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>The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. Why should they be interested? We know how SARS type viruses can

>The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. Why should they be interested? We know how SARS type viruses can spread to humans, we know what other species are vulnerable, and we know what things make it more or less likely. A new outbreak was not a surprising result. What benefit is there to aggressively investigating the exact transmission method? If your mink idea was found to be accurate, would you advocate closing mink farms? It being the source this time doesn't make it likely to cause the next transferrable virus.

throwaway53453 6y ago
I'd argue China needs to engage in proper sanitation and stop treating citizens as disposable.
- dang 6y ago
  Please do not post nationalistic flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars, which we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html While I have you: could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
  - throwaway53453 6y ago
    Sorry dang, have no intention of spamming the website with different accounts. I'll pay more attention to the rules next time.
kittiepryde 6y ago
Science is about collecting data, verifying, collecting more, in a repeating never ending cycle. Stopping science (especially in areas of active present day research) in the belief that we know and are done with it, just isn't sound logic. Viruses are not yet solved.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  I am not arguing to stop science, I don't see the benefit we're hoping to get out of aggressively researching various theories about how exactly the 2019 covid virus spread to humans.
  - frenchy 6y ago
    Presumably a better understanding of the origins of the 2019 virus would be useful for predicting the likelyhood of a similar outbreak from the same source, or allow people to alter practices to reduce that likelyhood.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      Our current understanding of everything you mention is already good, and there have been no indications that I'm aware of that this case happened in a way that would alter that understanding. To show my point, even if we aggressively investigate the source and discover it did not originate in a lab, nobody would then argue that it's alright to lower security on such biolabs.
      - sooheon 6y ago
        But people may come up with 80/20 improvements to mitigate the actual source of the virus. Why is improved data a bad thing, in your view?
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        I think this data will only lead to results orientated thinking, where we ignore all the other sources we know possibly could have caused it. Heavily financing research into finding the exact source provides no benefit I can find, and could cause further harm.
lamontcg 6y ago
That means that mink, and particularly the practice of mink farming is likely to lead to another outbreak (or whatever the actual species is determined to be). That animal would have sufficiently similar biology to humans, including the ACE2 receptor so that zoonotic transmission could happen. Those farms would definitely need to be closed.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  I have not researched this mink idea, so I don't know how likely they are to lead to cross species contamination, but remember the swine flu? We already know pigs are capable of such transmission and we still farm them. Lots of mammals are capable of this, and we can determine which ones are even if we don't isolate the cause of thie pandemic.
  - aden1ne 6y ago
    Minks (and other mustelids) are extraordinarily capable of transmitting human respiratory viral diseases. Ferrets (same genus as Minks) are used as an animal model for human influenza research for that reason. SARS-CoV-2 also spreads exceptionally well on mink farms. Out of a total of 128 mink farms in the Netherlands, at least 69[0] had an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, with more suspected cases. On at least two farms, there were confirmed transmissions from the animals to farm workers. It is likely mink would form a natural reservoir SARS-CoV-2 if allowed to spread in the wild. Mink farming has subsequently been banned since early 2021 in the Netherlands. [0]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-19/gezondheid-en-zorg/dieren/nertsen https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-1... (Dutch)
wonnage 6y ago
In any case, the original statement is silly in light of the fact that the origin of the much smaller SARS epidemic was still diligently researched and traced for 15+ years until it was finally found, in 2018: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  And thankfully confirming what was suspected prevented future outbreaks of similar diseases.

throwaway53453 6y ago

I'd argue China needs to engage in proper sanitation and stop treating citizens as disposable.

dang 6y ago
Please do not post nationalistic flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars, which we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html While I have you: could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  Sorry dang, have no intention of spamming the website with different accounts. I'll pay more attention to the rules next time.

kittiepryde 6y ago

Science is about collecting data, verifying, collecting more, in a repeating never ending cycle. Stopping science (especially in areas of active present day research) in the belief that we know and are done with it, just isn't sound logic. Viruses are not yet solved.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
I am not arguing to stop science, I don't see the benefit we're hoping to get out of aggressively researching various theories about how exactly the 2019 covid virus spread to humans.
- frenchy 6y ago
  Presumably a better understanding of the origins of the 2019 virus would be useful for predicting the likelyhood of a similar outbreak from the same source, or allow people to alter practices to reduce that likelyhood.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Our current understanding of everything you mention is already good, and there have been no indications that I'm aware of that this case happened in a way that would alter that understanding. To show my point, even if we aggressively investigate the source and discover it did not originate in a lab, nobody would then argue that it's alright to lower security on such biolabs.
    - sooheon 6y ago
      But people may come up with 80/20 improvements to mitigate the actual source of the virus. Why is improved data a bad thing, in your view?
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        I think this data will only lead to results orientated thinking, where we ignore all the other sources we know possibly could have caused it. Heavily financing research into finding the exact source provides no benefit I can find, and could cause further harm.

lamontcg 6y ago

That means that mink, and particularly the practice of mink farming is likely to lead to another outbreak (or whatever the actual species is determined to be). That animal would have sufficiently similar biology to humans, including the ACE2 receptor so that zoonotic transmission could happen. Those farms would definitely need to be closed.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
I have not researched this mink idea, so I don't know how likely they are to lead to cross species contamination, but remember the swine flu? We already know pigs are capable of such transmission and we still farm them. Lots of mammals are capable of this, and we can determine which ones are even if we don't isolate the cause of thie pandemic.
- aden1ne 6y ago
  Minks (and other mustelids) are extraordinarily capable of transmitting human respiratory viral diseases. Ferrets (same genus as Minks) are used as an animal model for human influenza research for that reason. SARS-CoV-2 also spreads exceptionally well on mink farms. Out of a total of 128 mink farms in the Netherlands, at least 69[0] had an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, with more suspected cases. On at least two farms, there were confirmed transmissions from the animals to farm workers. It is likely mink would form a natural reservoir SARS-CoV-2 if allowed to spread in the wild. Mink farming has subsequently been banned since early 2021 in the Netherlands. [0]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-19/gezondheid-en-zorg/dieren/nertsen https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-1... (Dutch)

wonnage 6y ago

In any case, the original statement is silly in light of the fact that the origin of the much smaller SARS epidemic was still diligently researched and traced for 15+ years until it was finally found, in 2018: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

boomboomsubban 6y ago
And thankfully confirming what was suspected prevented future outbreaks of similar diseases.