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One thing I would point out here: Shi Zhengli is the principal bat-borne sarbecovirus researcher at the WIV. When the pandemic first came to light, the first t

One thing I would point out here: Shi Zhengli is the principal bat-borne sarbecovirus researcher at the WIV. When the pandemic first came to light, the first thought Shi Zhengli had was, "Oh my goodness! That might have have come from our lab! Let's investigate! I wonder if the municipal health authority has got it wrong. I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China." Zhengli goes on to report that she was apparently enormously relieved to discover that so far as she could tell, the outbreak had not come from her lab. All well and good, but... When she was told about the nature of the epidemic, and the kind of virus it was, why was Shi Zhengli's first instinct that it might have leaked from her lab? Don't you think this is curious? What does she know that made her turn to that possibility immediately? Why didn't she simply assume, like most others, that it was some new natural pathogen arising from zoonotic transfer?

mikeyouse 4y ago
You'd have to ask her -- but all of the initial reasons that everyone was unsure also apply to her. There was a novel bat coronavirus pandemic near where her lab studies bat coronaviruses - why wouldn't that be your first thought?
- kaitaincps 4y ago
  She’s a scientist and a bat virus expert. One would expect her mind to gravitate towards what she saw as being the most plausible explanation. If a zoonotic jump had been overwhelmingly probable, why would the news have triggered the kind of reaction she later reported having? Bear in mind that your analysis is predicated on the falsehood that the WIV had been set up in Wuhan because that was a bat virus hotspot. So you’ll need to revisit that line of reasoning.
mike_d 4y ago
> "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China" Which in itself is an extremely odd statement, to the point I think it might have been taken out of context or mistranslated. If it was going to happen anywhere, Wuhan was one of the most likely candidates - to the point they built the lab there to do the research.
- kaitaincps 4y ago
  If I could Snopes-whack just one persistent myth in this debate, it would be that one. It’s completely untrue. And the WIV used the human population of Wuhan as a control in their experiments because there was so little exposure to zoonotic viruses within that population. I’m not entirely sure where this pernicious myth started. I do remember Maggie Koerth pushing that line on Twitter with some kind of smug joke at some point, and it getting lots of enthusiastic upvotes. When it was later pointed out that Koerth had got it wrong, she pretended that by claiming the WIV had been built in the area to study bat coronaviruses, the area she had in mind was “China”. This is like arguing that it makes perfect sense to set up a lab in New York to study rattlesnakes. (Of COURSE you would; the USA is where the rattlesnakes are!) So Shi Zhengli’s comment makes perfect sense, and was not taken out of context. The WIV was not studying bat-borne sarbecoviruses in Hubei, and had not been set up there to do so. All the interesting viruses were down in Yunnan, a thousand miles away. She meant exactly what she said.

mikeyouse 4y ago

You'd have to ask her -- but all of the initial reasons that everyone was unsure also apply to her. There was a novel bat coronavirus pandemic near where her lab studies bat coronaviruses - why wouldn't that be your first thought?

kaitaincps 4y ago
She’s a scientist and a bat virus expert. One would expect her mind to gravitate towards what she saw as being the most plausible explanation. If a zoonotic jump had been overwhelmingly probable, why would the news have triggered the kind of reaction she later reported having? Bear in mind that your analysis is predicated on the falsehood that the WIV had been set up in Wuhan because that was a bat virus hotspot. So you’ll need to revisit that line of reasoning.

mike_d 4y ago

> "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China" Which in itself is an extremely odd statement, to the point I think it might have been taken out of context or mistranslated. If it was going to happen anywhere, Wuhan was one of the most likely candidates - to the point they built the lab there to do the research.

kaitaincps 4y ago
If I could Snopes-whack just one persistent myth in this debate, it would be that one. It’s completely untrue. And the WIV used the human population of Wuhan as a control in their experiments because there was so little exposure to zoonotic viruses within that population. I’m not entirely sure where this pernicious myth started. I do remember Maggie Koerth pushing that line on Twitter with some kind of smug joke at some point, and it getting lots of enthusiastic upvotes. When it was later pointed out that Koerth had got it wrong, she pretended that by claiming the WIV had been built in the area to study bat coronaviruses, the area she had in mind was “China”. This is like arguing that it makes perfect sense to set up a lab in New York to study rattlesnakes. (Of COURSE you would; the USA is where the rattlesnakes are!) So Shi Zhengli’s comment makes perfect sense, and was not taken out of context. The WIV was not studying bat-borne sarbecoviruses in Hubei, and had not been set up there to do so. All the interesting viruses were down in Yunnan, a thousand miles away. She meant exactly what she said.