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Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

sciencemag.org

171–180 of 225 posts

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#171
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know? I thought about your 'nonsense' and recalled something rather old in 'internet time'. Anyways, i just searched for russian bio lab accident and this came up first: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/decades-after-deadly... I'm sure there is more to find about that, but for the purpose of rebutting your nonsense i deem it sufficient. What do i mean by that? The theories aren't unfounded when looking bac…

They have happened at some place at some point in the past seems pretty weak to go on. A lot of things have happened in the past, doesn't mean they're all potential causes this time around. Seems to me we need a bit more than we've had bio lab incidents before. I mean by this measure any time someone crashes a car it could be an assassination attempt. It's happened before.

I didn't mean to say that something like this IS the cause, just that it could be. Right now we don't have enough data and facts to confirm or dismiss either.

What rubs me the wrong way are the people instantly dismissing something like this as unlikely, or even impossible ignoring history.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#172
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know? I thought about your 'nonsense' and recalled something rather old in 'internet time'. Anyways, i just searched for russian bio lab accident and this came up first: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/decades-after-deadly... I'm sure there is more to find about that, but for the purpose of rebutting your nonsense i deem it sufficient. What do i mean by that? The theories aren't unfounded when looking bac…

Because it happened before means it's happened again? The amount of novel virus to have emerged from labs so far is probably very close to, if not zero.

Do you want to believe that, or do you know?

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#173
post #88
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any source you have found credible? Their is a lot of information going around in both directions.

You have a very lax definition of “Information”. There is absolutely nothing suggesting that Wuhan is man made. I expected a little more scientific perspective from this forum.

This forum has millions of readers. Human nature inevitably shows up at scale. Double that for human nature on the internet.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know? I thought about your 'nonsense' and recalled something rather old in 'internet time'. Anyways, i just searched for russian bio lab accident and this came up first: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/decades-after-deadly... I'm sure there is more to find about that, but for the purpose of rebutting your nonsense i deem it sufficient. What do i mean by that? The theories aren't unfounded when looking bac…

I don't get it. Why are people knee-jerk adverse to this idea? We're not arguing with flat earthers or moon landing skeptics. It's entirely plausible. With people putting their reputation on it, too. Dany Shoham (Israeli biological warfare expert) put his name on the line point this out before a lot of people. It's not out of the realm of possibility and shouldn't be disregarded out of hand like it has been. Could be…

The odds are fairly slim. Wuhan is a large Chinese city that has a greater population than most countries.

There is going to be an (X) in Wuhan for any value of (X) anyone cares to name. The fog of uncertainty is still thick; nobody has much of an idea what is going on. Anyone claiming that they have a theory on where the virus came from is fantasising. The knee-jerk people probably don't want them drowning out a weak signal with useless noise.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#176

The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc. To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

Well, there's one pre-print paper that goes as far as saying that because some segments of the RNA resemble, closely, parts of HIV, that those may have been inserted by human efforts. Of course, there's been a lot of pushback to this assertion; detractor say that this "inserted segment" actually shows up in all kinds of things and it also being in HIV is not significant here. For the article and the pushback, see thi…

Also discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204866

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#177
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Why are people knee-jerk adverse to this idea? We're not arguing with flat earthers or moon landing skeptics. It's entirely plausible. With people putting their reputation on it, too. Dany Shoham (Israeli biological warfare expert) put his name on the line point this out before a lot of people. It's not out of the realm of possibility and shouldn't be disregarded out of hand like it has been. Could be…

The odds are fairly slim. Wuhan is a large Chinese city that has a greater population than most countries. There is going to be an (X) in Wuhan for any value of (X) anyone cares to name. The fog of uncertainty is still thick; nobody has much of an idea what is going on. Anyone claiming that they have a theory on where the virus came from is fantasising. The knee-jerk people probably don't want them drowning out a wea…

There is only one Biosafety level 4 laboratory in China, and it opened... last year in... Wuhan. I am not saying there is a link, but I would not dismiss it too fast.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#178
post #56

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Quote: 75 815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days. We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.

To my layman's ears, some of the conclusions in the cited Lancet article sound chilling, e.g. "...given the substantial volume of case importation from Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple major Chinese cities. Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing 2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020."

Any comments on the soundness of the methodology used?

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested after we received a sample and sequenced it I'd love to read more. Do you have a link?

I think this might be the official US Justice Department link. It's long, but worth reading the whole thing since it is primary source and not some newspaper summary: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-... "The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with ai…

Viruses are not Lieber’s field.

Re: Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

#180
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community is dying. I’ve been here since 2013. Lobste.rs is currently the place to be but it’s small and is only for programming topics.

Lobste.rs looks cool but I see you can only join if you're invited by an existing member. Would you mind sending one to me, or letting me know where I can go about getting one? :) edward [dot] haigh [at] iohk [dot] io

Not sure how this comment was downvoted!
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