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Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

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Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#151

Post by alephnerd »

HPsquared wrote: post #123
pipeline_peak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1970's America wasn't anywhere near as poverty struck as China. It's really difficult to care about the world around you when you can't even take care at home.

The country has enough wealth. In 1975 the US GDP was about $7500/yr per capita (in 2021 dollars). Today the Chinese GDP per capita is around $10k/yr (more like 19k accounting for purchasing power parity).

The 1975 US Household median income was ~$13,000 (approx $65,000-70,0000 in 2019 dollars) [0][1]

Chinese household median income is around $4,700-4,800 in 2021, with massive disparities between First world comparable regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, and rust belt regions like Wuhan [2]. Even the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has noted that 600 million Chinese earn less that $140/month [3].

This of course leads to the larger discussion about GDP per capita being a weak metric to use when analyzing regional development, but in general China is by most standards still a developing middle income country with a (relatively) small and overperforming hinterland.

[0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1977/demo/p60-10...

[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1975?amount=1

[2] http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t2022011...

[3] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189968.shtml

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#152

Post by oasisbob »

manv1 wrote: post #118

One problem in these kinds of investigations is that nobody involved really wants the truth to be known. The lab isn't going to let anyone poke around and see what it was doing until the CPP falls. And even then records have probably been wiped already. The problem is that there really isn't any evidence. SARS-COV-2 has never been detected in any Chinese land animals associated with the market. We know that birds can…

> There were two variants in the market...

No, there were two distinct lineages in the market. That's different than variants.

The lineages are important because although the differences between the sequences are small, they are distinct, and there are no known transitional haplotypes.

> given the speed at which SARS-COV-2 variants have mutated in humans, well, how likely is it that the market was the source?

See Pekar et al: https://zenodo.org/record/6342616

They deal with this question directly.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#153

Post by hammock »

dang wrote: post #121
stinkass wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a nurse that said one of her family members lived in a small housing development where almost everyone got terminal brain cancer. A certain company that you've heard of handled hazardous materials next door and offered to do the testing in the development. Surprise, no contamination found. And they made it clear that if you implicate them, you'll be contacted by their sizable legal department. Everyone affected…

(This is is unrelated to your comment, just the username) Trollish usernames aren't allowed on HN because they effectively troll every thread they post to. We've learned that it's better to deal with this earlier than later, so I've banned the account. Happy to rename and unban it if you want to pick a more neutral username. This is a borderline case—we don't want to be prudes—but I suspect most readers would rather…

Dang I wanted to hear their reply

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#154

Post by Consultant32452 »

manv1 wrote: post #118

One problem in these kinds of investigations is that nobody involved really wants the truth to be known. The lab isn't going to let anyone poke around and see what it was doing until the CPP falls. And even then records have probably been wiped already. The problem is that there really isn't any evidence. SARS-COV-2 has never been detected in any Chinese land animals associated with the market. We know that birds can…

In Dr. Birx's recently released book she claims to have known it came from a lab origin from the start, based on evolutionary reasoning. As she describes: A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. But covid was extremely effective at infecting humans "right out of the box." In a lab environment the virus is repeatedly exposed to human cells and gets better at infecting human cells with each iteration.

Evolutionary biologist Heather Heying similarly reasoned the origin of the virus through an understanding of evolution. Covid doesn't appear to transmit outside. If covid evolved naturally, it would be capable of spreading outside, where animals live. Instead, it appeared to evolve to spread in lab-like air conditioned conditions only.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#155

Post by anigbrowl »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #57
CWuestefeld wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two are not mutually exclusive. For example, some "theories" say that a WIV employee took animals that had been used in experiments, and sold them at the market. I'm not suggesting this is actually what happened, just that there's plenty of room for involvement from both of these entities (or, perhaps, neither).

You find it more believable that it somehow made sense to sell animals infected with viruses for human consumption than someone made a mistake and got infected with a virus they were doing experiments on?

Actually yes. If someone is trading hundreds of live animals for meat on a weekly basis, and the animals aren't obviously seriously ill, why would you expect them to use any standard more rigorous than 'looks fine to me'?

Consider how things like hoof & mouth disease have ripped through agricultural herds in western countries, where there are much higher regulatory standards for food production. Diseases can spread fast before the symptoms become obvious.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#156

Post by AlanYx »

anigbrowl wrote: post #134
AlanYx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add to this, in the linked paper by Worobey et. al., Fig 2(B) shows something they label as "Centroid of Blue Cases". That centroid appears to be almost squarely on the location of the Wuhan Institute of Infectious Diseases. For some reason, neither the locations of the Wuhan Institute of Infectious Diseases or the Wuhan Institute of Virology are mentioned in the linked paper.

This is correct, but the paper does observe that these second-stage cases (mostly reported around January and February) occur in an area of high density housing with a preponderance of elderly people.

Are you referring to the linked paper or something else?

As far as I can tell (the writing style is not very clear IMHO), the Fig 2(B) blue cases are not second-stage cases, but rather a plot of "cases with no known link to the market".

As for your second point, I don't see any discussion in the paper that this cluster "occur[s] in an area of high density housing with a preponderance of elderly people". Where are you seeing this?

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#157

Post by tootie »

ejb999 wrote: post #36

I wonder how many people who are seemingly willing to believe the self-serving CCP party-line on this, would be just as believing of the owners of a nuclear power plant in their town, once the drinking water became radioactive, claiming "it didn't come from the plant, someone else down the street must have done it" - that is just about as believable as this.

That's disingenuous. I don't think anybody anywhere is just taking the CCP party line at face value.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#158

Post by Consultant32452 »

"I remind us all that an “outbreak at the Wet market” “natural origin” “not designed” “not a bioweapon” and “nothing to do with a virology lab” are all VERY different things that keep, oddly, getting conflated."

~ Eric Weinstein

This study seems to potentially shine some light on only the first item in that list, an outbreak at/near the wet market.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#159

Post by sudden_dystopia »

This is just a study of the distribution of early cases which was centered around the market. But the WIV is in the same area so I don’t see what this proves. Still doesn’t isolate an animal or explain how they had a bat virus that 95% matched sars cov 2 genome back in 2013 in WIV.

Re: Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic

#160

Post by nradov »

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #132
mullen wrote: post #114

The one thing that makes me think the Lab Leak theory is true is that the Chinese government very very strongly denies the story and does anything it can to deflect or redirect the discussion to some other theory. For anyone reading these kinds of stories and reports but is not a regular China follower, there is one thing you really should know. Anytime the Chinese government reacts very negatively to a story (Denial…

Quoted post unavailable.

Internal Chinese politics and international relations drive this behavior. They don't give a shit about the opinions of random foreigners.
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