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> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus

> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. I think that it is at least somewhat likely that it was the result of the lab's activities, but your assertion here has a huge dose of selection bias. If the virology labs studying coronaviruses were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future. It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
> They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future. Are they? I'm not aware of this trend, or of any other major species barrier crossings in Hubei. (If you're thinking of the original SARS, that started in Guangdong, two provinces to the south.)
is-ought 6y ago
Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
goatinaboat 6y ago
were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations The world’s foremost institute for tropical medicine is in London, England. So that debunks that idea.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  I mean, that's a practical side effect of the fact that England owned much of the tropics for a few centuries. It's further evidence that these things get sited sensibly, not randomly.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Sensibly, yes, but not their location isn't based on geographic proximity but rather what is a sensible location for the group building and staffing the lab.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
garmaine 6y ago
Wuhan is around thousand kilometers away from where this virus supposedly originated from. But the Wuhan lab did receive samples in 2019 from miners who died in 2012 from an infection of a novel coronavirus that resulted in symptoms very similar to COVID-19. https://nypost.com/2020/08/15/covid-19-first-appeared-in-chinese-miners-in-2012-scientists/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/15/covid-19-first-appeared-in-chi... That’s a complete coincidence though and you’re bigoted for thinking there could possibly be a connection! /s
angio 6y ago
Another selection bias is that we can't say if the virus originated there, but only that it was first detected there. Even if it originated in the countryside hundreds of miles away it makes sense it was detected only after it spread to a city with the labs to discover the virus.
- ginko 6y ago
  The virus was first sequenced by a lab in Shanghai. The WIV wasn't involved in the discovery of the virus.
  - angio 6y ago
    What I mean is that a small countryside hospital won't be able to notice there is a new type of pneumonia, while bigger cities have teams to detect that. It's the same reason why we probably had the virus circulating in europe in january but we only noticed after we started looking for it.
autokad 6y ago
china has 100 cities with over a million people in them. Only one has a lab specializing in corona virus research.
goatcode 6y ago
> It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse. But if a lighthouse manufactured coral reefs, and the coral reefs on which ships were running aground displayed features of those that a given lighthouse manufactured, it might be more accurate.
- 8note 6y ago
  Coral reefs do like to form on sunken ships, so that's still not far off
  - goatcode 6y ago
    We may need to look into this further!
esja 6y ago
Wuhan is nowhere near the caves where these bat viruses have been found. It's over 1800 kilometres to Southwest Yunnan, for example.
gregwebs 6y ago
China is a big country. Wuhan is 900km away from the bat caves that are believed to be the breeding ground for these viruses.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  ...but Wuhan is also 0km away from the wet markets that sell meat sourced x00km away near and around the bat caves.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    I have seen estimates of thousands of wet markets in China and perhaps 10000 in all of Asia. Why the one wet market closest to a lab doing GOF research, and previously questioned on its containment rigor.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      Because it is the largest city near the bat habitat - with the largest wet market. Wuhan is like Chicago in China. It's not some random small town. If an outbreak occurred in some rural area (which it might have previously), it's possible that it just fizzled out. Wuhan is a great place for a virus to spread.
      - tripletao 6y ago
        Take a look at this on a map. Mojiang (where RaTG13, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, was reportedly sampled) is closer to Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or HK than to Wuhan. Pu'er is roughly Chicago-sized, and it's 150 km away. Kunming is more people than two Chicagos, and it's 200 km away. It makes sense that this first emerged in a city, but Wuhan is far from the obvious geographic choice.
        6y ago
tripletao 6y ago
People keep saying this, but it's not true; SARS-like viruses haven't been found in nature near Wuhan. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q%26A.pdf https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli...
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  You've said elsewhere that you think it's reasonable to to suppose they have unpublished samples that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, indeed that's your central claim. So why do you trust this statement about their sampling results but not the one about not having anything closer than RaTG13 [18.5, p6]?
  - tripletao 6y ago
    Honestly, I don't fully. From a standpoint of a lab accident, evidence of natural zoonosis near Wuhan would be exculpatory and they'd have no reason to conceal it. But the CCP also seems to be pushing to exclude any origin whatsoever within China, like with their frozen food theory (which is thoroughly rejected by almost all scientists physically outside China, but which the WHO team nonetheless seems to be considering). So I think it's entirely possible e.g. that China has confidently determined the non-lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, but that it's from an agricultural practice so reckless that they've decided it's better for their reputation to leave everything shrouded in doubt. It's much more obvious to me that China is concealing something than what they're concealing. (Of course, that's usually how concealing stuff works.) That said, I still think zoonosis near Wuhan is unlikely. In a pre-pandemic publication with no incentive to lie, the WIV studied antibodies to SARS-like viruses in the blood of people living near bats in Yunnan province. They used blood from people living in Wuhan as a negative control: > As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ So while it's possible that natural zoonosis did occur in Wuhan, I believe that would require the WIV staff to be genuinely mistaken.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

> They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future. Are they? I'm not aware of this trend, or of any other major species barrier crossings in Hubei. (If you're thinking of the original SARS, that started in Guangdong, two provinces to the south.)

is-ought 6y ago

Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

goatinaboat 6y ago

were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations The world’s foremost institute for tropical medicine is in London, England. So that debunks that idea.

ceejayoz 6y ago
I mean, that's a practical side effect of the fact that England owned much of the tropics for a few centuries. It's further evidence that these things get sited sensibly, not randomly.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Sensibly, yes, but not their location isn't based on geographic proximity but rather what is a sensible location for the group building and staffing the lab.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

garmaine 6y ago

Wuhan is around thousand kilometers away from where this virus supposedly originated from. But the Wuhan lab did receive samples in 2019 from miners who died in 2012 from an infection of a novel coronavirus that resulted in symptoms very similar to COVID-19. https://nypost.com/2020/08/15/covid-19-first-appeared-in-chinese-miners-in-2012-scientists/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/15/covid-19-first-appeared-in-chi... That’s a complete coincidence though and you’re bigoted for thinking there could possibly be a connection! /s

angio 6y ago

Another selection bias is that we can't say if the virus originated there, but only that it was first detected there. Even if it originated in the countryside hundreds of miles away it makes sense it was detected only after it spread to a city with the labs to discover the virus.

ginko 6y ago
The virus was first sequenced by a lab in Shanghai. The WIV wasn't involved in the discovery of the virus.
- angio 6y ago
  What I mean is that a small countryside hospital won't be able to notice there is a new type of pneumonia, while bigger cities have teams to detect that. It's the same reason why we probably had the virus circulating in europe in january but we only noticed after we started looking for it.

autokad 6y ago

china has 100 cities with over a million people in them. Only one has a lab specializing in corona virus research.

goatcode 6y ago

> It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse. But if a lighthouse manufactured coral reefs, and the coral reefs on which ships were running aground displayed features of those that a given lighthouse manufactured, it might be more accurate.

8note 6y ago
Coral reefs do like to form on sunken ships, so that's still not far off
- goatcode 6y ago
  We may need to look into this further!

esja 6y ago

Wuhan is nowhere near the caves where these bat viruses have been found. It's over 1800 kilometres to Southwest Yunnan, for example.

gregwebs 6y ago

China is a big country. Wuhan is 900km away from the bat caves that are believed to be the breeding ground for these viruses.

koheripbal 6y ago
...but Wuhan is also 0km away from the wet markets that sell meat sourced x00km away near and around the bat caves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- a9h74j 6y ago
  I have seen estimates of thousands of wet markets in China and perhaps 10000 in all of Asia. Why the one wet market closest to a lab doing GOF research, and previously questioned on its containment rigor.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Because it is the largest city near the bat habitat - with the largest wet market. Wuhan is like Chicago in China. It's not some random small town. If an outbreak occurred in some rural area (which it might have previously), it's possible that it just fizzled out. Wuhan is a great place for a virus to spread.
    - tripletao 6y ago
      Take a look at this on a map. Mojiang (where RaTG13, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, was reportedly sampled) is closer to Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or HK than to Wuhan. Pu'er is roughly Chicago-sized, and it's 150 km away. Kunming is more people than two Chicagos, and it's 200 km away. It makes sense that this first emerged in a city, but Wuhan is far from the obvious geographic choice.
      - 6y ago

tripletao 6y ago

People keep saying this, but it's not true; SARS-like viruses haven't been found in nature near Wuhan. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q%26A.pdf https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli...

SiempreViernes 6y ago
You've said elsewhere that you think it's reasonable to to suppose they have unpublished samples that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, indeed that's your central claim. So why do you trust this statement about their sampling results but not the one about not having anything closer than RaTG13 [18.5, p6]?
- tripletao 6y ago
  Honestly, I don't fully. From a standpoint of a lab accident, evidence of natural zoonosis near Wuhan would be exculpatory and they'd have no reason to conceal it. But the CCP also seems to be pushing to exclude any origin whatsoever within China, like with their frozen food theory (which is thoroughly rejected by almost all scientists physically outside China, but which the WHO team nonetheless seems to be considering). So I think it's entirely possible e.g. that China has confidently determined the non-lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, but that it's from an agricultural practice so reckless that they've decided it's better for their reputation to leave everything shrouded in doubt. It's much more obvious to me that China is concealing something than what they're concealing. (Of course, that's usually how concealing stuff works.) That said, I still think zoonosis near Wuhan is unlikely. In a pre-pandemic publication with no incentive to lie, the WIV studied antibodies to SARS-like viruses in the blood of people living near bats in Yunnan province. They used blood from people living in Wuhan as a negative control: > As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ So while it's possible that natural zoonosis did occur in Wuhan, I believe that would require the WIV staff to be genuinely mistaken.