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...Its strange how 'thinking'is often synonymous with believing wildly implausible conspiracy theories on the basis of no evidence. Researchers have found hundr

...Its strange how 'thinking'is often synonymous with believing wildly implausible conspiracy theories on the basis of no evidence. Researchers have found hundreds of SARS like corona-viruses in horseshoe bats in southern china. This pandemic was predicted by many subject matter experts as a likely scenario and their research was oriented to try and prevent their worst case scenario from occurring. Because of the sheer number of potentially dangerous bat viruses, they are still concerned that we haven't even encountered the worst case virus, maybe there is something equally as hard to detect but more deadly out there. There is no need for an accidental release to occur. Zoonaotic viruses cross the species barrier and cause pandemics, that's literally the only way they happen, and it's always because of close contact between animals and humans, it's not some big mystery, eating bats in southern china was, and is incredibly dangerous.

eindiran 6y ago
That's correct: researchers have found a lot of similar coronaviruses in southern China. > “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” [0] Given that a leading virologist who specifically studies bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology considers this a possibility, I think it's safe to say that it's not some wild conspiracy theory. I obviously don't know what happened, and it seems very plausible that the virus came from standard zoonotic transfer, but it's a bit unfair to characterize this as a conspiracy theory. [EDIT] The article was actually changed since I read it: "She is distressed because stories from the Internet and major media have repeated a tenuous suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally leaked from her lab—despite the fact that its genetic sequence does not match any her lab had previously studied." So it sounds like she came to the conclusion that it wasn't an accidental release in April. [0] 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...
- scarmig 6y ago
  The tricky thing is that it's impossible to distinguish between "accidental release" and "standard zoonotic transfer," unless you're able to track the transmission chain to patient zero. China could possibly do that (though it's not guaranteed), but if they did and it was clearly something that was accidentally released, obviously that's not something they'd ever announce, so it'd look exactly the same as the current "we don't know anything" state. And all the ambiguity means any stance on accidental release vs standard zoonotic transfer is going to be driven more by politics ("China is evil!" "No it's not!") than by any empirical evidence.
  - eindiran 6y ago
    I agree that it's effectively impossible to distinguish between the two and that any stance on the issue is going to be driven by politics; my comment was just an objection to the claim that it is a "wildly implausible conspiracy theory" that the virus was accidentally released.
- nradov 6y ago
  There is no proof that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab, however it remains a plausible hypothesis. Yuri Deigin wrote a good argument for that possibility. https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throu... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
- FuckButtons 6y ago
  Not only does it not match what they have studied, but what is more likely: that a bio containment facility that is purpose built to seal off pathogens from escaping leaks and that one patient successfully infects many others with a virus that has a good chance of not even infecting them severely. Or, that multiple of the hundreds of thousands of bats that are in the region that have the virus spread it to humans because of their repeated and ongoing interaction. The latter has exponentially more chance of occurring because of the almost infinitely larger resivoir of virus and also has vastly more chance of occurring because of the number of interactions. The former is so unlikely as to be essentially an exercise in magical thinking and the only reason people give it any credence as far as I’m concerned is because it’s easier to blame something simple and politically convenient than a complex system of human behavior.
pnako 6y ago
It's not "widely implausible" that the virus in Wuhan could come from the P4 lab in Wuhan that studied those viruses. In fact, I would say it's "likely". If you see a nuclear leak somewhere, it's not a "widely implausible conspiracy theory" to think it might come from the nuclear power plant in that same area.
- xxpor 6y ago
  The difference is there arent random natural sources of liquid radioactive materials all over the place that could cause a large scale leak and have humans randomly tapping on them and hoping they don't cause it to blow.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Maybe not necessarily natural, but I think you underestimate how much radioactive material is out among the general public (i.e. outside of power plants and missile silos). Radiology as a medical field literally revolves around using radioactive materials for medical imaging, and there have indeed been incidents where regular people got their hands on some canister of the stuff (that didn't get properly disposed of), oohed and aahed as it glowed in the dark and they painted themselves with it, and a week later dozens of people are dead and hundreds injured from radiation sickness.
  - pnako 6y ago
    Sure, my analogy is not perfect. But similar accidents have happened in the past (accidental leak of anthrax from a Russian lab, and voluntary leak of anthrax from a US lab). I don't know if it actually comes from that lab. I'm just saying it's not a wild conspiracy theory to think that it might well come from there.
ALittleLight 6y ago
I don't know why you would call a lab escape a "wildly implausible conspiracy theory." We know viruses like this are studied in labs and that lab escapes are possible. Maybe it didn't escape from a lab, but it's not a wild conspiracy like saying 5G causes Covid. As I understand it, the best reasons to suspect lab escape are: 1. The horseshoe bats thought to carry the virus live about a thousand miles away from Wuhan. Why wouldn't the virus start over there instead of in Wuhan. 2. The Wuhan Virology institute was a "BSL-4" lab, China's first and only. The BSL-4 lab is the only kind rated to handle very severe or infectious pathogens. 2.5 There were preexisting documented concerns about the safety protocols at the lab, saying they were substandard. 3. The Wuhan lab worked on "Chimeric coronavirus" exactly like Covid. There's a lot more evidence and analysis from people more capable than me (see sources 3 & 4), but to me, the basic case "We are absolutely certain it came from bats a thousand miles away and definitely not the bioweapons lab next door researching this exact type of virus" makes me pretty suspicious. Add on to that the "mainstream" consensus has been wrong at every step, no lockdown, it's the flu, masks won't help, slow and few tests, etc - and I don't think anyone is really justified in dismissing the lab escape theory out of hand. Perhaps the experts are wrong. Again. I'm actually not familiar with the evidence claiming that it's certainly zoonotic. My understanding is that is less likely due to the fact that it looks like a combination of a horseshoe bat virus and a pangolin virus - which theoretically could happen if a bat caught a pangolin virus, those two viruses infected the same cell, while reproducing the viruses were accidentally merged to cause the resultant virus to still be viable and have gained function, and then that unlucky bat traveled a thousand miles away to Wuhan to enjoy a bat stew... Either all that, or, again, the neighborhood bioweapons lab with sloppy safety controls that was genetically modifying coronaviruses accidentally let one out. 1. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicated-origins.html https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicate... 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539 3. https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ 4. https://link.medium.com/MI3PjBt0g7 https://link.medium.com/MI3PjBt0g7
- FuckButtons 6y ago
  Look, believe what you want to, I honestly don’t care, but if you think this is what a bio weapon looks like you need your head examined. Why would anyone make a weapon that kills old people by the tens of thousands and leaves most of the rest of us fine after a few weeks? Also, there are virologists aplenty out their trying to inform the world at the moment, maybe listen to them, this is literally all they do, they might know more than you do about how viruses evolve.

eindiran 6y ago

That's correct: researchers have found a lot of similar coronaviruses in southern China. > “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” [0] Given that a leading virologist who specifically studies bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology considers this a possibility, I think it's safe to say that it's not some wild conspiracy theory. I obviously don't know what happened, and it seems very plausible that the virus came from standard zoonotic transfer, but it's a bit unfair to characterize this as a conspiracy theory. [EDIT] The article was actually changed since I read it: "She is distressed because stories from the Internet and major media have repeated a tenuous suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally leaked from her lab—despite the fact that its genetic sequence does not match any her lab had previously studied." So it sounds like she came to the conclusion that it wasn't an accidental release in April. [0] 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...

scarmig 6y ago
The tricky thing is that it's impossible to distinguish between "accidental release" and "standard zoonotic transfer," unless you're able to track the transmission chain to patient zero. China could possibly do that (though it's not guaranteed), but if they did and it was clearly something that was accidentally released, obviously that's not something they'd ever announce, so it'd look exactly the same as the current "we don't know anything" state. And all the ambiguity means any stance on accidental release vs standard zoonotic transfer is going to be driven more by politics ("China is evil!" "No it's not!") than by any empirical evidence.
- eindiran 6y ago
  I agree that it's effectively impossible to distinguish between the two and that any stance on the issue is going to be driven by politics; my comment was just an objection to the claim that it is a "wildly implausible conspiracy theory" that the virus was accidentally released.
nradov 6y ago
There is no proof that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab, however it remains a plausible hypothesis. Yuri Deigin wrote a good argument for that possibility. https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throu... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
FuckButtons 6y ago
Not only does it not match what they have studied, but what is more likely: that a bio containment facility that is purpose built to seal off pathogens from escaping leaks and that one patient successfully infects many others with a virus that has a good chance of not even infecting them severely. Or, that multiple of the hundreds of thousands of bats that are in the region that have the virus spread it to humans because of their repeated and ongoing interaction. The latter has exponentially more chance of occurring because of the almost infinitely larger resivoir of virus and also has vastly more chance of occurring because of the number of interactions. The former is so unlikely as to be essentially an exercise in magical thinking and the only reason people give it any credence as far as I’m concerned is because it’s easier to blame something simple and politically convenient than a complex system of human behavior.

pnako 6y ago

It's not "widely implausible" that the virus in Wuhan could come from the P4 lab in Wuhan that studied those viruses. In fact, I would say it's "likely". If you see a nuclear leak somewhere, it's not a "widely implausible conspiracy theory" to think it might come from the nuclear power plant in that same area.

xxpor 6y ago
The difference is there arent random natural sources of liquid radioactive materials all over the place that could cause a large scale leak and have humans randomly tapping on them and hoping they don't cause it to blow.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Maybe not necessarily natural, but I think you underestimate how much radioactive material is out among the general public (i.e. outside of power plants and missile silos). Radiology as a medical field literally revolves around using radioactive materials for medical imaging, and there have indeed been incidents where regular people got their hands on some canister of the stuff (that didn't get properly disposed of), oohed and aahed as it glowed in the dark and they painted themselves with it, and a week later dozens of people are dead and hundreds injured from radiation sickness.
- pnako 6y ago
  Sure, my analogy is not perfect. But similar accidents have happened in the past (accidental leak of anthrax from a Russian lab, and voluntary leak of anthrax from a US lab). I don't know if it actually comes from that lab. I'm just saying it's not a wild conspiracy theory to think that it might well come from there.

ALittleLight 6y ago

I don't know why you would call a lab escape a "wildly implausible conspiracy theory." We know viruses like this are studied in labs and that lab escapes are possible. Maybe it didn't escape from a lab, but it's not a wild conspiracy like saying 5G causes Covid. As I understand it, the best reasons to suspect lab escape are: 1. The horseshoe bats thought to carry the virus live about a thousand miles away from Wuhan. Why wouldn't the virus start over there instead of in Wuhan. 2. The Wuhan Virology institute was a "BSL-4" lab, China's first and only. The BSL-4 lab is the only kind rated to handle very severe or infectious pathogens. 2.5 There were preexisting documented concerns about the safety protocols at the lab, saying they were substandard. 3. The Wuhan lab worked on "Chimeric coronavirus" exactly like Covid. There's a lot more evidence and analysis from people more capable than me (see sources 3 & 4), but to me, the basic case "We are absolutely certain it came from bats a thousand miles away and definitely not the bioweapons lab next door researching this exact type of virus" makes me pretty suspicious. Add on to that the "mainstream" consensus has been wrong at every step, no lockdown, it's the flu, masks won't help, slow and few tests, etc - and I don't think anyone is really justified in dismissing the lab escape theory out of hand. Perhaps the experts are wrong. Again. I'm actually not familiar with the evidence claiming that it's certainly zoonotic. My understanding is that is less likely due to the fact that it looks like a combination of a horseshoe bat virus and a pangolin virus - which theoretically could happen if a bat caught a pangolin virus, those two viruses infected the same cell, while reproducing the viruses were accidentally merged to cause the resultant virus to still be viable and have gained function, and then that unlucky bat traveled a thousand miles away to Wuhan to enjoy a bat stew... Either all that, or, again, the neighborhood bioweapons lab with sloppy safety controls that was genetically modifying coronaviruses accidentally let one out. 1. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicated-origins.html https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicate... 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539 3. https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ 4. https://link.medium.com/MI3PjBt0g7 https://link.medium.com/MI3PjBt0g7

FuckButtons 6y ago
Look, believe what you want to, I honestly don’t care, but if you think this is what a bio weapon looks like you need your head examined. Why would anyone make a weapon that kills old people by the tens of thousands and leaves most of the rest of us fine after a few weeks? Also, there are virologists aplenty out their trying to inform the world at the moment, maybe listen to them, this is literally all they do, they might know more than you do about how viruses evolve.