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We need to know the origin of Covid-19

105 points by RickJWagner 6y ago

hhjj 6y ago
"The Chinese government owes the world complete transparency at the Wuhan lab. We need to know how to make virus research as safe as possible." We don't know the origin of covid but we already know how to fix it? That looks biased.
- fredgrott 6y ago
  not many on this site trust the NSA or the CIA. But, both orgs have stated both privately and in public that that is not the believable case. The question should be raise purely on China health concerns as the world will still face it taking 5 to 6 years to vaccinate China. But at the same time we want China to accept the vaccine help rather than harm that effort in over-asking them to endure public pain of their health focus failings. There will be no fast and easy answers here
  - acdha 6y ago
    > not many on this site trust the NSA or the CIA. > But, both orgs have stated both privately and in public that that is not the believable case. Do you have a citation for that? The public statements last week had it as one of the two scenarios they were studying (along with a lab leak) which is not as strong as the claim you’re making.
- veltas 6y ago
  If the Chinese government reveals more about what happened, shows any sign of anything being covered up or censored, then information will be revealed that can be spun to put more focus/attention on them regardless of the root cause. Cooperation has been disincentivized by the political rhetoric about China's potential culpability in the outbreak.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  It seems to me that no government will accept that they owe the world complete transparency on anything, much less virus research.
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Well written article. I don't know if the title reflects the content. I would probably describe it something closer to : "Summary of what we know about the origin of COVID-19"
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Not really. Instead of asking the question “Did something go wrong with a research process?”, it focused on the culpability of China, but assigns accountability for the US involvement (ie. Funding the research) as a personal act of Fauci. In other words, it’s yet another political doctor using the credibility of his profession to peddle a stupid political angle. Obviously COVID-19 is not an effective biological warfare mechanism — it’s too virulent and not deadly enough. The whole narrative is dumb, more about keeping the low-IQ voting base titillated with bread and circus.
ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
Avirus with such shape... spread such a scale... let me tell you the wild doesn't have this signature... the only signature from such a context... is "madness" and the only ocuring madness on earth is human spread...
slver 6y ago
I personally really need to know the purpose of life, the origin of the Universe and so on, but I don't get to. The origin of COVID-19 will never be known for certain for logistical, factual, and most of all political/diplomatic reasons. What I know for sure though is the media will chew that topic and spin soft-conspiracies around it for years to come. It's a TV pundit dream to have a topic like this. No one knows for sure, which means their opinions can boldly go into speculation and science-fiction and nobody could claim otherwise for sure.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  Yeah I've said before, there is not falsifiability to the claim a lab released this virus, so all of these conversations come across as insincere. As a thought experiment, imagine that outbreak did start from a lab accident. Say they collected a sample originated from nature, then had an a accident with it. - Now how do you prove that this didn't happen? The virus will have no indication of being man-made (it's not) so you get to wave off scientists who are telling you it's not man-made. The lab will never admit that there was an accident because of how many layers of pressure there are to never admit this (not just from a high level, but from individuals who don't want to be "responsible" for a global pandemic). So you get to wave off their claims of innocence too. - You're essentially saying you don't accept proof this didn't happen, but you want proof it did... without falsifiability that "proof" will never be anything scientifically sound. It's like if a child says you have cooties (the imaginary ones, not a louse). You can't prove them wrong because cooties don't exist and the definition is in their hands (you: I can check with a microscope; child: They're completely invisible and too small for that). No logic will ever counter their claim, the only responses are emotional. Accepting that you do have them and move on, or stoically choosing not to engage.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Do we call this Russel's Lab Accident?
anoonmoose 6y ago
> "This obviously would require the cooperation of the Chinese government, which we have not seen to date." That's an understatement; I would actually go as far as to say that if you write an entire article and this your conclusion, it was a waste of time to write the article.
cies 6y ago
If we look at the broader problem with infectious disease, it seems most have their origin in our relation with animals: too many animals, in bad living conditions, mingling with humans. The solution seems to be: stop using animals for our food/pleasure/clothing/medicine. We knew this before C19. But sadly the solutions is most advertised are: more virus research labs (which also needs animals), more vaccines, more distancing... These are not actual solutions.
- toolz 6y ago
  Alternatively, maybe we should mingle with animals more often such that novel viruses are common enough that we experience them with far more cross-reactive immunity than we did with covid. I'm of the opinion we have a long way to go before our primary defense against viruses is _not_ our immune system. If I'm correct I think many of our strategies to limit exposure and pretend we can hide from pathogens is very misguided.
  - TheBigSalad 6y ago
    Viruses are not healthy for you.
    - toolz 6y ago
      That's simply not true at all. There are beneficial viruses, but that isn't my point to begin with. My point is that viruses are unavoidable. That being the case you want to experience many endemic viruses to boost your immunity rather than a once a decade pandemic inducing virus.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - rswail 6y ago
    We haven't actually evolved to occupy an ecological niche that has us "mingling with" animals such as bats. This is not something we can "breed into" ourselves. Our primary strategy to limit exposure is to not have contact with animals with novel coronaviruses or others that can cross species. So we have to rely on our immune systems as our primary protection. Vaccines, theraputics, and public health measures are the only other strategies we have.
toolz 6y ago
The title is a bit misleading, I still don't know why we need to know the origin. Will that somehow help prevent future pandemics? I'd love to understand the origins out of scientific curiosity, but sadly I'm afraid too many people will pretend this is somebodies fault. I'm american and I know 2/3 CDC labs producing covid tests contaminated PCR tests during an early review. I'm quite certain we'll blame a Chinese lab leaks for covid while sweeping our own mistakes under the rug quite readily.
- delfinom 6y ago
  Don't forget the numerous times in the past the CDC has fucked up, including 75 CDC employees potentially exposed to anthrax in 2014 because they shipped live instead of dead samples of the lethal strain.
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    But at least you know, or at least someone can try to find out ... that we can’t is not an excuse to say we should not. The whole debate is crazy in the sense we can talk talk talk. But you can have a country that is likely the source of the virus not investigated. And running vaccination that is not helping the countries that use it (chile ...). It is all fine. Human race who care.
- adrianb 6y ago
  Was it a natural origin? We need to understand how bats came into contact with an intermediary species, how that came into contact with humans, how to minimize risks in the future. Was it a lab leak? We need to know if safety protocols were followed and to develop better protocols if needed. By your logic, we would never investigate any accident. Why look into the cause of a fire, it won't help bring back the victims or restore the damage. We should only look into how the response of the firefighters could've been better? No. We should look into both. We even investigate every single airplane incident even if there were no victims and develop new safety protocols around them.
  - pabs3 6y ago
sschueller 6y ago
If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. For this reason I doubt we will ever find out what really happened as there is a lot of blame to go around. Do we really need to know? Lab leaks are nothing new and regardless need to prevented at all cost. Maybe there needs to be an independent international regulatory setup that inspects these labs.
- vcavallo 6y ago
  > Do we really need to know? If this were the case and we had more details on the engineering of the virus, we could have (could still) improved our approach to dealing with it. So to the extent that damage to life and prosperity could have been at least partially mediated, yes, we need(ed) to know.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Somebody needs to know and somebody needs to take corrective action if appropriate. You & I don't need to know.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      This is straight up dystopian. Why hide this information?
      - bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Because the subsequent witch hunt will make future disclosures even less likely.
    - hirundo 6y ago
      Public pressure is a crucial motivator for taking corrective action. The less you and I know, the less chance we can collectively apply that force, if appropriate.
      - 6y ago
kinop1o 6y ago
"One thing is well established: COVID-19 started in China." Fun fact: virus found in a place does not mean anything about its origination. Check the infectious disease history
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Ever heard of Occam's razor ?
  - calvano915 6y ago
    First site of large scale breakout does not equal definite site of origin.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Yup, but if you were to make a judgement call, more like than not that it would be the same place.
- jxi 6y ago
  Agree, though do you have some good examples of this?
vitus 6y ago
> We are now 16 months into the most serious global pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1919, and we still don’t know the origin of the virus. Weird way to start out the article, given that we don't actually know where the Spanish flu came from.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  We have slightly more resources now to find out than in 1918...
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    We still lack a time machine to gather short lived evidence from 2 years ago.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      That would assume all evidence is completely gone by now.
- sjg007 6y ago
  We know the spanish flu came from Kansas.
  - WhompingWindows 6y ago
    The first observations of mortality were observed in Kansas in March 1918, but then in April it was already in France, Germany, and the UK. The first recorded case was an army cook in Kansas, but researchers believe there were likely cases before this. So, it's hard to know for sure exactly where the index case arose.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not. It's also likely that China should be more careful when doing this research. The US has had some pretty egregious virus leaks while doing their research so the latter statement doesn't say anything bad about China, just that they haven't learned as many hard lessons as the US has. Given the first two statements, does it really matter much whether COVID escaped from a Chinese lab or was of natural origin? The same actions should be taken either way. The big difference is that the knowledge enables a Chinese witch hunt.
- SCHiM 6y ago
  No, the big difference is, that if it leaked from their lab _they_ are responsible. That's not a witch hunt. If I crash my car into your car today, it does not matter that you crashed your car into someone else two years ago.
- athrowaway3z 6y ago
  > Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not. That's a big fucking upside you see to China's research. You can make these statements when you are still talking about hypothetical risk. But we already have one outcome, i.e. the current pandemic and its costs. So what you are saying here is: The cost benefit of China doing novel disease research is at least as valuable as all the costs of COVID-19 so far. I'm not falsifying your conclusion, but you will need to back up the first statement with something at least.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    I am curious, what exactly do we get from researching these diseases? It wasn't apparent to me at all that the vaccines have come from people who study those diseases, but people who study those medical approaches. Maybe that's naive of me.
    - HelloNurse 6y ago
      Experts of vaccine design and productions rely on the findings on experts of virus physiology and chemistry to know what their vaccine should do (specifically, what virus components, among many equally easy to hack ones, promise to be more disruptive). It's a complementary relationship, like Product Development and Sales or aerial reconnaissance and bombardment.
thinkingemote 6y ago
Too soon, this is like saying "we need to know whether or not Saddam is actually making nuclear bombs". This is something that being right at the time gives no advantages and which time will reveal.
- minikites 6y ago
  Think about who benefits from Sinophobia.
ericmay 6y ago
I’m pretty sure the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan lab on accident, and here we are. CCP incompetence or apathy allowed it to spread worldwide. They were doing legitimate research there and the protocols simply failed this one time and here we are. Viruses can escape labs. Happened in the U.K. too. The amount of cover-up and unwillingness of world leaders to really talk about the potential origin makes sense because they don’t want to create anti-Asian sentiments. We are already seeing some of that recently (attacks on Asians by morons and racists). Trump was willing to stoke the flames. He called it the China Virus specifically because of this - I think he was pissed off that it happened given his anti-China rhetoric and that world leaders probably agreed not to probe into it too much and to keep distance from the theory to prevent racist hate attacks and violence (which was probably the right thing to do). For China, well, can’t ever admit anything bad happened and all that with the authoritarian regime. So the motivation there is obvious. To me this group of actions would make the most sense geopolitically, subject to new information.
- permo-w 6y ago
  “CCP incompetence or apathy” caused the virus to spread or scheming. Let’s say the CCP sees the original SARS, sees the economic destruction it can wreak, quietly prepares for a pandemic - not so much that it’ll look obvious, but enough that they’ll recover significantly quicker than other nations - then releases the virus in a place known to have wet markets and a viral lab, giving them extra plausible deniability. The virus tears through the west, giving the quickly recovered and happily subsided Chinese businesses space to jump in and fill the void left by dying and dead western companies. It’s similar to what they did with the steel industry. They subsidised their steel for so long that the western steel companies went out of business from being unable to compete, then they raised their prices, and were left dominant in the market
  - Mordisquitos 6y ago
    You might as well come up with a conspiracy theory proposing that it was the Taiwanese Kuomintang who released the engineered SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan with the win-win possibilities of either a) destroying the PRC's economy and political status if they failed to contain it or b) destroying their international reputation if the virus spread out of their borders and damaged the west more than them. The Kuomitang would know that the CCP's secrecy and lack of transparency would only encourage conspiracy theories about them plotting to release the virus for their own benefit. Furthermore, unlike the PRC, Taiwan would have enough motivation to engage in such risky conspiracies as they face a literal existential threat. I mean yes, this conspiracy theory is post hoc bullshit... But what makes it any worse than the one suspecting the CCP?
JPDSm8NTaAYBHd 6y ago
China lab.
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
Wuhan lab leak is an unfounded speculative conspiracy theory that will get you banned from all major social platforms; twitter, youtube, facebook, etc. You may not discuss this issue further. "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” ― George R.R. Martin Oh and it's also completely false and a conspiracy theory that only months before covid; deadly viruses were being sent to Wuhan Lab. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canadian-scientist-sent-deadly-viruses-to-wuhan-lab-months-before-rcmp-asked-to-investigate-1.5609582 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canadian-scientist-s... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-escorted-from-infectious-disease-lab-amid-rcmp-investigation-1.5211567 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e... That the RCMP removed this Chinese viral researcher from the lab and then never issued anything about it. You can read it right there in those CBC articles. Those Chinese researchers have also never been heard from since the RCMP got involved. But dont worry, this is all a conspiracy theory as proposed by the CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-online-chatter-conspiracy-1.5442376 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-on... Wait the CBC is calling themselves conspiracy theorists? No factual basis for the previous 2 CBC articles? https://globalnews.ca/news/7723161/coronavirus-phac-government-scientists/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7723161/coronavirus-phac-governme... Wait the University and public health no longer oppose their firing and won't actually say why they were fired? Just that there was indeed a policy breach? https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/31/health-agency-ordered-to-release-documents-on-viruses-sent-to-china/ https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/31/health-agency-ordered-to-rel... They have until today to release the documents and public health is refusing to obey the government orders? Can they even do that? It's a good thing this is all just a conspiracy theory.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." Right, but remember that censorship isn't just bad because it silences truth-tellers. It is also bad because it can amplify falsehoods. > It's a good thing this is all just a conspiracy theory. Your sarcasm is ambiguous. Perhaps you mean that it's unlikely that all the topics your discussing are conspiracy theories. Perhaps you meant that they are all true and are all being painted as conspiracy theories. Perhaps you meant something in between. Generous interpretation requires me to ask you what you meant, at which point you can choose any of the above adventures. The irony is that to me that kind of hedging and sarcasm starts to smell a lot like conspiracy theory rhetoric.
newacct583 6y ago
Author is a republican politician with no expertise in epidemiology or virology. Absent evidence, this whole China Lab theory is literally just tinfoil hat speculation. As gets repeated ad nauseum every time this comes up, there is absolutely nothing about the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 that is even remotely difficult to explain as a natural process. It's a close relative of a virus known to exist on the same continent in a species group known to transit large distances easily. People who insist on "asking questions" here aren't people who are curious, they are people who really, really want the answer to conform to their priors about modern geopolitics (or, frankly, just people who want to have an enemy to hate). It's not healthy, and it's not going anywhere. We need to stop.
- Quarrelsome 6y ago
  > this whole China Lab theory is literally just tinfoil hat speculation I feel like that's a bit cold. This is a virus whose closest relatives are known to exist in animals that are the specific animals that they specialise in, in that lab where they also do science around viruses like this one. Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there? Enough at least to take it beyond the realm of tin foil.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    "Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there?" is pretty much the definition of tinfoil hat nuttery. You accuse people of serious crimes when you have evidence. Not before. It's not like evidence would be hard to find if it existed. Is there a whistleblower? No. Is there a specific feature of SARS-CoV-2 that matches other known genes that would be difficult to explain by natural evolution? No. Stop chasing coincidence and clicking on partisan opinion essays that confirm your priors and go find some evidence.
    - Quarrelsome 6y ago
      ye but government ain't people and the CCP has not been forthcoming in providing the evidence it has. Your attitude falls apart in this climate. There is no evidence so there is no one to blame. Perfect! Chimes the CCP.
smitherfield 6y ago
I think a useful concept with this is the legal doctrine of adverse inference.[1] If one of the parties to a lawsuit conceals or destroys important evidence, it is assumed that that evidence would have been unfavorable to the party which concealed or destroyed it. So, while we may not be able to know for sure how COVID-19 originated, we can certainly draw an adverse inference from the behavior of the Chinese government. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
- xxxxxxx12 6y ago
  This has been my guiding heuristic - China has acted unmistakably suspect. They've got a political and ideological character that requires controlling narratives and erasing any trace of incompetence(this threatens the illusion of supreme power).
  - Arnt 6y ago
    If their political and ideological character requires controlling narrative, then surely any single instance means nothing. If I have an espresso every morning, the fact that I have one tomorrow morning means nothing. If I don't have one tomorrow, if I deviate from my usual behaviour, that might mean something significant. But following one's normal routine is just… normal.
    - bluefirebrand 6y ago
      The difference is that the ethical implications of you buying your espresso daily don't make you inherently less trustworthy. The "routine" of burying evidence, silencing dissidents, and constant propaganda does absolutely reduce China's trustworthiness. To the point where we can and probably should always assume the worst of that regime.
      - Arnt 6y ago
        You misunderstand. What you said (and which I agree with) is that they always want to control the narrative. Not when they've done anything wrong, but always. I agree with that part — it's aregime that wants to control the narrative always, just so the populace won't get used to the existence of anything beyond control of the regime. However, since the regime always wants to control the narrative, you cannot assume that wanting to control a particular narrative means anything more than "they're acting as usual". You can assume that the regime is untrustworthy in general, but you cannot assume anything particular about this instance. Your argument is tantamount to "any control freak can and probably be assumed guilty of everything".
ngcc_hk 6y ago
The answer is we must. The problem is we have to ask this question show the real problem. Imagine it is from German, japan ... china and Russia is fundamentally enemy of human race and this is the proof.
klmadfejno 6y ago
I don't think it matters much. Comparing which rare event is more likely is still a toss up. But I am curious: What kind of stats do we have on BL4 lab leaks historically? Or that lab in particular? Is there validity to the state department claim that the lab reported flu like symptoms in its scientists months prior to COVID breaking out? Or is that trump admin bluster?
henearkr 6y ago
It's destroying the geopolitical consensus on joining forces to solve the problem, by pointing our finger on the country where it originated (the next pandemic can come from anywhere). We know that it came from animals and that human activity (be it meat markets or laboratories) made the bridge. What we really need is an efficient global infrastructure to quickly research and deliver vaccines to everyone on the planet. The Nipah virus, Ebola, we were already too much lucky that they did not turn in to global catastrophes, and many more viruses are waiting for us in the future.
zamalek 6y ago
At my old job, one specific manager would go on a tirade of "who to blame" at the onset of any serious issue. More resources were consistently spent on finding out who caused a problem instead of solving the problem. I've grown a keen eye for this antipattern. I don't understand which problem laying the blame addresses. We have a vaccine. We should be solving the problem of getting that vaccine into as many people as possible, which is a problem that the WHO can help with. Finally, the author of this article has made it extremely clear that they would only accept one answer. I'm all for rooting out accountability once the pandemic is over, but such blatant refusal to entertain any other explanations is definitively a which hunt.
chasd00 6y ago
I would hope the guilt associated with millions of deaths would compel someone to come forward but I’m not holding my breath.
- taylodl 6y ago
  That's why I don't think it leaked from a lab, or, if it did, the lab in question is completely unaware of the leak. There is the possibility the virus leaked from a lab without the lab having any knowledge and while the lab was faithfully executing all safety protocols. What we do know is the disease made its first mass appearance in Wuhan and the Chinese government did their level best to cover it up. That doesn't necessarily point to a leak, but it does show the Chinese knew there was a novel disease that was quickly spreading and causing severe problems. It's apparent they tried to contain the disease and failed. It could still be the case the disease originated outside of Wuhan but took root there first. It may take years to figure out the origin of this disease.
hnbad 6y ago
We literally don't. SARS-CoV-2019 isn't some kind of novel deadly supervirus. It's pretty much the kind of virus that has been predicted for years to cause a pandemic eventually. Yet most of the world was woefully underprepared because we didn't take the risk seriously. Yes, it's good to know where the virus originated and if it was caused by a lab containment breach it's important for the international community to be able to learn from the mistakes. But that won't prevent the next pandemic and it won't help us deal with the next pandemic when it happens. Climate change has already been predicted to make future pandemics more likely and more frequent. Prevention is important, yes, but crisis management is much more important. As members of an IT-centric community HNers should know that "just don't make mistakes" is not a good strategy for dealing with bugs or incidents. China seems to have the situation somewhat under control following the initial catastrophic outbreak. Some other countries, especially in Asia (e.g. Vietnam), have also successfully managed the pandemic despite having close ties to China in general and the Wuhan region in particular. The common thread seems to be ruthlessly fact-based policies (e.g. no early "dialing back" of lockdowns) and free access to testing, vaccinations and general support (e.g. food) while under quarantine. The countries currently hit the worst either simply failed to act at all or (like Germany) kept riding the R=1.0 edge by going constantly back and forth out of a fear for "the economy" (despite epidemiologists and economists explicitly warning against this).
Bayesian_bro 6y ago
I've been looking into the research that was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is an NIH grant that was doing interesting research around bat coronavirus. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... . I would encourage you to read into their research methods. This one is pretty scary in retrospect https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/11427_2017_Article_9189.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114.... Research methods included synthesizing new Coronavirus variants with specific genes. It's not a smoking gun but it's definitely a loaded gun.
throwaway4good 6y ago
It came from nature to demonstrate the hubris and incompetence of the western world ...
estebarb 6y ago
I don't get the article. It suggests that the virus originated in a chinese virus lab doing research on behalf of the US? And honestly, how knowing the origin is useful other than flamming sinophoby? I don't remember the world blaming americans on H1N1. What we need to know is why some countries are keeping vaccines for themselves, even if they don't plan to use them. A virus leak is an accident, monopolizing vaccines is genocide.
asterix_pano 6y ago
We can know with pretty much certainty that raising a huge number of animals in close spaces is just asking for disaster. But I don't see us stopping to kill 70 billions land animals a year and the world becoming vegan anytime soon.
HelloNurse 6y ago
> In the critical first weeks of the pandemic, Beijing suppressed essential information and prevented World Health Organization investigators from entering the country. > ... > Second, the Chinese equivalent of our CDC tested 41 species in the market and to date no intermediary species carrying the virus capable of transmitting the virus to humans has been identified. If you don't trust the Chinese government, why do you take their evidence against a competing theory at face value? Shouldn't they protect equally their research institutions, their meat markets, their public health authorities, and anybody else who might have committed a serious mistake? Of course, reading not very much between the lines, this piece looks like an attack by some right-wing clique with accounts to settle against Anthony Fauci, prominently noted as supporting the animal market hypothesis and having funded WIV coronavirus research; propaganda for a semi-smart audience.
larsga 6y ago
It's no mystery where it came from. A very similar virus (SARS-CoV-1) came very close to sparking a global pandemic in 2004. In late 2017 that virus was found in bats in a cave in Yunnan, China. The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 has no name, just the code RaTG13. In 2013 three miners cleaned out bat shit from a mine in China and all three died of viral pneumonia caused by RaTG13. Why that didn't spark a pandemic is not known, but basically we got lucky for the second time. Then, in 2019, we had the third incident, but this time we didn't get lucky. In theory this virus could have come from a lab, but it's far, far more likely it came from wild bats. And its cousin SARS-CoV-1 is still out there in bats. It could be let loose for the second time at any moment. That lab doesn't worry me. Bats do.

105 points by RickJWagner 6y ago

hhjj 6y ago

"The Chinese government owes the world complete transparency at the Wuhan lab. We need to know how to make virus research as safe as possible." We don't know the origin of covid but we already know how to fix it? That looks biased.

fredgrott 6y ago
not many on this site trust the NSA or the CIA. But, both orgs have stated both privately and in public that that is not the believable case. The question should be raise purely on China health concerns as the world will still face it taking 5 to 6 years to vaccinate China. But at the same time we want China to accept the vaccine help rather than harm that effort in over-asking them to endure public pain of their health focus failings. There will be no fast and easy answers here
- acdha 6y ago
  > not many on this site trust the NSA or the CIA. > But, both orgs have stated both privately and in public that that is not the believable case. Do you have a citation for that? The public statements last week had it as one of the two scenarios they were studying (along with a lab leak) which is not as strong as the claim you’re making.
veltas 6y ago
If the Chinese government reveals more about what happened, shows any sign of anything being covered up or censored, then information will be revealed that can be spun to put more focus/attention on them regardless of the root cause. Cooperation has been disincentivized by the political rhetoric about China's potential culpability in the outbreak.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
It seems to me that no government will accept that they owe the world complete transparency on anything, much less virus research.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

Well written article. I don't know if the title reflects the content. I would probably describe it something closer to : "Summary of what we know about the origin of COVID-19"

Spooky23 6y ago
Not really. Instead of asking the question “Did something go wrong with a research process?”, it focused on the culpability of China, but assigns accountability for the US involvement (ie. Funding the research) as a personal act of Fauci. In other words, it’s yet another political doctor using the credibility of his profession to peddle a stupid political angle. Obviously COVID-19 is not an effective biological warfare mechanism — it’s too virulent and not deadly enough. The whole narrative is dumb, more about keeping the low-IQ voting base titillated with bread and circus.

ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago

Avirus with such shape... spread such a scale... let me tell you the wild doesn't have this signature... the only signature from such a context... is "madness" and the only ocuring madness on earth is human spread...

slver 6y ago

I personally really need to know the purpose of life, the origin of the Universe and so on, but I don't get to. The origin of COVID-19 will never be known for certain for logistical, factual, and most of all political/diplomatic reasons. What I know for sure though is the media will chew that topic and spin soft-conspiracies around it for years to come. It's a TV pundit dream to have a topic like this. No one knows for sure, which means their opinions can boldly go into speculation and science-fiction and nobody could claim otherwise for sure.

BoorishBears 6y ago
Yeah I've said before, there is not falsifiability to the claim a lab released this virus, so all of these conversations come across as insincere. As a thought experiment, imagine that outbreak did start from a lab accident. Say they collected a sample originated from nature, then had an a accident with it. - Now how do you prove that this didn't happen? The virus will have no indication of being man-made (it's not) so you get to wave off scientists who are telling you it's not man-made. The lab will never admit that there was an accident because of how many layers of pressure there are to never admit this (not just from a high level, but from individuals who don't want to be "responsible" for a global pandemic). So you get to wave off their claims of innocence too. - You're essentially saying you don't accept proof this didn't happen, but you want proof it did... without falsifiability that "proof" will never be anything scientifically sound. It's like if a child says you have cooties (the imaginary ones, not a louse). You can't prove them wrong because cooties don't exist and the definition is in their hands (you: I can check with a microscope; child: They're completely invisible and too small for that). No logic will ever counter their claim, the only responses are emotional. Accepting that you do have them and move on, or stoically choosing not to engage.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Do we call this Russel's Lab Accident?

anoonmoose 6y ago

> "This obviously would require the cooperation of the Chinese government, which we have not seen to date." That's an understatement; I would actually go as far as to say that if you write an entire article and this your conclusion, it was a waste of time to write the article.

cies 6y ago

If we look at the broader problem with infectious disease, it seems most have their origin in our relation with animals: too many animals, in bad living conditions, mingling with humans. The solution seems to be: stop using animals for our food/pleasure/clothing/medicine. We knew this before C19. But sadly the solutions is most advertised are: more virus research labs (which also needs animals), more vaccines, more distancing... These are not actual solutions.

toolz 6y ago
Alternatively, maybe we should mingle with animals more often such that novel viruses are common enough that we experience them with far more cross-reactive immunity than we did with covid. I'm of the opinion we have a long way to go before our primary defense against viruses is _not_ our immune system. If I'm correct I think many of our strategies to limit exposure and pretend we can hide from pathogens is very misguided.
- TheBigSalad 6y ago
  Viruses are not healthy for you.
  - toolz 6y ago
    That's simply not true at all. There are beneficial viruses, but that isn't my point to begin with. My point is that viruses are unavoidable. That being the case you want to experience many endemic viruses to boost your immunity rather than a once a decade pandemic inducing virus.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rswail 6y ago
  We haven't actually evolved to occupy an ecological niche that has us "mingling with" animals such as bats. This is not something we can "breed into" ourselves. Our primary strategy to limit exposure is to not have contact with animals with novel coronaviruses or others that can cross species. So we have to rely on our immune systems as our primary protection. Vaccines, theraputics, and public health measures are the only other strategies we have.

toolz 6y ago

The title is a bit misleading, I still don't know why we need to know the origin. Will that somehow help prevent future pandemics? I'd love to understand the origins out of scientific curiosity, but sadly I'm afraid too many people will pretend this is somebodies fault. I'm american and I know 2/3 CDC labs producing covid tests contaminated PCR tests during an early review. I'm quite certain we'll blame a Chinese lab leaks for covid while sweeping our own mistakes under the rug quite readily.

delfinom 6y ago
Don't forget the numerous times in the past the CDC has fucked up, including 75 CDC employees potentially exposed to anthrax in 2014 because they shipped live instead of dead samples of the lethal strain.
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  But at least you know, or at least someone can try to find out ... that we can’t is not an excuse to say we should not. The whole debate is crazy in the sense we can talk talk talk. But you can have a country that is likely the source of the virus not investigated. And running vaccination that is not helping the countries that use it (chile ...). It is all fine. Human race who care.
adrianb 6y ago
Was it a natural origin? We need to understand how bats came into contact with an intermediary species, how that came into contact with humans, how to minimize risks in the future. Was it a lab leak? We need to know if safety protocols were followed and to develop better protocols if needed. By your logic, we would never investigate any accident. Why look into the cause of a fire, it won't help bring back the victims or restore the damage. We should only look into how the response of the firefighters could've been better? No. We should look into both. We even investigate every single airplane incident even if there were no victims and develop new safety protocols around them.
- pabs3 6y ago

sschueller 6y ago

If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. For this reason I doubt we will ever find out what really happened as there is a lot of blame to go around. Do we really need to know? Lab leaks are nothing new and regardless need to prevented at all cost. Maybe there needs to be an independent international regulatory setup that inspects these labs.

vcavallo 6y ago
> Do we really need to know? If this were the case and we had more details on the engineering of the virus, we could have (could still) improved our approach to dealing with it. So to the extent that damage to life and prosperity could have been at least partially mediated, yes, we need(ed) to know.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Somebody needs to know and somebody needs to take corrective action if appropriate. You & I don't need to know.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    This is straight up dystopian. Why hide this information?
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      Because the subsequent witch hunt will make future disclosures even less likely.
  - hirundo 6y ago
    Public pressure is a crucial motivator for taking corrective action. The less you and I know, the less chance we can collectively apply that force, if appropriate.
    - 6y ago

kinop1o 6y ago

"One thing is well established: COVID-19 started in China." Fun fact: virus found in a place does not mean anything about its origination. Check the infectious disease history

ekianjo 6y ago
Ever heard of Occam's razor ?
- calvano915 6y ago
  First site of large scale breakout does not equal definite site of origin.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Yup, but if you were to make a judgement call, more like than not that it would be the same place.
jxi 6y ago
Agree, though do you have some good examples of this?

vitus 6y ago

> We are now 16 months into the most serious global pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1919, and we still don’t know the origin of the virus. Weird way to start out the article, given that we don't actually know where the Spanish flu came from.

ekianjo 6y ago
We have slightly more resources now to find out than in 1918...
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  We still lack a time machine to gather short lived evidence from 2 years ago.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    That would assume all evidence is completely gone by now.
sjg007 6y ago
We know the spanish flu came from Kansas.
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  The first observations of mortality were observed in Kansas in March 1918, but then in April it was already in France, Germany, and the UK. The first recorded case was an army cook in Kansas, but researchers believe there were likely cases before this. So, it's hard to know for sure exactly where the index case arose.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not. It's also likely that China should be more careful when doing this research. The US has had some pretty egregious virus leaks while doing their research so the latter statement doesn't say anything bad about China, just that they haven't learned as many hard lessons as the US has. Given the first two statements, does it really matter much whether COVID escaped from a Chinese lab or was of natural origin? The same actions should be taken either way. The big difference is that the knowledge enables a Chinese witch hunt.

SCHiM 6y ago
No, the big difference is, that if it leaked from their lab _they_ are responsible. That's not a witch hunt. If I crash my car into your car today, it does not matter that you crashed your car into someone else two years ago.
athrowaway3z 6y ago
> Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not. That's a big fucking upside you see to China's research. You can make these statements when you are still talking about hypothetical risk. But we already have one outcome, i.e. the current pandemic and its costs. So what you are saying here is: The cost benefit of China doing novel disease research is at least as valuable as all the costs of COVID-19 so far. I'm not falsifying your conclusion, but you will need to back up the first statement with something at least.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I am curious, what exactly do we get from researching these diseases? It wasn't apparent to me at all that the vaccines have come from people who study those diseases, but people who study those medical approaches. Maybe that's naive of me.
  - HelloNurse 6y ago
    Experts of vaccine design and productions rely on the findings on experts of virus physiology and chemistry to know what their vaccine should do (specifically, what virus components, among many equally easy to hack ones, promise to be more disruptive). It's a complementary relationship, like Product Development and Sales or aerial reconnaissance and bombardment.

thinkingemote 6y ago

Too soon, this is like saying "we need to know whether or not Saddam is actually making nuclear bombs". This is something that being right at the time gives no advantages and which time will reveal.

minikites 6y ago
Think about who benefits from Sinophobia.

ericmay 6y ago

I’m pretty sure the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan lab on accident, and here we are. CCP incompetence or apathy allowed it to spread worldwide. They were doing legitimate research there and the protocols simply failed this one time and here we are. Viruses can escape labs. Happened in the U.K. too. The amount of cover-up and unwillingness of world leaders to really talk about the potential origin makes sense because they don’t want to create anti-Asian sentiments. We are already seeing some of that recently (attacks on Asians by morons and racists). Trump was willing to stoke the flames. He called it the China Virus specifically because of this - I think he was pissed off that it happened given his anti-China rhetoric and that world leaders probably agreed not to probe into it too much and to keep distance from the theory to prevent racist hate attacks and violence (which was probably the right thing to do). For China, well, can’t ever admit anything bad happened and all that with the authoritarian regime. So the motivation there is obvious. To me this group of actions would make the most sense geopolitically, subject to new information.

permo-w 6y ago
“CCP incompetence or apathy” caused the virus to spread or scheming. Let’s say the CCP sees the original SARS, sees the economic destruction it can wreak, quietly prepares for a pandemic - not so much that it’ll look obvious, but enough that they’ll recover significantly quicker than other nations - then releases the virus in a place known to have wet markets and a viral lab, giving them extra plausible deniability. The virus tears through the west, giving the quickly recovered and happily subsided Chinese businesses space to jump in and fill the void left by dying and dead western companies. It’s similar to what they did with the steel industry. They subsidised their steel for so long that the western steel companies went out of business from being unable to compete, then they raised their prices, and were left dominant in the market
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  You might as well come up with a conspiracy theory proposing that it was the Taiwanese Kuomintang who released the engineered SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan with the win-win possibilities of either a) destroying the PRC's economy and political status if they failed to contain it or b) destroying their international reputation if the virus spread out of their borders and damaged the west more than them. The Kuomitang would know that the CCP's secrecy and lack of transparency would only encourage conspiracy theories about them plotting to release the virus for their own benefit. Furthermore, unlike the PRC, Taiwan would have enough motivation to engage in such risky conspiracies as they face a literal existential threat. I mean yes, this conspiracy theory is post hoc bullshit... But what makes it any worse than the one suspecting the CCP?

JPDSm8NTaAYBHd 6y ago

China lab.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

Wuhan lab leak is an unfounded speculative conspiracy theory that will get you banned from all major social platforms; twitter, youtube, facebook, etc. You may not discuss this issue further. "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” ― George R.R. Martin Oh and it's also completely false and a conspiracy theory that only months before covid; deadly viruses were being sent to Wuhan Lab. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canadian-scientist-sent-deadly-viruses-to-wuhan-lab-months-before-rcmp-asked-to-investigate-1.5609582 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canadian-scientist-s... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-escorted-from-infectious-disease-lab-amid-rcmp-investigation-1.5211567 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e... That the RCMP removed this Chinese viral researcher from the lab and then never issued anything about it. You can read it right there in those CBC articles. Those Chinese researchers have also never been heard from since the RCMP got involved. But dont worry, this is all a conspiracy theory as proposed by the CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-online-chatter-conspiracy-1.5442376 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/china-coronavirus-on... Wait the CBC is calling themselves conspiracy theorists? No factual basis for the previous 2 CBC articles? https://globalnews.ca/news/7723161/coronavirus-phac-government-scientists/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7723161/coronavirus-phac-governme... Wait the University and public health no longer oppose their firing and won't actually say why they were fired? Just that there was indeed a policy breach? https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/31/health-agency-ordered-to-release-documents-on-viruses-sent-to-china/ https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/31/health-agency-ordered-to-rel... They have until today to release the documents and public health is refusing to obey the government orders? Can they even do that? It's a good thing this is all just a conspiracy theory.

jancsika 6y ago
> "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." Right, but remember that censorship isn't just bad because it silences truth-tellers. It is also bad because it can amplify falsehoods. > It's a good thing this is all just a conspiracy theory. Your sarcasm is ambiguous. Perhaps you mean that it's unlikely that all the topics your discussing are conspiracy theories. Perhaps you meant that they are all true and are all being painted as conspiracy theories. Perhaps you meant something in between. Generous interpretation requires me to ask you what you meant, at which point you can choose any of the above adventures. The irony is that to me that kind of hedging and sarcasm starts to smell a lot like conspiracy theory rhetoric.

newacct583 6y ago

Author is a republican politician with no expertise in epidemiology or virology. Absent evidence, this whole China Lab theory is literally just tinfoil hat speculation. As gets repeated ad nauseum every time this comes up, there is absolutely nothing about the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 that is even remotely difficult to explain as a natural process. It's a close relative of a virus known to exist on the same continent in a species group known to transit large distances easily. People who insist on "asking questions" here aren't people who are curious, they are people who really, really want the answer to conform to their priors about modern geopolitics (or, frankly, just people who want to have an enemy to hate). It's not healthy, and it's not going anywhere. We need to stop.

Quarrelsome 6y ago
> this whole China Lab theory is literally just tinfoil hat speculation I feel like that's a bit cold. This is a virus whose closest relatives are known to exist in animals that are the specific animals that they specialise in, in that lab where they also do science around viruses like this one. Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there? Enough at least to take it beyond the realm of tin foil.
- newacct583 6y ago
  "Sure, it might not be this but there's a fair bit of co-incidence going on here isn't there?" is pretty much the definition of tinfoil hat nuttery. You accuse people of serious crimes when you have evidence. Not before. It's not like evidence would be hard to find if it existed. Is there a whistleblower? No. Is there a specific feature of SARS-CoV-2 that matches other known genes that would be difficult to explain by natural evolution? No. Stop chasing coincidence and clicking on partisan opinion essays that confirm your priors and go find some evidence.
  - Quarrelsome 6y ago
    ye but government ain't people and the CCP has not been forthcoming in providing the evidence it has. Your attitude falls apart in this climate. There is no evidence so there is no one to blame. Perfect! Chimes the CCP.

smitherfield 6y ago

I think a useful concept with this is the legal doctrine of adverse inference.[1] If one of the parties to a lawsuit conceals or destroys important evidence, it is assumed that that evidence would have been unfavorable to the party which concealed or destroyed it. So, while we may not be able to know for sure how COVID-19 originated, we can certainly draw an adverse inference from the behavior of the Chinese government. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference

xxxxxxx12 6y ago
This has been my guiding heuristic - China has acted unmistakably suspect. They've got a political and ideological character that requires controlling narratives and erasing any trace of incompetence(this threatens the illusion of supreme power).
- Arnt 6y ago
  If their political and ideological character requires controlling narrative, then surely any single instance means nothing. If I have an espresso every morning, the fact that I have one tomorrow morning means nothing. If I don't have one tomorrow, if I deviate from my usual behaviour, that might mean something significant. But following one's normal routine is just… normal.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    The difference is that the ethical implications of you buying your espresso daily don't make you inherently less trustworthy. The "routine" of burying evidence, silencing dissidents, and constant propaganda does absolutely reduce China's trustworthiness. To the point where we can and probably should always assume the worst of that regime.
    - Arnt 6y ago
      You misunderstand. What you said (and which I agree with) is that they always want to control the narrative. Not when they've done anything wrong, but always. I agree with that part — it's aregime that wants to control the narrative always, just so the populace won't get used to the existence of anything beyond control of the regime. However, since the regime always wants to control the narrative, you cannot assume that wanting to control a particular narrative means anything more than "they're acting as usual". You can assume that the regime is untrustworthy in general, but you cannot assume anything particular about this instance. Your argument is tantamount to "any control freak can and probably be assumed guilty of everything".

ngcc_hk 6y ago

The answer is we must. The problem is we have to ask this question show the real problem. Imagine it is from German, japan ... china and Russia is fundamentally enemy of human race and this is the proof.

klmadfejno 6y ago

I don't think it matters much. Comparing which rare event is more likely is still a toss up. But I am curious: What kind of stats do we have on BL4 lab leaks historically? Or that lab in particular? Is there validity to the state department claim that the lab reported flu like symptoms in its scientists months prior to COVID breaking out? Or is that trump admin bluster?

henearkr 6y ago

It's destroying the geopolitical consensus on joining forces to solve the problem, by pointing our finger on the country where it originated (the next pandemic can come from anywhere). We know that it came from animals and that human activity (be it meat markets or laboratories) made the bridge. What we really need is an efficient global infrastructure to quickly research and deliver vaccines to everyone on the planet. The Nipah virus, Ebola, we were already too much lucky that they did not turn in to global catastrophes, and many more viruses are waiting for us in the future.

zamalek 6y ago

At my old job, one specific manager would go on a tirade of "who to blame" at the onset of any serious issue. More resources were consistently spent on finding out who caused a problem instead of solving the problem. I've grown a keen eye for this antipattern. I don't understand which problem laying the blame addresses. We have a vaccine. We should be solving the problem of getting that vaccine into as many people as possible, which is a problem that the WHO can help with. Finally, the author of this article has made it extremely clear that they would only accept one answer. I'm all for rooting out accountability once the pandemic is over, but such blatant refusal to entertain any other explanations is definitively a which hunt.

chasd00 6y ago

I would hope the guilt associated with millions of deaths would compel someone to come forward but I’m not holding my breath.

taylodl 6y ago
That's why I don't think it leaked from a lab, or, if it did, the lab in question is completely unaware of the leak. There is the possibility the virus leaked from a lab without the lab having any knowledge and while the lab was faithfully executing all safety protocols. What we do know is the disease made its first mass appearance in Wuhan and the Chinese government did their level best to cover it up. That doesn't necessarily point to a leak, but it does show the Chinese knew there was a novel disease that was quickly spreading and causing severe problems. It's apparent they tried to contain the disease and failed. It could still be the case the disease originated outside of Wuhan but took root there first. It may take years to figure out the origin of this disease.

hnbad 6y ago

We literally don't. SARS-CoV-2019 isn't some kind of novel deadly supervirus. It's pretty much the kind of virus that has been predicted for years to cause a pandemic eventually. Yet most of the world was woefully underprepared because we didn't take the risk seriously. Yes, it's good to know where the virus originated and if it was caused by a lab containment breach it's important for the international community to be able to learn from the mistakes. But that won't prevent the next pandemic and it won't help us deal with the next pandemic when it happens. Climate change has already been predicted to make future pandemics more likely and more frequent. Prevention is important, yes, but crisis management is much more important. As members of an IT-centric community HNers should know that "just don't make mistakes" is not a good strategy for dealing with bugs or incidents. China seems to have the situation somewhat under control following the initial catastrophic outbreak. Some other countries, especially in Asia (e.g. Vietnam), have also successfully managed the pandemic despite having close ties to China in general and the Wuhan region in particular. The common thread seems to be ruthlessly fact-based policies (e.g. no early "dialing back" of lockdowns) and free access to testing, vaccinations and general support (e.g. food) while under quarantine. The countries currently hit the worst either simply failed to act at all or (like Germany) kept riding the R=1.0 edge by going constantly back and forth out of a fear for "the economy" (despite epidemiologists and economists explicitly warning against this).

Bayesian_bro 6y ago

I've been looking into the research that was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is an NIH grant that was doing interesting research around bat coronavirus. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... . I would encourage you to read into their research methods. This one is pretty scary in retrospect https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/11427_2017_Article_9189.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114.... Research methods included synthesizing new Coronavirus variants with specific genes. It's not a smoking gun but it's definitely a loaded gun.

throwaway4good 6y ago

It came from nature to demonstrate the hubris and incompetence of the western world ...

estebarb 6y ago

I don't get the article. It suggests that the virus originated in a chinese virus lab doing research on behalf of the US? And honestly, how knowing the origin is useful other than flamming sinophoby? I don't remember the world blaming americans on H1N1. What we need to know is why some countries are keeping vaccines for themselves, even if they don't plan to use them. A virus leak is an accident, monopolizing vaccines is genocide.

asterix_pano 6y ago

We can know with pretty much certainty that raising a huge number of animals in close spaces is just asking for disaster. But I don't see us stopping to kill 70 billions land animals a year and the world becoming vegan anytime soon.

HelloNurse 6y ago

> In the critical first weeks of the pandemic, Beijing suppressed essential information and prevented World Health Organization investigators from entering the country. > ... > Second, the Chinese equivalent of our CDC tested 41 species in the market and to date no intermediary species carrying the virus capable of transmitting the virus to humans has been identified. If you don't trust the Chinese government, why do you take their evidence against a competing theory at face value? Shouldn't they protect equally their research institutions, their meat markets, their public health authorities, and anybody else who might have committed a serious mistake? Of course, reading not very much between the lines, this piece looks like an attack by some right-wing clique with accounts to settle against Anthony Fauci, prominently noted as supporting the animal market hypothesis and having funded WIV coronavirus research; propaganda for a semi-smart audience.

larsga 6y ago

It's no mystery where it came from. A very similar virus (SARS-CoV-1) came very close to sparking a global pandemic in 2004. In late 2017 that virus was found in bats in a cave in Yunnan, China. The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 has no name, just the code RaTG13. In 2013 three miners cleaned out bat shit from a mine in China and all three died of viral pneumonia caused by RaTG13. Why that didn't spark a pandemic is not known, but basically we got lucky for the second time. Then, in 2019, we had the third incident, but this time we didn't get lucky. In theory this virus could have come from a lab, but it's far, far more likely it came from wild bats. And its cousin SARS-CoV-1 is still out there in bats. It could be let loose for the second time at any moment. That lab doesn't worry me. Bats do.