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> The viral outbreak could have been stopped in December in Wuhan had we had the foresight and financial support to develop antiviral drugs or vaccines. It’s q

> The viral outbreak could have been stopped in December in Wuhan had we had the foresight and financial support to develop antiviral drugs or vaccines. It’s quite possible the pandemic started with a virology lab in Wuhan doing exactly that.

c3534l 7y ago
Unfortunately to say, the President of the United States is not a reliable source. US intelligence agencies said Trump is wrong, and without any further evidence, it should be placed in the conspiracy theory category.
- legolas2412 7y ago
  What's the conspiracy here? We know that WIV studies coronavirus. It could have been inadvertently leaked. He also said it's "possible". Notice the lack of certainty. From what i know, the wet market theory also lacks evidence. All we know is that this evolved naturally and was not designed in a lab. It could still evolve in a lab, or evolve elsewhere and studied in the lab.
  - c3534l 7y ago
    Maybe I responded too strongly, based on other things I've read on other sites. "Currently unfounded" might have been a better way to phrase it.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  I don't think Wuhan labs started the virus, but I'd point out that the job of spy agencies is to lie and manipulate the public. Trump's a liar but so are the spooks. Trump is transparently attempting to pin the blame on a foreign power so that way he isn't blamed for the epidemic in the US. Essentially, who is blamed will determine the 2020 election. One read no further than that to understand his motivations.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Person A has motivation A and says thing A, person B has motivation B and says thing B, and the truth sits off in the corner like a kid at the prom with no date.
  - geomark 7y ago
    "I'd point out that the job of spy agencies is to lie and manipulate the public." The spy agencies have a number of jobs. The obvious one is to spy (not just on foreign powers, but on everybody, as we now know without a doubt). Lying to and manipulating the public is another big job. And they have other more heinous jobs (torture, assassinations, etc). To do their jobs requires constant obfuscation. So why on earth does anyone ever give any credence to anything a spook says?
- bpodgursky 7y ago
  Here's the best collection of evidence that accidental release from WIV should be viewed as a plausible vector: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ Nothing in here can reasonably be classified as a conspiracy theory. The US intelligence agencies haven't said anything to my knowledge about accidental release. They said it didn't appear to be an engineered virus (true) and that there was no evidence that it did come from the lab (true). But what that misses, is that there's a ton of circumstantial evidence that exactly this class of disease was being studied (bat coronaviruses, research on animal to human transmission, including forced mutation to encourage this) a few hundred yards from the wet market in question, and this lab had explicitly been called out for sloppy handling of dangerous biological materials. (and to be clear, this isn't some dark secret research -- it's public albeit controversial research on preventing pandemics, funded by the NIH.)
  - empath75 7y ago
    To be clear I do not believe it was engineered or designed or otherwise was part of biological weapons research. I think that it’s possible that it was a tragic accident, though. In terms of culpability, I don’t see how it’s any worse for China than the wet market theory. Either way, it’s a lapse in public health safety protocols.
    - chvid 7y ago
      You can tell from the way the Chinese authorities reacted in the beginning that they did not know what they were dealing with. Had it been a lab accident their reaction would have been quite different. Also as I understand it. Bats acts as a repository for corona virus but the virus has to mutate in order to infect a human, so it infects another animal, where the mutated strain grow, before it reaches a human.
      - tigershark 7y ago
        Exactly, and it seems that the intermediate host is the palm civet as far as I remember.
      - 7y ago
- empath75 7y ago
  They have not in fact said that. And fwiw, I think Trump is a monster and an idiot. I do think it’s plausible that they were researching corona viruses for perfectly good reasons and accidentally released it, though. Even if not, there are risks associated with continuing to research new viruses. I live five minutes away from where the lab was that nearly released Ebola into the us 30 years ago.
ImaCake 7y ago
Correlation is not causation. There is plenty of reason to believe that novel viruses would emerge in a place like Wuhan. I would suspect that the reverse is true: The coronavirus lab is in Wuhan because it a likely hot spot for emerging infectious diseases. Basically, the lab exists for exactly the reasons Vincent Racinnello is arguing for in his blog post.
- reuben_scratton 7y ago
  There's bat colonies and wet markets all over China. The odds that SARS-CoV-2 naturally began in one of the very few places with labs that study it seems exceedingly remote.
emmelaich 7y ago
Of course it is possible. Labs in the USA and elsewhere have had problems. Not hard to believe it happened in China too. Interesting fact - so called "gain-of-function" studies were banned in the US in 2014 and then the ban lifted in 2017. October 2014 - https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research-36564 https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gai... February 2018 - Ban ends. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
tigershark 7y ago
So also on HN you can find plenty of conspiracy theories it seems. On what is based your claim? This is a pretty good evidence against all the recent conspiracy theories with analysis of the virus genoma studied in the labs. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1733440 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1...

c3534l 7y ago

Unfortunately to say, the President of the United States is not a reliable source. US intelligence agencies said Trump is wrong, and without any further evidence, it should be placed in the conspiracy theory category.

legolas2412 7y ago
What's the conspiracy here? We know that WIV studies coronavirus. It could have been inadvertently leaked. He also said it's "possible". Notice the lack of certainty. From what i know, the wet market theory also lacks evidence. All we know is that this evolved naturally and was not designed in a lab. It could still evolve in a lab, or evolve elsewhere and studied in the lab.
- c3534l 7y ago
  Maybe I responded too strongly, based on other things I've read on other sites. "Currently unfounded" might have been a better way to phrase it.
tehjoker 7y ago
I don't think Wuhan labs started the virus, but I'd point out that the job of spy agencies is to lie and manipulate the public. Trump's a liar but so are the spooks. Trump is transparently attempting to pin the blame on a foreign power so that way he isn't blamed for the epidemic in the US. Essentially, who is blamed will determine the 2020 election. One read no further than that to understand his motivations.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Person A has motivation A and says thing A, person B has motivation B and says thing B, and the truth sits off in the corner like a kid at the prom with no date.
- geomark 7y ago
  "I'd point out that the job of spy agencies is to lie and manipulate the public." The spy agencies have a number of jobs. The obvious one is to spy (not just on foreign powers, but on everybody, as we now know without a doubt). Lying to and manipulating the public is another big job. And they have other more heinous jobs (torture, assassinations, etc). To do their jobs requires constant obfuscation. So why on earth does anyone ever give any credence to anything a spook says?
bpodgursky 7y ago
Here's the best collection of evidence that accidental release from WIV should be viewed as a plausible vector: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ Nothing in here can reasonably be classified as a conspiracy theory. The US intelligence agencies haven't said anything to my knowledge about accidental release. They said it didn't appear to be an engineered virus (true) and that there was no evidence that it did come from the lab (true). But what that misses, is that there's a ton of circumstantial evidence that exactly this class of disease was being studied (bat coronaviruses, research on animal to human transmission, including forced mutation to encourage this) a few hundred yards from the wet market in question, and this lab had explicitly been called out for sloppy handling of dangerous biological materials. (and to be clear, this isn't some dark secret research -- it's public albeit controversial research on preventing pandemics, funded by the NIH.)
- empath75 7y ago
  To be clear I do not believe it was engineered or designed or otherwise was part of biological weapons research. I think that it’s possible that it was a tragic accident, though. In terms of culpability, I don’t see how it’s any worse for China than the wet market theory. Either way, it’s a lapse in public health safety protocols.
  - chvid 7y ago
    You can tell from the way the Chinese authorities reacted in the beginning that they did not know what they were dealing with. Had it been a lab accident their reaction would have been quite different. Also as I understand it. Bats acts as a repository for corona virus but the virus has to mutate in order to infect a human, so it infects another animal, where the mutated strain grow, before it reaches a human.
    - tigershark 7y ago
      Exactly, and it seems that the intermediate host is the palm civet as far as I remember.
    - 7y ago
empath75 7y ago
They have not in fact said that. And fwiw, I think Trump is a monster and an idiot. I do think it’s plausible that they were researching corona viruses for perfectly good reasons and accidentally released it, though. Even if not, there are risks associated with continuing to research new viruses. I live five minutes away from where the lab was that nearly released Ebola into the us 30 years ago.

ImaCake 7y ago

Correlation is not causation. There is plenty of reason to believe that novel viruses would emerge in a place like Wuhan. I would suspect that the reverse is true: The coronavirus lab is in Wuhan because it a likely hot spot for emerging infectious diseases. Basically, the lab exists for exactly the reasons Vincent Racinnello is arguing for in his blog post.

reuben_scratton 7y ago
There's bat colonies and wet markets all over China. The odds that SARS-CoV-2 naturally began in one of the very few places with labs that study it seems exceedingly remote.

emmelaich 7y ago

Of course it is possible. Labs in the USA and elsewhere have had problems. Not hard to believe it happened in China too. Interesting fact - so called "gain-of-function" studies were banned in the US in 2014 and then the ban lifted in 2017. October 2014 - https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research-36564 https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gai... February 2018 - Ban ends. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

tigershark 7y ago

So also on HN you can find plenty of conspiracy theories it seems. On what is based your claim? This is a pretty good evidence against all the recent conspiracy theories with analysis of the virus genoma studied in the labs. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1733440 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1...