Wuhan Lab Might be COVID Origin

[Picairn]

If anyone's interested, here's a FactCheck article detailing the story behind gain-of-function research and the lab hypothesis: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-w ... agreement/

It's worth noting that Obama placed a moratorium on gain-of-function research funding in 2014 after 75 scientists were exposed to live anthrax in a lab, but the ban was lifted in 2017 under Trump.

[Resilient Acceleration]

I mean China already have a robust institution—the wet markets—that periodically unleashes deadly plagues from time to time. The risk factor was already incredibly obvious, with historical precedent, it's basically a ticking time bomb.

We have them too. We call them farmers' markets, county fairs and fishmongers. It's not like our viral surveillance is any better - the fact that we think ours are 'cleaner' comes purely from our own aesthetic perception of exotic eastern markets as being dirtier.

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

[Nilokeras]

We have them too. We call them farmers' markets, county fairs and fishmongers. It's not like our viral surveillance is any better - the fact that we think ours are 'cleaner' comes purely from our own aesthetic perception of exotic eastern markets as being dirtier.

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

The viral world is huge and diverse, and the vast majority of zoonoses do not cause serious disease. If you got weird body aches and headaches for 24 hours and then it went away, most people wouldn't stop to consider where it came from and would brush it off, even though they might frequently do things like breath in aerosolized rat droppings in the subway or hang out near some pigs at the county fair that could give them a virus we know nothing about.

[Tsaivao]

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

The viral world is huge and diverse, and the vast majority of zoonoses do not cause serious disease. If you got a weird body aches and headaches for 24 hours and then it went away, most people wouldn't stop to consider where it came from and would brush it off, even though they might frequently do things like breath in aerosolized rat droppings in the subway that could give them a virus we know nothing about.

Well thanks for that, I think I'm going to be wearing my mask permanently now, thank you...

[Nilokeras]

The viral world is huge and diverse, and the vast majority of zoonoses do not cause serious disease. If you got a weird body aches and headaches for 24 hours and then it went away, most people wouldn't stop to consider where it came from and would brush it off, even though they might frequently do things like breath in aerosolized rat droppings in the subway that could give them a virus we know nothing about.

Well thanks for that, I think I'm going to be wearing my mask permanently now, thank you...

We all should, really. If anything good comes of this pandemic it should be permanently ending our blaseness towards doing really common sense things like wearing masks on public transit/crowded places or calling in sick when we're not feeling well. It would save tens of thousands of lives from the flu season alone.

[New Kvenland]

I've never understood the motivation behind engineering something like COVID. What does China gain from a global virus that hurts them just as much as the rest of us? The CCP's bad, but they aren't, like, trying to destroy the world.

[-SARS-]

We have them too. We call them farmers' markets, county fairs and fishmongers. It's not like our viral surveillance is any better - the fact that we think ours are 'cleaner' comes purely from our own aesthetic perception of exotic eastern markets as being dirtier.

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

Bats are not a common food in China.

I dunno if there might be a few people eating them, but they are not everyday fare for most people.

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

The viral world is huge and diverse, and the vast majority of zoonoses do not cause serious disease. If you got weird body aches and headaches for 24 hours and then it went away, most people wouldn't stop to consider where it came from and would brush it off, even though they might frequently do things like breath in aerosolized rat droppings in the subway or hang out near some pigs at the county fair that could give them a virus we know nothing about.

Finally someone who appreciates our creativity and diversity!

I've never understood the motivation behind engineering something like COVID. What does China gain from a global virus that hurts them just as much as the rest of us? The CCP's bad, but they aren't, like, trying to destroy the world.

If you wanted to use a coronavirus as a weapon, SARS or MERS would be more useful. Not that you should.

[Punished UMN]

Tbh I basically accepted this was the most likely origin back around February.

[Page]

WTF difference does it make where COVID came from? The previous US administration's ignorance and inertia would still have led to 500k+ unneccesary deaths if it came from a lab, a bat, a pangolin or Bun E. Carlos.

It matters because whether it's lab origin or animal origin, there are things we need to do to make sure this doesn't happen again. Virology labs need better quarantine procedures, working there should be like working in Antarctica, people should be going in for months-long shifts and remain on the property for weeks after they're done, build quarantine apartments for lab workers to stay for awhile before going home. And the animal industry has long been a deadly biohazard. Wet markets are dangerous and factory farms are too, and the ones in the West are no better than China's. Factory farming spreads a great deal of disease. The human species needs to radically reduce meat and dairy production both for the sake of public health and the environment.

[Senkaku]

Hello, Chinese security services, friendly American pandemic investigator here. Please give us access to your laboratory and any classified files about incidents related to it that you haven’t destroyed yet, we’re trying to prove that it was either your negligence or malice that inflicted this world-historical disaster on humanity rather than simple bad luck. Also, if you’re doing secret and dubiously legal bioweapons research, we’d like to be briefed on all that too. Thanks in advance!

[Vassenor]

So what is the evidence it was created in a lab rather than being studied?

[-SARS-]

So what is the evidence it was created in a lab rather than being studied?

Even when you have a legitimate point, why must you make it in the form of a passive-aggressive one-liner?

[Nilokeras]

So what is the evidence it was created in a lab rather than being studied?

There is none, really. The commonly cited evidence is of gain-of-function experiments being carried out at the WIV (ie to explore through experimentation and modeling what mutations would be required to infect human or animal hosts), but based on the published genomes of the viruses being worked with none of the viruses being handled in the labs are closely related to COVID-19.

[Resilient Acceleration]

Still, it's unlucky that bats are the ones where the SARS-COV are widespread, at a place where bat consumption is a thing. If there's an easily transmissible zoonotic virus at the same level of COVID being widespread on seafood, we will probably already have it by now.

Bats are not a common food in China.

I dunno if there might be a few people eating them, but they are not everyday fare for most people.

So are civets, since most exotic animals are """medicinal""" in its consumption's purpose, yet they were the cause of the 2002 outbreak. Actually it's apparently more plausible for the bats to transfer the virus to pangolins first, which was then eaten by humans.

[Vassenor]

So what is the evidence it was created in a lab rather than being studied?

Even when you have a legitimate point, why must you make it in the form of a passive-aggressive one-liner?

Apparently directly asking a question where I expect an actual answer is a passive-aggressive one liner now. Huh.

[Nilokeras]

Actually it's apparently more plausible for the bats to transfer the virus to pangolins first, which was then eaten by humans.

Unlikely.

Researchers’ first started looking at the virus’s genome to see whether they could match it to pathogens found in other animals. In late January, a few weeks after researchers sequenced the SARS-CoV-2 genome, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted online the entire sequence of a coronavirus that had been stored in their lab since being discovered in intermediate horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus affinis) in Yunnan province in 2013. That genome, named RATG13, was 96% identical to SARS-CoV-2, making it the closest known relative and strongly suggesting the new virus originated in bats.

...

Pangolins were among the first animals suspected of being the intermediate. Two teams in China reported that they’d found similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and coronaviruses isolated from tissue of Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) that had been confiscated. Trading pangolins is illegal in China.[

The pangolin coronaviruses turned out to be too distant to be direct ancestors of SARS-CoV-2, but the fact that they are the only wild mammals besides bats known so far to be living with coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 suggests they can’t be ruled out as an intermediate source

If bats are the initial reservoir for the virus, as seems to be the case, then there is an infinite array of potential sources of contact since humans and wildlife are frequently in contact with them, particularly in urban settings. Mice living in an attic alongside bats, for example. It does not require your weird insistence on the funny Chinamen and their strange cuisine being the source of the zoonosis.

[-SARS-]

Even when you have a legitimate point, why must you make it in the form of a passive-aggressive one-liner?

Apparently directly asking a question where I expect an actual answer is a passive-aggressive one liner now. Huh.

Who are you asking? The OP does not say it was created in a lab, and you didn't quote anybody.

[Deacarsia]

I feel vindicated by this, and this ought to give our more arrogant and dismissive members pause.

[Vassenor]

Apparently directly asking a question where I expect an actual answer is a passive-aggressive one liner now. Huh.

Who are you asking? The OP does not say it was created in a lab, and you didn't quote anybody.

I believe the question is, or at least should be, whether or not we should continue with Gain of Function Research, and if it was developed in a lab and leaked from said lab, should we fine all those involved and redistribute the fine among small business owners, rather than "lolz, let's go to warz!" What's your take on it -SARS- should we continue to mutate you?

Emphasis mine.

[Necroghastia]

I feel vindicated by this, and this ought to give our more arrogant and dismissive members pause.

what the hell is with that post title

[Vassenor]

I feel vindicated by this, and this ought to give our more arrogant and dismissive members pause.

So what about it scientists studying it in a lab contracting it vindicates you?

[-SARS-]

Who are you asking? The OP does not say it was created in a lab, and you didn't quote anybody.

I believe the question is, or at least should be, whether or not we should continue with Gain of Function Research, and if it was developed in a lab and leaked from said lab, should we fine all those involved and redistribute the fine among small business owners, rather than "lolz, let's go to warz!" What's your take on it -SARS- should we continue to mutate you?

Emphasis mine.

Maybe quote that if it's what you're responding to instead of making people guess?

Even then, that post doesn't say the virus was created in the lab, just that it should be investigated.

The virus is almost certainly a product of natural evolution, judging by genetic evidence like the extent of its differences from other known viruses -- but instead of actually making that point you just did the online equivalent of a hippo waddling into a session of Congress and rolling all over the carpet. You didn't provide any information or give any indication of who you were addressing. It added nothing of value to the thread.

I agree with you about many of the topics that come up for debate in NSG, but your debating technique fucking stinks.

[Resilient Acceleration]

In any case, this was the three possibilities put forward by the WHO-China team. Which, I mean it involves China,

“There is a popular perception of a group of Sherlock Holmeses going in with magnifying glasses and swabs,” John Watson, a senior British epidemiologist on the mission, said during a webinar organized by Chatham House in March. “But that is not how it was set up.”

Instead, Beijing and the WHO agreed last summer to a series of scientific studies that were carried out in China. When the foreign members visited Wuhan in January, it was to help in a joint assessment of the evidence China had found, not to scour the city for new facts. “There was no freedom at all to wander around,” Watson has said.

but oh well.

On directly from bats:

Ben Embarek and Liang, the leaders of the WHO-China team, laid out what they called four main hypotheses and ranked them, from least to most likely.

The first was that someone became directly infected by a bat or its guano. Because of how these viruses can attach to receptors on human cells, direct infection is a possibility. But direct transmission isn’t favored as the cause of the current pandemic. That’s because the bats harboring SARS-like viruses live many hundreds of miles from Wuhan. “Since Wuhan is not a city or environment close to these bats’ environment, a direct jump from bats is not very likely,” Ben Embarek said during the press event.

On lab leak:

The researchers went on to dismiss the lab accident theory as “extremely unlikely,” saying they had agreed not to pursue it any further. Their reasoning was fairly simple: Chinese scientists at several Wuhan labs told them they had never seen the virus before and hadn’t worked on it.
...The Wuhan Institute of Virology possesses gene information about similar viruses that it has not released publicly. Other information disappeared from view when the institute took a database offline in late 2019, just before the outbreak started.

One problem with the lab leak theory is that it presumes the Chinese are lying or hiding facts, a position incompatible with a joint scientific effort. To those who believe a lab accident is likely, including Jamie Metzl, a technology and national security fellow at the Atlantic Council, the WHO team isn’t set up to carry out the sort of forensic probe he believes is necessary.

On intermediary food:

The scenario the WHO-China team said it considers most probable is the “intermediary” theory, in which a bat virus infected another wild animal that was then caught or farmed for food. The intermediary theory does have the strongest precedents. Not only is there the case of SARS, but in 2012 researchers discovered Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a deadly lung infection caused by another coronavirus, and quickly traced it to dromedary camels.

The trouble with this hypothesis is that Chinese researchers have not succeeded in finding a “direct progenitor” of this virus in any animal they’ve looked at. Liang said China had tested 50,000 animal specimens, including 1,100 bats in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. But no luck: a matching virus still hasn’t been found.

The Chinese team appears to strongly favor a twist on the intermediate-animal idea: that the virus could have reached Wuhan on a frozen food shipment that included a frozen wild animal. This “cold chain” hypothesis may have appeal because it would mean the virus came from thousands of miles away, even outside China. “We think that is a valid option,” says Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who traveled with the group. She said China had tested 1.5 million frozen samples and found the virus 30 times.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techno ... wuhan/amp/

[Picairn]

I feel vindicated by this, and this ought to give our more arrogant and dismissive members pause.

Calling NSG posters "arrogant and dismissive" is a surefire way to bite a warning, mate. This isn't a "vindication" or any of the sort, merely a report that an investigation is being called based on circumstantial evidence.

[Vassenor]

Emphasis mine.

Maybe quote that if it's what you're responding to instead of making people guess?

Even then, that post doesn't say the virus was created in the lab, just that it should be investigated.

The virus is almost certainly a product of natural evolution, judging by genetic evidence like the extent of its differences from other known viruses -- but instead of actually making that point you just did the online equivalent of a hippo waddling into a session of Congress and rolling all over the carpet. You didn't provide any information or give any indication of who you were addressing. It added nothing of value to the thread.

I agree with you about many of the topics that come up for debate in NSG, but your debating technique fucking stinks.

Except that we did investigate the possibility last year. And it was found to be rubbish.