17 ms·

Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

367 points by ycombonator 7y ago

allovernow 7y ago
There is a recently opened P4 biolab in Wuhan within miles of the seafood market in question, with researchers who have recently been working with and publishing on the topic of Corona viruses, including research on human transmission. Not to be sensationalist, and personally I think the title is alarmist, but are a number of suspicious elements to this story that are worth examining: https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-part-1-d6a338eed7c5 https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-part...
- Fomite 7y ago
  - Every laboratory exposure-related outbreak I've encountered has been trivially easy to trace back to that event. - Most high-end virology labs are doing research on human to human transmission of corona viruses. They're a major emerging type of virus we don't understand, and a Chinese lab working on them is even less surprising. - If this was a bioweapon, it sucks.
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Originating from a lab doesn't necessarily mean it is a weapon. Only that they have poor sterilization or something.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      Points one and two are originating in a lab as a general principle. Only point three is addressing the mutated version of this rumor, which is that it's a bioweapons lab.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      yeah close proxmity changes everything, mistakes are not impossible. ..
  - dk1138 7y ago
    Trivially easy to trace, sure. But the Chinese government bay be highly motivated to prevent disclosing or allowing discovery of that.
  - baddox 7y ago
    The ones that are too difficult to trace wouldn't, of course, be included among every lab exposure-related outbreak you've encountered.
    - vtail 7y ago
      Yes - it's a good example of a survivorship bias.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      There are very, very few outbreaks where we don't eventually figure out the source. Like, can you spin the theory that we're missing them? Sure. But there's a pretty strong absence of evidence there, despite a field that's actively looking constantly (and where showing that would further the political and scientific careers of a number of people).
  - ranger207 7y ago
    >If this was a bioweapon, it sucks. Bioweapons aren't all that effective in general for the reasons seen here: they're too slowly acting, to easy to treat, and not as lethal as, say, chemical weapons (which are also not that effective as weapons). Biological weapons are most dangerous as terror weapons.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
      I am not sure I agree completely. Yes, the panic they induce ( and that media happily augment ) is in itself dangerous, but.. well, weaponized ebola has apparently been in existence for a while. What makes you think progress was not made since then to.. add new traits to existing strains? I hate to say anything more, because we would easily move into wild speculation territory.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      Agreed. I worked on biodefense stuff for awhile, and my usual argument was that bioweapons are at best panic and disruption. But this was mostly to address the terminal version of this particular rumor, which I've also encountered on social media.
- NathanKP 7y ago
  Medium account was suspended...
  - prostheticvamp 7y ago
    It’s up for me.
    - NathanKP 7y ago
      Must still be a cache somewhere for you. When I try to view it, it says "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules."
      - tinodotim 7y ago
        Interesting, I visited it from IPs from all around the world through different desktop browsers and it's available everywhere BUT there is no author and no author bio. If that's (kind of) on purpose that's really weird, to suspend somebodies account but leave the article up and remove all the author references. Anybody from medium on hn :)?
        LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        At first it was like that for me too. After a reload, because trying to click on that Adrian Bond icon to see what else he posted, it's now gone completely like parent poster described. The funny thing about that is when you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology the geocoordinates there lead you into the same forest on all major mapping services, while the pictures are recent or even from this year. Interesting edit history, 'patriots' proudly performing Psyberwar...
        allovernow 7y ago
        That's weird...it looks like an empty forest separating farmland.
- neuralrust 7y ago
  There is a 2017 article on Nature on that laboratory in Wuhan: 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...
- Aperocky 7y ago
  s/biolab/World Trade Center/ s/biolab/Apollo/ ‘Number of suspicious elements’ Even the VOA has came out to classify this as a hoax. Sometimes people just want to believe in conspiracies.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    Did you read the article before you dismissed this? The links are a little more substantial than 9/11 conspiracies. And the mechanism is far less far-fetched, considering that on at least one instance SARS was confirmed as having escaped a research lab much like the one in question. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death
    - Aperocky 7y ago
      There are 23 genome publicly available, And it’s closely identifies with existing coronavirus from bats and are further away from SARS. I am not a biologist, tell me should I trust the existing science or your story? It was said that the virus might not have originated from the market itself, people who actually raised or caught these wild animals might have gotten it first. But to make a jump from that to the biolab is exactly like how the US flag looked like wind blew on it and we never went to the moon. I’ll believe it when NIH or CDC publish corroborating evidence. Or are they part of the ‘system’ to you?
      - filoleg 7y ago
        I don't think that the author of the parent comment has some "i don't believe the system" sentiment, tinfoil hat style. For example, I definitely trust CDC (the US one). However, I am vary of trusting Chinese authorities and agencies when it comes to this issue, as they have shown before that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to hide the truth when revealing it casts a bad light or reveals some info. I have no strong opinion on the true source of the virus, as there isn't simply enough info and time to do a proper investigation by CDC, but it is easily imaginable how much the reputation of China will get damaged if it gets discovered that the virus was born out of one of their labs.
- archagon 7y ago
  Who is "Adrian Bond", I wonder? Can't find anything about the author.
- superzamp 7y ago
  Currently reading a (French) book regarding France-China industrial espionage and relations that was published well before the virus outbreak. Funnily enough, the author describes quite extensively how this P4 in Wuhan came into existence and all the subsequent problems faced by France to get China to honor the deal. I quote/translate: "In the course of these fifteen years, China has several times failed to live up to their engagement, staying relatively vague about the existence of an offensive biological program. Chinese officials had, for example, previously certified they had no other P4 and no plans to build any, but we now know they do have many, some being quite suspicious, a France official said". The book is "France-Chine, les liaisons dangereuses" by Antoine Izambard, for those curious.
  - mc32 7y ago
    They have to be naive as VW if they believed the CCP would honor the contract...
    - superzamp 7y ago
      Yeah the whole thing is basically a shitshow. The majority of the French administration was against the deal as well as many other countries but the president at the time forced the deal to go through.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    As I mentioned in another thread. I worked at a facilities department at university with an infectious disease research lab. We had incidents where there were system failures eg. Air filtration. It can just be a simple accident that the China government is covering up because they know their population would turn on them.
  - hcheung 7y ago
    Would be an interesting read if there is an English version of the book available.
- topmonk 7y ago
  Heres another article: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavir... What also leads me to believe this may be the case is that there was (according to the article) experiments on bats being run, and in China, people often find random animals, in drainage ditches, etc., and then go on to sell them for meat. It's possible that the bats they were working on were improperly disposed of, and then picked up and sold at the wet market.
  - notadoc 7y ago
    Zerohedge? Their primary product is fear porn for clicks, how reliable of a source do you think that is?
    - WaitWaitWha 7y ago
      Forget the local content, but follow the links and make your decisions with those additional resources - discard them or not. Even a click-bate site can have links that help dis/prove a hypothesis.
      - ficklepickle 7y ago
        Here is an article from CBC[0], the source of the original article that sparked this theory. It claims to debunk the sensational claims, going as far as to call them fake and a conspiracy. No coronavirus was sent to Wuhan from that lab, it was a henipavirus and Ebola. It also wasn't sent by Dr. Qiu. That doesn't prove the coronavirus didn't escape from the Wuhan lab. But it does debunk this popular theory that it was Dr Qiu. Even if it did escape from the lab, it doesn't mean it's a bioweapon. Although the CCP are almost certainly working on them, possibly in their only known level 4 lab in Wuhan. I imagine there is a research overlap between bioweapons and treating people. They both require a deep understanding of how the viruses function. There is an interesting unanswered question: what is the RCMP investigating Dr. Qiu for? They are very vague. It could be nothing, or it could be related to her helping setup the lab in Wuhan. The RCMP is a vain, inept organization IMO. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-online-chatter-conspiracy-1.5442376 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-on...
- ibeckermayer 7y ago
  “Indian scientists have just found HIV (AIDS) virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov virus that are not found in any other coronavirus. They hint at the possibility that this Chinese virus was designed ["not fortuitous'].” [1] “BOSTON (CBS) – Three people tied to universities and a hospital in the Boston area were indicted on charges they lied about their ties to China or tried to help the Chinese government. Among them was Dr. Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Prosecutors said Lieber had a contract with Wuhan Institute of Technology. He also ran a group that had contracts with the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health” [2] [1] https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/1223320879162986496?s=20 https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/122332087916298649... [2] https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/01/28/massachusetts-china-indictments-charles-lieber-yanqing-ye-zaosong-zheng/ https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/01/28/massachusetts-china-i...
  - justinzollars 7y ago
    This paper is not yet peer reviewed. I'm sure this claim will be studied exhaustively in the coming days/weeks.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  There are 23 genome publicly available, And it’s closely identifies with existing coronavirus from bats and are further away from SARS. I am not a biologist, tell me should I trust the existing science or your story? It was said that the virus might not have originated from the market itself, people who actually raised or caught these wild animals might have gotten it first. But to make a jump from that to the biolab is exactly like how the US flag looked like wind blew on it and we never went to the moon. I’ll believe it when NIH or CDC publish corroborating evidence.
- viscanti 7y ago
  This appears to have been debunked already. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/29/coronavirus-china-lab-mortality-virology-wuhan-virus-not-bioweapon/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/29/coronavirus-china-lab-m...
- testis321 7y ago
  > 410 > This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules. Hmm...
- mustachionut 7y ago
  The allegation that the virus originated in a lab is appealing but unfounded. Everybody would rather believe that our problems come from circumstances humans understand and control rather than the cold randomness of the universe. Though the virus and death it has caused is terrible, at least the fight against it unites humanity in a limited way. The groundless assertion that it originated in a lab recasts coronavirus into a human vs human problem and amplifies our political differences.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    From a fake account? There is no reason for that. Is there? Although your content seems very fatalistic ( = we can't understand nature). It seems weird and suspicious
    - mustachionut 7y ago
      > From a fake account? No. From a new, anonymous account where I intend to post my opinions without them being tied to my identity. At least until I post enough for stylometric analysis to work...
      - throw876545 7y ago
        Unfortunately, saying rational things about China—instead of demonizing it—can be seen as defending the Chinese government and bring a lot of grief in this current “Yellow Peril” environment.
        allovernow 7y ago
        China is literally ground zero for what will be a global pandemic if we do not contain it. I implore you not to bring nonsensical allegations of racism into this.
        NicoJuicy 7y ago
        A new account is the same as a fake account. I didn't see any reason for not tieing it to a identity. I express my opinions also, only if it is really sensitive I would use a throw away. I think being pro/contra China is not that sensitive, except if you are in China and contra.
erichocean 7y ago
"Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag" https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.927871.full.pdf https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.... > [ABSTRACT] We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  FWIW, https://old.reddit.com/user/BurrShotFirst1804 https://old.reddit.com/user/BurrShotFirst1804 is claiming that this (preprint, unreviewed) paper is very misleading, speaking as (supposedly) someone highly familiar with at least one of these HIV proteins. Not sure what to make of either the paper itself or this response to it.
  - m_alexgr 7y ago
    Difficult to properly peer review when things are moving so quickly.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      Plenty of things are being peer reviewed properly with this outbreak. But you can't take preprints in biology as any more holy writ than you can the occasional post on arXiv where someone claims to have come up with a complete unified model for physics, or solved a previously intractable problem.
diminish 7y ago
> “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts. What's the original source for the "Wuhan seafood market" hypothesis?
- Fomite 7y ago
  A large number of what we believe are the primary cases have exposure to said market.
- jmccorm 7y ago
  Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution better.
  - tgtweak 7y ago
    Have they seen this strain among animal populations? It seems logical to establish that animal populations can carry it, and in doing so it should be traceable there. It seems in the avian flu they had established very early on the lineage of it. It seems very unlikely that they will not be able to identify patient zero. There was a very far out article on zerohedge (not making any claims as to the legitimacy of the article or the publication) which had some interesting references about recent coronavirus research in facilities outside of China. I wouldn't normally promote it but there are some interesting references in there. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coron...
    - ianburrell 7y ago
      This coronavirus is close to some found in bats and 80% similar to SARS which came from bats through civets. Wouldn’t expect exact strain to be found in wild cause have to mutate to jump to humans. The question is how got to humans from bats since don’t think was direct connection. One paper suggested snakes but others don’t think that is likely. https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theory/ https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theo...
tempsy 7y ago
Yeah I have a hard time believing it has been definitively proven that the market was the source of the virus. Wouldn’t that mean they have the carcass of whatever animal transmitted the virus in their possession? And did the first person known to have contracted it actually say they went there?
- sct202 7y ago
  Why would they have a carcass of something someone ate at least a week before they got sick they caught the virus?
  - tempsy 7y ago
    I’ve seen nothing reported on what actually happened, including the allegation someone actually ate something. It could have been transmitted by just walking near something.
  - fourstar 7y ago
    That's exactly the point of the OP.
- pp19dd 7y ago
  It's just not that clear-cut. Last time around, they apparently culled the wrong animal population. Scientists still dispute to this day whether the action effected anything resembling change. The book "Spillover" (highly recommend it) goes into this in excruciating details, but in particular draws attention to the distinction between a host animal and the amplifier animal. In Hendra's case (Australia), it was a bat -> horse -> human -> random survival recurrence. In other outbreaks, it was not very clear what was what and health officials and some scientists tend to jump to conclusion too early. What might seem like a rising concern is that there's documentation that the new virus may have made two hops between healthy carriers and infected others.
- Aunche 7y ago
  It's pretty simple. You ask all the first people who got sick what they were doing over the past couple weeks. It's the same way they identified that Chipotle had an E Coli problem.
JarlUlvi 7y ago
There are allegations that the coronavirus may have been stolen from a Canadian bioweapons facility, and that coronavirus, weaponized, is now more virulent. https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/ https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/
Tenoke 7y ago
I hate to ask again, but why is this submission also getting heavily penalized? It seems like maybe all 2019-nCoV posts are getting penalized by mod(s) silently? Because this one and the last one an hour ago are. [0] I am not making any statements about whether that is sensible or not - but why not comment on why, like you've so often done in other cases? 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338
- dang 7y ago
  Major ongoing stories, especially sensational ones like a new epidemic, lead to tons of copycat and follow-up posts. In order for the front page not to fill up with coronavirus stories, or some other sensation du jour, we try to downweight follow-up posts unless there is significant new information. Otherwise the threads fill up with repetition of what's already been said, wild speculation, or both. We hit on the "significant new information" test after the Snowden storm of 2013, when users justly complained that the front page had become inundated with too many articles that added nothing substantial and were just triggering repeat threads. As a discussion becomes repetitive, it also tends to become wilder and more flame-prone—as if the mind has to resort to that to amuse itself, since there's nothing new to sink its teeth into. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Since HN's organizing value is intellectual curiosity, repetition and groundless speculation are among the things most to be avoided here. That's why we moderate that way.
  - marton78 7y ago
    Excellent reasoning. Thank you very much for your work of keeping this place sane!
stevespang 7y ago
Many if not all of the seasonal flu and coronaviruses have historically originated in Asia, specifically China. A Chinese biologist told me it is because poor Chinese people in rural areas very often overwinter their geese and pigs,etc in the 1st level of the house, some even sleep with them like pets (before they eventually eat them, how touching). That explains the increased levels of animal to human transition of these viruses.
Learn2win 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised that u.s. is behind the whole thing. Wilbur Ross admitted that coronavirus would be good for the US economy.
aaron695 7y ago
News at 7:00 the first African AIDS carrier may have not had sex with a monkey. We really need to upvote this old racist meme? It's from poor people. Poor people who live amongst wild animals. Aka farmers. It came from a rural location. Ie from a bat shitting on their rice while it dries. Does noone get what the meme about lightning deaths reducing each year means? It's about with wealth, nature has less of a catastrophic effect on our lives in part because people move to cities.
yurlungur 7y ago
The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Aperocky 7y ago
  To add to this, there are 20+ genomes available now. It’s being closely tracked and any claims should not be made without genome.
- mc32 7y ago
  Modified, not synthetic.
  - salemh 7y ago
    Any source you have found credible? Their is a lot of information going around in both directions.
    - ashildr 7y ago
      You have a very lax definition of “Information”. There is absolutely nothing suggesting that Wuhan is man made. I expected a little more scientific perspective from this forum.
      - dang 7y ago
        This forum has millions of readers. Human nature inevitably shows up at scale. Double that for human nature on the internet.
    - corporateslave5 7y ago
      I personally think any academics thinking parts are synthetic aren’t speaking about it
novaRom 7y ago
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Quote: 75 815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days. We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.
- dchichkov 7y ago
  Yes, 75815 individuals in Wuhan on Jan/25, with 4-6 day doubling is a more reasonable number. Better fits end of January, 3/200 of Japanese evacuation statistics and 4/400 of the Korean one. Assuming ~11M Wuhan population.
- gstipi 7y ago
  To my layman's ears, some of the conclusions in the cited Lancet article sound chilling, e.g. "...given the substantial volume of case importation from Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple major Chinese cities. Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing 2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020." Any comments on the soundness of the methodology used?
zapf 7y ago
It has to be from the factory farms. Right?
damm 7y ago
Virus's mutate and with how climate change is affecting everything; wouldn't it be tragically ironic if climate change accelerated how fast the common cold (for example) mutates Great and informative article unlike my comment
- FooHentai 7y ago
  There are several links between climate change (of any origin) and the spread of pathogens. Not mutation rate that I know of, but the ability to break out of existing 'reserve' locations which persistently harbor them into areas where they're not normally found. Case in point: the plague. Still very much alive in some areas of Asia and Africa, and localized outbreaks still occur today. But displacement of carriers species (e.g. rats) from those areas to others due to various climate-shift-induced pressures (such as too much or too little food, or human intrusion) can trigger outbreaks far and wide. The original plague period and spread was in many ways a perfect storm of factors but a re-occurrence is feasible (albeit today's improved knowledge of the cause, hygiene and containment measures should prevent it reaching anything like the scale once seen). Another example: A few years back Myrtle Rust made its way over to NZ for the first recorded time, and one theory of how it got here was being carried on unusually warm/humid air currents from Australia which allowed it, as a kind of mold, to survive the journey. Another vector: Melting permafrost releasing preserved pathogens to which today's populations (human and otherwise) have no immunity is another 'fun' climate change scenario. I find that one less plausible mostly because it would require human intrusion or some other means of transmission from the thawing site to hosts. But eh, maybe.
Asooka 7y ago
Claiming that this is a synthetic virus is pretty much the height of racism and is deeply unscientific. I hope sciencemag rescinds this story after the backlash.
blackrock 7y ago
I love laughing at conspiracy theories like the fake moon landing, the flat earth theory, and ancient astronauts built the pyramids, but this insinuation is a step too far.
sjwalter 7y ago
The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dangerous pathogens escaping their labs. In 2004, SARS escaped a BS-3 lab in Beijing, infecting several and killing at least one: " In April 2004, China reported a case of SARS in a nurse who had cared for a researcher at the Chinese National Institute of Virology. While ill, the researcher had traveled twice by train from Beijing to Anhui province, where she was nursed by her mother, a physician, who fell ill and died. The nurse in turn infected five third-generation cases, causing no deaths. Subsequent investigation uncovered three unrelated laboratory infections in different researchers at the NIV. At least of two primary patients had never worked with live SARS virus. Many shortcomings in biosecurity were found at the NIV, and the specific cause of the outbreak was traced to an inadequately inactivated preparation of SARS virus that was used in general (that is, not biosecure) laboratory areas, including one where the primary cases worked. It had not been tested to confirm its safety after inactivation, as it should have been." https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-could-escape-from-laboratories.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-c... Were a lab accident the source of this outbreak, you can bet your last dollar that the CCP would go to extreme lengths to hide that fact.
- sjwalter 7y ago
  For more recent, though more vague, evidence that China may not share the same views on handling extremely dangerous pathogens as the rest of the world, we have this story from July 2019, wherein a Chinese researcher working in one of Canada's BS-4 labs, along with her husband who was a SARS researcher, as well as several students she brought over from China to work with her, were all given the boot over unspecified "administrative matters". The University later severed all ties with her and her crew. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-escorted-from-infectious-disease-lab-amid-rcmp-investigation-1.5211567 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e... The article speculates that this was related to IP theft of some kind, which seems strange considering the lab's work was all in the public domain--what's to steal? This happened about six months ago, and four months before the Coronavirus broke. Is this at all related? Maybe, maybe not.
hi5eyes 7y ago
the video of oriental people eating bat soup was taken in a restaurant in micronesia
epicgiga 7y ago
I've more faith in the bat origin theory than the others so far. Don't know if the science is solid, but given how riddled bats are with all kinds of nasty stuff, you probably don't want to be eating that unless you're particularly keen on developing an exotic disease.
- throw876545 7y ago
  If you’re talking about the video if that TV show host eating bat soup, that took place in Palau, not China.
- guramarx11 7y ago
  I don't know which theory is bat shit crazy, a virus with suspicious resemblance to SARS, HIV or just EATING bat shit is crazy this outbreak proves humans are doomed to repeat the same mistake
- kjaftaedi 7y ago
  You can still have a man-made virus with the original source being bats. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavi... If you're interested in the open speculation, this guy does a pretty good breakdown of all the talking points: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html
anonytrary 7y ago
I'm not a fan of this title. It's verbose without being explicit. Should be "Wuhan seafood may not be source of coronavirus outbreak". Everyone already knows it's a novel virus spreading globally, just call it by its name.
- salmo 7y ago
  Its name is novel coronavirus or more specifically "2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)". There are many coronaviruses that just cause colds. There's also SARS, MERS, and now nCoV that are a lot more deadly.
  - anonytrary 7y ago
    Thank you for that clarification! I think the title makes more sense if you know about the novel prefix (which I didn't).
nobrains 7y ago
"13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace" How do they know, when its know that the virus can be spread before symptoms kick in? (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread-study/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asympt...)
blackrock 7y ago
This conspiracy idea is quite far fetched. And it was probably spread as fake news, by someone with a political agenda to smear the reputation of China worldwide. (And if you’ve been watching closely, this is a very well funded campaign, that has been very active for the past 3 years.) But let’s try to think this through. If they (China) were researching it, then it is possible that this could’ve accidentally escaped the lab. Although that is some serious professional incompetence. And if they are intelligent and skilled enough to work with dangerous diseases, then I’m sure they have proper containment and stringent decontamination processes in place. However, if this was a bioweapon, then a few arguments fall apart. (1) If they engineered it, then they should’ve had the genome already. Instead, they had to capture the strain, and sequence its genome, and it took them three weeks to complete the sequencing. And then, they shared it with the world, the CDC, the WHO, in order to help foreign countries contain it. For comparison, the CDC took over 2 months to sequence the Ebola virus. The Chinese sequenced this virus in 3 weeks. Granted, technology and techniques improved in the intervening years. So that begs the question: If this was a bioweapon, then why would they quickly share its genome with the world? Why not just keep it for themselves, while they work out some cure, and let the rest of the world flounder and die off? Their strength comes from their economic engine, and their exports to the world. They can’t make things for foreign markets, if those other countries are dying from some bioweapon that was unleashed on the world. (2) If this was a bioweapon, and then they ‘accidentally’ released it on themselves, which makes no sense, then what is the goal? Because the economic fallout from this thing will cause billions in economic damages. As well as potentially causing social instability, for a country that prizes stability over all else. And the political fallout will be even higher. (3) The Chinese are not suicidal. They were attacked with biological and chemical warfare by the Japanese in the 1930s. They were threatened with nuclear annihilation by MacArthur (to drop 50 atomic bombs) during the Korean War in the 1950s, and were also likely subjected to biological warfare too. The rest of the Western world prefers to ignore this, but they can never forget, because their people actually died from biological warfare. So given all that, they have first hand experience of what biological warfare will do. So if they are researching bioweapons, then I’m pretty certain that they will have stringent procedures in place to contain it. (4) And then there is the most logical argument, that this is a very poor bioweapon. The goal of a bioweapon is to maximize immediate casualties, while minimizing uncontrollable transmissions to others. Basically, there is no point in using a weapon, if it ends up killing yourself.
officemonkey 7y ago
The cognitive dissonance you feel between what a government says and what the truth is often the first sign that the government is authoritarian.
- rkuykendall-com 7y ago
  This is the FIRST sign that the Chinese government is authoritarian??
WaitWaitWha 7y ago
https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-feces-may-reveal-hidden-risk-of-spread-11580556507678.html https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-f... “The initial focus of case detection was on patients with pneumonia, but we now understand that some patients can present with gastrointestinal symptoms,"
WaitWaitWha 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo This guy's insight and references seem very interesting. Yes, this is a single persons opinion on this.

367 points by ycombonator 7y ago

There is a recently opened P4 biolab in Wuhan within miles of the seafood market in question, with researchers who have recently been working with and publishing on the topic of Corona viruses, including research on human transmission. Not to be sensationalist, and personally I think the title is alarmist, but are a number of suspicious elements to this story that are worth examining: https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-part-1-d6a338eed7c5 https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-part...

Fomite 7y ago
- Every laboratory exposure-related outbreak I've encountered has been trivially easy to trace back to that event. - Most high-end virology labs are doing research on human to human transmission of corona viruses. They're a major emerging type of virus we don't understand, and a Chinese lab working on them is even less surprising. - If this was a bioweapon, it sucks.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Originating from a lab doesn't necessarily mean it is a weapon. Only that they have poor sterilization or something.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    Points one and two are originating in a lab as a general principle. Only point three is addressing the mutated version of this rumor, which is that it's a bioweapons lab.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    yeah close proxmity changes everything, mistakes are not impossible. ..
- dk1138 7y ago
  Trivially easy to trace, sure. But the Chinese government bay be highly motivated to prevent disclosing or allowing discovery of that.
- baddox 7y ago
  The ones that are too difficult to trace wouldn't, of course, be included among every lab exposure-related outbreak you've encountered.
  - vtail 7y ago
    Yes - it's a good example of a survivorship bias.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    There are very, very few outbreaks where we don't eventually figure out the source. Like, can you spin the theory that we're missing them? Sure. But there's a pretty strong absence of evidence there, despite a field that's actively looking constantly (and where showing that would further the political and scientific careers of a number of people).
- ranger207 7y ago
  >If this was a bioweapon, it sucks. Bioweapons aren't all that effective in general for the reasons seen here: they're too slowly acting, to easy to treat, and not as lethal as, say, chemical weapons (which are also not that effective as weapons). Biological weapons are most dangerous as terror weapons.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
    I am not sure I agree completely. Yes, the panic they induce ( and that media happily augment ) is in itself dangerous, but.. well, weaponized ebola has apparently been in existence for a while. What makes you think progress was not made since then to.. add new traits to existing strains? I hate to say anything more, because we would easily move into wild speculation territory.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    Agreed. I worked on biodefense stuff for awhile, and my usual argument was that bioweapons are at best panic and disruption. But this was mostly to address the terminal version of this particular rumor, which I've also encountered on social media.
NathanKP 7y ago
Medium account was suspended...
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  It’s up for me.
  - NathanKP 7y ago
    Must still be a cache somewhere for you. When I try to view it, it says "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules."
    - tinodotim 7y ago
      Interesting, I visited it from IPs from all around the world through different desktop browsers and it's available everywhere BUT there is no author and no author bio. If that's (kind of) on purpose that's really weird, to suspend somebodies account but leave the article up and remove all the author references. Anybody from medium on hn :)?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        At first it was like that for me too. After a reload, because trying to click on that Adrian Bond icon to see what else he posted, it's now gone completely like parent poster described. The funny thing about that is when you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology the geocoordinates there lead you into the same forest on all major mapping services, while the pictures are recent or even from this year. Interesting edit history, 'patriots' proudly performing Psyberwar...
        allovernow 7y ago
        That's weird...it looks like an empty forest separating farmland.
neuralrust 7y ago
There is a 2017 article on Nature on that laboratory in Wuhan: 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...
Aperocky 7y ago
s/biolab/World Trade Center/ s/biolab/Apollo/ ‘Number of suspicious elements’ Even the VOA has came out to classify this as a hoax. Sometimes people just want to believe in conspiracies.
- allovernow 7y ago
  Did you read the article before you dismissed this? The links are a little more substantial than 9/11 conspiracies. And the mechanism is far less far-fetched, considering that on at least one instance SARS was confirmed as having escaped a research lab much like the one in question. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    There are 23 genome publicly available, And it’s closely identifies with existing coronavirus from bats and are further away from SARS. I am not a biologist, tell me should I trust the existing science or your story? It was said that the virus might not have originated from the market itself, people who actually raised or caught these wild animals might have gotten it first. But to make a jump from that to the biolab is exactly like how the US flag looked like wind blew on it and we never went to the moon. I’ll believe it when NIH or CDC publish corroborating evidence. Or are they part of the ‘system’ to you?
    - filoleg 7y ago
      I don't think that the author of the parent comment has some "i don't believe the system" sentiment, tinfoil hat style. For example, I definitely trust CDC (the US one). However, I am vary of trusting Chinese authorities and agencies when it comes to this issue, as they have shown before that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to hide the truth when revealing it casts a bad light or reveals some info. I have no strong opinion on the true source of the virus, as there isn't simply enough info and time to do a proper investigation by CDC, but it is easily imaginable how much the reputation of China will get damaged if it gets discovered that the virus was born out of one of their labs.
archagon 7y ago
Who is "Adrian Bond", I wonder? Can't find anything about the author.
superzamp 7y ago
Currently reading a (French) book regarding France-China industrial espionage and relations that was published well before the virus outbreak. Funnily enough, the author describes quite extensively how this P4 in Wuhan came into existence and all the subsequent problems faced by France to get China to honor the deal. I quote/translate: "In the course of these fifteen years, China has several times failed to live up to their engagement, staying relatively vague about the existence of an offensive biological program. Chinese officials had, for example, previously certified they had no other P4 and no plans to build any, but we now know they do have many, some being quite suspicious, a France official said". The book is "France-Chine, les liaisons dangereuses" by Antoine Izambard, for those curious.
- mc32 7y ago
  They have to be naive as VW if they believed the CCP would honor the contract...
  - superzamp 7y ago
    Yeah the whole thing is basically a shitshow. The majority of the French administration was against the deal as well as many other countries but the president at the time forced the deal to go through.
- threeseed 7y ago
  As I mentioned in another thread. I worked at a facilities department at university with an infectious disease research lab. We had incidents where there were system failures eg. Air filtration. It can just be a simple accident that the China government is covering up because they know their population would turn on them.
- hcheung 7y ago
  Would be an interesting read if there is an English version of the book available.
topmonk 7y ago
Heres another article: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavir... What also leads me to believe this may be the case is that there was (according to the article) experiments on bats being run, and in China, people often find random animals, in drainage ditches, etc., and then go on to sell them for meat. It's possible that the bats they were working on were improperly disposed of, and then picked up and sold at the wet market.
- notadoc 7y ago
  Zerohedge? Their primary product is fear porn for clicks, how reliable of a source do you think that is?
  - WaitWaitWha 7y ago
    Forget the local content, but follow the links and make your decisions with those additional resources - discard them or not. Even a click-bate site can have links that help dis/prove a hypothesis.
    - ficklepickle 7y ago
      Here is an article from CBC[0], the source of the original article that sparked this theory. It claims to debunk the sensational claims, going as far as to call them fake and a conspiracy. No coronavirus was sent to Wuhan from that lab, it was a henipavirus and Ebola. It also wasn't sent by Dr. Qiu. That doesn't prove the coronavirus didn't escape from the Wuhan lab. But it does debunk this popular theory that it was Dr Qiu. Even if it did escape from the lab, it doesn't mean it's a bioweapon. Although the CCP are almost certainly working on them, possibly in their only known level 4 lab in Wuhan. I imagine there is a research overlap between bioweapons and treating people. They both require a deep understanding of how the viruses function. There is an interesting unanswered question: what is the RCMP investigating Dr. Qiu for? They are very vague. It could be nothing, or it could be related to her helping setup the lab in Wuhan. The RCMP is a vain, inept organization IMO. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-online-chatter-conspiracy-1.5442376 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-on...
ibeckermayer 7y ago
“Indian scientists have just found HIV (AIDS) virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov virus that are not found in any other coronavirus. They hint at the possibility that this Chinese virus was designed ["not fortuitous'].” [1] “BOSTON (CBS) – Three people tied to universities and a hospital in the Boston area were indicted on charges they lied about their ties to China or tried to help the Chinese government. Among them was Dr. Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Prosecutors said Lieber had a contract with Wuhan Institute of Technology. He also ran a group that had contracts with the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health” [2] [1] https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/1223320879162986496?s=20 https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/122332087916298649... [2] https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/01/28/massachusetts-china-indictments-charles-lieber-yanqing-ye-zaosong-zheng/ https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/01/28/massachusetts-china-i...
- justinzollars 7y ago
  This paper is not yet peer reviewed. I'm sure this claim will be studied exhaustively in the coming days/weeks.
Aperocky 7y ago
There are 23 genome publicly available, And it’s closely identifies with existing coronavirus from bats and are further away from SARS. I am not a biologist, tell me should I trust the existing science or your story? It was said that the virus might not have originated from the market itself, people who actually raised or caught these wild animals might have gotten it first. But to make a jump from that to the biolab is exactly like how the US flag looked like wind blew on it and we never went to the moon. I’ll believe it when NIH or CDC publish corroborating evidence.
viscanti 7y ago
This appears to have been debunked already. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/29/coronavirus-china-lab-mortality-virology-wuhan-virus-not-bioweapon/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/29/coronavirus-china-lab-m...
testis321 7y ago
> 410 > This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules. Hmm...
mustachionut 7y ago
The allegation that the virus originated in a lab is appealing but unfounded. Everybody would rather believe that our problems come from circumstances humans understand and control rather than the cold randomness of the universe. Though the virus and death it has caused is terrible, at least the fight against it unites humanity in a limited way. The groundless assertion that it originated in a lab recasts coronavirus into a human vs human problem and amplifies our political differences.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  From a fake account? There is no reason for that. Is there? Although your content seems very fatalistic ( = we can't understand nature). It seems weird and suspicious
  - mustachionut 7y ago
    > From a fake account? No. From a new, anonymous account where I intend to post my opinions without them being tied to my identity. At least until I post enough for stylometric analysis to work...
    - throw876545 7y ago
      Unfortunately, saying rational things about China—instead of demonizing it—can be seen as defending the Chinese government and bring a lot of grief in this current “Yellow Peril” environment.
      - allovernow 7y ago
        China is literally ground zero for what will be a global pandemic if we do not contain it. I implore you not to bring nonsensical allegations of racism into this.
      - NicoJuicy 7y ago
        A new account is the same as a fake account. I didn't see any reason for not tieing it to a identity. I express my opinions also, only if it is really sensitive I would use a throw away. I think being pro/contra China is not that sensitive, except if you are in China and contra.

erichocean 7y ago

"Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag" https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.927871.full.pdf https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.... > [ABSTRACT] We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.

zozbot234 7y ago
FWIW, https://old.reddit.com/user/BurrShotFirst1804 https://old.reddit.com/user/BurrShotFirst1804 is claiming that this (preprint, unreviewed) paper is very misleading, speaking as (supposedly) someone highly familiar with at least one of these HIV proteins. Not sure what to make of either the paper itself or this response to it.
- m_alexgr 7y ago
  Difficult to properly peer review when things are moving so quickly.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    Plenty of things are being peer reviewed properly with this outbreak. But you can't take preprints in biology as any more holy writ than you can the occasional post on arXiv where someone claims to have come up with a complete unified model for physics, or solved a previously intractable problem.

diminish 7y ago

> “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts. What's the original source for the "Wuhan seafood market" hypothesis?

Fomite 7y ago
A large number of what we believe are the primary cases have exposure to said market.
jmccorm 7y ago
Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution better.
- tgtweak 7y ago
  Have they seen this strain among animal populations? It seems logical to establish that animal populations can carry it, and in doing so it should be traceable there. It seems in the avian flu they had established very early on the lineage of it. It seems very unlikely that they will not be able to identify patient zero. There was a very far out article on zerohedge (not making any claims as to the legitimacy of the article or the publication) which had some interesting references about recent coronavirus research in facilities outside of China. I wouldn't normally promote it but there are some interesting references in there. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coron...
  - ianburrell 7y ago
    This coronavirus is close to some found in bats and 80% similar to SARS which came from bats through civets. Wouldn’t expect exact strain to be found in wild cause have to mutate to jump to humans. The question is how got to humans from bats since don’t think was direct connection. One paper suggested snakes but others don’t think that is likely. https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theory/ https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theo...

tempsy 7y ago

Yeah I have a hard time believing it has been definitively proven that the market was the source of the virus. Wouldn’t that mean they have the carcass of whatever animal transmitted the virus in their possession? And did the first person known to have contracted it actually say they went there?

sct202 7y ago
Why would they have a carcass of something someone ate at least a week before they got sick they caught the virus?
- tempsy 7y ago
  I’ve seen nothing reported on what actually happened, including the allegation someone actually ate something. It could have been transmitted by just walking near something.
- fourstar 7y ago
  That's exactly the point of the OP.
pp19dd 7y ago
It's just not that clear-cut. Last time around, they apparently culled the wrong animal population. Scientists still dispute to this day whether the action effected anything resembling change. The book "Spillover" (highly recommend it) goes into this in excruciating details, but in particular draws attention to the distinction between a host animal and the amplifier animal. In Hendra's case (Australia), it was a bat -> horse -> human -> random survival recurrence. In other outbreaks, it was not very clear what was what and health officials and some scientists tend to jump to conclusion too early. What might seem like a rising concern is that there's documentation that the new virus may have made two hops between healthy carriers and infected others.
Aunche 7y ago
It's pretty simple. You ask all the first people who got sick what they were doing over the past couple weeks. It's the same way they identified that Chipotle had an E Coli problem.

JarlUlvi 7y ago

There are allegations that the coronavirus may have been stolen from a Canadian bioweapons facility, and that coronavirus, weaponized, is now more virulent. https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/ https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/

Tenoke 7y ago

I hate to ask again, but why is this submission also getting heavily penalized? It seems like maybe all 2019-nCoV posts are getting penalized by mod(s) silently? Because this one and the last one an hour ago are. [0] I am not making any statements about whether that is sensible or not - but why not comment on why, like you've so often done in other cases? 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338

dang 7y ago
Major ongoing stories, especially sensational ones like a new epidemic, lead to tons of copycat and follow-up posts. In order for the front page not to fill up with coronavirus stories, or some other sensation du jour, we try to downweight follow-up posts unless there is significant new information. Otherwise the threads fill up with repetition of what's already been said, wild speculation, or both. We hit on the "significant new information" test after the Snowden storm of 2013, when users justly complained that the front page had become inundated with too many articles that added nothing substantial and were just triggering repeat threads. As a discussion becomes repetitive, it also tends to become wilder and more flame-prone—as if the mind has to resort to that to amuse itself, since there's nothing new to sink its teeth into. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Since HN's organizing value is intellectual curiosity, repetition and groundless speculation are among the things most to be avoided here. That's why we moderate that way.
- marton78 7y ago
  Excellent reasoning. Thank you very much for your work of keeping this place sane!

stevespang 7y ago

Many if not all of the seasonal flu and coronaviruses have historically originated in Asia, specifically China. A Chinese biologist told me it is because poor Chinese people in rural areas very often overwinter their geese and pigs,etc in the 1st level of the house, some even sleep with them like pets (before they eventually eat them, how touching). That explains the increased levels of animal to human transition of these viruses.

Learn2win 7y ago

I wouldn't be surprised that u.s. is behind the whole thing. Wilbur Ross admitted that coronavirus would be good for the US economy.

aaron695 7y ago

News at 7:00 the first African AIDS carrier may have not had sex with a monkey. We really need to upvote this old racist meme? It's from poor people. Poor people who live amongst wild animals. Aka farmers. It came from a rural location. Ie from a bat shitting on their rice while it dries. Does noone get what the meme about lightning deaths reducing each year means? It's about with wealth, nature has less of a catastrophic effect on our lives in part because people move to cities.

yurlungur 7y ago

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Aperocky 7y ago
To add to this, there are 20+ genomes available now. It’s being closely tracked and any claims should not be made without genome.
mc32 7y ago
Modified, not synthetic.
- salemh 7y ago
  Any source you have found credible? Their is a lot of information going around in both directions.
  - ashildr 7y ago
    You have a very lax definition of “Information”. There is absolutely nothing suggesting that Wuhan is man made. I expected a little more scientific perspective from this forum.
    - dang 7y ago
      This forum has millions of readers. Human nature inevitably shows up at scale. Double that for human nature on the internet.
  - corporateslave5 7y ago
    I personally think any academics thinking parts are synthetic aren’t speaking about it

novaRom 7y ago

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Quote: 75 815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days. We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.

dchichkov 7y ago
Yes, 75815 individuals in Wuhan on Jan/25, with 4-6 day doubling is a more reasonable number. Better fits end of January, 3/200 of Japanese evacuation statistics and 4/400 of the Korean one. Assuming ~11M Wuhan population.
gstipi 7y ago
To my layman's ears, some of the conclusions in the cited Lancet article sound chilling, e.g. "...given the substantial volume of case importation from Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple major Chinese cities. Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing 2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020." Any comments on the soundness of the methodology used?

zapf 7y ago

It has to be from the factory farms. Right?

damm 7y ago

Virus's mutate and with how climate change is affecting everything; wouldn't it be tragically ironic if climate change accelerated how fast the common cold (for example) mutates Great and informative article unlike my comment

FooHentai 7y ago
There are several links between climate change (of any origin) and the spread of pathogens. Not mutation rate that I know of, but the ability to break out of existing 'reserve' locations which persistently harbor them into areas where they're not normally found. Case in point: the plague. Still very much alive in some areas of Asia and Africa, and localized outbreaks still occur today. But displacement of carriers species (e.g. rats) from those areas to others due to various climate-shift-induced pressures (such as too much or too little food, or human intrusion) can trigger outbreaks far and wide. The original plague period and spread was in many ways a perfect storm of factors but a re-occurrence is feasible (albeit today's improved knowledge of the cause, hygiene and containment measures should prevent it reaching anything like the scale once seen). Another example: A few years back Myrtle Rust made its way over to NZ for the first recorded time, and one theory of how it got here was being carried on unusually warm/humid air currents from Australia which allowed it, as a kind of mold, to survive the journey. Another vector: Melting permafrost releasing preserved pathogens to which today's populations (human and otherwise) have no immunity is another 'fun' climate change scenario. I find that one less plausible mostly because it would require human intrusion or some other means of transmission from the thawing site to hosts. But eh, maybe.

Asooka 7y ago

Claiming that this is a synthetic virus is pretty much the height of racism and is deeply unscientific. I hope sciencemag rescinds this story after the backlash.

blackrock 7y ago

I love laughing at conspiracy theories like the fake moon landing, the flat earth theory, and ancient astronauts built the pyramids, but this insinuation is a step too far.

sjwalter 7y ago

The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China. However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dangerous pathogens escaping their labs. In 2004, SARS escaped a BS-3 lab in Beijing, infecting several and killing at least one: " In April 2004, China reported a case of SARS in a nurse who had cared for a researcher at the Chinese National Institute of Virology. While ill, the researcher had traveled twice by train from Beijing to Anhui province, where she was nursed by her mother, a physician, who fell ill and died. The nurse in turn infected five third-generation cases, causing no deaths. Subsequent investigation uncovered three unrelated laboratory infections in different researchers at the NIV. At least of two primary patients had never worked with live SARS virus. Many shortcomings in biosecurity were found at the NIV, and the specific cause of the outbreak was traced to an inadequately inactivated preparation of SARS virus that was used in general (that is, not biosecure) laboratory areas, including one where the primary cases worked. It had not been tested to confirm its safety after inactivation, as it should have been." https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-could-escape-from-laboratories.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-c... Were a lab accident the source of this outbreak, you can bet your last dollar that the CCP would go to extreme lengths to hide that fact.

sjwalter 7y ago
For more recent, though more vague, evidence that China may not share the same views on handling extremely dangerous pathogens as the rest of the world, we have this story from July 2019, wherein a Chinese researcher working in one of Canada's BS-4 labs, along with her husband who was a SARS researcher, as well as several students she brought over from China to work with her, were all given the boot over unspecified "administrative matters". The University later severed all ties with her and her crew. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-escorted-from-infectious-disease-lab-amid-rcmp-investigation-1.5211567 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e... The article speculates that this was related to IP theft of some kind, which seems strange considering the lab's work was all in the public domain--what's to steal? This happened about six months ago, and four months before the Coronavirus broke. Is this at all related? Maybe, maybe not.

hi5eyes 7y ago

the video of oriental people eating bat soup was taken in a restaurant in micronesia

epicgiga 7y ago

I've more faith in the bat origin theory than the others so far. Don't know if the science is solid, but given how riddled bats are with all kinds of nasty stuff, you probably don't want to be eating that unless you're particularly keen on developing an exotic disease.

throw876545 7y ago
If you’re talking about the video if that TV show host eating bat soup, that took place in Palau, not China.
guramarx11 7y ago
I don't know which theory is bat shit crazy, a virus with suspicious resemblance to SARS, HIV or just EATING bat shit is crazy this outbreak proves humans are doomed to repeat the same mistake
kjaftaedi 7y ago
You can still have a man-made virus with the original source being bats. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavi... If you're interested in the open speculation, this guy does a pretty good breakdown of all the talking points: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html

anonytrary 7y ago

I'm not a fan of this title. It's verbose without being explicit. Should be "Wuhan seafood may not be source of coronavirus outbreak". Everyone already knows it's a novel virus spreading globally, just call it by its name.

salmo 7y ago
Its name is novel coronavirus or more specifically "2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)". There are many coronaviruses that just cause colds. There's also SARS, MERS, and now nCoV that are a lot more deadly.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  Thank you for that clarification! I think the title makes more sense if you know about the novel prefix (which I didn't).

nobrains 7y ago

"13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace" How do they know, when its know that the virus can be spread before symptoms kick in? (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread-study/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asympt...)

blackrock 7y ago

This conspiracy idea is quite far fetched. And it was probably spread as fake news, by someone with a political agenda to smear the reputation of China worldwide. (And if you’ve been watching closely, this is a very well funded campaign, that has been very active for the past 3 years.) But let’s try to think this through. If they (China) were researching it, then it is possible that this could’ve accidentally escaped the lab. Although that is some serious professional incompetence. And if they are intelligent and skilled enough to work with dangerous diseases, then I’m sure they have proper containment and stringent decontamination processes in place. However, if this was a bioweapon, then a few arguments fall apart. (1) If they engineered it, then they should’ve had the genome already. Instead, they had to capture the strain, and sequence its genome, and it took them three weeks to complete the sequencing. And then, they shared it with the world, the CDC, the WHO, in order to help foreign countries contain it. For comparison, the CDC took over 2 months to sequence the Ebola virus. The Chinese sequenced this virus in 3 weeks. Granted, technology and techniques improved in the intervening years. So that begs the question: If this was a bioweapon, then why would they quickly share its genome with the world? Why not just keep it for themselves, while they work out some cure, and let the rest of the world flounder and die off? Their strength comes from their economic engine, and their exports to the world. They can’t make things for foreign markets, if those other countries are dying from some bioweapon that was unleashed on the world. (2) If this was a bioweapon, and then they ‘accidentally’ released it on themselves, which makes no sense, then what is the goal? Because the economic fallout from this thing will cause billions in economic damages. As well as potentially causing social instability, for a country that prizes stability over all else. And the political fallout will be even higher. (3) The Chinese are not suicidal. They were attacked with biological and chemical warfare by the Japanese in the 1930s. They were threatened with nuclear annihilation by MacArthur (to drop 50 atomic bombs) during the Korean War in the 1950s, and were also likely subjected to biological warfare too. The rest of the Western world prefers to ignore this, but they can never forget, because their people actually died from biological warfare. So given all that, they have first hand experience of what biological warfare will do. So if they are researching bioweapons, then I’m pretty certain that they will have stringent procedures in place to contain it. (4) And then there is the most logical argument, that this is a very poor bioweapon. The goal of a bioweapon is to maximize immediate casualties, while minimizing uncontrollable transmissions to others. Basically, there is no point in using a weapon, if it ends up killing yourself.

officemonkey 7y ago

The cognitive dissonance you feel between what a government says and what the truth is often the first sign that the government is authoritarian.

rkuykendall-com 7y ago
This is the FIRST sign that the Chinese government is authoritarian??

WaitWaitWha 7y ago

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-feces-may-reveal-hidden-risk-of-spread-11580556507678.html https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-f... “The initial focus of case detection was on patients with pneumonia, but we now understand that some patients can present with gastrointestinal symptoms,"

WaitWaitWha 7y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo This guy's insight and references seem very interesting. Yes, this is a single persons opinion on this.