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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

#191

Post by [deleted] »

tripletao wrote: post #181
chimprich wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also raises eyebrows the fact that no animal has ever been found to be positive for COVID, in contrast to all of the previous SARS pandemics. This doesn't really mean very much. It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. It's not like we were able to say definitively how the spillover began; it's all probabilities. We have found similar viruses to SAR…

> It took something like 15 years to find the bat population likely to have been the source of SARS-CoV-1. This is true but misleading. It took a long time to find the reservoir host (i.e., the animal in which most of the virus evolved) for SARS-1, but the proximal host (i.e., the animal that actually infected the first humans) was found within about a year. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/01/who-see…

[deleted]

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

#192

Post by chiefalchemist »

marcosdumay wrote: post #172
chiefalchemist wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Then let's go with: not properly tested and approved in alignment with tradition. The rub for many was / is the quickness of the process in contrast with the cock-sureness of the narrative (i.e., don't worry about it...just trust us...). There was also the disconnect between "trust the science" vs limited data and the shutting down of any question. Real Science is fearless.

But the process was enough to bring sureness. You seem to have a problem with the process being non-traditional, but it was the obvious adaptation to get the same sureness on the shortest possible timeframe. The data wasn't limited in any way. It's funny, because I have the opposite criticism. We just let people die for 6 months because we refused to act on "we are sure it's safe, we are confident it will work" and w…

> "You seem to have a problem with the process being non-traditional,"

Really? Because that's not what I said.

You can't change a process - especially not a medical one for 100s of millions of people - and then say "We're 100% certain of this. This is all new. There are no long term side effects. And if you think or say otherwise, we will cancel you."

Anyone who knows even a bit of history - medical or otherwise - and is comfortable with that is a either naive, or on the take.

To clarify, I don't have a problem with an non-traditional process. That being said, the way the process was "sold" set off my BS detector too many times. The two are disconnected to a fault.

For example, there's this:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/13/1111137...

Long to short, we've had "OMG the variants..." repeated over and over, how important the jab is to that, and then how in a worldwide pandemic the threat of variants can come from anywhere.

Yet, 2 docs in Brazil have to invent their own vax? And promise to give it away? While USA Big Pharma...does what??? counts their money? Because variants aren't a threat? See?

Again, complete disconnect. Disconnect that no one should be comfortable with.

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

#193

Post by anigbrowl »

AlanYx wrote: post #190
anigbrowl wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not my job to read the paper and look at the figures for you. Try putting the maps side by side and realizing they show the same geographic area. Fig 2B is an exemplar, as is clear from the description: 'Schematic showing how cases can be near to, but not centered on, a specific location.'

I'm trying to be civil, but you keep making statements about the paper that are objectively not correct. Fig. 2(B) does not show "second stage cases (mostly reported around January and February)" as you posted earlier. The map from the Weibo analysis is not shown in the paper, so one can't "put[] the maps side by side". Moreover, it's irrelevant to claim that a Weibo analysis of second stage cases not shown in the pa…

Perhaps you should get someone else to explain it to you. You are complaining that the map from the Weibo analysis is not shown in the paper, but it is, in figures 1D & 1E. Either you have poor reading comprehension or you are just trying to confuse people.

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

#194

Post by LinuxBender »

oasisbob wrote: post #139
LinuxBender wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically speaking, if it were a lab-leak and if it were a malicious lab tech or an that was mad at the world or compromised by a political actor, they could have dumped/micronize sprayed a vial [1] into the food market which would make the statement not entirely false. This is of course a lazy theory and would be nearly impossible to test out. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksrWmPMZGiY [video, gets NSFW…

> This is of course a lazy theory and would be nearly impossible to test out. Even this hypothetical theory doesn't explain the early lineage A / lineage B split and is not supported by existing data.

I have my own weak hypothesis regarding what you mention but I don't have anything really to back it up. Lineage A could have been the compromised tech and lineage B could have been an intentional engineered release that is more contagious but less lethal to improve morbidity from A and reduce or mitigate the fallout, not that anyone would ever admit doing this to the general public.

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

#195

Post by oasisbob »

tripletao wrote: post #164
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…

Note that the zoonotic path of Ebola into humans isn't well-understood. There was pretty good evidence of the path for SARS-1 though, and very good evidence for MERS. For SARS-CoV-2, there's still nothing, despite the recent emergence and considerably greater effort searching. The "two lineages" argument has been grossly distorted by Worobey and the media. They're just two single-nucleotide polymorphisms apart, so th…

> They're just two single-nucleotide polymorphisms apart

The problem with that argument, is that it doesn't explain the polytomies and is misleading, as you accuse Worobey of being.

"Just a few SNPs" is disingenuous and glosses over the usefulness of this evidence that almost everyone agrees on - eg, that it's highly unlikely that lineage B evolved from lineage A. (Even Jesse Bloom agrees on this.)

It may take a bit to find consensus on the dual-zoonosis theory and related phylogenetics, but the eagerness with which people dismiss this issue drives me nuts.

https://twitter.com/jepekar/status/1499840349807656960

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

#196

Post by lern_too_spel »

rob_c wrote: post #169
lern_too_spel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a crazy inference. Nowhere did I imply completely above board. Doesn't rampantly falsify data, yes. Completely above board and trustworthy, no. There are vanishingly few organizations that are completely above board and trustworthy.

> Doesn't rampantly falsify data, yes. Completely above board and trustworthy, no. the 2 are equivalent given context, no?

No. They were fined for doing things like recommending off-label use for their drugs, and they provided no data to support that off-label use. That isn't falsifying data, but that isn't acting trustworthy either.

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

#197

Post by lern_too_spel »

albatross13 wrote: post #65
lern_too_spel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the fines were for data falsification. Now we know not to trust albatross13.

> he thinks none of these lawsuits contained data falsification claims https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/pfizer > he thinks these whistleblowers and the BMJ are liars https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 Now we know not to trust lern_too_spel :)

Point me to a specific fine for data falsification. Unlike you, I have made no false claims here.

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

#198

Post by rich_sasha »

lamontcg wrote: post #180
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…

> SARS-COV-2 has never been detected in any Chinese land animals associated with the market. They acted very quickly to sterilize the market which eliminated the evidence. In SARS-1 the market associated with that was allowed to operate until investigators were able to take samples from the animals there and find the related virus. As a containment measure this was probably the right reflex to have, as an investigati…

I'm not really disagreeing, but isn't comparing Ebola and Marburg to SARSes a bit apples-to-bananas?

Ebola and Marburg for decades were quite rare. Incredibly deadly, but an outbreak would affect a few tens of people, and invariably in remote locations. By the time the epidemiologists arrived, the outbreak was waning.

Clearly the Ebola outbreak in 2010s was much bigger, but that was the first such large outbreak.

Also, with outbreaks in the rainforest, and perhaps with poor sanitation, there are thousands of possible animal hosts, whereas hyper-urbanised China hives far less opportunity for wildlife contact.

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

#199

Post by tripletao »

lamontcg wrote: post #189
tripletao wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of SARS-1 the actual progenitor virus was only found 10 years later in bats in Yunnan. Why do you keep saying this? As you know, the closest animal viruses to SARS-1 were found in civet cats and raccoon dogs, within about a year of its emergence in humans. The bat viruses that Dr. Shi later discovered are scientifically important, because most of SARS-1's genome probably evolved in bats. They provide no…

WIV-1 can directly infect humans. So did civit cats and racoon dogs give us SARS-1 or did we infect them (or backwards and forwards as in the case of SARS-CoV-2 and mink)? If you go back a few months before the pandemic outbreak in humans and there's a zoonotic jump to civit cat and raccoon dogs then I don't think you can usefully call that the reservoir species. It existed and evolved for decades in bats, which I'd…

WIV-1 can infect human cells in vitro. No complete human infected with WIV-1 has ever been identified, living or dead. When SARS-1 emerged in humans, cases were concentrated among traders handling civet cats, as were positive antibody tests. That seems to me like a pretty strong case for forward zoonosis, maybe not perfect but certainly stronger than any evidence we have for SARS-CoV-2.

I agree there's no evidence for any animal except bats as the reservoir for SARS-1 (or SARS-CoV-2). The intermediate host seems like the important link to show natural origin, though. Genetic engineers can't invent new viruses de novo, only modify existing ones, so a reservoir host must always exist; the question is just how it got from that reservoir to a human pandemic.

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

#200

Post by kansface »

csours wrote: post #115

We don't have testable theories here, we have Mad Libs. A virus of (human)/(animal) origin was (un)intentionally (released)/(spread)/(detected) in Wuhan, starting at a (lab)/(market). Narrative 1: Animal origin with extensive spread in a food market Narrative 2: Animal origin with accidental release from lab study Narrative 3: Intentional creation/modification of a virus for purposes of scientific study and subsequen…

> What would actually change if you had certainty around one of these theories?

Widespread political support for ending all public funding of gain-of-function research or outright banning it.

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