16 ms·

It doesn't have to have been engineered to have escaped. Why this convolution keeps happening is beyond me, we "know" this isn't a bio-superweapon. Taking this

by rob_c 5y ago

It doesn't have to have been engineered to have escaped. Why this convolution keeps happening is beyond me, we "know" this isn't a bio-superweapon. Taking this as read, either: Researchers at the lab failed to spot something like this in the wild, in an area where they were looking for this. So, failed to raise the alarm appropriately with acceptable transparency. or, Researcher work at the lab led to the collection of this from bats and some set of unknown situations led to it getting into the populace. So, caused the disaster they were trying to prevent/research. Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of days. Which is understandable given the nature of the work going on inside the lab The fact that everyone involved seems to have thrown up barriers into a sensible discussion on this is unfortunate and renders most conversations mute such that we'll probably never know how bad it was.

mikem170 5y ago
Didn't the article cover the scenarios you mentioned? The article said that the lab's normal job was to look for new bat viruses, and that it's pretty hard to get infected from a qtip swabbed over a bats anus stored in a stabilizing solution. The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out.
- forcry 5y ago
  >The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin.. Some scientists think otherwise, quite strongly in the opposite direction, it seems.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs
  - mikem170 5y ago
    I found this link [0] that seems to debunk, in a lot of detail, the congressional testimony of these two physicists on the specifics of their claims for evidence of gain of function manipulation in the gentic sequence of covid-19. That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19 evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a lab. [0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest-new-old-wrinkle-in-the-covid-19-lab-leak-conspiracy-theory/ https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest... [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
    - forcry 5y ago
      Well, if the authors of these posts disagree, they should contact the government and offer their testimony as well, then we can consider their argument to hold similar weight.
      - mikem170 5y ago
        Congressional testimony tends to be more political than scientific, don't you think? Facts about DNA are still facts, regardless of who congress invites to speak before them. I never considered Congress to be gatekeepers of science.
        forcry 5y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=27757299 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=27757299
      - Smashure 5y ago
        I’ve never seen someone say “their argument wasn’t made in front of congress, so it doesn’t hold the same weight” Attack their argument, not the location where they said the argument.
        forcry 5y ago
        >Attack their argument, not the location where they said the argument. As layman, I am powerless to do so. So I have to go by how much stake the proponents are putting in their argument. A testimony before government puts a lot more of their reputation and what not, at stake, than a blog post on a domain that one control, that has also has no real legal weight.
        mikem170 5y ago
        I agree that it is tough that there are so many unfiltered voices on this. I've been giving the most weight to dna-based evidence, and explanations from virologists, and critiques from other virologists. It is understandable that others look for different sources of truth as they see fit.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence: such as the earliest cases happening in a single-digit mile radius from one of the worlds few labs studying gain-of-function in coronaviruses, while bats are hibernating, a thousand miles from the nearest bat colony, and the extraordinary response and threats re calls for investigation from officials. To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    I'm not sure about your statement saying the earliest cases were near the wuhan lab. Do you have a source for that? I've seen the opposite, that there is genetic evidence that the virus originated 600 miles south of Wuhan, where there are bats: > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. [0]. The above would imply that the markets in Wuhan were a super-spreader site for covid-19, but not the origin. Coronaviruses in bats and jumping from bats to humans is incredibly common, with 3% of people they randomly tested in bat cave areas with bat coronavirus antibodies [1], which this source extrapolated to mean that 1-7 million people a year are infected by various bat viruses. I agree with you that genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have at this point. > To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth Would be interesting if some lab tried to duplicate some of this theorized tricky editing, to prove it could be done. [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...
- canoebuilder 5y ago
  >The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, Highly tendentious claim... >and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out. Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months. Are you privy to some valuable knowledge that is not widely dispersed in the literature? Because what you’re saying would seem to contradict it.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    So you think that it's less than 51% probable that this virus jumped from nature (from animals) into people, like every other virus we know about? There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just this article. EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence he references points to covid originating 600 miles south of wuhan [1], which was also discussed in this writeup by another virologist [2] who also got into detail on the genetic evidence that we do have. Here's another article on how common it is for humans to be infected by bat viruses [3], here's the infectious disease expert from Biden's treansition team saying covid likely jumped from animals to humans [4]. The original article detailed how it took 15 years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with that, too. [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://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-... [2] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-china https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus... [4] https://text.npr.org/1000780650 https://text.npr.org/1000780650
    - canoebuilder 5y ago
      Yes, similar viruses are known far outside Wuhan. In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan and no known bat coronavirus source anywhere near Wuhan, other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology..., lends credibility to the lab theory, does it not? Infections from nature aren’t rare, unfortunately neither are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the relative few places on earth where this type of viral and pathogen research occurs to all the places humans interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world, you could say infections coming from labs are actually are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted. There is even a paper trail of government officials expressing concern about lax safety measures at this particular lab. Well before the world heard of coronavirus. If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses, I don’t see that as a point against the theory that one or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside the lab.
- hex4def6 5y ago
  Here's a question: How many times did classic SARS escape from a lab? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_of_SARS_Lab_Escapes_in_2003-2004 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_...
  - mikem170 5y ago
    So that is the basis for what? Is that a fact that changed your mind about the origins of covid? We know that lab leaks happen. Scary stuff. Even how many lab leaks there are here in the U.S. The paper you link to describes several lab leaks during a period of time while SARS was being widely studied. Its quite a leap from knowing there are lab leaks to implying that covid, or any other virus, leaked from a lab. There's relevant genetic evidence indicating that the earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]. Also it is estimated, based on antibody testing, that there are millions of people every year who get infected with various bat coronaviruses [1]. More/better evidence is needed to prove a lab leak, given that nature does things like this all the time. [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...
    - forcry 5y ago
      > earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan Nothing conclusive of that sort in that article. >All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."
albinofrenchy 5y ago
The article addresses this very point. I have 0 trust in the CCP to do or say anything not in it's own interest, but on the whole the "They found a novel virus in the wild, sampled it, and then it escaped their lab" seems a lot less likely than "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick".
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick". More like, "some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, a thousand miles from the nearest bat population, while they were hibernating; and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses, and didn't let independent examiners in for a year, even then limiting their time and access severely."
  - Maursault 5y ago
    >and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses If the argument is: 1) a lab was built in Wuhan that studied coronaviruses, then a global coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan 2) Therefore the lab caused the global pandemic then it is a fallacious argument.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
    - blast 5y ago
      That's not the argument. Nobody's pretending that propositional logic can decide this. It's a question of how to weight empirical evidence. Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses, especially since concerns had been raised about unsafe conditions there.
      - mikem170 5y ago
        But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected samples from infected people: > In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A, B and C. > His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan. > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. It doesn't seem fair to assume this originated in Wuhan. Instead the Wuhan markets may have been the first super-spreader site. [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-...
taxicabjesus 5y ago
> Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of days. There's a case to be made that "China acted as-if this was the end of days," and western media went along with the narrative. For example, people were not falling dead in the streets from cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan China. Those were staged. Example of the Propaganda in the UK: "CORONAVIRUS IS CAUSING PEOPLE TO DROP TO THE FLOOR IN THE STREET" (subtitle on video, article published January 24 2020), https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/infected-people-seen-dead-streets-21347952 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/infected-people-see... I think it likely that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading much earlier than the official narrative allows. Competitors in the Wuhan Military Olympics seem to have caught #EarlyCovid (COVID-19 before it had a name): "Congress is investigating whether the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan was a covid-19 superspreader event" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/23/congress-wuhan-military-games-2019-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/23/congress-... "During the two-week event, however, many of the international athletes noticed that something was amiss in the city of Wuhan. Some later described it as a “ghost town.” As the covid-19 pandemic took hold worldwide in early 2020, athletes from several countries — including France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg — claimed publicly they had contracted what they believed to be covid-19 at the games in Wuhan, based on their symptoms and how their illnesses spread to their loved ones." (emphasis added) Australia probably had #EarlyCovid: https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407130748373504002 https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407130748373504002 cui bono - "who stands, or stood, to gain (from a crime, and so might have been responsible for it)?" While China is certainly a beneficiary of their theatrics, why do the power structures in the rest of the world go along with the con job? I got the blood test for SARS-CoV-2 immunity last week. If it's positive I would take this as confirming that I did actually have #EarlyCovid (COVID-19 before the lab test was available). I remember an odd headache in the December 2019/January 2020 period. This won't prove I had #EarlyCovid, but it's DATA AND SCIENCE to back up my inconsequential mussing about the Long Con [0] of our era. @MichaelPSenger stands on his little twitter platform trying to point out the Long Covid Con. For example: https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1348324838167908352 https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/134832483816790835... There's a lot of servings of crow [1] to go around, but no one in power will call out those most deserving. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick [1] https://grammarist.com/idiom/eat-crow/ https://grammarist.com/idiom/eat-crow/
lamontcg 5y ago
The article covered this. When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all. While collecting the samples they're of course exposed to the environment and could have gotten sick, but they have dramatically less exposure to the environment that the workers who collect bat guano for fertilizer in China, or the people who clean the cages in the wet markets. It would be highly unlikely that one of them was naturally patient zero when there's a million times more human exposure going on in China. And hopefully they were wearing respirators in the caves and mines since they know the risks. When it comes to the live virus the problem is that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look like any other known virus. The difference between it and RaTG13 is still 4% which is like the difference between us and gorillas. It is a few decades of viral evolution and serial passage through many millions of hosts away. So for a lab that was all about finding new sequences and publishing them they would have had to keep this new viral backbone perfectly secret, they would have had to keep this new ACE2-infecting spike protein perfectly secret. Then there would have had to be some novel lab accident since SARS-CoV-2 requires aerosolized particles to be breathed in, you don't get it off surface transmission so the petri dish binding studies don't produce an environment where a lab accident is very possible.
- native_samples 5y ago
  "When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all." None of this is right. RNA (of which mRNA is just a subtype) is extremely unstable and degrades almost immediately unless carefully protected, which is why viruses need a capsid and why mRNA vaccines need cold chains. You can't just touch some animal and collect raw RNA. Also the only type of thing a virologist could recover from a bat of any interest to them is viable virus because their whole goal is to study actual viruses. "Then there would have had to be some novel lab accident since SARS-CoV-2 requires aerosolized particles to be breathed in" There's nothing unexpected about that. These supposedly novel lab accidents happen all the time. Viruses constantly escape from labs. SARS1 has escaped in China many times, and the last foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK came from a lab that had captured samples from the previous outbreak and kept them replicating. "petri dish binding studies don't produce an environment where a lab accident is very possible" Virologists don't only try to grow viruses in petri dishes. Look up serial passage. Animals are frequently used for that purpose. The WIV has been found to have been developing and buying bat cages. It's not really disputed that they were infecting live animals with viruses.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by rob_c 5y ago

mikem170 5y ago

Didn't the article cover the scenarios you mentioned? The article said that the lab's normal job was to look for new bat viruses, and that it's pretty hard to get infected from a qtip swabbed over a bats anus stored in a stabilizing solution. The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out.

forcry 5y ago
>The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin.. Some scientists think otherwise, quite strongly in the opposite direction, it seems.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs
- mikem170 5y ago
  I found this link [0] that seems to debunk, in a lot of detail, the congressional testimony of these two physicists on the specifics of their claims for evidence of gain of function manipulation in the gentic sequence of covid-19. That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19 evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a lab. [0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest-new-old-wrinkle-in-the-covid-19-lab-leak-conspiracy-theory/ https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest... [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
  - forcry 5y ago
    Well, if the authors of these posts disagree, they should contact the government and offer their testimony as well, then we can consider their argument to hold similar weight.
    - mikem170 5y ago
      Congressional testimony tends to be more political than scientific, don't you think? Facts about DNA are still facts, regardless of who congress invites to speak before them. I never considered Congress to be gatekeepers of science.
      - forcry 5y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=27757299 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=27757299
    - Smashure 5y ago
      I’ve never seen someone say “their argument wasn’t made in front of congress, so it doesn’t hold the same weight” Attack their argument, not the location where they said the argument.
      - forcry 5y ago
        >Attack their argument, not the location where they said the argument. As layman, I am powerless to do so. So I have to go by how much stake the proponents are putting in their argument. A testimony before government puts a lot more of their reputation and what not, at stake, than a blog post on a domain that one control, that has also has no real legal weight.
        mikem170 5y ago
        I agree that it is tough that there are so many unfiltered voices on this. I've been giving the most weight to dna-based evidence, and explanations from virologists, and critiques from other virologists. It is understandable that others look for different sources of truth as they see fit.
mandmandam 5y ago
> The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence: such as the earliest cases happening in a single-digit mile radius from one of the worlds few labs studying gain-of-function in coronaviruses, while bats are hibernating, a thousand miles from the nearest bat colony, and the extraordinary response and threats re calls for investigation from officials. To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth.
- mikem170 5y ago
  I'm not sure about your statement saying the earliest cases were near the wuhan lab. Do you have a source for that? I've seen the opposite, that there is genetic evidence that the virus originated 600 miles south of Wuhan, where there are bats: > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. [0]. The above would imply that the markets in Wuhan were a super-spreader site for covid-19, but not the origin. Coronaviruses in bats and jumping from bats to humans is incredibly common, with 3% of people they randomly tested in bat cave areas with bat coronavirus antibodies [1], which this source extrapolated to mean that 1-7 million people a year are infected by various bat viruses. I agree with you that genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have at this point. > To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth Would be interesting if some lab tried to duplicate some of this theorized tricky editing, to prove it could be done. [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...
canoebuilder 5y ago
>The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin, Highly tendentious claim... >and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out. Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months. Are you privy to some valuable knowledge that is not widely dispersed in the literature? Because what you’re saying would seem to contradict it.
- mikem170 5y ago
  So you think that it's less than 51% probable that this virus jumped from nature (from animals) into people, like every other virus we know about? There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just this article. EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence he references points to covid originating 600 miles south of wuhan [1], which was also discussed in this writeup by another virologist [2] who also got into detail on the genetic evidence that we do have. Here's another article on how common it is for humans to be infected by bat viruses [3], here's the infectious disease expert from Biden's treansition team saying covid likely jumped from animals to humans [4]. The original article detailed how it took 15 years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with that, too. [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://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-... [2] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-china https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus... [4] https://text.npr.org/1000780650 https://text.npr.org/1000780650
  - canoebuilder 5y ago
    Yes, similar viruses are known far outside Wuhan. In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan and no known bat coronavirus source anywhere near Wuhan, other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology..., lends credibility to the lab theory, does it not? Infections from nature aren’t rare, unfortunately neither are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the relative few places on earth where this type of viral and pathogen research occurs to all the places humans interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world, you could say infections coming from labs are actually are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted. There is even a paper trail of government officials expressing concern about lax safety measures at this particular lab. Well before the world heard of coronavirus. If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses, I don’t see that as a point against the theory that one or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside the lab.
hex4def6 5y ago
Here's a question: How many times did classic SARS escape from a lab? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_of_SARS_Lab_Escapes_in_2003-2004 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_...
- mikem170 5y ago
  So that is the basis for what? Is that a fact that changed your mind about the origins of covid? We know that lab leaks happen. Scary stuff. Even how many lab leaks there are here in the U.S. The paper you link to describes several lab leaks during a period of time while SARS was being widely studied. Its quite a leap from knowing there are lab leaks to implying that covid, or any other virus, leaked from a lab. There's relevant genetic evidence indicating that the earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]. Also it is estimated, based on antibody testing, that there are millions of people every year who get infected with various bat coronaviruses [1]. More/better evidence is needed to prove a lab leak, given that nature does things like this all the time. [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...
  - forcry 5y ago
    > earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan Nothing conclusive of that sort in that article. >All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."

albinofrenchy 5y ago

The article addresses this very point. I have 0 trust in the CCP to do or say anything not in it's own interest, but on the whole the "They found a novel virus in the wild, sampled it, and then it escaped their lab" seems a lot less likely than "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick".

mandmandam 5y ago
> "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick". More like, "some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, a thousand miles from the nearest bat population, while they were hibernating; and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses, and didn't let independent examiners in for a year, even then limiting their time and access severely."
- Maursault 5y ago
  >and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses If the argument is: 1) a lab was built in Wuhan that studied coronaviruses, then a global coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan 2) Therefore the lab caused the global pandemic then it is a fallacious argument.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
  - blast 5y ago
    That's not the argument. Nobody's pretending that propositional logic can decide this. It's a question of how to weight empirical evidence. Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses, especially since concerns had been raised about unsafe conditions there.
    - mikem170 5y ago
      But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected samples from infected people: > In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A, B and C. > His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan. > Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. It doesn't seem fair to assume this originated in Wuhan. Instead the Wuhan markets may have been the first super-spreader site. [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-...

taxicabjesus 5y ago

> Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of days. There's a case to be made that "China acted as-if this was the end of days," and western media went along with the narrative. For example, people were not falling dead in the streets from cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan China. Those were staged. Example of the Propaganda in the UK: "CORONAVIRUS IS CAUSING PEOPLE TO DROP TO THE FLOOR IN THE STREET" (subtitle on video, article published January 24 2020), https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/infected-people-seen-dead-streets-21347952 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/infected-people-see... I think it likely that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading much earlier than the official narrative allows. Competitors in the Wuhan Military Olympics seem to have caught #EarlyCovid (COVID-19 before it had a name): "Congress is investigating whether the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan was a covid-19 superspreader event" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/23/congress-wuhan-military-games-2019-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/23/congress-... "During the two-week event, however, many of the international athletes noticed that something was amiss in the city of Wuhan. Some later described it as a “ghost town.” As the covid-19 pandemic took hold worldwide in early 2020, athletes from several countries — including France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg — claimed publicly they had contracted what they believed to be covid-19 at the games in Wuhan, based on their symptoms and how their illnesses spread to their loved ones." (emphasis added) Australia probably had #EarlyCovid: https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407130748373504002 https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1407130748373504002 cui bono - "who stands, or stood, to gain (from a crime, and so might have been responsible for it)?" While China is certainly a beneficiary of their theatrics, why do the power structures in the rest of the world go along with the con job? I got the blood test for SARS-CoV-2 immunity last week. If it's positive I would take this as confirming that I did actually have #EarlyCovid (COVID-19 before the lab test was available). I remember an odd headache in the December 2019/January 2020 period. This won't prove I had #EarlyCovid, but it's DATA AND SCIENCE to back up my inconsequential mussing about the Long Con [0] of our era. @MichaelPSenger stands on his little twitter platform trying to point out the Long Covid Con. For example: https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1348324838167908352 https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/134832483816790835... There's a lot of servings of crow [1] to go around, but no one in power will call out those most deserving. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick [1] https://grammarist.com/idiom/eat-crow/ https://grammarist.com/idiom/eat-crow/

lamontcg 5y ago

The article covered this. When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all. While collecting the samples they're of course exposed to the environment and could have gotten sick, but they have dramatically less exposure to the environment that the workers who collect bat guano for fertilizer in China, or the people who clean the cages in the wet markets. It would be highly unlikely that one of them was naturally patient zero when there's a million times more human exposure going on in China. And hopefully they were wearing respirators in the caves and mines since they know the risks. When it comes to the live virus the problem is that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look like any other known virus. The difference between it and RaTG13 is still 4% which is like the difference between us and gorillas. It is a few decades of viral evolution and serial passage through many millions of hosts away. So for a lab that was all about finding new sequences and publishing them they would have had to keep this new viral backbone perfectly secret, they would have had to keep this new ACE2-infecting spike protein perfectly secret. Then there would have had to be some novel lab accident since SARS-CoV-2 requires aerosolized particles to be breathed in, you don't get it off surface transmission so the petri dish binding studies don't produce an environment where a lab accident is very possible.

native_samples 5y ago
"When collecting samples from the wild they aren't collecting viable virus, they're collecting samples which have mRNA in them. Those samples just won't infect anyone at all." None of this is right. RNA (of which mRNA is just a subtype) is extremely unstable and degrades almost immediately unless carefully protected, which is why viruses need a capsid and why mRNA vaccines need cold chains. You can't just touch some animal and collect raw RNA. Also the only type of thing a virologist could recover from a bat of any interest to them is viable virus because their whole goal is to study actual viruses. "Then there would have had to be some novel lab accident since SARS-CoV-2 requires aerosolized particles to be breathed in" There's nothing unexpected about that. These supposedly novel lab accidents happen all the time. Viruses constantly escape from labs. SARS1 has escaped in China many times, and the last foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK came from a lab that had captured samples from the previous outbreak and kept them replicating. "petri dish binding studies don't produce an environment where a lab accident is very possible" Virologists don't only try to grow viruses in petri dishes. Look up serial passage. Animals are frequently used for that purpose. The WIV has been found to have been developing and buying bat cages. It's not really disputed that they were infecting live animals with viruses.

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