16 ms·

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Yes, there's a youtube documentary that talks about 2 animal labs in Wuhan, one specializing in bats.
- godtoldmetodoit 7y ago
  Tucker Carlson did a piece talking about how the bats that this jumped from do not live within ~900km of Wuhan, but that the lab in Wuhan did testing on the bats that they imported. It definitely seems plausible they were doing research on these bats, and that due to some improper controls it jumped over to a human working in the lab and that was our patient 0. It definitely seems feasible to me that it could have "come out of a lab" while still being entirely natural in origin and without any ill intent on the Chinese part. I'm not endorsing this as true, I don't know if it's true or not, but I did find it interesting and worthy of additional research.
  - meowface 7y ago
    That would be plausible if it's true. Can you cite the sources Carlson was referring to?
  - sv9 7y ago
    Non-US readers should know that Tucker Carlson is a Fox News pundit, and to say that he has credibility issues would be an incredibly charitable interpretation of things.
- alderz 7y ago
  You might be thinking of this one https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    Yes that is it, thank you! I like that it clears things up like - > According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the lab that is 280 meters away and studied bat viruses is a lot more plausible than it originating in a wet market. People make stupid mistakes handling waste all the time. There was no need for the Chinese government to throw the wet market under the bus or for people to imply Chinese people ate bats or some other racially motivated theory and there was no need to believe the chinese government created a bioweapon. Most likely is that it was just a horrible mistake and careless handling of biohazardous waste/animals.
    - Izkata 7y ago
      > I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the lab that is 280 meters away Yeeaah, about that... I looked more myself last time when I mentioned this and couldn't find the reference I originally saw (it was more than a month before my comment a month ago), instead found this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%AA%E5%AE%B6%E7%94%B5%E6%94%B6%E5%94%AE%E8%B0%83%E5%89%82%E7%AB%99/@30.6139163,114.2607687,18z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m18!1m12!4m11!1m3!2m2!1d114.2619792!2d30.613991!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaeb59c797e79:0x65d68e09b1b0e542!2m2!1d114.261863!2d30.613914!3e2!3m4!1s0x342eaeb59c797e79:0x65d68e09b1b0e542!8m2!3d30.613914!4d114.261863 https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%A... https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%AA%E5%AE%B6%E7%94%B5%E6%94%B6%E5%94%AE%E8%B0%83%E5%89%82%E7%AB%99 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto... According to Google Maps and Translate, the pin in the image in that PDF that says "Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention" is actually on a building labeled "New Century Home Appliances Collection and Disposal Station". 14-15km appears to be the actual distance from the market to the lab: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wholesale+Market,+Jianghan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/China,+CN+%E6%B9%96%E5%8C%97%E7%9C%81+%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E5%B8%82+%E6%AD%A6%E6%98%8C%E5%8C%BA+%E5%B0%8F%E6%B4%AA%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%AD%E5%8C%BA44%E5%8F%B7+Wuhan+Institute+of+Virology,+CAS:+Hubei+Engineering+and+Technology+Research+Center+for+Viral+Diseases+%E9%82%AE%E6%94%BF%E7%BC%96%E7%A0%81:+430071/@30.5778361,114.2362297,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea94ab99e2bfd:0x5ba9b4b6604c943d!2m2!1d114.2616875!2d30.6177919!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea56945e84d71:0x402ec92fd18fef96!2m2!1d114.3508524!2d30.5391912!3e2 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wh... There is one building 4km away called the Wuhan CDC&P, but looking at the surrounding buildings that appears to be an office, not a lab: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wholesale+Market,+Jianghan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/Wuhan+Centres+for+Disease+Prevention+%26+Control,+Jiang+Han+Bei+Lu,+Jiangan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/@30.6034003,114.2531576,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea94ab99e2bfd:0x5ba9b4b6604c943d!2m2!1d114.2616875!2d30.6177919!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaee6df67e08b:0x9cbacadc65f81283!2m2!1d114.279647!2d30.589446!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wh... IMO despite the faked image, the same city is still suspicious, especially with stories like this coming out now: https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in-luggage-fbi-report-describes-chinas-biosecurity-risk-144526820.html?guccounter=1 https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in...
- MilnerRoute 7y ago
  It wasn't a paper. It was a social media post that people mistook for a paper. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
Flow 7y ago
Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ
- andromeduck 7y ago
  That doesn't look like the seafood market in Wuhan.
  - Flow 7y ago
    FYI: A wet market isn't necessarily seafood only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 2019-nCoV 7y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. It is not Indonesia as the previous child (now deleted) alluded to — the easy tell is the distinct lack of Hijabs visible (which are ubiquitous in the largest Muslim country in the world).
  - alderz 7y ago
    It is Indonesia. See https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-coronavirus-dogs-snakes-rats-bats-wuhan-market-indonesia https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-co... for the details. There are signs that are definitely not chinese. You can see them clearly in the original higher quality video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc The lack of hijabs is due that it is recorded in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, where the majority is christian.
    - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
      That explains it.
avs733 7y ago
So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.
- papermachete 7y ago
  It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.
  - avs733 7y ago
    it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...
    - papermachete 7y ago
      They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only engage in political damage control.
  - meowface 7y ago
    What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
    - papermachete 7y ago
      That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret military base got away with corona would make you more effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.
meowface 7y ago
Failing to disprove one competing hypothesis doesn't lend nearly as much evidence to other hypotheses as you might think. It's very hard to fully trace something like this, especially in such a huge, dense population center.
zozbot234 7y ago
You don't need to eat bats for them to be a problem. The virus could have jumped via some intermediate host. Some folks used to be skeptical wrt. the market being a source, because it was officially described as a fish/seafood market and fish are not a very plausible reservoir for this virus. However it's clear by now that all kinds of live animals were sold there, similar to other "wet" markets throughout Mainland China.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  > You don't need to eat bats for them to be a problem. The virus could have jumped via some intermediate host. Currently the "jump host" hypothesis suggests the pangolin as an intermediate host from bats. Not enough evidence to be 100% sure, though.
FpUser 7y ago
Let me extrapolate you logic: major UK facility for chemical and biological weapons research in Porton Down was close to a place where novichok poisoning happened. Your conclusion ... ?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?

redis_mlc 7y ago
Yes, there's a youtube documentary that talks about 2 animal labs in Wuhan, one specializing in bats.
godtoldmetodoit 7y ago
Tucker Carlson did a piece talking about how the bats that this jumped from do not live within ~900km of Wuhan, but that the lab in Wuhan did testing on the bats that they imported. It definitely seems plausible they were doing research on these bats, and that due to some improper controls it jumped over to a human working in the lab and that was our patient 0. It definitely seems feasible to me that it could have "come out of a lab" while still being entirely natural in origin and without any ill intent on the Chinese part. I'm not endorsing this as true, I don't know if it's true or not, but I did find it interesting and worthy of additional research.
- meowface 7y ago
  That would be plausible if it's true. Can you cite the sources Carlson was referring to?
- sv9 7y ago
  Non-US readers should know that Tucker Carlson is a Fox News pundit, and to say that he has credibility issues would be an incredibly charitable interpretation of things.
alderz 7y ago
You might be thinking of this one https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Yes that is it, thank you! I like that it clears things up like - > According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the lab that is 280 meters away and studied bat viruses is a lot more plausible than it originating in a wet market. People make stupid mistakes handling waste all the time. There was no need for the Chinese government to throw the wet market under the bus or for people to imply Chinese people ate bats or some other racially motivated theory and there was no need to believe the chinese government created a bioweapon. Most likely is that it was just a horrible mistake and careless handling of biohazardous waste/animals.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    > I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the lab that is 280 meters away Yeeaah, about that... I looked more myself last time when I mentioned this and couldn't find the reference I originally saw (it was more than a month before my comment a month ago), instead found this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%AA%E5%AE%B6%E7%94%B5%E6%94%B6%E5%94%AE%E8%B0%83%E5%89%82%E7%AB%99/@30.6139163,114.2607687,18z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m18!1m12!4m11!1m3!2m2!1d114.2619792!2d30.613991!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaeb59c797e79:0x65d68e09b1b0e542!2m2!1d114.261863!2d30.613914!3e2!3m4!1s0x342eaeb59c797e79:0x65d68e09b1b0e542!8m2!3d30.613914!4d114.261863 https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%A... https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%E6%96%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%AA%E5%AE%B6%E7%94%B5%E6%94%B6%E5%94%AE%E8%B0%83%E5%89%82%E7%AB%99 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto... According to Google Maps and Translate, the pin in the image in that PDF that says "Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention" is actually on a building labeled "New Century Home Appliances Collection and Disposal Station". 14-15km appears to be the actual distance from the market to the lab: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wholesale+Market,+Jianghan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/China,+CN+%E6%B9%96%E5%8C%97%E7%9C%81+%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E5%B8%82+%E6%AD%A6%E6%98%8C%E5%8C%BA+%E5%B0%8F%E6%B4%AA%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%AD%E5%8C%BA44%E5%8F%B7+Wuhan+Institute+of+Virology,+CAS:+Hubei+Engineering+and+Technology+Research+Center+for+Viral+Diseases+%E9%82%AE%E6%94%BF%E7%BC%96%E7%A0%81:+430071/@30.5778361,114.2362297,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea94ab99e2bfd:0x5ba9b4b6604c943d!2m2!1d114.2616875!2d30.6177919!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea56945e84d71:0x402ec92fd18fef96!2m2!1d114.3508524!2d30.5391912!3e2 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wh... There is one building 4km away called the Wuhan CDC&P, but looking at the surrounding buildings that appears to be an office, not a lab: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wholesale+Market,+Jianghan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/Wuhan+Centres+for+Disease+Prevention+%26+Control,+Jiang+Han+Bei+Lu,+Jiangan+Qu,+Wuhan+Shi,+Hubei+Sheng,+China/@30.6034003,114.2531576,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x342ea94ab99e2bfd:0x5ba9b4b6604c943d!2m2!1d114.2616875!2d30.6177919!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaee6df67e08b:0x9cbacadc65f81283!2m2!1d114.279647!2d30.589446!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Wuhan+South+China+Seafood+Wh... IMO despite the faked image, the same city is still suspicious, especially with stories like this coming out now: https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in-luggage-fbi-report-describes-chinas-biosecurity-risk-144526820.html?guccounter=1 https://news.yahoo.com/suspected-sars-virus-and-flu-found-in...
MilnerRoute 7y ago
It wasn't a paper. It was a social media post that people mistook for a paper. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

Flow 7y ago

Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ

andromeduck 7y ago
That doesn't look like the seafood market in Wuhan.
- Flow 7y ago
  FYI: A wet market isn't necessarily seafood only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
2019-nCoV 7y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. It is not Indonesia as the previous child (now deleted) alluded to — the easy tell is the distinct lack of Hijabs visible (which are ubiquitous in the largest Muslim country in the world).
- alderz 7y ago
  It is Indonesia. See https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-coronavirus-dogs-snakes-rats-bats-wuhan-market-indonesia https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-co... for the details. There are signs that are definitely not chinese. You can see them clearly in the original higher quality video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc The lack of hijabs is due that it is recorded in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, where the majority is christian.
  - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
    That explains it.

avs733 7y ago

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.

papermachete 7y ago
It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.
- avs733 7y ago
  it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...
  - papermachete 7y ago
    They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only engage in political damage control.
- meowface 7y ago
  What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
  - papermachete 7y ago
    That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret military base got away with corona would make you more effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.

meowface 7y ago

Failing to disprove one competing hypothesis doesn't lend nearly as much evidence to other hypotheses as you might think. It's very hard to fully trace something like this, especially in such a huge, dense population center.

zozbot234 7y ago

You don't need to eat bats for them to be a problem. The virus could have jumped via some intermediate host. Some folks used to be skeptical wrt. the market being a source, because it was officially described as a fish/seafood market and fish are not a very plausible reservoir for this virus. However it's clear by now that all kinds of live animals were sold there, similar to other "wet" markets throughout Mainland China.

lbeltrame 7y ago
> You don't need to eat bats for them to be a problem. The virus could have jumped via some intermediate host. Currently the "jump host" hypothesis suggests the pangolin as an intermediate host from bats. Not enough evidence to be 100% sure, though.

FpUser 7y ago

Let me extrapolate you logic: major UK facility for chemical and biological weapons research in Porton Down was close to a place where novichok poisoning happened. Your conclusion ... ?