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The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

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Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#31

Post by guesst »

rramadass wrote: post #29
guesst wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…

You make a very good point (and thanks for the links). However i would not let China off the hook until we have figured out exactly what happened. If nobody is held "accountable" (for a certain definition of this word) it is bound to happen again and the next time it most certainly will be "biological warfare". This needs to be treated as seriously and as comprehensively the way we treat Nuclear Weapons.

I really think it's just the other way around. The more people make this about China, the less likely we are to find out the truth. If it's used as a geopolitical chess piece, it will get bogged down forever in political mud, which is kind of where the question is right now anyways. People will decide what they think about it based on how they feel about China. That's crazy.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#32

Post by roca »

thepasswordis wrote: post #24

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet: Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right? So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

That is one of the points in the article in favour of a lab leak hypothesis. People have been searching for an animal host (not necessarily a bat, could be an intermediate host) for over a year now and haven't found anything. The animal host for SARS1 was found in four months.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#33

Post by DSingularity »

bpodgursky wrote: post #14
mromanuk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don’t read articles written by racists. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2834627 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/on-the-...

You could read articles by a guy who was the NYTimes science writer for 30 years though.

I won’t read articles by scientists who whitewash colonial European exploitation with pseudo-science which claims that Africans are poor because they have genes inferior to the rich white men of Europe. Yeah, the same men who colonized and brutally exploited Africa and India and China and the Middle East. Yeah, those that robbed the world like common bandits while pretending they had a burden to civilize the “savage”. Europeans should leave Africa alone — because they still are exploiting them — and then pay them reparations.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#34

Post by bigpumpkin »

thepasswordis wrote: post #24

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet: Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right? So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

For SARS (2003) It took 3 years to find the intermediate host (civets). And 14 years (2017) to find the bat parent of the virus[1].

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

Guess who found the bat host? Shi Zhengli of the very WIV in question.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#35

Post by fooker »

mromanuk wrote: post #4
dataflow wrote: post #2

Please consider spending the ~hour or so it takes to read this. Yes, this is a repost, but I'm posting it because it hardly grabbed any attention the first couple of times people posted it. [1] [2] Yes, it's long, but it's very much worth the read. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27056327 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27062021

Sorry, I don’t read articles written by racists. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2834627 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/on-the-...

Do you realize that is literally prejudice?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#36

Post by guesst »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #34
thepasswordis wrote: post #24

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet: Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right? So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

For SARS (2003) It took 3 years to find the intermediate host (civets). And 14 years (2017) to find the bat parent of the virus[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... Guess who found the bat host? Shi Zhengli of the very WIV in question.

That's a bit confusing because the OP makes an opposite point: "The intermediary host species of SARS1 was identified within four months of the epidemic’s outbreak, and the host of MERS within nine months."

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#37

Post by pumpkinhead »

thepasswordis wrote: post #24

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet: Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right? So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

That is what exactly I think the Wuhan labs was studying, given that SARS did jump from another animal to human very recently. What would happen if these things mutate naturally and infect humans? They add gain-of-function genes to a near relative, study how it infect cells and come up with a plan to treat it. Except someone dropped some stuff on their shoe and went out shopping to the wet market.

I did plenty of these gain-of-function experiments in my postgrad studies. Mice tumours cells given genes to super-express certain cell adhesion molecules. Without this kind of approach, it is difficult to impossible to study these reactions. You just gotta be careful.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#38

Post by roca »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #34
thepasswordis wrote: post #24

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet: Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right? So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

For SARS (2003) It took 3 years to find the intermediate host (civets). And 14 years (2017) to find the bat parent of the virus[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... Guess who found the bat host? Shi Zhengli of the very WIV in question.

That wikipedia article says

> In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.)

and

> The SARS epidemic began in the Guangdong province of China in November 2002 ... Chinese government officials did not inform the World Health Organization of the outbreak until February 2003.

That's six months from the start of the outbreak, and less than four months from WHO being informed, not three years.

Where did you get your "three years" figure from?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#39

Post by willmadden »

guesst wrote: post #15
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

We don't want to know. That may sound a bit glib but I think it's true. What would be the reaction if we could determine the outbreak was due to an unintentional leak? China cannot reimburse the world for the economic damage covid has caused. It cannot be held accountable for all the lives that have been lost. It cannot compensate the world for the diminished quality of life we've all suffered. But there will be plen…

The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…

SARS-2-CoV was almost assuredly not natural, and RaTG13 was a keyboard virus. The only question is if it was accidentally leaked or if it was intentional. We'll never know, the CCP destroyed the evidence.

There are many videos and articles on this site about how SARS-2-CoV was not zoonotic. I don't necessarily blame China, but the funders of the research.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/more-evidence-covid-19-may-no...

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