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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

#231
post #213
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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…

>Then why would block any investigation from outside the Chinese government? Now imagine it's US, not China. Would US let anyone from outside to investigate its labs?

That's a very interesting question.

Let's assume the US is the epicenter of a global pandemic that killed 6 million people and $12 trillion in economic damage (and counting). And the US is refusing to cooperate with an investigation into its origins.

What is an appropriate response from China, Russia, and the international community?

Assume the US's military isn't the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world. Instead China's is the most powerful and advanced.

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

#232

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?

What does "isolated region" mean to you?

The example given by the other poster is rural Hubei.

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

#233
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Fined for being inscrupulous but are not unscrupulous... Ok I think I understand the faith.

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

#234
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.

Similarly the WHO is now issuing the report that says it didn’t come from the WHO lab.

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

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure emotional argument without substance. You made no effort at all to criticize the methodology (which looks pretty standard to me, consistent with methods used to pinpoint the origin of other disease outbreaks besides COVID), or the raw data. Not one of the listed authors is Chinese, nor do any of them have any Chinese institutional affiliations. What is your actual argument for why I should disregard this, beyond…

> Not one of the listed authors is Chinese, nor do any of them have any Chinese institutional affiliations. Those are pretty naive criteria based on what we already know about the situation. One of the biggest opponents of investigating the lab leak hypothesis was Peter Daszak, a British zoologist who is certainly not Chinese nor does his EcoHealth Alliance have any surface level ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virolo…

I wouldn't be complaining if the op had made an effort to establish such a linkage as you did for your example. Is it my job to validate an assertion which op didn't bother to support with an argument?

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> A virus takes years to learn/evolve the ability to infect humans, and does so poorly at the start. This sounds like pure speculation. How much actual data do we have on viruses that just made the jump from animals to humans? Probably nowhere near the amount needed to confidently say that the original Wuhan strain was somehow too infectious to realistically be of natural origin. As for getting better at infecting hu…

Before her book was released, when Dr. Birx was going along with the natural origin story that was being pushed by the government, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?"

Dr. Fauci has recently been saying in interviews that the only masks that work are N95/KN95. When he was pushing cloth masks, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?"

Dr. Fauci has said, under oath, that when he was saying the vaccines would stop the spread he was just expressing a hope that would be the case. Dr. Birx says in her book she knew it would not stop the spread. When they were saying it would stop the spread, did you go around calling that "pure speculation?"

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they sell killed animals (in the live market)?

The whole point of live markets is that the animals are, well, live. And I would imagine they'd have a hard time selling dissected animals.

I think Wuhan market is a "wet" market rather than "live", so you can get prepared butchered meat.

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

#238
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live markets exist in China because there is low trust in the food supply. For many Chinese, they want to see the animal killed in front of them so they can make sure they're not getting ripped off. Due to various policies, China is a relatively low-trust society. Of course, it's also low trust because ripping people off isn't necessarily seen as bad, it's seen as clever.

And ripping people off isn't seen as clever in the rest of the world? Come on.

No, not even close to the same degree. If you told all your friends you sell ground beef at the farmers market but it was actually 50% beef 50% horse are they going to praise you for your cleverness or think you're an asshole?

That issue is why live markets exist cause no one there trusts the meat to be what what they say it is unless they can literally see it.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that it's highly unlikely that B evolved from A, but why do you think that's significant? We know the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is highly stochastic, with most lineages dying out and a few exploding, and we know the IFR in humans is small enough that considerable cryptic spread is possible before enough people die to raise the alarm. So why do you take the two lineages as conclusive evidence of two zoonotic…

I don't take two lineages to be conclusive evidence of multiple zoonotic events. However, the multiple polytomies for each are not easy to explain away. Have you read Pekar's most recent paper in Science? I raise this in earnest, I'm reading it now. A lot of it follows the preprint, but the update more directly addresses many of the points we're discussing. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 My probl…

I led with "just two mutations" because as far as I can tell, all of Worobey's or Pekar's reasoning starts from the assumption that there was no significant cryptic (unsampled) human spread. If the two lineages were tens of SNPs apart, then I believe that would be a reasonable assumption--it would be hard to explain how the virus could spread in humans long enough to accumulate that many mutations without causing enough sickness and mortality for someone to notice.

But with just two SNPs, I believe that assumption is invalid. So while I believe those authors have correctly observed that we're missing part of the evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2, I don't see how they decided whether that's unsampled spread in animals vs. unsampled spread in humans, except under that incorrect assumption.

I hadn't read the final paper, but I'm looking at it now. I don't see any new points that don't depend on that assumption yet, though. Do you?

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to be doing that. Can you tell us where anyone is claiming with 100% certainty?

The top comment in this thread: >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. Absolutely sure the CCP ar…

> Literally "I don't believe the facts".

Where is the fact in there? "China investigated itself and found themselves not guilty" does not make a "fact".

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