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Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

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Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#801

Post by SiempreViernes »

tripletao wrote: post #558
Ancapistani wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. I think that it is at least somewhat likely that it was the result of the lab's activities, but your assertion here has a huge dose of selection bias. If the virology labs studying coronaviruses were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but t…

People keep saying this, but it's not true; SARS-like viruses haven't been found in nature near Wuhan. 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…

You've said elsewhere that you think it's reasonable to to suppose they have unpublished samples that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, indeed that's your central claim. So why do you trust this statement about their sampling results but not the one about not having anything closer than RaTG13 [18.5, p6]?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#802

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

boringg wrote: post #199
crx07 wrote: post #21

This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…

I subscribe to this theory. I didn't subscribe to it originally because it seemed to dystopian. However on reading the recent politico article ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin... ) really changed my opinion about it. To be clear I think it would have been an accident at a Chinese government lab that was underfunded and overworked. Seems to me like the likeliest candidate. I don't think t…

The Politico article is extremely dishonest. Josh Rogin has been claiming for a year now that US diplomats raised red flags about the WIV's safety. He wrote an article to this effect a year ago, based on diplomatic cables he had seen. Then the Washington Post obtained the full cables, and it turned out that Rogin had seriously mischaracterized them. They do not claim that the WIV has unsafe practices - only that its newest lab is still (2 years before officially opening) training personnel and can't yet run at full capacity. It asks the US government to continue its training program for WIV scientists. Yet Rogin continues to misrepresent the cables.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#803

Post by bgandrew »

freeflight wrote: post #714
bgandrew wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they didn't find an intermediate host after more than a year of search should tell you something.

It took nearly a century to somewhat establish the geographical origin of the Spanish flu and even these results are still a bit controversial to this day [0]. The reality is that epidemiology is not a straight forward nor simple field of research, finding concrete and solid answers is usually way more difficult than most people assume when they want answers to point fingers. [0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article…

what I'm saying is that until the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 is known to be exactly the same virus that was researched in Wuhan institute of virology, it's obvious that lab leak should be number 1 hypothesis. That wouldn't be so, if covid started in Beijing or Nanjing. Or if Wuhan wouldn't be home to one of the two BSL–4 labs in China. And the only lab to my mind that investigated SARS-CoV-2 closest known relative before the outbreak. But since all those facts are true, I really have a hard time considering other hypotheses.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#804

Post by Raaasmus »

handmodel wrote: post #671
ajross wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no requirement that bats be transported to Wuhan. It's close to a known bat virus, and that's all we know. There are local bats in Wuhan, needless to say. Other species can easily be involved. The truth is that there is nothing particularly surprising about the way this virus evolved. Fundamentally this is a pandemic like any other. They happen in some species or another every year. And that, more than anyth…

Is it Occam's razor? The Bayesian probability suggests the odds that it would evolve by chance AND first become an issue right next to one of the top three bat virus research centers in the world are pretty slim. It would be like a new mosquito disease first being an issue in human population next the CDC headquarters in Atlanta instead of somewhere in Africa of South America. Sure - there are mosquitos everywhere -…

To me another simple explanation is that the disease was first identified near the labs because it is a lab that deals with viruses. I may be mistaken, but I recall it as one of the top ones in the world that virologists from around the world go to.

Also waste water samples from Spain and Italy show COVID-19 much earlier than reported in Wuhan.

Spain, March 2019, 1 sample https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...

Italy, 18. December 2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N2DW1YK

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#805

Post by nednar »

gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

> The alternative theory is [...]

So there are only two alternatives, and we just need to compare which sounds more likely? Or could it be that you exclude about a million other alternatives here, while also ignoring that just a little bit more information about context often makes unlikely scenarios more likely and vice versa?

Not arguing any of the theories here, just looking at the approach. The first task might not be to make assumptions, but to understand the situation better.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#806

Post by aden1ne »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #693
lamontcg wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means that mink, and particularly the practice of mink farming is likely to lead to another outbreak (or whatever the actual species is determined to be). That animal would have sufficiently similar biology to humans, including the ACE2 receptor so that zoonotic transmission could happen. Those farms would definitely need to be closed.

I have not researched this mink idea, so I don't know how likely they are to lead to cross species contamination, but remember the swine flu? We already know pigs are capable of such transmission and we still farm them. Lots of mammals are capable of this, and we can determine which ones are even if we don't isolate the cause of thie pandemic.

Minks (and other mustelids) are extraordinarily capable of transmitting human respiratory viral diseases. Ferrets (same genus as Minks) are used as an animal model for human influenza research for that reason.

SARS-CoV-2 also spreads exceptionally well on mink farms. Out of a total of 128 mink farms in the Netherlands, at least 69[0] had an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, with more suspected cases. On at least two farms, there were confirmed transmissions from the animals to farm workers. It is likely mink would form a natural reservoir SARS-CoV-2 if allowed to spread in the wild.

Mink farming has subsequently been banned since early 2021 in the Netherlands.

[0]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-1... (Dutch)

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#807

Post by the-dude »

bitreality wrote: post #766
ethbr0 wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask a liar a question, and they lie, then the strongest conclusion isn't that you asked the right question -- it's that they're a liar. China stonewalls pretty much every attempt by the international community to interfere with their internal control. So this is more "business as usual" than "Clouseau found the smoking gun."

The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged. One of those labs was right near the seafood market which had one of the first documented outbreaks. It's all circumstantial evidence of course, but that's really all you're going to get with a country like China. We can be damn well sure that they would never admit to the virus originating from a lab le…

Could you please define "right near" ? Are we talking about the lab ~10km away ?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#808

Post by aww_dang »

cameldrv wrote: post #741
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. We could also invoke Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. A coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan China miles away from a Virology Lab that studies coronavirus and has in the past exercised gain of function research on cornoviruses specifically with novel lung ACE2 bind may have had a lab accident and a live virus broke out if the lab. The problem is the media labeling common sense as con…

Exactly. If there were an Anthrax outbreak in Ft. Detrick, MD, everyone would be immediately assuming the lab was involved. Wuhan is the Ft. Detrick of Coronaviruses.

There were two incidents at that facility. The first led to a building being condemned.

The second was a more nebulous investigation into the yet unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill#Lawsuits

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#809

Post by smcl »

throwawaysea wrote: post #756
plibither8 wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Frankly, I'm tired of this tip-toed attitude - there hasn't been any sort of consequences suffered or imposed on the Chinese government for how they surreptitiously dealt with the virus, initially. I'm not condoning or advocating conspiracy theories, but where they are wrong, they should be penalised.

The Chinese government also started limiting domestic flights in January 2020 but allowed foreign flights out until late March 2020 ( https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2020/04/09/Coronaviru... ). That seems like they were containing damage that affected them but were happy to risk the rest of the world. I’m not sure if this was an economic decision or something more malicious but it doesn’t matter - how are they…

> Meanwhile in the US, hysterical partisans attacked Trump for correctly naming the virus along with its origin

He spent months doing nothing in preparation, and denying there was an issue then when it turned out there was an actual problem decided it was all China's fault ... even though they had it largely under control by that point. That's why people were "hysterical" - he saw it coming, did nothing and refused to take any responsibility, but blamed someone else. He wasn't trying to accurately identify the source of the virus, he was trying to save his own skin.

Sure it's frustrating that we only found out in (I think) December that it was spreading human-to-human, and it'd be good to see some actual investigation from China. But Trump's finger-pointing was all just desperate attempt to save face and deflect from his own poor management and nothing more. Your question should be rephrased "How many deaths could have been avoided with just the most basic level of competency?" and directed at Donald Trump and his administration.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#810

Post by aww_dang »

ipiz0618 wrote: post #764
gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

China is demonized not because of an accident (if it was one). Even if it's confirmed that a lab accident was the cause, China holds the blame for hiding the truth, telling the world it's all okay, and arresting people that dared to speak out (even causing their deaths). No matter what was the origin, China is responsible for the outbreak. Btw, I don't think we can ever find out the truth. It's been over a year, and…

Minor nitpick, but it would be more accurate to use CCP in place of China in this comment.
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