WHO Abandons Investigation Into Origins of COVID-19 Pandemic 248
Bruce66423 shares a report from Nature: The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned. Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn't going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. "Their hands are really tied." [...]
"There is no phase two," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but "that plan has changed." "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins," she said. Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus's initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020. But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated. "The ending of the investigation is not a surprise," adds Bruce66423. "But why 'quietly'?"
"There is no phase two," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but "that plan has changed." "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins," she said. Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus's initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020. But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated. "The ending of the investigation is not a surprise," adds Bruce66423. "But why 'quietly'?"
Smart move (Score:5, Funny)
No one really wants to know where it actually came from anyhow. It didn't create any economic impact, so definitely not worth our time to sort out the root cause. ... /s
New episodes of StarWarsRewrite++ will be on Disney soon, and new episode of OldYellerStone premiers this Friday.
Re:Smart move (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons. Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.
The WHO really can't afford to get mixed up in that. It is totally reliant on nations volunteering information and accepting help.
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Welcome to the real world, where major screw-ups have consequences! Facing accountability is not a good excuse for covering things up in any other case, including Western governments, but I guess the Chinese Communist Party gets a pass in your book.
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You proved my point. You aren't interested in the science, only in there being "consequences" for China.
You can't seriously expect China to assist you in your prosecution of them, so we will lose that scientific knowledge and more people will die in the next pandemic.
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What? Your entire point was, and continues to be, that we should ignore the scientific and electrical facts because they would be POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT. Take your favorite topic where the US government or a European government has done something wrong. Would you accept "the answer would be used politically, so we can't investigate that" in that situation?
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*scientific and epidemiological facts. Stupid phone.
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No, I'm saying the opposite. If you want to know what actually happened, don't start by saying your goal is to assign blame and seed restitution.
As an engineer I've found that having a no-blame culture really helps. I don't care who was responsible, I just want to fix it and make sure it doesn't happen again. If people get defensive I can't do that.
Re:Smart move (Score:5, Informative)
No, you literally said this:
The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons. Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.
Sometimes people -- even governments, and even the CCP -- need to grow up and admit that something bad happened under their watch. The fact that some people will criticize you for it comes with having influence in the world. That dynamic is no excuse for dropping an investigation, which is what you're endorsing with "The WHO really can't afford to get mixed up in that."
See, for example, how the US government shot down three UFOs recently because they were discovered shortly after that Chinese balloon. They're still investigating those, but are leaning [go.com] towards them being "commercial or benign", and are sharing those tentative assessments in the interest of transparency.
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You have absolutely failed to read my mind or to write what you mean. What you called "used for political purposes", I called "have[ing] consequences". You reject the idea that there should be any for China, wumao.
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you are the only person repeatedly using the word "consequences"
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Entrope said it, I was replying to them.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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All reasoning is motivated, or it would not occur.
No lol. Motivated reasoning means you look for facts to prove your point.
Scientific reasoning means you look for facts to disprove your point (or hypothesis).
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more people will die in the next pandemic.
Well, good to know there's a silver lining to that cloud.
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I tend to watch the statistics and do what is likely to ensure my continued existence. In case of this pandemic, this was a vaccine. If you prefer to not get one ... well, more power to you!
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Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.
Are you suggesting this isn't already the case?
Re:Smart move (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons
So fucking what? Everything is used to political reasons. Tens of millions of people died from this likely lab leak and you're worried "oh noos, somebody might make it political?" Please.
Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up
You mean exactly like China did with this one?? You make zero sense.
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There are legitimate logistical reasons for a country may want to want to cover it up, even if were not "a lab leak" as you conjecture. It is only in hindsight that such decisions can be seen as a miscalculation on their part. But that still doesn't make any part of it intentional.
But you sound like you've already made up your mind what the "facts" are, and it's unlikely anyone is going to convince you otherwise.
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So you need China's help to do the investigation. Obviously China isn't going to let you investigate if it thinks you will immediately turn round and use the freshly printed peer reviewed paper to beat them over the head with.
This is not hard to understand. You need cooperation, but all you have are the smouldering remains of that bridge.
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The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons.
This is not a reason to hide the truth.
IF you are a scientist, you look for truth, even if you don't like the result.
If you are a politician, covering up the truth will be even worse. Because eventually it will get out.
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If you are a scientist you need a visa to visit China, and they aren't likely to grant you one if the purpose of your trip is to supply their international rivals with information use against them.
The reality is you need to be nice to China or you don't get to investigate. That sucks but it's the same in every country.
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It's not so much that it would be used "for political reasons", that would absolutely happen if those in power had any incentive to do so. It's that those in power would have something to lose if the news ever got out.
You can be certain that there is someone, or many someones, in power right now who were involved in orchestrating and planning the virus, simply because it's not being investigated. If the less-powerful political party had something to lose, it would be sought as if life depended on it - becau
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so definitely not worth our time to sort out the root cause.
Your sarcasm is irrelevant. You're right at this point it's not worth any time to do any further digging. The answers have been narrowed down to all key points of relevance:
a) China did it: Things we can do about it: Fuck all.
b) Natural spread through wet market: Things we can do about it: We're already doing it, pressure has been on to reduce wet markets for years.
There's zero value in digging into the cause economically and socially now beyond pointless finger pointing, and we have balloons we can use for
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I'm not sure what we'd learn.
There's no way this was a deliberately-released bioweapon. China's vaccines suck, and probably hundreds of thousands of their citizens are dying to this wave.
SARS-COV-2 itself doesn't look engineered.
https://www.datascienceassn.or... [datascienceassn.org]
If it was, they were hiding their tracks incredibly well and it was much weaker than it needed to be. Prematurely-released bioweapon is possible but super-unlikely.
An accidental lab-leak of a GoF would look engineered so that didn't happen.
So we ha
Re:Smart move (Score:5, Insightful)
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Humanity fails yet another test and moves one step closer to extinction.
See also: Fermi Paradox
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By far not fast enough.
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We're pretty good at not going extinct.
There were cases where the human population were almost eradicated a few times already, yet here we are.
Now that's not to say we're good at keeping systems or societies alive. We're pretty good at crashing and burning those too.
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I think it's too soon to say
There were species that were around on this planet for orders of magnitude longer than humans have.
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We wouldn't want to offend the nation that brought us this wonderful disease.
Re:There is overwhelming evidence for a lab leak (Score:4, Funny)
It was Colonel Mustard with the revolver in the study. I'm absolutely certain.
Re:There is overwhelming evidence for a lab leak (Score:5, Insightful)
There were trace amounts detected in a small number of samples. The chosen test procedure was extremely sensitive, had a high margin of error, and was capable of producing false positive results. The scientist who performed the test even said he didn't consider the results conclusive proof of an infection, as you would expect far higher levels of antibodies if there was one.
That's the kind of result where the proper response is "Oh that's interesting, let's see if we can find more data to support it." And no further data was ever found.
Re:Smart move (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course; one looks for evidence to support or falisify a hypothesis. That is how SCIENCE is done. Now its also true that as human beings we enjoy it when our ideas are confirmed.
The thing here though is anyone with real sense (besides maybe the CCP who may already know) should want to know what happened.
If it was a lab leak - we should hold China to account it will have been their sloppy handling and subsequent cover up that did massive harm to the entire world and we should make them PAY.
If it was the wet market - than we should probably be pressuring China and other places where these exist to reform however domestically difficult that is before this happens again.
If it actually started in Europe and was brought to Whuan by military exercises or commercial traffic, we should want to know that too, and find out lead to that.
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We should, but it's also only worth putting significant effort into a hypothesis if there's reason to believe it's viable. "People want to find someone to blame" isn't enough of a scientific reason.
We've got a ton of evidence tracing the origin of the spread to the market. The market is highly conductive to a virus spreading, and everything we saw fits with what you'd expect from a natural crossover.
The Europe theory comes from antibody tests on a very small number of blood samples. The specific test run wa
Evidence for the lab leak (Score:3)
Wuhan has an efficient subway system. People often travel 7.5 miles to work. And go to the fish markets after. The CDC lab is right next door, which is why Holmes took his famous photo at that market. There are many other issues with that Worobey paper. No evidence that the market was not just one of several super spreaders (the subway being another).
The lab leak hypothesis is based on the fact that we know the lab was genetically engineering bat coronaviruses because they proudly published their exce
preventing future outbreaks (Score:2)
All scenarios lead to new pandemics.
Even knowing won't stop a pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's imagine for a moment that we find with undeniable proof what caused the pandemic. What would come out of it?
- Scenario: It was due to the unsanitary situation on the wet market.
- Result: Wet markets get banned, which will work as great as the ban on "traditional medicine" shit for tiger woo and rhino horn. I.e. not at all. Officials look the other way and the only net result is that the sanitary situation now deteriorates further because they can't be controlled at all, leading to more pandemics.
- Scenario: It escaped a lab.
- Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.
- Scenario: It was deliberately launched as either an attack on China or ... (insert conspiracy nuttery here)
- Result: A massive international diplomatic stink, with China accusing the US of attacking China and the US accusing China of an attack that backfired badly, with troll farms fanning the conspiracy nuttery fires and both sides finally having an excuse if they really want to start a war.
Frankly, can someone think of a scenario that actually ends in a situation that is better?
Re:Even knowing won't stop a pandemic (Score:5, Interesting)
"Frankly, can someone think of a scenario that actually ends in a situation that is better?"
-Scenario: Virus came from nature as every other pandemic ever, the origins are clarified and characterized, precursor virus and closely related variants identified and the process of the jump described in detail
-Result: ancestor virus antigens mapped and a vaccine that allows immunity against these not-yet-well-adapted viruses developed, people can now be protected from the next SARS virus so it becomes much more difficult that it can successfully jump to humans. Next pandemic (from highly pathogenic coronavirus) averted.
I think that scenario is realistic and would justify investigating the origins.
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The problem with that is you then have to acknowledge existence of viral research labs that try and do this antigen mapping, and all the nutters point to them claiming they are being used to develop weapons.
Gain of Function research needs control (Score:2, Interesting)
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to find viruses of pandemic potential to try to then proactively develop vaccines for them. This involved genetically engineering viruses to see how much they would need to evolve to become really dangerous. We know this because of their papers and grant applications, public record.
Reckless experiments, but not actually a bioweapon. And then via sloppy hygiene it leaked. Very simple. Leaks happen all the time in biolabs.
The technology to do this has only bee
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Yeah, that's gonna happen. Say, which country do you think would jump on that. Except for maybe Finland [youtube.com].
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We have a working example with nuclear nonproliferation. This is because humanity on the whole agreed that unaccounted nukes are very bad for everyone, no exceptions. Today the nuclear technology is well-understood by everyone, but very few countries (i.e., nobody but Israel and North Korea) did it. The same needs to happen with gain of function research.
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Let's say for a moment this is true (I doubt it is, but for the sake of argument). What do you think will happen if it is proven?
China has already made efforts to better secure all its bio labs. It's not going to close them down though. Or let you inspect them.
What would an investigation actually do to improve the situation? The only outcome will be that China is further alienated from the WHO and cooperation with Western experts.
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By your logic, why put a murderer in jail because the victim will still be dead. IF they were the trigger for the outbreak then they need to be pulled into the light and held accountable. Stop being so freaking cavalier about this.
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That's not a bad guess. It's possibly true. But I can't imagine an effective international regulation of that.
I still GUESS that it was circulating in a remote area without doctors, some villager carried it, along with merchandise, into the wet market. After all, until people knew what to look for COVID was just "atypical pneumonia", and it doesn't spread that easily in areas were people are outside most of the time, and in family groups the rest of the time. I think it was spreading LONG before it was
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There's been suggestive evidence that it was in Italy 6 months before anyone recognized it. But that's due to analyzing old sewage, so don't be too convinced.
I looked at the followup evidence on that a year later, and it seems the consensus on that was the tests were either contaminated or done poorly.
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The Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to find viruses of pandemic potential to try to then proactively develop vaccines for them.
It's more than that, they were trying to engineer a virus that looked exactly like SARS-CoV-2.
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A far more likely reason would be that safety protocols for dealing with dangerous pathogens were insufficient or disregarded in the Wuhan lab. Negligence and human error are always the most likely explanations for disasters.
And it is very worth the effort to find out what could have prevented the lab leak, assuming it was unintentional.
Safety of anything gets a lot better if lessons are learned from failures, that's why jet travel today is as safe as it is.
And if the lab leak was INTENTIONAL, someone needs
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If that is your opinion, YOU are the nutter. Rational people want to find out the truth more than they want to win an argument.
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the origins are clarified and characterized, precursor virus and closely related variants identified and the process of the jump described in detail
But we already know this. The goal of the WHO investigation doesn't have anything to do with genetics. Your scenario is already included in the wet market scenario. We know this virus is already present in nature.
Re:Even knowing won't stop a pandemic (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need to ban wet markets, nor is it practical to do so.
We just need to ban the bushmeat trade. There are plenty of good reasons to do so besides Covid.
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Same net result, you push them underground and it becomes even less controllable.
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What would you say about banning the private sale of nuclear weapons? Or fully automatic small arms and grenades?
Does banning them "push them underground and it becomes even less controllable"?
Nah. You're just cherry-picking your arguments. I highly doubt you're in favor of selling hand grenades in anonymous markets.
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That's pretty much the question you have to solve, does it solve or create more problems if you outlaw something?
We know by now that outlawing alcohol creates more problems than it solves. We're still not 100% certain about other drugs, it seems. In some countries, we do know by now that outlawing a Nazi movement sure created a very vibrant underground culture of it that's pretty hard to keep under surveillance, but it seems we need more research on this before we finally find out what would be better.
Resea
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To a first approximation, the harm from hard drugs is 100% attributable to the so-called "War on Drugs."
In nature there aren't all that many "hard drugs."
The reason they exist on every city street and in every school is because the "War on Drugs" vastly increases the financial incentives for concentrating milder things like coca leaves or opium poppies or cough medicines into vastly more lethal substances such as cocaine, heroin, and meth.
I say this as a libertarian with strong conservative and anti-collect
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We need to ban reckless Gain of Function research that created SARS-CoV-2.
The pangolins were framed!
Re: Even knowing won't stop a pandemic (Score:2)
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One need not resort to an outright ban. When The Jungle came out, meat packing in the U.S. was even more awful than these wet markets. We didn't ban sausage; we gradually enacted a way for meat packing to be (mostly) safe and sanitary. (Conditions for workers is still pretty awful, let alone for the animals themselves.)
In other words: one need not go to unworkable extremes to enact positive chan
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Now try that in a country where consumers can't really complain.
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- Scenario: It escaped a lab. - Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.
Uh what? By "conspiracy nuts" you mean people who think it came from the lab in which case they would say "yeah, I thought so." And if it turns out it did come from the lab then the likely outcome would be an agreement on a moratorium on GoF research at the minimum. It's not like China cooperates now.
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They won't say "yeah, I thought so". And you know it. They will simply extrapolate and go overboard in a "I was right finally, so I'm right with any outrageous claim" spiel.
So I was right that it came from a lab, and thus it is the evil Chinese reptilian overlords from the hollow earth...
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- Scenario: It escaped a lab.
- Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day,
What you are saying is that you don't want anyone to look for the truth because conspiracy theorists will be happy. Something is wrong with you. Search for the truth where it leads, not because you want to win an argument against crazy people. Otherwise you have become one of the crazy people.
You have to look for the truth and accept it when you find it, not be afraid because there is a conspiracy theorist out there. That's not scientific.
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- Scenario: It escaped a lab.
- ONE Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.
- SECOND Result: if safety protocols for labs were insufficient, they can be improved, if safety protocols were correct, but not adhered to, the nations and institutions responsible get punished and asked for reparations, future bio-safety inspections can and will know what and where to look for in audi
scared (Score:5, Insightful)
"But why 'quietly'?"
Because the WHO, and almost everyone else, is scared of the manipulative and aggressive over-reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.
The entire pandemic is the CCP's biggest failure for many years and they are trying to suppress any investigation into it so that they can re-write history to suit them. The pandemic happened because of the CCP encouraging farmers to grow wild animals for sale - live sale - at markets, where they came into close contact with other domestic animals and humans. That is the ideal situation for incubating and spreading new diseases between the wild animals, domestic animals, and humans. The local CCP officials then tried to ignore the problem hoping it would go away, until it was so widespread that it could not be contained and we had a pandemic.
So any attempt to find out what happened in China at the start of the pandemic is aggressively suppressed and attacked by the CCP. Anyone in China who is part of such investigation is harassed or arrested, foreigners are not allowed in or harassed and obstructed when they do get in, and subtle and overt political threats are made against any countries supporting such investigation.
SARS (the first one) started in a similar way in Hong Kong, but authorities there acted decisively to contain it. Wuhan authorities just carried on and ignored it, so COVID-19 (SARS the second) started to spread and mutate and here we are.
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"But why 'quietly'?"
Because the WHO, and almost everyone else, is scared of the manipulative and aggressive over-reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.
Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.
It is the same reason Julian Assange is still in prison - people in power don't like being exposed or embarassed.
Re:scared (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.
*rolls eyes* Yeah, we're almost as bad as a country with no real civil rights and who rounds up ethnic minorities and puts them in reeducation camps.
I'm not saying we're a perfect country by a long shot but you're being delusional here.
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Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.
*rolls eyes* Yeah, we're almost as bad
In the specific issue at hand yes.
as a country with no real civil rights and who rounds up ethnic minorities and puts them in reeducation camps.
I'm not saying we're a perfect country by a long shot but you're being delusional here.
Bad example. A similar number of people are incarcerated in the US and China, despite a far smaller number of people in the US.
There are so many areas where the US is better, that you could have picked.
Re:scared (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about you but I would much rather live in a country where I'd serve an above average length sentence for a real crime like theft or murder then one where I could go to jail just for being critical of the government.
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No, it's because the WHO deliberately avoids politics that would interfere with its work. Not just for China, for every country.
The WHO's job is to collect and disseminate medical information. It has no legal powers, all it can do is rely on having good relations with nations who then voluntarily hand over data. The WHO can also offer expertise, but there is no obligation to accept it.
That's why the WHO doesn't try to assign blame. Not just in China, in Africa when there is an Ebola outbreak, and in the US
Keep looking for those UFO balloons (Score:3)
Nothing to see here, citizen.
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Indeed. The amount of attention given to balloons rather than the source of Covid-19 is amazing.
For a summary with citations and links see
http://www.originofcovid.org/ [originofcovid.org]
"But why 'quietly'?" (Score:2)
China proves again (Score:4, Insightful)
Money talks, bullshit walks.
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You're right, money talks. What's the financial benefit to identifying the source at this point? Any possible solution either results in learning nothing new, or being able to do nothing about it.
The only purpose for continuing this investigation now is political, to either point the blame to or away from China. Pointing the blame to China achieves nothing. You can't do shit about it. Pointing the blame away from China achieves nothing. People don't listen anyway since "the WHO is corrupt".
Really there's ze
So we already know what caused it (Score:2)
The problem is we also no we can't do anything about that because China's rural economy is dependent on those poorly regulated wet markets and that deforestation.
So the WHO is giving up because nobody is going to listen anyway and their resources are better spent elsewhere. You can't Er
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The genetics clearly point to it coming from a combination of bats and pangolins
False. You are sounding like a conspiracy theorist.
Stupid to think it would be useful anyway. (Score:2)
"understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks
If the results of such a study changed human behaviour one jot - nay, even one tittle - I'd say pursue it. But you aren't going to change fuck all. We, collectively, don't learn a lot of lessons, and we don't learn them for long.
Interesting turn of events. (Score:2)
They Won't Get Fooled Again (Score:3)
Re:It leaked from the Wuhan lab (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe, but when you say that without context, a dozen conspiracy nutters hear "it was bio-engineered in a secret weapons lab".
A delivery driver getting scratched or bitten because full safety protocols did not apply until the live samples were accepted by the lab, is not so sexy.
*Evidence* that it leaked from a lab: (Score:4, Informative)
1. Bat coronavirus starts in a city with the world's leading bat coronavirus lab, and is 1000 miles from the relevant horseshoe bats.
2. No evidence of zootonic spill over. The source of SARS-1 (civets) and MERS (camels) were discovered within months.
3. Virus emerges suddenly, with no adaption phase as happened with other viruses, such as SARS-1. Pre-adapted to humans.
4. Virus gains much power from a Furin Cleavage site that was obviously inserted by genetic engineering.
There is much more. For a summary with citations and many links see
http://www.originofcovid.org/ [originofcovid.org]
Evidence is indeed required, and provided.
sigh (Score:5, Informative)
1. the family of bat which they think the reservoire is in , is Asian Rhinolophus bats, of which horseshoe bat is one of that family. I have no idea why you think those where 1000 miles away, tehre are plenty of the Rhinolophus in the wuhan region (Rhinolophus Sinicus and Rhinolophus Affinis).
2. all proper scientific article looking at it conclude a zoonotic origin. Too many to cite
3. What do you think would happen that it should adapt sloooowwwly over decades to attack human? that is remote from reality of virus. Simple mutation make them spread and attack various receptor , and when those receptor allow them to spread species, it usually not a "slow" adaptation e.g. pig flu, also e.g. HIV ( from what I know a slow adaptation make sense for bacteria or other organism with self reproduction mechanism, but not that much for virus which can only reproduce intra cellular reproduction but I could be wrong feel free to provide such example of slow adaptation)
4. Furin cleavage have been observed in the nature without genetic engineering, heck they have been observer in OTHER coronavirus. https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.10... [pnas.org]
At least THOSE are peer reviewed contrary to your CT web site.
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all proper scientific article looking at it conclude a zoonotic origin.
ah, yes, "proper" scientific articles. You do realize anyone who even dares to mention a lab origin is at risk of ostracization, career attack or worse? Seriously, read a review of the comprehensive evidence and tell me you still think it's a slam dunk it has natural origins. https://alexwasburne.substack.... [substack.com]
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ah, yes, "proper" scientific articles. You do realize anyone who even dares to mention a lab origin is at risk of ostracization, career attack or worse?
Gotta love that air tight alibi. You cant ever be wrong with reasoning like this!
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And now it's my turn, puh-lease. How on earth does China being uncooperative all of a sudden raise the likelihood of the disease being engineered and then escaping? No offense but you dont seem to understand how probability works.
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Let's imagine for a moment that all this was true, and proven to be true. What now?
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Ok, that's what you do. How do you want to make China comply? It's not like you can easily detect bio weapon research from abroad.
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Maybe, but when you say that without context, a dozen conspiracy nutters hear "it was bio-engineered in a secret weapons lab".
That's because it was bio-engineered in a secrete weapons lab. I don't think it was a finished product, and probably escaped into the wild unintentionally via piss-poor security procedures, but I have no doubt whatsoever that this thing was being cooked up as a potential bioweapon for use in a peer war against the United States. It just got out, Stephen King-like, to the outside world before they knew what was happening, and they couldn't contain it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It leaked from the Wuhan lab (Score:4, Interesting)
sewage water as early as 2019 in europe, well before it was spread in China
You're comparing apples to oranges, and omitting the key qualifier "known" in the China case. We don't know how widely it spread before it was recognized as causing a novel forma of viral pneumonia. Has anyone tested stored sewage water samples from Wuhan from 2019, particularly before the potential superspreader event you mention?
For that matter, did the European sewer-sample preprint you're probably thinking of ever get peer reviewed and officially published, or did it get a bunch of news coverage and then quietly get buried because the researchers had a false positive?
Re:It leaked from the Wuhan lab (Score:4, Interesting)
The virus has been found in (stored) sewage water as early as 2019 in europe, well before it was spread in China.
No. No it wasn't. Please provide an actual citation that includes genetic sequencing.
There were plenty of false positives, but no one who bothered to do a gene sequence had anything to report.
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But did it? The virus has been found in (stored) sewage water as early as 2019 in europe,
Unlikely. You should search for the follow-up analysis on this point.
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... "it was caused by Neptunian lizard people" is just as valid as this "Wuhan lab" conspiracy bullshit.
I don't think you know what "is just as valid" means.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You keep posting this website, but does this look like a serious, scientific, rigorous investigation of the origin of COVID to you?
https://originofcovid.files.wo... [wordpress.com]
I'll stick with peer reviewed and published papers, thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
You should have started your post whining about woke people, it would have saved me the time of reading the rest.
I don't even know what people you're referring to with this use of the term but at this point I guess that's not surprising as the word has clearly become a catch all phrase for things people don't like. At this point the term says far more about the person using it then it does about whatever group they're trying to attach the word to.