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It is not. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or ev

It is not. In the words of Dr. Shi herself: > We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province. https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q%26A.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien... Coronaviruses are basically everywhere, as are bats. The greatest abundance of sarbecoviruses is far from Wuhan, though. The closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were found in Yunnan and surroundings, near Kunming or Pu'er, and now in Laos.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I'm not really familiar with Dr Shi or your source (seems a bit obfuscated via archive.org), but it does seem like a very sober and careful analysis from an expert. Also, she says what I always assumed was the case: > Scientists from around the world have overwhelmingly concluded that SARS-CoV-2 originated naturally rather than from any institution.
- tripletao 4y ago
  An expert indeed; Dr. Shi discovered the bat virus ancestors of SARS-1. Her subsequent research at the WIV is the matter of controversy here, as to whether that could have caused the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The interview is with Science, the well-known academic journal. That journal seems to have reorganized their website recently and broken my old link, so I used archive.org instead of hunting down the new URL. So Dr. Shi is obviously going to say the pandemic is of natural origin. Even if she personally believes otherwise, she's under the physical control of the PRC government, and would suffer grave consequences if she went against their official story. My point is that not even she thinks spillover in Wuhan is likely, though. The idea that the WIV was situated in Wuhan because of an abundance of nearby sarbecoviruses is bizarrely common, but it's neither anti-lab-origin nor pro-lab-origin, just wrong.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Indeed, I really don't know why there is a virology lab in Wuhan, or why they would be located in any given part of the world. I tend to assume that covid-19 came about like (presumably) every other virus since time eternal; through random mutation in the wild. What I don't really understand is any sort of singular alternative theory of how it arose - it seems that every alternative is anomaly hunting or god of the gaps type arguments in search of some greater meaning behind it.
    - tripletao 4y ago
      I agree there's no conclusive evidence for any specific origin of SARS-CoV-2, unnatural, natural, or otherwise. I don't see the "god of the gaps" analogy, though. There's no evidence that god exists, and attributing actions to god has no predictive or practical benefit. But there's certainly evidence that virologists exist, and were collecting and manipulating novel SARS-like viruses near the origin of a novel SARS-like pandemic. (Are you familiar with the DEFUSE grant proposal?) So with millions dead, shouldn't we investigate? There are many paths unexplored within reach of American or European subpoena, both in the WIV's collaborators and in sequencer reads from unrelated work that may contain early viral genomes as contamination.
      - hotpotamus 4y ago
        What would you like to investigate? This is what I don't understand - what is the alternative to a natural origin?
        tripletao 4y ago
        That researchers at the WIV collected two novel viruses from nature, built a chimera with a synthetic FCS, infected themselves by accident, and spread the virus into the world? The first two steps are exactly what they proposed in DEFUSE; that proposal got rejected, but it's still an indication of the work they might have continued with other funders. Or that they collected one naturally-evolved virus, got infected in the field, and spread it from there? The WIV sent grad students into remote caves that no other humans routinely entered, specifically selected for their abundance of novel potential pandemic pathogens, with nothing more than nitrile gloves and a surgical mask. So while there are far more farmers and guano collectors (and others creating risk of natural spillover) than WIV grad students, the risk per WIV grad student seems orders of magnitude higher.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I'm not really familiar with Dr Shi or your source (seems a bit obfuscated via archive.org), but it does seem like a very sober and careful analysis from an expert. Also, she says what I always assumed was the case: > Scientists from around the world have overwhelmingly concluded that SARS-CoV-2 originated naturally rather than from any institution.

tripletao 4y ago
An expert indeed; Dr. Shi discovered the bat virus ancestors of SARS-1. Her subsequent research at the WIV is the matter of controversy here, as to whether that could have caused the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The interview is with Science, the well-known academic journal. That journal seems to have reorganized their website recently and broken my old link, so I used archive.org instead of hunting down the new URL. So Dr. Shi is obviously going to say the pandemic is of natural origin. Even if she personally believes otherwise, she's under the physical control of the PRC government, and would suffer grave consequences if she went against their official story. My point is that not even she thinks spillover in Wuhan is likely, though. The idea that the WIV was situated in Wuhan because of an abundance of nearby sarbecoviruses is bizarrely common, but it's neither anti-lab-origin nor pro-lab-origin, just wrong.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Indeed, I really don't know why there is a virology lab in Wuhan, or why they would be located in any given part of the world. I tend to assume that covid-19 came about like (presumably) every other virus since time eternal; through random mutation in the wild. What I don't really understand is any sort of singular alternative theory of how it arose - it seems that every alternative is anomaly hunting or god of the gaps type arguments in search of some greater meaning behind it.
  - tripletao 4y ago
    I agree there's no conclusive evidence for any specific origin of SARS-CoV-2, unnatural, natural, or otherwise. I don't see the "god of the gaps" analogy, though. There's no evidence that god exists, and attributing actions to god has no predictive or practical benefit. But there's certainly evidence that virologists exist, and were collecting and manipulating novel SARS-like viruses near the origin of a novel SARS-like pandemic. (Are you familiar with the DEFUSE grant proposal?) So with millions dead, shouldn't we investigate? There are many paths unexplored within reach of American or European subpoena, both in the WIV's collaborators and in sequencer reads from unrelated work that may contain early viral genomes as contamination.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      What would you like to investigate? This is what I don't understand - what is the alternative to a natural origin?
      - tripletao 4y ago
        That researchers at the WIV collected two novel viruses from nature, built a chimera with a synthetic FCS, infected themselves by accident, and spread the virus into the world? The first two steps are exactly what they proposed in DEFUSE; that proposal got rejected, but it's still an indication of the work they might have continued with other funders. Or that they collected one naturally-evolved virus, got infected in the field, and spread it from there? The WIV sent grad students into remote caves that no other humans routinely entered, specifically selected for their abundance of novel potential pandemic pathogens, with nothing more than nitrile gloves and a surgical mask. So while there are far more farmers and guano collectors (and others creating risk of natural spillover) than WIV grad students, the risk per WIV grad student seems orders of magnitude higher.