With Virus Origins Still Obscure, WHO and Critics Look To Next Steps 227
The joint international and Chinese mission organized by the World Health Organization on the origins of Covid released its report last week suggesting that for almost every topic it covered, more study was needed. What kind of study and who will do it is the question. From a report: The report suggested pursuing multiple lines of inquiry, focused on the likely origin of the coronavirus in bats. It concluded that the most likely route to humans was through an intermediate animal, perhaps at a wildlife farm. Among future efforts could be surveys of blood banks to look for cases that could have appeared before December 2019 and tracking down potential animal sources of the virus in wildlife farms, the team proposed. Critics of the report have sought more consideration of the possibility that a laboratory incident in Wuhan could have led to the first human infection. A loosely organized group of scientists and others who have been meeting virtually to discuss the possibility of a lab leak released an open letter this week, detailing several ways to conduct a thorough investigation. It called for further action, arguing that "critical records and biological samples that could provide essential insights into pandemic origins remain inaccessible."
Much of the letter echoes an earlier release from the same group detailing what it saw as the failures of the W.H.O. mission. This second letter is more specific in the kind of future investigations it proposes. The group is seeking a new inquiry that would include biosecurity and biosafety experts, one that could involve the W.H.O. or a separate multination effort to set up a different process to explore the beginnings of the pandemic and its origins in China. Jamie Metzl, an author, senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, an international policy think tank and signer of the scientists' letter, said the renewed calls for a more thorough investigation reflected the need for greater monitoring of and restrictions on what viruses can be studied in labs around the world. "This is not about ganging up on China," Mr. Metzl said. Mr. Metzl's group was among those disappointed by the report issued last week, as it dismissed out of hand the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, calling it extremely unlikely. Further reading: Data Withheld From WHO Team Probing COVID-19 Origins in China: Tedros.
Much of the letter echoes an earlier release from the same group detailing what it saw as the failures of the W.H.O. mission. This second letter is more specific in the kind of future investigations it proposes. The group is seeking a new inquiry that would include biosecurity and biosafety experts, one that could involve the W.H.O. or a separate multination effort to set up a different process to explore the beginnings of the pandemic and its origins in China. Jamie Metzl, an author, senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, an international policy think tank and signer of the scientists' letter, said the renewed calls for a more thorough investigation reflected the need for greater monitoring of and restrictions on what viruses can be studied in labs around the world. "This is not about ganging up on China," Mr. Metzl said. Mr. Metzl's group was among those disappointed by the report issued last week, as it dismissed out of hand the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, calling it extremely unlikely. Further reading: Data Withheld From WHO Team Probing COVID-19 Origins in China: Tedros.
Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:2, Insightful)
The Wuhan Institute of virology should explain how a virus can go from not being detected at all in animals or humans to being easily spread from human to human in the space of one month.
This simple doesn't happen SARS did not occur in one city, but was widespread as it was spread from animals to people over time in a wide geographic area.
SARS-2 Cov did not act like a naturally occurring virus as it originated in Wuhan.
Add in the Chinese government's continuing cover-ups and I think we all have alot of impo
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You are not allowed to question the narrative; its a "Conspiracy Theory".
Let the Bureaucrats at WHO tell you what to believe, and do that. It is much easier on everyone that way.
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:2)
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"group of scientists" [from the article] =/= "youtube cranks and conspiracy theorists" [your response]
BTW, how are things over there in China?
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Informative)
You are not allowed to question the narrative; its a "Conspiracy Theory".
You a free to question it. In fact, many expert virologist have weighed in [slashdot.org] and concluded that Covid-19 originated in bats, transferred into some second animal (suspected to be pangolins) and then transferred to humans. Implying that it man-made is a conspiracy theory as there is no evidence to even suggest that being the case. What you have is an authoritarian regime that has been embarrassed by it's citizens actions (eating wild animals) which in turn makes makes them livid that anyone has the gall to focus on something so embarrassing.
Honestly though, if they had actually engineered this shit then let me tell you want would have happened: all the people that worked there would be erased from existence and there would be evidence presented that the lab had been closed for months. Then an artificial trail would be created pointing to another point of origin. You guys like to pretend that the CCP is full of idiots but alas they are far from idiots. This highly investigation has an open-ended conclusion which only leads to suspicion... by fools.
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly though, if they had actually engineered this shit
I don't think anyone believes they 'engineered it'. I think the suspicion is that they were studying a whole bunch of different animal coronaviruses (which we know they were doing at that lab) and running pretty standard gain of function experiments on them. Then one (or maybe even a bunch) of these experiments leaked out.
Thing is this sort of thing happens in western BSL4 labs, so it's not even saying the Chinese are less competent to believe it happened in one of theirs.
It seems to me that if this came from a lab accident, then that is a very very good thing. It means we can prevent this sort of thing from happening again by just enforcing better standards in BSL4 labs. If, instead, it did come from a spontaneous zoonotic event, then that is going to be substantially harder to protect against in future.
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that point is sort of frustrating to me. "Escaped from a lab" and "Engineered by a lab" are two wildly different hypotheses, with the former vastly more credible-seeming than the other. Accidents happen. But "escaped from a lab" is also MUCH more embarrassing to the Chinese government than "caused by human-animal interaction in the wild" (who wants to admit to a mistake that cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars?), and so I'm betting we'll never, ever get to the truth of this.
The problem is, when you can't trust a government (not unique to the Chinese government, but there are definitely differences in degrees of trust), there's really no information that government can offer which fundamentally negates that inherent mistrust. It's like trying to prove a negative.
It very well could have occurred entirely in the wild, but given how the Chinese are not cooperating very well, it's hard to square that as the truth. Otherwise, why would they not be more forthcoming? The only reason I can offer is either inherent reluctance to do so in a culture of secrecy, or else it may expose another embarrassing fact, like that they covered up their own Covid numbers.
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The number of interactions with wild animals carrying corona virus strains is orders of magnitude greater than the number of interactions with viruses in those labs (and the security protocols much worse). While it's possible that there was a lab accident, given what we know now the probability of that would be very low. 1% I think would generous.
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Otoh, lab contact is orders of magnitude greater than being in the same neighborhood of the woods as bats. I would estimate the probability of a lab accident as at least 50%.
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Engineered in Lab also requires Escaped from Lab to get it out of the lab.
Unless you want to add another option called "Intentionally Released from Lab". That in turn can be standalone without the Engineered in Lab option.
It's possible (but not probable) that it was intentionally released.
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I agree completely on your first para. But I was listening to an interview on NPR yesterday, and at least according to them this team was not an official WHO inspection--it simply included people from the WHO. Furthermore, the director of the WHO has come out in public saying the lab hypothesis can't be excluded. If these points are true, then WHO may be more independent of Chinese pressure than you and I had thought.
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Since this is science, where everything comes with a certain amount of uncertainty, not conspiracy theories where it's 100% certain that it was aliens/Jewish space lasers/the CCP/the extreme left/whatever, there's always something there that needs more study.
OK... so you're saying there's a chance it was Jewish space lasers. ;)
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Since this is science, where everything comes with a certain amount of uncertainty, not conspiracy theories where it's 100% certain that it was aliens/Jewish space lasers/the CCP/the extreme left/whatever, there's always something there that needs more study.
OK... so you're saying there's a chance it was Jewish space lasers. ;)
Shh, a schanda fur die goyim!
Missing Data (Score:2)
While this is probably just the reflex reaction of China's communist regime not wanting to share data for fear that it might make them look bad it might also be because the
It's not just the eating wild animals (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about embarrassment, it's about money. China needs the deforestation (and the wet markets) to keep their economy growing at the rate it needs to for them to maintain power.
It's a classic "bull by the horns" scenario. The people in charge aren't competent enough administrators to solve the problems they cause, but you can wallpaper of a lot of that with 3-5% economic growth. Sorta like the US did during the
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Agreed, but.. I remember a year or two ago when they buried a TRAIN to hide the accident and then dug it up when pressed. Considering that, the probability of the conspiracy theory being true is a lot higher. A conspiracy theory to hide news of cataclysmic accidents is not crazy if they actually conspire frequently to do exactly that.
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Another point, somewhat contradicting my earlier argument: There is one strategy that I've found useful against conspiracists, which is not to get them to argue why it's a conspiracy but to get them to explain how they would run the conspiracy, with exact details for every point. No magicking stuff out of thin air like you do when you dream up the conspiracy, you have to explain how it's done, who's involved, how it's funded, and how it's all kept secret. In particular for USG conspiracies, how a governme
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Yours is a typical example of a fallacy that China has been pushing all along, equating "escaped from the lab" with "man-made"--a fallacy intended to make the "escaped from the lab" hypothesis look like a conspiracy theory. In reality, "escaped from the lab" and "originated in bats... transferred to humans" (with or without some intermediate host) is quite possible. THAT is the hypothesis that many critics of the WHO study have proposed, and which you conveniently ignore, hoping no one will notice.
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Insightful)
You are not allowed to question the narrative
Of course you are.
its a "Conspiracy Theory".
Yes it is.
The semicolon seems to imply that you think these two things are not independent. Except they are. You're of course allowed to question whatever you want as long as you come up with a solid scientific basis for questioning the other scientific "narratives" that have been stated to date.
But not coming up with one, and imply saying "China bad", "Wuhan bad", "I know enough about virolliogy to spell virus, so I must be right", that my friend is none the less a conspiracy theory.
In the mean time scientific discussions with arguments are being made out in public, and they are are being checked, verified, and incorrect assumptions are being discredited.
Let the Bureaucrats at WHO tell you what to believe
If by bureaucrats you mean health workers and virologists and epidemiologists, then sure, I highly recommend it over some armchair idiots on Slashdot.
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Wish I had mod points, +1 to all of the above. For everything else, read Jan-Willem van Prooijen's "The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories". Unfortunately one of the things it points out is that it's almost impossible to reason anyone out of their conspiracy theory beliefs. It's the same with other reality-deniers like schizophrenics, the only known strategy there is to manage them until they get back on their meds (that's serious, not being snarky). Unfortunately there's no meds for conspiracy theorists
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I think a society with more transparency and less denial and obfuscation would help.
The commerce-driven nature of American society results in literally most public information being advertising, public relations, campaign/political statements, or literal fiction. Even "reality" TV is highly scripted and faked to appear spontaneous.
We need big banks and financiers to just say "I'm really rich, and willing to do anything to get richer." We need corporations who fuck up to say "Hey, we fucked up, and we're no
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Here's how to tell if what you believe is a conspiracy theory: is there any evidence that could persuade you the theory is *false*? Conspiracy theorists' beliefs can't be shaken by evidence, implausibility, or expert opinions. In fact their faith is strengthened by disproof.
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Yup, see my reply above, and the reference to the book. You're dealing with faith, not science, so nothing you say will change their minds. Treat it like you would someone trying to sign you up to their prosperity-gospel church or whatever, polite disinterest, work to change the subject, and leave if they persist.
"Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired" - Jonathan Swift, 1721.
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This simple doesn't happen SARS did not occur in one city, but was widespread as it was spread from animals to people over time in a wide geographic area.
Apparently the key to your inability to understand the situation is you stopped reading early in the pandemic, and assumed they had traced the virus all the way back to its origin the moment they declared a pandemic.
Further tracing has been done, and it continues to point to the Wet Market in Wuhan. We're starting to figure out if humans caught it directly from a bat, or if it went through another species first.
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And we're to believe that it's just a coincidence that an L4 Biolab that studies such viruses and is suspected of working on behalf of the CCP to weaponize them is within short walking distance of that wet market. Any discussion of that coincidence is verboten.
We're also to believe that all of the evidence exonerating said Biolab is honest even though the CCP has provided all of it and gone out of their way to prevent any independent investigation.
Right-O!
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Insightful)
SARS-CoV-2 would make a terrible bioweapon, the idea that it's an escaped or intentionally released bioweapon is not only unsupported by evidence, but rather stupid. The idea that it was being studied in the lab and had leaked out unintentionally is technically possible but almost entirely unsupported so far and is being weaponized by racists and ideologues, so should be considered false until there is substantial evidence for it.
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The same could be said about the idea that it went from a pangolin or whatever to a bat to a human with a random one-in-a-kazillion mutation that made it so widely contagious for humans. That's at least equally as stupid, right?
The biggest thing for me is that any mention of the most plausible and coincidental theory - that bioweapons lab a short distance away - is not allowed to even be considered since the beginning, resulting in you being unpersoned and accused of the most vile things. That's a huge re
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How is that "equally stupid"? We know viruses can leap between species, sometimes between very distantly related species. Most of the time the infections (like cowpox) are not severe because viruses tend to evolve to attack a pretty specific set of hosts. But statistically speaking, it's going to happen that every once in a while a virus that manages to jump across species will, because it replicates so quickly, and particularly where it's RNA structure is unstable, will evolve rapidly.
Has anybody here ever
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Neither idea is stupid. I consider one to be more probable than the other but refuse to dismiss either. I'm only asking why so many people who claim to love science are exerting pressure to prevent discussion of a theory when so little evidence exist for any explanation. We're all just guessing, which is what science is supposed to be all about. Why must one theory be dismissed at all costs before we know anything?
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, but most people educated in virology and related fields are saying most energy should be put in the path that seems to them most likely to help us understand the most about the virus going forward.
In the mean time, I get the impression a lot of the focus in the other direction is in large part driven by the same factors that are driving our snailed pace or inability to acknowledge and put in place best practices, like those followed in South Korea that can control the economic and public health crises that are common in most nations.
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Sure, but most people educated in virology and related fields are saying most energy should be put in the path that seems to them most likely to help us understand the most about the virus going forward.
In the mean time, I get the impression a lot of the focus in the other direction is in large part driven by the same factors that are driving our snailed pace or inability to acknowledge and put in place best practices, like those followed in South Korea that can control the economic and public health crises that are common in most nations.
If you want people to think you are putting science above politics, don't go and put politics above science in the second paragraph. Knowing the source of the virus is key if we want to prevent it from happening again.
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SARS-CoV-2 hasn't evolved rapidly. From what we know, it started out well-adapted to humans in Wuhan, and after several months, and with lots of infected hosts, we got the UK variant, South African variant, and Brazilian variant.
And now the "Indian variant". What I find interesting is that it's RACIST to refer to it as a "Chinese virus" or the "Wuhan virus", but it's totally cool to geographically name the variants. Shouldn't we have someone scolding us about how those should be called "sars-cov-2/v3" or something like that?
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The same could be said about the idea that it went from a pangolin or whatever to a bat to a human with a random one-in-a-kazillion mutation that made it so widely contagious for humans. That's at least equally as stupid, right?
Err no. That's actually incredibly common and the origin of most pandemics along with many far less serious viruses occured this way.
Your statement is like saying some quack conspiracy about the moon landing being fake is "the same" as reading a book on well known fundamental physics on how rocket engines work.
The bottom line is that we will never know the true origin due to the hyper-secrecy of the CCP.
No, the bottom line is that we'll never know for certain, period. Because that's how back tracing a pandemic works.
Even if they came out with "smoking gun proof" of the origin tomorrow it couldn't be trusted.
If we had a smoking gun proof we could trust it providing we're not some conspiracy t
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"The idea that it was being studied in the lab and had leaked out unintentionally is technically possible but almost entirely unsupported so far and is being weaponized by racists and ideologues, so should be considered false until there is substantial evidence for it."
There is literally more evidence of it than any other theory, although that still leaves it far from proven.
We know that lab was working with similar viruses and we know that lab has very poor safety. We know that the earliest Covid patient s
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually "escaped from a lab" has the 2nd or 3rd most evidence for it, behind "came from a wildlife farm" and possibly "came from the Wuhan wet market." We know the virus was in contact with people at both places and AFAIK some of the earliest infections were from the area of a wildlife farm. The only thing giving "escaped from a lab" more evidence than "escaped from Dr. Fauci's butthole venom glands" is the fact that we know the lab was working with similar viruses.
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Interesting)
>Actually "escaped from a lab" has the 2nd or 3rd most evidence for it, behind "came from a wildlife farm" and possibly "came from the Wuhan wet market."
OK, what farm? Where was it located. Why didn't the Covid outbreak start near this farm? Here we have a virus that is HIGHLY adapted to human-to-human transmission, to the extent that a choir performance was a "super-spreader" event. But somehow the people on this farm were, what, all asymptomatic?
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At this point the "escaped from lab" theory actually has the most supporting evidence
It also has a far higher burden of proof given that:
a) It's not remotely possible to identify patient zero on a virus that in the large part of the population is asymptomatic. The "earliest" patent you refer to being unconnected to the wet market only is relevant if the virus has a near 100% mortality / hospitalisation rate.
b) Viruses jumping between species as a source of epidemics is the norm. That's how it usually happens.
c) Viruses leaking from labs is not the norm.
So no, escaped from lab has not been e
Re: Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:2)
until there is evidence for it
no matter what the truth is, there will never be evidence unless we look for evidence. I think these latest calls to action are based on that logic. Even if the chance that this virus originated in a lab are 0.1%, perhaps the severity of the pandemic warrants investigating even these outside-odds possibilities.
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"The idea that it was being studied in the lab and had leaked out unintentionally is technically possible but almost entirely unsupported so far" And the Chinese government waited 14 months to let WHO in; and when they did let them in, they made the team wait in quarantine for two weeks out of the four they were allowed. That sure smells like a cover-up, with all the evidence having been disappeared.
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And what evidence do you have that Russell's Teapot *DOESN'T* exist?
Re: Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Interesting)
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You consider 17 miles a short walking distance.
I admire your fitness program.
One hypothesis is an accidental infection of a lab employee who then went shopping at the wet market. Everything about that is plausible. What it doesn't explain is the Italian blood samples taken in September 2019 that were retested and found to have SARS COV2 antibodies. That does NOT mean an Italian origin, given that people from everywhere visit Italy.
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OK, not so short then. How many such labs are in China? Just the one? And it's just a random coincidence that it's 17 miles from the initial outbreak site. Got it.
Or maybe you site labs for research into bat viruses in areas where the viruses are likely to be a threat? Not to mention that this seems pretty clearly not to be the location of the initial outbreak, rather just the place where there was someone ready to detect it.
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Or maybe you site labs for research into bat viruses in areas where the viruses are likely to be a threat?
Yep, thats why its called The Bat Lab... because the Chinese people are super smart, and knew that being a Bat Lab was more important than being any other kind of lab....
Do you even fucking hear yourself? ITS NOT A FUCKING BAT LAB - ITS NOT CALLED A BAT LAB - ITS JUST A LAB
You are now yanking hard on the shit peeking out of your anus
Cue music (Score:2)
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So we're at least 18 months into this pandemic and your own post illustrates how little we still actually know about this thing and its origins. Almost nothing.
Except that it absolutely 100% didn't come from the nearby biohazard lab in any way shape or form.
And that doesn't strike you as odd.
No, and it shouldn't strike you as odd either. The reason is that it's not ruled out that it came from that lab. It's ruled out that it came from that lab in November in the way that has been proposed. It's also not ruled out that China covered something up. In fact, that's almost certain, though it's probably just something stupid like that they were slow reacting to doctor's concerns. We know that the virus was travelling around in places in Europe already in approximately September 2019. This makes
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:5, Insightful)
No scientist would design COVID-19. It uses a design we thought wouldn't work. Turns out it has other features that make up for it, but no one knew those other features could exist.
You don't make an airplane that you don't think can fly. And you don't make a bioweapon that you don't think can infect anyone.
Also, you don't release a bioweapon on your own, unprotected population. Because that makes you lose just as much as everyone else.
There's a lab there studying bat viruses because there's a good amount of bats in the surrounding countryside. And bats have weird immune systems that don't actually kill invaders, so they are fantastic vessels for new viruses to evolve in. Which means we need to study the fuck out of them so we have a chance to find the next Ebola (also bat virus) before it appears in people.
If you're going to study bats, you're going to go to where the bats are. And if you've got a ton of poor people desperate for a protein source, and there's bats around, they're going to be eating bats.
If you're going to lie about a virus to cover up for your abysmal response to the pandemic, you're going to claim it's man-made because that gives you a flimsy excuse and comfort for your followers struggling to not think about your incompetence.
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Designed? Maybe not. Studied, experimented with perhaps, and then escaped/leaked? Is that allowed to be considered or no?
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Studied, experimented with perhaps, and then escaped/leaked? Is that allowed to be considered or no?
For intentional release, the problem becomes "to what end?"
China lost trillions of dollars, a large number of people, and got embarrassed on the global stage about just how much poverty they're covering up - wet markets aren't a sign of affluence. Failures in supply chains due to COVID are causing a lot of companies to review whether or not "import everything from China" is a great business model anymore.
So intentional release doesn't make any sense. They'd want to release it somewhere else to harm that c
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For intentional release, the problem becomes "to what end?"
Pattern detected.
You first refused to believe it came from the lab because, you claim, nobody would make covid as a weapon.
When its pointed out that your logic has holes in it, instead of presenting a new theory, you just added to the old one, but again you place the goalpost on the field, this time you claim that either (A) it was not released from the lab, or (b) it was released intentionally and since it doesnt make sense for (B) then it must be (A)
You are a braindead fuck with no logic skills at
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"Within walking distance". It's 8.5 miles as the crow flies. Probably about 12 miles walk. But you keep burying yourself in those conspiracy theories to distract from the fact that YOUR country is the one that failed to contain the virus.
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I suspect that there is a wet market within 10km of any spot picked at random in any 10 million population city in China.
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"Further tracing has been done, and it continues to point to the Wet Market in Wuhan."
So far the closest thing we have to a patient zero was not connected with the wet market.
So no, tracing does not point to the wet market, though it does appear to have been a nexus of spreading.
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So far the closest thing we have to a patient zero was not connected with the wet market.
Not directly, but they have several connections to people who are. And there's enormous error bars on pointing to them as "patient zero" at this time.
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Not directly, but they have several connections to people who are.
Who in the area doesn't?
And there's enormous error bars on pointing to them as "patient zero" at this time.
I've been consistently weaselly about calling them patient zero for that specific reason. I'm quite willing and ready to revise my estimate if we find out who they got it from.
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Except the most likely candidate would be hACE2 transgenic mice
[Citation Required]
Alternatively maybe China has been covering up the virus in humans for months, until an evolved strain popped up in Wuhan.
And how do you think that works? People travel. Viruses don't check passports.
The OP is correct in that there's no explanation of how the virus went from not being detected at all in animals or humans to being easily spread from human to human in the space of one month.
Why do you think it would be detected earlier? We do not know of every virus on the planet. In 2018, we found more than 100 new coronaviruses around the world.
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The Wuhan Institute of virology should explain how a virus can go from not being detected at all in animals or humans to being easily spread from human to human in the space of one month.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Wuhan Institute of virology should explain how a virus can go from not being detected at all in animals or humans to being easily spread from human to human in the space of one month.
Er.. it was spreading in humans for a long time and then someone detected it? Maybe someone in an area where they have expertise in detecting viruses? I mean, just a hypothesis, given that it was spreading since September 2019 in Europe undetected.
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https://science.sciencemag.org... [sciencemag.org]
We know it came from bats so it probably did not originate in Italy, but it was certainly spreading in humans much earlier than when scientists actually took notice in Wuhan.
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But for the fact that the first deaths in Italy from Covid were in February, 2020, which indicates it started spreading in Italy around January 2020. By now we know a few things about how Covid spreads and it's lethality. It couldn't have been spreading undetected in 2019 because it would have been killing people, right.
Re: Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:2)
The logic in everything you said is severely flawed. Many emerging viruses are detected in humans and in a specific region first. HIV for example. Ebola, and others. Many viruses are even named for the region detected. For example Ebola is named after the Ebola river. Usually in a specific region. Sadly a lot of people seem to have modded you up.
A rational though somewhat unlikely possibility is that it may have been in a sample from bats that was being cultured and mishandled at the Wuhan lab. However the
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Cause if not, it sounds a bit like you're talking out of your ass.
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So what about all those other times throughout recorded history (and indeed, going back millions, if not billions of years) that viruses have jumped between species? Why is COVID-19 so special when, in fact, we've been catching diseases from the animals we get up close and personal with since the dawn of time?
RNA viruses kind of suck, because RNA is unstable and these viruses evolve at insane rates, and once they do leap from one species to another, even if the initial cases don't really make people very si
It was detected (Score:5, Interesting)
As I've pointed out before the lab in question is a Biohazard Level 4 lab. They would have been working with the virus in petri dishes, especially if it was "engineered" as is slyly suggested. The problem is COVID finds it *very* hard to pass by touch. Just washing your hands and not touching your face is enough to prevent it from doing that. And it takes about 15 minutes of continuous exposure to get it.
It's ridiculous to think even the worst run lab on earth, faced with a virus like that, would spread it outside.
So why the lab narrative? Well, as I've said before epidemiologists have been telling us for 30 years that deforestation & the wet markets were going to increase interspecies contact and that in turn would set up a pandemic. It's already happened twice (H1N1 & Swine Flu) but it was contained.
The problem with deforestation/wet markets as a cause is that they're systems, not individuals. The goal of the lab narrative is to distract and blame shift from the extremely poor handling of the pandemic by various right wing governments (US, Brazil, UK, Canada which is more and more turning into America's hat, etc, etc).
Deforestation is too abstract. Systems are too abstract. You can't shift blame to them. You need individuals. You need to blame a lab tech and the Chinese government headed up by Xi.
China, for their party, is probably more than happy to let a lab accident be blamed (even as they swear it wasn't). They know they're gonna take a hit, but they don't want to give up their slash and burn policies or their dangerous wet markets full of wild animals. They don't want to address any of the systemic problems. If the rest of the world blames a lab then they can just say "naw uh!" to that while cheerfully continuing the (very profitable) actions that actually *did* cause the pandemic.
It's a win-win for everyone except the ones suffering through the pandemic.
In case anyone's going to ask why COVID (Score:4, Interesting)
Out in the real world COVID only has symptoms 60% of the time. This means we've got millions of Typhoid Marys walking around spreading it. It's easy to get trapped with one for the 15 minutes or so it takes to catch it. This is why you get things like restaurants causing outbreaks but only a few people in the restaurant actually got it. They were the ones down wind of the people who already had it.
COVID is about the worst possible disease it could have been. If it spread faster or was deadlier then people would have taken it more seriously and we'd have stamped it out. If it spread slower or was less deadly then we'd have just treated it like a new flu variant.
It's pretty useless as a bio weapon, since the unique nature of it makes it easy to contain in a clinical setting but a nightmare out in the wild. Almost like it was created by natural selective pressures and not engineering...
Wet markets are less likely (Score:2)
China prefers #3 because we're not going to do anything about #3. We'll shake our fist impotently and it'll be used to scare up a little local anti-Asian sentiment that they couldn't care less about.
The problem with #1 or #2 is that our gov't might actually make them *act* on them. We might demand they slow or halt deforestation or clean up the wet markets, both o
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The Wuhan Institute of virology should explain how a virus can go from not being detected at all in animals or humans to being easily spread from human to human in the space of one month.
That is typically how it works when a virus jumps interspecies. No need to bother the Wuhan Institute of Virology with this. A basic textbook would do.
This simple doesn't happen SARS did not occur in one city
So you know how the virus started back to patient 0, quick you should call the WHO. They are dying to know this information. Thank god you're here to help!
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"It was clear that the first SARS evolved rapidly during its first three months of existence, constantly fine-tuning its ability to infect humans, and settling down only during the later stages of the epidemic. In contrast, the new virus [SARS-CoV-2] looked a lot more like late-stage SARS. “It’s almost as if we’re missing the early phase,” Chan marveled to Zhan. Or, as she put it in their paper, as if “it was already well adapted for human transmission.”
That was a profoun
Re:Wuhan Institute of Virology (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps it was just staggeringly bad luck: The mutations had all occurred in an earlier host species, and just happened to be the perfect genetic arrangement for an invasion of humanity. But that made no sense. Those mutations would have been disadvantageous in the old host.
Cats, ferrets, minks, etc. could be good intermediate hosts, because they lack the ACE2 receptor mutations that make many other animals immune [aaha.org].
The mutations are only disadvantageous in animals with significantly different ACE2 receptors (e.g. dogs).
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You don't need WIV to explain it. The SARS-COV-2 genome was sequenced way back in January 2020 and it's there for the whole world to see.
The secret of SARS-COV-2's enhanced infectiousness is almost certainly a mutation in the spike protein. At present one strong candidate is a sequence of four amino acids which give the virus a strong affinity for furin, an enzyme widely expressed in human cells. This sequence is unique to SARS-COV-2 among closely related viruses and could conceivably arise through natur
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"[Chan] and Zhan posted a new preprint on bioRxiv dismantling the pangolin papers. Confirmation came in June when the results of a study of hundreds of pangolins in the wildlife trade were announced: Not a single pangolin had any sign of a coronavirus. Chan took a victory lap on Twitter: “Supports our hypothesis all this time.” The pangolin theory collapsed."
https://www.bostonmagazine.com... [bostonmagazine.com]
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Unless China is so far ahead of the rest of the world in virology that it would have left everybody in the dust and has otherwise completely unknown ways to manipulate viruses, COVID was not modified or created in a lab. If it merely "escaped", it would have been present in nature already.
So no, that did not happen. Enough actual experts have explained why. Get over it.
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"In recent years, some members of the scientific community have been involved in a vigorous debate over so-called “gain-of-function” (GOF) experiments involving pathogens with pandemic potential (PPP), such as influenza virus. Proponents and opponents of GOF work engaged in extensive discussion about the value, safety, ethics, and validity of this type of research. The debate was initially catalyzed by research experiments published in 2012, which reported that serial passage in ferrets rendered
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That's actually pretty straight forward. There are many many different strains of corona virus in the wild, in many many populations of wild animals. Virus's mutate pretty quickly, It's pretty unusual for a virus strain to become both more virulent and more deadly, which is why we don't see that happen all the time, but given the number of mutations strains of the virus go through world wide it's not incompatible with the math that we see something like this happen every once in a while (without human invol
This is very much a CSI Effect story (Score:2)
We're not going to "zoom in...ENHANCE!" our way into finding the exact source in a 20-minute episode.
Real science takes time.
Re: This is very much a CSI Effect story (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact China withheld information
And the fact you know this means "real science" figured out they withheld information. When given enough time.
and that WHO has been a China puppet
The WHO has exactly zero real power. It has to be nice to everyone because that's the only way the WHO can do its job.
For example, every year the rest of the world gets flu shots thanks to data collected in China. Because annual flu infections spike first in that part of the world. This isn't a whole lot of help to China, because by the time that year's flu shot has been designed and manufactured, China's flu season is waning. The WHO and the rest of the world would really like to keep getting that data, and pissing off China isn't going to accomplish that.
A little like pissing off the US by withholding oil isn't a great way to keep freedom bombs away.
What, exactly, do you propose the WHO do in response to China withholding information, and what makes you think the WHO has that power?
Stob blamecasting (Score:4, Insightful)
Too much has been made out of finding 'responsible' parties without making it clear that nobody is going to come after them. This should be handled like the FAA handles incident reports. We'd actually like to find out what went wrong without handing out penalties and fines. So we can stop it from happening again.
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China needs some strong cancel culture to take care of their blame problem. Hey it works for that ...other guy.
That assumes anyone wants to fix things (Score:2)
So which would be a better outcome for China and the global economy: stop the slash & burn and shut down wild animals in wet markets (which in turn would devastate their rural economies and require drastic social changes) or blame a lab accident and let the good times roll?
China
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shut down wild animals in wet markets (which in turn would devastate their rural economies and require drastic social changes)
Not really. 'Wild animals' implies hunter-gatherer type harvesting. That's insanely expensive per unit of caloric intake. Even the farming of exotic animals isn't terribly efficient. Although it brings in more cash per animal, it doesn't scale well. Since many of those exotics are solitary animals. Developing mainstream domesticated livestock would seem to be the most efficient. Pigs, chickens, cows, etc.
But those don't satisfy the demand for exotics among the wealthier Chinese. Or their witch doctors. Sc
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Too much has been made out of finding 'responsible' parties without making it clear that nobody is going to come after them. This should be handled like the FAA handles incident reports. We'd actually like to find out what went wrong without handing out penalties and fines. So we can stop it from happening again.
That would be smart. Most people are not smart and want some kind of "revenge" so they are calling for somebody to be "responsible". In actual reality, tons of mistakes were made by everybody.
Despots 101 (Score:4, Informative)
Despots don't like scrutiny and outside investigators poking around their land. That doesn't necessarily mean it's lab created, only that despots are secretive out of habit. They'd probably rather live with lab conspiracy theories floating around than permit more snooping around.
I strongly suspect China tried to cover up the early spread out of fear of panic, and that's probably what they are really protecting, not a "lab job".
Someone skipped step 2 (Score:2)
Step one: Shock and denial. Step two: Pain and guilt. The WHO and China skipped right over that one to step three: Anger and Bargaining. They will likely ping pong (no pun intended) between steps one and three.
Washington think tank... (Score:3)
...with ties to the US National Security Council (Jamie Metzl), who have little or no expertise in virology, criticises the WHO & China for not doing further investigations into possible lab origins of COVID after an international consensus of virologists concluded it extremely unlikely, & the NYT runs with the story.
Science & objectivity aren't Washington's or the NYT's strong points, are they? Is the NYT turning into a print version of Fox News?
Crackpot, batshit-crazy (no pun intended) seem to be the new mode of US political thinking these days. Anyone seeking to establish better-informed, more rational thinking in the US capital may face an uphill battle.
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Today some people still believe that the CIA developed the virus to reduce the homosexual population or something like that.
Are we seeing a similar thing this time propagated by the powerful entities in the US to make one of their competitors look worse than they are?
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A number of pandemics have originated in east Asia for one simple reason, for most of recorded history it has had some of the highest population densities of any region on the planet. The close proximity between humans and animals (wild or domesticated) makes inter-species transmission events higher, and high densities of human beings means when that happens (and it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time) even a virus that doesn't replicate well in a new host species is going to spread. Most species
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There are always going to be outlier opinions among experts. What the right-wing news media has done is over-focus on the outlier opinions. That's what spinsters do: cherry-pick evidence, quotes, and experts to shape the narrative they want.
A good news organization gives a clear indication of the ratio of expert opinions and gives both sides an opportunity to speak and respond. It seems that's asking too much these days.
I'd even argue that if only 5% of experts have a given opinion, it's probably not news
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What ALL news media does is over focus on the outlier opinions. Russia Gate? Four goddamn years of that nonsense and it was utter fabricated lies. I can't stand the orange buffoon but to think the left-wing news media wasn't just as guilty of this bullshit when they saw political points to be scored... well its bullshit.
Glenn Greenwald has a greatly detailed writeup on how utterly awful the media has become - both
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We work on the most reasonable results. When I turn on the light, and it does not come on, I do not do a dance to the FSM and ask why he forsook me. No, I check the bulb, the switch, my electric payment.