few of them ended up in the wildlife market. Great way for some low-level person in the lab to make a few bucks, and according to many people I know who have spent time in China the culture of "anything for a few bucks" is even more potent than it is in the USA. I'm sure Chinese authorities are examining this possibility, but they would never talk about it as it would be embarrassing. If anyone is found to have done this they will be in deep 船尾.
svara 7y ago
This seems rather unlikely. We have the genome sequence of the Wuhan seafood market coronavirus, and it's consistent with it being a so far unknown relative of the SARS virus and other coronaviruses (see my other comment where I have posted links to the sequence alignments). So did the Wuhan BSL-4 lab virologists discover a new relative of the SARS virus, study it in their lab, didn't publish it, then accidentally set it free? Sounds substantially less likely to me than people coming in contact with it while handling bush meat. That happens all the time, unfortunately ...
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Does that contradict the idea that a similar virus was found and then modifed in the lab?
  - nneonneo 7y ago
    So...the Wuhan scientists are modifying viruses in their BSL-4 lab (which is no joke when it comes to safety standards) and then just letting these things escape? Sorry, that’s very far fetched. Why can’t people accept that a virus like this could evolve naturally?
    - thinkingemote 7y ago
      Its more likely to be accidentally released like by a worker with stuff on them as has happened previous times with SARs etc in similar viral lab in China ( and happened in other cases and countries including the UK) than intentionally released. But it's also a hundred times more likely that the source is nature. However we should not discount the possiblity that viruses get out by accident as it's not uncommon even with top bio safety labs.
    - anonsivalley652 7y ago
      Define "naturally" Without human intention: yes. Without repeated patterns of humans activity: no. If meat agriculture, and meat-eating in general, were almost nonexistent, the risks of evolving a pandemic would be several orders-of-magnitude lower than exist today.
hubadu 7y ago
It has already happened multiple times in the past, four times in Beijing alone: https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-laboratory-escapes-self-fulfilling-prophecies/# https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-lab...

nexuist 7y ago

> >The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Why is Canada sending Ebola to China?
- maxerickson 7y ago
  a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada So the question is what sort of controls are in place vs what sort of controls should be in place. It isn't Canada sending the samples, it's Canada not preventing them from being sent.
- endorphone 7y ago
  By all accounts all procedures were followed, beyond that apparently some intellectual property protections weren't. China studies major viruses too. They are a party to the research. That part isn't so insidious.

turk73 7y ago

It's just a coincidence that the apparent origin point, Wuhan, has this scary looking virus laboratory a la Steven King's "The Stand." Just a weird coincidence, right? But also, how bad is China if there is a "wildlife market" in Wuhan where people go to eat exotic animals? WTF, China?

neffy 7y ago

I think it's a perfectly valid question, although the wildlife market is equally valid on the evidence we have. We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting to public information at this point in time - terrible as the published numbers are they are not that out of whack with a normal bad flu epidemic, which also causes significantly higher death rates. So it's either the actual death rates are higher (well, almost certainly), and/or they know or suspect something more serious. Bearing in mind too, that even China doesn't trust China on reporting - witness the central committee order a few days ago to the regions to be accurate with reports or else.

reaperducer 7y ago
We know that the Chinese Government is hugely overreacting Do we know that? All of the criticism I've seen has been of the government under-reacting. In fact, in a speech yesterday Xi told the local authorities that they weren't doing enough. Non-Chinese estimates (as of 24 January) are that there's 6,000 people infected vs. 1,300 from the Chinese government. The 6,000 figure comes from the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston: https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html
- adamiscool8 7y ago
  It seems like the local government under-reacted, and now the central government is (hopefully) over-reacting.
- dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
  Your statements are too broad. The government actively denies anything is wrong among its own citizens until the disease is spread outside the country. This has been well documented both with this and with SARS. To medical professionals, they have them recommend those sick people stay home and not go out. To the cities where infected people are, it seems they have established some kind of lock down of those areas. Oh, and of course they have spread some anti-american sentiment stating that the United States is somehow responsible. Of course it's hard to tell which story is right, the seafood or the medical facility. And honestly, it doesn't have to be one or the other - it could be both. They could have been practicing the breeding of viruses which had been harvested from local areas known to harbor diseases and infestations. If procedures were in question, or being retested, they might use a novel less deadly virus as a mechanism to practice with. It's plausible. It would be nice if governments didn't blatantly lie to their citizens, but I guess that's what "progress" is in 2020.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

The odds of this naturally occurring in China are probably close to 1 in 4. And the odds of it happening in Wuhan are probably close to 3%. The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim. If this were some super strain of Smallpox, that would make a more convincing conspiracy. The odds of there being some plausible conspiracy by now are high.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> The odds of the Chinese government making a super virus based on Coronavirus seem smaller than that, and the odds of it escaping the laboratory might be decent, but when you combine them, it's pretty slim. I don't think anyone is arguing that this is an outbreak of an unusually dangerous virus. It's just an unexpected outbreak of a new flu-levels-of-dangerous virus, and it happened suspiciously close to a BSL-4 facility. A facility like that stores dangerous viruses and works on them, it's not at all implausible somebody fucked up and something escaped containment.
- verroq 7y ago
  It’s funny because bats (and bat caves) are reservoirs of many viruses contained in BSL-4 facilities and they have no containment and frequently come into human contact.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I didn't even realize that until now.
- treis 7y ago
  >I don't think anyone is arguing that this is an outbreak of an unusually dangerous virus. It's not unusually dangerous. Viruses kill lots and lots of people every year. This one doesn't seem to be more dangerous than any other. It's just new.
- Supermancho 7y ago

joeyspn 7y ago

Also from Nature (2017): "Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus — and suggests new outbreak could occur" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 (Wuhan lab apparently carried out the research)

cheuv 7y ago
You forget thise one : https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787 https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat... The original paper is provided by virologists researchers and two of them are from Wuhan Biosafety Lab (Zhengli-Li Shi & Xing-Yi Ge)
- throwawaylolx 7y ago
  This paper claims that their "work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations," which is opposing the theory that the virus originated from Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory.
throwawaylolx 7y ago
>and suggests new outbreak could occur An outbreak caused _by bats_, which is opposed to GP's theroy.

Freestyler_3 7y ago

I dont know how much is conspiracy theory at this point, but it was said that they had small sars outbreak there before.

corporateslave5 7y ago

Take this with a grain of salt, copied from reddit: Read this website: http://virological.org/ http://virological.org/ Specifically this one: http://virological.org/t/ncovs-relationship-to-bat-coronaviruses-recombination-signals-no-snakes/331 http://virological.org/t/ncovs-relationship-to-bat-coronavir... and this one: http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 Basically Wuhan virus is essentially SARs http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 http://virological.org/t/missed-orfs-in-ncov/345 "Anyone notice two ‘accessory’ ORFs not annotated in nCoV? Orf13 (aka 9b) (28284:28577) and Orf14 (28734:28955) . One is ~ 70% ID and other ~ 90% to syntenous ORFs in BAT SARS 2017 ?" Translation: Some very specific parts of the genome are matching almost exactly, which only occurs in almost identical viruses. The ORFs are tagged parts of genes, this researcher is discussing how Chinese researchers "omitted" parts of their gene annotation. Some back story is the gene sequences have been shared openly so they can be studied, Chinese messed with how they annotated the sequences. To understand this better, here is the wikipedia definition of 'accessory gene' (ORF is just a chunk of the gene): "The variable or accessory genome (also: flexible, dispensable genome) refers to genes not present in all strains of a species. These include genes present in two or more strains or even genes unique to a single strain only, for example, genes for strain specific adaptation such as antibiotic resistance." The researcher is saying specific strain markers are matching between the 2017 virus and this one. Which is impossible, unless... Not only that, its extremely similar to a SARs taken from bats in 2017! The comment on this linked thread is from a Harvard researcher, she is hinting at a biological link to a lab strain. This virus escaped from Wuhan lab Another hint from another researcher The comment on this page from Kristian G. Andersen is mildly disturbing (http://archive.is/O1vhN http://archive.is/O1vhN)... As Associate Professor, Scripps Research, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, SRTI etc etc I assume he knows what he's talking about when he states: "That means that the outbreak was detected almost immediately after the first case, which - given that this is flu season in China - is just amazing. Detecting an outbreak of pneumonia (similar to flu) of a novel coronavirus that fast is truly impressive." Basically they are saying its weird to have found this to be a novel virus so fast. Its so uncommon, how could they have done this? Its an oddity Washington Times article https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w... UPDATE More evidence this virus came from a lab!!!! Read through this Harvard biologists twitter: https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1220377043210317831 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1220377043210317831 Specifically: "Even has almost identical accessory genes to 2018 bat ‘SARS’ (not all in new database annotations)" Shes saying this virus has already been seen and is logged in a database!

Aperocky 7y ago

> I'm bordering on conspiracy theory territory here Yes. All of the initial cases are people who have been to a specific seafood market, which also sells wild animals. You would be suggesting that somehow Biosafety Laboratory dropped it's virus specifically in that market, which sold animals known to naturally carry the coronavirus. I call bs based on principal: Simple explanation is almost always right over complex ones.

moralestapia 7y ago
Points of view ... for me the simplest explanation seems to be one linked to the other. The good news is that we are rational and able to find explanations based on evidence. Let's see what comes out in a few weeks.
briandon 7y ago
"No link with seafood market in first case of China coronavirus, Chinese scientists revealed" https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-link-seafood-market-first-case-china-coronavirus-chinese https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-l...
sloppycee 7y ago
> Simple explanation is almost always right over complex ones. What's more likely? An amazing coincidence: - The origin of this novel disease is 20 miles from a research lab. - The research lab is actively studying zoonotic viruses. - The genome suggests a ~10 years lineage from the closest bat coronavirus (96% identical). This strain of Bat coronavirus has gone under the radar for that long? - Despite the numerous mutations it has the exact same envelope protein to that closest bat coronavirus. This is extremely unusual even for closely related viruses. - China is 'overreacting': has quarantined 50 million people, stationed armed guards in hazmat suits and is scrambling to build overflow hospitals. OR Someone responsible for disposing of test animals (bats) decided instead to make a quick buck selling them to a market 20 miles down the street?
- Natsu 7y ago
  To be fair, it might have been first identified there because there was a lab equipped to isolate it, but I don't really know. I mean, China has had a problem with things like fake eggs, so who knows? Its DNA seems to have been sequenced and made available online. If it's anything that has obviously been tampered with by a lab, I expect someone to point that out sooner or later. That said, I have no idea what sort of thing could be detected in the first place.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

api 7y ago

> Were experimented animals not disposed of properly? It's not inconceivable that a few of them ended up in the wildlife market. Great way for some low-level person in the lab to make a few bucks, and according to many people I know who have spent time in China the culture of "anything for a few bucks" is even more potent than it is in the USA. I'm sure Chinese authorities are examining this possibility, but they would never talk about it as it would be embarrassing. If anyone is found to have done this they will be in deep 船尾.

svara 7y ago

This seems rather unlikely. We have the genome sequence of the Wuhan seafood market coronavirus, and it's consistent with it being a so far unknown relative of the SARS virus and other coronaviruses (see my other comment where I have posted links to the sequence alignments). So did the Wuhan BSL-4 lab virologists discover a new relative of the SARS virus, study it in their lab, didn't publish it, then accidentally set it free? Sounds substantially less likely to me than people coming in contact with it while handling bush meat. That happens all the time, unfortunately ...

jeffdavis 7y ago
Does that contradict the idea that a similar virus was found and then modifed in the lab?
- nneonneo 7y ago
  So...the Wuhan scientists are modifying viruses in their BSL-4 lab (which is no joke when it comes to safety standards) and then just letting these things escape? Sorry, that’s very far fetched. Why can’t people accept that a virus like this could evolve naturally?
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    Its more likely to be accidentally released like by a worker with stuff on them as has happened previous times with SARs etc in similar viral lab in China ( and happened in other cases and countries including the UK) than intentionally released. But it's also a hundred times more likely that the source is nature. However we should not discount the possiblity that viruses get out by accident as it's not uncommon even with top bio safety labs.
  - anonsivalley652 7y ago
    Define "naturally" Without human intention: yes. Without repeated patterns of humans activity: no. If meat agriculture, and meat-eating in general, were almost nonexistent, the risks of evolving a pandemic would be several orders-of-magnitude lower than exist today.

hubadu 7y ago

It has already happened multiple times in the past, four times in Beijing alone: https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-laboratory-escapes-self-fulfilling-prophecies/# https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-lab...