Researchers Pinpointed Covid-19's Origin to Within a Few Metres (abc.net.au) 211
Australia's public broadcaster interviewed a virologist who "played a key role in mapping the evolution of COVID-19" (and was also "the first person to release the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to the world.")
But interestingly, this Australian virologist also visited the Wuhan market in 2014, "and recognised the risk of virus transmission between animals and humans and suggested taking some samples." "While I was there, I noticed there were these live wildlife for sale, particularly raccoon dogs and ... muskrats" he said. "I took the photographs because I thought to myself: 'God, that's, that's not quite right'." Raccoon dogs had been associated with the emergence of a different coronavirus outbreak, SARS-CoV-1, in 2002-04, which became known worldwide as the SARS virus.
Even in 2014, Professor Holmes believed the market could become a site of virus transmission between animals and humans. The monitoring that Professor Holmes suggested never took place but, in the early days of COVID-19, he was still convinced that a market like the one in Wuhan was the logical origin of the virus. "They are the kind of engine room of [this sort] of disease emergence ... because what you're doing is you're putting humans and wildlife in close proximity to each other," he said.
The professor also describes the theory that the virus some how leaked from a Chinese lab as "horrendous, blame-game finger-pointing," noting that the nearest lab is miles away. And he cites other reasons the market is where the virus originated: Aside from the geographic clustering, he also points to the fact that two different strands emerged almost simultaneously in humans, something that is much more likely if the virus had already been mutating in animals. "They're sufficiently far apart that they were probably independent jumps.
"It means there was a pool of infected animals in the market and it's mutated amongst them before it jumped to humans."
All of this has led Professor Holmes to conclude that the question of how COVID-19 emerged is settled. "I'm extremely confident that the virus is not from a laboratory. I think that's just a nonsensical theory," he said. Detailed mapping of where samples were detected inside the Huanan seafood wholesale market allowed Professor Holmes and his colleagues to even pinpoint to a few square metres where COVID-19 was likely to have jumped between humans and animals.
"It's extraordinary," he said. "And I took a photo in 2014 of one of the stalls that was the most positively tested in the whole market."
But interestingly, this Australian virologist also visited the Wuhan market in 2014, "and recognised the risk of virus transmission between animals and humans and suggested taking some samples." "While I was there, I noticed there were these live wildlife for sale, particularly raccoon dogs and ... muskrats" he said. "I took the photographs because I thought to myself: 'God, that's, that's not quite right'." Raccoon dogs had been associated with the emergence of a different coronavirus outbreak, SARS-CoV-1, in 2002-04, which became known worldwide as the SARS virus.
Even in 2014, Professor Holmes believed the market could become a site of virus transmission between animals and humans. The monitoring that Professor Holmes suggested never took place but, in the early days of COVID-19, he was still convinced that a market like the one in Wuhan was the logical origin of the virus. "They are the kind of engine room of [this sort] of disease emergence ... because what you're doing is you're putting humans and wildlife in close proximity to each other," he said.
The professor also describes the theory that the virus some how leaked from a Chinese lab as "horrendous, blame-game finger-pointing," noting that the nearest lab is miles away. And he cites other reasons the market is where the virus originated: Aside from the geographic clustering, he also points to the fact that two different strands emerged almost simultaneously in humans, something that is much more likely if the virus had already been mutating in animals. "They're sufficiently far apart that they were probably independent jumps.
"It means there was a pool of infected animals in the market and it's mutated amongst them before it jumped to humans."
All of this has led Professor Holmes to conclude that the question of how COVID-19 emerged is settled. "I'm extremely confident that the virus is not from a laboratory. I think that's just a nonsensical theory," he said. Detailed mapping of where samples were detected inside the Huanan seafood wholesale market allowed Professor Holmes and his colleagues to even pinpoint to a few square metres where COVID-19 was likely to have jumped between humans and animals.
"It's extraordinary," he said. "And I took a photo in 2014 of one of the stalls that was the most positively tested in the whole market."
My mind it put at ease! (Score:3, Insightful)
Gosh gee whiz, I sure am glad to hear the novel bat coronavirus originated at the wet market and not the novel bat coronavirus research center located less than 0.5 km away, where they purposefully study adding ACE-2 binding sites to wild bat coronaviruses. I'm also sure it was a very thorough investigation, considering the CCP barred international researchers from studying it for a year, censored Li Wenliang and other whistleblowers, and initially claimed it was from a lab....located in the US.
It's also not suspicious that one of the principle authors on the public letter saying it couldn't have been from the BSL-4 lab was Peter Daszak, the leading researcher on numerous ACE-2 binding bat coronavirus experiments, along with Shi Zhengli from that same WIV. And definitely not suspicious that him and his organization, the EcoHealth alliance, submitted a grant proposal to DARPA's Project Defuse proposing to modify novel bat coronaviruses to make them infectious to humans, spray them in caves in Yunnan China, and bring the samples back to the WIV.
https://theintercept.com/2021/... [theintercept.com]
https://drasticresearch.files.... [wordpress.com]
Also not relevant that DARPA rejected the proposal on ethics and safety grounds, saying that Daszak et al. didn't have sufficient safety protocols to keep the virus from leaking and spreading to humans https://drasticresearch.files.... [wordpress.com]. I'm sure that was the end of it!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The only thing missing is Anthony Fauci co-signing the study. Then, I would be 100% sure the study is correct if Fauci had co-signed but I am already 99% sure it can't possibly come from a lab since it makes no sense at all!
All those conspiracy theorists should listen to science and get vaxed as quickly as possible and as many times as possible. I just got my 11th booster shot yesterday and I feel pretty secure and safe knowing that I am on the right side.
Also, here in Canada, I get a reward for listening t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone can publish crap on Wordpress. And they know gormless souls like you will repeat it. All you have is "Gee, I have suspicions."
Re: (Score:2)
It's not published on Wordpress, it's linked to scribd from Wordpress. The leaks are regarded as authentic by The Intercept, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Peter Daszak himself.
That's an easy mistake to make if you don't read and think
Re:My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Informative)
The lab is 11km away, not 0.5km.
You can check the satellite imagery yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, it's the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC), which is 0.28km away from the wet market. https://www.news.com.au/lifest... [news.com.au]
The WHO investigators finally visited that facility to study it, after getting permission over a year after the pandemic started: https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
The WHCDC also conducted novel bat coronavirus experiments: https://thebulletin.org/2020/0... [thebulletin.org]
Early scholarly research out of China identified the WHCDC and WIV as very possibly spreading the dis
ResearchGate = Facebook (Score:3)
And that's where a lot of the problems have come from. It's a fun, anything-goes social media site with the word "research" in its name. So wild, unsubstantiated almost-science-y comments are mistaken for "published research!! Published on Researchgate!"
No. Just
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, it's the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC), which is 0.28km away from the wet market. https://www.news.com.au/lifest [news.com.au]... [news.com.au]
No it's not. It *WAS*, and moved before COVID. Do yourself a favour and stop reading Fox News Downunder (yeah News Corp Australia is another heavily biased Murdoch rag, about as trustworthy as any politician running their utterly worthless mouths.)
The WHO investigators finally visited that facility to study it
Yep, a completely different building in a different location to the one in the News.com.au article.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's more than one bio research lab in Wuhan. One is rather close to the market.
Re: (Score:2)
Not the one that studies these kinds of infections,
No, you made that up.
There are multiple labs in Wuhan that kept horseshoe bats or viruses, and were studying coronavirus.
Re: (Score:2)
And nobody goes there to shop from the lab?
Re: (Score:2)
according to Google maps, the research center is 50 miles away, aka 80km or something
Re:My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Interesting)
More like 15 km. Americans assume Wuhan is a small, insignificant place because they'd never heard of it, but it's a megacity larger than New York City both in area and population. The distances from the Huanan Seafood Market to WIV is roughly the same as from Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan to the Bronx; not *far* but hardly next door.
In field science, and in particular epidemiology, you can always make a convincing argument by cherry picking evidence that points in a particular direction. This goes *both ways*, which is why early on in debates about controversial questions expert opinion is divided. There's nothing sinister about a question like this not being settled right away. This isn't like the science you learned in elementary school, where any contentious questions were put to bed decades or centuries ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Americans assume Wuhan is a small, insignificant place because they'd never heard of it.
As a resident of the UK, I made a similar assumption. I live in Birmingham, which is a large industrial city in a convenient central location for transport. It appeared that Wuhan might have a similar status, with respect to the Chinese economy. Then I looked at the stats. From what I recall, Wuhan is about ten times bigger than Birmingham. That is freaking enormous.
Re: (Score:2)
Did they cause SARS-CoV-1, as well?
Re: (Score:2)
As the proposal says, the purpose is to create an innoculant that can infect animals similar enough to human that we can still study the likely progression of disease and its evolution, and hopefully create vaccines and medicine to help prevent infection in humans.
Re: (Score:2)
Coronaviruses have a long and storied history of evolving this capacity on their own. Or, more likely, developing it in recombination events after a species jump.
Influenza has the same problem. Both animals have influenza, and people do.
Get some rotten luck and catch an animal strain... Get some more rotten luck and that animal strain recombines with a human strain... Get over 9000 rotten luck? Pandemic.
Vice versa is possible as well. Recombining viruses are scary as hell when there
Re: My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a frequenter moderator (I assume because I don't say much and have a fairly low user id) and also as somebody whose knowledge of mandarin is limited to what I picked up watching "Ni Hao, Kai-lan" with my daughter, I can honestly say my finger hovered over the "overrated" pick list item not because I have any connection to the execrable CCP (Taiwan is an independent country, free Tibet, Xi looks like a pudgy bear) but because the top-level post scans like conspiracy theory bullshit. Sorry.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Just wow (Score:5, Interesting)
For an actual well-researched and well-documented examination of the origins of COVID-19, see this article on science.org: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 [science.org]
to be fair to people (Score:5, Informative)
2) the office of cdc wuhan were actually machang road not far away from the wet market before their move 3km away in december before it all started. If you look machang road (a bit south of wet market) in a google map (google https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]) you will see an empty lot. if you look in baidu you will find this : æ¦æ±åç-¾ç--...ééæZåäåf (google translate wuhan cdc) i hope it center on the building https://map.baidu.com/poi/%E6%... [baidu.com]
but rather than look up and understand that the office apparently moved, and it was an office not a lab , people jumped into CT.
Re:Just wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
For example, they tested animals present at the market for COVID.
Who is they?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Just wow (Score:2)
He doesnâ(TM)t have a problem: I also think itâ(TM)s conspiracy theory bullshit. Just because itâ(TM)s well written doesnâ(TM)t make it more real⦠look at the number of people suckered by Nigel Farage (an amazing salesman and liar)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Has it occurred to you that you're fucking stupid? I hate resorting to that word, but what other explanation is there? You've gotta be a few eggs short of a dozen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That, sir, is very much a "you" problem.
Nope, his posts have been debunked before, and the few bits of verifiable information in them is wrong.
You on the other hand have passed judgement based on your pre-conceived idea of reality. That is a real problem, you have a long standing inability to research or conduct any critical thinking.
Re: My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because it reads like one of those Facebook posts with a bunch of circumstantial evidence and links that are less relevant than the poster thinks, verses the scientific consensus decided by people who actually know this stuff and have read and understood the research.
Re: (Score:2)
I am one of the mods who upvoted him.
Then, if you posted from the same IP or account, you probably just cancelled your mod. Posting as AC after modding cancels your mod.
Anyway, it seems back to +5 now so I guess it doesn't make much difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Yah, that would do absolutely _nothing_ about the sock puppet accounts mining mod points here.
Re: My mind it put at ease! (Score:2)
Well stated. Although, there is the sock puppet problem that is used by those who are so politically aligned that their logic skills are atrophied.
Maybe it would be better to make it so that the moderation would only apply to others who thought along the same way as they did. It would encourage people to login so that their account would show more favorable moderation. This would make it so that the mideast trying to sabotage a list, would only do so for their own mindset.
Re:My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also not suspicious that one of the principle authors on the public letter saying it couldn't have been from the BSL-4 lab was Peter Daszak,
Peter Daszak needs to be investigated. There are a lot of suspicious arrows pointing to him.
Just what we need. More harassment of researchers who disagree with right wing talking points [reuters.com]
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to argue that Peter Daszak should not be harassed with death threats, then yes, I agree with you.
If you want to argue the Peter Daszak should not be questioned about his research, then no, I disagree with you.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to argue that Peter Daszak should not be harassed with death threats, then yes, I agree with you.
If you want to argue the Peter Daszak should not be questioned about his research, then no, I disagree with you.
Sure it's not meant to be threatening or intimidating, it's just subjecting people you disagree with to endless investigations in the hope that some dirt comes up.
Re:My mind it put at ease! (Score:5, Informative)
Peter Daszak was genetically modifying coronavirus to infect humans. It's not unreasonable to ask him to give more details about what he was doing.
Really? Evidence?
The closest thing I found to your claim was this: [science.org]
To assess the risk of those viruses to humans, Shi’s team took sequences coding for their viral surface protein and stitched them into a bat coronavirus called WIV1, one of only three she has succeeded in growing in lab cultures. Daszak and Shi described these chimeric viruses in a 2017 paper. None of them has a close relationship to SARS-CoV-2. But some lab-leak proponents believe Shi, possibly with Daszak’s knowledge, hid other chimeric virus experiments that led to SARS-CoV-2.
The same batch of documents also showed that in “humanized” mice, some of the chimeric viruses grew better and were more lethal than WIV1. An NIH official, in response to an inquiry from a member of Congress, claimed EcoHealth had “failed to report” the worrisome results immediately, as the grant required. Daszak sent NIH a detailed letter strongly rebutting that accusation.
Pretty big stretch to get from there to "genetically modifying coronavirus to infect humans".
There is probable cause.
Actually it's irrelevant because SARS-CoV-2 wasn't genetically engineered. [science.org]
To co-opt your analogy, you're claiming probable cause because someone has a gun collection when the victim was stabbed. The lab leak theories sound convincing on a superficial level, but then they fall apart when you look into them.
Either way, this is a guy who has dedicated his life working to prevent pandemics like COVID-19 and now you're treating him like a suspect in a criminal investigation just to have someone to blame for it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty big stretch to get from there to "genetically modifying coronavirus to infect humans".
You think going from "humanized mice" to "humans" is a big stretch? Do you even read what you write? It wouldn't be too onerous for Peter to release the genetic sequences of the viruses his research created.
Actually it's irrelevant because SARS-CoV-2 wasn't genetically engineered
Your first paragraph goes back to a citation of a paper by...Peter Daszak. If you actually want a detailed and balanced view of the problem, here is a good article [thebulletin.org]. Is there proof that the virus originated in the lab? No. Is there plenty of evidence? Yes.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the resear
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
You think going from "humanized mice" to "humans" is a big stretch?
Yes, because your claim was that he modified coronaviruses to infect humans. This is, by your own link, objectively false.
I'll grant you that you were "close" to the truth, but that's simply the art form a conspiracy theorist excels in.
When you add your own spin to the truth, it outs you as a misinformation peddler.
Do you even read what you write? It wouldn't be too onerous for Peter to release the genetic sequences of the viruses his research created.
Ah yes. Prove to me that you didn't create the virus. This is why the 5th amendment exists. Because of shitheads like you in positions of power. Thank $DEITY you are irrelevant.
No. Is there plenty of evidence? Yes.
Wrong, there is
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes. Prove to me that you didn't create the virus. This is why the 5th amendment exists. Because of shitheads like you in positions of power. Thank $DEITY you are irrelevant.
I didn't ask for that. I asked for him to release the genomes of the coronaviruses he did create. That is not unreasonable, I don't know why you have a problem with it.
Yes, because your claim was that he modified coronaviruses to infect humans. This is, by your own link, objectively false.
What is false here? I think you're wrong. Do you understand how a virus works? Are you saying that the virus infected the humanized mice in a way that they wouldn't infect humans? What exactly are you saying?
You're a nut, dude. I'm sorry, but you are. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get help.
ok, personal attacks.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you trying to say? That he should not provide data that he has, and that has been requested, because some people will still be conspiratorial? I don't understand your argument.
Re: (Score:2)
https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
You are asking for the hidden, secret data you assume must exist. That is definitively conspiratorial.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty big stretch to get from there to "genetically modifying coronavirus to infect humans".
You think going from "humanized mice" to "humans" is a big stretch? Do you even read what you write? It wouldn't be too onerous for Peter to release the genetic sequences of the viruses his research created.
As the other poster said that is a slight of hand on your part.
Testing on mice, some of them humanized, becomes deliberately targeting the humanized mice. And the humanized mice become human.
So something innocuous becomes framed as malicious.
Actually it's irrelevant because SARS-CoV-2 wasn't genetically engineered
Your first paragraph goes back to a citation of a paper by...Peter Daszak. If you actually want a detailed and balanced view of the problem, here is a good article [thebulletin.org]. Is there proof that the virus originated in the lab? No. Is there plenty of evidence? Yes.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the research area has been heavily politicized since ~2016. Scientists are also human, and many have gotten caught up in the politics. If covid escaped from a lab, it means they will lose funding, so they are not unbiased.
Interesting how your "balanced view of the problem" is "one of the most-cited pieces in support of the lab leak hypothesis". Either way his whole debunking of the evidence against genetic engineering is hypothetical ways you could conceal the engineering. Is that possib
Re: (Score:2)
Peter Daszak was genetically modifying coronavirus to infect humans. It's not unreasonable to ask him to give more details about what he was doing.
Your disagreement with the first part is not based in science. I can't figure out why on earth you disagree with the second part.
Re: (Score:2)
A simple search engine will show it's true. I've linked to pages that verify it. Scientists don't disagree with this point, I don't know why you do.
Re: My mind it put at ease! (Score:2, Insightful)
Utter BS (Score:5, Informative)
It's been clear from the very beginning when top scientists, including Fauci, were emailing about the pandemic, that they wanted the lab leak theory to simply go away [theintercept.com]
Reminder -- bats weren't sold at the Wuhan wet market and even the Chinese CDC found no evidence that the Wuhan wet market was the source of the virus. [sciencealert.com]. All animal samples came back negative.
Another reminder -- the closest wild viral match to SARS-CoV-2 is from bats over 1,000km away. But it's like the Lancet guy says.. Western scientists just keep chanting "The market! The market!" never once acknowledging that the lab has NEVER been investigated other than a pathetic three hour visit [apnews.com] which was surely chaperoned and only after the Chinese authorities scrubbed the place much like they took down the WIV viral databases [researchgate.net] at the very start of the pandemic. Nothing to see there though, I'm sure..
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
" Chinese CDC found no evidence", yep, those trusty Chinese who claim the Uyghurs are being re-educated due to some mysterious brain ailment.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The entire reason they refused to look at the lab is because people on the right started pointing out the lab early on, and saw the scientific community wanted to make sure that they were well insulated and seen as completely different from those idiot right wingers. It also didn’t help that Chinese propaganda internally in the country was claiming that US Marines brought the virus over during a joint training exercise in the area and late 2019. And, we know from emails from Fauci and others that they
Re: Utter BS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't there some evidence showing that the Furin Cleavage sites on the Covid virus were identical to ones that were patented by Moderna?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10542309/Fresh-lab-leak-fears-study-finds-genetic-code-Covids-spike-protein-linked-Moderna-patent.html
Re: (Score:2)
He's one guy who has zero expertise in the area.
Your desperation to believe something with zero evidence is interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Even the head of the Lancet investigative team has had enough and in a recent interview [currentaffairs.org] made clear that the scientific community refuses to look at the lab
Relevant quote:
"When I asked [Peter Daszak] for one of the research proposals, he said, “No, my lawyer says I can’t give it to you.” I said, “What? You’re heading a commission. We’re a transparent commission. You’re telling me your lawyer says you can’t give me your project proposal.”
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You're responding to a Communist propagandist.
> noting that the nearest lab is miles away.
This shithead knows damn well that the office building for the BSL4 lab is meters from the market.
That and the synonymous mutation rate of RATG13 is a one in a trillion event (it's fake, they faked it for a coverup).
The midwit morons here who write quality shell scripts and THEREFORE feel certain about parroting USA Today are such obnoxious noise lately. Go buy a virology book, you stupid fucks.
Re:Utter BS (Score:5, Insightful)
made clear that the scientific community refuses to look at the lab which he believes is a likely source of the virus.
The community did look. Quite a few virologists and epidemiologists inspected the lab as part of a research into the COVID origins and concluded that the lab leak case is incredibly unlikely. There's some 16 pages on it you can find on the WHO's website.
Incidentally the scientific community steadfastly refuses to look at my perpetual motion machine. Also they refuse to consider the possibility that global warming was caused by Trump farting setting off a butterfly wings style chain reaction. THE DEEP STATE IS SELLING YOU LIES. Damn those scientific community, we know the TRUTH!!!@
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a few virologists and epidemiologists inspected the lab as part of a research into the COVID origins
Citation desperately needed. The WHO got to spend about 3 hours there long after the Chinese had the chance to scrub the place. Three hours. Barely enough time for a tour.
Naturally you then spiral off into totally irrelevant Trump-related bullshit. Tell me, why does the head of the Lancet COVID commission feel the way he does? Did you even read the interview?
Now I'm hungry (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Now I'm hungry (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder where I can get racoon dog tacos after midnight.
I'm guessing Raccoon City [fandom.com] might have some ...
This is a global problem, China makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen in other articles where the origin of COVID-19 was blamed on climate change, the wild animals are migrating to more pleasant conditions and therefore crossing paths with people more often. It's more complicated than that. It still requires a series of bad public health decisions for the disease to spread so quickly.
I grew up on a dairy farm in the US Midwest. As part of selling milk our farm had to have a license. To get a license meant an inspection from the state, county, and sometimes federal, health inspectors. If you have things out of place they can pull the license. Dad gave me a list of things to do one day, a list of repairs required by the health inspector. Dad decided that if he could get a grade A license he might make more money, his grade B license meant less money per gallon of milk but a grade A license meant more costs. A new license meant a new inspection, and grade A meant stricter rules.
(For those curious about the difference, grade A milk is the milk put in jugs to drink, grade B milk is the milk used to make cheese, yogurt, and other dairy products. I'd bet most people reading this didn't know that.)
Things on the to-do list included a shelf for the medicine so it wasn't sitting on a ledge in a corner, a couple more lights where the cows were milked, and restoring a little door for the hose to pump out the milk. The door was covered up in repairs of the siding, the milk truck driver never used it anyway as it was just easier to prop open the walk-in door and run the hose through there.
I noticed the milk truck driver using the new door for the milk hose after it was restored. I suspect he got a warning from the inspectors after the inspection of our barn. Even grade B milk needs the barn door closed while pumping out the milk. It could let in flies or something.
My point is that we've seen diseases out of China before. Diseases spread from animals to humans. This hasn't happened in the USA, not in a long time anyway. Likely because we have better rules on public health. I listed the things we had to do to sell milk to show how much attention is spent on detail. In China they have just horrible public sanitation by comparison. They can't step it up? Just a little bit? Like keep the caged wild animals from shitting where people eat? Flies spread disease, and a fly going from animal shit to someone's glass of milk can get that someone sick.
It would be wise for the US government to pressure China into improving their public health. We saw disease spread from China because they kept airline flights out of the country going even after they knew of the disease. They didn't tell other countries about it until the source was nearly certain.
Is climate change causing the spread of disease? We can have that debate but it's also clear we have measures to at least limit the damage. We can lower the risks by dealing with climate change but lower the risks even more by having good public sanitation protocols. Climate change is a global problem so all nations need to contribute. Disease is also a global issue, so if a nation as large as China can't get their act together then we will still have a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen in other articles where the origin of COVID-19 was blamed on climate change, the wild animals are migrating to more pleasant conditions and therefore crossing paths with people more often.
The message I get is not so much climate change as the culprit, but destruction of wild habitats by expansion of human activities. It benefits animals like foxes to move from the countryside to the cities, because of the better food resources. The countryside in England is often a highly artificial environment, probably more than most gardens in towns and cities. I am not knocking farmers, because I need the food they grow. But there is plenty of evidence that wild areas, like hedges, woodlands, and marshes
It's important to blame a lab leak (Score:2, Insightful)
Secon
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have, again, descended into self-parody. The Chinese are trying to make it anything but a the lab, they even went so far as to claim that US Marines brought the virus into their country during a joint training exercise in late 2019.
This article actually fits in the Chinese propaganda perfectly, and that’s pretty much what it likely is.
Re: (Score:2)
The Chinese gov't is the CCP (Score:2)
That said, There's no sign of lab accidents, and it would be foolish to shut down an entire country's R&D for what amounts to political reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Second China needs us all to think it's a lab leak because they really, really do not want to shut down the wet markets
They've shut down the wet markets. Don't use this line of thought again.
Not really (Score:3)
There was a brief shut down of the major market (with plenty of smaller ones left open and w/o regulation).
Again, China wasn't about to toss their entire rural economy in the bin over a little thing like a global pandemic. It's about money. Always was. Always is. Funny
Re: Not really (Score:2)
Or they know that the origin wasn't the wet markets so there's no significant benefit in permanently closing them. Which makes more sense than hoping another such incident doesn't happen in the future and have to constantly lock down major cities and lose billions upon billions of dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
The CCP wants to be in total control of information about China, and the lives of Chinese people. And when it comes to a choice between the welfare of citizens and spinning the desirable party propaganda line, the people serve the needs of the party, to the death if need be. In the case being discussed here, it is really difficult to find out what actually happened, because the people who might know are afraid to tell.
the CT nutcases are out in full force (Score:4, Insightful)
and the moderators along with them. what the fuck slashdot ?
yes, of course a lab in wuhan would be the source of virus rather than hundreds of animals, known to harbor the virus, in close proximity to humans for extended periods of time and maintained in unsanitary conditions.
of course it couldn't of been that, it was a single worker in a secure facility, using all sorts of protocols to prevent infection who got it and then spread it.
you idiots would be funny if it weren't for the fact that the majority of you fucking idiots can vote.
go ahead moderators, give me my troll beat down.
Re: the CT nutcases are out in full force (Score:2)
I canâ(TM)t actually tell what you really believe from your poorly written sarcasm.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
and the moderators along with them. what the fuck slashdot ?
Give it time to settle man. Slashdot unfortunately has quite a few idiots with mod points, and timezones mean that some articles post at certain times of the day are full of nothing but bullshit.
You want to know the real Slashdot, read every article 1 or 2 days late.
Nature's lab (Score:3)
What nature can do in wild animals, especially when in close proximity to people, over years and years is continually experiment to eventually find the strain of a virus that has all the right properties to jump to people to people.
I have a theory... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is a world audience by the way, it's on the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, the Stupid is strong in this thread. (Score:5, Insightful)
The virus either was developed in a poorly run CCP lab, and then got out accidently by some means, or it jumped to humans in the charnel pit of horrors that is the Wuhan wet market, even after the dangers of that sort of squalid hell hole were plainly known.
So, either way the Chinese were responsible. This isn't some sort of "accident" no-one could control, it came about because of the Chinese not giving a fuck about anything else apart from themselves.
Then they fucking LIED about its transmission while they quietly ransacked the entire globe for PPE, AND stopped all domestic travel out of the affected areas while allowing international travel. You couldn't fly from Wuhan to Bejing but you could fly from Wuhan to Milan, Paris, London, NYC and LA. They spread it far and wide and hushed it up for as ling as they could.
Then they got their handpicked bunch of flunkies (with skin in the game) to give them a clean bill of health in the later "investigative" whitewash, after having a year to destroy all evidence and sanitise everything and everybody. Anyone even tempted to whistleblow were quietly dealt with.
The point you apologist clowns can't seem to understand is that if it was cooked up in a lab, how many other viruses are still there in undropped test tubes, or if it came from the wet market then how long before it happens again ?
The CCP will be the death of us all, mark my words.
I see! (Score:2)
I mean, no one would suspect someone wearing a mask and gloves there anyways. And maybe the atomizer was seen as a bottle of sanitizer. Right?
We're at TMST! (Score:2)
We've reached the Theoretical Maximum of Shitty Thinking on this one. Anybody doing a study on logical fallacies and broken critical thought would do well to simply go through these threads. Both sides are exuding them like mad. The straw men alone are in sufficient numbers to take down a small African nation. And the hominems are duly ad-ded.
So ... what? (Score:2)
Ok, we now know where it comes from. Great. Unfortunately, I never cared who was to blame, I care about who solves it. Can we do that next? I think it would accomplish a lot more.
Metre Maid (Score:2)
"Somewhere between the bottom of the feet and the top of the head."
Evidence for wet market theory (Score:2)
The diagram in the second link [abc.net.au] from the post suggests to me that an animal source of the virus is more likely. On that diagram there are four notes read that "Positive sample" with the location these samples were found, which were a combination "wall surface", "ground surface", "shoe bottoms", and "gloves".
The media has reported that transmission between humans happens from virus particles that are expelled while breathing. The fact that these samples were found on surfaces, and stuck to shoe bottoms, sug
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: noting that the nearest lab is miles away (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: wuhan labs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Most likely not. Putting human and wild animals in close quarters is more likely than escaping the Wuhan lab.
Re: (Score:2)
Foolishness. His exoneration of the lab based on distance is stupid, too, of course.
I'd give my (non-specialist) estimate that the chances are something like 75% wet market origin, 24% lab origin, an 1% two separate origins. But I wouldn't invest any belief in it. (Why do you feel you need to decide? Both choices are bad.)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd give my (non-specialist) estimate that the chances are something like 75% wet market origin, 24% lab origin, an 1% two separate origins.
Someone else pointed out to me that calculating probabilities is one of the biggest problems we have with resolving the covid origin problem. For example, what is the probability that a furin cleavage site appears in a coronavirus? What is the likelihood that it develops a way to attach to the ace-2 receptor? Even virologists disagree widely on these probabilities.
Getting more data is really the only way to narrow the huge margin of error on these probabilities.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, the furin cleavage is know in wild strains, so that's not really a reasonable thing to pick. (My source for that was one of Derek Lowe's columns several months ago.)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the furin cleavage is know in wild strains
Those wild strains were found very far from Wuhan, and are very different than SARS-CoV-2. So again that leaves the question, what is the probability that virus somehow made it to Wuhan and mutated (or transferred genes to other viruses), becoming the COVID-19 that we know and love today? The probability is very difficult to calculate, the error margins are wide.
Re: (Score:2)
the lab "theory" isn't even approached because China absolutely won't let anyone even investigate that possibility.
Because so much of the funding for COVID research in the Wuhan lab came from the US (mostly through EcoHealth Alliance), there is a lot of investigative work we can do without involving China.
Re: seafood market no longer exists (Score:2)