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Wuhan is also home to bat caves where we've identified dozens of SARS/COVID-like viruses to date. They're the same caves three of that lab's researchers went in

Wuhan is also home to bat caves where we've identified dozens of SARS/COVID-like viruses to date. They're the same caves three of that lab's researchers went into before becoming hospitalized with a flu-like illness in December of 2019. Even if you could trace this pandemic to those three researchers, it would not be evidence of SARS-COV-2 being a manufactured virus.

timr 5y ago
> Wuhan is also home to bat caves where we've identified dozens of SARS/COVID-like viruses to date. The closest related natural viruses to SARS-CoV2 were not found in Wuhan. They were found in caves in Yunnan, and possibly Laos. > The same caves three of that lab's researchers went into before becoming hospitalized with a flu-like illness in December of 2019 Again, Yunnan, not Wuhan. The researchers worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
petre 5y ago
The bat caves are mostly in the region of Yunnan, a mountainous region famous for the tea with the same name. It directly borders Myanmar and Laos. Noted, about "nearby", edited.
- wk_end 5y ago
  Not really "nearby" - they're something like 1500km away. Unless you'd refer to Warsaw as a nearby city of Paris, or Atlanta as nearby to New York, or Vancouver, BC as nearby to San Jose. ETA: parent comment (to their credit!) edited the above to remove the world "nearby" either while I was replying or right after. Still leaving this comment up because it's worth pointing out just how far those caves are from Wuhan.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    Since you called it out, and I live in Vancouver, BC - before the pandemic put a damper on travel I would say that Vancouver, BC and San Jose are pretty close - not geographically but for virus transmission. More important than physical distance, for a virus, is how often and how many potential carriers move between the locations.
deafsquid69 5y ago
xyzzy123 5y ago
This is plausible sounding but wrong, in fact it's in Alina Chan's top 10 myths: "(4) (FALSE) Wuhan is a place where SARS transmits from animals into humans frequently. That's why the Wuhan Institute of Virology was built there. Actually, Wuhan is ~1000km away from SARS spillover zones. Its human population was even used as a negative (no SARS) control group." https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=12 https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=12
- bawolff 5y ago
  That doesn't really seem to contradict the important part of the parent's argument: that the researchers went into the caves in question. I have no idea if that's true, but how far away the caves are seems like a quibble that's fairly irrelevant.
  - xyzzy123 5y ago
    There are 3 sentences in OP's post, the first two are wrong or misleading. The third (conclusion) is OK only insofar as it doesn't depend on the (false) premises. 1. Wuhan is not known for spillover. 2. Cave visits did happen but this has never been connected to the 3 "sick researchers" reported by US intel. 3. Sure, lab origin, zoonosis, engineering or not, all still on the table, just factually what OP wrote was inaccurate or misleading.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      Wuhan is a very large city in Central China and a transport hub. So it at least sounds plausible that the virus might have been carried there by someone, though I don't know how plausible it is that (if that's what occured) it did not seem to have left a trail of contamination (or perhaps it did but we don't know...) Also, I believe that the first recorded outbreak of SARS was in Guangdong while the origin of the virus was eventually found to be in Yunnan, 1000+km away.

timr 5y ago

> Wuhan is also home to bat caves where we've identified dozens of SARS/COVID-like viruses to date. The closest related natural viruses to SARS-CoV2 were not found in Wuhan. They were found in caves in Yunnan, and possibly Laos. > The same caves three of that lab's researchers went into before becoming hospitalized with a flu-like illness in December of 2019 Again, Yunnan, not Wuhan. The researchers worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

petre 5y ago

The bat caves are mostly in the region of Yunnan, a mountainous region famous for the tea with the same name. It directly borders Myanmar and Laos. Noted, about "nearby", edited.

wk_end 5y ago
Not really "nearby" - they're something like 1500km away. Unless you'd refer to Warsaw as a nearby city of Paris, or Atlanta as nearby to New York, or Vancouver, BC as nearby to San Jose. ETA: parent comment (to their credit!) edited the above to remove the world "nearby" either while I was replying or right after. Still leaving this comment up because it's worth pointing out just how far those caves are from Wuhan.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Since you called it out, and I live in Vancouver, BC - before the pandemic put a damper on travel I would say that Vancouver, BC and San Jose are pretty close - not geographically but for virus transmission. More important than physical distance, for a virus, is how often and how many potential carriers move between the locations.

deafsquid69 5y ago

xyzzy123 5y ago

This is plausible sounding but wrong, in fact it's in Alina Chan's top 10 myths: "(4) (FALSE) Wuhan is a place where SARS transmits from animals into humans frequently. That's why the Wuhan Institute of Virology was built there. Actually, Wuhan is ~1000km away from SARS spillover zones. Its human population was even used as a negative (no SARS) control group." https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=12 https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1394327680456220672?s=12

bawolff 5y ago
That doesn't really seem to contradict the important part of the parent's argument: that the researchers went into the caves in question. I have no idea if that's true, but how far away the caves are seems like a quibble that's fairly irrelevant.
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  There are 3 sentences in OP's post, the first two are wrong or misleading. The third (conclusion) is OK only insofar as it doesn't depend on the (false) premises. 1. Wuhan is not known for spillover. 2. Cave visits did happen but this has never been connected to the 3 "sick researchers" reported by US intel. 3. Sure, lab origin, zoonosis, engineering or not, all still on the table, just factually what OP wrote was inaccurate or misleading.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    Wuhan is a very large city in Central China and a transport hub. So it at least sounds plausible that the virus might have been carried there by someone, though I don't know how plausible it is that (if that's what occured) it did not seem to have left a trail of contamination (or perhaps it did but we don't know...) Also, I believe that the first recorded outbreak of SARS was in Guangdong while the origin of the virus was eventually found to be in Yunnan, 1000+km away.