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Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing. That the virus originate

Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing. That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant fraction of the first known hospitalized cases having no direct connection to the market it should be obvious that the source is unlikely to have been the market itself but rather something close to it with the market just acting as a regional landmark or amplifier. It's like you walk past a bunch of kids playing with fireworks by the trail and an hour later the forest is on fire having started in the same area as you saw the kids. You obviously can't know for sure it was them without more evidence, it could have been a cigarette butt from a carless smoker, but you be a fool to think it that just because there was no accelleant involved that it couldn't have been the kids. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224451-700-chinas-sars-cases-sound-alarm-over-lab-security/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224451-700-chinas-s...

ueudrjjj 7y ago
One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.
- ausjke 7y ago
  a few weeks ago CCP issued a new law to manage virology labs, and yes historically virus escaped its labs multiple times.
  - ausjke 7y ago
    I simply stated a fact which is easily verifiable by checking news from its government, so why the downvotes, I hope it's not that we have CCP watchers here at HN.
    - StandardFuture 7y ago
      We are getting a small influx of CCP troll commenters in these comments now, so I would not be surprised if a few CCP (or CCP sympathetic) accounts have enough karma to downvote.
- StandardFuture 7y ago
  This is very valid clarification on what I will just name "lab theories". There is a huge differentiation in: 'purposely bio-engineered and intentionally-released' theories, vs. 'someone collected bats in the wild for research, brought them to the Wuhan lab, and there was an accidental pathogen escape during the research.' The former is entirely dramatic, while the latter is neither dramatic, unreasonable, illogical, or "conspiracy".
  - jonny_eh 7y ago
    It's a shame that China's covering something up, which will only fuel the most outlandish theories.
    - JamesG124 7y ago
      There's little evidence to support the cover-up charge https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_thoughts_on_chinas_initial_handling_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_th...
      - bart_spoon 7y ago
        Since that post was made, there has been widespread reporting that US intelligence agencies are quite sure that China's numbers regarding the infection have been fabricated and underreported by quite a large amount. [0] Keep in mind that the Chinese government doesn't have to be pursuing a centralized disinformation campaign for it to occur. It would appear that at least a decent amount of the misinformation is occurring because local officials are covering up the extent of the damage from the party for fear of retaliation. In this case, its entirely plausible for large-scale cover-up to be occuring in China, without the national CCP driving it or even being aware of the extent that its occuring. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavir...
        JamesG124 7y ago
        1. I'm well aware of that. Is that the only new evidence that's come to light since the piece I linked to though? Would have expected something more solid than unnamed sources from inside national security (see: big hack) 2. I'll grant that that's possibility in the exact same sense in which I grant the centralized cover-up theory to be a possibility, and in which I grant both the lab creation and the lab accident origin theories to be possibilities. But I'm not interested in possibilities. What I'm interested in is positive evidence supportive of this or that theory.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rumanator 7y ago
  > One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. Source?
  - knzhou 7y ago
    There are no sources. I've personally looked into tens of claims about people being "disappeared" in China over the past few years, and literally every time the only evidence has been "they haven't tweeted for 12 hours". The person reappears soon after, but by that point the lie's damage is done, and nobody ever hears the correction.
    - BryanBigs 7y ago
      Source?
  - Izkata 7y ago
    A lot of their information was scrubbed, but user laowhy86 on Youtube found their identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU He believes this scientist was the first person infected, who it spread from.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
fspeech 7y ago
I don't know where the "within half a kilometer" meme came from. Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 13.5km from the market by road or 30 minutes by car. And the two are separated by the Yangtze river: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/12D2/production/_110781840_wuhan_map.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/12D2/production/... (in case one wonders the source of the map is BBC https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51388024 https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51388024) With Wuhan's population it would not surprise me if there are millions who live or work closer to the institute than the market.
- Throwawayaerlei 7y ago
  It comes from the fact there's a Wuhan Center for Disease Control that's across the river from the Institute for Virology and much closer to the wet market. Which is mentioned in the fine Daily Mail article, which gets a whole lot of basic facts correct, or nearly so (it differs in the distance it claims between the Center and the wet market, and the number of days that it took for the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center to be closed by the Chinese Communist Party for "rectification" after they broke the embargo on publishing genome sequences; would that any Western researchers show as much courage as those did). And that Wuhan CDC has BSL-3 labs, although the Daily Mail passes on the entirely plausible rumor that bat coronavirus research was being done at both locations in BSL-2 labs. Lots of scientists all over the world do research in labs that aren't really at the level that should be used for what they're doing, the higher the level, the more obnoxious and difficult it is to do anything. A security/convenience trade-off we should be all to familiar with.

ueudrjjj 7y ago

One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.

ausjke 7y ago
a few weeks ago CCP issued a new law to manage virology labs, and yes historically virus escaped its labs multiple times.
- ausjke 7y ago
  I simply stated a fact which is easily verifiable by checking news from its government, so why the downvotes, I hope it's not that we have CCP watchers here at HN.
  - StandardFuture 7y ago
    We are getting a small influx of CCP troll commenters in these comments now, so I would not be surprised if a few CCP (or CCP sympathetic) accounts have enough karma to downvote.
StandardFuture 7y ago
This is very valid clarification on what I will just name "lab theories". There is a huge differentiation in: 'purposely bio-engineered and intentionally-released' theories, vs. 'someone collected bats in the wild for research, brought them to the Wuhan lab, and there was an accidental pathogen escape during the research.' The former is entirely dramatic, while the latter is neither dramatic, unreasonable, illogical, or "conspiracy".
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  It's a shame that China's covering something up, which will only fuel the most outlandish theories.
  - JamesG124 7y ago
    There's little evidence to support the cover-up charge https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_thoughts_on_chinas_initial_handling_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_th...
    - bart_spoon 7y ago
      Since that post was made, there has been widespread reporting that US intelligence agencies are quite sure that China's numbers regarding the infection have been fabricated and underreported by quite a large amount. [0] Keep in mind that the Chinese government doesn't have to be pursuing a centralized disinformation campaign for it to occur. It would appear that at least a decent amount of the misinformation is occurring because local officials are covering up the extent of the damage from the party for fear of retaliation. In this case, its entirely plausible for large-scale cover-up to be occuring in China, without the national CCP driving it or even being aware of the extent that its occuring. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavir...
      - JamesG124 7y ago
        1. I'm well aware of that. Is that the only new evidence that's come to light since the piece I linked to though? Would have expected something more solid than unnamed sources from inside national security (see: big hack) 2. I'll grant that that's possibility in the exact same sense in which I grant the centralized cover-up theory to be a possibility, and in which I grant both the lab creation and the lab accident origin theories to be possibilities. But I'm not interested in possibilities. What I'm interested in is positive evidence supportive of this or that theory.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rumanator 7y ago
> One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. Source?
- knzhou 7y ago
  There are no sources. I've personally looked into tens of claims about people being "disappeared" in China over the past few years, and literally every time the only evidence has been "they haven't tweeted for 12 hours". The person reappears soon after, but by that point the lie's damage is done, and nobody ever hears the correction.
  - BryanBigs 7y ago
    Source?
- Izkata 7y ago
  A lot of their information was scrubbed, but user laowhy86 on Youtube found their identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU He believes this scientist was the first person infected, who it spread from.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

fspeech 7y ago

I don't know where the "within half a kilometer" meme came from. Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 13.5km from the market by road or 30 minutes by car. And the two are separated by the Yangtze river: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/12D2/production/_110781840_wuhan_map.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/12D2/production/... (in case one wonders the source of the map is BBC https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51388024 https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51388024) With Wuhan's population it would not surprise me if there are millions who live or work closer to the institute than the market.

Throwawayaerlei 7y ago
It comes from the fact there's a Wuhan Center for Disease Control that's across the river from the Institute for Virology and much closer to the wet market. Which is mentioned in the fine Daily Mail article, which gets a whole lot of basic facts correct, or nearly so (it differs in the distance it claims between the Center and the wet market, and the number of days that it took for the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center to be closed by the Chinese Communist Party for "rectification" after they broke the embargo on publishing genome sequences; would that any Western researchers show as much courage as those did). And that Wuhan CDC has BSL-3 labs, although the Daily Mail passes on the entirely plausible rumor that bat coronavirus research was being done at both locations in BSL-2 labs. Lots of scientists all over the world do research in labs that aren't really at the level that should be used for what they're doing, the higher the level, the more obnoxious and difficult it is to do anything. A security/convenience trade-off we should be all to familiar with.