4 ms·

Evidence points to Wuhan market as source of Covid-19 outbreak

31 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

Jimmc414 2y ago
Relevant paper. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2
decremental 2y ago
[flagged]
coding123 2y ago
[flagged]
Laremere 2y ago
This aligns with my prior likely release hypothesis, informed by this excellent deep dive article that looks at a lot of the arguments for either the wet market or the lab: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r... My favorite quote from the article: Fourth, for the first time it made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate stayed acrimonious for years to come
- tootie 2y ago
  Isn't this not a coincidence at all? The research lab was put there because it was known hot spot for wild coronavirus strains.
  - tripletao 2y ago
    I guess this meme will never die? It absolutely was not, to the point that Dr. Shi used blood samples from Wuhan as negative controls. The closest known bat viruses were collected around Yunnan (~900 miles away), and in Southeast Asia. EDIT: And since my comment is downvoted, here's a reference from 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... No one expected natural spillover near Wuhan. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but the claim that the WIV was situated based on that is unequivocally false.
- janice1999 2y ago
  > biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. A laboratory (and nearby university) that was carrying out risky gain of function experiments with US funding, as finally admitted to in recent congressional hearings.
chasil 2y ago
This does not address the furin cleavage site, which I understand is not present on any other coronavirus. This feature is the lead evidence for a lab leak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin
- diggan 2y ago
  > A 12-nt insertion at S1/S2 in the spike coding sequence yields a furin cleavage site, which raised controversy views on origin of the virus. Here we analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of coronavirus spike proteins and mapped furin recognition motif on the tree. Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2. "Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ Just one paper among many, not sure it's as strong evidence as you seem to think. Overall, current evidence seems to be mostly be pointing to a natural origin, maybe linked to wildlife sold in Wuhan. Wonder when we'll reach any sort of conclusion to this.
  - chasil 2y ago
    I am assuming that sars-cov-2 has a human-specific furin cleavage site, and that the others are less-so. The text below is from an article posted elsewhere on this page (which is obviously biased). "All you really need to know about furin cleavage sites is that SARS-CoV-2 is the first and only SARS-like virus, out of many hundreds that have been described, ever to show up with a furin cleavage site in its spike gene. Sure enough, it’s an insertion, not a mutation, and it’s at the S1/S2 junction." https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-doubt-that-covid-leaked-from-a-lab/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-dou...
    - Smoosh 2y ago
      You’re seriously quoting an article on spiked-online.com as if it is a truthful and authoritative source? No, I can’t accept that.
sp3000 2y ago
Interesting, very much at odds with Matt Ridley's analysis here: https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-doubt-that-covid-leaked-from-a-lab/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-dou...
- sp3000 2y ago
  Not just taking into account the furin cleavage site issue, but there is every incentive for the scientific community and those in power to blame this on the wet market over the lab leak.
- groby_b 2y ago
  Matt Ridley is a journalist with hardly any qualification to conduct an analysis.
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    More than that, he's made quite a lot of his fortune by shilling pseudoscience to benefit his fossil fuel lobbying clients. I don't see why or how serious people would take this career con artist at his word.
zug_zug 2y ago
It's interesting to read this study... the degree of complexity of the analysis reminds me of a overcomplicated codebase. Would love to see completely independent analysis before trusting such a large codebase is bug-free.
Workaccount2 2y ago
The header to this study should read: >Using data made available by the Chinese government... They even kind of acknowledge this in the final line of the paper > Finally, the publicly available genomic and epidemiological data from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic remain incomplete, and future data from this time could shed further light on hypotheses regarding its emergence
m3kw9 2y ago
They didn’t talk about the furin site at all? Hmm
kamalamomala 2y ago
So we still live in 2020? Hey, that shit is done with, get over it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tripletao 2y ago
The paper itself was already submitted and briefly discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593098 As for previous attempts from the same authors (e.g. Pekar's "The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2"), it starts with low-quality data from the early pandemic, does some complicated math, and concludes that the pandemic originated from zoonotic transmission in the Wuhan market, "beyond reasonable doubt". It therefore wasn't a research accident, and there is no need for increased regulation of high-risk research of the type performed at the WIV. The details can and should be criticized, and I linked a detailed rebuttal in the other post. But fundamentally, how could any model reach any conclusion with the confidence they express? Western authorities had prior warning, much more advanced surveillance, and good knowledge of where the virus might get introduced (by necessity, an airport or seaport)--and yet they succeeded in tracing almost zero cases back to their introduction. So how could anyone possibly believe that a much cruder set of tools has succeeded at the more difficult task of determining the pandemic's earliest origins?
- obscuretone 2y ago
  Anecdotal as it may be, an investor in a company I used to work for was from Wuhan. He paid $80k USD to get out of the country in December 2019. They knew it was bad then and anyone who could was fleeing.
willcipriano 2y ago
> Team member Ed Holmes at the University of Sydney says > He was an honorary visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, from 2019-2021 Real good timing on his part. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Holmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Holmes
disambiguation 2y ago
I mean it's damning for WIV either way. Even if the virus wasn't a lab leak, isn't the point of the institute to study these viruses ahead of an outbreak in order to protect us? It's like having a marine biologist as a life guard at the beach, you'll get some neat facts about the wild life, but if you get caught in a ripe tide we'll you're out of luck.
spants 2y ago
JUST GO VEGAN...... health benefits, no animal cruelty and we stop this nonsense too.
jacknews 2y ago
"samples collected at the Huanan market by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention beginning on 1 January 2020" But there were cases in late summer 2019, and indirect evidence some researchers may have got sick around that time. They should just give up trying to whitewash it by now, nearly all the circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak, and virtually none to zoonotic origin, other than 'this is how it usually works', and 'evidence is consistent with' (ie does not rule it out).

31 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

Relevant paper. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2

decremental 2y ago

[flagged]

coding123 2y ago

[flagged]

Laremere 2y ago

This aligns with my prior likely release hypothesis, informed by this excellent deep dive article that looks at a lot of the arguments for either the wet market or the lab: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r... My favorite quote from the article: Fourth, for the first time it made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate stayed acrimonious for years to come

tootie 2y ago
Isn't this not a coincidence at all? The research lab was put there because it was known hot spot for wild coronavirus strains.
- tripletao 2y ago
  I guess this meme will never die? It absolutely was not, to the point that Dr. Shi used blood samples from Wuhan as negative controls. The closest known bat viruses were collected around Yunnan (~900 miles away), and in Southeast Asia. EDIT: And since my comment is downvoted, here's a reference from 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... No one expected natural spillover near Wuhan. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but the claim that the WIV was situated based on that is unequivocally false.
janice1999 2y ago
> biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. A laboratory (and nearby university) that was carrying out risky gain of function experiments with US funding, as finally admitted to in recent congressional hearings.

chasil 2y ago

This does not address the furin cleavage site, which I understand is not present on any other coronavirus. This feature is the lead evidence for a lab leak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furin

diggan 2y ago
> A 12-nt insertion at S1/S2 in the spike coding sequence yields a furin cleavage site, which raised controversy views on origin of the virus. Here we analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of coronavirus spike proteins and mapped furin recognition motif on the tree. Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2. "Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836551/ Just one paper among many, not sure it's as strong evidence as you seem to think. Overall, current evidence seems to be mostly be pointing to a natural origin, maybe linked to wildlife sold in Wuhan. Wonder when we'll reach any sort of conclusion to this.
- chasil 2y ago
  I am assuming that sars-cov-2 has a human-specific furin cleavage site, and that the others are less-so. The text below is from an article posted elsewhere on this page (which is obviously biased). "All you really need to know about furin cleavage sites is that SARS-CoV-2 is the first and only SARS-like virus, out of many hundreds that have been described, ever to show up with a furin cleavage site in its spike gene. Sure enough, it’s an insertion, not a mutation, and it’s at the S1/S2 junction." https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-doubt-that-covid-leaked-from-a-lab/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-dou...
  - Smoosh 2y ago
    You’re seriously quoting an article on spiked-online.com as if it is a truthful and authoritative source? No, I can’t accept that.

sp3000 2y ago

Interesting, very much at odds with Matt Ridley's analysis here: https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-doubt-that-covid-leaked-from-a-lab/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/there-is-now-no-dou...

sp3000 2y ago
Not just taking into account the furin cleavage site issue, but there is every incentive for the scientific community and those in power to blame this on the wet market over the lab leak.
groby_b 2y ago
Matt Ridley is a journalist with hardly any qualification to conduct an analysis.
- cholantesh 2y ago
  More than that, he's made quite a lot of his fortune by shilling pseudoscience to benefit his fossil fuel lobbying clients. I don't see why or how serious people would take this career con artist at his word.

zug_zug 2y ago

It's interesting to read this study... the degree of complexity of the analysis reminds me of a overcomplicated codebase. Would love to see completely independent analysis before trusting such a large codebase is bug-free.

Workaccount2 2y ago

The header to this study should read: >Using data made available by the Chinese government... They even kind of acknowledge this in the final line of the paper > Finally, the publicly available genomic and epidemiological data from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic remain incomplete, and future data from this time could shed further light on hypotheses regarding its emergence

m3kw9 2y ago

They didn’t talk about the furin site at all? Hmm

kamalamomala 2y ago

So we still live in 2020? Hey, that shit is done with, get over it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tripletao 2y ago

The paper itself was already submitted and briefly discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593098 As for previous attempts from the same authors (e.g. Pekar's "The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2"), it starts with low-quality data from the early pandemic, does some complicated math, and concludes that the pandemic originated from zoonotic transmission in the Wuhan market, "beyond reasonable doubt". It therefore wasn't a research accident, and there is no need for increased regulation of high-risk research of the type performed at the WIV. The details can and should be criticized, and I linked a detailed rebuttal in the other post. But fundamentally, how could any model reach any conclusion with the confidence they express? Western authorities had prior warning, much more advanced surveillance, and good knowledge of where the virus might get introduced (by necessity, an airport or seaport)--and yet they succeeded in tracing almost zero cases back to their introduction. So how could anyone possibly believe that a much cruder set of tools has succeeded at the more difficult task of determining the pandemic's earliest origins?

obscuretone 2y ago
Anecdotal as it may be, an investor in a company I used to work for was from Wuhan. He paid $80k USD to get out of the country in December 2019. They knew it was bad then and anyone who could was fleeing.

willcipriano 2y ago

> Team member Ed Holmes at the University of Sydney says > He was an honorary visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, from 2019-2021 Real good timing on his part. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Holmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Holmes

disambiguation 2y ago

I mean it's damning for WIV either way. Even if the virus wasn't a lab leak, isn't the point of the institute to study these viruses ahead of an outbreak in order to protect us? It's like having a marine biologist as a life guard at the beach, you'll get some neat facts about the wild life, but if you get caught in a ripe tide we'll you're out of luck.

spants 2y ago

JUST GO VEGAN...... health benefits, no animal cruelty and we stop this nonsense too.

jacknews 2y ago

"samples collected at the Huanan market by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention beginning on 1 January 2020" But there were cases in late summer 2019, and indirect evidence some researchers may have got sick around that time. They should just give up trying to whitewash it by now, nearly all the circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak, and virtually none to zoonotic origin, other than 'this is how it usually works', and 'evidence is consistent with' (ie does not rule it out).