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Conspiracy theories aside, Worebey's Science paper is not unanimously well received by the scientific community, and the data analysis was shown to be partly fl

by dangom 4y ago

Conspiracy theories aside, Worebey's Science paper is not unanimously well received by the scientific community, and the data analysis was shown to be partly flawed. Here's a discussion on inference pointing to references and sources that argue against the results of the paper: https://inference-review.com/article/thunder-out-of-china https://inference-review.com/article/thunder-out-of-china It also raises eyebrows the fact that no animal has ever been found to be positive for COVID, in contrast to all of the previous SARS pandemics. EDIT: thanks everyone for correcting my assertion. No source animal was found.

gerdesj 4y ago
"Animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been documented around the world. Most of these animals became infected after contact with people with COVID-19, including owners, caretakers, or others who were in close contact. We don’t yet know all of the animals that can get infected. Animals reported infected worldwide include ..." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/... EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_can_get_SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_can_get_S... - long list of refs
mikeyouse 4y ago
Plenty of animals have been found to positive for Covid - and the animal cages in the market had numerous environmental positive samples. I think you mean that no source animals have been found -- but if the timeline in this paper is right, the zoonotic jump happened in late November and they didn't shut down the market and start testing until almost a month later -- so a strong case of "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence"
phreeza 4y ago
Are you sure COVID has never been documented in animals? I seem to remember reading about cases where entire farm populations of minks were being killed. Perhaps you mean infection from an animal host to human?
- plouffy 4y ago
  Even that's wrong: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01792-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01792-y
  - tripletao 4y ago
    Indeed. I think the grandparent commenter wanted to say "no animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 have yet been found, except those infected directly or indirectly by humans".
koliber 4y ago
> No source animal was found. Since this was a food market, it's possible and likely that all the source animals were eaten by the time the study was being done.
- cudgy 4y ago
  And this is more likely than a lab leak?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Yes? They’re perishable, and intended for consumption.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      The only infected animals were bunched together in a single truck headed for a single market. That’s more plausible than an existing known virus derivative in a lab in the same city somehow allowing it to escape? Circumstantial activity like the denial and deletion of data surrounding the research at the lab is irrelevant too?
  - koliber 4y ago
    I don't know. I was addressing the question about the lack of infected source animals. I tried to make that clear by quoting the point that I was replying to.
chimprich 4y ago
> It also raises eyebrows the fact that no animal has ever been found to be positive for COVID, in contrast to all of the previous SARS pandemics. This doesn't really mean very much. It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. It's not like we were able to say definitively how the spillover began; it's all probabilities. We have found similar viruses to SARS-CoV-2 floating around in pangolins and bats.
- tripletao 4y ago
  > It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. This is true but misleading. It took a long time to find the reservoir host (i.e., the animal in which most of the virus evolved) for SARS-1, but the proximal host (i.e., the animal that actually infected the first humans) was found within about a year. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/01/who-sees-more-evidence-civet-role-sars https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/01/who-sees... Based on the WIV's pre-pandemic research, we knew immediately that the reservoir host of SARS-CoV-2 is bats. We still haven't found the proximal host. It's almost certainly not pangolins, and Nature eventually published an extensive correction to their pangolin paper. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x#change-history https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x#change-his...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

by dangom 4y ago

gerdesj 4y ago

"Animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been documented around the world. Most of these animals became infected after contact with people with COVID-19, including owners, caretakers, or others who were in close contact. We don’t yet know all of the animals that can get infected. Animals reported infected worldwide include ..." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/... EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_can_get_SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_can_get_S... - long list of refs

mikeyouse 4y ago

Plenty of animals have been found to positive for Covid - and the animal cages in the market had numerous environmental positive samples. I think you mean that no source animals have been found -- but if the timeline in this paper is right, the zoonotic jump happened in late November and they didn't shut down the market and start testing until almost a month later -- so a strong case of "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence"

phreeza 4y ago

Are you sure COVID has never been documented in animals? I seem to remember reading about cases where entire farm populations of minks were being killed. Perhaps you mean infection from an animal host to human?

plouffy 4y ago
Even that's wrong: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01792-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01792-y
- tripletao 4y ago
  Indeed. I think the grandparent commenter wanted to say "no animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 have yet been found, except those infected directly or indirectly by humans".

koliber 4y ago

> No source animal was found. Since this was a food market, it's possible and likely that all the source animals were eaten by the time the study was being done.

cudgy 4y ago
And this is more likely than a lab leak?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Yes? They’re perishable, and intended for consumption.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    The only infected animals were bunched together in a single truck headed for a single market. That’s more plausible than an existing known virus derivative in a lab in the same city somehow allowing it to escape? Circumstantial activity like the denial and deletion of data surrounding the research at the lab is irrelevant too?
- koliber 4y ago
  I don't know. I was addressing the question about the lack of infected source animals. I tried to make that clear by quoting the point that I was replying to.

chimprich 4y ago

> It also raises eyebrows the fact that no animal has ever been found to be positive for COVID, in contrast to all of the previous SARS pandemics. This doesn't really mean very much. It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. It's not like we were able to say definitively how the spillover began; it's all probabilities. We have found similar viruses to SARS-CoV-2 floating around in pangolins and bats.

tripletao 4y ago
> It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. This is true but misleading. It took a long time to find the reservoir host (i.e., the animal in which most of the virus evolved) for SARS-1, but the proximal host (i.e., the animal that actually infected the first humans) was found within about a year. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/01/who-sees-more-evidence-civet-role-sars https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/01/who-sees... Based on the WIV's pre-pandemic research, we knew immediately that the reservoir host of SARS-CoV-2 is bats. We still haven't found the proximal host. It's almost certainly not pangolins, and Nature eventually published an extensive correction to their pangolin paper. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x#change-history https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x#change-his...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]