Where Did the Pandemic Start? Anywhere But Here, Chinese Scientists Argue (science.org) 205
sciencehabit writes: From the start of the pandemic, the Chinese government -- like many foreign researchers -- has vigorously rejected the idea that SARS-CoV-2 somehow originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and escaped. But over the past 2 years, it has also started to push back against what many regard as the only plausible alternative scenario: The pandemic started in China with a virus that naturally jumped from bats to an "intermediate" species and then to humans -- most likely at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Beijing was open to the idea at first. But today it points to myriad ways SARS-CoV-2 could have arrived in Wuhan from abroad, borne by contaminated frozen food or infected foreigners -- perhaps at the Military World Games in Wuhan, in October 2019 -- or released accidentally by a U.S. military lab located more than 12,000 kilometers from Wuhan. Its goal is to avoid being blamed for the pandemic in any way, says Filippa Lentzos, a sociologist at King's College London who studies biological threats and health security. "China just doesn't want to look bad," she says. "They need to maintain an image of control and competence. And that is what goes through everything they do."
The idea of a pandemic origin outside China is preposterous to many scientists, regardless of their position on whether the virus started with a lab leak or a natural jump from animals. There's simply no way SARS-CoV-2 could have come from some foreign place to Wuhan and triggered an explosive outbreak there without first racing through humans at the site of its origin. "The idea that the pandemic didn't originate in China is inconsistent with so many other things," says Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has argued for more intensive studies of the WIV lab accident scenario. "When you eliminate the absurd, it's Wuhan," says virologist Gregory Towers of University College London, who leans toward a natural origin. Yet Chinese researchers have published a flurry of papers supporting their government's "anywhere-but-here" position. Multiple studies report finding no signs of SARS-CoV-2 related viruses or antibodies in bats and other wild and captive animals in China. Others offer clues that the virus hitched a ride to China on imported food or its packaging. On the flip side, Chinese researchers are not pursuing -- or at least not publishing -- obvious efforts to trace the sources of the mammals sold at the Huanan market, which could yield clues to the virus' origins.
The idea of a pandemic origin outside China is preposterous to many scientists, regardless of their position on whether the virus started with a lab leak or a natural jump from animals. There's simply no way SARS-CoV-2 could have come from some foreign place to Wuhan and triggered an explosive outbreak there without first racing through humans at the site of its origin. "The idea that the pandemic didn't originate in China is inconsistent with so many other things," says Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has argued for more intensive studies of the WIV lab accident scenario. "When you eliminate the absurd, it's Wuhan," says virologist Gregory Towers of University College London, who leans toward a natural origin. Yet Chinese researchers have published a flurry of papers supporting their government's "anywhere-but-here" position. Multiple studies report finding no signs of SARS-CoV-2 related viruses or antibodies in bats and other wild and captive animals in China. Others offer clues that the virus hitched a ride to China on imported food or its packaging. On the flip side, Chinese researchers are not pursuing -- or at least not publishing -- obvious efforts to trace the sources of the mammals sold at the Huanan market, which could yield clues to the virus' origins.
uh (Score:4, Insightful)
it has also started to push back against what many regard as the only plausible alternative scenario: The pandemic started in China with a virus that naturally jumped from bats to an "intermediate" species and then to humans -- most likely at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.
you mean the only plausible scenario period. the graf makes it sound like the 'lab leak' and 'wet market' scenarios are somehow competing in the realm of plausibility, when the former is a conspiracy theory
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no, they were not "actively studying that virus" in a lab in wuhan.
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I think that's the point, though. Even the conspiracy theories make more sense than the idea that it originated outside of China.
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do you have any idea how much the media would LOVE for the 'lab leak' thing to be real? i mean my god, that's straight out of a sci-fi movie, the clicks and eyeballs that shit would produce would be INSANE.
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it was worth the scientific community looking in to it. they looked in to it. they found it not at all plausible. this happened a while ago.
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some bigshot architects and engineers spent years bitching that "we didn't look deep enough into 9/11 possibly being an inside job". so fuckin' what? the theory is stupid and they are stupid, and their complaints don't mean it wasn't looked into and shown to be stupid.
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That COVID started from a lab leak is not unreasonable. There's just no particular reason to believe it. And the wet market is a perfectly reasonable site to assume.
FWIW, believing that it started outside of China is also reasonable, depending on what you mean by "it". There's a closely related bat virus that lives in, I think it was, Cambodia. Somewhere in SouthEast Asia, anyway. It's a quite plausible ancestor to the virus that acquired human-human transmission capability. But this doesn't mean or i
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it's not a conspiracy theory to see a bunch of smoke and think a fire is happening because smoke is direct evidence of a fire's existence. it would , however, be a conspiracy theory to see smoke and think that it's evidence that a fire was set by The Jews
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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clearly, polio must have been a lab leak. in fact, i'll bet there's a lab somewhere in NY state that at one point studied the pathogen. case closed, QED, ipso facto summa cum laude etc etc
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We know the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
But China needs both those things to keep their rural economies going. They long since reopened the wet markets and they never stopped the slash & burn.
And China needs non stop crazy growth because they're an authoritarian kleptocratic capitalist dictatorship. Idle hands are the devil's plaything, and they need to keep their citizens pressing forward and never looking back to ask "hey, why don't we have civil rights?".
Wet markets are not an economic driver. (Score:2)
Wet markets are not an essential part of Chinese economic growth. Super markets could serve the exact same function and their economy is advanced enough to where they could afford them in most parts of the country. The Chinese just like the wet markets because they're traditional.
Google it (Score:3)
Tearing down huge tracks of forest giving wild animals full of disease nowhere to go but into cities thereby putting them into contact with humans and other wild animals more increases the odds of a pandemic. Who knew?
Oh yeah, all those epidemiologists who've been warning us for 20 years. They knew. You didn't listen.
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Patient Zero? (Score:2)
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It was some woman named Ida Know.
How about Wei Do No ?
Huh? (Score:2)
By either it jumping animals, poor food safety practices, or a lab accident.
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Your point?
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Hahaha, one conspiracy after another.
Reliable source? (Score:2, Insightful)
The country that has worked hard to help scientists outside of China who have no real access to or knowledge of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and had no ability to test people and animals in the area of the wet market in Wuhan immediately after cases started to emerge come to the "scientifically proven" conclusion that the virus did not escape Wuhan Institute of Virology is also pushing the theory that it came from a US military lab... Just how many papers by western scientists have already "proven" or i
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If you don't want this to happen again then you need to make sure that the next country to be ground zero doesn't get the same treatment. Blame, accusations, lawsuits, animosity.
Otherwise they aren't going to invite outside help in, or share their raw data. People complain that the WHO wasn't willing to blame or criticise China, and this is the reason why.
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Lab grown viruses have clear markers that indicate they were made in a lab. Furthermore when human beings make viruses those viruses become much less effective and much less capable of spreading across successive generations because our tampering with their makeup isn't natural and when natural selection kicks in it eliminates our tampering.
This is the most absurd, unsubstantiated claim. You can read here [nytimes.com] how scientists got most of the way to re-creating COVID-19 in the lab using accelerated natural selection. Before they stopped.
There isn't a single credible scientist who believes this virus was made in a lab or even leaked from one
Literally in the fucking summary: " "The idea that the pandemic didn't originate in China is inconsistent with so many other things," says Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has argued for more intensive studies of the WIV lab accident scenario."
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jesse bloom at fred hutch argued (past tense) for study into the possibility of a lab leak. do they still argue this? does this person currently believe that the virus was in fact made in a lab?
Notice how you said "most of the way" (Score:2)
And I never said the pandemic didn't originate in China. Stop putting words in my mouth. I said it didn't come from a lab. That's an awfully clever bit of misdirection on your part. Are you a pro at this?
As mentioned in my comment, when we try to create natural viruses we can get real close but we can't get them to pr
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And I never said the pandemic didn't originate in China. Stop putting words in my mouth. I said it didn't come from a lab. That's an awfully clever bit of misdirection on your part. Are you a pro at this?
I quoted the summary. That should have been clear but maybe reading comprehension isn't your thing.
The sequences we insert don't last across successive generations of the virus and it quickly burns out.
That is irrelevant to the serial passage / accelerated natural evolution in the NYT article I linked.
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No. We don't know either way. We do know that it evolved significantly as it spread. I *believe* that the spread centered at the Wuhan wet market. I don't think any conclusion beyond that is reasonable. It could have been brought in by an infected farmer. It's not like COVID is that easily detected if you don't know what you're looking for. But you don't automatically get markers on the genes of a virus just by growing it in a lab. Those are commonly put there, but it's also common to keep control s
Everyone knows... (Score:5, Funny)
Hercule Poirot plot (Score:2)
People still care (Score:2)
about what the PRC government says? That's new.
Good ol' Chinese researchers... (Score:2)
Yet Chinese researchers have published a flurry of papers supporting their government's "anywhere-but-here" position.
Is it any wonder why every time there is a post on /. about 'Chinese researchers discovered/proved/invented X', that we all ignore or mock it?
perfectionist political culture (Score:2)
This whole pandemic has shown us what can happen when you have a culture where admitting fault or showing vulnerability is an invitation for vultures to dine upon your entrails.
The origins of the pandemic were an entirely random event, even if some human error along the way enabled it. The Chinese government trying to deflect it reflects the deepest, most fragile version of this kind of culture, and this story is only the latest iteration. There have been plenty of stories on this site about the technolog
Interesting post (Score:3)
The thing about China is that the CCP's justification for its suppression of freedom is that it does a perfect job governing China, nobody could do better and they should stay in power. So everything that rains on that parade needs to be shot down. So the idea that they have any responsibility for the pandemic is perceived as a threat, however unrealistic.
I guess that settles it (Score:2)
Donald Trump cooked it up in Fauci's kitchen in a mad ploy to...um...steal sunshine and lollipops. Yeah.
China (Score:2)
Why the fuck should it even matter anymore? (Score:2)
All that trying to figure out where it started at this point accomplishes is a whole bunch finger-pointing that doesn't help anyone.
Why can't we just work the fuck together towards a common solution instead of always blaming the "other guy"?
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All that trying to figure out where it started at this point accomplishes is a whole bunch finger-pointing that doesn't help anyone.
Why can't we just work the fuck together towards a common solution instead of always blaming the "other guy"?
OK, take the most logical and innocent reason this happened (animal-to-human crossover). What part of Wet Market do you understand is "common" across the rest of the world? Think the rest of the planet will convince a society who's been buying and consuming food from wet markets for hundreds of years, is going to be successful in stopping that practice altogether?
Let me know how you feel we (the planet) could even "work the fuck together" to eliminate even that risk from happening again, because I sure as
Natural Origin ... (Score:4, Informative)
Here is an extensive article in a science publication that lists the evidence for the natural origin, in Wuhan, China and around the Huanan wet market.
Call Of The Wild: Why Many Scientists Say It Is Unlikely SARS-CoV-2 Originated In A Lab Leak [science.org].
There are also these two studies [scripps.edu] that confirm the findings so far.
And just think about it for a second: how many Coronaviruses jumped to humans in the two decades before the current pandemic?
The answer is two: SARS in 2002 (from China, racoon dogs), and MERS in 2012 (camels).
Why should this one be any different? Just because of the level of disruption to humans?
19 hour drive from the bat cave vs a few minutes (Score:2)
The caves where the bat lady started her collection is a 19 hour drive from the wet market while the lab is a few minutes away.
Common sense tells you what is more likely to have happened.
Re: 19 hour drive from the bat cave vs a few minut (Score:2)
Haha.
China carefully shutdown their domestic travel, but insisted on making sure international flights happened.
Try again.
No doubt the Chinese trolls will defend this (Score:3)
Sure. (Score:3)
Ho hum (Score:2)
Every study and article about the origins of covid is and will be nothing more than disinformation ax-grinding until approximately the year 2070, when most of the actors will be dead, and most people won't really any longer care how it started. Only then can disinterested studies be done.
Re:They lie. EcoHealth Alliance Paid for it. They (Score:5, Interesting)
The Intercept is just a Russian propaganda outlet, it pushes anti-American drivel. Of course that's not to say it didn't start in China, it just has nothing to do with labs and US funding. The pandemic started in China because they eat fucking everything, from pangolins, to dogs and cats, to bats, to live rat babies, to monkeys, to wolf pups, to snakes, to protected shark species, to, well, people:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/asia-pac... [www.rfi.fr]
Yeah, many of those people who engaged in it are still alive.
Until China stops creating melting pots of disease by poaching the world over and bringing it altogether and instead sticks to more manageable food production, i.e. that they can produce locally without poaching globally, then they're going to continue to be a major source of disease and should rightly be treated as such.
I'm amazed no countries have actually sued China for the costs of the pandemic yet, but then, that's why China is desperate to manipulate the science to pretend it came from elsewhere protect themselves from such legal cases.
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Until China stops creating melting pots of disease by poaching the world over and bringing it altogether and instead sticks to more manageable food production, i.e. that they can produce locally without poaching globally, then they're going to continue to be a major source of disease and should rightly be treated as such.
I'm amazed no countries have actually sued China for the costs of the pandemic yet, but then, that's why China is desperate to manipulate the science to pretend it came from elsewhere protect themselves from such legal cases.
I don't understand why you are amazed.
What court do you imagine would hear the case? How would the judgment be enforced?
And say you somehow found a court which had jurisdiction what's the case?
Is the claim that China is liable because of the levels of hunting and small scale agriculture (raising animals in close proximity to humans)? Are you also going to sue the Democratic Republic of Congo for Ebola and Brazil for Zika? Is every developing nation now liable for the diseases that start there? And how do w
Did you even read your link beyond the headline? (Score:2)
Did you even read your link beyond the headline? Even if every single word those people saying is true it's all just circumstantial nonsense. These people being interviewed have absolutely no proper evidence of a disease actually leaving a lab in Wuhan and then infecting people from there.
A local lab working on local diseases isnt proof of anything beyond the sensibility of establishing a lab near what you want to study.
Re: They lie. EcoHealth Alliance Paid for it. Th (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you sure that what's been proven isn't that you are so far out there that you are no longer on the American political spectrum?
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Re: They lie. EcoHealth Alliance Paid for it. They (Score:3)
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Let's be real about this - the true source of this virus has almost certainly been covered up multiple times by multiple bad actors. Like so many other things, we'll never know the truth.
Like so many other things, we will eventually discover the truth of the matter.
And like so many other things, there won't be a fucking thing you can do about it. Now, or 20 years from now when the truth is finally revealed, and Greed N. Corruption is still in charge.
Re: The citizens of this planet will never know (Score:2)
No, we will not eventually discover the truth of the matter. One of the versions will be written in history books that grown ups read in their childhood, and they will start assuming that to be the unadulterated truth.
Re: The citizens of this planet will never know (Score:2)
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Re:The citizens of this planet will never know (Score:5, Insightful)
We are being real, and you're being disingenuous pressing for a conclusion with your post. The origin is definitely within China. There's only two competing theories and only one of which is supported by nearly everyone in the scientific community. The only alternative is the one subject to a potential "cover up", the lab leak.
So by saying it's almost certainly covered up you're implying that by "being real" we should accept the lab leak theory, one that is almost universally rejected by even non-Chinese virologists.
Let's be actually real: We know beyond reasonable doubt where it came from, a few people in denial won't change that, and it's a scenario which has overwhelming support from the scientific community, and it's more than good enough.
Not as sexy as some deep state conspiracy though.
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Actually, MY theory is that it (the human-human transmissible strain) originated somewhere in rural China, evolved there to have decent transmissiblity, and was then carried into the Wuhan market by a farmer in town to do some business. There, where there was a dense collection of people, it spread.
FWIW, note that in the US it was first noticed when an unusual number of people came into the same hospital in December. But there are signs that it had been in the country for months. Up until than people ha
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The unfortunate fact that 2019/20 was also a very bad flu year (60K fatalities, vs a typical 20-30K) threw up a real smokescreen in terms of identifying it earlier. Hard to identify a cluster of novel deadly pneumonias when the hospitals are all swamped with people suffering potentially deadly pneumonia, after all.
If it hadn't been, there would've been a real probability that the cluster of un
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We are being real, and you're being disingenuous pressing for a conclusion with your post. The origin is definitely within China. There's only two competing theories and only one of which is supported by nearly everyone in the scientific community. The only alternative is the one subject to a potential "cover up", the lab leak.
So by saying it's almost certainly covered up you're implying that by "being real" we should accept the lab leak theory
What the hell? Did you read a single word of TFA or even the summary? The Chinese are trying to cover up the fact that it even came from China at all! Thus, a bad actor trying to cover up the truth...EXACTLY as I said in my post.
Your arrogance and laziness is astounding. You can't even be bothered to understand the basic facts of the article, yet you call me disingenuous when YOU are the one putting words in my mouth, and then making assumptions about the words you put there. I never said anything about dee
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So by saying it's almost certainly covered up you're implying that by "being real" we should accept the lab leak theory, one that is almost universally accepted by even non-Chinese virologists.
FTFY.
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The line between slow adult and obvious troll blurs further every day.
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Just because YOU chose to ignore something doesn't mean the rest of us have. Vaccination rates are still being reported and are still having a positive effect on infection rates. https://www.factcheck.org/2022/04/scicheck-covid-19-data-comparing-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-continues-to-be-available-contrary-to-viral-posts/ [factcheck.org]
Odd, that.
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Re:The citizens of this planet will never know (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to have a strange definition of freedom where one group's rights are paramount to all others. Who gets to decide which group is the "in group?" We (thankfully) don't have the freedom to shoot a gun in somebody else's face and kill them. In many jurisdictions it's illegal to intentionally spread deadly diseases. HIV positive people have gone to jail for having sex.
Getting vaccinated or not is a personal decision as long as you are in your own home. the minute you go to a restaurant or sports venue or shopping mall, you don't have the right to spread pathogens. As an FYI, it's not illegal to not wash your hands when you cook at home. But do it working at a restaurant and you will get fired and your employer fined. That's just how it works.
Freedom to put feces in other people's food? If that's the definition of freedom, yeah, I don't want it.
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That's not actually correct (Score:5, Insightful)
We knew this was coming. We knew what we needed to do to stop it. And we know it's going to happen again. And we aren't doing much of anything to stop it because money. We can't risk slowing down the economy because China like the rest of the world is based their entire civilization on endless high-speed growth that wallpapers over the systemic problems nobody wants to address
In case anyone hasn't figured it out (Score:2)
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There are signs that the "next plague" is already spreading. Monkeypox isn't as severe as Covid, and it's easier to avoid. And the current version can be halted by a smallpox vaccination. But we don't have enough vaccine, and we're still ignoring it's spread. That it's currently spreading among gay people is not a statement about how it can spread, it's a statement about the history of how it got started. It has already started spreading outside that group, and in Africa it is distributed WO regard to
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Look at 7-day average case rates in log scale. No exponential growth, meaning that we're (ultimately) not seeing sustained transmission. Optimistically, we may even be starting at the peak where the curve starts turning down.
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That would be nice. It may happen. Certainly the currently most common version is controllable. But there are enough cases that mutated versions may well appear, with different characteristics.
Additionally, I've seen reports that a lot of cases aren't being properly diagnosed for one reason or another. So you can't really trust the reported case numbers. (E.g., the article I read said that a common version didn't display the most common symptoms, but came up with new ones. Lesions in different places,
Re: That's not actually correct (Score:3)
Yeah, about AIDS.... no. People THOUGHT it spread a lot among Gay men.
_Thought_ so much so that Scientists even thought it was a gay disease. In short, there was little funding and research to study it in the general population. They tested gay people, found more gay people had it. Thus it must be a gay pandemic... just stop being gay!
It silently spread into the general population to the point that it couldn't be ignored. Thanks flower power people. At that point, the realization began about blood contac
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One of the things I really hate about humanity which is especially true in america, we never learn
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Let's be real about this - the true source of this virus has almost certainly been covered up multiple times by multiple bad actors. Like so many other things, we'll never know the truth.
Let's be real about this.
The evidence overwhelmingly points towards a natural crossover event, probably in the wet market in Wuhan.
But people looking for villain to blame keep insisting that it must be the Virology Institute (possible, but unlikely).
So now China is deciding to exploit this controversy by throwing its own conspiracy theories into the mix. I don't think they'll be as successful as Russian information because they don't have the same tie in's with fringe media sources, but I expect some of the
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And in other news, experts saw the Wuhan market as a pretty bad risk _before_ this happens and it is no surprise this did happen there. Seriously. This is a result of plain, old-fashioned human ignorance and stupidity, not some deep conspiracy.
Re: The citizens of this planet will never know (Score:2)
Because Aliens.
Special Unit 2 failed their mission.
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I hate how the "authorities" used the conspiracy theory about the labs weaponizing viruses to de-legitimize the notion that a lab just researching this exact type of virus could have accidentally leaked it. And by authorities I don't just mean the Chinese, the US side fought hard against the lab leak narrative too for some reason.
In my mind such a scenario is far more likely than the extremely low percentage scenario of transmission from a natural source
The reason almost no one entertains the idea that Covid just happened to escape from a lab is because it's incredibly unlikely. Scientists working on infectious diseases arent doing so in open air environments where disease can be passed around. These labs take all kinds of safety precautions that make this type of thing extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, being in close proximity to wild animals is a well known way to get any number of diseases. In fact, many diseases affecting people today came from wild anima
Re:Conflation (Score:4, Informative)
the idea that Covid just happened to escape from a lab is because it's incredibly unlikely. Scientists working on infectious diseases arent doing so in open air environments where disease can be passed around. These labs take all kinds of safety precautions
Genuinely curious where you get off making these ridiculous claims. The WIV had safety issues severe enough for the State Department to send urgent cables [washingtonpost.com] over lapses there. Once of the Wuhan CDC researchers talks about not wearing his safety equipment and getting "splattered with bat urine" after which he quarantined himself for 14 days. [washingtonpost.com]
Honestly, what is your motivation with this laughable suggestion that "couldn't have come from lab, they are super careful!"
Re:Conflation (Score:4, Insightful)
The lab where getting splattered with bat urine is a major oversight leading to at least some quarantine time is a much less likely place for transmission than the wet market where that would just be Tuesday and nobody would alter their daily routine over it.
Why would you think that even a half-assed infectious disease lab would be a more likely place for transmission than a poorly ventilated wet market where they're hanging around and butchering the animals that the virus came from in the first place?
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No it doesnt, that doesnt change the odds of anything though.
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Sure and how often do you think people at Chinese wet markets get splattered by animal waste? Probably all the fucking time as many of these markets are full of live animals.
"Genuinely curious where you get off making these ridiculous claims.", because you can name a few small instances of something all of a sudden it's as common as keeping live animals at Chinese wet markets which is a constant disease threat. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black here in regards to ridiculous claims.
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Sure and how often do you think people at Chinese wet markets get splattered by animal waste?
Difference being, 1) there were no bats at the Wuhan wet market and 2) the lab is where the virus (might) have been created. The two things are not the same.
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1) there were no bats at the Wuhan wet market
Oh good, so if there are no bats that means all the other wild animals that were present all of a sudden stop transmitting their diseases? I don't think so.
2) the lab is where the virus (might) have been created.
Gotta love the conspiracy minded. The only thing a lab studying local diseases being present in a region where an outbreak happens of those same diseases is proof of is the sensibility of the labs location. Sure, the disease still might have escaped from a lab but I also might be the queen of England. Without any actual proof of anything all you're doing
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I'm not saying that they're super careful with the labs I'm saying that even the most are we idiotic basic precautions would be enough pro lab worker to avoid catching covid. They would literally have to put mentally disabled people in charge of the lab. I don't mean working at the lab I mean they would have to be in charge of the lab.
Covid spreads from sustaine
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These labs take all kinds of safety precautions
But that assumes that whatever original safety precautions were put in place are rigorously enforced and practiced. Every safety feature/precaution takes time, and humans will always find the quickest way to get their work done or leave the facility.
Just yesterday I had a line worker jam her finger on a conveyor line between two plastic containers. How? The line was designed with more than enough space for a single container, but she thought she would 'save time' by stacking the two plastic containers o
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It's an odds thing. Sure there's a chance a lab wasnt using proper precautions and the disease escaped, it's just not nearly as likely as the disease coming straight from an animal particularly when a society makes a habit of maintaining close contact with wild animals as I've heard is done in Chinese wet markets https://www.livescience.com/21... [livescience.com] .
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The reason almost no one entertains the idea that Covid just happened to escape from a lab is because it's incredibly unlikely. Scientists working on infectious diseases arent doing so in open air environments where disease can be passed around. These labs take all kinds of safety precautions that make this type of thing extremely unlikely.
Assuming that procedures were followed. Animal carcasses sent for disposal diverted by some underpaid flunky looking to make some extra money and taken to the wet market to be sold rather than cremated allows the leak. It's a theory with no evidence to support it, but it does 'explain' both the release being from WIV and the epicenter being the wet market. And I'm sure that the WIV management would assert that none of their staff would be so lax or venal as to do something like this; with so much water unde
Re:Conflation (Score:4, Informative)
A lab leaking a virus is like being struck by lightning and catching a virus from a wild animal is like getting wet in a rainstorm.
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Well, I don't believe that theory, but it's compatible with everything we know. So are several other theories.
Actually, it's not really plausible, it would have needed to be done in a lab. But not necessarily in a virology lab. The person doing it would need to be fairly wealthy, say as wealthy as a successful small businessman, and fairly knowledgeable. So the pool of candidates is only a few thousand, if you only include people who could easily get to Wuhan. (OTOH, the controlled release is a bit mor
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Bullshit. Stop thinking you are smarter than the actual experts.
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Bullshit. There is nothing but nebulous conspiracy theories pointing to the lab. There is solid evidence pointing to the market. Stop regurgitating lies.
So you think it was a coincidence that of all the thousands and thousands of wet markets across Asia, this new virus just happened to appear near the lab where the US and China were specifically trying to make a new, and more dangerous, version of the virus. Oh, and who says it's a conspiracy? Just the people who were involved and who all face personal ruin and/or prison if they're ever proved to be guilty.
Yo-de-ho, mate. If you'll buy that then I've a lovely bridge here if you want it.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you ain't buying denials when you enjoy you free conspiracy suppositories.
There are two options:
1) The lab had nothing to do with it and the governments involved in the lab deny any connection.
2) The lab was the source and the governments involved in the lab deny any connection to avoid liability for millions of deaths.
Since the governments will deny it either way, this becomes:
1) The lab had nothing to do with it.
2) The lab was the source.
And any rational person has to judge based on the observable facts. Which are that there are tens of thousands of wet markets across Asia and