The famous, highly cited Science paper has the animals wrong? Good to know.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/302/5643/276
In any case, it’s obvious you don’t want to defend jman’s actual assertions that are relevant to this thread, that the lab leak advances racist tropes against Chinese that the wet market hypothesis does not. I don’t blame you, obviously the opposite is true.
The discussion of origins of COVID doesn’t really belong in the moderation thread. However, I hope that they can be conducted with sensitivity to the very real rise in anti-Asian sentiment and violence in the United States and elsewhere. There seems to be some misunderstanding that racist narratives have to follow logic to be successful. In fact, any narrative about the origins of the virus will be (and likely already has been) coopted to stoke xenophobia.
Jman smeared another poster for alleged racism. I pointed out that smear is totally unfounded and ridiculous. If Jman’s false smear belongs in the moderation thread then a rebuttal also belongs here.
Naked racism???
(Seriously, please read the wiki)
In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets ( Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian palm civets to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was also later found in raccoon dogs ( Nyctereuteus sp.), ferret badgers ( Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like coronaviruses in Chinese bats.[60][61]
Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets. The bats did not show any visible signs of disease but are the likely natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. In late 2006, scientists from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of Hong Kong University and the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus appearing in civets and humans, bearing out claims that the disease had jumped across species.[62]
In December 2017, “after years of searching across China, where the disease first emerged, researchers reported … that they had found a remote cave in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan province, which is home to horseshoe bats that carry a strain of a particular virus known as a coronavirus. This strain has all the genetic building blocks of the type that triggered the global outbreak of SARS in 2002.”[3] The research was performed by Shi Zhengli, Cui Jie, and co-workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China, and published in PLOS Pathogens . The authors are quoted as stating that “another deadly outbreak of SARS could emerge at any time. The cave where they discovered their strain is only a kilometre from the nearest village.”[3][63] The virus was ephemeral and seasonal in bats.[64] In 2019, a similar virus to SARS caused a cluster of infections in Wuhan, eventually leading to a global pandemic.
Of note, your article specifically states:
The detection of SCoV-like viruses in small, live wild mammals in a retail market indicates a route of interspecies transmission, although the natural reservoir is not known.
Which notably is different than your assertion. I don’t think Science is wrong, I think you are.
Below is the coverage of the paper in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
If you dig in deeper to the literature, it’s unclear if civets where the vector through which in was transmitted to humans. Regardless, the animal responsible is the horseshoe bat.
jesus christ the Science paper says that they don’t know what the actual natural reservoir for Sars is, just that they detected sars in animals and the human animal traders. You don’t even have to read the whole paper, just the abstract. Which is like eighty words long.
But the fact that you’re telling me to read wikipedia rather than a peer reviewed article is pretty funny.
Jesus Christ sorry for the shit posting guys. Got roped in. Not the right place.
The ban until next week of Jal is absolute bullshit.
Yeah what was the post?
What was he banned for? I presumed it was for something already deleted.
I think it was something like “if there’s any racist trope against the Chinese it’s that they are good scientists, not bad”.
Seriously? That’s what he was banned for? A farce if true.
Apparently that’s it, it was deleted. I read the post, it was totally innocuous. Pointing out a racist trope exists is not engaging in racism. In fact, I did the exact same thing moments before, pointing out that the wet market hypothesis advanced racist tropes about Chinese animal husbandry and dietary habits. We were making the point that there doesn’t seem to be a prominent racist trope in Western culture that would fit with the lab leak hypothesis. The “racist trope” about Chinese scientists is that they are very diligent and capable, which, as jal pointed out, doesn’t seem to be promulgated by the lab leak hypothesis.
Utterly pathetic.
@MrWookie, could you provide us with the text of the post you deleted and confirm that was why jal was banned? If that’s what happened we need to have a vote on your action.
Yes, that was it. It is absolutely racist to say that it’s racist to say that Chinese people make excellent scientists.
Can you give us the exact wording of the post?
Why?
Because the people in question are not random Chinese people off the street, and thinking that a random person off the street is likely to be a good scientist just because they look Chinese, which is casually but usually not maliciously racist. The people we were talking about were the people in the Wuhan lab, scientists, and jal said it was racist to presume that they were excellent scientists
This is stupid and you’re being an ass and slandering him.