Regardless of what happened inside a lab, or how it got out, it's how we responded to it that ultimately matters. What did we learn from it? How are we prepared to deal with another outbreak in the future? ARE we prepared to deal with another outbreak in the future? If so, how long are we prepared to do so before we let our guards down?

The people who are most interested in where it came from instead of how we handled it are those who are politically motivated to disregard safety in general. They need a boogeyman to deflect blame onto for their ridiculous dereliction of duty.

I refuse to allow them to do so.

China got caught with their pants down on pandemic prevention given their past research into bat virus and their own initial warning in 20127. That does not mean that combine that with politics about the CCP to jump to a lab accident conclusion.

Even the US Defense Intelligence structure has jumped to such a conclusion.

But of course there are many reports about the virus circulating long before the Wuhan cluster was exposed. Maybe the lab was responsible for that cluster but not the actual first outbreak?

My issue with the theory is it lights a fuel under people for more racism against asians in general. Until there's solid evidence, everyone should dismiss it as just that - a theory.

No source of covid-19 has been found.

Similar lab leaks happen frequently.

BUT.. you're not allowed to discuss it with the undertones that you're a bad person. If you say china virus you could be accused of being a racist. But if you say South African or British variant it's okay. The mental acrobats are insane. If you suggest people aren't thinking critically about it you will be accused of flamebaiting or trolling. If you call out people who are trying to silence your comments you'll be accused of "making boring reading".

I think it should be discussed, debated and seriously considered. There is a suggestion in here to assume both the animal farm and the lab were the cause and to respond appropriately. With lack of further evidence I think this is the best idea.

Let me explain that i'm not trying to push any agenda, or that i ever normally believe such things but i think this event hasn't had enough coverage https://thebulletin.org/2019/11/what-happened-after-an-explo...

Conclude what you will. I personally don't know enough so i'm not sure whether a link can be drawn, yet the timing is curious.

https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

“In recent years, several new human infectious diseases have emerged. The use of names such as ‘swine flu’ and ‘Middle East Respiratory Syndrome’ has had unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors,” says Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security, WHO. “This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods.”

Diseases are often given common names by people outside of the scientific community. Once disease names are established in common usage through the Internet and social media, they are difficult to change, even if an inappropriate name is being used. Therefore, it is important that whoever first reports on a newly identified human disease uses an appropriate name that is scientifically sound and socially acceptable.

The best practices state that a disease name should consist of generic descriptive terms, based on the symptoms that the disease causes (e.g. respiratory disease, neurologic syndrome, watery diarrhoea) and more specific descriptive terms when robust information is available on how the disease manifests, who it affects, its severity or seasonality (e.g. progressive, juvenile, severe, winter). If the pathogen that causes the disease is known, it should be part of the disease name (e.g. coronavirus, influenza virus, salmonella).

Terms that should be avoided in disease names include geographic locations (e.g. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Spanish Flu, Rift Valley fever), people’s names (e.g. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Chagas disease), species of animal or food (e.g. swine flu, bird flu, monkey pox), cultural, population, industry or occupational references (e.g. legionnaires), and terms that incite undue fear (e.g. unknown, fatal, epidemic).

WHO developed the best practices for naming new human infectious diseases in close collaboration with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and in consultation with experts leading the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

Maybe if the US didn't have a very large number of people who are willing to harass people of visibly different races we wouldn't have to have these discussions and worry so much about our language. But we do, and we have a track record of specific races being attacked when nations that have a majority of that race become embroiled in international issues.

Ok sure. What did you win? Have you now advanced science and solved all unknown problems in virology? Was the progress of mankind so impeded by the inability to call COVID-19 the Chinese variant? Seriously ask yourself why you are so hung up on being able to call it the China virus. Are doctors around the world completely unable to sequence this virus because they can’t say the word “China virus”, or does it just make you feel better to be able to prescribe blame to a group of people?

I think we can agree there’s open mystery about the origin of the virus without getting caught up in culture war trite. British people aren’t being murdered because of some loose connection to a virus, the very least you could do is show some tact and try not to insert your bias at every opportunity.

Some people drop the N-bomb without ill intent either. There's plenty of precedent for agreeing that certain words and phrases just can't be used anymore in good faith.

Words and labels have become a very difficult thing for people to handle rationally. Within a span of just 5-10 years, a big handful of them went from being tools to bond people to being a dangerous virus that haphazardly assumes each and every person is immeasurably fragile.

It's a clear sign when there is a dramatic shift in how comedians are treated and responded to, that our society in general is more quick to jump to ill conclusions than they're ready to use insults and slurs to poke fun at each other and walk away unscathed, laughing with an eye-roll to top it off.

I miss those days when the majority (around me) were more light-hearted and understood that these moments of fun weren't used to harm others, but to build camaraderie by jesting about our differences and unique cultural idioms.

I worked with a very diverse team in the restaurant industry, and the majority of our jokes were racial stereotypes of one another, and it's safe to say, we all went home feeling seen, appreciated, and laughing our asses off.

It was fun that other people knew a few quirks about my origins that I was secure enough to laugh at, instead of feeling threatened by them. Many friendships were formed with light insults (and yes, often racial) used to break the ice.

While I agree that it’s extremely unlikely that a lab developed this virus, it’s far more plausible for one to have manufactured it.

I think the Wuhan/COVID/Coronavirus can be compared to the Soviet government's response to Chernobyl. Great efforts were made to keep a lid on that disaster from the people, and the world, until it was too great to ignore. Granted, a long time ago, but it's an example of what a totalitarian government (like China) might do in the face of such catastrophe.

Being culpable for a disaster on this scale would be unprecedented in the economic reparations, so much so that we'll likely never find the origins.

The so-called "Spanish Flu" of 1918 had origins in a migratory bird route over large tracts of pig stockyards, and the workers and nearby army base residents were subsequently infected and subsequently brought it over to Europe at the end of WW1.

Given both points above, shame on USATODAY for giving the time of day to such dangerous speculation while much of the planet chafes under lockdown and is irritable and hating on China anyway... shameful demagoguery. Dismissed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_hydrolysis

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/health/WHO-covid-daszak-c...

Historically, SARS-CoV-1 is suspected of being transmitted from bats to civets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291347/

In Feb 2020, China shut down its wildlife farming industry and sent out directions on how to kill and dispose of the animals: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00677-0

http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c30834/202002/c56b129850aa42acb584...

https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/...

Wildlife farming was a $70B industry that employed around 2% of China's workforce. There was a short-lived ban in 2003 in response to SARS-CoV-1, which was later rescinded.

One common cold coronavirus that circulates around had a common ancestor in 1890. Suspiciously timed with the Russian “Flu” pandemic of 1890-1891[1]

(Not that we can just discount the Wuhan lab theory, but a naturally occurring pandemic like this not that weird historically)

1 - https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-coronavir...

Right now, there is no question that say, the US military has samples of Coronavirus. Not for nefarious reasons mind you, but of course it's of military importance to study a global virus if only to work on vaccines and such.

Even if Coronavirus originated in nature, going forward if there is ever a new outbreak, you technically can't prove it wasn't the US military accidentally messing up can you?

You don't know the characteristics of the strain they're holding, and if it originated in nature then any study of it will show it came from nature.

Likewise you can't prove it wasn't the lab. They could have had samples of it from before, how can you prove the negative of that? It's hard to prove you didn't have access to a given thing.

The issue isn't how long an account has been on HN or the good posts it makes—it's the bad posts. This shouldn't be hard to understand; it's the same principle by which people who always stop at red lights and are nice to supermarket cashiers still don't get to rob banks.

I wasn't trying to be confrontational about it, just trying to understand why that's your opinion. In particular I was curious about your "very likely", because my priors are that most infectious diseases are not caused by lab leaks, and that there's no particular evidence of a lab leak here (though as you say plenty of reason to believe such evidence would be suppressed). But it's not my field so I'm not strongly attached to those priors.

I'd certainly agree with the article's premise that the lab theory should not be dismissed out of hand, but I think that's a different conclusion than saying "it's very likely to have originated in a lab leak". My takeaway from the article is "it's possible, but still not very likely", though I suppose I'd give a higher % of probability now than before reading the article.

Probably from known civilian gain-of-function research.

Probably not from a classified military biowarfare program.

Not the first not the last pandemic that originated in China: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140123-...

Some time ago I shared here on HN a US research on "The debate on potential pandemic pathogen creation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OaTwPAQ3v0

Interesting research on bio weaponry.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/18/1021030/coronavi...

(In the first case, the market may be expected to be just another case in a wider spread pattern with a gravitational center involving typical contacts and residential areas of lab workers, in the second one, we may expect to observe an initial spread around the market and the living quarters of those, who work there.)

Even without a patient zero, there should be some indications regarding clusters in early observations.

The hypocrisy is strong with this one, Luke.

Before the BLS4 facility in Wuhan was established in 2017, there was a lot of SARS / Coronavirus research going on at UNC (alongside people from Wuhan's Institute of Virology).

This included 'gain of function' research which attempts to create the means to 'deliver' pathogens via aerosol.

I'm not saying UNC had anything to do with Wuhan itself, but I do notice many articles avoid mentioning that very similar work goes on in other parts of the World.

(I was also amazed that the distance from the Wuhan lab to the fish market is startlingly close).

And if no evidence is good enough is it really a theory?

How does it fit the detection of the virus in the material collected months before officual discovery in places far away from the place of official discovery?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9410163/US-State-De...

If most of the discussion on an idea is about how people dismiss it or how any evidence is being covered up the idea might not be that strong.

2. Review CCTV of their movements for the 14 days prior.

3. Find the commonality.

If there's genuine interest in where it came from, I think the answer is certainly findable.

Of course, they don't allow a thorough investigation and thus are trying to hide something.

Whether it is deliberated it is harder. But if it is an accident.

And let Wu Han people to fly away to the world ...

1. It was human made or found. Human made is common QAnon fodder. I don't believe anyone serious finds that idea credible. Nature is probably far better at concocting new viruses than humans are. And if it was found, where did it come from? I'm honestly surprised DNA sequencing hasn't been more effective in answering this question thus far;

2. Whether it was deliberately released or accidentally leaked. Note that a deliberate release doesn't have to be state-sponsored. It could be a rogue employee like the Anthrax letters from ~20 years ago; and

3. Whether the lab knew what they had or they didn't. Coronaviruses are studied by Chinese labs. They could have hundreds of samples without realizing that one in particular can infect humans and be transmissible effectively and asymptomatically. I suspect that in any version of the lab origin theory that it's more likely they didn't know what they had. That would take human testing.

What does seem clear is that the CCP isn't particularly interested in getting to the bottom of this. I wouldn't take that as evidence of them having more knowledge of this than we do. I suspect they simply don't want to know. More to the point, I think the CCP sees efforts to find out as a direct attack on China.

I just haven't seen any evidence of it that I think 'proves' it.

Someone please explain to me how the Chinese were able to identify that that had a new virus.

I’ve done pandemic drills with homeland security. They said they way you know you’ve got a new virus floating around is either new symptoms; significantly more “flu like” cases; significantly more cases escalating to pneumonia; increased deaths.

Covid presents like the flu, so much so you need a test, but early on a test was not available. So the symptoms are not unique.

Early on there was not a spike in cases, so that would not have sparked an interest.

Early on there was not a significant uptick in flu cases turning to to pneumonia, so that would not have sparked interest.

Early on there was not a spike in deaths, so that would not have e sparked an interest.

In fact when the Chinese discovered covid, there was absolutely no evidence that anything out of the ordinary was taking place.

But somehow the Chinese knew that they had a very contagious, bat based virus circulating, based on no information.

Everyone is focused on the wrong thing, I want to know how they discovered it with no information?

I’ve always believed this was an lab accident by a technician that needed their job so they covered it up until they and too many family members got sick and it was obvious something was wrong.

They knew about the virus because it was being studied, and that’s the only answer that makes any sense.

If it was through natural selection, then it was likely such virus was going to cause a pandemic whether it was leaked by the lab or not, since presumably there's a natural reservoir of the virus.

(1) Let's address the glass windows in our own house first and tighten the US policies and culture. Secrecy is not a good idea here. Without even reflecting on Covid, it is clear the author has been dealing with this a while, and the US needs to improve. I am reminded of discussions on the old '50s/'60s nuclear culture...

(2) A year later, it may not be possible for the most honest, the most painstaking, the most independent reconstruction of the Wuhan lab events to properly track what occurred. Nor would it be per se politically doable. It might, however, be feasible for the Chinese official position to commit to an enhanced tightening of policies and culture around lab handling of specimens, in light of current events and looking forward.

(3) To a first approximation (the same one where Pi = 3), I don't care if Covid comes from a lab, a bat, a pig, or a chicken. I care that there are dead people, and that there was massive dysfunction globally & in a multipartisan way in the response, leading to more dead and disabled people...

Its an example of bait and switch. This virus is not something that should have gained this much attention.

A bayesian inference shows that death when looking at a age stratification chart, who died compared with how many were expected to die in this cohort vs how many where expected to die were it a average flu outbreak in that same population.

I was building a model for local hospitals, with information back in march 2020. I grew disheartened when I realised that this killer virus was hardly more deadly than a bad flu year.

That brings up the excess deaths, why is it so high? Its hard to find good numbers in this, especially when you apply related increase in violent crime in 2020. Murders increases by 40% in NYC for example. More needs to be done to look into these numbers.

The death rate in all countries is died with, nor from. For example the UK lists all deaths who died within 30 days if a positive reading as a covid death. So to get the true numbers you need to apply a bayes model to see what we should have seen in a normal year.

A person over 70 has a 10% change if dying each year.

So if a virus that had no affect but turned your hair green killed 10% of people in an aged care home this would be branded as a deadly virus. Because of collerlation.

Now this virus kills much more than 10%, flu outbreaks have been reported to kill 12-16% of people in aged care homes. Covid is still more however.

I am now rambling, I have not squared the circle just yet. I still don't understand the hysteria, but it reminds me of post 9/11. Where people were acting crazy and full of anger.

I don't know what comes next, but I can tell you it won't be logical.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345753939_Outlines_...

https://zenodo.org/record/4477081

I don't fully agree with either analysis, but it shows the evidence and basic form of the argument. Most human pandemics historically have originated from natural zoonosis, but the 1977 flu pandemic was very likely a lab accident. So my prior knowing that a pandemic has occurred but nothing else would be small but not zero, perhaps a few percent.

That the pandemic occurred in a city that (a) lies far from expected natural spillover regions for SARS-like viruses, and (b) contains the lab with the world's biggest collection of SARS-like viruses increases that probability. That the lab staff say they weren't working with any viruses close to SARS-CoV-2 decreases it, but the obstruction of any attempt to verify that independently increases it back again.

The absence of a proximal host also increases that probability. China has every opportunity and motivation to find that, and so far they've failed. I guess it's possible that they found it and they're lying, because they seem determined now to show that the virus originated outside China; but the lab leak has become a sufficiently established part of (politicized and largely science-free) anti-China rhetoric that I'd guess they'd welcome the chance to prove it false.

Of course that could just mean the pandemic originated from a very rare but natural event. But that then raises the possibility of a naturally-evolved virus released by WIV staff, whether by way of the lab or just from a researcher who gets infected on a sampling trip--WIV collection activity is a small fraction of total human activity in spillover areas, but a large fraction of human activity travelling from the most remote virus-rich regions back to Wuhan.

If you're interested in this, I'd suggest Alina Chan's Twitter feed. She's taken a tremendous reputational risk here, and quite a lot of abuse both from virologists who find it unthinkable that their work could lead to such a catastrophe, and from genuine conspiracy theorists disappointed when what they thought was their ally debunks their science-free claims.

Nice study.

But it didn't show where these people were from looks like hospital inpatients in the first Wuhan cluster.

Also I would like to see their results compared to non covid positive of the same age.

A member of my family got swine flu in 2009/10 they had very adverse health affects for three years after. So its not uncommon to have long term affects from flu like illnesses

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

There are some indications that it might have been spreading possibly as early as September but the coverage I’ve seen was preliminary and researchers were cautious about concluding anything without more comprehensive tests to rule out things like cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses. The generally accepted patient 0 for the outbreak must have been infected in November to be symptomatic in early December but I haven’t seen any credible claims that anyone in China had identified this as a new disease until late December.

They do if they don't get treatment. Usual course for deadly covid is, high fevers, feeling terrible, then there's an improvement in symptoms for a couple of days, then blood oxygen levels drop and the person drops dead

There is nothing in china's outbreak response that suggests guilt.

I'd say that the release of a highly transmissible and moderately lethal pathogen was the primary issue.

I realize it's annoying to be rate limited, but it's one of the few (crude) software tools we have to try to put off the descent of the forum into flamewar, so dropping the mechanism isn't really an option.

https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...

https://www.ocacnews.net/overseascommunity/article/article_s...

> In the wee hours of Dec. 31, 2019, CDC deputy chief Lo Yi-chun could not sleep and was scrolling his phone when an online post shared in a CDC chat group caught his attention.

> Quoting information from Chinese websites, the post that appeared on PTT, one of Taiwan's largest internet bulletin board systems (BBS), warned about the potential danger of a SARS-like disease that was spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

> "The post came out (on PTT) at 2 a.m., and at 3 a.m., I saw it being shared on a chat group by another sleepless CDC doctor," Lo said at a press conference Thursday.

> Lo said the post immediately caught his eye because unlike other unsubstantiated online messages this one included a chest CT scan, a hospital test result and what appeared to be a screenshot of messages sent by a doctor to his colleagues, warning them of a highly contagious virus.

> is-ought 34 minutes ago [dead] [–]

> Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement?

How is this even dead? It's only asking for a reference.

In this case, that the lab was not responsible.

If false, then it's yet another viral mutation / species cross over which have happened all the time throughout history.

When I hear hoofbeats I think "horses" not "zebras"...

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

I honestly don’t see what difference it makes from it coming from a lab in China vs someone eating something they weren’t supposed to be vs a bat, etc.

I’m honestly curious to why it matters - not to say that we shouldn’t pursue the truth but it seems like it doesn’t matter.

These theories without conclusive evidence seems to just blame China - which unfortunately drive anti Sino sentiment.

The fundamentals remain unchanged from when the WHO did their work, nothing said here is adding new evidence, its just the volume of agreement making people feel sure.

role of furin cleavage site in covid:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-0184-0

"In fact, no influenza virus with a furin cleavage site has ever been found in nature,"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7435492/

Where did this mutation come from?

This is an earnest question, not a blind "I don't care". I think this is interesting, and I can see some amount of merit in these claims, but at the end of the day it doesn't feel like it matters to me which one it was. It seems like the only change would be "China gets more bad PR" and maybe American racists use this as an excuse to be more racist.

Does that make sense?

In a bizarre world where you were presumed guilty, could you do anything? If you submitted evidence that you were on another continent at the time of the crime, doesn't that prove you didn't do it? (Assuming the crime is something you must be physically present to do)

I would say you're supposed to engage the same way everyone had been engaging with the entire thread up to that point. But if you do want to transition to a more evidence-based approach to the subject — which I could get behind — I don't think the right way to go about it is to suddenly demand proof from the first person whose opinion you don't like.

However the fact that all of the Chinese supporting votes showed up at once, and then the others show up slowly is supportive of a group of people working together.

It's like people just depend on nobody following the links they post.

  " Claims that it was created by an individual, government, or country

    Excluding claims that it was studied in, came from, or leaked from a lab without specifically calling it man-made"

  "The goal of this policy is to remove common viral hoaxes that have been repeatedly debunked by independent fact-checkers."

Sure, things aren't black and white and I never said they were. But Facebook will ban you for suggesting that it's possible that the virus is man-made, right? So they're the 'extremists' here.

It’s obvious in hindsight that what you say is likely true, but there is no feasible political route for the CCP to take blame, as their lives would be at stake due to unrest.

I'm afraid we'll never know the truth though, China would never admit it was a lab leak.

August 2019 - "Vape flu" appears in the US.

October 2019 - World Military Games in Wuhan, 300 US military men and women attend.

November 2019 - SAR-COV2 appears in Wuhan.

Let's not discount this sequence of events as well.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54969682

There have been examples of bats excrement contaminating fruits on fields as a transmission chain. Accounting for these, often undiscovered, interactions is extremely difficult in terms of probability.

> we already know for certain the labs were transporting the bat viruses directly

In research from 5+ years ago, research which warned exactly about the fact how the virus already had overcome critical barriers to infect human cells [0]. A very plausible interpretation here can also be that said research was a warning about things to come, and is now mistaken as the original cause for it.

[0] https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

Sanction the CPC for non-transparency and their constant lies to their and the world's population. Demand liability.

The other source is a nature news article [1] which has by now following disclaimer:

> Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.

It also states at the end:

> Without the experiments, says Baric, the SHC014 virus would still be seen as not a threat. Previously, scientists had believed, on the basis of molecular modelling and other studies, that it should not be able to infect human cells. The latest work shows that the virus has already overcome critical barriers, such as being able to latch onto human receptors and efficiently infect human airway cells, he says. “I don't think you can ignore that.” He plans to do further studies with the virus in non-human primates, which may yield data more relevant to humans.

So it might just as well be that these experiments warned us about that potential, and now that it actually happened, some people interpret the original warning as the cause.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

[1] https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

I’ve also seen plenty of valid conversations about this on various web forums where it didn’t come to name calling.

I’ve also seen plenty of aggressive and disingenuous arguments by angry people, who proclaim their suspicions are true facts instead of probability assessments, and then perch their discussions on the assumed truth of those suspicions.

https://archive.is/O5PhV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#History

> The 2010 autopsy of Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy, revealed the presence of the DNA sequence of Borrelia burgdorferi making him the earliest known human with Lyme disease.

Unless it's got conclusive evidence of a functional time machine, it's gonna struggle to explain how a town in Connecticut predates a prehistoric mummy.

I've seen my supposedly smart and well-read friends dismiss the lab-leak theory out of hand; rejecting all discussion and labelling me with the right-wing conspiracist label despite the fact I'm heartily left-leaning.

And, I have a lot of experience with political posts on Reddit being "ninja-banned"; appearing in New but not in the main feed; disappearing even from new for an hour and then re-appearing, comments ninja-removed without trace, even from their OP's direct comment feed.

Poor Aaron Swartz :/

Unfortunately I'm nowhere near informed enough on virology to understand whether these claims are accurate or are some sort of sleight of hand.

That said - it doesn't yet change my priors about the likely source of outbreak which seems most plausibly at WIV.

Their manufacturing economy does not benefit from being locked down on a regular basis

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

Respectfully, this just simply isn't supported by the data and the dozens upon dozens of polls available[1]. Sure, there's a bunch of QAnon weirdos out there or staunch Alex Jones acolytes, but most regular folks have been taking it more or less seriously: social distancing and mask-wearing has been almost universally adopted. Last year in April and May, the percentage of people that "weren't worried" about Covid-19 was in the single digits. And there is some mistrust out there, but it's been well-earned: 15 days to flatten the curve has turned into 365 days of economic and social limbo.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/308222/coronavirus-pandemic.asp...

Clearly the virus is only a major issue for elderly and infirm patients, where the vast majority of people under the age of 30-40 present mildly or asymptomatically. And if that's indeed the case, then perhaps forcing the entire population to shelter in place for more than a year makes less sense than, say, recommending protective measures primarily for the vulnerable.

And no, the vast majority of cities do not have viral research labs.

Also waste water samples from Spain and Italy show COVID-19 much earlier than reported in Wuhan.

Spain, March 2019, 1 sample https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...

Italy, 18. December 2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N2DW1YK

But your point is still a good one

"Has this been causing small, stochastically limited outbreaks for some time before we picked it up?" is a question that has dogged several recent outbreaks.

lol care to share those numbers

It's not exceptional in many of the ways viruses can be. It's not as deadly as Ebola. Or as durable as Norovirus. Or as transmissible as Measles. It's just...really good at its job.

The lack of fomite transmission for SARS-CoV-2 has saved a lot of healthcare workers.

The idea that this thing sprang out of the wild, in Wuhan of all places, perfectly adapted to infect human beings, is fucking laughable.

This is all circumstantial, of course. But, that combined with the fact that COVID originated in Wuhan, thousands of kilometers away from the bat caves of Yunnan province, yet in the same city as the only BSL-4 laboratory in China, that's hard to ignore.

Military-funded scientific biowarfare research should be different (use different, more advanced, tools) than run-of-the-mill bioinformatics research which US scientists work with. So if the scientist is not working on military research, their guess is as good as: "it was not engineered using common industry-standard known methods". It is misattributing authority, like quoting bio science experts saying "COVID can't be a weapon because the mortality is too low". No, you have zero idea about the military applications of biowarfare. If the scientist really was a military researcher, then they won't disclose signs of tampering to a news outlet or academic journal.

Another is that, for obvious reasons, military research would like to obfuscate its engineering. So it is unlikely they use easily detectable methods for that. It is perfectly possible to breed viruses in a lab, inside natural hosts. Then you won't see any biological markers of tampering, but the virus was still engineered by cross-breeding captured fruit bats or manually creating a zoonotic transmission chain to humans. So even without biological signs of tampering, the lab leak remains plausible.

IMO the CCP is evil because they have internment camps just like Nazi Germany. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/uighurs/

I'm sorry, but in this case, China is the country who told the rest of the world what to do and the west, with its superiority mentality over the east, ignored it and got a while year economy down the drain.

In my book, conspiracies will always make their way to those who want to believe them.

You can catch flu from an asymptomatic person, but Covid has a much higher reproduction factor. During the winter lockdown in England, regular flu was completely eradicated - literally not a single case was detected in entire England [0]. At the same time, Covid was still spreading happily. The measures that stopped flu in its tracks only slightly inconvenienced SARS-Cov-2.

Covid is simply too good at spreading, compared to other similar diseases.

(As an analogy: I can swim, Michael Phelps can swim, we can both call ourselves swimmers, but we are not really comparable.)

[0]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-cases-covid-en...

And again, RaTG13, the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, was sampled by the WIV in 2013 and published only post-pandemic. So it's unquestionable that they had at least one unpublished virus similar to SARS-CoV-2 in their collection; the only question is how many others.

It's likely that the only people who know the answer are under the physical control of the Chinese government. Even if they're sometimes briefly abroad, they likely have loved ones behind. So it doesn't take any voluntary conspiracy to keep them quiet, just a direction from a government that has amply demonstrated e.g. in Xinjiang its willingness and ability to punish anyone who discloses its secrets.

As I mentioned earlier, a proximal animal host would greatly increase my confidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from natural zoonosis. Is there any evidence short of a direct admission from the WIV that would decrease yours?

Finally, Marc Lipsitch and David Relman are Harvard epidemiology and Stanford microbiology profs respectively. I'd rather people engaged seriously with the evidence than just relied on credentials; but are you saying they're conspiracy theorists too?

It's further evidence that these things get sited sensibly, not randomly.

It's not worth the risk.

We should also remember that there were past lab leaks in China of SARS, including ones that led to smaller outbreaks and deaths: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death

If leaks are a problem, then certifications should be better enforced.

Burying our head in the sand and waiting for nature to kill us is a losing move.

Let’s remember this is China we’re talking about. Before you hand wave that away, consider the emphasis that China places on keeping-up-appearances at practically any cost

The reality is that epidemiology is not a straight forward nor simple field of research, finding concrete and solid answers is usually way more difficult than most people assume when they want answers to point fingers.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/18/5298310

Exactly that. The first paper which discredited the lab leak theory published in The Lancet early last year by a number of scientists was later found out to have been organized behind the scenes by EcoHealth, which also asked for it's name not to appear on the paper.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/ecohealth-allian...

The defense is NOT to stop the virus (unrealistic defense solution) - it's to make sure we can withstand/resist it so things like vaccines can be put into place so we can go back to some sort of normal (e.g. New Zealand)

The USA (only major western country without healthcare) was unique in how many deaths we had. 90% of those were unnecessary.

It’s rather simple to do the so called ’gain of function’, you let the virus have it’s run with bat cells and add lots of human cells in petri with them. Because there is no immune system, the virus have not much to stop it. Slowly it adapt to human cells, you can change the type of cells so it can adapt to other receptors and so on. Those articles where published before the whole crisis erupted.

It's a pure mapping problem. There are thousands of known viruses that affect humans. But most viruses don't have thousands of vaccines.

Additionally, there are constraints. The only contraint on a virus is that is needs to reproduce, and cause harm. Any kind of harm will do, and any kind of spreading is fine. But the vaccine needs to not hurt the person (at least, don't hurt them worse than the virus would).

Even if both processes involved similar techniques, the constraints on virus production are more favorable to the researcher than vaccine production.

To get back to whether China or any nation would intentionally create a biological weapon, however...: most industrialized countries realized a long time ago that bioweapons tends to be a bad strategy. Most western countries stopped their bioweapons programs back in the 70s for the simple reason that there was no reasonable use-case for a bioweapon that isn't done better by simply bombing something (or more recently-hacking their infrastructure). Bioweapons are strategically useful for small nations, and terrorist groups.

"Moderna designed its coronavirus vaccine in 2 days" was a headline I saw. And it's been approved by the FDA. So that seems demonstrably false.

Multiple companies have come up with a vaccine by now, too.

Which is not a dismissal at all. What scientists are saying is that both zoonotic transfer and lab leak are plausible, but that we don't have evidence for the latter (yet!) and the former is more likely.

In many media articles this simplifies to 'scientists say virus origins are zoonotic'.

They are acting without any concern for the outside world - not for how they are perceived, not for any consequences. They are acting with pure self-determination. This works because they know they can be self sufficient and have a long term plan to get there.

Controlling the information/narrative domestically is the only variable they need to manipulate that matters. So as an outsider, it all seems quite inexplicable, but if you see it as a way to achieve long term political and infrastructure goals while maintaining social harmony locally - most of their actions make sense, even if they may not be morally justifiable to some/many/all people in some/many/all situations :)

And just for domestic propaganda reasons. If it came from China they could be blamed for it, and they want to deny/deny/deny and defect blame. Serves their propaganda purposes to have people believe it was imported and generates an us-vs-them bunker narrative where the rest of the world is unfairly blaming them. That leaves their citizens questioning the rest of the world and not their own government.

I don't think anyone suggests the CCP unleashed the virus onto its own city on purpose.

If a bio research lab is accidentally allowing the public to come in contact with anything it is studying, this is something we need to

1. investigate

2. identify

3. prevent

Saying "it's possible this could have happened anyway" is not meaningful. I would prefer we identify how it did happen. If a lab leaked it, this would inform future discussions on what lab practices and research projects have acceptable risk/reward.

Ignoring the possibility this leaked from a lab until you have bulletproof evidence is nonsensical, particularly when investigator access is restricted. This, more than anything, is the point the article is making. Lab containment failures have a well documented history.

China has absolutely no chance to meet head-to-head against a US Carrier Strike Group on neutral territory. Absolutely none, and the US has TEN Carrier Strike Groups.

Ex: If China + US decides that we need to fight over in Antartica, the US will win in nearly every feasible encounter.

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China's plan isn't to win or even challenge the Navy on the high seas. Instead, China's plan is to assert military strength with the seas it is close to: asserting military might against Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Korea, and other local minor powers.

Furthermore: Chinese air-forces can launch from Mainland China to support any hypothetical naval operations.

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EX: Its not trying to beat US in a fair fight. China is likely aiming to beat the US in an "unfair fight": any fight close to China's territories + air force + cruise missile range might stand a chance against a US Carrier Strike Group.

A few powerful Chinese ships under the protective cover of cruise-missiles + Chinese airforce is probably the plan. It only will be effective when close to the Chinese coast, but that's all China really cares about.

Those in favour of the lab leak hypothesis point out that the virus showed up on the scene with all the evolutionary capability to spread amongst humans i.e with batteries included.

With previous Sars viruses my understanding is that each zoonotic jump was traceable with examples of previous forms in prior animal hosts to corroborate the lineage.

What makes Covid-19 interesting is that these zoonotic jumps or the gain of functions can be accelerated in the lab with the purpose of preparing us ahead of time for a dangerous forms of Sars style viruses. It looks like covid-19 may be that type of strain, not man made, but given the lab conditions for it to gain the capability. It may have escaped.

It's worth exploring the lab leak hypothesis but I would say that it's not politically expedient for any of the scientists or parties involved. We will never really know the truth and that is something we need to grow comfortable with.

Meanwhile in the US, hysterical partisans attacked Trump for correctly naming the virus along with its origin. This resulted in a societal unwillingness to direct blame at the Chinese government for all their numerous missteps, starting with suppression of early reports of a new pneumonia like illness in late 2019. How many deaths could have been avoided with just the most basic level of transparency and responsibility?

Due to the timing, the general consensus is that the husbands contacted the disease from one male (close hugging or extended talking) and then gave it to their wives that night.

I thought UV resistant organisms were usually referred to as extremophiles because it's so infrequent

Yes, governments tend to avoid releasing embarrassing info. Witness the way the US government failed to prepare for the virus and pretended everything would be fine and then only made changes when they couldn't possibly do anything else which probably is responsible for killing 500,000 people.

The bats this disease come from we’re not being sold in the market at this time. They’re out of season. So already the theory is assuming a multi-animal hop (some other wild animal got in contact with a bat and got infected, then captured and moved a thousand kilometers to the wet market and killed).

Meanwhile the bio lab in Wuhan received a sample of infectious coronavirus just months prior to the earliest known case. Within a few weeks of the outbreak while China was still downplaying the disease, the central government passed a rushed emergency safety rules update for these labs, starts pushing back on requests for access, and using state media to throw out a bunch of crazy theories about external origin.

Anyone with half a brain can connect the dots.

You reason about WHO as an institution, while disregarding the principal-agent problem. The leaders of WHO are very strongly influenced by China, and as a result the institution is working to please China, rather than working to fulfill its nominal mission. Its leaders will see ample rewards for corrupting the institution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Garden_of_Beasts

Might have something to do with the fact that the leader of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom, was hand picked by the Chinese communist party and won the position over the US and EU's favored choice.

The lies about masks may have helped with shortages in the short term. The result is now that people rightfully distrust everything their governments say.

The 1936 Olympic Summer Games are a good starting point in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics

How is violating the Sino-British Joint Declaration and getting away with it "losing ground"? The Hong Kong protests failed and Hongkongers now have less freedom than before.