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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#51

Post by avs733 »

papermachete wrote: post #44
avs733 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.

It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.

it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#52

Post by alderz »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #8

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?

You might be thinking of this one https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#53

Post by andromeduck »

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing.

That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant fraction of the first known hospitalized cases having no direct connection to the market it should be obvious that the source is unlikely to have been the market itself but rather something close to it with the market just acting as a regional landmark or amplifier.

It's like you walk past a bunch of kids playing with fireworks by the trail and an hour later the forest is on fire having started in the same area as you saw the kids. You obviously can't know for sure it was them without more evidence, it could have been a cigarette butt from a carless smoker, but you be a fool to think it that just because there was no accelleant involved that it couldn't have been the kids.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224451-700-chinas-s...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#54

Post by pizza234 »

tanilama wrote: post #33
andromeduck wrote: post #2

Huge change of tone from 2 months ago, ok m guessing it's because because they fear that the lab accident theory will gain more traction academically or they fear people will reveal the scale of the damage to the public vs the clearly fabricated stats we have now. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/30/asia-pacific/sc... www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/all-signs-point-to-china/ https://www.dailymail.co.…

I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than presenting a story. There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus

I agree that Daily Mail should not be used as source in informed contexts, however the thebulletin.org link has very well informed comments (at least).

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#55

Post by ueudrjjj »

andromeduck wrote: post #53
gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing. That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant fraction of the first known hospitali…

One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#56

Post by tarkin2 »

tanilama wrote: post #33
andromeduck wrote: post #2

Huge change of tone from 2 months ago, ok m guessing it's because because they fear that the lab accident theory will gain more traction academically or they fear people will reveal the scale of the damage to the public vs the clearly fabricated stats we have now. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/30/asia-pacific/sc... www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/all-signs-point-to-china/ https://www.dailymail.co.…

I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than presenting a story. There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus

The Daily Mail is not a credible resource. Wikipedia banned, as one example.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#57

Post by tanilama »

StandardFuture wrote: post #47
tanilama wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than presenting a story. There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus

This paper is only about engineering a virus using a common backbone virus as a starting point. That does not mean the virus could not be derived within a lab using recombination methods in other animals and sourcing the starting novel virus from bats. In fact, this type of research was the exact research being done at the Wuhan Virology lab.

> the exact research being done at the Wuhan Virology lab

I would like to see the exact research they tried to do there. Navigating through their published research list, I couldn't locate any, but I am not an expert:

http://www.whiov.cas.cn/kycg_105248/lwqk/index.html

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#58

Post by ausjke »

ueudrjjj wrote: post #55
andromeduck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time, particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped twice in Beijing. That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant fraction of the first known hospitali…

One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.

a few weeks ago CCP issued a new law to manage virology labs, and yes historically virus escaped its labs multiple times.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#59

Post by [deleted] »

throwanem wrote: post #43
amvalo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's not engineered doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab. It could be a natural virus that was collected and escaped. The original SARS escaped no less than 3 times from chinese labs following the outbreak.

It could be lots of things. The focus on a possible escape from containment as the source seems odd given that - among other more likely causes - bat guano is also widely used as fertilizer, and bats, like humans, shed coronaviruses in their feces. Except that where we do so only occasionally and only when actively infected, bats' generally higher viral load and the high intraspecific transmissibility of a lot of the…

[deleted]

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#60

Post by CreRecombinase »

StandardFuture wrote: post #37
meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

> I think it is overwhelmingly likely Why are you so sure it is overwhelmingly likely? > I think it's probably just a coincidence that there's a virology lab there Only because you believe it to be purely coincidental of a virology lab being next to the outbreak source location? I am entirely up for accepting this viewpoint. But, the lack of evidence to suggest an actual source location coupled with the (CCP sourced…

I don't know about illogical, but I think your intuition that zoonotic transfer is unlikely because it hasn't happened in the recent past is not a good one.
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