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Here's one virologist, Dr. Duehr, who is very confident that covid-19 doesn't have any connection to the Wuhan lab. He backed it up with a detailed reddit post

Here's one virologist, Dr. Duehr, who is very confident that covid-19 doesn't have any connection to the Wuhan lab. He backed it up with a detailed reddit post [0], the most comprehensive collection of referenced information that I have seen on this topic. There's a 34 page pdf [1] version of this post that is easier to read. Specifically regarding the lab leak scenario he references genetic evidence from early cases elsewhere in Hubei province [2], cases hundreds of miles from Wuhan from before the Wuhan meat-market super spreader event. These earlier cases are genetic parents of the cases from the Wuhan market super-spread event. Not the other way around. EDIT: Here's another source [3] that gets into genetic detail, a microbiologist saying the same thing. I'm curious if you have something from a virologist saying the opposite, that it is more likely that the virus came form a lab than from nature. Most of what I see seems to be the opposite, that the lab is a possibility, but not the most likely. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9jI9WX7 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kAHSEx9-eIyVIahczH8itHaUm9... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/fqpcfs2/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... [3] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

gamblor956 5y ago
You should probably read the citations more closely. The strain that went global was the Wuhan strain, which may have been genetically descended from the strain found elsewhere in China (including Guangdong) but the Wuhan strain demonstrates additional mutations. (See, e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7, and even the article cited by the reddit post https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...) IOW, his evidence doesn't disprove that the SARS2 outbreak is related to a lab leak from the Wuhan lab. At best, he shows that a related coronavirus also broke out in Hubei province some months earlier. But while genetically similar to COVID19, it wasn't COVID19. At best, it was a precursor strain, but lacking the mutations found in COVID19, the Hunan strain did not reach pandemic status and fizzled out. Also, the reddit post focuses heavily on debunking the meat-market theory, but meat-market super-spreader event has been debunked for over a year (and had been by the time of the post). The reddit post suggests that a Hunan seafood market was the actual source of the outbreak, despite the fact that the Hunan seafood market is not close to bat habitats nor does it have sellers selling bats. (Note that the Hunan market theory has been advanced by China because the market does sell frozen seafoods imported from other countries, and China currently claims that COVID19 was caused by imported frozen food.) Other reasons to treat the "debunking" in that reddit comment with a boulder-sized grain of salt: it mixes up the Wuhan and Hunan food markets; the timeline asserts that COVID19 could not be Wuhan-based because was found outside of China by the time of the alleged food market superspreader event, but this timeline actually fits with what we now know about COVID19: that it had already begun spreading in humans by the fall of 2019; one of the big revelations following the WHO report was that multiple Wuhan lab staff were infected with COVID19 in early fall 2019 with the strain that ultimately reached pandemic status. The lab-leak hypothesis does not assume that COVID19 was man-made. It assumes that it leaked from the lab due to negligence or failures in safety protocols.
- mikem170 5y ago
  Wet market as opposed to meat market, I didn't mean to misquote Dr. Deuhr. Are you saying that there were people infected with covid-19 600 miles away from Wuhan, before cases originating in the Wuhan wet market, with covid-19 viruses that were genetic patents of those found in people infected in Wuhan, but that the virus still came from Wuhan? > Analysis of the first 41 Covid-19 patients in medical journal the Lancet found that 27 of them had direct exposure to the Wuhan market. But the same analysis found that the first known case of the illness did not. [0] > Lab Leak scenarios are inconsistent with several established facts regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The majority of early cases were linked to different markets that sold wildlife or wildlife products in Wuhan. [1] I don't buy your original assertion that "most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible". The articles you linked to do not support that. And your assertion about a lab leak that "there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible" is wrong, I just supplied two. Most of the news quotes from virologist I read say "nature probable, lab-leak possible, lab-made not feasible". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-co... [1] https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691 https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-g...
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    1) The issue isn't you mixing up the terms, its that the Dr you cite mixes up the terms. The Hunan market isn't close to bats, nor were bats sold there, moreover, the Hunan strain was not as similar to COVID19 as the Wuhan strain. Dr Deuhr does not provide anything to support his theory that the Hunan strain was COVID19, though he demonstrates that the Hunan strain is related to COVID19 and might be a predecessor. (However, most coronaviruses are genetically very similar; the reason we had vaccines so quickly was because SARS2 is actually genetically close to SARS1, and they've been working on vaccines for that for almost 2 decades.) 2) I don't care what articles from Spring 2020 say about the virus' origins, related to meat markets, etc. We know more now than we did back then, including, for example, that the virus was already spreading before the meat market incidents cited in the WHO report...though China waited until after the WHO report was published to admit that the first cluster of COVID19 cases occurred several months before any of the meat market incidents identified in the report. The largest and earliest known cluster of infections confirmed to be COVID19 were Wuhan staff members occurring in late summer/early fall 2019 (or in other words, 6 months before the earliest cluster traceable to any food market) and those staffers all just happened to be studying the bat viruses that were the most genetically similar to the initial pandemic strain of COVID19, and it just so happens that most of the mutations in that initial strain of COVID19 were all present in the various strains of coronavirus also being studied in the lab (though it is not clear if those sickened staffers were also studying those other strains). Is it possible the lab workers picked it up from the food market? Sure, but then the question becomes why did several unrelated Wuhan lab workers get infected at the same time...but nobody else at the food market for 5-6 more months? 3) You supplied two quotes from Spring 2020, when the earliest known cases were the Wuhan food market cluster. Are those experts willing to say the lab-leak theory is not feasible, knowing now that the first cluster was among Wuhan lab workers? 4) The lab leak theory is not that the virus was man-made, the theory is that it leaked from the lab. The lab leak theory does not posit how COVID19 originated. COVID19 could have been among the samples of bat viruses being studied by the lab (i.e., already present in the wild), or it could have resulted from cross contamination between samples (several researchers that have worked with the head of the Wuhan lab have accused her of recklessness regarding safety protocols). The biggest circumstantial factor supporting the lab-leak theory: this theory could easily have been proven false if China had opened up its Wuhan lab to foreign researchers. But China chose not to, because it clearly had something to hide. Presumably, that something is that outbreak was traceable to the lab in some way.

gamblor956 5y ago

You should probably read the citations more closely. The strain that went global was the Wuhan strain, which may have been genetically descended from the strain found elsewhere in China (including Guangdong) but the Wuhan strain demonstrates additional mutations. (See, e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7, and even the article cited by the reddit post https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...) IOW, his evidence doesn't disprove that the SARS2 outbreak is related to a lab leak from the Wuhan lab. At best, he shows that a related coronavirus also broke out in Hubei province some months earlier. But while genetically similar to COVID19, it wasn't COVID19. At best, it was a precursor strain, but lacking the mutations found in COVID19, the Hunan strain did not reach pandemic status and fizzled out. Also, the reddit post focuses heavily on debunking the meat-market theory, but meat-market super-spreader event has been debunked for over a year (and had been by the time of the post). The reddit post suggests that a Hunan seafood market was the actual source of the outbreak, despite the fact that the Hunan seafood market is not close to bat habitats nor does it have sellers selling bats. (Note that the Hunan market theory has been advanced by China because the market does sell frozen seafoods imported from other countries, and China currently claims that COVID19 was caused by imported frozen food.) Other reasons to treat the "debunking" in that reddit comment with a boulder-sized grain of salt: it mixes up the Wuhan and Hunan food markets; the timeline asserts that COVID19 could not be Wuhan-based because was found outside of China by the time of the alleged food market superspreader event, but this timeline actually fits with what we now know about COVID19: that it had already begun spreading in humans by the fall of 2019; one of the big revelations following the WHO report was that multiple Wuhan lab staff were infected with COVID19 in early fall 2019 with the strain that ultimately reached pandemic status. The lab-leak hypothesis does not assume that COVID19 was man-made. It assumes that it leaked from the lab due to negligence or failures in safety protocols.

mikem170 5y ago
Wet market as opposed to meat market, I didn't mean to misquote Dr. Deuhr. Are you saying that there were people infected with covid-19 600 miles away from Wuhan, before cases originating in the Wuhan wet market, with covid-19 viruses that were genetic patents of those found in people infected in Wuhan, but that the virus still came from Wuhan? > Analysis of the first 41 Covid-19 patients in medical journal the Lancet found that 27 of them had direct exposure to the Wuhan market. But the same analysis found that the first known case of the illness did not. [0] > Lab Leak scenarios are inconsistent with several established facts regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The majority of early cases were linked to different markets that sold wildlife or wildlife products in Wuhan. [1] I don't buy your original assertion that "most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible". The articles you linked to do not support that. And your assertion about a lab leak that "there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible" is wrong, I just supplied two. Most of the news quotes from virologist I read say "nature probable, lab-leak possible, lab-made not feasible". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/how-did-the-co... [1] https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691 https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-g...
- gamblor956 5y ago
  1) The issue isn't you mixing up the terms, its that the Dr you cite mixes up the terms. The Hunan market isn't close to bats, nor were bats sold there, moreover, the Hunan strain was not as similar to COVID19 as the Wuhan strain. Dr Deuhr does not provide anything to support his theory that the Hunan strain was COVID19, though he demonstrates that the Hunan strain is related to COVID19 and might be a predecessor. (However, most coronaviruses are genetically very similar; the reason we had vaccines so quickly was because SARS2 is actually genetically close to SARS1, and they've been working on vaccines for that for almost 2 decades.) 2) I don't care what articles from Spring 2020 say about the virus' origins, related to meat markets, etc. We know more now than we did back then, including, for example, that the virus was already spreading before the meat market incidents cited in the WHO report...though China waited until after the WHO report was published to admit that the first cluster of COVID19 cases occurred several months before any of the meat market incidents identified in the report. The largest and earliest known cluster of infections confirmed to be COVID19 were Wuhan staff members occurring in late summer/early fall 2019 (or in other words, 6 months before the earliest cluster traceable to any food market) and those staffers all just happened to be studying the bat viruses that were the most genetically similar to the initial pandemic strain of COVID19, and it just so happens that most of the mutations in that initial strain of COVID19 were all present in the various strains of coronavirus also being studied in the lab (though it is not clear if those sickened staffers were also studying those other strains). Is it possible the lab workers picked it up from the food market? Sure, but then the question becomes why did several unrelated Wuhan lab workers get infected at the same time...but nobody else at the food market for 5-6 more months? 3) You supplied two quotes from Spring 2020, when the earliest known cases were the Wuhan food market cluster. Are those experts willing to say the lab-leak theory is not feasible, knowing now that the first cluster was among Wuhan lab workers? 4) The lab leak theory is not that the virus was man-made, the theory is that it leaked from the lab. The lab leak theory does not posit how COVID19 originated. COVID19 could have been among the samples of bat viruses being studied by the lab (i.e., already present in the wild), or it could have resulted from cross contamination between samples (several researchers that have worked with the head of the Wuhan lab have accused her of recklessness regarding safety protocols). The biggest circumstantial factor supporting the lab-leak theory: this theory could easily have been proven false if China had opened up its Wuhan lab to foreign researchers. But China chose not to, because it clearly had something to hide. Presumably, that something is that outbreak was traceable to the lab in some way.