3 ms·

Aside from he rest of the weird conspiracy insinuation I've come to expect - you should probably know that horseshoe bats are endemic to the caves around Wuhan

Aside from he rest of the weird conspiracy insinuation I've come to expect - you should probably know that horseshoe bats are endemic to the caves around Wuhan and were studied by virologists in the hills above the biggest animal trade in Hubei.. So it's probably best if you stop making the silly claim about them being 1,000km away if you want to bolster your case. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824899/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824899/

trhway 4y ago
If you didn't notice you're pushing the 2021 work by that same Wuhan institute. It is as trustworthy in that matter as that EcoHealth Aliance's owner/PI Daszak's conclusion that the coronavirus wasn't of their making.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Yes, the WIV does indeed study the bats that we're questioning. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan". Do you think they just invented the bats? I mean... they're on video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s
  - trhway 4y ago
    >The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan". That again is a strawman argument. I didn't say anything about bats. I was talking about the natural siblings of COVID-19, ie. the coronaviruses using ACE2 (like for example WIV1). Those viruses were found in Yunnan (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711), a 1000km from the Wuhan, and weren't found in Wuhan. Given that Yunnan people there have incomparably higher chances to get exposed to those viruses, there are no chances that one of such viruses was brought on a bat/civet from Yunnan to the market in Wuhan and jumped on human for the first time there without such a virus independently infecting significant number of people in Yunnan. On top of that that supposed natural COVID-19 virus supposedly did such a first jump on human in Wuhan market at exactly the same time when the Wuhan lab produced in BSL2 environment (hardly can be called "biosafety" at all, especially for an airborne virus) a chimeric virus by all accounts indistinguishable from COVID-19. It isn't a conspiracy theory. It is probability theory. If we imagine that an event of such vanishingly small probability did happen, then it would be a crown achievement of human science worth 10 Nobels - just think about it - creating the same virus at the same place at the same time as the supposedly "natural" beginning of the pandemic. EcoHealth and WIV would be doing non-stops victory laps, and we would be putting bronze statues of Daszak on every corner of every public street. Instead all the participants - the WIV, EcoHealth, NIH and China government went total denial and "5th amendment" and started that huge PR campaign to spread that nonsense that thinking that an airborne virus can escape BSL2 makes you a racists conspiracy theorist.
Nimitz14 4y ago
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  The rest of the comment is the same exact meritless insinuation I've replied to 100 other times in this thread. It's tiring replying to people who don't understand the first thing about biology or virology because you have to retrace so much ground just to get them to the point where they can comprehend why they're 'not even wrong'. But sure, I'll bite. Aside from the completely false claim there aren't horseshoe bats near Wuhan. A small grant (only $1.5M was ever paid) to a lab studying coronaviruses after a huge coronavirus outbreak (SARS) isn't remotely interesting and especially isn't evidence of a lab leak. And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. More to the point, it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant.
  - trhway 4y ago
    - dang 4y ago
      Could you please make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes? It's against the site guidelines. It's also not in your interest, since it weakens your case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - trhway 4y ago
        thank you, i appreciate it, overwatching Big Brother :) Sometimes one just gets carried away.
  - trhway 4y ago
    >A small grant ... isn't evidence of a lab leak The grant is evidence of research not of the leak. >And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. we don't really know what was done with the "subjects". The IRB document would probably be a good starting point here. When you're doing GoF by specifically increasing human targeting virality by creating chimera viruses in the lab, the "PCRs on people who live near bats" sounds a bit sideway. > it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. really depends on how GoF is done. So far such conclusions in this case came from the people coopted and prompted by Daszak while those people weren't aware of the conflict of interest that Daszak has here. >So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant. that is strawman argument. The facts of Daszak involvement is clearly and widely documented. As to his motivation or final target - it is clearly a matter of interpretation and scale of fantasy of the one doing interpretation, and as i already mentioned in Russia for example, where fantasy these days runs amok and political interests are very specifically directed, it is interpreted in the opposite direction - as US building bioweapons. (Note: in my interpretation i see no bioweapons or the likes, just a somewhat dangerous research performed with a bit of corner cutting (not necessary for the reason of costs, as the speed of research at lower BSL also improves a lot), and instead of looking into the mistakes and how to make such research safer - i think such research is unavoidable - the issue got highly politicized with no any useful outcome as a result)
kaitaincps 4y ago
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7 “In October 2015, we collected serum samples from 218 residents in four villages in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China (Fig. 1A), located 1.1–6.0 km from two caves (Yanzi and Shitou). We have been conducting longitudinal molecular surveillance of bats for CoVs in these caves since 2011 and have found that they are inhabited by large numbers of bats including Rhinolophus spp., a major reservoir of SARSr-CoVs. […] As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting.”

trhway 4y ago

If you didn't notice you're pushing the 2021 work by that same Wuhan institute. It is as trustworthy in that matter as that EcoHealth Aliance's owner/PI Daszak's conclusion that the coronavirus wasn't of their making.

mikeyouse 4y ago
Yes, the WIV does indeed study the bats that we're questioning. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan". Do you think they just invented the bats? I mean... they're on video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI&t=185s
- trhway 4y ago
  >The claim you're questioning is "There are horseshoe bats near Wuhan". That again is a strawman argument. I didn't say anything about bats. I was talking about the natural siblings of COVID-19, ie. the coronaviruses using ACE2 (like for example WIV1). Those viruses were found in Yunnan (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711), a 1000km from the Wuhan, and weren't found in Wuhan. Given that Yunnan people there have incomparably higher chances to get exposed to those viruses, there are no chances that one of such viruses was brought on a bat/civet from Yunnan to the market in Wuhan and jumped on human for the first time there without such a virus independently infecting significant number of people in Yunnan. On top of that that supposed natural COVID-19 virus supposedly did such a first jump on human in Wuhan market at exactly the same time when the Wuhan lab produced in BSL2 environment (hardly can be called "biosafety" at all, especially for an airborne virus) a chimeric virus by all accounts indistinguishable from COVID-19. It isn't a conspiracy theory. It is probability theory. If we imagine that an event of such vanishingly small probability did happen, then it would be a crown achievement of human science worth 10 Nobels - just think about it - creating the same virus at the same place at the same time as the supposedly "natural" beginning of the pandemic. EcoHealth and WIV would be doing non-stops victory laps, and we would be putting bronze statues of Daszak on every corner of every public street. Instead all the participants - the WIV, EcoHealth, NIH and China government went total denial and "5th amendment" and started that huge PR campaign to spread that nonsense that thinking that an airborne virus can escape BSL2 makes you a racists conspiracy theorist.

Nimitz14 4y ago

mikeyouse 4y ago
The rest of the comment is the same exact meritless insinuation I've replied to 100 other times in this thread. It's tiring replying to people who don't understand the first thing about biology or virology because you have to retrace so much ground just to get them to the point where they can comprehend why they're 'not even wrong'. But sure, I'll bite. Aside from the completely false claim there aren't horseshoe bats near Wuhan. A small grant (only $1.5M was ever paid) to a lab studying coronaviruses after a huge coronavirus outbreak (SARS) isn't remotely interesting and especially isn't evidence of a lab leak. And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. More to the point, it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant.
- trhway 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Could you please make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes? It's against the site guidelines. It's also not in your interest, since it weakens your case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - trhway 4y ago
      thank you, i appreciate it, overwatching Big Brother :) Sometimes one just gets carried away.
- trhway 4y ago
  >A small grant ... isn't evidence of a lab leak The grant is evidence of research not of the leak. >And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. we don't really know what was done with the "subjects". The IRB document would probably be a good starting point here. When you're doing GoF by specifically increasing human targeting virality by creating chimera viruses in the lab, the "PCRs on people who live near bats" sounds a bit sideway. > it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. really depends on how GoF is done. So far such conclusions in this case came from the people coopted and prompted by Daszak while those people weren't aware of the conflict of interest that Daszak has here. >So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant. that is strawman argument. The facts of Daszak involvement is clearly and widely documented. As to his motivation or final target - it is clearly a matter of interpretation and scale of fantasy of the one doing interpretation, and as i already mentioned in Russia for example, where fantasy these days runs amok and political interests are very specifically directed, it is interpreted in the opposite direction - as US building bioweapons. (Note: in my interpretation i see no bioweapons or the likes, just a somewhat dangerous research performed with a bit of corner cutting (not necessary for the reason of costs, as the speed of research at lower BSL also improves a lot), and instead of looking into the mistakes and how to make such research safer - i think such research is unavoidable - the issue got highly politicized with no any useful outcome as a result)

kaitaincps 4y ago

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7 “In October 2015, we collected serum samples from 218 residents in four villages in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China (Fig. 1A), located 1.1–6.0 km from two caves (Yanzi and Shitou). We have been conducting longitudinal molecular surveillance of bats for CoVs in these caves since 2011 and have found that they are inhabited by large numbers of bats including Rhinolophus spp., a major reservoir of SARSr-CoVs. […] As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting.”