9 ms·

> There is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities, just as there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap But there is so much more opport

by mabbo 6y ago

> There is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities, just as there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap But there is so much more opportunity for the zoonotic possibilities. In fact, this is the seventh time we've seen Betacoronavirus cross from bats, through another animal, and then into humans. SARS came via palm civets. MERS came via camels. Four more types cause a mild cold only and so they don't get sexy names or a deep investigation as to how humans became hosts. So why would Covid-19 even need to come from a lab? We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. It's the perfect breeding ground to create a pandemic-level virus and probably a few thousand more viruses of lesser impact. > A lab accident — a dropped flask, a needle prick, a mouse bite, an illegibly labeled bottle — is apolitical. Oh, I disagree. If the root cause is Big Government meddling where they ought not to, that tells us one story. If the root cause is unregulated wet markets with viruses crossing species freely, that tells a very different story. Smaller government solves one problem, and more regulations solves the other. There are a lot of people who want each story to be the truth.

InTheArena 6y ago
Except this is not just a USA story. The reality is that China is shutting down any research into the origins of the virus - at least by doctors not loyal to the government. They are arresting journalists who don’t tell the story they want to tell. In the vacuum of information, it’s fair to point out that the market not being the source means something else was - and - there was a lab that had the closest variant to the virus within the same city. If smallpox broke out in Atlanta, so you think anyone on earth wouldn’t immediately come to the conclusion that the CDC had a accident with their BSl? And there are 14 in the USA. Just one in China - and it’s Wuhan. Let’s not act like this is a story about American regulation or deregulation.
- InTheArena 6y ago
  Never mind that the author is dealing with a country that is committing genocide right now simply because some Muslims believe in Allah and not the state.
  - noctua 6y ago
    If I've understood it correctly, China isn't persecuting Muslims, but Uyghurs, and their main justification for it is the East Turkestan independence movement. There are plenty of Muslims in other parts of China living normal lives.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      There are plenty of Uyghurs living normal lives. Don't forget that even the highest estimates of a million targeted amount to maybe 10% of the total population. There are also plenty of ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims among the eyewitnesses interviewed in Western media, as well as restrictions on religious freedom all over the country: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-persecution-mosque-demolition-xi-jinping-regime-islam-a9115431.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-m... Of course having their mosque closed for illegal religious activity and eating halal food that says 清真 instead of حلال on the packaging still leaves people with what might be considered a "normal life", even though it is different from the normal life they knew before.
      - Retric 6y ago
        The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. That’s impacting people outside of internment camps. A policy which removes some pressure from the excess male births from the rest of the country and destroys an unwanted ethnic group. Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60%.
        yorwba 6y ago
        > The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. I assume you're referring to this part of your link: > In March 2017, Salamet Memetimin, an ethnic Uyghur and the Communist Party Secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village in Qira County, Hotan Prefecture, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home. In interviews with Radio Free Asia in 2020, residents and officials of Shufu County (Kona Sheher), Kashgar Prefecture (Kashi) stated that it was no longer possible to perform traditional Uyghur nikah marriage rites in the county. Such a policy against nikah marriages would also affect other Muslims, not just Uyghurs. > Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. Similarly, forced sterilization has been part of government restrictions on reproduction for decades, and although the limit has been raised with the abandonment of the one-child policy, there's still a limit. So it doesn't just affect all non-Uyghur Muslims in China as well, but actually everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-child-policy-outrage-at-chinas-offer-to-remove-iuds.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-chil...
- mabbo 6y ago
  Hey, if you want to say the Chinese government are corrupt, genocidal assholes, I'm with you. What they want to cover up is any hint of fault. They want everyone to stay in line and question nothing, regardless of anything else. I just don't think there's any real evidence of this being a man made pandemic either.
mantap 6y ago
Perhaps paradoxically the fact that other betacoronaviruses have made the jump to humans naturally, would increase the probability that this was a lab accident: scientists want to study the most likely candidates for a pandemic.
incrudible 6y ago
> So why would Covid-19 even need to come from a lab? We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. It's the perfect breeding ground to create a pandemic-level virus and probably a few thousand more viruses of lesser impact. The question of how it got to Wuhan all the way from Southern China remains unanswered. There weren't any bats sold on the wet markets, nor has any other host animal been identified. The virologists working in Wuhan did travel all the way to Southern China to collect bat coronavirus samples and they did perform gain-of-function experiments. Viruses - even highly pathogenic ones - have escaped labs on numerous occasions. There is a plausible scenario here. There is another plausible scenario, which is that "ground zero" for Sars-CoV-2 is actually Southern China, just like Sars-CoV-1. However, the virus wasn't discovered there first, because it didn't cause enough illness. The outbreak in Wuhan, the 9th largest city in China, would've been discovered by chance.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  Good points, and I tend to think the 'escaped from a lab' case is at least as strong as the zoonotic one. A small counterpoint though -- the market is the Huanan market, i.e. specialising in south china sourced or styled food. I would not be surprised if some exotic animals were there but never admitted to.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Although reasonable, one theory ("the bat coronavirus was transported by scientists to the lab that studies bat coronaviruses") involves no illigal activity. On the other hand the counter-theory ("there was illegal bat trafficking from a small mine in Yunnan") involves speculation that something happened that we don't know about. Strictly speaking, the lab leak theory has more observed evidence. Presumably the Chinese government would have identified and explained if they found bat traffickers. We know the lab was aware of RaTG13 - they produced a sequence quickly that no-one else had seen. I know nothing about the situation but it would be interesting to know where exactly the sample was being sequenced. I doubt they did it in the mine, samples must have been transported to some lab. I used to think 99% chance zoonotic, but the fact the similar virus was known to the lab was enough to drag me to thinking it is probably a toss up. Lab leaks do happen, this lab was studying bat coronaviruses. It is possible.
travisoneill1 6y ago
There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few virus labs. Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one right next to the virus lab? That alone is enough evidence to make the lab escape theory the most likely origin. Though it's far from certain.
- incrudible 6y ago
  The virus likely didn't originate at the wildlife market, because many of the early patients had no connection to it. There is a building of the Wuhan CDC (not the WIV) near the wildlife market, but the Wuhan CDC has numerous buildings and this particular one doesn't seem to be implicated in coronavirus research.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    2 good points. Being in the same city as the virus lab is a lot less suspicious than being across the street.
    - andromeduck 6y ago
      Regardless of the lab theory it's pretty clear that the wet market was simply the first known super spreader location and not necessarily the origin given how a third of the first known patients had no connection to the wet market.
- MilnerRoute 6y ago
  Snopes.com points out that the market wasn't "right next to the virus lab." It was in fact a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
  - kunfuu 6y ago
    Back in Feb 2020, a rumor circulating on Chinese social media said that there was another lab in the city near the market, which was a competitor to the lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology that is most widely mentioned, under the umbrella of a university of agriculture/forestry/geology (I don't remember the exact details). I am not sure about the validity of the rumor, though.
noetic_techy 6y ago
Yes but the jumps typically flame out. This virus has an extremely well adapted human furin site well outside of typical Bat Corona virus. This is more in line with gain of function research.
99_00 6y ago
>We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. That's not in evidence. >Bats were initially suggested to be the source of the virus, although it remains unclear if bats were sold there (Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market). >Despite the role that the market played in the pandemic, it is yet unclear whether the novel coronavirus outbreak started in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Marke...
esja 6y ago
Can you explain how this virus became (instantly) better adapted to humans than it is to bats? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- EliRivers 6y ago
  Looks like it didn't become better adapted. Already was. In lots of species, it's less well adapted. This is a non-story.
nradov 6y ago
There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that the OC43 beta coronavirus crossed from animals in 1889 and killed about a million people worldwide. It can still be fatal to elderly or immunocompromised patients. The only reason it doesn't kill many people today is that most of us are infected as children and build up a level of immunity, so subsequent reinfections tend to have mild symptoms. Just like SARS-CoV-2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
- tim333 6y ago
  Maybe that's how SARS-CoV-2 will end up - people will get it as kids and become immunized.
0-_-0 6y ago
> In fact, this is the seventh time we've seen Betacoronavirus cross from bats. This is also not the first time a lab leak caused an outbreak, the 2004 SARS outbreak was caused by a lab leak [1] [1]: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-spotlight-20040427-03 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-...
himinlomax 6y ago
The main point here is that the lab escape hypothesis has been hitherto dismissed out of hand when it ought not to be. I agree that the natural zoonotic contamination hypothesis is more plausible to begin with, but since it has not been confirmed (as in: no natural reservoir has been identified), the less plausible but nonetheless not implausible lab escape hypothesis should still be on the table.
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  The President of the United States is on record as saying it came from a lab. I’m not sure how that translates to “dismissed out of hand”.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    The President says a lot of things...
  - api 6y ago
    I treat Trump's grunts like the output of a Markov chain random text generator and don't consider them official signifiers either for or against anything. He blathers and lies and then contradicts himself with different lies an hour later. He's a classic bullshitter.
  - ahepp 6y ago
    Dismissed by the intelligentsia, like everything he says. Usually they are right to do so, but occasionally I think there is a touch of "orange man bad" syndrome.
collyw 6y ago
You have no questions about the validity of data coming out of China? The fact that there is China's first biosaftey level 4 lab in the same town where the virus originated doesn't arouse any suspicion whatsoever?
cheph 6y ago
> We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. No wet markets here where I am ... so maybe speak for yourself.
- 36463736e6 6y ago
  So your country doesn't have stores or markets that carry live fish or display meat on a counter?
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Look up the definition of what a wet market is. for example, most markets in the UK can be classed as wet, as well as many large supermarkets with a meat or fish counter
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway189262 6y ago
SARS has leaked from Chinese labs multiple times. And the only lab in the world specializing in coronaviruses was ~1000 ft away from the first cases. The leaked US diplomatic cables urge the US to help China with this very lab because biosecurity there was so concerning to visiting scientists. It's also the only BSL4 lab in China. In addition the head of that lab has published numerous papers about generic engineering of coronaviruses. That lab also discovered the closest ancestor of COVID. COVID is also interestingly contagious among minks and ferrets, common lab animals used for serial passage. It's also undergone remarkably little generic drift since the pandemic began. Since the moment it was released it was already human adapted. Extremely suspicious for a brand new virus. For SARS, MERS, etc we were able to find a 99.9% identical virus in nature. The closest one we have to COVID is 96%, quite distant genetically. The last time we couldn't find the virus in nature was the 1976 flu pandemic. 20 years later scientists began admitting that it was triggered by a lab leak. When genetic engineering became advanced enough it was obvious that the strain was identical to a pandemic flu strain from the 50's. In reality, the scientist new from the beginning that the 1976 pandemic was a lab leak but the information was thoroughly suppressed so that the soviet union would cooperate with monitoring. This is exactly what happened with China early in the pandemic. Nobody wanted to criticize people being welded into their homes because China was providing data on the virus. I am completely convinced that this is why the lab leak hypothesis for COVID is being "debunked" To me there is overwhelming evidence that COVID is a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. IMO the only reason everybody is denying it is the severe political repercussions for China essentially killing more people than WWII. US researchers are co-authors on many of the institutes papers on coronavirus genetic manipulation. The US was funding some of their research, presumably because gain of function research is banned in the states.
- nradov 6y ago
  Are you referring to the 1976 or 1977 influenza? There is evidence of a lab leak or other human origin for the 1977 strain but the original source was never definitively identified. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/ https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15.full https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15.full

by mabbo 6y ago

InTheArena 6y ago

Except this is not just a USA story. The reality is that China is shutting down any research into the origins of the virus - at least by doctors not loyal to the government. They are arresting journalists who don’t tell the story they want to tell. In the vacuum of information, it’s fair to point out that the market not being the source means something else was - and - there was a lab that had the closest variant to the virus within the same city. If smallpox broke out in Atlanta, so you think anyone on earth wouldn’t immediately come to the conclusion that the CDC had a accident with their BSl? And there are 14 in the USA. Just one in China - and it’s Wuhan. Let’s not act like this is a story about American regulation or deregulation.

InTheArena 6y ago
Never mind that the author is dealing with a country that is committing genocide right now simply because some Muslims believe in Allah and not the state.
- noctua 6y ago
  If I've understood it correctly, China isn't persecuting Muslims, but Uyghurs, and their main justification for it is the East Turkestan independence movement. There are plenty of Muslims in other parts of China living normal lives.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    There are plenty of Uyghurs living normal lives. Don't forget that even the highest estimates of a million targeted amount to maybe 10% of the total population. There are also plenty of ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims among the eyewitnesses interviewed in Western media, as well as restrictions on religious freedom all over the country: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-persecution-mosque-demolition-xi-jinping-regime-islam-a9115431.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-m... Of course having their mosque closed for illegal religious activity and eating halal food that says 清真 instead of حلال on the packaging still leaves people with what might be considered a "normal life", even though it is different from the normal life they knew before.
    - Retric 6y ago
      The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. That’s impacting people outside of internment camps. A policy which removes some pressure from the excess male births from the rest of the country and destroys an unwanted ethnic group. Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60%.
      - yorwba 6y ago
        > The CCP is also discriminating against Uyghur marriages. I assume you're referring to this part of your link: > In March 2017, Salamet Memetimin, an ethnic Uyghur and the Communist Party Secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village in Qira County, Hotan Prefecture, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home. In interviews with Radio Free Asia in 2020, residents and officials of Shufu County (Kona Sheher), Kashgar Prefecture (Kashi) stated that it was no longer possible to perform traditional Uyghur nikah marriage rites in the county. Such a policy against nikah marriages would also affect other Muslims, not just Uyghurs. > Combined with some forced sterilization and forced contraception and you get a “mild” form of genocide that destroys a people without producing mass graves. Similarly, forced sterilization has been part of government restrictions on reproduction for decades, and although the limit has been raised with the abandonment of the one-child policy, there's still a limit. So it doesn't just affect all non-Uyghur Muslims in China as well, but actually everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-child-policy-outrage-at-chinas-offer-to-remove-iuds.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-chil...
mabbo 6y ago
Hey, if you want to say the Chinese government are corrupt, genocidal assholes, I'm with you. What they want to cover up is any hint of fault. They want everyone to stay in line and question nothing, regardless of anything else. I just don't think there's any real evidence of this being a man made pandemic either.

mantap 6y ago

Perhaps paradoxically the fact that other betacoronaviruses have made the jump to humans naturally, would increase the probability that this was a lab accident: scientists want to study the most likely candidates for a pandemic.

incrudible 6y ago

> So why would Covid-19 even need to come from a lab? We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. It's the perfect breeding ground to create a pandemic-level virus and probably a few thousand more viruses of lesser impact. The question of how it got to Wuhan all the way from Southern China remains unanswered. There weren't any bats sold on the wet markets, nor has any other host animal been identified. The virologists working in Wuhan did travel all the way to Southern China to collect bat coronavirus samples and they did perform gain-of-function experiments. Viruses - even highly pathogenic ones - have escaped labs on numerous occasions. There is a plausible scenario here. There is another plausible scenario, which is that "ground zero" for Sars-CoV-2 is actually Southern China, just like Sars-CoV-1. However, the virus wasn't discovered there first, because it didn't cause enough illness. The outbreak in Wuhan, the 9th largest city in China, would've been discovered by chance.

emmelaich 6y ago
Good points, and I tend to think the 'escaped from a lab' case is at least as strong as the zoonotic one. A small counterpoint though -- the market is the Huanan market, i.e. specialising in south china sourced or styled food. I would not be surprised if some exotic animals were there but never admitted to.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Although reasonable, one theory ("the bat coronavirus was transported by scientists to the lab that studies bat coronaviruses") involves no illigal activity. On the other hand the counter-theory ("there was illegal bat trafficking from a small mine in Yunnan") involves speculation that something happened that we don't know about. Strictly speaking, the lab leak theory has more observed evidence. Presumably the Chinese government would have identified and explained if they found bat traffickers. We know the lab was aware of RaTG13 - they produced a sequence quickly that no-one else had seen. I know nothing about the situation but it would be interesting to know where exactly the sample was being sequenced. I doubt they did it in the mine, samples must have been transported to some lab. I used to think 99% chance zoonotic, but the fact the similar virus was known to the lab was enough to drag me to thinking it is probably a toss up. Lab leaks do happen, this lab was studying bat coronaviruses. It is possible.

travisoneill1 6y ago

There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few virus labs. Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one right next to the virus lab? That alone is enough evidence to make the lab escape theory the most likely origin. Though it's far from certain.

incrudible 6y ago
The virus likely didn't originate at the wildlife market, because many of the early patients had no connection to it. There is a building of the Wuhan CDC (not the WIV) near the wildlife market, but the Wuhan CDC has numerous buildings and this particular one doesn't seem to be implicated in coronavirus research.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  2 good points. Being in the same city as the virus lab is a lot less suspicious than being across the street.
  - andromeduck 6y ago
    Regardless of the lab theory it's pretty clear that the wet market was simply the first known super spreader location and not necessarily the origin given how a third of the first known patients had no connection to the wet market.
MilnerRoute 6y ago
Snopes.com points out that the market wasn't "right next to the virus lab." It was in fact a full seven miles away. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
- kunfuu 6y ago
  Back in Feb 2020, a rumor circulating on Chinese social media said that there was another lab in the city near the market, which was a competitor to the lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology that is most widely mentioned, under the umbrella of a university of agriculture/forestry/geology (I don't remember the exact details). I am not sure about the validity of the rumor, though.

noetic_techy 6y ago

Yes but the jumps typically flame out. This virus has an extremely well adapted human furin site well outside of typical Bat Corona virus. This is more in line with gain of function research.

99_00 6y ago

>We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. That's not in evidence. >Bats were initially suggested to be the source of the virus, although it remains unclear if bats were sold there (Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market). >Despite the role that the market played in the pandemic, it is yet unclear whether the novel coronavirus outbreak started in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Marke...

esja 6y ago

Can you explain how this virus became (instantly) better adapted to humans than it is to bats? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
EliRivers 6y ago
Looks like it didn't become better adapted. Already was. In lots of species, it's less well adapted. This is a non-story.

nradov 6y ago

There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that the OC43 beta coronavirus crossed from animals in 1889 and killed about a million people worldwide. It can still be fatal to elderly or immunocompromised patients. The only reason it doesn't kill many people today is that most of us are infected as children and build up a level of immunity, so subsequent reinfections tend to have mild symptoms. Just like SARS-CoV-2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

tim333 6y ago
Maybe that's how SARS-CoV-2 will end up - people will get it as kids and become immunized.

0-_-0 6y ago

> In fact, this is the seventh time we've seen Betacoronavirus cross from bats. This is also not the first time a lab leak caused an outbreak, the 2004 SARS outbreak was caused by a lab leak [1] [1]: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-spotlight-20040427-03 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-...

himinlomax 6y ago

The main point here is that the lab escape hypothesis has been hitherto dismissed out of hand when it ought not to be. I agree that the natural zoonotic contamination hypothesis is more plausible to begin with, but since it has not been confirmed (as in: no natural reservoir has been identified), the less plausible but nonetheless not implausible lab escape hypothesis should still be on the table.

kasey_junk 6y ago
The President of the United States is on record as saying it came from a lab. I’m not sure how that translates to “dismissed out of hand”.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  The President says a lot of things...
- api 6y ago
  I treat Trump's grunts like the output of a Markov chain random text generator and don't consider them official signifiers either for or against anything. He blathers and lies and then contradicts himself with different lies an hour later. He's a classic bullshitter.
- ahepp 6y ago
  Dismissed by the intelligentsia, like everything he says. Usually they are right to do so, but occasionally I think there is a touch of "orange man bad" syndrome.

collyw 6y ago

You have no questions about the validity of data coming out of China? The fact that there is China's first biosaftey level 4 lab in the same town where the virus originated doesn't arouse any suspicion whatsoever?

cheph 6y ago

> We (humans) had wet markets filled with animals, including the very bats that carry the base virus. No wet markets here where I am ... so maybe speak for yourself.

36463736e6 6y ago
So your country doesn't have stores or markets that carry live fish or display meat on a counter?
thinkingemote 6y ago
Look up the definition of what a wet market is. for example, most markets in the UK can be classed as wet, as well as many large supermarkets with a meat or fish counter
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway189262 6y ago

SARS has leaked from Chinese labs multiple times. And the only lab in the world specializing in coronaviruses was ~1000 ft away from the first cases. The leaked US diplomatic cables urge the US to help China with this very lab because biosecurity there was so concerning to visiting scientists. It's also the only BSL4 lab in China. In addition the head of that lab has published numerous papers about generic engineering of coronaviruses. That lab also discovered the closest ancestor of COVID. COVID is also interestingly contagious among minks and ferrets, common lab animals used for serial passage. It's also undergone remarkably little generic drift since the pandemic began. Since the moment it was released it was already human adapted. Extremely suspicious for a brand new virus. For SARS, MERS, etc we were able to find a 99.9% identical virus in nature. The closest one we have to COVID is 96%, quite distant genetically. The last time we couldn't find the virus in nature was the 1976 flu pandemic. 20 years later scientists began admitting that it was triggered by a lab leak. When genetic engineering became advanced enough it was obvious that the strain was identical to a pandemic flu strain from the 50's. In reality, the scientist new from the beginning that the 1976 pandemic was a lab leak but the information was thoroughly suppressed so that the soviet union would cooperate with monitoring. This is exactly what happened with China early in the pandemic. Nobody wanted to criticize people being welded into their homes because China was providing data on the virus. I am completely convinced that this is why the lab leak hypothesis for COVID is being "debunked" To me there is overwhelming evidence that COVID is a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. IMO the only reason everybody is denying it is the severe political repercussions for China essentially killing more people than WWII. US researchers are co-authors on many of the institutes papers on coronavirus genetic manipulation. The US was funding some of their research, presumably because gain of function research is banned in the states.

nradov 6y ago
Are you referring to the 1976 or 1977 influenza? There is evidence of a lab leak or other human origin for the 1977 strain but the original source was never definitively identified. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/ https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15.full https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15.full