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> WIV officials told the investigators that serum samples for all staff and students in the bat coronavirus group subsequently tested negative for Covid antibod

> WIV officials told the investigators that serum samples for all staff and students in the bat coronavirus group subsequently tested negative for Covid antibodies. We have only their word to go on because the lab hasn’t been independently audited... Why has the lab not been independently audited? If I was going to make a case against someone making an error, saying "well, that group said they didn't make an error" seems like a bad argument. > The first human case of Covid could have been infected hundreds of miles away, perhaps closer to the horseshoe bat caves of southern China. Have we found such a person? > You can get on the fast train in Wuhan and be in Guandong Province, the home of the original SARS outbreak, in under four hours. If someone had been in Guandong, and taken a train to Wuhan, it seems to me that the early cases would not have been so concentrated in Wuhan, for two reasons: 1) if Wuhan is really all that accessible by different means of transportation, you'd expect people would just as easily take it from Wuhan to other places, and 2) presumably, the fast train doesn't just stop in Wuhan (Google says it's 1000 km away), meaning an infected person on the train could easily have infected someone else on the train who got off in between. Honest question: is that not how the spread of disease would work? > There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or anyone else, ever had any strain that similar to Covid-19. Again, that's what we're trying to figure out. You can't take the thing we're trying to figure out as evidence one way or the other, that's Begging the Question (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question) > Given that Covid (or its direct ancestor) must exist in nature, it’s more likely that it got out naturally (like SARS and MERS) than that it took an undetectable detour through a secure biolab. I don't understand this jump. Most people I've read arguing that the lab leak theory is possible agree that there must be some base virus in nature. The question is, what is the more likely path from that natural virus to the COVID outbreak, through a lab or through some other animal (or animals)? I understand the argument that we didn't find the transmission chain for SARS or MERS or Ebola for years, but why does asserting it started in nature lead to the conclusion it therefore had a natural path? This again seems like the author is trying to prove a conclusion using the conclusion. > The fact that China is being secretive about Covid-19 isn’t evidence for any particular theory. When SARS came out, I don't remember the Chinese government blaming Italian frozen food or athletes at an international athletics competition for SARS. I don't remember them promising people that it's not transmittable between humans, or that it's not a big deal. I think simply saying "China is being secretive" is not looking at the whole picture. > All theories of the origins of Covid-19 should be investigated, including lab origin theories. We should go wherever the science takes us. This seems right to me. We can't make bricks without clay though.

mikem170 5y ago
> it seems to me that the early cases would not have been so concentrated in Wuhan There's genetic evidence that the origin was 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]: > 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. And this [1]: > Upon further investigation, the first case detected from December 1st was found to have no connection to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was never linked to any future cases of COVID19. A third of the first 41 cases had no connection to the market, including 3 of the first 4 cases reported. Given this data, we have a new hypothesis: The first human cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened before December 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. [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://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
runawaybottle 5y ago
Why has the lab not been independently audited? If I was going to make a case against someone making an error, saying "well, that group said they didn't make an error" seems like a bad argument. Well, remember back in February 2019 when China said Covid was basically over and capped their infection count at about 60k? While every other country reported the truth in the millions, they just said ‘no, it stopped at 60k (as of today less than 100k still)’. They are liars, that’s why there’s no independent investigation. China believes it deserves automatic respect and the rest of the world should take it’s word for it. They do not accept that many countries work hard to earn a modest reputation of integrity.

mikem170 5y ago

> it seems to me that the early cases would not have been so concentrated in Wuhan There's genetic evidence that the origin was 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]: > 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. And this [1]: > Upon further investigation, the first case detected from December 1st was found to have no connection to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was never linked to any future cases of COVID19. A third of the first 41 cases had no connection to the market, including 3 of the first 4 cases reported. Given this data, we have a new hypothesis: The first human cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened before December 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. [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://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3 https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

runawaybottle 5y ago

Why has the lab not been independently audited? If I was going to make a case against someone making an error, saying "well, that group said they didn't make an error" seems like a bad argument. Well, remember back in February 2019 when China said Covid was basically over and capped their infection count at about 60k? While every other country reported the truth in the millions, they just said ‘no, it stopped at 60k (as of today less than 100k still)’. They are liars, that’s why there’s no independent investigation. China believes it deserves automatic respect and the rest of the world should take it’s word for it. They do not accept that many countries work hard to earn a modest reputation of integrity.