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Science

Wuhan Lab Researcher Fully Sequences Genomes of Coronavirus Samples From 2004 to 2021, Finds No Close Relatives to SARS-CoV-2 (nature.com) 226

60-year-old Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli led the Wuhan Institute of Virology's group studying bat coronaviruses (prompting Science magazine to call her "Bat Woman"). In June of 2020 Scientific American described Zhengli as "distressed because stories from the Internet and major media have repeated a tenuous suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally leaked from her lab — despite the fact that its genetic sequence does not match any her lab had previously studied."

More than four years later, Nature writes Friday that Zhengli "reported that none of the viruses stored in her freezers are the most recent ancestors of the virus SARS-CoV-2," presenting data at a conference in Japan "on dozens of new coronaviruses collected from bats in southern China." Shi has consistently said that SARS-CoV-2 was never seen or studied in her lab. But some commentators have continued to ask whether one of the many bat coronaviruses her team collected in southern China over decades was closely related to it. Shi promised to sequence the genomes of the coronaviruses and release the data. The latest analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, includes data from the whole genomes of 56 new betacoronaviruses, the broad group to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs, as well as some partial sequences. All the viruses were collected between 2004 and 2021.

"We didn't find any new sequences which are more closely related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2," said Shi, in a pre-recorded presentation at the conference... The results support her assertion that the WIV lab did not have any bat-derived sequences from viruses that were more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than were any already described in scientific papers, says Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. "This just validates what she was saying: that she did not have anything extremely closely related, as we've seen in the years since," he says.

"Earlier this year, Shi moved from the WIV to the Guangzhou Laboratory, a newly established national research institute for infectious diseases."

Wuhan Lab Researcher Fully Sequences Genomes of Coronavirus Samples From 2004 to 2021, Finds No Close Relatives to SARS-CoV-2

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  • by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Saturday December 07, 2024 @07:08PM (#64998509) Homepage Journal

    ... considering the politics (read: national government) involved, I have a hard time accepting the source as credible.

  • Two things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday December 07, 2024 @07:16PM (#64998521)

    One: I believe the non-Chinese researchers who say the local wet market is the most likely point of origin for COVID.

    Two: Due to Chinese politics, I don't trust any claim made by someone subject to CCP when there is the smallest chance the CCP would care about the claim.

    So no, COVID didn't come from that lab, but I don't believe that is most likely true on the word of a Chinese scientist.

    • Re:Two things (Score:5, Informative)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday December 07, 2024 @07:32PM (#64998545)

      One: I believe the non-Chinese researchers who say the local wet market is the most likely point of origin for COVID.

      Sample analysis and medical records confirm the wet market was the most likely origin [technologyreview.com] of the outbreak [cnn.com].

      From the patchy, fragmented information he could get, Worobey traced how the first 20 covid-19 patients in three hospitals in Wuhan were diagnosed (a total of 27 cases were deemed suspicious by December 30). He found that the clinicians identified cases based on the disease’s clinical manifestation, especially features of their CT scans of the lungs, regardless of their prior exposure at Huanan. It turned out that nine of them were workers at the market, while one patient who had no market exposure had friends who worked there and had visited his home.

      Almost one-third of the first 174 people who got Covid-19 had a connection to the market, and many others without a direct connection lived around the market, within a city of 12 million people.

    • On the one hand, we have the Wuhan lab which had a history of previous leaks and was a lab that was specifically studying bat viruses and how to make them infect people, and in a communist country where high ranking military officers have a 20+ year long history of publicly stating that their country is going to make a bio weapon that will kill anybody who is not Chinese (i.e. a clear plan to be doing research into making a killer illness as policy of the CCP).

      On the other hand, we have a wet market in that

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday December 07, 2024 @07:28PM (#64998543)

    What? Are you telling me that the Internet rumor mill populated by really smart keyboardists who got a B- in high school biology and desperately crave social media adulation didn't get it right? Unpossible!

    • What? Are you telling me that the Internet rumor mill populated by really smart keyboardists who got a B- in high school biology and desperately crave social media adulation didn't get it right? Unpossible!

      B-? Aren't you giving them a lot of credit?

  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Saturday December 07, 2024 @07:59PM (#64998597) Homepage

    The body of evidence supports a natural emergence of the virus that caused the pandemic.
    There are no data to support the alternate hypotheses (lab leak or whatever).

    First ...

    Think about it a bit ... we had THREE outbreaks from the beta coronaviruses sub family in less than two decades.

    Two of them were pandemics, but with varying scale:

    - SARS in 2003, from civet cats
    - MERS in 2012, from camels
    - SARS-COV-2 in 2019, from raccoon dogs (or other species)

    There are 4 other coronaviruses that infect humans with common cold like (about 16% of annual cases).

    The most parsimonious explanation that accounts for all the scientifically rigorous evidence is that the jump from bats to a farmed animal (most likely raccoon dog) in southern China. Those infected animals were trucked to Wuhan's market. Either in the farm, or along the route, or in the market, two humans got infected, one with lineage A and another with lineage B. One of these lineages died out, and the other continued to spread around the world, mutating, as viruses do, and still going on ...

    But, please don't take my words for any of that though ...

    You have 3 virologists, all with Ph.Ds in the field.
    Two of them are retired virology professors at respected universities.
    One wrote the textbook, literally, on virology (Vincent Racaniello)

    TWIV 1155 [youtube.com]: Listen from 00:02:20 to 01:10:00

    They discuss two papers, one briefly (they term that a "snippet"), and the other in more depth.

    The in depth one (starting at ~ 00:30:00) is one of many that support the natural zoonotic origin, with 2 separate spillover events from animal to humans in the Huanan wet market in Wuhan.

    The paper is: Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic [cell.com].

    Also, a genetic analysis of animals in the Wuhan wet market [phys.org] is zeroing in on a short list of animals that possibly helped spread it to people.

    And it is not only the beta coronaviruses: influenza does that all the time.
    The current strain of H5N1 jumps to mammals regularly.

    For example, dozens of tigers died in Vietnam [apnews.com], and before that seals in Patagonia [apnews.com].

    And now dairy cows in the USA have been infected [jhu.edu], and there are human cases too, but it is not clear how they contracted the diseases so far (water foul, some mammal such as pet dogs who ate dead infected birds, ...).

    But you say: intelligence agencies have said the lab leak theory cannot be ruled out.
    Those are intelligence agencies and by definition they don't publish the data backing up their postulates. We have to take their word for it without any scrutiny.

    Moreover, experts are overwhelmingly for the natural origin.

    • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

      +1

    • Reliable news sources and appeal to reason and logic. But who are you going to believe experts in the field of epidemiology and trained journalists working for the associate press or my uncle on Facebook? I rest my case.
    • Think about it a bit ... we had THREE outbreaks from the beta coronaviruses sub family in less than two decades.

      Two of them were pandemics, but with varying scale:

      - SARS in 2003, from civet cats
      - MERS in 2012, from camels
      - SARS-COV-2 in 2019, from raccoon dogs (or other species)

      It's worth to note that you are only listing the strains that posed a threat the last 20 years. Considering the very large amount of different strains floating around in animals, a crossover event producing a variant like SARS-COV-2 was only a matter of time and it will happen again.

      • by kbahey ( 102895 )

        Considering the very large amount of different strains floating around in animals, a crossover event producing a variant like SARS-COV-2 was only a matter of time and it will happen again.

        I fully agree.

        And the same applies to influenza.
        It is only a matter of time before H5N1 (bird flu) mutates enough to infect humans.

        In early 2020, I asked my family doctor: were you expecting a pandemic?
        His answer: yes, but we [the medical community] thought it would be a flu variant.

    • All of that is true, and I tend to agree with you. But none of that directly establishes a natural origin and/or rules out a lab leak. One aspect of the whole thing that feeds the speculation is that we were able to trace the natural vector for the other coronavirus outbreaks within a few years. But covid-19 is still undetermined. That's unusual, but also does not directly confirm or rule out any particular theory.
      • by kbahey ( 102895 )

        It origin is undetermined because the Chinese government acted fast, and those actions resulted in an information blackout.
        They destroyed the animals in the market, took swabs, and then disinfected everything.
        Their actions could have been driven by: a) public health concerns (limiting the spread), or b) avoiding blame for yet another pandemic because of exotic species being consumed (SARS, then SARS CoV 2), or c) an active cover-up, or d) something else entirely. Which one is it? That is up for debate.

        The g

  • And also: "trust me to exhonerate myself" doesn't fly for speeding tickets. Why should it fly for this?

  • So, COVID didn't come from any samples currently in the freezers. Great, but that doesn't tell us anything about what might have been in the freezers.
    • Coronavirus variants have been with us for millions of years

      They have always enjoyed a highly variable rate of infection and mortality.

      Mutation has ensured they are still around despite our wonderfully adaptive defenses. This is a feedback loop that sees this family of nasties continually evolving solutions around said defenses. Claiming this to be intentional weaponisation is just yet more anthropomorphism nonsense.

      Quit manufacturing bogeymen out of thin air.

      If you want to wake up in cold sweats and get

  • by hsthompson69 ( 1674722 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @11:42AM (#64999433)

    ...if they hadn't deleted the evidence in the first place.

    All of these sequences existed *before* the rona, but were mysteriously deleted. Even if this person is 100% telling the truth, it can't get past the distrust such an action would engender.

    The sad fact is, there never will be a smoking gun, or a complete exoneration - we live in a world where we can't trust the data, or the conclusions, or the reporting on either the data or the conclusions.

    The mind-fuck is "how much of the rest of my historical understanding of the world needs to be re-evaluated given this"?

  • Shitou Cave (Stone Cave), Mojiang County

    Jinning Cave: Near Jinning district in Kunming, Yunnan province

    Tongguan Mine: Location: Near Tongguan village in Mojiang County.
  • We investigated ourselves and found we are definitely not responsible for, and therefore cannot be held to account, the single biggest global health disaster in the modern world. Everybody can rest easy and focus their attention elsewhere, since we have concluded beyond any doubt that WE did NOTHING wrong. Some of you have brought up that, in the early days of the pandemic, ALLEGED researchers CLAIMING to be affiliated with us or to have intimate knowledge of our labs, policies, and procedures have made sta

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