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The US frequently has it's own lab incidents including even with anthrax. China must be having lab incidents as well. There isn't a smoking gun to indicate eith

The US frequently has it's own lab incidents including even with anthrax. China must be having lab incidents as well. There isn't a smoking gun to indicate either that this is a lab outbreak or natural. However, in the absence of evidence we need to ask ourselves which is more likely: 1) A disease traveled hundreds of miles to a large city without leaving a trace of evidence 2) A lab had yet another outbreak Almost all of the outbreak attention has been focused on the Wuhan lab that received international grants [1]. However, that lab is miles away from the initial outbreak and there's another lab that's a block away from the Wuhan seafood market that also does bat research (but not gain of function). This lab is also adjacent to the hospital that dealt with initial outbreak. This was pointed out by Chinese researchers in a preprint that was quickly taken down [2]. 1: https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741 https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan... 2: The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus 10.13140/RG.2.2.21799.29601 https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.resea...

patmcc 6y ago
>>>1) A disease traveled hundreds of miles to a large city without leaving a trace of evidence This doesn't strike me as intrinsically unlikely. Bats can apparently fly ~50 miles for food, a person on a bus can easily travel ~400 miles in a day, etc. I don't disagree with the premise that a lab outbreak is possible, but so is "guy got infected by bats or something, didn't realize, hopped on a bus to visit family/find work".
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  And that bus happened to be traveling to a city which hosts a top-tier biolab with the world's foremost experts on bat-borne coronaviruses. Not a smoking gun, of course, but anyways I think your logical fallacy here is the "reasonableness" heuristic, in which you base the likelihood of some incredibly unlikely event on whether you can "imagine" some scenario where it happened. The fact that you can come up with a story to explain... well, I don't even know exactly what you're explaining, because it's really just a fragment of a chain of causation which has been mostly left unsaid. But anyways, I'm willing to wager that you know very little about disease transmission patterns so your intuition here is worse than ignorance.
  - patmcc 6y ago
    The OP specifically said "in the absence of evidence we need to ask ourselves which is more likely..." - and suggested (strongly) that a lab outbreak is much more likely than the alternatives. I was trying to point out that a) once the virus is in humans it's easily spread and b) though the lab's research may have led to the pandemic, it doesn't necessarily follow that there was a "lab outbreak". Here's my understanding on what (probably?) happened: 1) Bat(s) carrying the novel coronavirus were taken from Yunnan or Zhejiang province. 2) They were brought to the lab in Wuhan (WHCDC) (~500+ miles away). 3) They were experimented upon, dissected for tissue samples, etc. 4) Some/all of these samples were disposed of. And some time later, the Huanan Seafood Market (near this lab) was likely an origin point of the epidemic. Now, the actual disease release could happen at any of the 4 steps above. Someone who captured the bats could have been infected at that time. Someone could have been exposed during transport of the bats. Someone could have been infected during experimentation. The materials could have been improperly disposed of, tainting food/water/clothes/whatever. Would we consider all of those "lab outbreaks"? Also, I want to point out - "a city which hosts a top-tier biolab with the world's foremost experts on bat-borne coronaviruses" - we may also expect such a biolab to be located in an area where bats, and bat-borne viruses, are more likely to be, no? Where else would be a more logical place to put it? :)
    - brippalcharrid 6y ago
      But is it more likely for the virus to have undergone sufficient natural mutation from its closest known relative* (RaTG13) in order for it to have become both capable of and very effective at infecting humans (ACE2 receptors) and for it to have then been so carelessly disposed of from the BSL-4 Wuhan biolab that someone came into contact with it and became infected, or is it more likely for it to have been the product of the Gain-of-Function research on bat coronaviruses in that lab which the NIH began funding in 2014 due to the US-wide ban on Gain-of-Function research that lasted until 2017? [0] Consider the fact that lab safety protocols are designed to contain pathogens, which creates very poor conditions for viruses to naturally evolve and transfer zoonotically, whereas Gain-of-Function research has the express aim of creating ideal conditions for evolution which is both directed and can proceed many orders of magnitude faster. *Also, there's plenty of doubt as to whether RaTG13[1] actually exists; we just have the RNA sequence and we're currently just taking Beijing's word for that. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741 https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan... [1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200910/Scientists-claim-serious-data-discrepancies-in-RaTG13-sequence.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200910/Scientists-claim-...
Bjartr 6y ago
> in the absence of evidence we need to conclude that we do not know what actually happened. Coincidences can and do occur, even wildly unlikely ones. Investigating unlikely ones can bear fruit, but condemning on coincidence alone is not wise.
- breck 6y ago
  > Coincidences can and do occur, even wildly unlikely ones. You could gather some data and do some math on "Given that an outbreak occurred in humans, what is the expected range of the nearest bio research lab?" If the Wuhan lab(s) is a lot closer to the initial outbreak than you'd expect, then that alone merits a closer look. I have no idea about the distribution of bio research labs, but seems like it's probably relatively easy to come up with that number.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    The bio labs definitely warrant a closer look, we just shouldn't jump to conclusions until we've had those looks and collected some direct evidence.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      Sadly, it looks like that the Chinese won't let that happen until it's impossible to figure out, either because they have something to hide or because it's just their usual modus operandi.
roywiggins 6y ago
> 1) A disease traveled hundreds of miles to a large city without leaving a trace of evidence It was certainly circulating in, say, California, for a couple months before it was actually detected [0]. During flu season, seems to me a new respiratory disease can probably get pretty far before anyone notices it's not the flu. It probably crossed the Pacific before it was detected and reported in China, what's a few hundred miles? All you have to go on are symptoms, and mild/moderate covid doesn't look like anything special, it's not Ebola. [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-known-U-S-coronavirus-death-occurred-on-15217316.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-known-U-S-c...
- gojomo 6y ago
  That story only reports a death-with-COVID that was a few weeks (February 6) before the first-at-the-time discovered community case (February ~26: https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/patient-and-precautions-uc-davis-medical-center/ https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/patient-and-precaut...). I've seen two people on Twitter claim UCSF personnel have told them COVID was discovered retrospectively in UCSF December 2019 autopsies: https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1333932912329146368 https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1333932912329146368 Neither of the people claiming that seemed to me be prevaricators/hoaxers/people-with-an-axe-to-grind. And, that sort of discovery would be a plausible outcome of a review of all autopsies back to December that California ordered in April – https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/newsom-orders-all-ca-counties-to-review-autopsies-dating-to-december https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/newsom-orders-all-ca-coun... – on which I've seen little followup reporting. But, I've seen no other confirmation of these UCSF rumors in official statements. So: still wondering what hard evidence, if any dates COVID-in-the-US to December 2019 or earlier. (There's a survey of December blood donors which found 2% immune reactivity - but the imprecision of that test, especially given known cross-reactivities with other 'common cold' coronaviruses has caused some experts to discount it as definitive proof that COVID was circulating then.)
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    If you push the first death to Feb 6, then they were probably infected mid-January, and without any known links to China, it seems much more likely than not that there were a cases that percolated around California in December-January before it caused that death: > “What it means is we had coronavirus circulating in the community much earlier than we had documented and much earlier than we had thought,” said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health officer. “Those deaths probably represent many, many more infections. And so there had to be chains of transmission that go back much earlier.”

patmcc 6y ago

>>>1) A disease traveled hundreds of miles to a large city without leaving a trace of evidence This doesn't strike me as intrinsically unlikely. Bats can apparently fly ~50 miles for food, a person on a bus can easily travel ~400 miles in a day, etc. I don't disagree with the premise that a lab outbreak is possible, but so is "guy got infected by bats or something, didn't realize, hopped on a bus to visit family/find work".

jkhdigital 6y ago
And that bus happened to be traveling to a city which hosts a top-tier biolab with the world's foremost experts on bat-borne coronaviruses. Not a smoking gun, of course, but anyways I think your logical fallacy here is the "reasonableness" heuristic, in which you base the likelihood of some incredibly unlikely event on whether you can "imagine" some scenario where it happened. The fact that you can come up with a story to explain... well, I don't even know exactly what you're explaining, because it's really just a fragment of a chain of causation which has been mostly left unsaid. But anyways, I'm willing to wager that you know very little about disease transmission patterns so your intuition here is worse than ignorance.
- patmcc 6y ago
  The OP specifically said "in the absence of evidence we need to ask ourselves which is more likely..." - and suggested (strongly) that a lab outbreak is much more likely than the alternatives. I was trying to point out that a) once the virus is in humans it's easily spread and b) though the lab's research may have led to the pandemic, it doesn't necessarily follow that there was a "lab outbreak". Here's my understanding on what (probably?) happened: 1) Bat(s) carrying the novel coronavirus were taken from Yunnan or Zhejiang province. 2) They were brought to the lab in Wuhan (WHCDC) (~500+ miles away). 3) They were experimented upon, dissected for tissue samples, etc. 4) Some/all of these samples were disposed of. And some time later, the Huanan Seafood Market (near this lab) was likely an origin point of the epidemic. Now, the actual disease release could happen at any of the 4 steps above. Someone who captured the bats could have been infected at that time. Someone could have been exposed during transport of the bats. Someone could have been infected during experimentation. The materials could have been improperly disposed of, tainting food/water/clothes/whatever. Would we consider all of those "lab outbreaks"? Also, I want to point out - "a city which hosts a top-tier biolab with the world's foremost experts on bat-borne coronaviruses" - we may also expect such a biolab to be located in an area where bats, and bat-borne viruses, are more likely to be, no? Where else would be a more logical place to put it? :)
  - brippalcharrid 6y ago
    But is it more likely for the virus to have undergone sufficient natural mutation from its closest known relative* (RaTG13) in order for it to have become both capable of and very effective at infecting humans (ACE2 receptors) and for it to have then been so carelessly disposed of from the BSL-4 Wuhan biolab that someone came into contact with it and became infected, or is it more likely for it to have been the product of the Gain-of-Function research on bat coronaviruses in that lab which the NIH began funding in 2014 due to the US-wide ban on Gain-of-Function research that lasted until 2017? [0] Consider the fact that lab safety protocols are designed to contain pathogens, which creates very poor conditions for viruses to naturally evolve and transfer zoonotically, whereas Gain-of-Function research has the express aim of creating ideal conditions for evolution which is both directed and can proceed many orders of magnitude faster. *Also, there's plenty of doubt as to whether RaTG13[1] actually exists; we just have the RNA sequence and we're currently just taking Beijing's word for that. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741 https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan... [1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200910/Scientists-claim-serious-data-discrepancies-in-RaTG13-sequence.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200910/Scientists-claim-...

Bjartr 6y ago

> in the absence of evidence we need to conclude that we do not know what actually happened. Coincidences can and do occur, even wildly unlikely ones. Investigating unlikely ones can bear fruit, but condemning on coincidence alone is not wise.

breck 6y ago
> Coincidences can and do occur, even wildly unlikely ones. You could gather some data and do some math on "Given that an outbreak occurred in humans, what is the expected range of the nearest bio research lab?" If the Wuhan lab(s) is a lot closer to the initial outbreak than you'd expect, then that alone merits a closer look. I have no idea about the distribution of bio research labs, but seems like it's probably relatively easy to come up with that number.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  The bio labs definitely warrant a closer look, we just shouldn't jump to conclusions until we've had those looks and collected some direct evidence.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Sadly, it looks like that the Chinese won't let that happen until it's impossible to figure out, either because they have something to hide or because it's just their usual modus operandi.

roywiggins 6y ago

> 1) A disease traveled hundreds of miles to a large city without leaving a trace of evidence It was certainly circulating in, say, California, for a couple months before it was actually detected [0]. During flu season, seems to me a new respiratory disease can probably get pretty far before anyone notices it's not the flu. It probably crossed the Pacific before it was detected and reported in China, what's a few hundred miles? All you have to go on are symptoms, and mild/moderate covid doesn't look like anything special, it's not Ebola. [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-known-U-S-coronavirus-death-occurred-on-15217316.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-known-U-S-c...

gojomo 6y ago
That story only reports a death-with-COVID that was a few weeks (February 6) before the first-at-the-time discovered community case (February ~26: https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/patient-and-precautions-uc-davis-medical-center/ https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/patient-and-precaut...). I've seen two people on Twitter claim UCSF personnel have told them COVID was discovered retrospectively in UCSF December 2019 autopsies: https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1333932912329146368 https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1333932912329146368 Neither of the people claiming that seemed to me be prevaricators/hoaxers/people-with-an-axe-to-grind. And, that sort of discovery would be a plausible outcome of a review of all autopsies back to December that California ordered in April – https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/newsom-orders-all-ca-counties-to-review-autopsies-dating-to-december https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/newsom-orders-all-ca-coun... – on which I've seen little followup reporting. But, I've seen no other confirmation of these UCSF rumors in official statements. So: still wondering what hard evidence, if any dates COVID-in-the-US to December 2019 or earlier. (There's a survey of December blood donors which found 2% immune reactivity - but the imprecision of that test, especially given known cross-reactivities with other 'common cold' coronaviruses has caused some experts to discount it as definitive proof that COVID was circulating then.)
- roywiggins 6y ago
  If you push the first death to Feb 6, then they were probably infected mid-January, and without any known links to China, it seems much more likely than not that there were a cases that percolated around California in December-January before it caused that death: > “What it means is we had coronavirus circulating in the community much earlier than we had documented and much earlier than we had thought,” said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health officer. “Those deaths probably represent many, many more infections. And so there had to be chains of transmission that go back much earlier.”