Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by 99_00 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #258

99_00 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't need to assume - US is always handling things this way, to the extreme; Hague Invasion Act for example.

The question is what would China do if it had America's dominant position and there was and a global pandemic killing 6 million and causing 12 trillion in damage originated blocks away from an American virus lab and animal market.

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

#262

Post by lern_too_spel » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

rob_c wrote: post #259

lern_too_spel wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You very clearly don't understand. I said they aren't completely trustworthy and I never implied they are.

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.

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

#263

Post by trasz » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #261

trasz wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to assume - US is always handling things this way, to the extreme; Hague Invasion Act for example.

The question is what would China do if it had America's dominant position and there was and a global pandemic killing 6 million and causing 12 trillion in damage originated blocks away from an American virus lab and animal market.

Nothing, given that it's way less aggressive than US, and I believe for a deep cultural reasons. Which is also what have been done literally every single time it happened before, I believe? The whole idea of punishing a country for a pandemic sounds deranged even for a right wing propaganda.

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

#264

Post by mikeyouse » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #175

mikeyouse wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And what evidence may you have that it did not come from a lab? Ignoring the incredible risks of playing with and even creating deadly pathogens and the high likelihood of it being released into the world serves what purpose other than to protect a small group of scientists that want to create Frankenstein pathogens for experimental purposes that are likely to be either weaponized or accidentally released? Even if th…

You do see the imbalance between the two statements right?

"This virus came from a lab - so we should ban lab research"

and

"You can't prove the virus didn't come from a lab - so we should ban lab research"

Nature is doing far more Gain of Function research than humans are capable of - as evidenced by literally every pandemic in history. I've generally found the people who are the most vocal about banning GoF have literally no idea what it entails and why the way pedestrians talk about is so cringeworthy.

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

#265

Post by 99_00 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #263

99_00 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is what would China do if it had America's dominant position and there was and a global pandemic killing 6 million and causing 12 trillion in damage originated blocks away from an American virus lab and animal market.

Nothing, given that it's way less aggressive than US, and I believe for a deep cultural reasons. Which is also what have been done literally every single time it happened before, I believe? The whole idea of punishing a country for a pandemic sounds deranged even for a right wing propaganda.

Punishing a country for a pandemic is deranged.

Ensuring the cause of the pandemic is understood and steps have been taken to greatly reduce the likely hood of it happening again is the opposite of deranged. Failing to do so is in fact deranged.

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

#266

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

sigma_ligma wrote: post #254

Consultant32452 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

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.

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

#267

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #216

lamontcg wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it spreads asymptomatically though isn't that "good" at spreading rather than "medium"? SARS-1 disn't have a presymptomatic infectious phase and the peak of symptoms was roughly the peak of infectiousness, and it was mostly severely virulent, and it didn't produce a global pandemic and was controllable. To have an uncontrollable pandemic you really need that silent spreading, so the pandemic virus that emerges nec…

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.

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

#268

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #228

rich_sasha wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wuhan itself is 12 million people, 1,500 km^2 according to Wikipedia. I don't know but I'm guessing there is far less opportunities for coming up close with all sorts of wildlife. Id also guess the manpower that went into searching for the SARS2 predecessor far exceeds the efforts that went into sampling animals in African rainforest.

The zoonotic theory is that the infected animals came from exactly the places where there is a lot of wildlife and were shipped to Wuhan (which is basically the point of wet markets). There might have been more manpower looking for the SARS-2 predecessor but, unlike with Ebola, there isn't any guarantee it still exists in a recognizable form, and in intermediate hosts you have the issue of human-animal transmission.

Yeah, at this point it is impossible to determine any intermediate host unless you have lucky backdated samples in a freezer someplace.

And I'm still skeptical that bats gave it directly to intermediate animals who gave it to people in a nice linear fashion. Humans going into mines (like the Mojiang miners) or bat guano farming could have become infected and given it to farmed animals that they were around first, and the pandemic could be the result of spillback once the virus got good at infecting humans (not needing to be particularly good at infecting the farmed animals because of massively crowded conditions).

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

#269

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #247

sudosysgen wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SARS-1 was more infectious and less virulent you wouldn't see cases concentrated amongst traders, would you? If anything, since many of them already have some kind of immunity from previous infection, you would not expect them to even notice being sick before the virus already infected thousands.

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'd need to do something like find civit-adapted SARS-CoV-2 which could be genetically dated to prior to Dec 2019 because there were simply too many mutations to have been backspill from the human pandemic. If the spread in civets started very shortly before the spread in humans then that would likely not be possible at this point. If you could find a virus in civets that was 5 years of genetic drift away from SARS-CoV-2 that would probably work, but that may never have existed. What remains is finding the persistent bat reservoir.

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

#270

Post by kbelder » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #251

kbelder wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He specifically mentioned the Chinese government; therefore, his comment was specifically not racist. The Chinese government is not a race. It's just a bad government. All races have them at times.

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 races). Heck, look at Taiwan. Chinese people, much better government.