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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

#161

Post by mullen »

chimprich wrote: post #133
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…

> 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 let them.

> So if they don't react negatively and deny something, then the story is... false? That doesn't make any sense.

When it comes to the Chinese government and information, surprisingly as it sounds, yes. If the Lab Leak story was not true, the Chinese government would not even react to it. They might even entertain it as part of their information ops strategy since the Lab Leak theory is a plausible theory.

If you think about it, how does the Wet Market theory make China look better than the Lab Leak theory? It really doesn't. If serious pandemics are coming out of Wet Markets, then why does China still allow Wet Markets to exist? At least with lab safety, labs can be improved and managed better while Wet Markets are just ticking pandemic timebombs.

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

#162

Post by anigbrowl »

AlanYx wrote: post #156
anigbrowl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course I'm referring to the linked paper.

If you are not seeing such discussion perhaps you should read it more slowly. It's early in the Results section.

The clustering of COVID-19 cases in December around the Huanan market (Fig. 1, B and C, insets) contrasts with the pattern of widely dispersed cases across Wuhan by early January through mid-February 2020 (Fig. 1, D and E), which we mapped using location data from individuals using a COVID-19 assistance app on Sina Weibo (26). Weibo-based data analyses show that, unlike early COVID-19 cases, by January and February many of the sick who sought help resided in highly populated areas of the city, and particularly in areas with a high density of older people (Fig. 1E and figs. S9 and S10).

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

#163

Post by mullen »

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.

> ignored scientific evidence

Any "scientific evidence" that can be touched by the Chinese government will be corrupted. Any influence they have over "scientific evidence" is not scientific evidence.

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

#164

Post by tripletao »

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 they could easily have arisen in a single human-to-human transmission. SARS-CoV-2 averages something around a third of an SNP per human-to-human transmission, so ~10% of such transmissions differ by two SNPs.

If a missing link does exist, then it's just a single mutation away from either strain. So there's no reason to consider the "two lineages" too significant in any direction, unless you believe sampling in humans has been perfectly good. That belief seems unreasonable to me, especially since belief in a natural zoonotic origin requires us to believe sampling in animals has been perfectly bad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/153463060722071...

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

#165

Post by ZeroGravitas »

9991 wrote: post #143
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally find that, while there are a worrying amount of people with insane takes on things, often reaching 30% in various polls when something becomes "political", that the majority generally gets it right. If only there was a bit more democracy, a lot of bad things could be avoided. Having said that, I looked up the polling on lab leaks and American democracy loses on this one: https://morningconsult.com/2021/06…

I know "nearly half" is not quite a majority, but it's still a plurality of Americans getting it right. Don't count out American democracy just yet.

Sadly, it wasn't a binary choice:

48% "The Coronavirus spilled from a Virology lab in China"

28% Don't Know / No Opinion

26% "The Coronavirus moved naturally from animals to humans"

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

#166

Post by mikeyouse »

ChemSpider wrote: post #144
mikeyouse wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I remember the market is between the lab and some public transit destinations. It would make sense to go through the market on the way home from work. You don't remember correctly. The WIV is ~15km from the market and there are multiple other markets nearer the WIV if employees were regularly 'shopping.

There is a second "small WIV" just around the corner from this market.

So when people were insisting the WIV was the source for all this time due to the type of work they were doing there, they really meant that the CCDC was the source even though the CCDC was doing entirely different (and lower level work)? You get why that's not very convincing and reeks of "god of the gaps" style arguments, right?

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

#167

Post by googlryas »

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…

Since you seem to think the lab leak theory is true, imagine a hypothetical world where it really did start from the wet market.

How do you believe the CCP's reaction would be different from what we saw them actually do?

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

#168

Post by chimprich »

Jeema101 wrote: post #116
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.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the pandemic started in Wuhan, but probably not in the way you're thinking: Wuhan is the largest railway hub in all of China [1]. And that's likely the reason why both the institute and the market were situated there in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Railway_Hub

A good point. Another factor reducing the "coincidence" of a (probable) bat-originated coronavirus pandemic starting in a city with a lab studying bat coronaviruses is that labs studying viruses of type X tend to be located in areas where viruses of type X are found.

To take ejb999's example of radioactive water being found near a nuclear power plant, is it more likely that the radioactive water was found because there is increased monitoring of radiation near nuclear power plants?

It is important not to make emotional leaps to conclusions. Apparent correlations deserve study, but they are not proofs.

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

#169

Post by rob_c »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #52
rob_c wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the inference being here that companies paying fines at this level are completely above board and trustworthy?

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?

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

#170

Post by mullen »

mikeyouse wrote: post #145
cudgy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is perfectly reasonable that some lab somewhere would collect and study the COVID virus. What is unreasonable is that the lab or a lab worker just got sloppy and accidently released that virus out to the world. Is this still true? It is unfortunate that it took an event like this to prove what we already knew: lab workers, who are of course fallible humans, will make mistakes. Given that Covid was released upon…

> Given that Covid was released upon the world likely due to a lab accident This is entirely without evidence. > This in itself has proven to be a source of denial by the very virus experts (like Fauci) that do not want their area of science to be restricted. Even if you ignore Covid19 -- epidemiologists and virologists have been screaming for years that pandemics are hugely problematic and will become increasingly l…

> This is entirely without evidence.

To make it clear, the Chinese government blocks any investigation by outside parties that they don't control or have influence over.

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