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China Science

New Data Found Linking Covid-19's Origins to Wuhan Market. WHO Demands China Release It (theatlantic.com) 213

"The World Health Organization on Friday called on China to release new data linking the Covid pandemic's origins to animal samples at Wuhan Market after the country recently took down the research," reports CNBC.

The existence of the new data was revealed by the Atlantic earlier this week, in an article reporting that the newly-discovered samples showed the virus was present in creatures for sale there near the very beginning of the pandemic: A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It's some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses....

The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic's start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China's academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. A few weeks ago, the data appeared on an open-access genomic database called GISAID, after being quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.

The samples were already known to be positive for the coronavirus, and had been scrutinized before by the same group of Chinese researchers who uploaded the data to GISAID. But that prior analysis, released as a preprint publication in February 2022, asserted that "no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced...." The new analysis, led by Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, and Michael Worobey — three prominent researchers who have been looking into the virus's roots — shows that that may not be the case. Within about half a day of downloading the data from GISAID, the trio and their collaborators discovered that several market samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were also coming back chock-full of animal genetic material — much of which was a match for the common raccoon dog. Because of how the samples were gathered, and because viruses can't persist by themselves in the environment, the scientists think that their findings could indicate the presence of a coronavirus-infected raccoon dog in the spots where the swabs were taken....

The new analysis builds on extensive previous research that points to the market as the source of the earliest major outbreak of SARS-CoV-2: Many of the earliest known COVID-19 cases of the pandemic were clustered roughly in the market's vicinity. And the virus's genetic material was found in many samples swabbed from carts and animal-processing equipment at the venue, as well as parts of nearby infrastructure, such as storehouses, sewage wells, and water drains. Raccoon dogs, creatures commonly bred for sale in China, are also already known to be one of many mammal species that can easily catch and spread the coronavirus. All of this left one main hole in the puzzle to fill: clear-cut evidence that raccoon dogs and the virus were in the exact same spot at the market, close enough that the creatures might have been infected and, possibly, infectious.

That's what the new analysis provides. Think of it as finding the DNA of an investigation's main suspect at the scene of the crime.

The article also notes that the genetic sequences "also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation." And it adds that all along China has "vehemently" fought the theory that Covid-19 originated from live animals being sold at Wuhan market. Although "in June 2021, a team of researchers published a study documenting tens of thousands of mammals for sale in wet markets in Wuhan between 2017 and late 2019, including at Huanan."

"The animals were kept in largely illegal, cramped, and unhygienic settings — conditions conducive to viral transmission — and among them were more than 1,000 raccoon dogs." And there's even photos of raccoon dogs for sale at the market in December of 2019.


More coverage of the newly-discovered data is now appearing in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Guardian, PBS, and Science.
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New Data Found Linking Covid-19's Origins to Wuhan Market. WHO Demands China Release It

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  • by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @09:46AM (#63380279)
    Why are people so concerned about the origin of disease they are pretending no longer exists? https://mastodon.social/@Weekl... [mastodon.social]
    • I am just guessing, and have no education at all in virology/epidemiology or anything related, but it i possible the experts want this information to help them understand how this epidemic started, and thereby help prevent future epidemics.
      • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @10:03AM (#63380295)

        How to prevent future pandemics? Get a population that's less stupid and harder to bullshit.

        But who'd want that?

        • The population intelligence isn't relevant here. They only spread a virus, they are usually not a contributor to any pandemic outbreak. There's a reason China doesn't want this data coming out, they've resisted a lot of pressure from the west already to stop the practice of wet markets due to both disease and trade of illegal produce.

          • There's a reason China doesn't want this data coming out, they've resisted a lot of pressure from the west already to stop the practice of wet markets due to both disease and trade of illegal produce.

            Well it is pretty much down to the lab leak or the wet market regardless. Unless China has some compelling evidence otherwise, it is on them either way.

          • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @08:07PM (#63381493)

            I dont think the wet market politics have much to do with the data being resisted. (And I'm 99% certain the wuhan lab 3 hours away had nothing to do with it, theres just no evidence, that was always a nutty conspiracy theory whos primary evidence seemed to be "it has wuhan in the name")

            What is dangerous to china is the political fallout from how poorly party officials behaved when the virus was first discovered. Whe the hospital near the wuhan wet market started getting cases of a mysterious seemingly infectious serious illness that appeared to be SARS doctors started raising alarms and pretty frantically saying "Um, something extremely bad is happening we should probably do some contact tracing and quarantine this", party officials responded by sanctioning those doctors and demanding they stop "Alarming" people. The CCP local branch just refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and allowed the thing to get out of hand.

            It wasnt until it had truly out of hand that the national party stepped in and took control of the system, brought in proper virologists with the freedom to do what needed to be done (and crucially share gene sequenes that had been collected so the rest of the world knew how to respond, as it had already started spreading into italy and a couple of other places) and instituted some fairly drastic lockdowns that the situation started to recover there.

            And THAT early response is whats being covered up.

            Wuhan is a very large city in a very large province (think 'state'). Wuhan has between 8 to 11mil people depending on how you cound [8mil in central city, another 3 in surrounding burbs] and its capital to a province with 58mil people. So the officials in charge of that are very senior and powerful in the party.

            They know the Chinese legal system is relatively independent (At least in chinese terms) and more than willing to take down senior party officials, and corruption and malicious behavior that impacts very large populations have tended to be dealt with by the legal system via bullet in the brain.

            Now , *everyone* knows what happened at the start there with those officials, but nobody can prove it, because the evidence is classified. IF that evidence DID get into the hands of prosecutors, some very senior people in the communist party are going to find themselves on their knees on an oval with a white cloth around their eyes and a gun pressed onto their temple.

            And the party will do *anything* to avoid that.

            They don't give a shit about wet markets. The chinese govt have been trying to phase them out for a while now (Covids not the first time a zoonotic virus has hit the population via open air fish markets). What they DO care about is making sure party officials dont get ganked.

            • by Albinoman ( 584294 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @08:49PM (#63381567)
              3 hours away? By wheelchair? Its roughly 10 miles away in a city of 3200 square miles. Yeah, the idea that a virus escaped from one of the only labs in the entire planet that was specializing in coronaviruses is ludicrous, purely a staggering coincidence. What is this now, the fourth or fifth animal they've implicated? After screaming that it was bats and pangolins for years with no actual evidence it's obvious they are desperate for a zoonotic origin.
        • Thats a task that may be beyond an epidemiologists paygrade alas. The stupid isn't inherent (Theres nothing *naturally* that makes Americans dumber than than , say, the australians, or other countries that handled it a lot more rationally as a society) but theres something cultural and educationally that leads to a lot of americans (and american politicians, alas) to making some very unscientific decisions. Fixing that is herculean and has people actively pushing against it.

          Better to actually figure out how

      • by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @01:15PM (#63380687)

        I am just guessing, and have no education at all in virology/epidemiology or anything related, but it i possible the experts want this information to help them understand how this epidemic started, and thereby help prevent future epidemics.

        Oh the irony. The reason why they are looking for the source is that the other hypothesis is that COVID is the result of "gain-of-function" research. If it escaped from a lab (and since WIV destroyed the original samples we will never know), then perhaps this type of research should be banned or at least regulated more tightly. It is basically biological weapons research, although to be clear it is defense against biological weapons research too. So that is the reason we want to be as sure as possible. But since politics is now involved you can bet that we won't be able to get to the bottom of it. Just look at your post, so full of hate and derision about a topic of research when that knowledge would help us make better policy decisions.

    • Why are people so concerned about the origin of disease they are pretending no longer exists?

      Presumably to prevent it from happening again.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Why are people so concerned about the origin of disease they are pretending no longer exists?

        Presumably to prevent it from happening again.

        <sarcasm>To prevent what from happening again?</sarcasm>

        Oh, sorry, I thought this was about the people pretending that it never existed. :-D

    • Nobody is pretending covid no longer exist. Pretending covid in 2023 is the same as covid in 2020 is a lie. The current situation doesn't require lockdown, social distancing or mandatory masks.
    • There are people who have convinced themselves that it never existed and that it was made up by US politicians as a hoax. But they are still mad at China just because. it's the world we live in.
    • Nobody worth giving any air to is arguing the disease no longer exists. The data you point to sure enough shows thousand still dying per week, but here’s the problem with your statement: those thousands of people dying are now largely the people we expect to die from any virus. They’re often very old and in assisted living facilities. Even with vaccines, there’s not much we can do. A virus like COVID, in which the millions of other people also catching it will recover quickly and just fine
  • by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @09:59AM (#63380287)
    How did they end up getting positions at the Wuhan laboratory doing gain-of-function research?

    It's almost as if nature itself is constantly doing gain-of-function research and testing cross-species infections on a literal second-by-second basis, using wild animals as test subjects.
    • by sfcat ( 872532 )

      It's almost as if nature itself is constantly doing gain-of-function research and testing cross-species infections on a literal second-by-second basis, using wild animals as test subjects.

      That is accurate, but GOF accelerates the natural process by several orders of magnitude and allows you to guide that evolution towards being more pathological (deadly) or guide it in other directions instead.

      • No, it can't. Nature is performing experiments at trillions of times the rate humans will ever be able to.

        Natural selection works best when genetic variability and reproduction is high.
  • Too Late (Score:3, Insightful)

    by coop247 ( 974899 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @10:09AM (#63380303)
    Sorry but a "low confidence" report by a government agency that I don't trust at all has confirmed and validated all of my extremely wrong positions on COVID and masking.
    • One thing I wonder is why those that were adamant this was a weapon unleashed on us weren't incredibly over-zealous about wearing masks. "I ain't lettin' any of that bad-guy shit touch me."

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @10:13AM (#63380309)

    China is seriously bungling the PR on this. What are they trying to accomplish? Everyone knows Covid originated in China, there's no painting over that.

    Maybe it is that China wants to control the narrative, but that's impossible at this point. The veil of secrecy generates distrust, makes it look very much like they are deliberately hiding something, and further damages China's credibility on pretty much everything.

    • Re:a big mistake (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @11:02AM (#63380389)

      What are they trying to accomplish?

      The veil of secrecy generates distrust, makes it look very much like they are deliberately hiding something, and further damages China's credibility on pretty much everything.

      Odds are pretty good that they're getting exactly the results they intend. It's not like they're stupid.

      So assume that generating distrust and making it look like they're deliberately hiding something is exactly what they want to do. Then ask what the benefit could possibly be?

      Me, I'd assume that it's fueling the fires that burn in the US. The us & them battle between blue and red, republican and democat. The fact-seeking folks will take a look at this and conclude "shrug, okay, so... we don't have the actual data, but sure, raccoon dogs... that scans." The insular, drama-seeking folks will take a look and conclude "right, we can't have this made-up data, which means it was totally deliberate gain-of-function global warfare and soon Q will show us all how China infiltrated the mRNA researchers and implanted secrets that mean the vaccines will modify white people to be sterile to depopulate 'Merica to weaken us before they invade via illegal immigration."

      That division in the supposedly United States of America elevates their global standing, not hurts it.

      • Uh yeah sure except that the anti-China thing is pretty bi-partisan at this point so nice theory but the holes in it are larger than the pot.

      • What are they trying to accomplish?

        The veil of secrecy generates distrust, makes it look very much like they are deliberately hiding something, and further damages China's credibility on pretty much everything.

        Odds are pretty good that they're getting exactly the results they intend. It's not like they're stupid.

        So assume that generating distrust and making it look like they're deliberately hiding something is exactly what they want to do. Then ask what the benefit could possibly be?

        Why are the two leading American GOP Presidential candidates proposing that an enemy of the US (Russia) be allowed to conquer an friendly nation like Ukraine?

        There's a tendency to assume that foreign countries with other cultures are acting with some kind of single objective and every action is precisely oriented to that objective.

        I think it's more likely that the Chinese system rewards secrecy and is deeply suspicious of Westerners, so even when it would be to their benefit to release data there are very

    • by kqs ( 1038910 )

      It's the same theory as "never talk to a police officer, even if you are innocent, especially if you are innocent". No matter what China says, folks with their own agenda will "interpret" it to prove their agenda. Remaining silent won't stop this, of course, but it means that the crazies will have to use ever more unlikely leaps of faith to make their points.

      If China is silent, then all we have is the evidence. And the evidence doesn't support much except for the Wuhan Market and the same random mutation

      • Not talking and hiding evidence are not the same thing.
        • by kqs ( 1038910 )

          Err, the fifth amendment means that you don't need to testify against yourself, which means "give verbal evidence against yourself". So yes, hiding (a specific type of) evidence is an important part of the fifth amendment, and an important part of not talking. I really don't see how you can see them as different things.

      • From the article;

        genetic sequences "also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation."

    • by znrt ( 2424692 )

      dunno, maybe china chose to just do its thing and don't give a crap about conspiracy nuts, demagogues and even high level political agendas in the west, who will keep blaming china every day anyway, for anything imaginable from corrupting christian youth to rogue weather balloons.

      what secrecy, anyway? while china did indeed try to dismiss the issue during the first days of infection (as did most countries in the world btw if not all, very notoriously the us with trump insisting it was flu even while mass bu

      • I understand your cynicism on this, but "china chose to just do its thing and don't give a crap" is a pretty self-destructive way to behave on the international stage. It gets you shunned in a lot of places, counterproductive. Any secrecy at this point only sows more doubt. It's dumb.

    • What are they trying to accomplish?

      Prevent even more pressure to crack down on and close wet markets. This has been a point of contention long before COVID. This is just more fuel to the fire, but in the form of a full can of gasoline rather than a wooden log.

      It's one thing to point and say: "You're trading illegal animals in conditions that could cause a disease."
      And quite another to say: "You mutherfuckers caused a global pandemic because you didn't do as we said."

    • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      China is seriously bungling the PR on this. What are they trying to accomplish?

      Have you seriously never read any Chinese state-run media?

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      They're doing a pretty good job winding up the Americans.

  • What a buffoon.

  • Weasel words (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @11:11AM (#63380403)

    "Now, an international team of virologists, genomicists, and evolutionary biologists may have finally found crucial data to help fill that knowledge gap. A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019".

    A few phrases leap out at the experienced bullshit-detector.

    "...MAY have finally found crucial data..."

    "...raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue COULD have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus..."

    Incidentally, if there is enough publicly available evidence to reach such conclusions, why nag the Chinese government to "release" it? Conversely, if it hasn't been "released", how can the Atlantic be so sure it exists?

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Well, I'm sure that "nag" is a better description of what they're doing than "demand". And the reason is that there isn't sufficient evidence to reach a conclusion. And it's my suspicion that China doesn't have the evidence being asked for. Remember, the first stage of this event that we know of was the Wuhan municipal government denying that anything was wrong.

    • A few phrases leap out at the experienced bullshit-detector.

      They're weaseling because "several" of the samples collected at the market (from walls, floors, cages, shopping carts) that included early-variant COVID RNA also contained animal chemical markers, and that markers from Racoon Dogs (which can be infected by COVID-19) were common.

      The tests did NOT include any samples directly from an animal, and were conducted after the outbreak had been going on for long enough that the market had been shut down.

      So,

  • Occam Says (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @11:33AM (#63380459)

    If your town has been poisoned, the toxin probably came from the local poison factory.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      SARS-Cov 1 came from a wet market so, following occam logic, SARS-cov2 very likely came from a wet market.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        We found the source of SARS. We found a strain of SARS which could move animal to person but not person to person. It came from an animal that lived in the location where transmission was first observed. Nobody ever argued that SARS came from a lab as there was a clear chain of evidence it was natural in origin. None of these things are true for COVID-19 which came from a bat which doesn't live in Wuhan, which got both transmission mutations seemingly at the same time and we haven't been able to trace C
      • SARS-Cov 1 came from a wet market so, following occam logic, SARS-cov2 very likely came from a wet market.

        Indeed all the previous pandemics in history have come from wild animal zoonosis, not labs. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  • by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @11:48AM (#63380499)
    What does racoon dog taste like?
    • Mostly like dog with just a hint of raccooniness.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Mod parent funny, though I was looking for jokes about the unknown animal. Pretty certain it's the same animal they call "tanuki" in Japanese. Has a rather nasty reputation in the folk tales.

  • Now why would China want to hide this data, that might prove that the Wuhan lab did nothing wrong? Right. That's not what they are hiding. Rather, more likely the opposite.

    Meanwhile, maybe it is because Xi is depicted as a raccoon dog in cartoons?

  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @01:11PM (#63380675)

    If raccoon dogs are the source, where is the wild reservoir? It shouldn't be that hard to find.

    Oh, they haven't found it yet? Hmm.

  • I think it's likely to be a lab leak.

    WIV is right there across the river, three employees from WIV were sick and hospitalized in Nov.

    Despite years of intense searching no progenitors found.

    Zoonotic origin virus spreading to humans is instantly highly transmissible between humans out of the gate with zero delay for adoption.

    Very specific research topics known to be of interest and study within WIV. This topic of SARS like viruses using (human) ACE2 has been a subject of study for quite some time with docum

  • Shouldn't this have come from the WHO-let-the-dogs-out dept?

  • ...after the horses ran away.

      The data is already released else TFS would not read the way it does. Everything now on is just a formality.

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