Chinese Officials Release 'Updated Analysis' of 1,300 Samples From Wuhan Market (telegraph.co.uk) 44
"Chinese officials have released an updated analysis of more than 1,300 samples taken from the Wuhan wet market at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic," reports the Telegraph:
In a preprint published on Wednesday, researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said there was "convincing evidence" that Sars-Cov-2 was spreading widely at Wuhan's Huanan seafood market in January 2020.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, tells them "This data could and should have been shared three years ago." China's paper then called for "more work involving international coordination" to investigate the potential origins of SARS-CoV-2. "Surveillance of wild animals using a viromic approach should be enhanced to explore the potential natural and intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2, if any, which would help to prevent future pandemics caused by animal-origin coronaviruses or alike, with a spillover event."
But the Telegraph notes that China also "claimed it's not clear how Covid got there, as no virus was found in the 457 animal swabs taken from 18 species at the market. The data behind the latest Chinese research has proved controversial, after a team of international experts downloaded the genetic sequences that had been discreetly shared on a database called GISAID. Their analysis was the first conducted on the data outside China, which has been accused by the World Health Organization of withholding critical clues. In samples taken from the Wuhan market that tested positive for Covid, the international team found genetic material from wildlife known to be susceptible to Sars-Cov-2 — including racoon dogs, palm civets and Himalayan marmots. This does not prove these animals were infected, but does confirm they were being illegally sold at Huanan market in early 2020.
"What we are seeing is the genomic ghost of that animal in the stalls," said Dr Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who first spotted the data when trawling GISAID. "It's close to the best [evidence] we can get, because the animals were gone when they came to sample the markets," she told the Telegraph earlier this month....
The latest paper from China CDC — published on ChinaXiv on Wednesday — reveals that although researchers sampled 18 species including bamboo rats, wild boars and hedgehogs, they did not take specimens from animals including raccoon dogs now known to be susceptible to the virus. It is likely that this is because they had already been removed. Some researchers said this undermines the China CDC's suggestion that animals did not bring the virus into the market — a route that China has consistently discredited, much like the potential for a laboratory leak, as it does not want the origin to be within its own borders. "This claim that no live animals with the virus were found at the market is one of the most pernicious and misleading talking points proffered," said Dr Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the international analysis.
"If no live raccoon dogs... or other plausible intermediate hosts species were tested (because they had all disappeared by the time this testing took place), then saying that the lack of Sars-CoV-2 live animals at the market is evidence against a zoonotic origin is at best misinformed. At worst, it is deliberate disinformation," he told the Telegraph.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, tells them "This data could and should have been shared three years ago." China's paper then called for "more work involving international coordination" to investigate the potential origins of SARS-CoV-2. "Surveillance of wild animals using a viromic approach should be enhanced to explore the potential natural and intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2, if any, which would help to prevent future pandemics caused by animal-origin coronaviruses or alike, with a spillover event."
But the Telegraph notes that China also "claimed it's not clear how Covid got there, as no virus was found in the 457 animal swabs taken from 18 species at the market. The data behind the latest Chinese research has proved controversial, after a team of international experts downloaded the genetic sequences that had been discreetly shared on a database called GISAID. Their analysis was the first conducted on the data outside China, which has been accused by the World Health Organization of withholding critical clues. In samples taken from the Wuhan market that tested positive for Covid, the international team found genetic material from wildlife known to be susceptible to Sars-Cov-2 — including racoon dogs, palm civets and Himalayan marmots. This does not prove these animals were infected, but does confirm they were being illegally sold at Huanan market in early 2020.
"What we are seeing is the genomic ghost of that animal in the stalls," said Dr Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who first spotted the data when trawling GISAID. "It's close to the best [evidence] we can get, because the animals were gone when they came to sample the markets," she told the Telegraph earlier this month....
The latest paper from China CDC — published on ChinaXiv on Wednesday — reveals that although researchers sampled 18 species including bamboo rats, wild boars and hedgehogs, they did not take specimens from animals including raccoon dogs now known to be susceptible to the virus. It is likely that this is because they had already been removed. Some researchers said this undermines the China CDC's suggestion that animals did not bring the virus into the market — a route that China has consistently discredited, much like the potential for a laboratory leak, as it does not want the origin to be within its own borders. "This claim that no live animals with the virus were found at the market is one of the most pernicious and misleading talking points proffered," said Dr Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the international analysis.
"If no live raccoon dogs... or other plausible intermediate hosts species were tested (because they had all disappeared by the time this testing took place), then saying that the lack of Sars-CoV-2 live animals at the market is evidence against a zoonotic origin is at best misinformed. At worst, it is deliberate disinformation," he told the Telegraph.
Clearly it came in from frozen beef (Score:5, Interesting)
Definitely flown in from Texas.
Also...a pox on all your houses. Even if it did start as a spillover at the market and not the lab...fuck you. Three years ago was the time to be adults about, not this horseshit shaming and namecalling and race card about how lab leak was a racist conspiracy but wet market spillover somehow wasn't.
Fuck everyone who had anything to do with any of it.
Re: Clearly it came in from frozen beef (Score:2, Flamebait)
Hush now. The media inform me that science is whatever comes out of the mouth of any given scientist. If there is a contradiction between two scientists, the obvious answer is that one of them isn't *really* a scientist but is in fact a partisan hack masquerading as a scientist, and the one whose words are more pleasing to your sensibilities is the true heir to Aristotle and the rest. There is no such thing as ambiguity or uncertainty; there are only degrees of moral rectitude: the purer your soul, the mor
Re: (Score:2)
curious.
was linux used to generate the analysis
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is some serious Orwellian shit. A scientist saying that a lack of evidence interpreted at meaning the opposite of what that evidence suggests is misinformation?
Correct. A lack of evidence does not support the opposite of what that (non-existing) evidence suggests. A lack of evidence doesn't support any interpretation.
Horseshit. You follow where the evidence leads!
And lack of evidence... doesn't lead anywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
And lack of evidence... doesn't lead anywhere.
It should lead you to stop focusing on the same place you found no evidence the last 7 times you tested.
Re: (Score:2)
You think the entire world should try to topple the CCP, and are also upset that the CCP isn't providing you with access to the information you need to convince the world of that.
You may also recall the dodgy intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and toppling Saddam. Maybe you can see why the CCP isn't going to give you what you want.
Re: (Score:1)
Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from fr...] (Score:3)
Your arguments are based in the idea that this virus was indeed natural in origin, with so much contradictory evidence.
Pretty much everybody agrees that the virus was natural in origin. The strongest argument for this is the fact that nobody would start with a virus that is almost never lethal to make a bioweapon; you'd want to make a weapon from something that kills people.
The "lab leak" theory is that the lab was investigating the zoöviruses and it accidentally escaped the confinement, not that it was deliberately a weapon.
But even that theory, so far, lacks any evidence. The strongest arguments for it end up being
Re: Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from fr (Score:2)
There is no direct evidence for or against the lab leak theory. There are however three pieces of circumstantial evidence:
1. Coincidence of location. The lab was where the first outbreak was logged.
2. A close-ish cousin of the virus was known to be in that lab in 2013 when they published the genome of a bat virus they picked up.
3. Peter Daszak's DARPA proposal to make what in retrospect looks an awful lot like what covid turned out to be using WIV facilities.
All we have is indirect evidence because direct a
Re: (Score:2)
There is no direct evidence for or against the lab leak theory. There are however three pieces of circumstantial evidence:
1. Coincidence of location. The lab was where the first outbreak was logged.
This is in contrast with lots of direct examination of stuff at the wet market. But no direct evidence that the first spillover event occurred there.
The first outbreak was among vendors at the market in mid-December 2019. There was no lab outbreak.
The earliest examination of the market was in January 2020, and a lot of the more exotic animals had been removed before anything was examined. No virus was found in the animals at the market at the time, but there were samples from the vendor stands that suggested infected racoon dogs had been present near the initial outbreak. Live racoon dogs were not present at the time the samples were taken.
2. A close-ish cousin of the virus was known to be in that lab in 2013 when they published the genome of a bat virus they picked up.
The lab speci
Re: Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from f (Score:2)
There was no lab outbreak.
In order to make that statement, or to claim that there was a lab outbreak, one needs to interrogate the health status of all lab employees over the relevant time frame. No such hard data is available, so neither claim can be made.
Science isn't about asking whether x exists; it's about determining whether my measurement of x is sensitive to x in the presence of x and sensitive to false alarms in the absence of x before I go out and try to measure x in the world. The outbreak in the market is meaningless wit
Re: (Score:2)
There was no lab outbreak.
In order to make that statement, or to claim that there was a lab outbreak, one needs to interrogate the health status of all lab employees over the relevant time frame. No such hard data is available, so neither claim can be made.
Science isn't about asking whether x exists; it's about determining whether my measurement of x is sensitive to x in the presence of x and sensitive to false alarms in the absence of x before I go out and try to measure x in the world. The outbreak in the market is meaningless without a comparable level of scrutiny on the lab. In the absence of that comparable level of scrutiny, anything you say about the market, short of tracing critter zero from the wild to the market, is anecdotal information and not systematically collected information.
There is confirmed evidence of an outbreak in the market. All the evidence we have points back to an origin at the market in mid-December.
There isn't a hint of evidence to suggest there was one in the lab. If you're going to claim there was a lab outbreak, you need at least some evidence to suggest there was one
Science is about following the evidence where it leads. "It's possible that something completely different than the evidence suggests happened but it left no trace" isn't science.
Re: Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from f (Score:2)
No guy. Science is not a passive process of following the readily apparent evidence. Science is the process of interrogating reality by *systematically* collecting all relevant information, and actively seeking it out when necessary, not just examining the stuff sitting out for all to see and calling it a day.
Re: Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from (Score:2)
How do you know there was no lab outbreak? Did you look to check or did you just assume there wasn't one because the CCP didn't announce one?
Re: Burden of proof [Re:Clearly it came in from fr (Score:2)
CCP releases altered analysis of samples (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: CCP releases altered analysis of samples (Score:2)
"Wonderful news, comrades! Last night, the Chernobyl Nuclea Power Station fullfilled the 5 year plan for thermal energy production in 47 microseconds!"
Re: (Score:2)
Except it no longer matters what people actually believe.
It seems now that since its political, in the US now if you are conservative you suspect the lab may have had something to do with it. If you are liberal, you insist that is fake news and any other discussion is, I dunno, a Russian plot or something.
CCP (Score:4, Insightful)
Uyghur Muslims (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.dailywire.com/news... [dailywire.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wel, in the immortal words of Roky Erickson.... (Score:2)
3 years (Score:2)
So, it took the Chinese 3 years to figure out how to diddle the data so it looks like it wasn't their fault. Definitely a tour de force of diddling.
Like OJ's Bronco drive... (Score:4, Interesting)
On a more serious note, the CCP was concealing something. Take your pick about what that was. It could be simply to hide a policy of allowing international travel (to Italy in particular) to infect their competitors while buying up so much PPE they stripped the world supply all while denying the existence of the epidemic. If that were broadly known, it'd stoke generations CCP opposition. (aka, the cover-up doesn't prove a specific origin, does suggest guilt about something)
Why would wet market samples after the fact be conclusive in any way? The pathogen infects animals. No matter the origin, it would jump to live animals at the market. You'd need samples from at least Oct 2019. Genetic sequencing of all of those CCP destroyed early samples is the thing that'd have had utility. Those early samples would have either had, or not had characteristics of splicing. Separate from origins, those providing samples for sequencing to the WHO in Oct would have given the world a head start on treatment, containment and general preparation. Lives would have been saved.
Re: (Score:2)
On a more serious note, the CCP was concealing something. Take your pick about what that was. It could be simply to hide a policy of allowing international travel (to Italy in particular) to infect their competitors while buying up so much PPE they stripped the world supply all while denying the existence of the epidemic. If that were broadly known, it'd stoke generations CCP opposition. (aka, the cover-up doesn't prove a specific origin, does suggest guilt about something)
As far as I am concerned, the CCP screwed over their own people and the world by delaying action that could have limited the spread of the virus. I don't think it matters whether it was a lab leak or species jump, they tried to hide the fact that a new virus was spreading and they let it happen.
This is how authoritarian, unaccountable, concentrated-power works. In all places and for all time. Anyone seeking minority rule, or permanent power, promising to use their power "for good" is lying.
Corruption kills.
of course no animal samples (Score:1)
Of course it was never found in animal swabs. It came from the lab. Duh.
Outright comical (Score:2)
That the scientific community laps this up is further evidence of the ongoing collective ass-covering. But cracks are starting to appear. Like Fauci now saying a lab leak would still count as "natural spillover." Can't make this shit up.
Ask yourself what was happening before COVID? (Score:1)
What was happening in Hong Kong before Covid lock downs? Protests, mainly student protests of the rights being taken away when Mainland China took over control early.
There was no signs of the protests stopping... until conveniently lock down due to Covid. But wait there's more! Once things locked down, and flights and travel from Wuhan to other parts of China were strictly forbidden, what did China do when we wanted to stop flights? Complain and spout the racism card. Don't know about you, but this has been
Fits with what I've heard... (Score:1)
In the early days of the outbreak they constrained their surveillance to the area around the market. Their data showed spreading through and from the market because they weren't looking anywhere else. The fact that they never found an infected animal could mean that they're chasing a ghost or it could mean it never came from an animal in the first place.
It's a shame that this got politicized so early on. If it hadn't been for Trump calling it "the China virus" maybe people would have been more receptive
Re: (Score:2)
In the early days of the outbreak they constrained their surveillance to the area around the market. Their data showed spreading through and from the market because they weren't looking anywhere else. The fact that they never found an infected animal could mean that they're chasing a ghost or it could mean it never came from an animal in the first place.
People searched the market a month after the first outbreak. The animal was most likely sold before anyone even realized the virus was spreading.
It's a shame that this got politicized so early on. If it hadn't been for Trump calling it "the China virus" maybe people would have been more receptive to the lab leak hypothesis.
People would've been receptive if there was science and evidence to support the lab leak theory. But there's not
The best argument for it arising in nature thus far has been "because I said so"
The best argument for it arising in nature is viruses have arisen the same way countless times throughout history. There hasn't been the slightest bit of evidence that a virus has arisen any other way ever.
whereas there is stronger evidence that the virus likely emerged from the lab.
There is zero evidence of a lab leak. All people
Newsflash (Score:1)
China lies out its ass and gullible people around the world believe them. Details at 11.
Pedantry. (Score:1)
Does it really matter the exact origin? Well, I suppose it does but that only affects the severity of the situation.
The fact is China is the cause of this, whether through peasant incompetence(guess who is responsible for that...) or by malevolent evil villains(same people).
Severity is the only remaining variable and both are not easily forgiven.
Anybody falling for this needs to have... (Score:2)
a huge "moron" tattoo applied to his/her forehead so that anybody they encounter in the future will be fore-warned.
Let's see here...
A novel new bat virus erupts in one of the only cities on Earth with a virology lab dedicated to studying and manipulating bat viruses, which has [a] been given research funding by an American bureaucrat (who was blocked by BOTH Obama and Trump from continuing such research in the US) and [b] is affiliated with a communist party (which by DEFINITION unites military and spying a
Really No virus in animals? (Score:2)