6 ms·

It could be that you're confusing cause and effect, though. How do we know that the virus (or a precursor) wasn't already circulating in China, and was simply

It could be that you're confusing cause and effect, though. How do we know that the virus (or a precursor) wasn't already circulating in China, and was simply detected in Wuhan because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there? (Also I'm not entirely sure your statement about the gain of function research is correct. A Google search doesn't seem to provide any evidence one way or another.)

diogenescynic 5y ago
Wouldn’t that be incredibly convenient and unlikely?
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  What would be unlikely for a pandemic to also affect wuhan?
  - raducu 5y ago
    To START in Wuhan, the only place doing gain-of function on the closest known virus to SARS2 and to not find a natural source for it given the source was found within months for both SARS1 and MERS.
    - dopidopHN 5y ago
      Did it start in wuhan? I thought we found trace of COVID in urine elsewhere
TN1ck 5y ago
Interesting point, similar to why the „Spanish flu“ is called like that even though it originated in the US.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  I thought the Spanish flu originated in China but came to Europe from the U.S., but came to the U.S. from Canada?
- Jeema101 5y ago
  Yes good point . It's widely accepted nowadays that the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain, yet that was the common belief at the time. I think it also bears pointing out that, in the US at least, we largely failed to detect that the virus was spreading inside the country for some time - even after knowing said virus existed and with plenty of warning, so you have to wonder in retrospect how effective some of these so-called surveillance systems even are. It's easy to not find anything amiss when you aren't looking.
bouncycastle 5y ago
> because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there In the beginning, they arresting doctors in Wuhan who spoke about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
neonological 5y ago
Covid was discovered in Wuhan by an eye doctor who died. Experts of corona viruses did not "discover" the virus, rather other people in the same vicinity did. The hospitals where regular doctors work discovered it. The virus was location tracked to the wet market which is Right next to this virology lab. Now correlation does not equal causation. But correlation and common sense is strong evidence for causation. Chemo therapy is correlated with cancer deaths. It does not mean chemo causes cancer. The common sense does not match up, but it does for covid and it is highly unwise not to consider this lab as the causative source of the pandemic.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>How do we know that the virus [wasn't]...simply detected in Wuhan because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there? Even if true, that would not explain the elaborate story, regarding the wet market there and species-jumping. Also, seems unlikely, as there'd have to be reason to suspect a new virus was circulating at scale that required investigation by these scientists, which could have happened anywhere in the country. I mean, it's hard to understand what mechanism you're proposing for scientists residing in the city leading to the discovery of the virus circulating among the population there. It's not like the scientists simply roam the streets with some superhuman ability to detect new viruses in people.
- epistasis 5y ago
  What you misleadingly call an "elaborate story" is exactly the common story of how new disease emerges. It was even in the Sodergbergh movie Contagion from 2011.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    If you don't like the word "elaborate" then feel free to choose another word. The point is that it's a detailed story about a specific time and place that they're claiming to be ground zero, and there's no evidence to support it. In fact, they've yet to find the natural reservoir for the virus to be able to definitively claim that it originated in another species, let alone that it did so through a specific species that existed in that specific place, then jumped. So, there's an obvious disconnect in the official story. What would you prefer to call it? And, that it's a "common story" of how new diseases emerge has exactly zero bearing on whether this specific disease so evolved. You must know that form of argument is just syllogistically unsound.
  - celticninja 5y ago
    Perhaps the story was chosen because of its existence in popular culture, making it more believable.
uvesten 5y ago
There's so many attempts to muddy the waters it would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Even though I'm not sure you attempted to do that here, it certainly reads like it. So, basically, you're saying that (many, we know how contagious covid 19 is) people got sick and put into hospital/died with a novel respiratory disease in another (or several other) chinese cities first. However, that was covered up or unnoticed _until_ it reached wuhan, and for some reason a researcher who works with coronaviruses at the lab saw a sick patient (at the hospital?), realized "that looks like a novel coronavirus" and decided to raise the alarm? Additionally, after that only Wuhan got shut down, while the other city or cities which should have had a raging epidemic by now still went unnoticed? That's what I mean, these other theories to explain away what is the most staightforward explanation makes no sense, and invokes too many unlikely scenarios or coincidences. Regarding gain-of-function, see [nature article from 2015](https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-%201.18787#/b1 https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...) questioning the safety of gain-of-function research, and the article that [triggered the reaction](https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985). Part of that research took place in the Wuhan lab. (Then there are the conflicts of interest of the WHO investigator Peter Daszak, who is very quick to discredit any theory that the virus might have escaped from the lab...) Again, this is a farce, and it would almost be funny if it weren't for all the dead and the generally shitty situation for most of the world at the moment.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The most straightforward explanation is that factory farming of animals provided natural bioreactors to execute "gain of function experiments" where bats gave the animals viruses which eventually jumped to humans. What China and the CCP wants though is to have this debate centered around if it was lab produced or not. They can rely on western scientists to debunk the lab created hypothesis. That leaves their own theories about it originated in Italy as the standing theory for their own domestic consumption. And that avoids looking at their animal farming practices and keeps them from having to crack down on that whole economy, which would be highly disruptive. And this keeps factory farming conveniently entirely off the radar as a cause of this pandemic. The next pandemic could easily be a virus that hops to humans from pigs or chickens in the USA. All the yelling both ways about lab origins is a very effective smokescreen to avoid doing anything to prevent a future pandemic. NOTHING will happen to prevent future pandemics over yelling about lab causes other than making some people in America very, very angry about China. What we should be doing is thinking about factory farming practices and reducing our diet of meat and animal products. This would mean that we might have to admit that the insufferable vegans were right all along, and then change our own behavior -- so its much easier to just get super angry at China.
cameldrv 5y ago
They’ve tested a lot of banked samples and performed a lot of investigations over the past year, and the first publicly known cases are still in Wuhan.
celticninja 5y ago
Because the problem was not brought to our attention by scientists working in the Wuhan lab, it was brought to our attention by a doctor in a hospital there who noticed the problem. A doctor the CCCP tried to gag and who subsequently died. So these experts didn't notice/detect a virus right under their noses, or they knew about its existence but could not tell anyone because of fear of the CCCP

diogenescynic 5y ago

Wouldn’t that be incredibly convenient and unlikely?

dopidopHN 5y ago
What would be unlikely for a pandemic to also affect wuhan?
- raducu 5y ago
  To START in Wuhan, the only place doing gain-of function on the closest known virus to SARS2 and to not find a natural source for it given the source was found within months for both SARS1 and MERS.
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    Did it start in wuhan? I thought we found trace of COVID in urine elsewhere

TN1ck 5y ago

Interesting point, similar to why the „Spanish flu“ is called like that even though it originated in the US.

kmonsen 5y ago
I thought the Spanish flu originated in China but came to Europe from the U.S., but came to the U.S. from Canada?
Jeema101 5y ago
Yes good point . It's widely accepted nowadays that the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain, yet that was the common belief at the time. I think it also bears pointing out that, in the US at least, we largely failed to detect that the virus was spreading inside the country for some time - even after knowing said virus existed and with plenty of warning, so you have to wonder in retrospect how effective some of these so-called surveillance systems even are. It's easy to not find anything amiss when you aren't looking.

bouncycastle 5y ago

> because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there In the beginning, they arresting doctors in Wuhan who spoke about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang

neonological 5y ago

Covid was discovered in Wuhan by an eye doctor who died. Experts of corona viruses did not "discover" the virus, rather other people in the same vicinity did. The hospitals where regular doctors work discovered it. The virus was location tracked to the wet market which is Right next to this virology lab. Now correlation does not equal causation. But correlation and common sense is strong evidence for causation. Chemo therapy is correlated with cancer deaths. It does not mean chemo causes cancer. The common sense does not match up, but it does for covid and it is highly unwise not to consider this lab as the causative source of the pandemic.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

>How do we know that the virus [wasn't]...simply detected in Wuhan because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there? Even if true, that would not explain the elaborate story, regarding the wet market there and species-jumping. Also, seems unlikely, as there'd have to be reason to suspect a new virus was circulating at scale that required investigation by these scientists, which could have happened anywhere in the country. I mean, it's hard to understand what mechanism you're proposing for scientists residing in the city leading to the discovery of the virus circulating among the population there. It's not like the scientists simply roam the streets with some superhuman ability to detect new viruses in people.

epistasis 5y ago
What you misleadingly call an "elaborate story" is exactly the common story of how new disease emerges. It was even in the Sodergbergh movie Contagion from 2011.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago
  If you don't like the word "elaborate" then feel free to choose another word. The point is that it's a detailed story about a specific time and place that they're claiming to be ground zero, and there's no evidence to support it. In fact, they've yet to find the natural reservoir for the virus to be able to definitively claim that it originated in another species, let alone that it did so through a specific species that existed in that specific place, then jumped. So, there's an obvious disconnect in the official story. What would you prefer to call it? And, that it's a "common story" of how new diseases emerge has exactly zero bearing on whether this specific disease so evolved. You must know that form of argument is just syllogistically unsound.
- celticninja 5y ago
  Perhaps the story was chosen because of its existence in popular culture, making it more believable.

uvesten 5y ago

There's so many attempts to muddy the waters it would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Even though I'm not sure you attempted to do that here, it certainly reads like it. So, basically, you're saying that (many, we know how contagious covid 19 is) people got sick and put into hospital/died with a novel respiratory disease in another (or several other) chinese cities first. However, that was covered up or unnoticed _until_ it reached wuhan, and for some reason a researcher who works with coronaviruses at the lab saw a sick patient (at the hospital?), realized "that looks like a novel coronavirus" and decided to raise the alarm? Additionally, after that only Wuhan got shut down, while the other city or cities which should have had a raging epidemic by now still went unnoticed? That's what I mean, these other theories to explain away what is the most staightforward explanation makes no sense, and invokes too many unlikely scenarios or coincidences. Regarding gain-of-function, see [nature article from 2015](https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-%201.18787#/b1 https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...) questioning the safety of gain-of-function research, and the article that [triggered the reaction](https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985). Part of that research took place in the Wuhan lab. (Then there are the conflicts of interest of the WHO investigator Peter Daszak, who is very quick to discredit any theory that the virus might have escaped from the lab...) Again, this is a farce, and it would almost be funny if it weren't for all the dead and the generally shitty situation for most of the world at the moment.

lamontcg 5y ago
The most straightforward explanation is that factory farming of animals provided natural bioreactors to execute "gain of function experiments" where bats gave the animals viruses which eventually jumped to humans. What China and the CCP wants though is to have this debate centered around if it was lab produced or not. They can rely on western scientists to debunk the lab created hypothesis. That leaves their own theories about it originated in Italy as the standing theory for their own domestic consumption. And that avoids looking at their animal farming practices and keeps them from having to crack down on that whole economy, which would be highly disruptive. And this keeps factory farming conveniently entirely off the radar as a cause of this pandemic. The next pandemic could easily be a virus that hops to humans from pigs or chickens in the USA. All the yelling both ways about lab origins is a very effective smokescreen to avoid doing anything to prevent a future pandemic. NOTHING will happen to prevent future pandemics over yelling about lab causes other than making some people in America very, very angry about China. What we should be doing is thinking about factory farming practices and reducing our diet of meat and animal products. This would mean that we might have to admit that the insufferable vegans were right all along, and then change our own behavior -- so its much easier to just get super angry at China.

cameldrv 5y ago

They’ve tested a lot of banked samples and performed a lot of investigations over the past year, and the first publicly known cases are still in Wuhan.

celticninja 5y ago

Because the problem was not brought to our attention by scientists working in the Wuhan lab, it was brought to our attention by a doctor in a hospital there who noticed the problem. A doctor the CCCP tried to gag and who subsequently died. So these experts didn't notice/detect a virus right under their noses, or they knew about its existence but could not tell anyone because of fear of the CCCP