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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 Wuh

• 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.
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  • mikem170 5y ago
    I've been interested and following the science around this. I've been heavily favoring genetic evidence over other things, those other things tending to be circumstantial, conflicting, and/or not well sourced. So I give the most weight to published scientific studies and information presented by scientists helping me connect and crosscheck those dots. There's a lot of data. Here's a couple of the specific references throwing doubt on Wuhan as the origin for the pandemic [0] [1]. I know these are from last March, but I don't think that invalidates them, unless there are new studies with conflicting info. Here's another one on how 2.7% of people tested in villages near bat caves had antibodies from bat coronavirus infections during the prior 2-3 years [2], with only 1 person out of 218 who touched a dead bat, and 20 who saw bats fly over their houses. Nobody eating bats. Nature happens, viruses spread. It's hard for me to blame the lab based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence at this point, which mostly points towards bats, when it's known that there are hundreds of coronaviruses, and hundreds of mammal species they can jump across, and the history of all kinds of viruses jumping between animals and people, even specifically coronaviruses jumping from bats to people. I just don't feel the need to blame the lab without solid evidence when nature does things like this as a matter of course. I assume that you would agree this is not definitively proven either way yet - nature vs lab? We appear to base our opinions on different evidence and lean in different directions on the probabilities. I'm actually kind of flummoxed about your statement that "most scientists (specifically, virologists) say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible". That's not what I'm seeing at all. They pretty much all seem to be saying most likely from bats, lab leak could be possible. Seems like you were exaggerating. [0] 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-... [1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-china https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/