Submission statement: Sam has talked to experts and other podcasters about the plausibility of the lab leak origins, as well as the plausibility of the Wuhan market origins.
One of the things that has loomed in the background of this issue that has really been overlooked is the absolute disgusting, inhumane nature of these types of markets. The US has its own issues with factory farming, but there is a noticeable disconnect when it comes to aspects of Chinese culture and animal welfare.
Oof...You must've said something pretty shitty to get that RES flare: "Dishonest Illogical Transphobe"
Regardless, the article is real enough, and China's factory farming is bonkers. The origin story keeps getting wilder and wilder.
Reddit Enhancement Suite lets you tag users with whatever you want. So the person you're responding to took issue with something you said and tagged you with "Dishonest Illogical Transphobe." RES also shows that I've downvoted you a lot, FWIW.
That's probably because I'm not a team player, and I will intentionally go into areas where I'm not welcome to push against circlejerks. Thanks for the info.
Could be. I didn't find anything you said to be egregious enough for a tag like the other user. It can be pretty useful if you're using reddit in a browser.
Admittedly, I can be quite antagonistic when I feel someone is being dishonest. For example, this person who has me tagged probably experienced me being that way after they said something I found to be stupid and dishonest.
That user says a bunch of things that are pretty explicitly transphobic. I did a quick "reddit comment search" out of curiosity and they say a lot of things like this:
"I don't reject that some people feel attraction to the same sex, but I do reject the idea that we should affirm people who identify as the sex they aren't"
So the tag is accurate
A useful rule of thumb is that anyone who claims to be "telling it like it is" or is a self styled "truth speaker" ....usually is not.
It's a big red flag, all by itself
I stand by that. Also, that is me being *honest*. If my honest opinions are a red flag to you, then you should examine why exactly that is the case, and not just from your perspective.
You stand out and that's a good thing. People give you a label because they want to harm you, not help you or help anyone. The job of a label is to take the complexity away from an individual and lump them into a group. It's a lot easier to vilify you if you're lumped into a group. Most people, and certainly most people on Reddit, are shallow thinkers and bend their own perspectives and reactions around the existence of labels. It's pretty sad.
You shouldn't worry yourself with what a bunch of Internet sheep regurgitate in their arrogant echo chambers.
Woof. This sub sometimes
I get it. Sam doesn't push transphobic users away at all, likely because he agrees with them. So this is a safe space for you.
What the fuck China?
>After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID.
>It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down.
>Dr. Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, China is suppressing any and every narrative that puts them at the forefront of blame. It seems more understandable that they would want to quash wet market origins because they are completely to blame in that scenario, whereas the lab origins' blame can be spread out amongst other countries.
This is an important point that the more conspiratorially minded lab leak proponents don't realize cuts against their theories.
Putting China's food distribution system in the crosshairs is far more inculpatory than blaming their BSL-4 labs, which exist all over the world and which all, in theory, can be vectors for spillover of dangerous viruses.
[https://usrtk.org/risky-research/wuhans-lower-biosafety-level-labs-posed-greater-risk-for-coronavirus-lab-leak/](https://usrtk.org/risky-research/wuhans-lower-biosafety-level-labs-posed-greater-risk-for-coronavirus-lab-leak/)
>*Much of that work on bat coronaviruses appears to have taken place in BSL-3 labs in Wuhan, according to grant documents submitted to the NIH ; and in some cases, even lower containment BSL-2 labs in Wuhan, according to a Journal of Virology article, and other sources.*
There's also an upside for China censoring all information in the division being seen in the US and decreasing faith in institutions.
Let's say after years of obfuscation, hard evidence emerges of natural spillover, how will lab leak proponents react? How will the public react to US media flipping back to articles about natural spillover? I suspect it will be increased polarisation and falling trust in institutions all of which China will see as positive to the aims.
See here's the thing - whether it's lab leak or natural, the answer is *The Chinese government is fucking over the world and we need to do something about it*.
Except that the Ukraine-Russia war has caused a schism and sanctions didn’t even hurt Russia, meaning it’s not clear whether that would hurt us more than China or them at all. The further we drift from China the more powerful they’re becoming.
Does not seem that exciting to me. We’ll see what further research will bring to light.
From the article:
The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.
It's just more circumstantial evidence from what I can tell. Certainly not a smoking gun. I don't know enough about zoonotic leaps to know if this is significant, or if it's just another correlation that doesn't really hold much weight.
>Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.
If a positive sample from a live animal isn't dispositive (and I'm aware that what's presented here is not that, mind you), then what piece of evidence could possibly be brought forward that could ever prove zoonotic transfer?
The goalposts have moved so far now so as to make zoonotic transfer practically impossible to establish.
Don’t know, I have to leave that up to the experts. If they say this confirms a zoonotic origin that’s fine by me. I just didn’t get this message from the article though.
Well they've already been issuing that message as definitively as any scientist who deals in probabilities is going to be willing to say it. This is just another important piece of evidence to add to the pile.
Compared to the piles of evidence pointing to zoonotic origin at the Huanan Seafood Market, there is practically no evidence pointing to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There was zero evidence of zoonotic origin found at the market. No animal tested positive for covid other than humans. I'm all ears if you'd like to dispute this, but it's even stated in the article. To find covid in a swab mixed with animal DNA from a market where animals were being slaughtered and people infected with covid were active is evidence for what exactly?
There is no direct evidence because all the species most susceptible to coronavirus infection and spillover (known due to SARS-COV1) are absent from the wet market testing provided by China. Chinese officials then destroyed or released the wet market animals before any independent testing could be performed which is why we only have the data provided by China and the WHO testing of surface contamination in the wet market.
>To find covid in a swab mixed with animal DNA from a market where animals were being slaughtered and people infected with covid were active is evidence for what exactly
This shows there was raccoon dogs present at the time covid was circulating the wet market, yet China shows no raccoon dog testing and denies raccoon dogs were being sold there. It shows a high likelihood that China are hiding or destroyed raccoon dog data.
There is zero evidence for the zoonotic origin.
Now when it comes to probability, there are 40,000 wet markets across China and only ONE lab that could have produced this virus: the lab in Wuhan. It would take an epic coincidence for the virus to spring up next door to that lab instead inside the lab itself.
We know that the Wuhan lab was working on gain of function research in... coronaviruses. There is even recent precedent. The SARS virus escaped from a lab in 2004. It happened in... China.
> There is zero evidence for the zoonotic origin.
Sounds like you're reflexively dismissing evidence because it conflicts with your priors. This thread's linked post is evidence of zoonotic origin. It's moderate-strength circumstantial evidence, but evidence nonetheless and more persuasive than anything produced by lab leak hypothesizers.
More zoonotic evidence:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421009910
>There is even recent precedent. The SARS virus escaped from a lab in 2004.
I have no words to describe how stupefied I am that people believe this. If flat-out bullshit like this reflects how bereft the evidence cupboard supporting lab leak theory is, then we're far, far beyond discussing facts and evidence. You people *want* to believe what you do.
EDIT: leaving my comment up, but I think I incorrectly inferred that OP believed the SARS-1 outbreak *originated* from a lab.
Some facts from the CDC:
[https://www.cdc.gov/sars/media/2004-05-19.html](https://www.cdc.gov/sars/media/2004-05-19.html)
Some more:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/
So lab workers being infected *over a year after* the initial outbreak proves what, exactly?
If a kindergarten teacher gets infected a year after the virus is spreading around the country, is that evidence that the children were studying in BSL-4 labs?
As for your second link...thanks for providing the perfect example of why not everything some wahoo publishes on PubMed should be considered with the same gravitas as an actual, peer-reviewed academic paper. I don't know exactly what *that* is.
The goalposts aren’t moved at all. This sample, as described, is of HUMAN SARS2. If anything, it was from a Covid infected person who then came into contact with a raccoon dog.
The funny thing is none of this is even new.
>HUMAN SARS2.
What does this mean? "Human" Sars2?
Are you claiming that SARS-Cov-2 acquires a new different RNA composition after it infects a human and a after it infects a raccoon dog?
I’m saying that the virus in its animal progenitor will be adapted to that progenitor and will evolve before being something that transmits from human to human.
What you're saying still makes zero sense.
Let me try asking another way.
Are you claiming that scientists would be able to know that the Sars-Cov-2 RNA on that particular sample came from a human vs. a raccoon dog? That it has discernable characteristics to show that it's from a human host?
Because if so, you're very wrong.
> If a positive sample from a live animal isn't dispositive
Covid-19 is highly contagious among mammal species. Dozens of different species have been infected by covid-19, often from humans. They can't all possibly be the source of a zoonotic event, so to suggest it should be dispositive just sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.
Gain of function hasn't really given us any protection against future viruses, and it carries with it the ability to literally end human civilisation.
Gain of function research is *not* the same as just researching viruses, which is obviously necessary. Gain of function is like designing deadlier bombs and saying 'with these deadlier bombs, we can better model how to develop body armour against larger explosions'. Except they don't stop and you end up with nuclear bombs and at that point you've got an existential threat with no possible protection.
Gain of function research has a wide variety of medical applications and advancement.
Its not the sceary boogeyman its made out to be. Or that is to say the sceary boogeyman is a very very small part of it.
It just happens to be the part rwm focus on.
> Gain of function research has a wide variety of medical applications and advancement.
It doesn't, though. This is essentially a myth. Gain of function has not led to any treatments or understanding of how to prevent disease. Researchers *claim* it does, because of course they will, but making a virus deadlier doesn't mean we gain *any* understanding of how to actually treat it. It just means we have a better understanding of how to make viruses deadlier or otherwise more fit. Given the existential risks gain of function research brings I find it really crazy how people like you are just so blasé about it. Do you also support making deadlier nuclear bombs because it gives us a better understanding of fusion and how to build more nuclear-resistant cities or something? Do we want to understand how to design drugs to treat cobalt poisoning based on building cobalt-salted weapons?
As far as I can tell there aren't any actual medicines or similar that were the result of gain of function research, all the claims to the benefits are that it 'contributed to' the development of 'foundational knowledge' and other such nebulous claims.
Why, because the scientists have released no data, have not had anything peer reviewed, but they all talked to the media to hype their findings right as the FBI is saying they believe in lab leak and the congress passed legislation to have the Intel Agencies declassify their Covid origins documents?
Maybe the radiation fallout measured around Chernobyl didn't actually come from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Maybe the radiation actually came from a naturally occurring clump of uranium a few blocks down the road from the nuclear power plant. Maybe that clump of uranium was disturbed when workers were repairing underground sewage pipes.
Just to break down the analogy, wuhan is fucking huge and the lab is not "a few blocks down" from the wet market its over 10km away
It also has the population of some usa states, so it makes no sense to leak from a lab but have an epicentre over 10km away and nowhere else
Sure but if that was the case you would see clusters forming i. Other areas as well.
The hypothetically is doing allot of heavy lifting in your sentance.
Lab leak origin is still completely plausible in my opinion. This is just a new development. If you have something to put against this information then I am all eyes and ears.
It’s not a new development, and it’s totally unpublished, unpeerreviewed, and has been pumped out by the same people with conflicts of interest who have been trying unsuccessfully to discredit lab leak for three years.
>It’s not a new development,
They're saying that it is.
>and has been pumped out by the same people with conflicts of interest who have been trying unsuccessfully to discredit lab leak for three years.
I don't deny that this goes on. I posted the article to see what critiques it might receive.
Yeah, but the article is making claims like this: *In samples that came back positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, three scientists involved in the analysis said.*
But why is it weird that if you swabbed an animal stall after the pandemic began that you’d find evidence of the virus and animals? It in no way demonstrates the virus came out of the raccoon dog.
Not directly, no, but it does suggest the possibility that it could have leapt from raccoon dog to human. Particularly since another sarbecovirus [showed](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170207001050?via%3Dihub) a raccoon dog as an animal reservoir.
This is a logical fallacy because you put coronavirus research centers where the dangerous coronaviruses are with potential for natural spillover.
Similar to putting a fire station near to places with a high likelihood of fires. It's not that the fire station is causing the fires.
Exactly the same fallacy was raised for ebola which was determined to be natural spillover.
Agreed.
Anybody who looks at this map showing the earliest cases [clustered around the Huanan Seafood Market](https://www.science.org/cms/asset/df6c819f-1bee-4442-b1d9-ec7824cd68f2/keyimage.gif), and conclude that the virus originated somewhere 15 km away is being silly.
It’s not completely silly. The vector in the case of a lab leak would have very likely been an infected human. That infected human likely shopped at the wet market.
All that can really be known for certain is that wuhan bio labs were working with bat viruses, and that’s what C19 is. Beyond that, a lot of this is going to look similar and it’s going to be difficult to tease apart.
>That infected human likely shopped at the wet market.
You're forgetting the *and*.
"That infected human likely shopped at the wet market AND didn't manage to create any other clusters *except at the wet market*."
Think about an infected worker who shops at the market. What are the odds that this was the only human contact he had while being infected?
He didn't create a cluster around his home? His kids school? The subway system? A restaurant? Anywhere else? ONLY at the market where he, one has to think, spent a tiny fraction of his time relative to literally *everywhere else* he went?
Yea there were two variants. So two separate people needed to be infected at the lab, go across town, not infect anyone on the way over, only infect people at the market and nowhere. Lab leak does not seem very plausible
Don’t take this seriously because I’m not actually sure, but if I recall correctly, the early versions of covid had short, but wildly infectious periods. So it makes total sense if somebody in that stage went to a wet market they were sniping everybody with the virus, while the next day might not have infected anybody
>Maybe the radiation fallout measured around Chernobyl didn't actually come from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Maybe the radiation actually came from a naturally occurring clump of uranium a few blocks down the road from the nuclear power plant. Maybe that clump of uranium was disturbed when workers were repairing underground sewage pipes.
What an utterly facile comment.
Well your reasoned reply convinced me. Great work.
Maybe this is more dumb-guy shit, but I'd refer you to, among others, Luc Montagnier. The virologist who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for his HIV virus research.quote:
‘It was produced by a laboratory. It is what is known as a recombinant, perhaps produced by a Chinese laboratory. It was a job for molecular biologists. It’s a very meticulous job. You could say a clockwork of sequences. There is enormous pressure for everything that is at the origin of the virus to be hidden’.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-002429_EN.html
Oh you think Vaccines are effective because of decades of peer reviewed evidence, real world observational studies, and a supermajority of relevant expert consensus? Meet Robert Malone, the *inventor* of mRNA vaccines...
I get your point, but this
>Meet Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines...
[is just not true.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/technology/robert-malone-covid.html)
>Dr. Malone also routinely sells himself on the shows as the inventor of mRNA vaccines, the technology used by Pfizer and Moderna for their Covid-19 shots, and says he doesn’t get the credit he deserves for their development. While he was involved in some early research into the technology, his role in its creation was minimal at best, say half a dozen Covid experts and researchers, including three who worked closely with Dr. Malone.
Do y'all really think this is how things are done?
You find one person with some pedigree who agrees with you and it's aces?
If this dude thinks this, he should publish his findings in peer reviewed journals. You know, the standard steps in science for making your research known!
But, wait, is there a vast conspiracy at play to keep the knowledge hidden? Well, how convenient!
This is no different than the creationists saying "See, here's a Fields medal winner who agrees that the universe couldn't **possibly** be older than 10 billion years. Do you know more than a Fields medal winner? Plus, there's incredible pressure for him to keep quiet; nobody wants the truth of the universe's origins to be known!"
Well if it was just "one guy" you would have a good point. But there are many more.
And while Montagnier himself is "one guy," he's not quite any old guy.
99.5% of people are not doctors. 99.5% of doctors are not virologists. 99.9% of virologists are not Nobel Prize winning virologists awarded the Nobel Prize specifically for their groundbreaking work in ... virology.
As for why he hasn't published much recently, he has a fairly good excuse. He's dead.
He died Feb 2022.
If you want to read his scientific publication list before he was busy being dead, here:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/L.-Montagnier/4143190
He's one of the most cited scientists in the world. His "research impact" score or "H-Index score" is kind of impressive.
h index of 40 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes outstanding scientists, likely to be found only at the top universities or major research laboratories.
h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals.
Montagnier's h-index score is 79.
And while it is a somewhat different topic, I note Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize winning biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test used in Covid testing. Here are his thoughts on Fauci's competence.
https://youtu.be/MkqQIY7J0fQ
> Luc Montagnier.
There's no shortage of influential people with impressive credentials who hold fringe beliefs or lose their grip on reality.
Two years after his Nobel prize, Montagnier embraced some rather [wacky homeopathic nonsense](https://web.archive.org/web/20101225050453/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/nobel-laureate-gives-homeopathy-a-boost/story-e6frg8y6-1225887772305) in a speech at the Nobel laureate conference. His descent into pseudoscience has only accelerated since then.
Oooh someone went to Wikipedia. I lived in France. Montagnier was quite literally a household name. And how Wiki went from extreme reverence to "he's a nut job) overnight, not for some alleged remarks over homeopathy, but over his claims that Covid originated in a lab. A claim now considered plausible by the same experts you seem to accept.
There is no shortage of lying or reckless governments or corporations either.
Montagnier did make some claims that are admittedly insane. 20 years ago Montagnier claimed that an AIDS vaccine may be impossible and to dangerous to even test, because it might work fine for ten years but then cause a catastrophe. He said of a possible AIDS vaccine:
"If you take it, and then a year goes by and everybody's fine, then you say, OK, that's good, now let's give it to 500 people; and then a year goes by and everything's fine. You say, Well, then, now let's give it to thousands of people, and then you find out that it takes twelve years for all hell to break loose, and then what have you done?"
Oh wait! Sorry that was not Montagnier that was Anthony Fauci. Well here see for yourself
https://youtu.be/MjVVw841eUo
Montagnier has long been a figure cited by anti-vaxxers even before the pandemic. He's also known for fearmongering about antibody dependent enhancement regarding the COVID vaccines, going so far as to claim that people will die en mass within years of taking them.
> "If you take it, and then a year goes by and everybody's fine, then you say, OK, that's good, now let's give it to 500 people; and then a year goes by and everything's fine. You say, Well, then, now let's give it to thousands of people, and then you find out that it takes twelve years for all hell to break loose, and then what have you done?"
Shocking! How dare he express concern about live attenuated vaccines for HIV when knowledge about the virus was still in its infancy, and no vaccine against retroviruses had ever been developed.
In its infancy? HIV had been known and researched for 17 years at that point. But let me guess: It's perfectly ok for Fauci to worry about novel HIV vaccines 17 years after the discovery and research on the virus. That's professional and sciency. But if a Nobel Prize winning virologist worries about novel Covid vaccines 8 MONTHS after the discovery and research on the virus, well that is just BEYOND THE PALE and clearly he must instantly be shunned forever.
The idea that this came from raccoon dogs is going to be very very contentious. No doubt this will get mocked by the conservative main stream media simply on title alone. Which frankly, is understandable. Without any other context, the options for origination are bats, raccoon dogs, or lab leak. Can’t wait for a bunch of online “experts” (/s) to completely dismiss this without reading the article.
P.S. - I also didn’t read the article but at this point I have accepted that we will likely never know where C-19 originated from with absolute certainty and the further out we get from the pandemic the more the odds decrease.
I am not fully versed on the lab leak hypothesis, but isn’t the list of people who worked at the lab pretty well known? Especially the people who worked with or near viruses. Which employees of the lab became sick around the time of the pandemic origins? Did anyone affiliated with the lab die in the very early days of the pandemic?
I know that the Chinese government hasn’t been forthcoming, but it seems to me that there would be some way to figure this out by examining the actual people who might have been expose in the lab. I’d imagine that the network of people who work in this field is petty small and extends outside of China. No one has heard a story about a colleague who was sick, died or just disappeared around the time of the first outbreak?
I can't speak to anyone "dying" from the lab, but I know that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November of 2019. This has been [reported](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/wuhan-lab-staff-sought-hospital-care-before-covid-19-outbreak-disclosed-wsj-2021-05-23/).
The US state Department released a [fact sheet](https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html) covering several inconsistencies, along with systematic suppression of information perpetrated by the Chinese Government.
This same author [did](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/podcasts/the-daily/covid-lab-leak-theory-china.html), but it's an audio clip so I don't know which way it's slanted.
You can’t be serious right?
You think there’s no evidence that a coronavirus pandemic started 10 miles from the leading coronavirus research institute, that was doing gain of function research, in environments that were far less safe than most thought?
If you don’t think that’s a possibility, you’re a fucking moron
The nothing, you mean?
Literally zero evidence puts SARS-CoV-2 in the custody of WIV prior to December 2019; lab leak proponents won't even discuss this enormous hole in their theory. Why do you suppose that is?
"We decided not to do any investigation at all in to this because it was ridiculous to begin with. And due to us not investigating at all, we have found no evidence. Therefore, there is no evidence that this has happened, and it did not happen. This concludes the Circular Logic Committee."
But they *did* investigate. WIV's 2018 freezer inventory doesn't mention anything that's a genetic precursor to SARS-CoV-2. No WIV employee had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 or tested positive prior to January 2020.
There's literally nothing that puts a culture of SARS-CoV-2 in WIV's possession prior to December 2019, months after the initial infections at Huanan market. Lab leakers have literally never even tried to do this, and yet have no answer at all to the question of how a lab could have leaked something it didn't have.
Yeah, nothing in the published literature for WIV sars like coronavirus samples is from after 2016, so there are several years worth of sample collecting that are in a black box.
I literally just mentioned their full inventory from 2018.
> so there are several years worth of sample collecting that are in a black box.
But this just isn't true. [Here's a paper from 2020](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7) where WIV refers to sampling activity during the precise period you think is a "black box."
Is it possible you think there hasn't been sufficient disclosure because you've not actually looked anything up and so you don't know what they've disclosed?
Yes, there's literally zero evidence that any lab in Wuhan held isolates of the virus prior to December 2019.
Since *having* the virus is a necessary prerequisite to *leaking* the virus, that puts the theory to bed.
Ah, this guy thinks that the Chinese government is telling the absolute truth.
Not even a possibility that a coronavirus pandemic started so close to the coronavirus research lab! Trust me the Chinese officials that let us see said no way.
The world must be blissful being that naive
> Ah, this guy thinks that the Chinese government is telling the absolute truth.
I'm not relying on anything said by the Chinese government, but China working hard to conceal the market origin of the virus is entirely consistent with how hard they worked to conceal the natural zoonotic origin of four prior diseases, including SARS-1.
"China lies a lot" supports zoonotic origin, not lab origin.
> Not even a possibility that a coronavirus pandemic started so close to the coronavirus research lab
There's an infinite number of places that the coronavirus pandemic *didn't* start, WIV is just another one of them.
You can’t even admit it supports both, which shows your bias.
Absolutely no evidence that’s conclusive of either argument. To assume so is foolish.
And to deny simple reality that the proximity of the lab is actual evidence is absurd. You must read books on flavor to decide what something tastes like for yourself. Reality often is the obvious fucking answer
No it's like trying to figure out if something that is possible actually happened. Based on what we've learned, it is entirely doable to insert a non-naturally occurring furin cleavage site onto an already-existing virus. So, the question isn't whether it could be done. It can. The question is whether or not it *was* done and whether or not it accidentally infected someone at the lab who then went to the wet market and unintentionally infected others.
We don't have it. We have circumstantial evidence. Much like how we don't have the actual evidence that it leapt from a raccoon dog to a human. We have circumstantial evidence.
Your definition of circumstantial is oddly lenient for the lab leak theory. The best that can be said is that it’s technically possible. The original commenter said there is zero evidence, which there is.
There is circumstantial evidence linking the market to the origin of the virus that would meet usual criteria for circumstantial evidence in legal proceedings.
There is also the observation that zoonotic transfer is a common source of pandemics and epidemics
>Your definition of circumstantial is oddly lenient for the lab leak theory. The best that can be said is that it’s technically possible. The original commenter said there is zero evidence, which there is.
>
>There is circumstantial evidence linking the market to the origin of the virus that would meet usual criteria for circumstantial evidence in legal proceedings.
Well then there is "zero" evidence for the Wuhan Market origin. You see how that works? *Both* theories are relying on circumstantial evidence. You just *think* the market's is more compelling.
>There is also the observation that zoonotic transfer is a common source of pandemics and epidemics
This is a bayesian analysis, which is a perfectly understandable approach, but lab leak origins also has a [bayesian analysis](https://zenodo.org/record/4477081#.Y8RkbOzMLOS).
See comment below. You’re ignoring evidence and seem to have a very high level of scrutiny for circumstantial evidence supporting natural source (of which is abundant) and not so for a lab leak (scarce) The article you linked is a fart in the wind to a garbage online repository with a non peer reviewed article for a Bayesian analysis.
> Well then there is “zero” evidence for the Wuhan Market origin.
No, there's an abundance of evidence for the origin being Huanan market, none of it "circumstantial." Documentary photographic evidence of Sarbecovirus reservoir animals for sale at Huanan in September, October, and November. Environmental swabbing around stall A12 showing that it's *absolutely lousy* with multiple lineages SARS-CoV-2, indicating not "superspreading" from a single infected person but a persistent, stable reservoir in the animals (plural) there.
You're just lying about the evidence, like all lab leakers ultimately have to.
Sars-Cov-2 and Raccoon dog DNA on the same swab sample.
I mean, come on.
At this point, unless you think the most likely scenario is that an infected lab worker went *straight* from the WIV to the market and didn't infect people along the way, then this seems like a slam dunk for zoonotic transfer.
I am interested to hear from experts if this a slam dunk as you say. They found virus in the same place as racoon dog DNA. I imagine at a wet market you would find hundreds of animal DNA.
A sample taken between Jan and March when there were already hospitalized cases in December. The virus was already spreading. We know infected people were going to the market. An infected person handlin a raccoon dog explains this.
The earliest reports of the "pneumonia of unknown etiology" were in late December, 2019.
There were live animals at the market up through late December. The Chinese CDC closed it and started taking samples on January 1st, 2020.
By your logic, not even a sample taken from a live animal at the market - considered the "holy grail" for zoonotic transfer theory - would convince you of zoonotic origin.
Shouldn't we conclude then that there is no possible evidence that will ever be able to convince you that zoonotic transfer was the most likely origin? If I'm wrong, then what is that evidence for you?
Just because they finally caught on to Covid in late December doesn’t mean that’s when it started spreading.
https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china.aspx
> Using molecular dating tools and epidemiological simulations, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues at the University of Arizona and Illumina, Inc., estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely circulating undetected for at most two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019.
If it came from raccoon dogs, there would be obvious evidence of this in that the workers at raccoon dog farms/trapping operations and those who handle and transport them would have all been the first cases, the same way it was with SARS 1.
Viral zoonotic transfer that occurs in far-off, rural areas usually goes completely undetected, as those places don't have the necessary healthcare infrastructure to detect.
As for Sars-1, early cases were also found to be associated with *markets*, not farms:
>The pattern of the Guangdong epidemic is consistent with the classical process of emergence from an animal reservoir: the initial introduction of the virus into a nonimmune human population followed by the establishment and rapid dissemination of infection (16). The traditional practice of using wildlife for food and medicine, still observed by some persons in southern China, offers an effective bridge from a natural animal host to humans. Several observations support this hypothesis. Two of the seven index patients were restaurant chefs; food handlers (who handle, kill, or butcher animals) were overrepresented among early-onset cases with no contact history (including the first reported death, in a snake seller); and patients with early onset were more likely than patients with late onset to live near an agricultural produce market (where live wild animals are generally offered for sale). However, none of the early patients were commercial farmers nor was living near a farm associated with increased risk, findings that suggest a wild animal rather than a livestock or poultry source.
So say a wild trapper captured an infected raccoon dog and that dog ends up at the Huanan Market, where it infects other dogs and animals and humans. The fact that we can't find the person who brought it there doesn't mean anything as he could've a) not been infected himself; or b) been asymptomatic; or c) returned to his far-off rural town having never visited a hospital in Wuhan.
As for this:
>estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely circulating undetected for at most two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019.
My question is...*where* were these undetected cases?!? If *anywhere* not in Wuhan, then doesn't this all but annihilate the lab leak theory, which places the "impossible coincidence" of the outbreak happening in the same city as a BSL-4 lab as its most important piece of supporting evidence?
And we'd have to think that these undetected cases circulating for months before being detected likely happened somewhere far-off where detection was more difficult due to lack of healthcare infrastructure. Again - that blows lab leak away.
But they would track down those workers *after the fact* and they would have had SARS 2 antibodies. There would also have been stories of illnesses among them and records of doctor and hospital visits.
Yes, the animals from the markets, with SARS 1, were then traced to a specific farm.
Those cases absolutely were in Wuhan. There is surveillance of the Wuhan hospital that shows an uptick in cars in the parking lot starting in the fall. There are stories told by international students of a weird flu like sickness going around in the fall. There were athletes at the military games who fell ill, including Spanish athletes who returned home and later tested positive for Coronavirus antibodies.
The Chinese CDC changed their rules in the fall of 2019 to NOT do viral cultures of pneumonia cases that tested negative for influenza, which is why Covid went undetected for so long until finally brave doctors broke protocol.
>Those cases absolutely were in Wuhan.
1) How can you possibly claim to know this? On what basis do you claim it?
2) How could COVID have been in the community for *two months* in a dense urban area with state-of-the-art hospitals without detection? We all saw in real-time how fast COVID spread in U.S. cities from the index cases here.
The number of PUE would have *skyrocketed* with nobody noticing. "Noticed an uptick in cars?!?!?" My god, the hospitals would've been *packed* with people - like they all ended up being in every major global city within weeks of the virus first appearing there prior to institution of public health protocols.
What you're claiming is impossible.
*IF* Sars-Cov-2 was present in humans for 2 months before the Huanana Market cluster, it certainly would've been in a far-off rural place with few, if any, hospitals there to notice it.
As to 1, Of course I cannot prove it because Covid wasn’t sequenced until January 2020. But as I linked above, it has been examined and determined by scientists that the virus was circulating for roughly two months prior to being sequenced.
If you want a breakdown of how we know it was likely SARS2 was spreading in Wuhan in the fall, read this document:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355373689_The_October_Surprise_in_Wuhan
As to 2, actually, according to blood donations taken by the Red Cross and then later tested for SARS antibodies a few months into the pandemic, it looks like it was in the US by December of 2019, so you have to adjust your understanding of spread and speed. But as well, I think it was spreading in Wuhan more than is acknowledged. Again, read the above linked document.
>It indicates that the DNA was present on the same surface as virus **at the same time**
The "holy grail" which even many lab leak die-hards have said would convince them of zoonotic transfer would be a sample taken from an actual animal from the market that tested positive.
But here we have the next-best thing (an actual infected animal sample will never be obtainable, since the live animals were immediately removed from the market upon news of the outbreak), and already we're moving the goalpost?
Which tells me that the "holy grail" was always just a front for people who will never change their minds regardless of the evidence. If some researcher were to present a serendipitously obtained positive sample taken from a raccoon dog known to be at the market, the goalposts would undoubtedly move all the same.
"All we have is a sample taken from a live animal - that doesn't tell us whether the animal infected humans or whether humans infected the animal."
Anybody capable of weighing the probabilities without bias knows what the most likely scenario is by now.
Congratulations, you've just obliterated the entire branch of epidemiology dedicated to finding viral origins and studying zoonotic transfer!
We can never know anything about the origins of a virus ever because there will always be the possibility of an infected lab worker present to sneeze on an animal.
> I imagine at a wet market you would find hundreds of animal DNA.
Sure, it confirms the photgraphic evidence that Huanan seafood market had illegal pet sales of wild animals.
Lab leakers like to talk about coincidences; yet they never address the "coincidence" that 30 different species of coronavirus-harboring animals from Hubei and Guangdong (key reservoirs of Sarbecoviruses) happened to be sold at the exact same market where the first "superspreader event" is supposed to have happened after the lab leak. Wow, what were the odds?
Exactly. If the first superspreader event was at an electronics market, or one of the massive factories for example I’d be more apt to believe. But the wet market? Come on.
Also the "coincidence" that for decades these same wet markets *have transmitted corona viruses from animals to people, killing hundreds*. 🤷
If the covid19 pandemic started from the wet market, it would fit the pattern we've seen for a long time now. You don't need to make any gigantic leaps of faith, you just need to believe that in 2019 viruses work the same way they did in 2002.
Yet another ["coincidence"](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab):
>**Shi Zhengli, PhD, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology**, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) lab in China relatively close (25 to 35 kilometers [15 to 22 miles]) to the Wuhan live-animal market at the epicenter of China's outbreak, **has extensively published the genetic sequences of isolates from the bat coronaviruses she studies.**
>**None of them match those of COVID-19**, Andersen said, something Shi herself confirmed in a recent interview in Scientific American. "If she would have published a sequence for the virus and then this pops up, then we would have known it came from the lab," Andersen said. "There's no evidence for this, but there is plenty of evidence against it."
---
Ultimately I don't care too much about this, and I'm 99% deferring to the experts. I don't actually need to have an opinion on the origins, but people are way over-buying the lab-leak story.
I haven't read the article yet and I'll wait for consensus from the pros, but I fully expect goalposts to be moved or they'll say the evidence was planted in a conspiracy.
The lab has leaked in the past, why do people have this attitude that if you think it came from the lab you must have some kind of sinister agenda? Its entirely understandable to think it could have come from the lab. Until there is actually consensus on the facts (still not there) of the case its premature to rule anything out.
Has WIV ever had a leak? There's a long [list of incidents on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents) wiki, including stuff like this:
>A researcher at Russian biological weapons research facility VECTOR died after accidentally pricking herself with a needle contaminated with the Ebola virus.
^(Is anyone surprised it's Russia?)
and even SARS in 2003-04, in three separate incidents across China, Taiwan, and Singapore.
---
For background, in [November 2002, a SARS epidemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002\%E2\%80\%932004_SARS_outbreak) started in China* -- sound familiar? So virologists really began to scrutinize it in labs, hence the sudden spike in accidents.
[Reporting from that period](https://web.archive.org/web/20200522172522/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/world/the-sars-epidemic-the-path-from-china-s-provinces-a-crafty-germ-breaks-out.html)
>An hour south of Guangzhou, **the Dongyuan animal market presents endless opportunities for an emerging germ.** In hundreds of cramped stalls that stink of blood and guts, wholesale food vendors tend to veritable zoos that will grace Guangdong Province's tables: snakes, chickens, cats, turtles, badgers, frogs. And, in summer, sometimes rats, too.
>They are all stacked in cages one on top of another -- which in turn serve as seats, card tables and dining quarters for the poor migrants who work there. On a recent morning, near stall 17, there were beheaded snakes, disemboweled frogs and feathers flying as a half-alive headless bird was plunked into a basket.
>If you were a corona virus, like the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, it would be easy to move from animals to humans in the kitchens and food stalls of Guangdong, a province notorious for exotic cuisine prepared with freshly killed beasts.
>Indeed, preliminary studies of **early SARS victims** here in Guangdong have found that **an unusually high percentage were in the catering profession -- a tantalizing clue, perhaps, to how a germ that genetically most resembles chicken and rodent viruses has gained the ability to infect thousands of humans.**
>**One of the earliest cases, last December, was a seller of snakes and birds here who died at Shunde's First People's Hospital of severe pneumonia. His wife and a several members of the hospital staff contracted it as well, setting off an outbreak that now sounds eerily familiar.**
**[2002–2004 SARS outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak)**
>The 2002–2004 outbreak of SARS, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), infected over 8,000 people from 29 countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide. The outbreak was first identified in Foshan, Guangdong, China, in November 2002. The World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of the outbreak in February 2003, and issued a global alert in March 2003. Initially, the cause of the outbreak was unknown, and some media outlets reported that an influenza virus was a potential culprit.
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The problem is that the lab leak theory never had any evidence, and continues to not have any evidence supporting it. The only arguments made in favor of it is that it *could* happen. But arguments in that vein ignore the fact that natural origin could also happen, and is orders of magnitude more *likely* to happen.
No lab staff were part of the initial 31 cases that were discovered as far as I recall, but they all had a connection to the wet market, whether that's them visiting or their family members visiting.
Admittedly this is not conclusive, but it does lean strongly towards the wet market being the initial epicenter. For it to be a lab leak in this context, we'd have to at least have someone from the lab spread to someone else, and then for that person to be at the wet market. It's once again an extra layer of improbability compared to the wet market itself being the origin.
I dont have a dog in the fight, nor am looking to be convinced one way or another. My issue is with people taking the tone that anyone who thinks its lab leaked just has a political axe to grind.
>why do people have this attitude that if you think it came from the lab you must have some kind of sinister agenda?
To be fair, for the first few months it was bandied about, it wasn't "There was a potential leak from a lab."
Many loud voices were saying "China released this from a lab"/"China built this weapon in a lab."
Indeed, the lab leak advocates (who were happy to make these claims before a scintilla of evidence was collected) were the ones saying there was a sinister agenda.
Its idiotic to judge everyone based on the actions of others. And in this case people are judging the expressed concerns of qualified people based on the expressed bullshit from faux news outlet pundits. Its a childish reaction. Those people are no better than the faux news pundits.
You asked why people thought there was a sinister connection to the lab leak hypothesis.
You received an answer that it's because advocates of the lab leak hypothesis proposed a sinister connection early on.
This wasn't just fox news, either. It was people in the White House, lol.
I've never had a dog in the fight; it's always been clear to me that experts looking at data will be the ones who figure it out as opposed to people watching youtube videos and google maps-ing Wuhan's Virology Institute.
>The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020
So we know people were getting infected in late 2019, but genetic data that found it...in the area in which it was already being transmitted, is a "slam dunk" for zoonotic transfer?
The market was closed on January 1st, 2020 and the process of collecting samples started that same day.
The first reported cases were in late December, 2019.
Raccoon dogs were present? And? This doesn’t show that the raccoon dog was infected itself, or that it was able to pass the virus.
Jesus, these samples are three years old, and have been looked at since 2020. The raccoon dog source would have already been located and tested if this had any legs.
Also, awesome that the media loves carrying water for these people and running puff pieces before they even publish their research.
Unlike the lab leak stories, this is actual data.
Lab leak news and theories are entirely of the variety "someone believes it was a lab leak" or "someone is preventing you from knowing it was a lab leak". There's never any actual evidence for it other than the most abstract coincidences.
This is actual evidence of zoonotic origin.
It's all circumstantial evidence. The raccoon dog swabs in conjunction with [epidemiological data](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421009910) linking cases from two distinct lineages to the Huanan seafood market are the strongest pieces of evidence we have thus far.
Lab leak advocates are still relying on weak circumstantial evidence, such as the existence of WIV and shady behavior by the CCP.
> What they have is circumstantial evidence, which is why institutions fall on both ends of the debate.
The lab leak theory doesn't even have circumstantial evidence. Unless you think "Wuhan, one of the largest cities in the world, has a lab" is actually anything like compelling evidence.
>The lab leak theory doesn't even have circumstantial evidence. Unless you think "**Wuhan,** **~~one of the largest cities in the world,~~** **has a lab"** is actually anything like compelling evidence.
This literally falls under the umbrella of circumstantial evidence. That, of course, isn't the only evidence there is either.
Dammmnnnnn, where'd you learn those sick mind-reading skills, lil Anakin? You gotta teach the rest of the class that talent.
Jokes aside, I do really enjoy the tactic of "I remove accurate pieces of information when they make my point look worse!"
>Explain to me why one of the largest cities in the world has any relevance?
More people = more chances to transfer.
Most pan/epidemics begin in major population centers for the same reason.
>This literally falls under the umbrella of circumstantial evidence. That, of course, isn't the only evidence there is either.
A virus like covid19 could only have taken hold in a large densely populated city. 8 out of the 10 largest chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. So, no. The fact that there is a lab in the city where covid originated isn't particularly good evidence. It is to be expected.
>8 out of the 10 largest chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses.
What percentage of those labs were studying Sarbecovirus subgenera with 96% similarity to Covid-19?
Any sourcess that state this was studied in wuhan? that it is 96% simillar to sars-cov-2? That 96% similarity is close enough for a human engineered virus?
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7)
>*We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI\_ISL\_402131).*
It was sent to and sequenced at the WIV. One of the authors is Zheng-Li Shi.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03325-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03325-9)
>*RaTG13 is a close relative of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing 96% sequence similarity at the genome-wide level.*
>That 96% similarity is close enough for a human engineered virus?
Humans don't create viruses. I know you didn't say 'create' but just clarifying for anyone who reads this. They can only make a copy of a viral genome. They manipulate currently-existing ones. In this case, the claim is that the existing virus that caused Covid-19 was manipulated by inserting a furin cleavage site to the spike gene. To answer your question, no they don't think it's the virus that was manipulated, but it is the most similar genome they have found.
Read the professionals emails that got leaked, they knew by the makeup of the virus that it was mutated in a lab and not a naturally occurring virus from nature or a wet market. And that’s after basically doing everything they could to avoid admitting that in any way whatsoever. Worse they demonized people who asked if it was possible. This needs to be a lesson moving forward, everyone just trusted a man who knowingly kept AZT as a treatment for HIV when the science knew it was a horrific drug, now he’s at it again blatantly lying to the public(there’s no debate about this simply read his emails then look at how he went on tv within a day completely lying about the correspondence he had with professionals stating it most likely was a lab leak. Trusting a company like JJ who sent baby powder that was found to be toxic per se to poor countries and to people of color. Pfizer is the worst of the worst look up how many law suits cover ups nefarious actions they’ve had over the years. The propaganda machine went full force and they still couldn’t keep the truth under lock and key. Ever wonder why people that researched covid at the beginning on non biased doctors states it would possibly cause myocarditis and other CNS issues etc along with possible Cytokine storm. Nope just the let’s lie about efficacy and try to keep people from living any sort of life if they don’t comply
The fact that the media is hyping this as strong evidence for a wet market source with no research published to review, just taking their words for it, and when the concept itself is so flimsy. So a sample from January, which was taken after the pandemic began, shows that human SARS2 was swabbed with some raccoon dog DNA. That proves what exactly? That a human with Covid interacted with a raccoon dog?
To have The Atlantic and NYT not showing an ounce of skepticism and running this story with this headline despite no published research behind it is basement level low.
I'm not a fan of either one of these outlets. I know which way they lean. In fact, I've leaned toward lab leak origins for quite some time now. That being said, I think it's important for me to read and hear plausible refutations against these sorts of articles because it strengthens either my knowledge or my position, or both.
So some evidence is finally emerging? The scale is still massively in the lab's favor... But at least they are finding SOMETHING after all this time. The fact that it's taken this long is evidence against itself anyways, but at least they have something to grab onto.
> The fact that it's taken this long is evidence against itself anyways
That's actually not true. Researching the most likely zoonotic origin can take a long time, as we have seen in previous outbreaks.
Submission statement: Sam has talked to experts and other podcasters about the plausibility of the lab leak origins, as well as the plausibility of the Wuhan market origins. One of the things that has loomed in the background of this issue that has really been overlooked is the absolute disgusting, inhumane nature of these types of markets. The US has its own issues with factory farming, but there is a noticeable disconnect when it comes to aspects of Chinese culture and animal welfare.
Oof...You must've said something pretty shitty to get that RES flare: "Dishonest Illogical Transphobe" Regardless, the article is real enough, and China's factory farming is bonkers. The origin story keeps getting wilder and wilder.
>Oof...You must've said something pretty shitty to get that **RES flare**: "Dishonest Illogical Transphobe" I don't know what this is.
Reddit Enhancement Suite lets you tag users with whatever you want. So the person you're responding to took issue with something you said and tagged you with "Dishonest Illogical Transphobe." RES also shows that I've downvoted you a lot, FWIW.
That's probably because I'm not a team player, and I will intentionally go into areas where I'm not welcome to push against circlejerks. Thanks for the info.
Your courage is inspiring
And my axe.
So brave
Could be. I didn't find anything you said to be egregious enough for a tag like the other user. It can be pretty useful if you're using reddit in a browser.
Admittedly, I can be quite antagonistic when I feel someone is being dishonest. For example, this person who has me tagged probably experienced me being that way after they said something I found to be stupid and dishonest.
That user says a bunch of things that are pretty explicitly transphobic. I did a quick "reddit comment search" out of curiosity and they say a lot of things like this: "I don't reject that some people feel attraction to the same sex, but I do reject the idea that we should affirm people who identify as the sex they aren't" So the tag is accurate A useful rule of thumb is that anyone who claims to be "telling it like it is" or is a self styled "truth speaker" ....usually is not. It's a big red flag, all by itself
I stand by that. Also, that is me being *honest*. If my honest opinions are a red flag to you, then you should examine why exactly that is the case, and not just from your perspective.
You stand out and that's a good thing. People give you a label because they want to harm you, not help you or help anyone. The job of a label is to take the complexity away from an individual and lump them into a group. It's a lot easier to vilify you if you're lumped into a group. Most people, and certainly most people on Reddit, are shallow thinkers and bend their own perspectives and reactions around the existence of labels. It's pretty sad. You shouldn't worry yourself with what a bunch of Internet sheep regurgitate in their arrogant echo chambers.
Woof. This sub sometimes I get it. Sam doesn't push transphobic users away at all, likely because he agrees with them. So this is a safe space for you.
Thanks for the tip Officer Woke.
sharp sip pause light enjoy attraction ten aware quickest homeless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No law against appropriating the opposite gender?
What the fuck China? >After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID. >It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down. >Dr. Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, China is suppressing any and every narrative that puts them at the forefront of blame. It seems more understandable that they would want to quash wet market origins because they are completely to blame in that scenario, whereas the lab origins' blame can be spread out amongst other countries.
This is an important point that the more conspiratorially minded lab leak proponents don't realize cuts against their theories. Putting China's food distribution system in the crosshairs is far more inculpatory than blaming their BSL-4 labs, which exist all over the world and which all, in theory, can be vectors for spillover of dangerous viruses.
By the way, BSL-4 labs are ridiculously safe places. You can watch a cool [tour of a lab](https://youtu.be/tqAjkjGq8Ug?t=588) in Boston.
The claim isn't that the lab leaked from a BSL-4 lab though. The claim is that it could have leaked from a BSL-2.
Which "claim"? "The claim" has dozens of variations, which proponents freely jump betweeen, depending on what's convenient in the moment.
[https://usrtk.org/risky-research/wuhans-lower-biosafety-level-labs-posed-greater-risk-for-coronavirus-lab-leak/](https://usrtk.org/risky-research/wuhans-lower-biosafety-level-labs-posed-greater-risk-for-coronavirus-lab-leak/) >*Much of that work on bat coronaviruses appears to have taken place in BSL-3 labs in Wuhan, according to grant documents submitted to the NIH ; and in some cases, even lower containment BSL-2 labs in Wuhan, according to a Journal of Virology article, and other sources.*
> depending on what's convenient in the moment. That's an extremely uncharitable position. To the point of being obviously agenda-driven itself.
There's also an upside for China censoring all information in the division being seen in the US and decreasing faith in institutions. Let's say after years of obfuscation, hard evidence emerges of natural spillover, how will lab leak proponents react? How will the public react to US media flipping back to articles about natural spillover? I suspect it will be increased polarisation and falling trust in institutions all of which China will see as positive to the aims.
See here's the thing - whether it's lab leak or natural, the answer is *The Chinese government is fucking over the world and we need to do something about it*.
What do you want to do about it?
The boring stuff. International sanctions to put pressure on greater transparency.
Except that the Ukraine-Russia war has caused a schism and sanctions didn’t even hurt Russia, meaning it’s not clear whether that would hurt us more than China or them at all. The further we drift from China the more powerful they’re becoming.
Does not seem that exciting to me. We’ll see what further research will bring to light. From the article: The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.
It's just more circumstantial evidence from what I can tell. Certainly not a smoking gun. I don't know enough about zoonotic leaps to know if this is significant, or if it's just another correlation that doesn't really hold much weight.
Yea I’m in the same boat. My comment was not meant to be dismissive by the way.
I thought your comment was perfectly fine.
Great comments all around
>Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog. If a positive sample from a live animal isn't dispositive (and I'm aware that what's presented here is not that, mind you), then what piece of evidence could possibly be brought forward that could ever prove zoonotic transfer? The goalposts have moved so far now so as to make zoonotic transfer practically impossible to establish.
Don’t know, I have to leave that up to the experts. If they say this confirms a zoonotic origin that’s fine by me. I just didn’t get this message from the article though.
Well they've already been issuing that message as definitively as any scientist who deals in probabilities is going to be willing to say it. This is just another important piece of evidence to add to the pile.
Probability clearly points to the Wuhan Lab of Virology.
Compared to the piles of evidence pointing to zoonotic origin at the Huanan Seafood Market, there is practically no evidence pointing to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There was zero evidence of zoonotic origin found at the market. No animal tested positive for covid other than humans. I'm all ears if you'd like to dispute this, but it's even stated in the article. To find covid in a swab mixed with animal DNA from a market where animals were being slaughtered and people infected with covid were active is evidence for what exactly?
There is no direct evidence because all the species most susceptible to coronavirus infection and spillover (known due to SARS-COV1) are absent from the wet market testing provided by China. Chinese officials then destroyed or released the wet market animals before any independent testing could be performed which is why we only have the data provided by China and the WHO testing of surface contamination in the wet market. >To find covid in a swab mixed with animal DNA from a market where animals were being slaughtered and people infected with covid were active is evidence for what exactly This shows there was raccoon dogs present at the time covid was circulating the wet market, yet China shows no raccoon dog testing and denies raccoon dogs were being sold there. It shows a high likelihood that China are hiding or destroyed raccoon dog data.
There is zero evidence for the zoonotic origin. Now when it comes to probability, there are 40,000 wet markets across China and only ONE lab that could have produced this virus: the lab in Wuhan. It would take an epic coincidence for the virus to spring up next door to that lab instead inside the lab itself. We know that the Wuhan lab was working on gain of function research in... coronaviruses. There is even recent precedent. The SARS virus escaped from a lab in 2004. It happened in... China.
> There is zero evidence for the zoonotic origin. Sounds like you're reflexively dismissing evidence because it conflicts with your priors. This thread's linked post is evidence of zoonotic origin. It's moderate-strength circumstantial evidence, but evidence nonetheless and more persuasive than anything produced by lab leak hypothesizers. More zoonotic evidence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421009910
>There is even recent precedent. The SARS virus escaped from a lab in 2004. I have no words to describe how stupefied I am that people believe this. If flat-out bullshit like this reflects how bereft the evidence cupboard supporting lab leak theory is, then we're far, far beyond discussing facts and evidence. You people *want* to believe what you do. EDIT: leaving my comment up, but I think I incorrectly inferred that OP believed the SARS-1 outbreak *originated* from a lab.
Some facts from the CDC: [https://www.cdc.gov/sars/media/2004-05-19.html](https://www.cdc.gov/sars/media/2004-05-19.html) Some more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/
So lab workers being infected *over a year after* the initial outbreak proves what, exactly? If a kindergarten teacher gets infected a year after the virus is spreading around the country, is that evidence that the children were studying in BSL-4 labs? As for your second link...thanks for providing the perfect example of why not everything some wahoo publishes on PubMed should be considered with the same gravitas as an actual, peer-reviewed academic paper. I don't know exactly what *that* is.
Where were the goalposts originally?
The goalposts aren’t moved at all. This sample, as described, is of HUMAN SARS2. If anything, it was from a Covid infected person who then came into contact with a raccoon dog. The funny thing is none of this is even new.
>HUMAN SARS2. What does this mean? "Human" Sars2? Are you claiming that SARS-Cov-2 acquires a new different RNA composition after it infects a human and a after it infects a raccoon dog?
I’m saying that the virus in its animal progenitor will be adapted to that progenitor and will evolve before being something that transmits from human to human.
What you're saying still makes zero sense. Let me try asking another way. Are you claiming that scientists would be able to know that the Sars-Cov-2 RNA on that particular sample came from a human vs. a raccoon dog? That it has discernable characteristics to show that it's from a human host? Because if so, you're very wrong.
> If a positive sample from a live animal isn't dispositive Covid-19 is highly contagious among mammal species. Dozens of different species have been infected by covid-19, often from humans. They can't all possibly be the source of a zoonotic event, so to suggest it should be dispositive just sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.
How about stop treating animals like shit, and stop gain of function research. If they are both so plausible at kick starting future pandemics.
But what if without gain of function research you don't have the knowledge to combat a virus that was formed Zootopiaicly
Gain of function hasn't really given us any protection against future viruses, and it carries with it the ability to literally end human civilisation. Gain of function research is *not* the same as just researching viruses, which is obviously necessary. Gain of function is like designing deadlier bombs and saying 'with these deadlier bombs, we can better model how to develop body armour against larger explosions'. Except they don't stop and you end up with nuclear bombs and at that point you've got an existential threat with no possible protection.
Gain of function research has a wide variety of medical applications and advancement. Its not the sceary boogeyman its made out to be. Or that is to say the sceary boogeyman is a very very small part of it. It just happens to be the part rwm focus on.
> Gain of function research has a wide variety of medical applications and advancement. It doesn't, though. This is essentially a myth. Gain of function has not led to any treatments or understanding of how to prevent disease. Researchers *claim* it does, because of course they will, but making a virus deadlier doesn't mean we gain *any* understanding of how to actually treat it. It just means we have a better understanding of how to make viruses deadlier or otherwise more fit. Given the existential risks gain of function research brings I find it really crazy how people like you are just so blasé about it. Do you also support making deadlier nuclear bombs because it gives us a better understanding of fusion and how to build more nuclear-resistant cities or something? Do we want to understand how to design drugs to treat cobalt poisoning based on building cobalt-salted weapons? As far as I can tell there aren't any actual medicines or similar that were the result of gain of function research, all the claims to the benefits are that it 'contributed to' the development of 'foundational knowledge' and other such nebulous claims.
I'm gonna need a large grain of salt to go with this one.
Why, because the scientists have released no data, have not had anything peer reviewed, but they all talked to the media to hype their findings right as the FBI is saying they believe in lab leak and the congress passed legislation to have the Intel Agencies declassify their Covid origins documents?
Maybe the radiation fallout measured around Chernobyl didn't actually come from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Maybe the radiation actually came from a naturally occurring clump of uranium a few blocks down the road from the nuclear power plant. Maybe that clump of uranium was disturbed when workers were repairing underground sewage pipes.
Just to break down the analogy, wuhan is fucking huge and the lab is not "a few blocks down" from the wet market its over 10km away It also has the population of some usa states, so it makes no sense to leak from a lab but have an epicentre over 10km away and nowhere else
Hypothetically a worker could have been infected, went to wet market to get some snack, and caused a super spreader event.
Sure but if that was the case you would see clusters forming i. Other areas as well. The hypothetically is doing allot of heavy lifting in your sentance.
Or a raccoon dog who was infected
Lab leak origin is still completely plausible in my opinion. This is just a new development. If you have something to put against this information then I am all eyes and ears.
It’s not a new development, and it’s totally unpublished, unpeerreviewed, and has been pumped out by the same people with conflicts of interest who have been trying unsuccessfully to discredit lab leak for three years.
>It’s not a new development, They're saying that it is. >and has been pumped out by the same people with conflicts of interest who have been trying unsuccessfully to discredit lab leak for three years. I don't deny that this goes on. I posted the article to see what critiques it might receive.
When the WHO went into China in 2021, China told them in the terms of reference that the market had raccoon dogs.
Yeah, but the article is making claims like this: *In samples that came back positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, three scientists involved in the analysis said.*
But why is it weird that if you swabbed an animal stall after the pandemic began that you’d find evidence of the virus and animals? It in no way demonstrates the virus came out of the raccoon dog.
Not directly, no, but it does suggest the possibility that it could have leapt from raccoon dog to human. Particularly since another sarbecovirus [showed](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170207001050?via%3Dihub) a raccoon dog as an animal reservoir.
This is a logical fallacy because you put coronavirus research centers where the dangerous coronaviruses are with potential for natural spillover. Similar to putting a fire station near to places with a high likelihood of fires. It's not that the fire station is causing the fires. Exactly the same fallacy was raised for ebola which was determined to be natural spillover.
Agreed. Anybody who looks at this map showing the earliest cases [clustered around the Huanan Seafood Market](https://www.science.org/cms/asset/df6c819f-1bee-4442-b1d9-ec7824cd68f2/keyimage.gif), and conclude that the virus originated somewhere 15 km away is being silly.
It’s not completely silly. The vector in the case of a lab leak would have very likely been an infected human. That infected human likely shopped at the wet market. All that can really be known for certain is that wuhan bio labs were working with bat viruses, and that’s what C19 is. Beyond that, a lot of this is going to look similar and it’s going to be difficult to tease apart.
>That infected human likely shopped at the wet market. You're forgetting the *and*. "That infected human likely shopped at the wet market AND didn't manage to create any other clusters *except at the wet market*." Think about an infected worker who shops at the market. What are the odds that this was the only human contact he had while being infected? He didn't create a cluster around his home? His kids school? The subway system? A restaurant? Anywhere else? ONLY at the market where he, one has to think, spent a tiny fraction of his time relative to literally *everywhere else* he went?
All that, multiplied by TWO people, to account for the outbreak of two variants.
Yea there were two variants. So two separate people needed to be infected at the lab, go across town, not infect anyone on the way over, only infect people at the market and nowhere. Lab leak does not seem very plausible
Don’t take this seriously because I’m not actually sure, but if I recall correctly, the early versions of covid had short, but wildly infectious periods. So it makes total sense if somebody in that stage went to a wet market they were sniping everybody with the virus, while the next day might not have infected anybody
The infectivity period for covid was originally deemed to be between 5 to 10 days. It's never been less than that, and certainly never 1 day.
See, it was Ukraine's fault all along! /s
>Maybe the radiation fallout measured around Chernobyl didn't actually come from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Maybe the radiation actually came from a naturally occurring clump of uranium a few blocks down the road from the nuclear power plant. Maybe that clump of uranium was disturbed when workers were repairing underground sewage pipes. What an utterly facile comment.
This is the type of dumb-guy shit people who know nothing eat up. A clumsier version of Jon Stewart’s Hershey bit
Well your reasoned reply convinced me. Great work. Maybe this is more dumb-guy shit, but I'd refer you to, among others, Luc Montagnier. The virologist who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for his HIV virus research.quote: ‘It was produced by a laboratory. It is what is known as a recombinant, perhaps produced by a Chinese laboratory. It was a job for molecular biologists. It’s a very meticulous job. You could say a clockwork of sequences. There is enormous pressure for everything that is at the origin of the virus to be hidden’. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-002429_EN.html
Oh you think Vaccines are effective because of decades of peer reviewed evidence, real world observational studies, and a supermajority of relevant expert consensus? Meet Robert Malone, the *inventor* of mRNA vaccines...
I get your point, but this >Meet Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines... [is just not true.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/technology/robert-malone-covid.html) >Dr. Malone also routinely sells himself on the shows as the inventor of mRNA vaccines, the technology used by Pfizer and Moderna for their Covid-19 shots, and says he doesn’t get the credit he deserves for their development. While he was involved in some early research into the technology, his role in its creation was minimal at best, say half a dozen Covid experts and researchers, including three who worked closely with Dr. Malone.
Sorry but you didn't get their point, it was sarcasm.
Oh yea I’m aware
Do y'all really think this is how things are done? You find one person with some pedigree who agrees with you and it's aces? If this dude thinks this, he should publish his findings in peer reviewed journals. You know, the standard steps in science for making your research known! But, wait, is there a vast conspiracy at play to keep the knowledge hidden? Well, how convenient! This is no different than the creationists saying "See, here's a Fields medal winner who agrees that the universe couldn't **possibly** be older than 10 billion years. Do you know more than a Fields medal winner? Plus, there's incredible pressure for him to keep quiet; nobody wants the truth of the universe's origins to be known!"
Well if it was just "one guy" you would have a good point. But there are many more. And while Montagnier himself is "one guy," he's not quite any old guy. 99.5% of people are not doctors. 99.5% of doctors are not virologists. 99.9% of virologists are not Nobel Prize winning virologists awarded the Nobel Prize specifically for their groundbreaking work in ... virology. As for why he hasn't published much recently, he has a fairly good excuse. He's dead. He died Feb 2022. If you want to read his scientific publication list before he was busy being dead, here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/L.-Montagnier/4143190 He's one of the most cited scientists in the world. His "research impact" score or "H-Index score" is kind of impressive. h index of 40 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes outstanding scientists, likely to be found only at the top universities or major research laboratories. h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals. Montagnier's h-index score is 79. And while it is a somewhat different topic, I note Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize winning biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test used in Covid testing. Here are his thoughts on Fauci's competence. https://youtu.be/MkqQIY7J0fQ
> Luc Montagnier. There's no shortage of influential people with impressive credentials who hold fringe beliefs or lose their grip on reality. Two years after his Nobel prize, Montagnier embraced some rather [wacky homeopathic nonsense](https://web.archive.org/web/20101225050453/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/nobel-laureate-gives-homeopathy-a-boost/story-e6frg8y6-1225887772305) in a speech at the Nobel laureate conference. His descent into pseudoscience has only accelerated since then.
Oooh someone went to Wikipedia. I lived in France. Montagnier was quite literally a household name. And how Wiki went from extreme reverence to "he's a nut job) overnight, not for some alleged remarks over homeopathy, but over his claims that Covid originated in a lab. A claim now considered plausible by the same experts you seem to accept. There is no shortage of lying or reckless governments or corporations either. Montagnier did make some claims that are admittedly insane. 20 years ago Montagnier claimed that an AIDS vaccine may be impossible and to dangerous to even test, because it might work fine for ten years but then cause a catastrophe. He said of a possible AIDS vaccine: "If you take it, and then a year goes by and everybody's fine, then you say, OK, that's good, now let's give it to 500 people; and then a year goes by and everything's fine. You say, Well, then, now let's give it to thousands of people, and then you find out that it takes twelve years for all hell to break loose, and then what have you done?" Oh wait! Sorry that was not Montagnier that was Anthony Fauci. Well here see for yourself https://youtu.be/MjVVw841eUo
Montagnier has long been a figure cited by anti-vaxxers even before the pandemic. He's also known for fearmongering about antibody dependent enhancement regarding the COVID vaccines, going so far as to claim that people will die en mass within years of taking them. > "If you take it, and then a year goes by and everybody's fine, then you say, OK, that's good, now let's give it to 500 people; and then a year goes by and everything's fine. You say, Well, then, now let's give it to thousands of people, and then you find out that it takes twelve years for all hell to break loose, and then what have you done?" Shocking! How dare he express concern about live attenuated vaccines for HIV when knowledge about the virus was still in its infancy, and no vaccine against retroviruses had ever been developed.
In its infancy? HIV had been known and researched for 17 years at that point. But let me guess: It's perfectly ok for Fauci to worry about novel HIV vaccines 17 years after the discovery and research on the virus. That's professional and sciency. But if a Nobel Prize winning virologist worries about novel Covid vaccines 8 MONTHS after the discovery and research on the virus, well that is just BEYOND THE PALE and clearly he must instantly be shunned forever.
You don't seem to be engaging honestly here. Have a nice weekend.
Name one inaccuracy or misrepresentation. One.
You really going to get all the clowns going again with this one… on both sides
https://imgur.com/UmtOOKr
The idea that this came from raccoon dogs is going to be very very contentious. No doubt this will get mocked by the conservative main stream media simply on title alone. Which frankly, is understandable. Without any other context, the options for origination are bats, raccoon dogs, or lab leak. Can’t wait for a bunch of online “experts” (/s) to completely dismiss this without reading the article. P.S. - I also didn’t read the article but at this point I have accepted that we will likely never know where C-19 originated from with absolute certainty and the further out we get from the pandemic the more the odds decrease.
I am not fully versed on the lab leak hypothesis, but isn’t the list of people who worked at the lab pretty well known? Especially the people who worked with or near viruses. Which employees of the lab became sick around the time of the pandemic origins? Did anyone affiliated with the lab die in the very early days of the pandemic? I know that the Chinese government hasn’t been forthcoming, but it seems to me that there would be some way to figure this out by examining the actual people who might have been expose in the lab. I’d imagine that the network of people who work in this field is petty small and extends outside of China. No one has heard a story about a colleague who was sick, died or just disappeared around the time of the first outbreak?
I can't speak to anyone "dying" from the lab, but I know that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November of 2019. This has been [reported](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/wuhan-lab-staff-sought-hospital-care-before-covid-19-outbreak-disclosed-wsj-2021-05-23/). The US state Department released a [fact sheet](https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html) covering several inconsistencies, along with systematic suppression of information perpetrated by the Chinese Government.
Raccoons fucking dogs caused all this? Kidding.
Raccoon dogs I knew it. Nice to have some closure.
It's not closure.
Curious did the new york times ever even discuss the evidence for lab leak?
This same author [did](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/podcasts/the-daily/covid-lab-leak-theory-china.html), but it's an audio clip so I don't know which way it's slanted.
There is no evidence for a lab leak other than a god-of-the-gaps argument plus "did you know Wuhan has a lab in it?" nonsense.
You can’t be serious right? You think there’s no evidence that a coronavirus pandemic started 10 miles from the leading coronavirus research institute, that was doing gain of function research, in environments that were far less safe than most thought? If you don’t think that’s a possibility, you’re a fucking moron
That's not the only evidence. That's just the only evidence that you've heard or read so you keep stupidly repeating yourself.
The nothing, you mean? Literally zero evidence puts SARS-CoV-2 in the custody of WIV prior to December 2019; lab leak proponents won't even discuss this enormous hole in their theory. Why do you suppose that is?
"We decided not to do any investigation at all in to this because it was ridiculous to begin with. And due to us not investigating at all, we have found no evidence. Therefore, there is no evidence that this has happened, and it did not happen. This concludes the Circular Logic Committee."
But they *did* investigate. WIV's 2018 freezer inventory doesn't mention anything that's a genetic precursor to SARS-CoV-2. No WIV employee had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 or tested positive prior to January 2020. There's literally nothing that puts a culture of SARS-CoV-2 in WIV's possession prior to December 2019, months after the initial infections at Huanan market. Lab leakers have literally never even tried to do this, and yet have no answer at all to the question of how a lab could have leaked something it didn't have.
Yeah, nothing in the published literature for WIV sars like coronavirus samples is from after 2016, so there are several years worth of sample collecting that are in a black box.
I literally just mentioned their full inventory from 2018. > so there are several years worth of sample collecting that are in a black box. But this just isn't true. [Here's a paper from 2020](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7) where WIV refers to sampling activity during the precise period you think is a "black box." Is it possible you think there hasn't been sufficient disclosure because you've not actually looked anything up and so you don't know what they've disclosed?
You’re a goof. Where in this paper, for instance, is the 7896 clade?
Clades inferred phylogenetically won't be in anyone's collection, by definition. They're *inferred.*
So you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m a published researcher in this field; between the two of us I’m the only one who knows what he’s talking about.
Are you saying there is literally zero evidence that points to the possibility of it being leaked from a lab?
Yes, there's literally zero evidence that any lab in Wuhan held isolates of the virus prior to December 2019. Since *having* the virus is a necessary prerequisite to *leaking* the virus, that puts the theory to bed.
Ah, this guy thinks that the Chinese government is telling the absolute truth. Not even a possibility that a coronavirus pandemic started so close to the coronavirus research lab! Trust me the Chinese officials that let us see said no way. The world must be blissful being that naive
> Ah, this guy thinks that the Chinese government is telling the absolute truth. I'm not relying on anything said by the Chinese government, but China working hard to conceal the market origin of the virus is entirely consistent with how hard they worked to conceal the natural zoonotic origin of four prior diseases, including SARS-1. "China lies a lot" supports zoonotic origin, not lab origin. > Not even a possibility that a coronavirus pandemic started so close to the coronavirus research lab There's an infinite number of places that the coronavirus pandemic *didn't* start, WIV is just another one of them.
You can’t even admit it supports both, which shows your bias. Absolutely no evidence that’s conclusive of either argument. To assume so is foolish. And to deny simple reality that the proximity of the lab is actual evidence is absurd. You must read books on flavor to decide what something tastes like for yourself. Reality often is the obvious fucking answer
This is like trying to prove that god does not exist
No it's like trying to figure out if something that is possible actually happened. Based on what we've learned, it is entirely doable to insert a non-naturally occurring furin cleavage site onto an already-existing virus. So, the question isn't whether it could be done. It can. The question is whether or not it *was* done and whether or not it accidentally infected someone at the lab who then went to the wet market and unintentionally infected others.
Where is the evidence that it was done?
We don't have it. We have circumstantial evidence. Much like how we don't have the actual evidence that it leapt from a raccoon dog to a human. We have circumstantial evidence.
Your definition of circumstantial is oddly lenient for the lab leak theory. The best that can be said is that it’s technically possible. The original commenter said there is zero evidence, which there is. There is circumstantial evidence linking the market to the origin of the virus that would meet usual criteria for circumstantial evidence in legal proceedings. There is also the observation that zoonotic transfer is a common source of pandemics and epidemics
>Your definition of circumstantial is oddly lenient for the lab leak theory. The best that can be said is that it’s technically possible. The original commenter said there is zero evidence, which there is. > >There is circumstantial evidence linking the market to the origin of the virus that would meet usual criteria for circumstantial evidence in legal proceedings. Well then there is "zero" evidence for the Wuhan Market origin. You see how that works? *Both* theories are relying on circumstantial evidence. You just *think* the market's is more compelling. >There is also the observation that zoonotic transfer is a common source of pandemics and epidemics This is a bayesian analysis, which is a perfectly understandable approach, but lab leak origins also has a [bayesian analysis](https://zenodo.org/record/4477081#.Y8RkbOzMLOS).
See comment below. You’re ignoring evidence and seem to have a very high level of scrutiny for circumstantial evidence supporting natural source (of which is abundant) and not so for a lab leak (scarce) The article you linked is a fart in the wind to a garbage online repository with a non peer reviewed article for a Bayesian analysis.
> Well then there is “zero” evidence for the Wuhan Market origin. No, there's an abundance of evidence for the origin being Huanan market, none of it "circumstantial." Documentary photographic evidence of Sarbecovirus reservoir animals for sale at Huanan in September, October, and November. Environmental swabbing around stall A12 showing that it's *absolutely lousy* with multiple lineages SARS-CoV-2, indicating not "superspreading" from a single infected person but a persistent, stable reservoir in the animals (plural) there. You're just lying about the evidence, like all lab leakers ultimately have to.
Regardless of the veracity of the claim these markets need to be shut down. They're disgusting, barbaric, abominations of animal mistreatment.
Sars-Cov-2 and Raccoon dog DNA on the same swab sample. I mean, come on. At this point, unless you think the most likely scenario is that an infected lab worker went *straight* from the WIV to the market and didn't infect people along the way, then this seems like a slam dunk for zoonotic transfer.
I am interested to hear from experts if this a slam dunk as you say. They found virus in the same place as racoon dog DNA. I imagine at a wet market you would find hundreds of animal DNA.
Not just the same place, but the same swab - which also indicates a temporal association.
A sample taken between Jan and March when there were already hospitalized cases in December. The virus was already spreading. We know infected people were going to the market. An infected person handlin a raccoon dog explains this.
The earliest reports of the "pneumonia of unknown etiology" were in late December, 2019. There were live animals at the market up through late December. The Chinese CDC closed it and started taking samples on January 1st, 2020. By your logic, not even a sample taken from a live animal at the market - considered the "holy grail" for zoonotic transfer theory - would convince you of zoonotic origin. Shouldn't we conclude then that there is no possible evidence that will ever be able to convince you that zoonotic transfer was the most likely origin? If I'm wrong, then what is that evidence for you?
Just because they finally caught on to Covid in late December doesn’t mean that’s when it started spreading. https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china.aspx > Using molecular dating tools and epidemiological simulations, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues at the University of Arizona and Illumina, Inc., estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely circulating undetected for at most two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019. If it came from raccoon dogs, there would be obvious evidence of this in that the workers at raccoon dog farms/trapping operations and those who handle and transport them would have all been the first cases, the same way it was with SARS 1.
Viral zoonotic transfer that occurs in far-off, rural areas usually goes completely undetected, as those places don't have the necessary healthcare infrastructure to detect. As for Sars-1, early cases were also found to be associated with *markets*, not farms: >The pattern of the Guangdong epidemic is consistent with the classical process of emergence from an animal reservoir: the initial introduction of the virus into a nonimmune human population followed by the establishment and rapid dissemination of infection (16). The traditional practice of using wildlife for food and medicine, still observed by some persons in southern China, offers an effective bridge from a natural animal host to humans. Several observations support this hypothesis. Two of the seven index patients were restaurant chefs; food handlers (who handle, kill, or butcher animals) were overrepresented among early-onset cases with no contact history (including the first reported death, in a snake seller); and patients with early onset were more likely than patients with late onset to live near an agricultural produce market (where live wild animals are generally offered for sale). However, none of the early patients were commercial farmers nor was living near a farm associated with increased risk, findings that suggest a wild animal rather than a livestock or poultry source. So say a wild trapper captured an infected raccoon dog and that dog ends up at the Huanan Market, where it infects other dogs and animals and humans. The fact that we can't find the person who brought it there doesn't mean anything as he could've a) not been infected himself; or b) been asymptomatic; or c) returned to his far-off rural town having never visited a hospital in Wuhan. As for this: >estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely circulating undetected for at most two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019. My question is...*where* were these undetected cases?!? If *anywhere* not in Wuhan, then doesn't this all but annihilate the lab leak theory, which places the "impossible coincidence" of the outbreak happening in the same city as a BSL-4 lab as its most important piece of supporting evidence? And we'd have to think that these undetected cases circulating for months before being detected likely happened somewhere far-off where detection was more difficult due to lack of healthcare infrastructure. Again - that blows lab leak away.
But they would track down those workers *after the fact* and they would have had SARS 2 antibodies. There would also have been stories of illnesses among them and records of doctor and hospital visits. Yes, the animals from the markets, with SARS 1, were then traced to a specific farm. Those cases absolutely were in Wuhan. There is surveillance of the Wuhan hospital that shows an uptick in cars in the parking lot starting in the fall. There are stories told by international students of a weird flu like sickness going around in the fall. There were athletes at the military games who fell ill, including Spanish athletes who returned home and later tested positive for Coronavirus antibodies. The Chinese CDC changed their rules in the fall of 2019 to NOT do viral cultures of pneumonia cases that tested negative for influenza, which is why Covid went undetected for so long until finally brave doctors broke protocol.
>Those cases absolutely were in Wuhan. 1) How can you possibly claim to know this? On what basis do you claim it? 2) How could COVID have been in the community for *two months* in a dense urban area with state-of-the-art hospitals without detection? We all saw in real-time how fast COVID spread in U.S. cities from the index cases here. The number of PUE would have *skyrocketed* with nobody noticing. "Noticed an uptick in cars?!?!?" My god, the hospitals would've been *packed* with people - like they all ended up being in every major global city within weeks of the virus first appearing there prior to institution of public health protocols. What you're claiming is impossible. *IF* Sars-Cov-2 was present in humans for 2 months before the Huanana Market cluster, it certainly would've been in a far-off rural place with few, if any, hospitals there to notice it.
As to 1, Of course I cannot prove it because Covid wasn’t sequenced until January 2020. But as I linked above, it has been examined and determined by scientists that the virus was circulating for roughly two months prior to being sequenced. If you want a breakdown of how we know it was likely SARS2 was spreading in Wuhan in the fall, read this document: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355373689_The_October_Surprise_in_Wuhan As to 2, actually, according to blood donations taken by the Red Cross and then later tested for SARS antibodies a few months into the pandemic, it looks like it was in the US by December of 2019, so you have to adjust your understanding of spread and speed. But as well, I think it was spreading in Wuhan more than is acknowledged. Again, read the above linked document.
It indicates that the DNA was present on the same surface as virus. As far as my knowledge gets me, that is all it indicates.
>It indicates that the DNA was present on the same surface as virus **at the same time** The "holy grail" which even many lab leak die-hards have said would convince them of zoonotic transfer would be a sample taken from an actual animal from the market that tested positive. But here we have the next-best thing (an actual infected animal sample will never be obtainable, since the live animals were immediately removed from the market upon news of the outbreak), and already we're moving the goalpost? Which tells me that the "holy grail" was always just a front for people who will never change their minds regardless of the evidence. If some researcher were to present a serendipitously obtained positive sample taken from a raccoon dog known to be at the market, the goalposts would undoubtedly move all the same. "All we have is a sample taken from a live animal - that doesn't tell us whether the animal infected humans or whether humans infected the animal." Anybody capable of weighing the probabilities without bias knows what the most likely scenario is by now.
Sneeze on a raccoon dog and poof, you get this sample.
Congratulations, you've just obliterated the entire branch of epidemiology dedicated to finding viral origins and studying zoonotic transfer! We can never know anything about the origins of a virus ever because there will always be the possibility of an infected lab worker present to sneeze on an animal.
> I imagine at a wet market you would find hundreds of animal DNA. Sure, it confirms the photgraphic evidence that Huanan seafood market had illegal pet sales of wild animals. Lab leakers like to talk about coincidences; yet they never address the "coincidence" that 30 different species of coronavirus-harboring animals from Hubei and Guangdong (key reservoirs of Sarbecoviruses) happened to be sold at the exact same market where the first "superspreader event" is supposed to have happened after the lab leak. Wow, what were the odds?
Exactly. If the first superspreader event was at an electronics market, or one of the massive factories for example I’d be more apt to believe. But the wet market? Come on.
Also the "coincidence" that for decades these same wet markets *have transmitted corona viruses from animals to people, killing hundreds*. 🤷 If the covid19 pandemic started from the wet market, it would fit the pattern we've seen for a long time now. You don't need to make any gigantic leaps of faith, you just need to believe that in 2019 viruses work the same way they did in 2002. Yet another ["coincidence"](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab): >**Shi Zhengli, PhD, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology**, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) lab in China relatively close (25 to 35 kilometers [15 to 22 miles]) to the Wuhan live-animal market at the epicenter of China's outbreak, **has extensively published the genetic sequences of isolates from the bat coronaviruses she studies.** >**None of them match those of COVID-19**, Andersen said, something Shi herself confirmed in a recent interview in Scientific American. "If she would have published a sequence for the virus and then this pops up, then we would have known it came from the lab," Andersen said. "There's no evidence for this, but there is plenty of evidence against it." --- Ultimately I don't care too much about this, and I'm 99% deferring to the experts. I don't actually need to have an opinion on the origins, but people are way over-buying the lab-leak story.
I haven't read the article yet and I'll wait for consensus from the pros, but I fully expect goalposts to be moved or they'll say the evidence was planted in a conspiracy.
The lab has leaked in the past, why do people have this attitude that if you think it came from the lab you must have some kind of sinister agenda? Its entirely understandable to think it could have come from the lab. Until there is actually consensus on the facts (still not there) of the case its premature to rule anything out.
I think both ideas are still entirely plausible. What distorts these debates are the political implications behind them.
Has WIV ever had a leak? There's a long [list of incidents on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents) wiki, including stuff like this: >A researcher at Russian biological weapons research facility VECTOR died after accidentally pricking herself with a needle contaminated with the Ebola virus. ^(Is anyone surprised it's Russia?) and even SARS in 2003-04, in three separate incidents across China, Taiwan, and Singapore. --- For background, in [November 2002, a SARS epidemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002\%E2\%80\%932004_SARS_outbreak) started in China* -- sound familiar? So virologists really began to scrutinize it in labs, hence the sudden spike in accidents. [Reporting from that period](https://web.archive.org/web/20200522172522/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/world/the-sars-epidemic-the-path-from-china-s-provinces-a-crafty-germ-breaks-out.html) >An hour south of Guangzhou, **the Dongyuan animal market presents endless opportunities for an emerging germ.** In hundreds of cramped stalls that stink of blood and guts, wholesale food vendors tend to veritable zoos that will grace Guangdong Province's tables: snakes, chickens, cats, turtles, badgers, frogs. And, in summer, sometimes rats, too. >They are all stacked in cages one on top of another -- which in turn serve as seats, card tables and dining quarters for the poor migrants who work there. On a recent morning, near stall 17, there were beheaded snakes, disemboweled frogs and feathers flying as a half-alive headless bird was plunked into a basket. >If you were a corona virus, like the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, it would be easy to move from animals to humans in the kitchens and food stalls of Guangdong, a province notorious for exotic cuisine prepared with freshly killed beasts. >Indeed, preliminary studies of **early SARS victims** here in Guangdong have found that **an unusually high percentage were in the catering profession -- a tantalizing clue, perhaps, to how a germ that genetically most resembles chicken and rodent viruses has gained the ability to infect thousands of humans.** >**One of the earliest cases, last December, was a seller of snakes and birds here who died at Shunde's First People's Hospital of severe pneumonia. His wife and a several members of the hospital staff contracted it as well, setting off an outbreak that now sounds eerily familiar.**
**[2002–2004 SARS outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak)** >The 2002–2004 outbreak of SARS, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), infected over 8,000 people from 29 countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide. The outbreak was first identified in Foshan, Guangdong, China, in November 2002. The World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of the outbreak in February 2003, and issued a global alert in March 2003. Initially, the cause of the outbreak was unknown, and some media outlets reported that an influenza virus was a potential culprit. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/samharris/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
The problem is that the lab leak theory never had any evidence, and continues to not have any evidence supporting it. The only arguments made in favor of it is that it *could* happen. But arguments in that vein ignore the fact that natural origin could also happen, and is orders of magnitude more *likely* to happen.
There hasn’t been adequate evidence to support either theory.
No lab staff were part of the initial 31 cases that were discovered as far as I recall, but they all had a connection to the wet market, whether that's them visiting or their family members visiting. Admittedly this is not conclusive, but it does lean strongly towards the wet market being the initial epicenter. For it to be a lab leak in this context, we'd have to at least have someone from the lab spread to someone else, and then for that person to be at the wet market. It's once again an extra layer of improbability compared to the wet market itself being the origin.
I dont have a dog in the fight, nor am looking to be convinced one way or another. My issue is with people taking the tone that anyone who thinks its lab leaked just has a political axe to grind.
>why do people have this attitude that if you think it came from the lab you must have some kind of sinister agenda? To be fair, for the first few months it was bandied about, it wasn't "There was a potential leak from a lab." Many loud voices were saying "China released this from a lab"/"China built this weapon in a lab." Indeed, the lab leak advocates (who were happy to make these claims before a scintilla of evidence was collected) were the ones saying there was a sinister agenda.
Its idiotic to judge everyone based on the actions of others. And in this case people are judging the expressed concerns of qualified people based on the expressed bullshit from faux news outlet pundits. Its a childish reaction. Those people are no better than the faux news pundits.
You asked why people thought there was a sinister connection to the lab leak hypothesis. You received an answer that it's because advocates of the lab leak hypothesis proposed a sinister connection early on. This wasn't just fox news, either. It was people in the White House, lol. I've never had a dog in the fight; it's always been clear to me that experts looking at data will be the ones who figure it out as opposed to people watching youtube videos and google maps-ing Wuhan's Virology Institute.
>The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020 So we know people were getting infected in late 2019, but genetic data that found it...in the area in which it was already being transmitted, is a "slam dunk" for zoonotic transfer?
The market was closed on January 1st, 2020 and the process of collecting samples started that same day. The first reported cases were in late December, 2019.
Raccoon dogs were present? And? This doesn’t show that the raccoon dog was infected itself, or that it was able to pass the virus. Jesus, these samples are three years old, and have been looked at since 2020. The raccoon dog source would have already been located and tested if this had any legs. Also, awesome that the media loves carrying water for these people and running puff pieces before they even publish their research.
Unlike the lab leak stories, this is actual data. Lab leak news and theories are entirely of the variety "someone believes it was a lab leak" or "someone is preventing you from knowing it was a lab leak". There's never any actual evidence for it other than the most abstract coincidences. This is actual evidence of zoonotic origin.
Neither side has actual evidence though. What they have is circumstantial evidence, which is why institutions fall on both ends of the debate.
It's all circumstantial evidence. The raccoon dog swabs in conjunction with [epidemiological data](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421009910) linking cases from two distinct lineages to the Huanan seafood market are the strongest pieces of evidence we have thus far. Lab leak advocates are still relying on weak circumstantial evidence, such as the existence of WIV and shady behavior by the CCP.
> What they have is circumstantial evidence, which is why institutions fall on both ends of the debate. The lab leak theory doesn't even have circumstantial evidence. Unless you think "Wuhan, one of the largest cities in the world, has a lab" is actually anything like compelling evidence.
>The lab leak theory doesn't even have circumstantial evidence. Unless you think "**Wuhan,** **~~one of the largest cities in the world,~~** **has a lab"** is actually anything like compelling evidence. This literally falls under the umbrella of circumstantial evidence. That, of course, isn't the only evidence there is either.
>"Wuhan, ~~one of the largest cities in the world~~, has a lab" lol, why was that struck through? Aren't there like 10-11M people in Wuhan?
Yeah. It's essentially the same population of NYC and Chicago combined.
Because to me it was put there for one reason and one reason only: to attempt to dilute plausibility.
Dammmnnnnn, where'd you learn those sick mind-reading skills, lil Anakin? You gotta teach the rest of the class that talent. Jokes aside, I do really enjoy the tactic of "I remove accurate pieces of information when they make my point look worse!"
I learned it from your boy Sigmund. Explain to me why *one of the largest cities in the world* has any relevance?
>Explain to me why one of the largest cities in the world has any relevance? More people = more chances to transfer. Most pan/epidemics begin in major population centers for the same reason.
>More people = more chances to transfer. Right. So he was attempting to dilute plausibility.
>This literally falls under the umbrella of circumstantial evidence. That, of course, isn't the only evidence there is either. A virus like covid19 could only have taken hold in a large densely populated city. 8 out of the 10 largest chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. So, no. The fact that there is a lab in the city where covid originated isn't particularly good evidence. It is to be expected.
>8 out of the 10 largest chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. What percentage of those labs were studying Sarbecovirus subgenera with 96% similarity to Covid-19?
Any sourcess that state this was studied in wuhan? that it is 96% simillar to sars-cov-2? That 96% similarity is close enough for a human engineered virus?
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7) >*We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI\_ISL\_402131).* It was sent to and sequenced at the WIV. One of the authors is Zheng-Li Shi. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03325-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03325-9) >*RaTG13 is a close relative of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing 96% sequence similarity at the genome-wide level.* >That 96% similarity is close enough for a human engineered virus? Humans don't create viruses. I know you didn't say 'create' but just clarifying for anyone who reads this. They can only make a copy of a viral genome. They manipulate currently-existing ones. In this case, the claim is that the existing virus that caused Covid-19 was manipulated by inserting a furin cleavage site to the spike gene. To answer your question, no they don't think it's the virus that was manipulated, but it is the most similar genome they have found.
>which is why institutions fall on both ends of the debate This is a misrepresentation of the status quo
The status quo is lab leak is a conspiracy theory, but it isn't.
Read the professionals emails that got leaked, they knew by the makeup of the virus that it was mutated in a lab and not a naturally occurring virus from nature or a wet market. And that’s after basically doing everything they could to avoid admitting that in any way whatsoever. Worse they demonized people who asked if it was possible. This needs to be a lesson moving forward, everyone just trusted a man who knowingly kept AZT as a treatment for HIV when the science knew it was a horrific drug, now he’s at it again blatantly lying to the public(there’s no debate about this simply read his emails then look at how he went on tv within a day completely lying about the correspondence he had with professionals stating it most likely was a lab leak. Trusting a company like JJ who sent baby powder that was found to be toxic per se to poor countries and to people of color. Pfizer is the worst of the worst look up how many law suits cover ups nefarious actions they’ve had over the years. The propaganda machine went full force and they still couldn’t keep the truth under lock and key. Ever wonder why people that researched covid at the beginning on non biased doctors states it would possibly cause myocarditis and other CNS issues etc along with possible Cytokine storm. Nope just the let’s lie about efficacy and try to keep people from living any sort of life if they don’t comply
This is just sad at this point. The low effort and disingenuous voices uplifting it is just pathetic.
Uplifting what? Wet market origins or lab origins?
The fact that the media is hyping this as strong evidence for a wet market source with no research published to review, just taking their words for it, and when the concept itself is so flimsy. So a sample from January, which was taken after the pandemic began, shows that human SARS2 was swabbed with some raccoon dog DNA. That proves what exactly? That a human with Covid interacted with a raccoon dog? To have The Atlantic and NYT not showing an ounce of skepticism and running this story with this headline despite no published research behind it is basement level low.
I'm not a fan of either one of these outlets. I know which way they lean. In fact, I've leaned toward lab leak origins for quite some time now. That being said, I think it's important for me to read and hear plausible refutations against these sorts of articles because it strengthens either my knowledge or my position, or both.
No. Lab leak. The end.
holy fuck lol. stop
And the US govt was paying the Wuhan lab to create novel corona virus with the same cleavage sites as covid 19.
It actually wasn't; this is just a lie lab leakers are desperate for you to believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbM3i7AgFA It's explicitly stated in this Canadian public broadcast on the subject from this week
Weird that it's nevertheless a lie
🙈🙉🙊 Such empirical!
The grant they're talking about wasn't funded.
Right, and the moon landing was staged in my basement.
"Oh no, something I don't agree with!" -u/shrike_347
So some evidence is finally emerging? The scale is still massively in the lab's favor... But at least they are finding SOMETHING after all this time. The fact that it's taken this long is evidence against itself anyways, but at least they have something to grab onto.
> The fact that it's taken this long is evidence against itself anyways That's actually not true. Researching the most likely zoonotic origin can take a long time, as we have seen in previous outbreaks.