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From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#China "In 2018, wet markets were noted to have remaine

by prirun 7y ago

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market#China "In 2018, wet markets were noted to have remained the most prevalent food outlet in urban regions of China despite the rise of supermarket chains since the 1990s.[66]" Later in the article, about Hong Kong, they say "Most neighbourhoods contain at least one wet market.[12]" So there are hundreds / thousands / tens of thousands of wet markets in China. How many level 4 bio labs are in China? 1, in Wuhan. It seems incredibly naive to me for anyone to believe that a virus just happened to naturally jump from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan, when that event could have happened in thousands of other wet markets. But it didn't; it happened in Wuhan. The unique thing about Wuhan is the level 4 bio lab.

joshuamorton 7y ago
There are more people in Wuhan City than in New York City. Would you immediately jump to conspiracy theories if an outbreak of a novel flu started in Galveston Texas? Or Atlanta? Or Boston? And that's just some of the BSL-4 facilities in the US. Coronaviruses can be studied in BSL-3 labs, which China has tons of, basically one in every major city (much like the US).
- gridlockd 7y ago
  There are two labs in Wuhan which performed experiments with bats and bat coronaviruses under unsafe conditions, where animal-to-human transmission could have occured - one being the Wuhan CDC and the other being the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Those are the kind of bats that most likely evolved COVID-19, which are native to southern China, not Wuhan. That's factual, not a conspiracy theory. The CCP has ordered the destruction of evidence at those places and imposed gag orders on the scientists involved. Again, just facts, not a conspiracy theory. The CCP has furthermore suppressed the spread of information on the initial outbreak and has been uncooperative regarding investigation on the origin of the virus. A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. Note that none of these facts support the conspiracy theory that the virus has been engineered or intentionally released.
  - birdyrooster 7y ago
    > A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. Source?
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market...
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    Correct, but note that they don't really support the idea that the virus was accidentally released from the lab either. > A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. But misleading. The article you cite notes the much likelier cause: the long incubation period means that those who did come into contact with the market infected others. > The CCP has ordered the destruction of evidence at those places and imposed gag orders on the scientists involved. Correct, but the Wuhan CDC is also where most of the early analysis of covid was being done after it was discovered. The CCP also silenced doctors in hospitals, they generally tried to cover up covid in general. Keeping the scientists working on it silenced isn't any different than how they treated hospital workers.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      > Correct, but note that they don't really support the idea that the virus was accidentally released from the lab either. Let's suppose we had to decide between two scenarios, which one of these two sounds more probable? A virus endemic to bats from southern China was first transmitted to a researcher working at one of two specialist centers in central China, while performing research on bats and/or bat coronaviruses, under a questionable safety regime. A virus endemic to bats from southern China was first transmitted to a human in the wildlife market in central China where no bats are sold, presumably through an intermediate host such as a pangolin. Which of these two scenarios is preferable to the ruling party of China? Which is feeding the narrative that "human encroachment on nature is dangerous" (bad thing is dangerous), as opposed to "scientific research can be dangerous" (good thing is dangerous)? > The article you cite notes the much likelier cause: the long incubation period means that those who did come into contact with the market infected others. How is that more likely? The finding is that there is no epidemiological link to the seafood market in 13 out 41 patients, including the earliest known patient. Your interpretation is the opposite of what the paragraph regarding the incubation period says: "Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts."
- pacala 7y ago
  Great question. If an outbreak of smallpox happened in Atlanta, 10 miles from the BSL-4 center, would you be so quick to call out any questions regarding said center as 'conspiracy theories'?
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    Smallpox and a flu-like virus aren't comparable. So I reject your premise. Like I said, if a novel flu-like virus appeared in Atlanta, would your first guess be that it leaked from the CDC facility? That's what you're faced with, not smallpox.
    - pacala 7y ago
      Do you have a source for how many research labs in China were actively working on bat coronaviruses? From what I can garner in the Western press, WIV is their #1 such research lab. If a new flu virus, quite more virulent that the usual flu, popped up in Atlanta 10 miles from the BSL4 facility and the closest known relative is endemic in polar bears, yeah, I'd be asking questions. Both about BSL4 and about the zoo. And maybe there are private citizens raising polar bears in Atlanta. I'd ask about them too. Especially if it were already known that polar bear viruses can be quite dangerous, see SARS episode 1. But then again, these discussions are by now futile. It is obvious that the conversation has been politicized. One side will try its best to dismiss and discredit the slightest mention that there was ongoing bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, including WTF moments like creating chimera viruses for the specific purpose of infecting humans. The other will overhype all the scary innuendo that can possibly be created around WIV, whether it relates even remotely to SARS-CoV-2 or not. I don't have the energy to elaborate the full decision tree in every post. Have fun!
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        Much like smallpox isn't equivalent to a flu-like virus, polar bears aren't equivalent to bats/civets/pangolins in terms of how close they are to Atlanta. I don't know why you feel the need to exaggerate every time you compare to Wuhan, but it isn't interesting.
baybal2 7y ago
Few points. That strain is said to be characteristic to large horseshoe bats from Yunnan Bats in China don't seem to live so far north, and away from the coast. More so, for larger species. The very few bats known to live near cities, are all small insectivorous species. SARS carrying bat species don't normally like living near humans. Bats are not considered food, even by nouveau riche weird meat eaters in China. The above mean that there should be no bats sold on wet markets. First responder reports confirm that. 1. So, out of where did the SARS strain very close to the wild virus came out from in the middle of a 10 million people megalopolis? 2. From where did the story about bats came out from to begin with? 3. It is now near certain that first reports of influx of respiratory patients happened as early as November, and it had nothing to do with the seafood market. If so, how media were first able to connect the dots to the market, and do it so quickly, and confidently? 4. The first report incriminating the market came out few weeks after first evidence of the government sending censorship directives, and instructions on outbreak handling to provincial authorities. 5. It means that a low key regional newspaper broke out a report at the same time when even a squeak about sars outbreak got people into trouble. 6. The amazing synchronicity with which top tier national medias republished the story of an obscure regional newspaper is clearly unnatural. 7. The way how zealously Chinese media came out to blast earliest reports doubting this outbreak originating from the seafood market even before that became news in the West stands out. Are all of them subscribed to the same obscure American academic journal? 8. Chinese government is no stranger to manufacturing bizarre hoaxes Normally, this is not what Chinese government would cover up. The concealment of original SARS outbreak only happened after the fact of its existence becoming public. What was covered up in 2003 was not its existence, but the lacklustre emergency response after it became clear that they completely screwed up. Similarly, other natural disaster coverups only happened after it becoming clear that somebody screwed up. I.E.: the Wenzhou train collision. The cover up was made not for screwup of signalling system designers, but to make the emergency response look "adequate." The guy wanted to render it a "small, manageable derailment accident," and not to show hundreds people dying on his hands while he did nothing.
- pacala 7y ago
  I struggle with similar questions. Probably we'll never know. As of your first point, there may be another natural virus, as of yet unidentified, possibly carried by a different species, that brought the disease to Wuhan. From the virologist chatter I hear, the genetic difference between RaTG13 is too large to have RaTG13 a recent direct precursor of SARS-CoV-2, either through genetic manipulation, or via culturing. Alternatively, everything that came out of China since Jan 2020 is pure BS. As of yet, there is no independent verification of the origin of RaTG13, which conveniently was found 'lying around in a freezer' in Jan 2020, stored there all the way back in 2013. Nor there is independent verification of the genomic sequences of all the other viruses that are 'lying around in a freezer'. Nor are the Chinese authorities very open to international collaboration on this matter. The sharp politicization of this issue is worrisome in itself.
maest 7y ago
> The unique thing about Wuhan is the level 4 bio lab. This is dangerous (and wrong) thinking. Wrong in the sense that, even if the conclusion were true, the reasoning is faulty. There are many characteristics which, in hindsight, would look suspicious. One of this characteristics is the presence of a bio research lab. Other interesting factors would have been the presence of particular chemicals in the air/water, presence of certain types of bats, the presence of certain climate quirks, the presence of nuclear powerplants etc. Let's say Wuhan was the only region which had a particular species of bats. Would you immediately conclude that the virus _must_ have come from that bat species? You have a conclusion and are looking for reasoning to support it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- SomeoneFromCA 7y ago
  Being "ultra skeptical" for some non-scientific reasons is also a very dangerous way of thinking. Keeping in mind several factors, such as China being a developing country (and likely having lower standards of biosecurity than say US or Germany), poor conditions in that particular lab (cited by US observers), proximity of the lab etc. at least suggests that there is some non-negligible probability it came from that lab.
  - maest 7y ago
    FWIW, my stance is that there is way too little information to draw any conclusion with sufficient conviction. This is a highly politicised issue so the bar for proving something is, imo, higher. The post I was replying too had high conviction in the 'lab-grown' theory. I'm not sure what you mean by 'non-scientific' reasons.
dchyrdvh 7y ago
Interesting how it's turned around. A few weeks ago one of my HN accounts was banned for a neutral note that the lab hypothesis shouldn't be disregarded. Now it's openly talked about on WaPo.
mikhailfranco 7y ago
Maybe not even the WIV Level 4 lab, which is 20 miles from the wet market, but the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control & Prevention lab is only 300 yards away, and would be a plausible shopping location for an accidentally infected research assistant, or even proximity to improperly destroyed refuse from the lab: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronav...
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
> It seems incredibly naive to me for anyone to believe that a virus just happened to naturally jump from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan, when that event could have happened in thousands of other wet markets. I think it's naive to believe that a spillover event is more probable in a high-security research lab than out in the real world. Do not underestimate the sheer amount of contact between humans and infected animals. Coronaviruses are not rare - for the animals that host them, they are just another common cold. Farmers, butchers, villagers who live near bat populations, people who frequent wet markets, and all sorts of other people are constantly coming into contact with animals that are sick with coronaviruses. There are estimates that a few million people in Southeast Asia are infected with bat coronaviruses each year. In other words, spillover events are occurring thousands of times each day. We're just lucky that the vast majority of them do not lead to global pandemics, because they are not well adapted to humans and do not transmit efficiently from person to person, or because the epidemic never reaches a major population center. There are probably even pandemics that go completely unnoticed, because the symptoms caused by the viruses are no worse than the common cold. So compare what's happening every day to thousands of people in Southeast Asia to a few people working under extreme safety precautions in a high-security lab.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  > So compare what's happening every day to thousands of people in Southeast Asia to a few people working under extreme safety precautions in a high-security lab. If you go off what other virologists have said, that this virus looks like a random wild virus. Then what are the chances the virus escaped from a bsl-4 lab while a researcher was cataloging it. Bs any of the millions as you say random farmers, butchers, etc randomly getting infected. Yeah odds favor the latter. Also the Wuhan seafood market looks exactly like the kind of enclosed place with lots of people we now know to avoid during the pandemic. So the only notable thing there is it's was a big enough cluster to be noticed. Looking from common origins is something every public health official does day in day out.

by prirun 7y ago

joshuamorton 7y ago

There are more people in Wuhan City than in New York City. Would you immediately jump to conspiracy theories if an outbreak of a novel flu started in Galveston Texas? Or Atlanta? Or Boston? And that's just some of the BSL-4 facilities in the US. Coronaviruses can be studied in BSL-3 labs, which China has tons of, basically one in every major city (much like the US).

gridlockd 7y ago
There are two labs in Wuhan which performed experiments with bats and bat coronaviruses under unsafe conditions, where animal-to-human transmission could have occured - one being the Wuhan CDC and the other being the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Those are the kind of bats that most likely evolved COVID-19, which are native to southern China, not Wuhan. That's factual, not a conspiracy theory. The CCP has ordered the destruction of evidence at those places and imposed gag orders on the scientists involved. Again, just facts, not a conspiracy theory. The CCP has furthermore suppressed the spread of information on the initial outbreak and has been uncooperative regarding investigation on the origin of the virus. A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. Note that none of these facts support the conspiracy theory that the virus has been engineered or intentionally released.
- birdyrooster 7y ago
  > A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. Source?
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market...
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  Correct, but note that they don't really support the idea that the virus was accidentally released from the lab either. > A large amount of the initial cases had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. Factual. But misleading. The article you cite notes the much likelier cause: the long incubation period means that those who did come into contact with the market infected others. > The CCP has ordered the destruction of evidence at those places and imposed gag orders on the scientists involved. Correct, but the Wuhan CDC is also where most of the early analysis of covid was being done after it was discovered. The CCP also silenced doctors in hospitals, they generally tried to cover up covid in general. Keeping the scientists working on it silenced isn't any different than how they treated hospital workers.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > Correct, but note that they don't really support the idea that the virus was accidentally released from the lab either. Let's suppose we had to decide between two scenarios, which one of these two sounds more probable? A virus endemic to bats from southern China was first transmitted to a researcher working at one of two specialist centers in central China, while performing research on bats and/or bat coronaviruses, under a questionable safety regime. A virus endemic to bats from southern China was first transmitted to a human in the wildlife market in central China where no bats are sold, presumably through an intermediate host such as a pangolin. Which of these two scenarios is preferable to the ruling party of China? Which is feeding the narrative that "human encroachment on nature is dangerous" (bad thing is dangerous), as opposed to "scientific research can be dangerous" (good thing is dangerous)? > The article you cite notes the much likelier cause: the long incubation period means that those who did come into contact with the market infected others. How is that more likely? The finding is that there is no epidemiological link to the seafood market in 13 out 41 patients, including the earliest known patient. Your interpretation is the opposite of what the paragraph regarding the incubation period says: "Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts."
pacala 7y ago
Great question. If an outbreak of smallpox happened in Atlanta, 10 miles from the BSL-4 center, would you be so quick to call out any questions regarding said center as 'conspiracy theories'?
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  Smallpox and a flu-like virus aren't comparable. So I reject your premise. Like I said, if a novel flu-like virus appeared in Atlanta, would your first guess be that it leaked from the CDC facility? That's what you're faced with, not smallpox.
  - pacala 7y ago
    Do you have a source for how many research labs in China were actively working on bat coronaviruses? From what I can garner in the Western press, WIV is their #1 such research lab. If a new flu virus, quite more virulent that the usual flu, popped up in Atlanta 10 miles from the BSL4 facility and the closest known relative is endemic in polar bears, yeah, I'd be asking questions. Both about BSL4 and about the zoo. And maybe there are private citizens raising polar bears in Atlanta. I'd ask about them too. Especially if it were already known that polar bear viruses can be quite dangerous, see SARS episode 1. But then again, these discussions are by now futile. It is obvious that the conversation has been politicized. One side will try its best to dismiss and discredit the slightest mention that there was ongoing bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, including WTF moments like creating chimera viruses for the specific purpose of infecting humans. The other will overhype all the scary innuendo that can possibly be created around WIV, whether it relates even remotely to SARS-CoV-2 or not. I don't have the energy to elaborate the full decision tree in every post. Have fun!
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      Much like smallpox isn't equivalent to a flu-like virus, polar bears aren't equivalent to bats/civets/pangolins in terms of how close they are to Atlanta. I don't know why you feel the need to exaggerate every time you compare to Wuhan, but it isn't interesting.

baybal2 7y ago

Few points. That strain is said to be characteristic to large horseshoe bats from Yunnan Bats in China don't seem to live so far north, and away from the coast. More so, for larger species. The very few bats known to live near cities, are all small insectivorous species. SARS carrying bat species don't normally like living near humans. Bats are not considered food, even by nouveau riche weird meat eaters in China. The above mean that there should be no bats sold on wet markets. First responder reports confirm that. 1. So, out of where did the SARS strain very close to the wild virus came out from in the middle of a 10 million people megalopolis? 2. From where did the story about bats came out from to begin with? 3. It is now near certain that first reports of influx of respiratory patients happened as early as November, and it had nothing to do with the seafood market. If so, how media were first able to connect the dots to the market, and do it so quickly, and confidently? 4. The first report incriminating the market came out few weeks after first evidence of the government sending censorship directives, and instructions on outbreak handling to provincial authorities. 5. It means that a low key regional newspaper broke out a report at the same time when even a squeak about sars outbreak got people into trouble. 6. The amazing synchronicity with which top tier national medias republished the story of an obscure regional newspaper is clearly unnatural. 7. The way how zealously Chinese media came out to blast earliest reports doubting this outbreak originating from the seafood market even before that became news in the West stands out. Are all of them subscribed to the same obscure American academic journal? 8. Chinese government is no stranger to manufacturing bizarre hoaxes Normally, this is not what Chinese government would cover up. The concealment of original SARS outbreak only happened after the fact of its existence becoming public. What was covered up in 2003 was not its existence, but the lacklustre emergency response after it became clear that they completely screwed up. Similarly, other natural disaster coverups only happened after it becoming clear that somebody screwed up. I.E.: the Wenzhou train collision. The cover up was made not for screwup of signalling system designers, but to make the emergency response look "adequate." The guy wanted to render it a "small, manageable derailment accident," and not to show hundreds people dying on his hands while he did nothing.

pacala 7y ago
I struggle with similar questions. Probably we'll never know. As of your first point, there may be another natural virus, as of yet unidentified, possibly carried by a different species, that brought the disease to Wuhan. From the virologist chatter I hear, the genetic difference between RaTG13 is too large to have RaTG13 a recent direct precursor of SARS-CoV-2, either through genetic manipulation, or via culturing. Alternatively, everything that came out of China since Jan 2020 is pure BS. As of yet, there is no independent verification of the origin of RaTG13, which conveniently was found 'lying around in a freezer' in Jan 2020, stored there all the way back in 2013. Nor there is independent verification of the genomic sequences of all the other viruses that are 'lying around in a freezer'. Nor are the Chinese authorities very open to international collaboration on this matter. The sharp politicization of this issue is worrisome in itself.

maest 7y ago

> The unique thing about Wuhan is the level 4 bio lab. This is dangerous (and wrong) thinking. Wrong in the sense that, even if the conclusion were true, the reasoning is faulty. There are many characteristics which, in hindsight, would look suspicious. One of this characteristics is the presence of a bio research lab. Other interesting factors would have been the presence of particular chemicals in the air/water, presence of certain types of bats, the presence of certain climate quirks, the presence of nuclear powerplants etc. Let's say Wuhan was the only region which had a particular species of bats. Would you immediately conclude that the virus _must_ have come from that bat species? You have a conclusion and are looking for reasoning to support it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SomeoneFromCA 7y ago
Being "ultra skeptical" for some non-scientific reasons is also a very dangerous way of thinking. Keeping in mind several factors, such as China being a developing country (and likely having lower standards of biosecurity than say US or Germany), poor conditions in that particular lab (cited by US observers), proximity of the lab etc. at least suggests that there is some non-negligible probability it came from that lab.
- maest 7y ago
  FWIW, my stance is that there is way too little information to draw any conclusion with sufficient conviction. This is a highly politicised issue so the bar for proving something is, imo, higher. The post I was replying too had high conviction in the 'lab-grown' theory. I'm not sure what you mean by 'non-scientific' reasons.

dchyrdvh 7y ago

Interesting how it's turned around. A few weeks ago one of my HN accounts was banned for a neutral note that the lab hypothesis shouldn't be disregarded. Now it's openly talked about on WaPo.

mikhailfranco 7y ago

Maybe not even the WIV Level 4 lab, which is 20 miles from the wet market, but the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control & Prevention lab is only 300 yards away, and would be a plausible shopping location for an accidentally infected research assistant, or even proximity to improperly destroyed refuse from the lab: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronav...

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

> It seems incredibly naive to me for anyone to believe that a virus just happened to naturally jump from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan, when that event could have happened in thousands of other wet markets. I think it's naive to believe that a spillover event is more probable in a high-security research lab than out in the real world. Do not underestimate the sheer amount of contact between humans and infected animals. Coronaviruses are not rare - for the animals that host them, they are just another common cold. Farmers, butchers, villagers who live near bat populations, people who frequent wet markets, and all sorts of other people are constantly coming into contact with animals that are sick with coronaviruses. There are estimates that a few million people in Southeast Asia are infected with bat coronaviruses each year. In other words, spillover events are occurring thousands of times each day. We're just lucky that the vast majority of them do not lead to global pandemics, because they are not well adapted to humans and do not transmit efficiently from person to person, or because the epidemic never reaches a major population center. There are probably even pandemics that go completely unnoticed, because the symptoms caused by the viruses are no worse than the common cold. So compare what's happening every day to thousands of people in Southeast Asia to a few people working under extreme safety precautions in a high-security lab.

Gibbon1 7y ago
> So compare what's happening every day to thousands of people in Southeast Asia to a few people working under extreme safety precautions in a high-security lab. If you go off what other virologists have said, that this virus looks like a random wild virus. Then what are the chances the virus escaped from a bsl-4 lab while a researcher was cataloging it. Bs any of the millions as you say random farmers, butchers, etc randomly getting infected. Yeah odds favor the latter. Also the Wuhan seafood market looks exactly like the kind of enclosed place with lots of people we now know to avoid during the pandemic. So the only notable thing there is it's was a big enough cluster to be noticed. Looking from common origins is something every public health official does day in day out.