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China Medicine United States

China Rules Out Animal Market and Lab as Coronavirus Origin (wsj.com) 199

Chinese scientists in recent days said they had ruled out both a laboratory and an animal market in the city of Wuhan as possible origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in their most detailed pushback to date against allegations from U.S. officials and others over what might have sparked it. From a report: The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the center of allegations around a potential laboratory accident, Wang Yanyi, over the weekend told China Central Television that the coronavirus was significantly different from any live pathogen that has been studied at the institute and that there therefore was no chance it could have leaked from there. Separately, China's top epidemiologist said Tuesday that testing of samples from a Wuhan food market, initially suspected as a path for the virus's spread to humans, failed to show links between animals being sold there and the pathogen.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in comments carried in Chinese state media, "It now turns out that the market is one of the victims." The comments, aimed at countering what Beijing perceives as efforts from top U.S. officials to focus solely on China, are unlikely to pacify critics. The Chinese officials didn't address fundamental issues, such as widespread evidence that China initially covered up the extent of the outbreak. In their calls for more global scientific collaboration to track the source of the virus, they also stopped short of endorsing widespread scientific belief that the coronavirus originated in China.

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China Rules Out Animal Market and Lab as Coronavirus Origin

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  • Wow, who would have thought that a country with a history of compulsive lying would clear itself of blame?

    I'm not even saying it DID come from a lab. I'm saying China is the last place on earth you can trust the verification of that to come from.

    • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @03:12PM (#60117102)

      You could have tried a valid criticism of the actual argument, but you went straight for "China man bad" line.

      • by I75BJC ( 4590021 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @03:18PM (#60117128)
        When a police department in the USA clears one of its officers of an alledgedly impropriety, the news media and public cry SCAM!

        When the Director of the Wuhan Institute says that the virus didn't come from the Lab/Institute, you believe the Director?

        Get Real!
        Get Consistent!
        • I could not care less about what news media and public in the US cry when a police department makes a statement about their officers. It is completely irrelevant here.

          I don't believe anyone, I'm interested in discussing the actual evidence presented.

          This is impossible because threadshitting like yours and GPs kills any chance of discussing the actual report findings and their shortcomings, and that bothers me.

          Impossibility of a discussion underscored by the many obviously "I disagree with your point" modera

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @03:50PM (#60117296)

        You could have tried a valid criticism of the actual argument

        There is no "actual argument". The CCP is saying it didn't come from the lab because they say so. Pointing out that the CCP has a long history of lying about many things is a very valid criticism.

        China is a huge country. There are thousands of "wet" markets. Yet this outbreak happened within spitting distance of the only virology lab in China studying these viruses. That could just be an extremely unlikely coincidence, but to convince the world we will need more than the word of known liars.

        So far they haven't even identified the animal reservoir. Until that happens, nothing should be "ruled out".

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's the thing, the first outbreak might have been there (we don't actually know for sure) but that doesn't mean it's the origin. The initial jump from animal to humans could have been anywhere and then that person traveled.

          We will probably never know now. China won't corporate with governments accusing it of a cover up, and if they find the origin people in those countries won't believe them anyway.

          • The initial jump from animal to humans could have been anywhere and then that person traveled.

            Sure. Someone may have contracted the disease hundreds of kilometers away, and then for some unknown reason decided to travel to Wuhan and then, by pure coincidence, collapsed in front of the only virology lab in China researching these viruses.

            Yup. That is totally plausible.

            Also, the virus could have come from outer space. So it can't be the lab.

            • Someone may have contracted the disease hundreds of kilometers away, and then for some unknown reason decided to travel to Wuhan and then

              And what gives you any reason to think that couldn't happen? People travel to distant places within their own country all the time.

              then, by pure coincidence, collapsed in front of the only virology lab in China researching these viruses.

              This is just priming. The infection would have been spreading for a long time. If this incident did happen, then yes it could be coincidence, because there could have been thousands of people around the city who were also exhibiting symptoms elsewhere.

              This is a literal case of selection bias.

            • that is a post still trying to peddle the conspiracy theory of it escaping the lab
      • there is a difference between China is bad and China has a history of lying and covering things up. One is emotive and the other is just plain history.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Well, the theory about "virus originating from the Lab" came from the boss in White house himself (a known conspiracy nut and a habitual liar) and from the State Department (which fabricated "evidence" to justify a war).

          If you believe ANYTHING from someone like them, then I have no doubt you've bought that bridge already. Good luck selling it.

        • by the way, how's the killing of innocent black people by racist police by shooting or neck kneeling doing in the USA these days? Or riot police tear gassing/shooting black protesters protesting the killing of an innocent man as opposed to police standing by and letting white protesters have their say about a triviality of wearing a mask when tooled up with automatic weapons - double standard? Or perhaps water boarding as an interview technique? Or lying about "weapons of mass destruction" to start a war?
      • You could have tried a valid criticism of the actual argument, but you went straight for "China man bad" line.

        You're in the same boat. You could have asked him for it. Fact is, both of you are victims and are not responsible for the outbreak. China however is. So instead of going at each other do turn your attention to China, because they need to show responsibility.

        The evidence we have so far points clearly at China as the centre of the outbreak. Not only this, but when it got detected did they stay inactive. Nobody is perfect and it could have been a very unlucky chain of events for China. If so then they could j

        • "So I'm quite curious to see what evidence they have that shows their innocence in the outbreak." using phrases like that implies they deliberately let a virus loose.
          It would never have been able to be contained unless you had prior knowledge or visibility of who carried the disease e.g. if it turned your skin green, you could isolate everyone easily. The problem for any country where an epidemic starts is that you cannot claim a pandemic until you have evidence of it and you can't do that until you have
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      Unfortunately the single most provably dishonest statement in this debate came from the US, when secretary of state Mike Pompeo claimed on ABC News there was âoeenormous evidenceâ the virus came from a lab in Wuhan.

      We can suspect China of lying when it says it didn't come from the lab. But when Pompeo said there was enormous evidence that it did, that was a falsifiable lie.

    • I'm not responsible for anything....

    • Wow, who would have thought that a country with a history of compulsive lying would clear itself of blame?

      I'm not even saying it DID come from a lab. I'm saying China is the last place on earth you can trust the verification of that to come from.

      It's always been very unlikely to have been from the lab, simply because the lab publishes its work to obtain and maintain funding (including from US sources) and nothing like SARS-CoV-2 is in any of the lab's publications. That doesn't mean it's impossible that it's from the lab, it could be from a just-started project that hadn't published anything yet (not even grant proposals) and if you're willing to assume actual malice and intentional release, then the lab clearly wouldn't have published it. But if

    • With Trump in charge, i'd think the USA government has claim to that title "the last place on earth you can trust the verification of that to come from"
  • in their most detailed pushback to date against allegations from U.S. officials and others over what might have sparked it.

    [...bold mine...]

    No one in the news business ever does any serious investigation(s). The so called democracies that "always seek the truth" are guilty as well, sadly.

    Why should US officials speculate? Why not keep their mouths shut until they are sure?

    Ohh...I know why...One word -- RATINGS.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It's more than ratings. The US has been engaging in a propaganda war with China for a while. You can speculate on the motives behind it. It's not because the government of China is an authoritarian regieme; the US has lots of "staunch allies" who are worse. It could be because China is the only nation currently posing a credible threat to the US's economic dominance however.

  • I guess the boggieman created it,
  • The trouble with communism, is ‘The Party must be protected above all else’. Lying is therefore acceptable if it protects the party.
    Western democracies have their own issues (especially the USA which has become captured by corporates), but at least there is some level of accountability to the people and often to the truth.
    You know and I know, the Chinese investigators will say what they are told to say. They may be telling the truth, but plot is trumps science.
    Abandoning the truth is what ultima

    • Abandoning the truth is what ultimately undoes any society.

      True, but authoritarian regimes can cause an amazing amount of suffering as they inevitably crumble. Just ask Russians how that revolution turned out for them. Or Germans who watched the rise of Nazism (and the Jews who faced the brunt of it). Or Koreans who backed the North. Or Cubans who backed Castro. Or Venezuelans who backed Chavez. The suffering and death of these millions is indescribable.

  • If it wasn't that particular wet market then it was another one. The RNA sequence evidence seems convincing enough that it's nothing human designed (besides how piss-poor it performs if it was intended as a weapon). So there was bat to something to human transmission somewhere in Wuhan from eating things you probably don't need to be eating, like the poor endangered pangolin. And now it's worse because you don't even know exactly where.

  • Blame-shifters gotta shift blame.

  • Let's hope (Score:2, Informative)

    by outlander ( 140799 )

    I'll just hope that we as a species start to handle this pandemic a little better.
    I wear a mask in case I've got it, to avoid spreading if I have it.
    And I appreciate when others do the same.
    And I hope that there's a way to test enough people to figure out how this thing works and spreads in more detail.

    I really hope there's a treatment, but I'm not holding my breath. Gonna be a while unless we get very lucky.

    • I dont wear a mask because Ive been forced to stay home for 2.5 Months by my government.

      There has been almost NO spread in the community, if there was, every grocery store, costco, Canadian Tire, Home Depot would have had outbreaks.
      In a greater area of 4.1 Million people, there have been less than a dozen cases of infections in such stores. These stores have been BUSY, because they are the only stores open and business hours where reduced and closed on Sundays.

      Recent studies have determined that:
      1. The viru

  • https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org] looks totally believable right? I'm sure we can trust them!
  • Old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @03:56PM (#60117320) Homepage

    It's great to hear it from an authoritative source, however biased that source might be... but this was already expected to be the case. Offhand, I don't have my source available... but this was all reported at least a month ago, by researchers outside of China.

    Genetically, the virus is mostly similar to other animal-borne coronaviruses, suggesting it began in bats and moved through pangolins, but it doesn't appear to reside in the muscle tissue that'd be used as a food, and the only connection to the Wuhan market is that several of the early cases (but not the earliest) were people that frequented the market.

    That wet market, it should be noted, is essentially similar to American farmers' markets. Almost all slaughter happens in facilities outside the market area, and sanitation measures are generally comparable to Western standards.

    The most likely vector for entering the human population is someone having an interaction with something contaminated by a pangolin. For example, we know the virus can be carried by dogs, so it could be (hypothetically) as simple as a pet dog attacking a pangolin, then licking its owner. We may never know.

  • by adfraggs ( 4718383 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @04:00PM (#60117344)

    Look up the Hendra virus in Australia. It came from bats, through to horses and then infected horse trainers. No wet markets, no weird or unusual foods, just people coming into normal contact with animals. It does happen.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Hantavirus in the US.

    • Look up the Hendra virus in Australia. It came from bats, through to horses and then infected horse trainers. No wet markets, no weird or unusual foods, just people coming into normal contact with animals. It does happen.

      How exactly the virus came into existence is secondary. It doesn't actually matter if it was created in a lab by an evil genius, or if Mother Nature made it. This is not about a virus, but about the outbreak of a virus. The emphasis is on the outbreak, meaning, the inability of a nation to contain it.

      China not only needs to take responsibility in front of the world if they want to be seen as a sovereign nation, but they owe it to themselves, their own people. So even if in the outrages event of another nati

    • by kbahey ( 102895 )

      Look up the Hendra virus in Australia. It came from bats, through to horses and then infected horse trainers. No wet markets, no weird or unusual foods, just people coming into normal contact with animals. It does happen.

      And MERS [wikipedia.org]. It is also a Coronavirus, and is much more deadly than the current SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the pandemic. It jumped from bats to camels, and from camels to humans.

      Camels have been domesticated as beasts of burden and as a source for meat, milk and wool source for at about

    • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @05:50PM (#60118110) Homepage

      Look up the Hendra virus in Australia. It came from bats, through to horses and then infected horse trainers. No wet markets, no weird or unusual foods, just people coming into normal contact with animals. It does happen.

      Why go as far as Australia. The Norovirus outbreaks, of cruise ship notoriety, has its origin right here in Norwalk, Ohio virus [wikipedia.org] at an elementary school, affecting half of the students [nih.gov] there.

      It was called the Norwalk Virus, until the rules to not name things after places or people came in effect, so it became Norovirus.

  • Oh well then... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 )

    ....if China says it's not that market or lab, that must be true.

    I mean, they've been a paragon of honesty, transparency, and openness in government.

  • The ridiculous part is, it isn't about guilt or fault or shame or anything like that. Politics muddies the waters and we all end up losing. Science is trying to get a handle on the coronavirus pandemic and all of a sudden its Trump spouting rubbish, and Jinping trying to divert attention elsewhere what the actual FUCK, gentlemen? We have a pandemic going on and they are standing in the way of solutions only to further their political agendas.
  • by ahodgson ( 74077 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @04:36PM (#60117562)

    I mean, they're forthright and known to be honest. I guess that closes the case on the lab.

  • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @04:53PM (#60117734)

    My dog said he wasn't the one who tipped over the garbage can and ate the food scraps too.

  • isn't a giant boob and never said anything stupid.
    OK sure......

  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Thursday May 28, 2020 @05:55PM (#60118136)

    We couldn't find any traces of any virus in either the lab or the market. Ergo, it must not be from the lab or the market!

    Note to self: redact that the market has been shut down for months, and the lab was just cleaned.

  • How, when, where this virus transferred to humans is very important to understand apparently since many countries and epidemic experts want to know. The bats guess is a leading suspect. Human survival With germs is a long evolving struggle especially now when we interact globally fast. It is nice that China shared their findings but still no smoking gun.
  • It's a complete surprise that China has determined that China wasn't at fault for the Wuhan coronavirus, and that China's lies, murders and deceptions are totally irrelevant. I never could have guessed!

    There are three possibilities.
    1. The Wuhan coronavirus did jump from bats to humans at the wet market.
    2. The Chinese virus lab in Wuhan INTENTIONALLY CREATED AND RELEASED the virus to infect the public.
    3. The Chinese virus lab in Wuhan was studying the virus when it was accidentally (or incompetently) releas

    • Damn it! I need an EDIT function here.

      A fourth possibility, that the virus was created in a US Army lab and released in Wuhan is ludicrous, and that the PRC government released this theory merely serves to suggest that Option 3 above was correct.

    • 1. The Wuhan coronavirus did jump from bats to humans at the wet market.

      It doesn't need to be at the wet market, it could be any countryside place where people commonly come into contact with bats and other animals.

  • China rules out china as source of problem.
  • On the one hand, I hardly find the authority's dismissal of the lab convincing. Even those in the US because it was US funded research going on there, and the blowback if they did admit it was from our program, and especially if it was from gain-of-function research that had been banned in the US and then moved to China, would be colossal. The media has been incredibly complicit in conflating that just because it wasn't engineered, that it didn't come from the lab (which is not an exclusive relationship by

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