[HN Gopher] China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted...
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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest
Author : new_time
Score : 214 points
Date : 2020-04-12 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| epx wrote:
| Who the hell doesn't know that?
| [deleted]
| ninetyfurr wrote:
| Ironically in censorsed domains, the absence of information is a
| very clear indicator of truth. It happens everywhere - there are
| many true things you are not allowed to post on the internet.
|
| You know the old saying, "Just because you read it on the
| internet, doesn't mean it's true"? Consider the inverse: Just
| because you haven't read it on the internet, doesn't mean it's
| not true.
| nikofeyn wrote:
| well, that's a meaningless statement if i've ever heard one.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine.
|
| Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media
| decides it's a political football. No more articles
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| Your "lots of interesting articles" were what made it a
| political football. Before it was picked up by the right-wing
| propaganda network there was one obviously flawed study and
| some fringe non-experts promoting it to people anxious for a
| cure, followed by a bunch of actual experts urging caution.
| cooper12 wrote:
| > No more articles
|
| https://news.google.com/search?q=hydroxychloroquine
| sjg007 wrote:
| No it doesn't mean that.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Huge change of tone from 2 months ago, ok m guessing it's because
| because they fear that the lab accident theory will gain more
| traction academically or they fear people will reveal the scale
| of the damage to the public vs the clearly fabricated stats we
| have now.
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/30/asia-pacific/sc...
|
| www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/all-signs-point-to-china/
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188557/amp/Did-cor...
|
| https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronav...
| leeoniya wrote:
| hmm, i was assured 9 days ago that i was _obviously_ wrong:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22771035
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| In lieu of evidence that the "wet market" story is true, the
| accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see
| how people react to it though - as though the idea is
| outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual
| bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people
| ate bats at the wet market?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You don't need to _eat_ bats for them to be a problem. The
| virus could have jumped via some intermediate host.
|
| Some folks used to be skeptical wrt. the market being a
| source, because it was officially described as a _fish
| /seafood_ market and fish are not a very plausible reservoir
| for this virus. However it's clear by now that all kinds of
| live animals were sold there, similar to other "wet" markets
| throughout Mainland China.
| [deleted]
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by
| Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it
| came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was
| the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot
| find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?
| alderz wrote:
| You might be thinking of this one https://img-
| prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| Those are the authors who entirely withdrew this "paper."
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon
| /
|
| Snopes reports that it contained numerous errors, and the
| authors themselves have said they had no direct evidence
| for their claims. (Note that it was never peer-reviewed
| or even accepted for publication anywhere. They just
| pasted it up on a social media site.)
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Yes that is it, thank you! I like that it clears things
| up like -
|
| > According to municipal reports and the testimonies of
| 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food
| source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.
|
| I've worked in a lab and Occam's razor for me says the
| lab that is 280 meters away and studied bat viruses is a
| lot more plausible than it originating in a wet market.
| People make stupid mistakes handling waste all the time.
| There was no need for the Chinese government to throw the
| wet market under the bus or for people to imply Chinese
| people ate bats or some other racially motivated theory
| and there was no need to believe the chinese government
| created a bioweapon. Most likely is that it was just a
| horrible mistake and careless handling of biohazardous
| waste/animals.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Yes, there's a youtube documentary that talks about 2
| animal labs in Wuhan, one specializing in bats.
| godtoldmetodoit wrote:
| Tucker Carlson did a piece talking about how the bats that
| this jumped from do not live within ~900km of Wuhan, but
| that the lab in Wuhan did testing on the bats that they
| imported. It definitely seems plausible they were doing
| research on these bats, and that due to some improper
| controls it jumped over to a human working in the lab and
| that was our patient 0.
|
| It definitely seems feasible to me that it could have "come
| out of a lab" while still being entirely natural in origin
| and without any ill intent on the Chinese part.
|
| I'm not endorsing this as true, I don't know if it's true
| or not, but I did find it interesting and worthy of
| additional research.
| meowface wrote:
| That would be plausible if it's true. Can you cite the
| sources Carlson was referring to?
| sv9 wrote:
| Non-US readers should know that Tucker Carlson is a Fox
| News pundit, and to say that he has credibility issues
| would be an incredibly charitable interpretation of
| things.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| It wasn't a paper. It was a social media post that people
| mistook for a paper.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
| Flow wrote:
| Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ
| andromeduck wrote:
| That doesn't look like the seafood market in Wuhan.
| [deleted]
| 2019-nCoV wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted. It is not Indonesia as the
| previous child (now deleted) alluded to -- the easy tell is
| the distinct lack of Hijabs visible (which are ubiquitous
| in the largest Muslim country in the world).
| alderz wrote:
| It is Indonesia. See
| https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-
| debunked-co... for the details. There are signs that are
| definitely not chinese. You can see them clearly in the
| original higher quality video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc
|
| The lack of hijabs is due that it is recorded in the
| North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, where the majority
| is christian.
| 2019-nCoV wrote:
| That explains it.
| nikofeyn wrote:
| you should place a nsfw or nsfl tag on your link as it
| shows disturbing images.
| meowface wrote:
| Failing to disprove one competing hypothesis doesn't lend
| nearly as much evidence to other hypotheses as you might
| think. It's very hard to fully trace something like this,
| especially in such a huge, dense population center.
| avs733 wrote:
| So...evidence?
|
| Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an
| explanation that appeals to large populations of our species
| who are hold certain suspicions.
|
| There is, however, a long history of animal to human
| transmission of diseases.
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have
| yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and
| twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.
| PeCaN wrote:
| I don't think "coronavirus escapes from a lab, in the exact
| area where the outbreak started, that was studying
| coronaviruses" is exactly an 'extraordinary claim'. If
| anything it's the elephant in the room. Are we just
| supposed to casually ignore that or what....
|
| I think the problem is that when people think of "lab" they
| think of some sort of devious genetic engineering
| bioweapons program, and not something considerably more
| likely but much more mundane like some scientists studying
| what sort of potentially bad viruses the local bats have.
| legolas2412 wrote:
| Umm, they were also combining viruses to create
| "chimeras". Now, this combinational process could be
| genetic engineering (which has been ruled out I think) or
| just combining in a petri dish, which I find compelling.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the
| virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.
| markdown wrote:
| Because people have to eat, and wild animals are only a
| tiny fraction of what's traded in wet markets.
|
| US supermarkets sold lettuce that killed people. Should
| those supermarkets be shut for good?
| bstar77 wrote:
| "So...evidence?"
|
| All people are saying is that there's a reasonable
| hypothesis that this thing came out of that laboratory.
| There's enough circumstantial evidence to support that
| theory even if it's not a leading theory.
| papermachete wrote:
| It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest
| of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this
| incident. If only to appease a crowd.
| avs733 wrote:
| it's really and truly not. This isn't a movie...
| papermachete wrote:
| They are solely responsible for this outbreak and only
| engage in political damage control.
| meowface wrote:
| What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the
| person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not
| actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| I'm not sure the concept of "onus" is meaningful in this
| kind of public debate. It's not like everyone has agreed
| to only believe conclusions reached by particular forms
| of argument.
| papermachete wrote:
| That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret
| military base got away with corona would make you more
| effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has
| hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all
| scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all,
| supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.
| rumanator wrote:
| > What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the
| person making the claim to provide positive evidence.
|
| You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't
| putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing
| conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US
| to attack China.
| meowface wrote:
| They're always spewing propaganda about everything,
| though. How does that eliminate the need to provide
| evidence about a claim?
|
| Or are you just saying the best geopolitical response to
| unsubstantiated propaganda is more unsubstantiated
| propaganda volleyed right back at them?
|
| This is similar to people who accuse the CIA of
| orchestrating every big event or crime. They say they
| don't need to provide evidence, because the CIA is
| untrustworthy and tries to deceive people. But this is a
| completely bullshit argument.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to
| lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in
| mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that,
| asking for evidence and reminding the world about
| presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled
| chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought
| papermachete wrote:
| I'd like to remind people it's not just the US - Chinese
| test (and inhaler) suppliers being sued for highly
| unreliable (and some even pre-infected) equipment.
| dchyrdvh wrote:
| My favorite theory is that the Wuhan virus lab created the
| virus and used bats in experiments. One bat escaped and
| infected other bats that eventually ended up on the wet market
| in Wuhan. Edit: a more plausible theory is that one researcher
| got bitten by an infected bat and chose to hide this fact.
| andromeduck wrote:
| My understanding is that nobody has found signs of that in
| the sequenced genome. By all accounts the jump to humans
| appears to have been natrual.
| tanilama wrote:
| I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source
| other than presenting a story.
|
| There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
|
| > Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory
| construct or a purposefully manipulated virus
| pizza234 wrote:
| I agree that Daily Mail should not be used as source in
| informed contexts, however the thebulletin.org link has very
| well informed comments (at least).
| tarkin2 wrote:
| The Daily Mail is not a credible resource. Wikipedia banned,
| as one example.
| andromeduck wrote:
| I don't think they're particularly reputable sources in
| general either but in this case all the source material is
| publicly accessible and verifyble. They just happen to be one
| of the few actually presenting it in English.
| riyadparvez wrote:
| If animals to human transmission can happen in a wildlife
| market, then it can also happen unintentionally in a virology
| lab researching very same family of virus. In the absence of
| substantial evidence, both theories are equally plausible to
| me.
| markdown wrote:
| And you think your opinion on this should be regarded as
| equal to that of a study published in Nature?
| godtoldmetodoit wrote:
| That doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab though. "Coming
| from a lab" does not = man made. If they were doing research
| on the bats in this lab, looking to identify potential scary
| viruses to be ready, it is entirely possible the virus jumped
| from bat to researcher there and that was our patient 0.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| This paper is only about engineering a virus using a common
| backbone virus as a starting point.
|
| That does not mean the virus could not be derived within a
| lab using recombination methods in other animals and sourcing
| the starting novel virus from bats. In fact, this type of
| research was the exact research being done at the Wuhan
| Virology lab.
| tanilama wrote:
| > the exact research being done at the Wuhan Virology lab
|
| I would like to see the exact research they tried to do
| there. Navigating through their published research list, I
| couldn't locate any, but I am not an expert:
|
| http://www.whiov.cas.cn/kycg_105248/lwqk/index.html
| swiley wrote:
| Combined with the researcher at the lab that was disappeared this
| is pretty convincing.
| Aperocky wrote:
| LOL everyone in China 'disappear' when they decide to not post
| on social media for X amount of days. Of course you never hear
| story that they're 'found' by posting or doing something again
| - despite the fact that they almost always do.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| The the American leadership constantly calling it by the region
| name you can understand why an authoritarian regime would want to
| control discussion of the origins by experts. The risk is of
| their research being weaponized by said demagogues.
| nikofeyn wrote:
| it is always curious to me that the west, and particularly the
| united states, refuse to believe their own actions and behavior
| don't affect the behavior of other countries. the united states
| has been ignoring this effect for years in practically every
| conflict for the past 70 years.
|
| people should start taking a stronger look at their own
| countries. the united states' leadership doesn't even have
| clear propaganda or a goal. they're just making it all up as
| they go, which is worse in my opinion.
|
| this toddler-level blame game is a major threat to the national
| security and economy in the united states.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't
| think it is wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the
| Chinese don't want the bad publicity associated with the virus,
| they should do something about these wet markets.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8
| roenxi wrote:
| This and similar monologues do get one important things
| wrong. The big one on the list - Spanish Flu - likely didn't
| come from Spain [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Hypothese
| s_a...
| cc81 wrote:
| On the other hand we did not call the "Swine Flu" the "North
| American flu"
| cm2187 wrote:
| Watch the video, he cites loads of examples.
| Vomzor wrote:
| It's called Mexican flu in Dutch.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Hilariously it was the CCP that pushed the Wuhan virus name
| in the first place, instead of SARS-like which was what the
| doctors were calling it, so as to not appear incompetent for
| having repeated the mistakes of SARS and in order to distance
| themselves and make sure it's the local baeurucrats that take
| the blunt of the heat.
|
| Then they went on claiming everything was good again, 0 new
| cases nationally, so the head honchos could take credit for
| showing leadership and whatnot. Now they're blaming new cases
| on foreigners, especially Africans, most of whom never even
| left the country since this whole ordeal started both to
| stoke nationalism + rally around the flag effect and so as to
| evade responsibility for not actually having stopped it yet.
| champagneben wrote:
| Given that this clamping down came about earlier than any
| discussion of this matter by the American leadership, I don't
| think that's a good explanation for this.
|
| *Reading this comment again, perhaps I should have phrased it
| more carefully - I'm not saying that any clamping down that is
| happening now has come earlier, but that China started clamping
| down on this from the very beginning.
| miked85 wrote:
| Are you suggesting the virus didn't originate in Wuhan?
| ccmcarey wrote:
| Wuhan.
| miked85 wrote:
| typo, updated.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| According to the deleted research center job and notice
| postings in November and December it allegedly originated in
| Hunan among bats, and they collected it and brought it back
| to the Wuhan lab.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused
| here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations
| within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus
| are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely
| genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist
| article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all
| people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simply ...
|
| Pretty much all stats I've seen relating to this thing are
| painfully awful. Here in the UK (in England), care home deaths
| are not reported in the main death stat etc etc ad nauseam.
| Scotland reports in its own way as does NI (or not bother)
| compared to England and Wales. We have minimal testing anyway so
| who knows what is actually going on?
|
| Anyway, one thing I am absolutely certain of is that whilst the
| stats in Europe and the US, CA etc are a bit wonky at best they
| are at least a decent attempt to have a go at reporting the
| situation.
|
| I think that the CN and other results that are so way off the
| curve that other nations and territories are reporting are
| complete fiction and dangerous fiction at that.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Natrualy occuring viruses escape from labs all the time,
| particularly in China. Infact SARS is known to have escaped
| twice in Beijing.
|
| That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab
| accident + leak theory of origin in fact we know that one of
| the labs actively experimenting on bats there was within half a
| kilometer of the market. You combine that with a significant
| fraction of the first known hospitalized cases having no direct
| connection to the market it should be obvious that the source
| is unlikely to have been the market itself but rather something
| close to it with the market just acting as a regional landmark
| or amplifier.
|
| It's like you walk past a bunch of kids playing with fireworks
| by the trail and an hour later the forest is on fire having
| started in the same area as you saw the kids. You obviously
| can't know for sure it was them without more evidence, it could
| have been a cigarette butt from a carless smoker, but you be a
| fool to think it that just because there was no accelleant
| involved that it couldn't have been the kids.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224451-700-chinas-s...
| ueudrjjj wrote:
| One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively
| dissapeared. I don't believe the conspiracy crowd saying this
| was some kind of weapon, but there's reasonable evidence to
| suggest that this is a case of embarrassing government
| incompetence (which the CCP loaths) followed by attempts to
| cover up said incompetence while a solution was persued.
| ausjke wrote:
| a few weeks ago CCP issued a new law to manage virology
| labs, and yes historically virus escaped its labs multiple
| times.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| This is very valid clarification on what I will just name
| "lab theories". There is a huge differentiation in:
| 'purposely bio-engineered and intentionally-released'
| theories, vs. 'someone collected bats in the wild for
| research, brought them to the Wuhan lab, and there was an
| accidental pathogen escape during the research.'
|
| The former is entirely dramatic, while the latter is
| neither dramatic, unreasonable, illogical, or "conspiracy".
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's a shame that China's covering something up, which
| will only fuel the most outlandish theories.
| [deleted]
| rumanator wrote:
| > One of the researchers at that lab was also effectively
| dissapeared.
|
| Source?
| stevespang wrote:
| Well over 680,000 views in just 4 days:
|
| THE documentary movie on the origin of CCP virus(Coronavirus,
| an investigative report with scientists interviewed
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMJ0EmMfb3U&t=
| meowface wrote:
| Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was
| engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic
| and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally
| ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected
| from local animals which their virology lab had stored for
| current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it
| escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly getting
| infected or taking home something with a contaminated surface.
|
| However, I think it is overwhelmingly likely that it's purely
| zoonotic and not related to the virology lab, and that the
| spread was not intentionally caused by any person. Wuhan is a
| massive city and economic hub, a lot bigger than NYC and the
| surrounding area. From what I've heard, there's basically every
| kind of facility and institute one could imagine there. I think
| it's probably just a coincidence that there's a virology lab
| there, and not at all an unlikely one.
| rpiguy wrote:
| Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the
| US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being
| too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research
| in Wuhan.
|
| Yeah. Just a coincidence.
| meowface wrote:
| Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known
| vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically
| related to the current situation?
| rpiguy wrote:
| She was researching bat Corona viruses? The outbreak
| started at a market on the doorstep of her lab? Her name
| is on several papers on bat Corona virus.
|
| Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly
| like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.
| miles wrote:
| > How is this researcher specifically related to the
| current situation?
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049397/b
| at-...
|
| _The flood of attacks came with allegations that the new
| coronavirus had escaped from her laboratory, which is in
| the same city, Wuhan, where the outbreak happened._
|
| _As the attacks increased, Shi felt forced to respond.
| On Sunday afternoon she sent a message to all her friends
| on the social media site WeChat: "I swear with my life,
| [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab."_
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| It's not at all a coincidence that there's a lab there.
| George W. Bush started an anti-pandemic project called
| PREDICT whose purpose was to collect specimens from bats and
| other mammals to identify ones that could transfer from bats
| to humans[1]. They trained and supported the lab in Wuhan. To
| me if you're looking for zoonotic transfer, one of the most
| likely places to look is someplace that's actively out there
| collecting viruses that are zoonotically transferrable.
|
| I still think the program would have been worthwhile even if
| it did leak the coronavirus. If China thinks the same, I can
| see why they would try to prevent a backlash against studying
| viruses.
|
| [1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronav
| irus...
| dlubarov wrote:
| > Wuhan is a massive city and economic hub
|
| Let's dig into this a bit more though. The WIV's location on
| Google Maps apparently changed after the incident [1]. I
| don't know if it was a legitimate correction or what, but for
| the sake of argument let's suppose that the old location was
| correct. Then the lab is 8.6 miles from the wet market, or
| ~14 km.
|
| It looks like the population density in that area is around
| 10,000 people per km^2, so there are around 400k people in a
| 14km radius, or about 1/3,000 of China's population.
|
| If we assume P(virus from WIV) = 0.01
| P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus from WIV) = 1
| P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus not from WIV) = 1/3,000
|
| Then Bayes' rule gives P(virus from WIV | outbreak in 14km
| radius) ~= 97%. Even if we reduce our prior to 0.001 (0.1%),
| the result is still ~75%.
|
| So while I have no idea if the virus was a random mutation or
| what, I strongly suspect that it's somehow connected to the
| WIV.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/exdvt6/goog
| le_...
| meowface wrote:
| Your prior is also exactly what you're trying to calculate,
| though. I don't think you can just try different numbers
| picked from a hat for that value.
|
| Also, it isn't accounting for lots of other highly
| relevant, potentially confounding variables.
|
| And those assumptions make no sense to me at all. Can you
| write them out much more explicitly?
|
| I think it's totally plausible it was a lab escape, but
| this analysis seems extremely oversimplified and naive, and
| I'd even say a misuse and abuse of Bayes' theorem. A full
| Bayesian analysis is a good idea, though. I'd like to see a
| much more robust and detailed one from someone.
| roenxi wrote:
| You can apply the same logic to a specific license plate
| number seen near a murder meaning that the car's owner was
| almost surely the murderer. That isn't a high enough
| standard of evidence as any specific event is unlikely in
| hindsight.
|
| A pandemic was likely to start somewhere densely populated
| and first be detected in a city centre. Somewhere densely
| populated was likely to have a specialised biological
| research lab. That it was BSL4 instead of BSL3 is evidence
| but it isn't particularly compelling.
|
| More to the point; it doesn't really make much of a
| difference whether it came from a Chinese lab or not.
| Horrible pandemics have happened before and will happen
| again.
| dlubarov wrote:
| In the murder scenario, we would have something like
| P(individual is guilty) = 1 / 7 billion
| P(individual's car on same block | individual is guilty)
| = 1 P(individual's car on same block | individual
| is innocent) = 50 / 7 billion P(individual is
| guilty | individual's car on same block) = 1 / 50 (from
| Bayes' rule)
|
| You might disagree with the priors, but I'm pretty sure
| the argument is sound.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| > I think it is overwhelmingly likely
|
| Why are you so sure it is overwhelmingly likely?
|
| > I think it's probably just a coincidence that there's a
| virology lab there
|
| Only because _you_ believe it to be purely coincidental of a
| virology lab being next to the outbreak source location?
|
| I am entirely up for accepting this viewpoint. But, the lack
| of evidence to suggest an actual source location coupled with
| the (CCP sourced and pushed narrative of) "overwhelming
| evidence" that raw bat consumption at the market started it
| leads me to lean towards a more logical conclusion of a
| simple lab escape.
|
| Am I being illogical in thinking that a pathogen escape from
| a virology lab (built in 2017, btw) in the same locale is
| more likely than a random zoonotic transfer of raw bat
| consumption (a practice likely being done at the same market
| for a considerable more amount of time)?
|
| EDIT: change "less likely" to "more likely"
| CreRecombinase wrote:
| I don't know about illogical, but I think your intuition
| that zoonotic transfer is unlikely because it hasn't
| happened in the recent past is not a good one.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Most bat consumption in China happens in the South, along
| with the population in general. The odds of a zoonotic
| event occuring in Wuhan of all places and within a block
| of one of the few labs known to have been activity
| hunting for a virus just like this is too much of a
| coincidence.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| But here is the crux of the matter. Is it possible that
| zoonotic transfer through consumption of bats caused
| this? Yes. Is it possible that zoonotic transfer via
| handling of bats inside the virology lab caused this?
| Yes.
|
| I am not sure why it is so necessary to be so adamant
| about vigorously dismissing the latter as a possibility.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered
| or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release
| a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country?
| doesn't make sense.
|
| the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's
| one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and
| samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there.
| it may very well be a coincidence; improbable things happen
| all the time in a world of ~8 billion people. it would be a
| pretty big one though.
| meowface wrote:
| There are still lots of other confounding variables there
| that you need to factor into the probability.
|
| Maybe I shouldn't say overwhelmingly likely for all of
| those possibilities - a lab escape isn't that unlikely. But
| there's no evidence of that. If it's true, we indeed may
| never discover any evidence, but evidence is still required
| to actually make the claim. As it is now, it's only worthy
| of speculation.
| endtime wrote:
| So I'm definitely not advocating the lab theory overall,
| and even if it did come from a lab it could have escaped
| rather than been deliberately released...but to answer your
| question, China does/did have problems with A) an aging
| population, B) a male heavy population, and C) Hong Kong
| streets full of protesters. This virus "helps" with all of
| those.
| sv9 wrote:
| Bioweapons are crappy precisely because of what's
| happening now. A good weapon discriminates, and lets you
| kill exactly who you want. By that measure, a virus is
| about as hamfisted as you can get. Besides, why unleash a
| pandemic on the whole world when you can just do what
| China normally does and use conventional military power
| instead? It's cheaper and easier to get some men in boots
| with guns to stop a protest than it is to unleash a
| worldwide pandemic that might last for years or longer.
| [deleted]
| Razengan wrote:
| > _why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a
| densely populated part of your own country? doesn 't make
| sense._
|
| Historically, China has not been above harming their own
| citizens. There is probably still a substantial "Greater
| Good" philosophy there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protest
| s
| downerending wrote:
| The theory of lab involvement doesn't seem particularly likely,
| no. But government censorship makes it appear much _more_
| likely, in my mind.
|
| It's unlikely that we'll ever really know. RNA sequences don't
| come with the signatures of their authors.
|
| But, every time you see someone saying that the lab theory has
| been "debunked", you should immediately think _fake news_.
| There _is no way_ to rule this theory out--rather, it 's
| balance of probabilities.
| codekilla wrote:
| This idea of the mutations being 'random' is pretty
| meaningless. A real question is whether or not something is
| intentionally engineered to pass these kinds of 'randomness'
| tests.
|
| Just to give you an example, this is an active area of research
| that Raytheon is engaged in:
| https://www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com/news/feature/ri...
| gerdesj wrote:
| Bloody hell. The responses to my post are not the best and this
| is an example from the first one:
|
| "That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab
| accident + leak theory of origin"
|
| Really? A lab spends some time analysing whether a virus is a
| natural progression from another virus via natural selection
| instead of deliberate manipulation. They write it up etc. At
| least spell "preclude" correctly in a rebuttal.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Both things can be true at the same time.
|
| Whether or not the virus is human engineered or not is
| orthogonal to whether or not it escaped from the nearby lab.
|
| It is known that the lab was studying these sorts of viruses.
|
| The same lab was responsible for a SARS outbreak in the year
| following the big SARS outbreak.
|
| Mistakes happen.
|
| EDIT. I was mistaken about the specific lab that was the source
| of the 2004 SARS outbreak. The lab responsible for that
| outbreak was in Beijing.
| amvalo wrote:
| Just because it's not engineered doesn't mean it didn't come
| from a lab. It could be a natural virus that was collected and
| escaped. The original SARS escaped no less than 3 times from
| chinese labs following the outbreak.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Furthermore, gain-of-function research doesn't have to be by
| genetic engineering. The controversial experiment of a few
| years back which I vaguely remember was more like natural
| selection.
| throwanem wrote:
| It _could_ be lots of things. The focus on a possible escape
| from containment as the source seems odd given that - among
| other more likely causes - bat guano is also widely used as
| fertilizer, and bats, like humans, shed coronaviruses in
| their feces. Except that where we do so only occasionally and
| only when actively infected, bats ' generally higher viral
| load and the high intraspecific transmissibility of a lot of
| these viruses means they do it much more frequently.
| [deleted]
| andromeduck wrote:
| Except this started in the heart of a city the size of New
| York, near a market not known to have sold bats, within
| half a kilometer of a lab known to have been doing research
| collecting bats from neighboring provinces near villages
| with people confirmed contracted SARS like viruses from
| bats per their own state media documentary.
|
| And then there's the behavior of the CCP.
| throwanem wrote:
| No one knows where this started. We know where the first
| confirmed case was reported, but that's not the same
| thing.
|
| I carry no brief for the CCP. But I do find it difficult
| to say nothing in the face of what looks like a struggle
| between a variety of factions, none openly declared, to
| establish a narrative of responsibility for a world-
| altering catastrophe, with no closer or more consistent
| reference to facts of any kind than is judged useful in
| support of whatever claim is being pushed at the moment -
| and, most notably, with the only reference to potentially
| _contradictory_ facts being to claim either that they 're
| unfounded, or presented with ulterior intent, or both.
|
| Last time I saw something play out that looked like this,
| it followed the World Trade Center attack and resulted in
| the Iraq war. That was a catastrophe from both a
| humanitarian perspective and one concerned with enhancing
| the geopolitical power of the US - but it was, at least,
| relatively minor in both respects. This one, if it plays
| out similarly, seems likely to be much worse.
|
| And aside from all of that, what the hell, is your time
| of no value? If you're going to peddle what may very well
| prove to be be war propaganda, at least you should have
| the self-respect to refuse to do it for free.
| sjg007 wrote:
| You have previous known infections in the villagers who
| interact with bats and then travel to say the Wuhan live
| market. We study these viruses because we know they
| infect humans. The Spanish flu was a bird flu. There were
| no biosafety level 5 labs back then. We get viruses from
| other animals all the time.
| throwanem wrote:
| Nitpick: there's no such thing as BSL-5. The scale tops
| out at level 4. Coronaviruses are handled at BSL-3.
| microcolonel wrote:
| Also the only lab that handles this stuff in Wuhan is less
| than a couple hundred meters from the wet market that Chinese
| authorities claimed was the epicenter.
|
| I'd believe this is a story of grave incompetence, and brazen
| managerial failure at a biolab. The intern gets bled on,
| bitten, or just breathed on by the test bat, gets a bit sick
| but comes into work anyway. After it seems to pass, she heads
| down to the market on the way home, and spreads the disease
| to one of the live animals, including humans, in the
| vicinity.
|
| Boom, outbreak.
|
| Could be as simple as that, with it being a pretty tenacious
| virus.
|
| The proven conspiracy follows, when authorities up to the top
| sought to cover up this embarrassment, then to make sure that
| the damage was global so that they wouldn't be at a relative
| disadvantage, and could maybe start claiming that it came
| from somewhere else (as they are now doing).
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Can you find your source for the market being a couple
| hundred meters away? This tweet has a map showing it's
| twenty miles away, but the source is the Daily Mail:
|
| https://twitter.com/dystopia992/status/1220735100192620546
| abecedarius wrote:
| Different lab. I bookmarked
| https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-
| tra... but it's offline for me right now. (Can't say if
| any of it is right, but the claim of the ~180m-away lab
| was the most interesting bit.)
| gottebp wrote:
| Why would genetic engineering (or lack there of) be a necessary
| sign here? The Wuhan lab regularly collected and studied
| various naturally occurring coronaviruses from all over China.
| It is perfectly possible that a collected sample from nature
| might have been leaked by accident.
| rpiguy wrote:
| Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the
| US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being
| too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research
| in Wuhan.
|
| It is neither fiction, nor dangerous to speculate that this
| outbreak started at the Wuhan lab.
|
| It may not have been engineered.
|
| However, the bats are brought to Wuhan lab from hundreds of
| miles away to be studied. It is also very possible that a bat
| carrying the natural virus being studied at the lab escapes or
| infected a person.
| jstepka wrote:
| It's us vs them. And by us, I mean western democracy.
|
| I fully support crushing them under the heal of our boot.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Hi guys,
|
| As a Chinese living in US. Please be mindful that a lot of people
| do not distinguish China the government, and the Chinese people,
| living in or outside of China mainland.
|
| This type of news, are of course worth discussion.
|
| But meanwhile, please refrain from politicizing beyond the facts.
| Think about not letting what a few political figures have
| started, i.e., politicizing the event without considering the
| impact, into actual hate crimes targeted at minority groups.
|
| Thanks!
| Razengan wrote:
| Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively
| perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has
| China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an
| increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections ("
| _The Wuhan virus is now the US virus_ "), along with a streak of
| random US-critical posts (" _What is the worst thing the US
| government has done?_ ") being massively updated on Reddit (which
| has a major investment from Tencent.)
|
| This is from the country which forces foreign companies to remove
| flags of countries it likes to bully (Taiwan, Japan) from their
| products. It's not inconceivable, and certainly probable, that
| they are filtering the narrative about themselves in something
| actually serious, such as this pandemic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Co...
| Medicalidiot wrote:
| I'm annoyed with the connection between SARS-CoV-2 and
| bioweapon. This is such a garbage bioweapon for two reasons:
| This doesn't kill military aged men and it cannot be readily
| shut off. American scientists have nailed down when the cross
| over event occurred and how it happened. The world's top
| virologists also have said multiple times that this is not a
| bioweapon, people who have studied viruses for decades. But
| people who aren't even in the medical field keep peddling the
| narrative that this is a bioweapon. Amazing.
|
| Here's the list of agents that are better than SARS:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioterrorism#Types_of_agents
| adventured wrote:
| It probably walked out of a Wuhan lab, with a lab tech or
| equivalent as the unaware infected carrier; which doesn't
| make it a bioweapon at all. It may have been sampled by
| China's large effort to search their territory for viruses,
| and then it was studied in Wuhan. It's most likely a mistake
| of incompetence. There is precedence in that it has happened
| multiple times in China with SARS since the original outbreak
| in 2003. Incompetence of this sort would also perfectly
| explain the regime's response to destroy evidence and try to
| cover it up.
| fantasticsid wrote:
| Speaking of incompetence..
| adventured wrote:
| > they are filtering the narrative about themselves
|
| It's not a tinfoil hat worthy context. We know for a fact that
| they're doing that.
|
| China ordered a book written [1] espousing the glorious success
| of Xi and the CPC in vanquishing the virus, before the world
| even knew for certain it was tranmissable person to person and
| just how dangerous it was.
|
| They invented an outlandish narrative about the US military
| attacking Wuhan with the virus and then freely spread that
| 5G-is-the-cause level of insanity all over Twitter (with the
| open blessing of Twitter, by way of their refusal to remove the
| disinformation campaign).
|
| [1]
| https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/26/WS5e56238da3101282...
| fantasticsid wrote:
| F __ks sake. Still finger pointing at this point. The US has
| 550K confirmed cases as we speak.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Take a look at reddit to see how legions of paid government
| actors are actively shaping the discussion on mainstream
| platforms.
| paulcole wrote:
| I don't buy this. Why would governments pay people to
| shitpost on Reddit when so many of us gladly do it for free?
| 2019-nCoV wrote:
| Many govs use astroturfing, the CCP in particular:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| joering2 wrote:
| To get specific narrative via majority posting similar
| "shit". Aka propaganda.
| taiwanboy wrote:
| On 1/22, Xi jinping and CCP blocked internal transportation
| such as railways, subways, ferries, trains and domestic flights
| in and out of Wuhan. But still let _international_ flights in
| and out of Wuhan. If the coronavirus wasn't weaponized with
| that intent I don't know what is.
| ycombonator wrote:
| They are afraid where it will lead to.
| zapttt wrote:
| "Despite its name, the geosciences university announced elsewhere
| on its website that it was carrying out coronavirus research."
|
| incredible journalists repoting on the academy doesn't know what
| geoscience/geology department studies nowadays. most of them are
| indistinguishable from sociology thanks to all the urban and
| policy planing. they also do a great deal od recent history
| because it's a base for the above.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Given the response articles saying it would be possible to
| engineer the virus have caused, this doesn't seem that extreme.
| The "origin" of the virus has become a political issue that
| fringe extremists in many countries are using to attack other
| countries.
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