7 ms·

Exciting! Now only if they can find the origins of the original virus.

jessaustin 5y ago
It's possible that several scientists in the relevant fields already have well-founded suspicions regarding this. As soon as political developments allow them to share their knowledge without endangering their funding, we might hear about it.
- wesleywt 5y ago
  Comments like these are frustrating. This pandemic was predicted for many years by scientist. I don't understand why the public wants to believe in the fantasy that this was deliberate action. No, this pandemic was caused by deliberate inaction.
  - todd3834 5y ago
    If it came from a lab then it was caused by overaction. If it came from the wild then you are right. That’s the reason people want to know
    - petre 5y ago
      It could have come from guano miners just as easily, but bringing it to a 50M population center was a recipe for disaster. Ebola and AIDS did not come from a lab but from tampering with wild animals.
  - halpert 5y ago
    How can you be so sure. The first outbreak was literally a few feet from a lab studying this exact virus. Biden called for U.S. intelligence to figure out if the original virus came from a lab: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/briefing/lab-leak-theory-covid-origins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/briefing/lab-leak-theory-... What do you know that the U.S. president and U.S. intelligence doesn't?
    - stirfish 5y ago
      I think USA intelligence only decided that it isn't a bioweapon https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak/2021/08/27/8f20b024-0740-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/wuhan-coron...
      - halpert 5y ago
        I didn't say it was a bioweapon, just that it very well could have originated in a lab. From your article: > The two main hypotheses — that the virus jumped from animals to humans in a natural process, or that it escaped from a research laboratory in China — remain on the table, ODNI said. Both theories are plausible, the agencies concluded.
        stirfish 5y ago
        I know, I was just providing some context. You sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole :)
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      > The first outbreak was literally a few feet from a lab studying this exact virus. Fact check: false. The early cases in Wuhan almost all cluster near the wet market, not the virology lab, which is on the outskirts of town on the other side of the river some ~30km from the market. (And to the extent they don't cluster near that market, they do favor quite strongly the market's side of the river, not the virology lab's side of the river.) > Biden called for U.S. intelligence to figure out if the original virus came from a lab Because a government has never, ever called for an investigation or an action to be taken because of political pressure despite its internal knowledge bases saying there is no need to investigate it.
      - adolph 5y ago
        The Wuchang campus is closer, 17k away. Crucially, however, the now famous “earliest” COVID-19 case (1), a 41-year-old male accountant, who lived 30 km south of Huanan Market and had no connection to it—illness onset reported as 8 December—may have become ill with COVID-19 considerably later. . . . This suggests that he may have been infected through community transmission after the virus had begun spreading from Huanan Market. [C]onclusive evidence of a Huanan Market origin from infected wildlife may nonetheless be obtainable through analysis of spatial patterns of early cases and from additional genomic data, including SARS-CoV-2–positive samples from Huanan Market, as well as through integration of additional epidemiologic data. Preventing future pandemics depends on this effort. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    You have oversimplified. It isn't necessary to believe that any researcher is capable of designing a sophisticated new virus. (Although, since this is all hooked to computers, just wait a decade...) It's just plausible that some researchers could be sloppy enough with inherently dangerous research to cause serious harm. Further, many have observed how those researchers have been at least partially funded by the same well-endowed funding entities that also fund major portions of most other research in virology. [EDIT:] But you're right about the "deliberate inaction". The obvious way to fight pandemics (as opposed to less contagious health threats) is to make sure everyone in society has access to relevant health care and other vital resources. This came naturally to many societies that earned much lower covid death rates than USA earned.
  - pizza234 5y ago
    > I don't understand why the public wants to believe in the fantasy that this was deliberate action This is gross oversimplification. The fact that some scientists may know doesn't imply that the only possibility is deliberate action. Since there have been a lot of money poured on Coronaviruses research in the last decade, it's reasonable that, (important!) even not assuming a lab leak (/important!), scientists working on it, don't want to disclose it. Even those who didn't work on it are disincentived to talk about it, as their reputation is on the line (in particular, because of the misguided opinion that lab leak equals bioengineerd virus). A few co-subscribers of the Lancet letter changed their mind on the topic. It doesn't surprise me that they did it only recently - precisely because their position is now less endangered. > This pandemic was predicted for many years by scientist It's hard to extract any value from this, especially without a very serious analysis, because at any point in time, there will be people predicting that events of any kind will happen.
chrisco255 5y ago
It was in Wuhan, next to a BSL-4 virology institute that synthesizes and analyzes coronaviruses and other deadly diseases. But it most likely came from the seafood market down the road.
- jml7c5 5y ago
  The BSL-4 lab is ~14 km away from the market.
  - slenk 5y ago
    Correlation does not mean causation.
    - _heimdall 5y ago
      A lack of correlation definitely does not mean causation, and they never found any relevant evidence of CoV-2 transmission in the wet market. They also never found cases of Covid prior to November 2019, which would mean this virus somehow became an extremely good for for human transmission within weeks of making the jump.
    - Flankk 5y ago
      If two variables are correlated that means they share a relationship. If you are stating that the relationship is coincidental then you should have a basis for that rationale. This can easily be estimated. There are 59 BSL4 labs in the world. The wet market is 14 km away from the lab. The Earth's land surface area is 148,326,000 km2. 14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2 36,329 / 148,326,000 = 0.000245 There is a 0.02% chance that a random disease will outbreak within 14 km of a BSL4 lab.
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        Setting aside all the other evidence for and against the lab-leak hypothesis, I gotta argue with your numbers. Humans are not randomly distributed over the land-surface of the earth. Neither are virology labs. The first known starting point of a disease outbreak will almost definitely be in a densely populated area, since that's basically a requirement for an outbreak. So taking that into account we have to correlate densely populated areas with BSL4 labs. For a back-of-the-envelope estimate, let's use the assumption: > "About 90% of the earth’s people live on only 10% of the land." And let's assume that all of those 59 labs are in that 10% as well. I'm sure it's actually smaller than that - since not all of that 10% of the land has enough density to be the epicenter of an outbreak, but... let's roll with that 10% That'd put you off by a factor of 10. 14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2 148,326,000 * 10% = 14,832,600 36,329 / 14,832,600 = 0.00245 aka 0.2% On top of that there have been multiple tries at this - in recent memory we've seen SARS classic, Covid-19, MERS-CoV, and Swine Flu. That's four chances at a target at least as big as 0.2%. My probabilities are rusty, but I believe that's 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% = 99.2% chance of none of those appearing near a lab or an 0.8% chance it was near a lab. If we take that into account, it starts to seem a bit more likely that we'd see something like this... And let's not even touch the > 1300 BLS3 labs that are out there.
cletus 5y ago
This actually deserves to be talked about more. Authorities seem to stand behind the Wuhan "wet market" theory but there's really no evidence of that, specifically if it came from an animal population, how come 2+ years later we haven't found that animal population? Also the bat coronavirus population is hundreds of miles away so how did this end up in Wuhan? This brings us to the "lab leak" theory. There are lots of possibilities here. If this is true (and that's a mighty big IF) then my suspicion is that this was an accident and the CCP doesn't necessarily know what happened but there's absolutely incentivized not to find out. I find claims that this was a deliberate release to be unconvincing. The key factors supporting this theory, or at least are open questions requiring further investigation are: 1. There's really no compelling alternative theory supported by substantial evidence; 2. The WHO has really lost a lot of credibility here. In early 2020, the WHO was bending over backwards not to upset China and not much has changed. In 2021 there was a joint investigation with the Chinese but the scope was pretty limited; 3. There used to be a database of coronaviruses that China had. In late 2019 this was taken offline. To date AFAIK this has never been examined by WHO investigators or any independent authority. Now this doesn't prove anything by itself but you'd think a thorough investigation would include examining it in its scope. 4. A long time (over a year) passed between the start of the outbreak and the investigation. This is a long time for evidence to go cold or "missing". To compare, the origins of two previous coronavirus outbreaks (ie SARS and MERS) were relatively quickly identified. No lab worker or official wants to be responsible for a leak (if there was one). No one wants to find out they were responsible. The CCP also doesn't want to set the precedent they're answerable or accountable to international authorities. This is what I mean when I say I suspect the CCP doesn't know and doesn't want to know.
- okaram 5y ago
  I think this is mostly asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ... What definitive evidence can we provide of an animal host now? What definitive evidence can we provide of a lab leak? Of a deliberate release? I don't think we can provide definitive evidence for any of the options, that proponents of another theory, even the reasonable ones, will accept, so ... I believe it is exactly 3 angels.
sneak 5y ago
Aside from being unable to be researched, to the point of being effectively unknowable: it's actually completely irrelevant. Where covid came from is meaningless now. Take any hypothesis you may have about its origins: you can't explain why it might matter today, in any way whatsoever. Covid is here and we have to cope with it. It's just our stupid monkey brains that thrive on x did y to z narratives that are demanding answers, as if they were in any way relevant.
- gugagore 5y ago
  While it may be irrelevant to how we address this current pandemic, whether covid came from a lab leak holds relevance because of the possibility of future lab leaks.
  - em500 5y ago
    But that possibility (as well as animal origin possibility) is there, regardless of the actual origin of the current pandemic.
    - gugagore 5y ago
      That's the same as saying that the possibility of a plane crash is there regardless of the reason of the current plane crash. There could be something worth learning in the details...
- jackdaniel 5y ago
  What was the source doesn't matter for fighting COVID but certainly matters for people who work on gain of function research. If the virus leaked from the laboratory then it will be a strong argument against funding this kind of science.
- _heimdall 5y ago
  Its only irrelevant if that information wouldn't help avoid a future pandemic. If it was a lab accident that's extremely important to know as we could easily mitigate (or eliminate) that risk. If it was zoological, there may be changes that could make that less likely. If it was a third cause that no one is even thinking about, that's even more important because it somehow was missed by everyone looking for the most likely cause.

It's possible that several scientists in the relevant fields already have well-founded suspicions regarding this. As soon as political developments allow them to share their knowledge without endangering their funding, we might hear about it.

wesleywt 5y ago
Comments like these are frustrating. This pandemic was predicted for many years by scientist. I don't understand why the public wants to believe in the fantasy that this was deliberate action. No, this pandemic was caused by deliberate inaction.
- todd3834 5y ago
  If it came from a lab then it was caused by overaction. If it came from the wild then you are right. That’s the reason people want to know
  - petre 5y ago
    It could have come from guano miners just as easily, but bringing it to a 50M population center was a recipe for disaster. Ebola and AIDS did not come from a lab but from tampering with wild animals.
- halpert 5y ago
  How can you be so sure. The first outbreak was literally a few feet from a lab studying this exact virus. Biden called for U.S. intelligence to figure out if the original virus came from a lab: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/briefing/lab-leak-theory-covid-origins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/briefing/lab-leak-theory-... What do you know that the U.S. president and U.S. intelligence doesn't?
  - stirfish 5y ago
    I think USA intelligence only decided that it isn't a bioweapon https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak/2021/08/27/8f20b024-0740-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/wuhan-coron...
    - halpert 5y ago
      I didn't say it was a bioweapon, just that it very well could have originated in a lab. From your article: > The two main hypotheses — that the virus jumped from animals to humans in a natural process, or that it escaped from a research laboratory in China — remain on the table, ODNI said. Both theories are plausible, the agencies concluded.
      - stirfish 5y ago
        I know, I was just providing some context. You sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole :)
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    > The first outbreak was literally a few feet from a lab studying this exact virus. Fact check: false. The early cases in Wuhan almost all cluster near the wet market, not the virology lab, which is on the outskirts of town on the other side of the river some ~30km from the market. (And to the extent they don't cluster near that market, they do favor quite strongly the market's side of the river, not the virology lab's side of the river.) > Biden called for U.S. intelligence to figure out if the original virus came from a lab Because a government has never, ever called for an investigation or an action to be taken because of political pressure despite its internal knowledge bases saying there is no need to investigate it.
    - adolph 5y ago
      The Wuchang campus is closer, 17k away. Crucially, however, the now famous “earliest” COVID-19 case (1), a 41-year-old male accountant, who lived 30 km south of Huanan Market and had no connection to it—illness onset reported as 8 December—may have become ill with COVID-19 considerably later. . . . This suggests that he may have been infected through community transmission after the virus had begun spreading from Huanan Market. [C]onclusive evidence of a Huanan Market origin from infected wildlife may nonetheless be obtainable through analysis of spatial patterns of early cases and from additional genomic data, including SARS-CoV-2–positive samples from Huanan Market, as well as through integration of additional epidemiologic data. Preventing future pandemics depends on this effort. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454
- jessaustin 5y ago
  You have oversimplified. It isn't necessary to believe that any researcher is capable of designing a sophisticated new virus. (Although, since this is all hooked to computers, just wait a decade...) It's just plausible that some researchers could be sloppy enough with inherently dangerous research to cause serious harm. Further, many have observed how those researchers have been at least partially funded by the same well-endowed funding entities that also fund major portions of most other research in virology. [EDIT:] But you're right about the "deliberate inaction". The obvious way to fight pandemics (as opposed to less contagious health threats) is to make sure everyone in society has access to relevant health care and other vital resources. This came naturally to many societies that earned much lower covid death rates than USA earned.
- pizza234 5y ago
  > I don't understand why the public wants to believe in the fantasy that this was deliberate action This is gross oversimplification. The fact that some scientists may know doesn't imply that the only possibility is deliberate action. Since there have been a lot of money poured on Coronaviruses research in the last decade, it's reasonable that, (important!) even not assuming a lab leak (/important!), scientists working on it, don't want to disclose it. Even those who didn't work on it are disincentived to talk about it, as their reputation is on the line (in particular, because of the misguided opinion that lab leak equals bioengineerd virus). A few co-subscribers of the Lancet letter changed their mind on the topic. It doesn't surprise me that they did it only recently - precisely because their position is now less endangered. > This pandemic was predicted for many years by scientist It's hard to extract any value from this, especially without a very serious analysis, because at any point in time, there will be people predicting that events of any kind will happen.

chrisco255 5y ago

It was in Wuhan, next to a BSL-4 virology institute that synthesizes and analyzes coronaviruses and other deadly diseases. But it most likely came from the seafood market down the road.

jml7c5 5y ago
The BSL-4 lab is ~14 km away from the market.
- slenk 5y ago
  Correlation does not mean causation.
  - _heimdall 5y ago
    A lack of correlation definitely does not mean causation, and they never found any relevant evidence of CoV-2 transmission in the wet market. They also never found cases of Covid prior to November 2019, which would mean this virus somehow became an extremely good for for human transmission within weeks of making the jump.
  - Flankk 5y ago
    If two variables are correlated that means they share a relationship. If you are stating that the relationship is coincidental then you should have a basis for that rationale. This can easily be estimated. There are 59 BSL4 labs in the world. The wet market is 14 km away from the lab. The Earth's land surface area is 148,326,000 km2. 14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2 36,329 / 148,326,000 = 0.000245 There is a 0.02% chance that a random disease will outbreak within 14 km of a BSL4 lab.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      Setting aside all the other evidence for and against the lab-leak hypothesis, I gotta argue with your numbers. Humans are not randomly distributed over the land-surface of the earth. Neither are virology labs. The first known starting point of a disease outbreak will almost definitely be in a densely populated area, since that's basically a requirement for an outbreak. So taking that into account we have to correlate densely populated areas with BSL4 labs. For a back-of-the-envelope estimate, let's use the assumption: > "About 90% of the earth’s people live on only 10% of the land." And let's assume that all of those 59 labs are in that 10% as well. I'm sure it's actually smaller than that - since not all of that 10% of the land has enough density to be the epicenter of an outbreak, but... let's roll with that 10% That'd put you off by a factor of 10. 14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2 148,326,000 * 10% = 14,832,600 36,329 / 14,832,600 = 0.00245 aka 0.2% On top of that there have been multiple tries at this - in recent memory we've seen SARS classic, Covid-19, MERS-CoV, and Swine Flu. That's four chances at a target at least as big as 0.2%. My probabilities are rusty, but I believe that's 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% = 99.2% chance of none of those appearing near a lab or an 0.8% chance it was near a lab. If we take that into account, it starts to seem a bit more likely that we'd see something like this... And let's not even touch the > 1300 BLS3 labs that are out there.

cletus 5y ago

This actually deserves to be talked about more. Authorities seem to stand behind the Wuhan "wet market" theory but there's really no evidence of that, specifically if it came from an animal population, how come 2+ years later we haven't found that animal population? Also the bat coronavirus population is hundreds of miles away so how did this end up in Wuhan? This brings us to the "lab leak" theory. There are lots of possibilities here. If this is true (and that's a mighty big IF) then my suspicion is that this was an accident and the CCP doesn't necessarily know what happened but there's absolutely incentivized not to find out. I find claims that this was a deliberate release to be unconvincing. The key factors supporting this theory, or at least are open questions requiring further investigation are: 1. There's really no compelling alternative theory supported by substantial evidence; 2. The WHO has really lost a lot of credibility here. In early 2020, the WHO was bending over backwards not to upset China and not much has changed. In 2021 there was a joint investigation with the Chinese but the scope was pretty limited; 3. There used to be a database of coronaviruses that China had. In late 2019 this was taken offline. To date AFAIK this has never been examined by WHO investigators or any independent authority. Now this doesn't prove anything by itself but you'd think a thorough investigation would include examining it in its scope. 4. A long time (over a year) passed between the start of the outbreak and the investigation. This is a long time for evidence to go cold or "missing". To compare, the origins of two previous coronavirus outbreaks (ie SARS and MERS) were relatively quickly identified. No lab worker or official wants to be responsible for a leak (if there was one). No one wants to find out they were responsible. The CCP also doesn't want to set the precedent they're answerable or accountable to international authorities. This is what I mean when I say I suspect the CCP doesn't know and doesn't want to know.

okaram 5y ago
I think this is mostly asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ... What definitive evidence can we provide of an animal host now? What definitive evidence can we provide of a lab leak? Of a deliberate release? I don't think we can provide definitive evidence for any of the options, that proponents of another theory, even the reasonable ones, will accept, so ... I believe it is exactly 3 angels.

sneak 5y ago

Aside from being unable to be researched, to the point of being effectively unknowable: it's actually completely irrelevant. Where covid came from is meaningless now. Take any hypothesis you may have about its origins: you can't explain why it might matter today, in any way whatsoever. Covid is here and we have to cope with it. It's just our stupid monkey brains that thrive on x did y to z narratives that are demanding answers, as if they were in any way relevant.

gugagore 5y ago
While it may be irrelevant to how we address this current pandemic, whether covid came from a lab leak holds relevance because of the possibility of future lab leaks.
- em500 5y ago
  But that possibility (as well as animal origin possibility) is there, regardless of the actual origin of the current pandemic.
  - gugagore 5y ago
    That's the same as saying that the possibility of a plane crash is there regardless of the reason of the current plane crash. There could be something worth learning in the details...
jackdaniel 5y ago
What was the source doesn't matter for fighting COVID but certainly matters for people who work on gain of function research. If the virus leaked from the laboratory then it will be a strong argument against funding this kind of science.
_heimdall 5y ago
Its only irrelevant if that information wouldn't help avoid a future pandemic. If it was a lab accident that's extremely important to know as we could easily mitigate (or eliminate) that risk. If it was zoological, there may be changes that could make that less likely. If it was a third cause that no one is even thinking about, that's even more important because it somehow was missed by everyone looking for the most likely cause.