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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a virus that's pretty good at spreading through humans but not yet amazing at spreading through humans stay in an isolated region for months or even years?

I don't think it would, and I don't know why you'd think I'm suggesting that.

>I tend to think it was circulating in rural Hubei, probably coinfecting domestic animals and people, getting better and better at infecting people until the market event happened which was where it found a densely packed human population where it spread with R0 significantly greater than 1 and took off.

How would a virus that's medium good at infecting humans, but not yet amazing at infecting humans, stay in rural Hubei for years without escaping?

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

#272
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why make the comparison if it's not needed. It is enough to state one thing without comparing it needlessly to another.

You're the one who needlessly and wrongly conflated not falsifying data with being completely above board and trustworthy. I've been trying to get through to you this whole thread that the two are not equivalent.

you only need to state don't feed the troll instead of feeding the troll

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are replies like this so frustratingly common when I engage with the "covid conspiracy theorist" crowd? I asked for empirical evidence and you responded with a massive self-righteous rant calling me a hypocrite because you _think_ I hold certain views. So what if I'm a hyprocrite, does that mean they're right? No, it doesn't, so your comment is nothing more than a drawn-out ad hominem attack.

Dr. Birx describing the evolution of viruses and how Covid does not fit that mold is not "pure speculation." I cited her book, and as she's a world class expert in this field I don't know what more beyond that you would expect? Unless you are expecting the CCP to open their books, which is laughable.

Dr. Birx stood by nodding when Trump suggested people drink Chlorox. Let's not pretend like she has earned any trust.

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

#274
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.

Quick reminder that the researchers at the Wuhan lab are American. So, according to the conspiracy theory, there is some motivation for Americans to help China with a cover up.

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

#275
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one thing that makes me think the Lab Leak theory is true is that the Chinese government very very strongly denies the story ...well, yes, of course they do. But they would also strongly deny the story if they thought it was untrue. > Anytime the Chinese government reacts very negatively to a story (Denial, attacking, undermining, deflecting), it usually means the story is true. So if they don't react negativel…

> ...well, yes, of course they do. But they would also strongly deny the story if they thought it was untrue. Then why would block any investigation from outside the Chinese government? If anything, if the Lab Leak theory is provable false, they should be inviting outsiders to investigate and waste their political capital/time/energy. If your advisories want to spin their wheels on something that is not true, then le…

You're saying that if there is more evidence that it didn't come from a lab then you would be convinced at let it go? I simply don't believe that.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad? Compared to which one better? Or just because it's Chinese? Now back to square one?

You're misunderstanding. Criticizing a government is not criticizing a race. You criticizing a government because of its policies, oppressiveness, and so on. None of that has anything to do with race. The Chinese have every ability to have a good government as any other race, because race has nothing to do with it. They just happen to have a bad government, compared to a number of other better governments (of all rac…

It's not criticizing a government to say "Chinese scientists". Also, much of the research in the Wuhan lab was being conducted by American scientists of Chinese descent for American academic institutions--no relation to the Chinese government. The entire conspiracy theory is held together by racism.

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

#277
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…

I'm not a fan of lab leak, but I don't really care. What get's me is I'd support serious action against china because if its a lab leak they need to own that, and if it's from shitty food supply chain they need to own that too. Also they're a shitty dictatorship, they're aggressive, they're genocidal etc. People seem very enthusiastic to blame china for a lab leak, but have no enthusiasm to blame them for other mecha…

That is exactly how this conspiracy theory is being employed. China is being punished because of a made-up story that is politically advantageous to spread. This is similar to Russia saying that Ukraine is infested with Nazis.

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

#278
post #173
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I nominate putin for the nobel peace prize based on his efforts here. You're implying intent on his part. If any single person in the world would want renewables to never exist, it would be him. I also am aghast that you would feel this way about a man destroying hundreds of thousands of lives. The man is evil.

> You're implying intent on his part. If this was required for most discoveries we'd have to recall a serious number of nobels... Also if he's shutting down hundreds of throusands of biological co2 and methane factories isn't that further supporting the case?

Unbelievable.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that finding the origin of a virus that's less deadly and faster-spreading (like SARS-CoV-2) is a harder problem. Nevertheless: 1. We quickly found pretty good evidence (infected civet cats and raccoon dogs, and infected human traders of those animals) that SARS-1 arose from natural zoonosis, within about a year of its emergence in humans. The later discovery of WIV-1 didn't add to this evidence. 2. We've fou…

They sterilized the market as a containment protocol for SARS-CoV-2, which eliminated the evidence. With SARS-1 the market was still fully operating when they went looking for the origins. Once the human pandemic kicks off and you find some civets or whatever with the virus, then how do you prove they had it before the humans unless you have lucky lab samples drawn from civets who were infected prior to Dec 2019? You…

A civet (assuming hypothetically that's the intermediate host for SARS-CoV-2) infected before Dec 2019 would provide strong genomic evidence of forward zoonosis. A civet infected afterward could still provide that evidence though, if it's by a zoonotic lineage distinguishable from the one that spilled over into humans (if such a lineage exists; you're of course correct it's not guaranteed to).

For now that's all academic though, since we've found zero animals infected by any lineage of SARS-CoV-2, excluding animals that we're quite confident were infected directly or indirectly by humans, from the timing, circumstances, and genomic evidence. I don't think your scenario is impossible, and the traders themselves also had good incentive to hide or dispose of suspect animals before anyone could swab them. There's inherently no direct evidence for it, though.

It seems like most arguments over the origin of SARS-CoV-2 eventually reduce to arguments over what the Chinese government has concealed, whether deliberately or accidentally as part of their containment protocol. That makes the argument hard to resolve, though there's still considerable unexplored evidence within reach of American or European subpoena, like a search through all available raw sequencer reads between September and December 2019 for contamination from SARS-CoV-2 or related viruses.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wuhan lab used to catch wild bats and take virus samples from them. It’s not too far fetched someone sold the same bats to the market or was infected and infected other people / living animals there.

I still don't see why you think researches would resort to selling bats to a wet market to make a little extra money. They'd be fired for sure if caught. They also would make almost no extra money... The going rate for bats isn't much...

There are more persons in a lab than only high qualified researchers. Cleaners for example. And one bat might not be much, but if your job is to dispose 20 or 50 of them and you can just go a few hundred meters and sell them to a vendor for a few bucks?

I don't say that is what actually happened there, I just think that this would be one possibility.

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