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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

#881

Post by herbst »

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…

> No matter what was the origin, China is responsible for the outbreak.

Even if thats the case its still the shitty response in the west, ignoring any chinese advice, that made this a global thing.

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

#882

Post by acdha »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #833
acdha wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of westerners want to believe the conspiracy theories in part because it’s hard to admit how much more we could have learned from SARS. Ignoring China, the Taiwanese government doesn’t take orders from them and certainly wouldn’t help with a cover up but because of SARS all it took was Li Wenliang‘s post leaking for them to activate a comprehensive response. The key part was recent memory overriding the…

It wasn't Li Wenliang's post that activated the Taiwanese response. It was the Chinese government's public alert on 30 December 2019 about a cluster of patients with "pneumonia of unknown etiology" that triggered the response.

That announcement came after top Taiwanese medical officials had seen those social media posts, realized how serious they looked, and started asking China about them.

https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...

https://www.ocacnews.net/overseascommunity/article/article_s...

> In the wee hours of Dec. 31, 2019, CDC deputy chief Lo Yi-chun could not sleep and was scrolling his phone when an online post shared in a CDC chat group caught his attention.

> Quoting information from Chinese websites, the post that appeared on PTT, one of Taiwan's largest internet bulletin board systems (BBS), warned about the potential danger of a SARS-like disease that was spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

> "The post came out (on PTT) at 2 a.m., and at 3 a.m., I saw it being shared on a chat group by another sleepless CDC doctor," Lo said at a press conference Thursday.

> Lo said the post immediately caught his eye because unlike other unsubstantiated online messages this one included a chest CT scan, a hospital test result and what appeared to be a screenshot of messages sent by a doctor to his colleagues, warning them of a highly contagious virus.

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

#883

Post by AzzieElbab »

esja wrote: post #255
AzzieElbab wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO and Peter Daszak also said they weren’t given enough access to develop any deliberate conclusions.

A proper investigation would not include Peter Daszak at all, due to his immense conflicts of interest on this topic, and his behaviour since the outbreak occurred.

The whole thing is a bureaucratic cya masterpiece. We deny the wuhan lab leak but, just in case, we also deny we had any means to actually investigate it

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

#884

Post by TheKarateKid »

jhugo wrote: post #771
TheKarateKid wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee I don't know.. maybe going 100 years back with the Spanish Flu? West Nile virus, Zika virus, Ebola.. all those are okay but saying Wuhan virus is considered racist.

The Spanish flu didn't originate in Spain.

My comment, nor the parent comment, ever said origination.

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

#885

Post by smcl »

Mat342 wrote: post #870
smcl wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

CCCP party li(n)e

Could you elaborate? I don’t really know what you’re suggesting so I can’t provide a response.

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

#886

Post by Uberphallus »

bgandrew wrote: post #803
freeflight wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relativ…

SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in Wuhan, but it's not that clear that it's where it originated. The genetic divergence between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 is explained with about 20 years of natural evolution, which puts the common ancestor somewhere in late 2000s, and given that bats migrate, the ancestor occurred potentially anywhere in Eurasia or even Africa.

Post-hoc analysis of waste water and patient samples in Europe shows that it was circulating in Europe by mid-late 2019, way before the patient 0 in Wuhan.

So the leak hypothesis, while feasible, would have to address why the virus was seemingly abroad before it became a problem in Wuhan itself.

Of course it's a reasonable hypothesis, but putting it as number 1 is kind of reframing the whole picture.

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

#887

Post by heidar »

ktzar wrote: post #787
bitcharmer wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. There is so much evidence of China suppressing information I don't understand how so many people dismiss their role in spreading the virus beyond their borders. They had a choice to make: country-wide lockdown and travel ban or lie about it and make it spread worldwide. The former would leave their economy in a disadvantaged state while the latter would level the playing field for the rest of t…

China did a harder lockdown than any other country has done. Right from the beginning. Took an immense toll to its economy, right from the beginning. A WHO team was there investigating and gathering information on public health from the beginning. I'm sorry, but in this case, China is the country who told the rest of the world what to do and the west, with its superiority mentality over the east, ignored it and got a…

The CCP didn't do it right from the beginning. It took them almost two months to even acknowledge the virus was spreading between humans and was dangerous.

All they did was try to downplay it and cover it up, until it had spread not only throughout China, but the rest of the world. That's despite having systems in place for exactly the purpose of catching viruses like covid-19 early and quickly.

It's a great example of why ineffective bureaucracy, combined with a bad system of governance and a culture where saving face is hugely important, is harmful to humanity.

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

#888

Post by esja »

boringg wrote: post #851
esja wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also assign a small but non-zero probability to the US not wanting to point the finger because they prefer the scenario where the general population comes to believe that the lab accident was responsible, but no hard evidence is ever produced. Why? Because it seems like US institutions and people (right up to Fauci) were involved in this research and may not want the domestic blowback. Conveniently the CCP don't…

Please supply links on the research grants.

Sure.

Part 1, from 2014-2019, for 3.7M:

https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8674931

Part 2, from 2019 until it was cancelled in April 2020:

https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304

Both led by Peter Daszak who is now also the lead WHO investigator. The same person who decided the WHO didn’t need to see the deleted virus databases, and the same person who co-ordinated the Lancet statement which minimised the lab leak theory early on (and let to it being considered a conspiracy theory).

Here he is on This Week In Virology, describing this sort of work. It’s worth watching the whole thing, but gets most interesting from minute 27 onward:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w

For example he confirms it’s easy to modify these viruses in the lab, and mentions collaborating with Ralph Baric at UNC. Baric invented Remdesivir (with Gilead) - the “cure” that turned out not to work very well. His lab was doing gain of function experiments before the ban. Shi Zhengli (“bat woman” from Wuhan) worked very closely with Baric and Daszak.

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

#889

Post by esja »

esja wrote: post #888
boringg wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please supply links on the research grants.

Sure. Part 1, from 2014-2019, for 3.7M: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8674931 Part 2, from 2019 until it was cancelled in April 2020: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304 Both led by Peter Daszak who is now also the lead WHO investigator. The same person who decided the WHO didn’t need to see the deleted virus databases, and the same person who co-ordinated the Lancet statement which minimised…

Another overview here (there are plenty of these):

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan...

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

#890

Post by rfoo »

watertom wrote: post #452

A lot of smart people in this forum. Someone please explain to me how the Chinese were able to identify that that had a new virus. I’ve done pandemic drills with homeland security. They said they way you know you’ve got a new virus floating around is either new symptoms; significantly more “flu like” cases; significantly more cases escalating to pneumonia; increased deaths. Covid presents like the flu, so much so you…

> I want to know how they discovered it with no information?

tl;dr: mNGS [1]

Longer answer as I think you may need to be mansplained because you wrote a long post which could be answered by a simple Google search and Wikipedia article:

Step 1: Doctor wonder why their patients were so sick, looks like infection but no pathogens identified, this is actually not that rare as there are many obscure pathogens even for experienced doctors.

Step 2: Patients agrees to pay for mNGS. Nurse draw their blood, send to lab.

Step 3: mNGS matches every DNA "pieces" from the patients' blood against a database. One of those pieces matched the original SARS with about 90% similarity.

Step 4: Chaos in the lab, the hospital and the government.

Step 5: "We've detected a new virus"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_metagenomic_sequencin...

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