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Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being too dangerous. She returned to China

by rpiguy 7y ago

Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research in Wuhan. Yeah. Just a coincidence.

MustComment 7y ago
Let's talk coincidences, then: 1) "Wuhan is a huge city" That is true, but there are eight other more populous cities in China.Source: Wikipedia 2) "maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats" Not really, the southern provinces of China are much more prone to these outbreaks. Shi Zenghli herself said "“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo... 3) "maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats?!" I'm afraid not. The bats used in her experiences were mainly from Yunnan province, over 1000kms away from Wuhan (check the same source). 4) "A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence."Just read the papers authored by Shi Zenghli, they are all available online. Start at this one: Pre-print [ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1 ]: "We then found a short RdRp region from a bat coronavirus termed BatCoV RaTG13 which we previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan Province showed high sequence identity to nCoV-2019. We did full-length sequencing to this RNA sample. Simplot analysis showed that nCoV-2019 was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with 96.2% overall genome sequence identity." Then, pay a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology website: "(...) is equipped with a general office, scientific research planning office, organization & personnel department, finance department, graduate student office , with five functional management departments, logistics support center, network information center, public technical service center (including analysis and testing center, experimental animal center, BSL -3 laboratory, isotope room, etc.), Virologica Sinica (English version), Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Virology and other support departments." SARS-CoV-2 very likely had a laboratorial origin, not from cell cultures, but from the interaction between bats and their lab animal technicians. Considering how easily viruses mutate and recombine to acquire new genes, the RaTG13 coronavirus is very plausibly the origin of SARS-CoV-2, for instance in one or several of these circumstances: a) Transmission chains in research animal facilities involving different species animals, including - but not necessarily restricted to - bats; b) Bidirectional transmission chains between lab animals and their handlers; c) Transmission of the RaTG13 coronavirus from a lab animal to a susceptible handler, with subsequent mutation and transmission chains within humans. And this was certainly what Wuhan virologist Shi Zheng-Li, China's foremost coronavirus expert, was thinking when she candidly aknowledged to Scientific American's Jane Qiu, ' "If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?” '. 5) "You're accusing a specific person of involvement in a major pandemic with evidence you admit is flimsy at best" Actually, this possibility was first raised by two Chinese authors, in February 2020, who uploaded an article titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" in ResearchGate. The paper was never published, and is no longer accessible in that platform, but can still be found online. On the other hand, I believe this was an accidental event derived from negligent lab practices, rather than a deliberate action by someone.
meowface 7y ago
Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?
- rpiguy 7y ago
  She was researching bat Corona viruses? The outbreak started at a market on the doorstep of her lab? Her name is on several papers on bat Corona virus. Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.
  - meowface 7y ago
    >Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol. Yes, and this is important, but this is also already publicly known. It's not providing any new or interesting information. There're still a lot of other variables and factors to take into account here. Statistics aren't so simple. For example, Wuhan is a huge city, larger than NYC, and an important economic hub. The area has a very high number of people and is population-dense. Tons of scientific institutions are there, as one would generally expect of such a city. So by that alone, the prior for the lab being there could be pretty high. Also, maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats? Perhaps even created there because they considered it very likely the particular bats in that particular area could potentially carry human-transferable viruses? And perhaps also because they knew lots of animals in the area, including bats, were regularly hunted and sold for food, further increasing the likelihood that human-infecting viruses may be found in that area? If that's true, one would expect outbreaks to be more likely to occur in that area whether or not the lab was involved. It'd be reversing cause and effect - maybe a lab is there because the area is a virus hotzone, rather than the area being a virus hotzone because a lab is there. I saw some other evidence saying coronavirus-carrying bats studied at the lab were taken from elsewhere in China, which could alter this assessment, so one would need to look at all of that more thoroughly, but the point is this isn't such a simple association to make. A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence.
MustComment 7y ago
Let's talk coincidences then

by rpiguy 7y ago

MustComment 7y ago

Let's talk coincidences, then: 1) "Wuhan is a huge city" That is true, but there are eight other more populous cities in China.Source: Wikipedia 2) "maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats" Not really, the southern provinces of China are much more prone to these outbreaks. Shi Zenghli herself said "“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo... 3) "maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats?!" I'm afraid not. The bats used in her experiences were mainly from Yunnan province, over 1000kms away from Wuhan (check the same source). 4) "A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence."Just read the papers authored by Shi Zenghli, they are all available online. Start at this one: Pre-print [ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1 ]: "We then found a short RdRp region from a bat coronavirus termed BatCoV RaTG13 which we previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan Province showed high sequence identity to nCoV-2019. We did full-length sequencing to this RNA sample. Simplot analysis showed that nCoV-2019 was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with 96.2% overall genome sequence identity." Then, pay a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology website: "(...) is equipped with a general office, scientific research planning office, organization & personnel department, finance department, graduate student office , with five functional management departments, logistics support center, network information center, public technical service center (including analysis and testing center, experimental animal center, BSL -3 laboratory, isotope room, etc.), Virologica Sinica (English version), Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Virology and other support departments." SARS-CoV-2 very likely had a laboratorial origin, not from cell cultures, but from the interaction between bats and their lab animal technicians. Considering how easily viruses mutate and recombine to acquire new genes, the RaTG13 coronavirus is very plausibly the origin of SARS-CoV-2, for instance in one or several of these circumstances: a) Transmission chains in research animal facilities involving different species animals, including - but not necessarily restricted to - bats; b) Bidirectional transmission chains between lab animals and their handlers; c) Transmission of the RaTG13 coronavirus from a lab animal to a susceptible handler, with subsequent mutation and transmission chains within humans. And this was certainly what Wuhan virologist Shi Zheng-Li, China's foremost coronavirus expert, was thinking when she candidly aknowledged to Scientific American's Jane Qiu, ' "If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?” '. 5) "You're accusing a specific person of involvement in a major pandemic with evidence you admit is flimsy at best" Actually, this possibility was first raised by two Chinese authors, in February 2020, who uploaded an article titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" in ResearchGate. The paper was never published, and is no longer accessible in that platform, but can still be found online. On the other hand, I believe this was an accidental event derived from negligent lab practices, rather than a deliberate action by someone.

meowface 7y ago

Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?

rpiguy 7y ago
She was researching bat Corona viruses? The outbreak started at a market on the doorstep of her lab? Her name is on several papers on bat Corona virus. Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.
- meowface 7y ago
  >Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol. Yes, and this is important, but this is also already publicly known. It's not providing any new or interesting information. There're still a lot of other variables and factors to take into account here. Statistics aren't so simple. For example, Wuhan is a huge city, larger than NYC, and an important economic hub. The area has a very high number of people and is population-dense. Tons of scientific institutions are there, as one would generally expect of such a city. So by that alone, the prior for the lab being there could be pretty high. Also, maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats? Perhaps even created there because they considered it very likely the particular bats in that particular area could potentially carry human-transferable viruses? And perhaps also because they knew lots of animals in the area, including bats, were regularly hunted and sold for food, further increasing the likelihood that human-infecting viruses may be found in that area? If that's true, one would expect outbreaks to be more likely to occur in that area whether or not the lab was involved. It'd be reversing cause and effect - maybe a lab is there because the area is a virus hotzone, rather than the area being a virus hotzone because a lab is there. I saw some other evidence saying coronavirus-carrying bats studied at the lab were taken from elsewhere in China, which could alter this assessment, so one would need to look at all of that more thoroughly, but the point is this isn't such a simple association to make. A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence.

MustComment 7y ago

Let's talk coincidences then