Scientists Again Link Covid Pandemic Origin to Wuhan Market Animals (msn.com) 131
The Washington Post reports:
An international team of scientists published a peer-reviewed paper Thursday saying genetic evidence indicates the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated with a natural spillover from an animal or animals sold in a market in Wuhan, China, where many of the first human cases of covid-19 were identified. The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus's origin... "The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were," said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper...
Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market... The new paper in Cell is longer, more comprehensive, probes a broader range of questions, and includes more data from the market and early-patient cases than the international team's informal 2023 report, Débarre said. Both the earlier and the new reports document that traces of the virus were found clustered in a section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where genetic traces of animals were also found. Several of those species — raccoon dogs, rabbits and dogs — are known to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid. Raccoon dogs have also been shown experimentally to be capable of transmitting the virus. A significant element of the new paper is an analysis of when the pandemic began. Scientists can study mutations of the coronavirus, which evolves at a relatively steady rate, to estimate when the millions of genomes deposited in databases had the most recent common ancestor. That genetic evidence points to mid-November 2019 as the most likely time the virus spilled into humans and began spreading, and there could have been two or more spillover events, the researchers said.
"The timing of the origin of the market outbreak is genetically indistinguishable from the timing of the origin of the pandemic as a whole," the report states. There are many independent lines of evidence pointing to the market as the epicenter of the pandemic, said Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., and a co-author of the report in Cell. No previous virus spillover has been so well-documented, he said. "Of any previous outbreak, pandemic, you name it, we don't have this level of granularity," he said. "We can narrow it down to a single market, and narrow it down to a section in that market, and maybe even narrow it down to a single stall in that market. That is mind-boggling...." The genetic evidence, the new report contends, supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the same way that SARS-CoV-1 — which sickened people in 2002-2003 but was extinguished before it could cause a full-blown pandemic — is widely believed to have started, from animals sold in a market.
The authors contend the world needs to take more aggressive action to shut down the illegal trade in wildlife to lower the risk of another catastrophic pandemic... There is no evidence that the virus, or its progenitor, was inside a laboratory before the outbreak.... "To the question — Did it come from a lab or come from a market? — I think we already knew the answer to that," Andersen said. "Yep, it's the market. It's natural, as we've previously seen happen."
One co-author posted a summary on X.com "If you don't want to read the papers."
Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market... The new paper in Cell is longer, more comprehensive, probes a broader range of questions, and includes more data from the market and early-patient cases than the international team's informal 2023 report, Débarre said. Both the earlier and the new reports document that traces of the virus were found clustered in a section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where genetic traces of animals were also found. Several of those species — raccoon dogs, rabbits and dogs — are known to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid. Raccoon dogs have also been shown experimentally to be capable of transmitting the virus. A significant element of the new paper is an analysis of when the pandemic began. Scientists can study mutations of the coronavirus, which evolves at a relatively steady rate, to estimate when the millions of genomes deposited in databases had the most recent common ancestor. That genetic evidence points to mid-November 2019 as the most likely time the virus spilled into humans and began spreading, and there could have been two or more spillover events, the researchers said.
"The timing of the origin of the market outbreak is genetically indistinguishable from the timing of the origin of the pandemic as a whole," the report states. There are many independent lines of evidence pointing to the market as the epicenter of the pandemic, said Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., and a co-author of the report in Cell. No previous virus spillover has been so well-documented, he said. "Of any previous outbreak, pandemic, you name it, we don't have this level of granularity," he said. "We can narrow it down to a single market, and narrow it down to a section in that market, and maybe even narrow it down to a single stall in that market. That is mind-boggling...." The genetic evidence, the new report contends, supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the same way that SARS-CoV-1 — which sickened people in 2002-2003 but was extinguished before it could cause a full-blown pandemic — is widely believed to have started, from animals sold in a market.
The authors contend the world needs to take more aggressive action to shut down the illegal trade in wildlife to lower the risk of another catastrophic pandemic... There is no evidence that the virus, or its progenitor, was inside a laboratory before the outbreak.... "To the question — Did it come from a lab or come from a market? — I think we already knew the answer to that," Andersen said. "Yep, it's the market. It's natural, as we've previously seen happen."
One co-author posted a summary on X.com "If you don't want to read the papers."
- "Early cases centered around the market (not a lab)"
- "Environmental swabs that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 clustered in the corner of the market where animals were sold."
- "There were 2 lineages of SARS2 that spilled over separately at Huanan."
Grabs my Frosty (Score:2)
Let's see what the experts have to say about this.
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This is gonna be good!
Re:Grabs my Frosty (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see what the experts have to say about this.
Lemme guess: something, something, ... CCP lab, ..., something, something, ... victimise Trump ..., something, something, ... Deep State ..., something, something, ... horse dewormer ..., something, something, ... DEMONcrats ..., something, something, ... Lizard people ..., something, something, ... eating cats and dogs ..., something, something, ... Killary Clinton ...
Re:Grabs my Frosty (Score:4, Funny)
Let's see what the experts have to say about this.
Lemme guess: something, something, ... CCP lab, ..., something, something, ... victimise Trump ..., something, something, ... Deep State ..., something, something, ... horse dewormer ..., something, something, ... DEMONcrats ..., something, something, ... Lizard people ..., something, something, ... eating cats and dogs ..., something, something, ... Killary Clinton ...
In future news, Trump goes off prompter at a rally and says this exact thing -- including all the "something, something" ...
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"they're eating the DOGS. they're eating the CATS. they're eating .... your pets!"
I'm sorry, world. lets hope we get beyond this stage of our country's adolescence.
btw, dont let the cat out of the bag. safer to leave them in. if you know what I mean.
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Hold on let me tweet Joe Rogan.
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Do you mean the expert scientists who wrote this paper or the basement dwellers up to their necks in conspiracy theories?
Re:Grabs my Frosty (Score:5, Interesting)
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The only reason there's any controversy at all is because of the secrecy from the Chinese researchers. They could end the controversy immediately by releasing their data. (To be fair, there's unneeded secrecy on the part of American researchers as well).
They could release every skerrick of information they have and the nutbars would still believe it's some kind of conspiracy to conceal the "truth".
In many ways it'll make it worse as the average person won't understand most of it and the swivel-eyed loons will find some details that can be taken out of context and used to try and prove something isn't true (whist the reams of evidence to the contrary are very loudly ignored).
COVID conspiracy theorists are just more incontrovertible proof of the wise
Re: Grabs my Frosty (Score:2)
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Ok but at least people who are not nut balls would be able to understand the situation. I think you are probably a nut all because you are arguing against getting more information. That is highly unscientific and something seems wrong about you because of that.
If you think that, you either didn't read my post are are completely stupid.
More likely you just didn't like what I had to say because you know it is true. Releasing more information won't help change the conspiracy theorists minds if the reams of verifiable information we already have aren't enough... also there's no evidence that information is actually being withheld or that the situation is anything other than what has been presented.
Demanding that "more information" must be released is just despe
Re: Grabs my Frosty (Score:2)
Re: Grabs my Frosty (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not going to take the word of somebody who has (TM) smattered through his posts.
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Don't listen to the experts, with their education, and data, and fact-based conclusions. The pundits on TV, Cable Channels, and Social Media Influencers are the ones who know everything. They said it was a lab leak! How could they all be wrong?
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So, do I listen to the scientist who are trying to keep their work on gain of function a secret? The ones whose jobs are on the line. Or should I listen to the scientist, like the former head of the CDC, who stated that the most likely cause was a lab leak. You know, the one who was in charge of the CDC back when gain of function was still legal, and isn't worried about his job anymore.
Personally I don't really care whether it was lab leak or wet market. What I am most concerned about was the absolute p
Let me be petty and say I'm tired of this story (Score:2)
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The latest strain of Covid seems to be making the rounds lately, so this is just like how twice a year we get a daylight saving time story. By this point though, the real answer to "where'd Covid come from?" is "that person who coughed on you."
Re: Let me be petty and say I'm tired of this stor (Score:2)
Hey. Only way to be sure you don't catch covid at that big rager is to be the one who spreads it.
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The thing that gave COVID-19 legs is that it initially evades the innate immune system which is actually responsible for many of the symptoms like fevers and coughs we associate with a respiratory infection. That means you're out and about feeling fine, and infecting people because you're talking to them or just breathing in their direction.
Re:Let me be petty and say I'm tired of this story (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess the cat bbq Haitian story fizzled out so we're back to gain of function and Fauci as today's dose of fear
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I guess the cat bbq Haitian story fizzled out so we're back to gain of function and Fauci as today's dose of fear
Oh, that story is about to be blown wide open again. Apparently the Republicans got a hot tip about unusual catnip flavoured ketchup shipments Springfield.
Re: Let me be petty and say I'm tired of this stor (Score:2)
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Silly Savage-Rabbit, if you're going to make that joke you need to spell it "catsup".
By the way, the origin of ketchup/catsup is a Chinese fish sauce, though that claim is poorly supported, which fits the theme of this thread nicely.
Apply the same level of scrutiny to the lab (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't care how thoroughly you search under the street light if you only search under the streetlight.
The notion of falsifiability in science is both obvious and subtle. Obvious in that, of course, there's no sense in believing something that you can't tell is right or wrong. Subtle in that actually telling whether something is right or wrong can be devilishly tricky.
Let's draw a very simple analogy. Let's say I give you gizmo with a single light on it that turns on when there's a MumbleGrumble in the vici
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I like how you reject any notion of scientific process in favor of reinventing the world.
I'd like to know, first, what a MumbleGrumble is. We should not have to discover that, and given that information we may know a great deal about your detector without any of your nonsense.
"Maybe. But if all you do is that, you have fooled yourself into thinking you know something. Maybe the peak light on place is where the MumbleGrumble is, or maybe the light goes on where there are MumbleGrumbles but something else se
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That's an unfair criticism. He's using "MumbleGrumble" as a type specifier, not as an instance. And in the model he's presenting, the "MumbleGrumble" could be responding to, e.g. either magnetic fields or vibration. Say that it was supposed to detect magnetic fields, but could also respond to vibration and you have a reasonable objection.
I don't believe the objection is valid, as I think the model is a poor analogy, but if you accept the model then his objection is valid.
Re:Apply the same level of scrutiny to the lab (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as falsifiability with history, there is no way to prove scientifically that Jesus was born, and therein lies the problem. Even if we take as granted that the covid pandemic was tied to Wuhan market, it is fundamentally impossible to prove how the animals in the market got sick, they could have acquired the virus from one of the lab workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even if we accept everything that the authors say is true.
I would also like to mention, that every major world power has a bioweapons program, including the United States. Chinese generals have also purportedly wanted to develop ethnic bioweapons, and the Covid hysteria by Government Officials was an attempt to not look weak, i.e. to portray that we are not vulnerable to a bioweapons attack.
Re:Apply the same level of scrutiny to the lab (Score:4, Interesting)
1. The virus appeared in the market and the lab was working furiously to try to understand what was happening. In their haste, they released the virus further.
2. The virus leaked from the lab. In order to cover it up, the virus was introduced into the market.
I guess there's a third possibility of two simultaneous leaks as well although that seems to be a bit far-fetched.
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Or they could have been infected by the CIA in an effort to start a pandemic in China as an act of biological warfare. You can choose any cause that appeals to you and make the case for it to the satisfaction of people who share your beliefs. If you are Chinese its those venal Americans. If you are American its those venal Chinese. And god forbid you suggest there is any moral equivalency that would make both equally unlikely.
Anyone remember the Anthrax scare after 911? The origins of the weaponized anthra
Elephant in the Room (Score:2)
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Even with science there's no such thing as falsifiability. All there is is making predictions and matching them to the data, this proves your theory useful, but does not prove your theory absolute impeccable truth. And since it can't absolutely prove the theory true, it also can't prove a theory false (the bad theory can be saved by making complicated assertions).
And making predictions, whether they turn out true or false, always comes with assorted other assumptions: reality is real, these observations are
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pretty much and even an AP article , for once, contextualizes this study quite well:
Woolhouse said the new study, while significant, left some critical issues unanswered.
“There is no question COVID was circulating at that market, which was full of animals,” he said. “The question that still remains is how it got there in the first place.”
https://apnews.com/article/cov... [apnews.com]
And contrary to some of the ppists in this thread there's no claims in the paper (afaict) that the virus was changed in sone meaningful way by these animals or that they were particularly involved in it's spread. It's still the case that these animals were present in those stalls and that covid was also present and the animals likely had active infections while there.
in addition, it's s
Re: Apply the same level of scrutiny to the lab (Score:2, Troll)
You know, this is progress. Time was, people would accuse me of being a bot without thinking I'd have to be dead to be replaced by one.
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How can we better deal with the next one? (Score:2)
Sure, it'd be nice to nail down details of the previous scary time for everybody, but what about catching the next one earlier? Or stopping anything else scary before it can impact us all?
I don't trust other people to do what is best for everyone else (isolate and report problems). Especially when their own lives are impacted. And I don't think our society helps them be good people either (with universal healthcare, or general paid vacation/sick time access).
How do we minimally bother people, but still n
Re:How can we better deal with the next one? (Score:5, Interesting)
[China] They're far more interested in cover-ups than prevention.
This is just an anecdote, but I flew out of Wuhan airport mid-November 2019. There were uniformed people at security checkpoints, taking everybody's temperature before letting them get to the airplanes. During the same trip I had flown to and from other cities in China, and this was the only airport where temperature was checked. I didn't pay much attention at the time, thinking it's just some local bureaucratic idiocy; I only connected this event to the COVID epidemic a couple of months later, when the news exploded worldwide.
I don't have enough information about the way things developed, but it seems obvious to me that China already knew about COVID and was already in full cover-up mode at that time.
What does Peter Thiele think? (Score:2)
And how much is he paying to promote conspiracy theories aligned with his interests?
The theories overlap, so it's moot. (Score:2, Troll)
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That depends on whether you are trying to calculate "most probable", or looking for certainty. You sure won't find certainty, and estimating probabilities is quite difficult. (And I favor a theory different from either of the two dominant theories.)
But you can always estimate probabilities. The problem is calculating your error bars (degrees of certainty).
Centered around the market? (Score:2)
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They are sorta skipping the "some idiot lab assistant let himself get exposed, started feeling a little ill, and spread it to a number of people, one of which went to the market" theory.
Heck, if it was someone in their early 20s, they might have been contagious without feeling too bad.
All this study does is nail down one of the early vector locations, not establish the actual origin.
Ha I had it in October 2019 (Score:3, Interesting)
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I know it was the same covid-19 because I have gotten that same virus and it temporarily damages my kidneys each time.
That's meaningless unless you can rule out other viruses don't present the same symptoms. If you get influenza, or rhinovirus, does it temporarily damage your kidneys? Be scientific about it.
Re: Ha I had it in October 2019 (Score:2)
My dad was in Colorado and I was in California, we both complained how the virus hit us the same week and impacted our energy levels more than normal for months afterwards. I know the virus was already spread out ac
Isn't it rather pointless now? (Score:2)
Managing outbreaks of it, and continual development of a better vaccine against it should be the primary focus, that and dispelling all the disinfo
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I mean, unless they somehow discovered incontrovertible evidence that it was a Chinese government operation to deliberately start a pandemic,
Ironically the work in the lab (creating coronaviruses) was funded by the American government. That part's not even controversial.
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I mean, unless they somehow discovered incontrovertible evidence that it was a Chinese government operation to deliberately start a pandemic,
Ironically the work in the lab (creating coronaviruses) was funded by the American government. That part's not even controversial.
Hey Cletus, you misspelled 'Murican' and 'gubbermint'.
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... the illegal trade in wildlife ... (Score:2)
I think they mean food?
Interesting. (Score:2)
"Bat-origin RaTG13 is currently the most phylogenetically related virus."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
How does a bat corona virus end up in civets and racoon dogs in a wet market with supposedly no bats?
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Does it matter ? (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point you either:
1) Believe the narrative that this came out of some wet market in China.
or
2) Believe the narrative that this was created in a Chinese Lab and, due to either incompetence or malicious intent, was released into the wild.
There is a no amount of evidence that will sway either side from what they believe.
Those battle lines are firmly drawn and there is absolutely nothing that will erase them at this point.
Just let it go.
Hell, I've added Covid to the list of topics to never discuss alongside religion and politics.
People are just way, Way, WAY too passionate about the topic and nothing positive ever comes from discussions about them.
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All that matters is how we deal with the next one. Unfortunately we fucked that up already by being obsessed with assigning blame. Wherever the next one starts, that country will try to cover it up and hope it spreads somewhere else so they can avoid being blamed as the origin, or getting it named after them.
They probably won't be sharing critical early data with the WHO either, for fear of that blowing back on them.
The WHO itself was badly weakened by all the politics played over COVID, and by the US tempo
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At this point you either:
1) Believe the narrative that this came out of some wet market in China.
or
2) Believe the narrative that this was created in a Chinese Lab and, due to either incompetence or malicious intent, was released into the wild.
Most people accepted that the weight of evidence as well as the basis of logic and reason that #1 is the most likely answer and #2 is tin foil hatted nuttery.
Just let it go.
That is entirely the issue with the conspiracy theorists.. everyone else has moved on.
It's been over for 2 years, we got most people vaccinated and beat it. Life has returned to relative normality but a few swivel-eyed loons are still hiding behind the sofa refusing to let it go.
Time to just ignore them. They've not got anything new, not that the
Why "or"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand the false binary here.
The VERY FIRST story I heard about the origin from a friend from southern China was that it was probably a lab tech or maintenance person, tasked with "disposing" of a batch of lab animals.
Seeing a side-opportunity to make some $, he sells them to a friend that works the wet market. They may have even all been rated as healthy failed test animals or something so it wasn't even deliberate or (in his view) dangerous.
I have to say, it still rings credible to me. I *don't* believe any Chinese researcher would have released it deliberately. I *do* believe that Chinese society works on an astonishing level of corruption as 'accepted practice'.
But to this point: it illustrates that "it came from the lab" and "it came from the market" are NOT EXCLUSIVE, and the...constant effort to insist that "it must be our definition because the other one is ONLY this extreme alternative" frankly smells more of desperate attempt to cover something up by strawmanning alternatives to absurdity.
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People are asking the wrong question (Score:2)
Oh (Score:2)
Green-brown steaming puddle of material such as emanates from the south end of a north facing fertile male bovine.
{+_+}
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Yeah but Facebook says it did come from the lab, and my extensive research of the comments on that post makes me doubt those 1 million other experts.
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"Yeah but Facebook says it did come from the lab"
Zuckerberg recently was airing his regrets around FB censoring too much around covid per the government's request, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. Also the guy you're responding to was clearly being sarcastic
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You seem to be suggesting that even *more* people who don't know what they're talking about would make more credible.
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No, just do it when the misinformation has public health repercussions and doesn't line up with the preponderance of scientific evidence. My opinion isn't the issue.
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I only have one account here buba, You may be becoming delusional.
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Zuckerberg recently was airing his regrets around FB censoring too much around covid per the government's request, so I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Are you meaning to imply Facebook was doing a good job blocking? Facebook. As in Zuckerberg's Facebook? The site infamously bad at managing any kind of speech even when it actively tries? There is absolutely no secret that the site is overrun with anti-vax COVID conspiracy nutjobs. The fact Zuckerberg regrets censoring too much per the government's regrets just makes me more ashamed to share a planet with this species of morons.
Also the guy you're responding to was clearly being sarcastic
No shit Sherlock. Did you think my post was serious?
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The DOD and state department says it came from the lab, genius.
Re:Over 1 million experts agree (Score:5, Informative)
It definitely came from a random bat.
Thank you for your expert analysis. However, I would direct you to the report itself [cell.com] which says the location was raccoon dogs and civets at the market, not bats. So yes, trust the science, not some rando who spouts nonsense without any evidence.
For a better article, here [sciencealert.com].
"We are seeing the DNA and RNA ghosts of these animals in the environmental samples, and some are in stalls where SARS-CoV-2 was found, too," she adds. "This is what you would expect under a scenario in which there were infected animals in the market."
The study also included an evolutionary analysis of viral genomes from COVID's early days, seeking likely forebears of the virus that launched the pandemic. The results suggest few if any humans were infected before market-related outbreaks.
"In this paper, we show that the sequences linked to the market are consistent with a market emergence," Débarre says. "The main diversity of SARS-CoV-2 was in the market from the very beginning."
Based on their findings, the authors created a short list of animal species at the market that most likely served as intermediate hosts.
The common raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) was the most genetically abundant animal in the samples, they report, but genetic material from the masked palm civet (Paguma larvata) also turned up in a stall with RNA from SARS-CoV-2.
Both species were linked with the original SARS outbreak, the researchers note, and common raccoon dogs have a known susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.
"These are the same sorts of animals that we know facilitated the original SARS coronavirus jumping into humans in 2002," says ecologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona.
Re:Over 1 million experts agree (Score:4, Interesting)
It definitely originated with some random bat in a cave somewhere. But while bats are sometimes sold in the bush meat trade, apparently they weren't on sale at the Huanan Seafood Market. So the virus had to get there some other way.
The exact way we'll never know. Civets and racoon dogs are plausible since they are found in the vicinity of bat roosts in Yunnan, but even if we knew for sure there were infected civets in the market at the time, that doesn't mean the virus *arrived* in civets. It could have been the truck driver for all we know who infected the vendors, who in turn infected the animals. It's unknowable, and it probably doesn't matter.
I think the important thing is that the most plausible contributing cause to this zoonotic spillover was the bush meat trade. This doesn't rule out other scenarios completely, and in that uncertainty you can build a thousand conspiracy theories.
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Even for the lab theory proponents, the source is still the human-animal interaction. After all, there's a reason we care about bat viruses and 99.9999% ignore thermal vent giant tube worm viruses.
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The results suggest few if any humans were infected before market-related outbreaks.
That's the strongest conclusion you can make from this paper.
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FWIW, I still think it evolved to spread in humans in the rural countryside, and was brought into town as a passenger in the guy who was selling the animals. It has too many unnoticeable cases to have evolved from an initial xeno-transmission at the marketplace.
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Politicians are known for their unflinching honesty and meticulous attention to detail. They don't trust random people nor even themselves, so to avoid bias they have innovated "double-blind legislation" where neither their voters nor the politicians themselves read the legislation before voting on it.
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"What does a government board where they interviewed hundreds of scientists and took their sworn testimony have to do with science?"
Did that help you understand how retarded you sound?
Re: Over 1 million experts agree (Score:2)
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"N-N-NoOOO you can't use THAT science! That science isn't real science! You can only look at MY SCIENCE! THAT'S WHAT SCIENCE IS!"
The retard still fails to see he's retarded, even when talked to as simply as possible.
Re: Over 1 million experts agree (Score:2)
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"All those scientists didn't have real science. It was fake science. Only my science is the real science"
You worship God and call it science because you're too naturally unintelligent to think for yourself
Re: Over 1 million experts agree (Score:2)
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You're the one appealing to authority by saying you only trust scientists. I gave you an entire PANEL filled with scientists, and you're saying they're not the higher authority (God) you worship, because *THOSE* scientists don't teach Real science, because Real science only comes from scientists you listen to.
You're unbelievably retarded. Your brain is a tautological circle and you spin around it like a hamster. Whatever consciousness you possess must be nothing more than a dim light, like a faucet dripping
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Apparently they are cute chubby little critters a bit like a fox but with a face and facial hair resembling a raccoon. I had to look it up too. They seem cute and their dietary habits make me think I wouldn't want to eat one.
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I made this just for you. https://imgflip.com/i/949lew [imgflip.com]
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And the US Senate Committee tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19 produced a 300 page report just for you: https://www.marshall.senate.go... [senate.gov]
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Fauci's name shows up twice. Here is the passage:
In China, animal experiments involving highly infectious agents are required to be conducted in an
BSL-3/ABSL-3 facilities.
1484 However, email correspondence in February 2020 between then-NIH Director
Francis Collins, then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, and Director of the Wellcome Trust, a large UKbased medical research charity, Dr. Jeremey Farrar, showed concern that the WIV may have conducted
SARS-related virus research using humanized mice expressing ACE 2 re
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Well, *that's* a good point. It was not a safe enough lab. But I still think that the virus was probably endemic at a very low level among the rural population, and didn't become pandemic until it adapted sufficiently to humans in the countryside, where xeno-transmission was *relatively* common.
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If the odds are a billion to one, how many virus reproductions would be required for it to show up?
Not that I accept your assertion, but even if it were true, it wouldn't be significant. There are LOTS of virus reproductions in every individual case. Definitely many millions. So if you have, say 100 cases you have a 50% chance of a "one chance in a billion" even occurring.
If it can occur, assume that it will. If it's advantageous, assume that it will spread.
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Turns out 'common knowledge' is a great excuse to defend conspiracy theories while ignoring evidence.
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Turns out 'common knowledge' is a great excuse to defend conspiracy theories while ignoring evidence.
Or the version Trump used in the debate, "But the people on television say ..."
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idk, i haven't seen much evidence of comeuppance.
NIH grants funded gain of function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat corona viruses.
Fauci and others lied about it for years though it was an open secret already just a few months into the pandemic.. Practically no consequences when this was finally revealed/admitted. (https://nypost.com/2024/05/16/us-news/nih-director-admits-taxpayers-funded-gain-of-function-research-in-wuhan-four-years-after-covid-pandemic-began/).
Nor had there been any rea
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The report doesn't say anything directly about whether or not the virus originated in a lab. It only traces it back to some animals in a nearby wet market. Nobody said how the animals got infected in the first place.
We do know that multiple strains of Covid-19 have been observed jumping from humans to animals.
Re:Sure they do (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked in zoonotic disease surveillance for many years, although I was out of the business when SARS-COV-2 emerged.
The conspiracy theories about SARS-COV-2 being cooked up in a lab are popular because they're simple, satisfying, and plausible sounding until you really start looking into them. Zoonotic diseases, on the other hand, nearly always sound implausible. The life cycle of the pathogen is often confusingly convoluted, and the path to human spillover involves a sequence of extremely unlikely events and require the interaction of things people never anticipated were related.
And yet novel zoonoses emerge on a regular basis, even though each emergence is implausibly unlikely. It's because these may be tail events, but the number of *trials* is huge: basically every time a human comes in contact with a potentially infected animal there is a very remote chance of a zoonosis emerging.
It's like God is the dungeon master and humanity is a player making a saving through on a d-one-million once every minute or so. We roll one-million about once every year or two, and a new zoonotic disease emerges. Every emergence a black swan event, and with black swan events people never have difficulty cooking up explanations that sound more plausible than what actually happened.
Truth really is stranger than fiction in these cases.
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Let's keep this narrative going. Heaven forefend we should admit an obvious truth: it got loose from the virology lab next door.
Yeah obviously. It's either that or it happened the same way as last time.
Re:The animals came from somewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, maybe. We can't rule that out, nor can we rule out a lot of other things.
The question being addressed here is, I think, what is the link between the place where we know the virus must have originated and the first identified outbreak at a wet market 1500 kilometers from the nearest bat cave? It's not unreasonable to focus on the bush meat trade, since that's what the market specialized in. Whether the pathogen actually arrived at that market in an animal or a person like a truck driver is a question we'll never be able to answer, and is not really consequential. If you want to stop this from happening again, you need to eliminate the bush meat trade, or you have to regulate it.
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Actually, that one's very consequential, and I strongly favor the truck driver or merchant. The reason is that it was already adapted to transmit between humans in a relatively inconspicuous manner, and many of the infections weren't noticed by the people carrying them. To me this strongly points to an endemic disease with an animal host. The only plausible alternative seems (to me) to be a lab creation intentionally designed for human transmission. And that the US would pay China to create such a thing
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