4 ms·

Poliovirus that infected a Chinese child in 2014 may have leaked from a lab

46 points by nextos 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
It’s not that surprising, as demonstrated by the multiple examples of lab leaks covered just in this article. Lab leaks and other lab incidents are more common than the public thinks. There’s a reason why Obama banned gain of function research before Fauci and the NIAID/NIH silently began it again. Even the first SARS leaked like five times, including incidents that caused deaths. And then of course there’s the second SARS, which never got properly investigated due to politics and censorship of lab leak speculation. Also related - the last polio survivor in an iron lung died earlier this year, likely due to his recent COVID-19 infection, sadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_(polio_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_(polio_survivor...
- jalapenos 2y ago
  But just in case anyone gets any logical ideas from this, just a reminder: the COVID-19 virus was an exception and there's no chance it could have leaked (in fact if you think so you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist nut job, FYI) and everyone working at that lab was a perfect human being who's never made a mistake in their lives, and the fact that the virus was the same type as ones they were experimenting with, and ground zero was right nearby, was all just a coincidence. Moving on.
  - Auracle 2y ago
    I’ll never forget, during the early-ish stages of COVID, NPR (All Things Considered, I believe) discussing the lab leak hypothesis, which they framed as a conspiracy theory. They said that China denied it as a possibility. Without a single iota of sarcasm, the host said something along the lines of “Well, that definitely rules that out then.” Great investigative journalism.
    - K0balt 2y ago
      lol yeah that was mind blowing. I can’t directly assert anything specific about the corona GOF lab leak(which seems to be the only hypothesis supported by any evidence) but I did unknowingly participate in an interesting and tragic anecdote in (December?) of that year. I had been residing in the Dominican Republic at that time, and my father was doing poorly so I flew home to Alaska. When I got on the plane it was filled entirely with what appeared to be ethnic Chinese, with only a sparse few Dominicans on the flight. During the flight I became curious and asked a fellow passenger in my row what the event was. He said that the people on the plane were on their way to conferences in the USA, and that the Chinese government had provided some kind of incentive to Wuhan businesses to “facilitate growth” by sending representatives to conferences in the USA, resulting in a sudden flood of conference goers. Travel was evidently part of the incentive, and the man I was talking to was baffled as to why his travel reservations(and that of hundreds if not thousands of others) had routed them through the Dominican Republic. We both supposed that it was just because the flood of visitors must have filled all of the other routes. In retrospect I can imagine other explanations that are a bit more complex, but who knows. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I can see the potential motivation for an industrial country that knows it is about to be brought to its knees by an epidemic to take measures to be sure that it isn’t singled out and isolated. Once arriving, I soon became debilitatingly ill with what I assumed was the “Chinese flu”. Unfortunately I passed Covid on to my father before I fell ill and to the family of my good friend while I was there during my recovery- a time which if it had been influenza I would no longer have been contagious. By the time I got back to the Dominican Republic, the news of Covid was breaking. Within days of getting home, my father died, and my friend and his elderly mother were both dead within two weeks. I feel like China made me complicit in the killing of my father and my friend and his mother. For my father, I was with him before i realised I was getting sick, for my friend I was “no longer sick, just tired”. If we had known about the severity and scope of this in a more timely fashion from China, and if there weren’t planes full of Wuhan residents erupting into the USA (through sussy routes) perhaps at least my friend and his mother might have been spared. Anyway, Covid really sucks and it makes me livid seeing idiots that think precautions are some kind of government plot to take their freedumns.
      - 2y ago
firesteelrain 2y ago
This only strengthens the argument that COVID-19 was a lab leak. Whether gain of function was used we don’t know. But if it happened in China, then likely this child was near a parent or someone on like public transportation who worked at the lab who inexplicably gave the virus to the child. There really should be a UN level inspection regime on the order of like nuclear non proliferation that sets standards and audits labs. If it does not exist already
- ein0p 2y ago
  That argument will never go anywhere because if C19 was a lab leak (which by the way I believe it was), it was a lab leak funded by Metabiota and Fauci, and those folks seem untouchable. 7 million deaths worldwide is a bit of a tough accusation to swallow even for the US or China.
  - tim333 2y ago
    The funding thing is unclear. Some money from the NIH did go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology but probably the bulk of their funding came from China and the DEFUSE grant got turned down.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  We actually do know gain of function research on coronaviruses was done in Wuhan, because there are public papers covering that research, which directly discuss gain of function techniques used. And those papers have Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, listed as an author. EcoHealth is the organization that the NIAID (Fauci’s agency) gave funding to for coronavirus research, and that grant is also public. This is all pretty easy to prove, but mainstream media did not investigate it at all, and social media banned discussion of it by independent journalists. The big problem was that China denied any site visit to WIV for almost a year, probably so that no evidence would exist. And then the WHO, probably under the CCP and Fauci’s direction, rejected Trump’s nominations for a representative for the US to visit WIV, and instead sent Peter Daszak. Basically the WHO sent the person who should have been under investigation for causing the pandemic.

46 points by nextos 2y ago

It’s not that surprising, as demonstrated by the multiple examples of lab leaks covered just in this article. Lab leaks and other lab incidents are more common than the public thinks. There’s a reason why Obama banned gain of function research before Fauci and the NIAID/NIH silently began it again. Even the first SARS leaked like five times, including incidents that caused deaths. And then of course there’s the second SARS, which never got properly investigated due to politics and censorship of lab leak speculation. Also related - the last polio survivor in an iron lung died earlier this year, likely due to his recent COVID-19 infection, sadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_(polio_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_(polio_survivor...

jalapenos 2y ago
But just in case anyone gets any logical ideas from this, just a reminder: the COVID-19 virus was an exception and there's no chance it could have leaked (in fact if you think so you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist nut job, FYI) and everyone working at that lab was a perfect human being who's never made a mistake in their lives, and the fact that the virus was the same type as ones they were experimenting with, and ground zero was right nearby, was all just a coincidence. Moving on.
- Auracle 2y ago
  I’ll never forget, during the early-ish stages of COVID, NPR (All Things Considered, I believe) discussing the lab leak hypothesis, which they framed as a conspiracy theory. They said that China denied it as a possibility. Without a single iota of sarcasm, the host said something along the lines of “Well, that definitely rules that out then.” Great investigative journalism.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    lol yeah that was mind blowing. I can’t directly assert anything specific about the corona GOF lab leak(which seems to be the only hypothesis supported by any evidence) but I did unknowingly participate in an interesting and tragic anecdote in (December?) of that year. I had been residing in the Dominican Republic at that time, and my father was doing poorly so I flew home to Alaska. When I got on the plane it was filled entirely with what appeared to be ethnic Chinese, with only a sparse few Dominicans on the flight. During the flight I became curious and asked a fellow passenger in my row what the event was. He said that the people on the plane were on their way to conferences in the USA, and that the Chinese government had provided some kind of incentive to Wuhan businesses to “facilitate growth” by sending representatives to conferences in the USA, resulting in a sudden flood of conference goers. Travel was evidently part of the incentive, and the man I was talking to was baffled as to why his travel reservations(and that of hundreds if not thousands of others) had routed them through the Dominican Republic. We both supposed that it was just because the flood of visitors must have filled all of the other routes. In retrospect I can imagine other explanations that are a bit more complex, but who knows. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I can see the potential motivation for an industrial country that knows it is about to be brought to its knees by an epidemic to take measures to be sure that it isn’t singled out and isolated. Once arriving, I soon became debilitatingly ill with what I assumed was the “Chinese flu”. Unfortunately I passed Covid on to my father before I fell ill and to the family of my good friend while I was there during my recovery- a time which if it had been influenza I would no longer have been contagious. By the time I got back to the Dominican Republic, the news of Covid was breaking. Within days of getting home, my father died, and my friend and his elderly mother were both dead within two weeks. I feel like China made me complicit in the killing of my father and my friend and his mother. For my father, I was with him before i realised I was getting sick, for my friend I was “no longer sick, just tired”. If we had known about the severity and scope of this in a more timely fashion from China, and if there weren’t planes full of Wuhan residents erupting into the USA (through sussy routes) perhaps at least my friend and his mother might have been spared. Anyway, Covid really sucks and it makes me livid seeing idiots that think precautions are some kind of government plot to take their freedumns.
    - 2y ago

firesteelrain 2y ago

This only strengthens the argument that COVID-19 was a lab leak. Whether gain of function was used we don’t know. But if it happened in China, then likely this child was near a parent or someone on like public transportation who worked at the lab who inexplicably gave the virus to the child. There really should be a UN level inspection regime on the order of like nuclear non proliferation that sets standards and audits labs. If it does not exist already

ein0p 2y ago
That argument will never go anywhere because if C19 was a lab leak (which by the way I believe it was), it was a lab leak funded by Metabiota and Fauci, and those folks seem untouchable. 7 million deaths worldwide is a bit of a tough accusation to swallow even for the US or China.
- tim333 2y ago
  The funding thing is unclear. Some money from the NIH did go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology but probably the bulk of their funding came from China and the DEFUSE grant got turned down.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
We actually do know gain of function research on coronaviruses was done in Wuhan, because there are public papers covering that research, which directly discuss gain of function techniques used. And those papers have Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, listed as an author. EcoHealth is the organization that the NIAID (Fauci’s agency) gave funding to for coronavirus research, and that grant is also public. This is all pretty easy to prove, but mainstream media did not investigate it at all, and social media banned discussion of it by independent journalists. The big problem was that China denied any site visit to WIV for almost a year, probably so that no evidence would exist. And then the WHO, probably under the CCP and Fauci’s direction, rejected Trump’s nominations for a representative for the US to visit WIV, and instead sent Peter Daszak. Basically the WHO sent the person who should have been under investigation for causing the pandemic.