I think this is my first post in the thread.
I’m not even against throttling this thread if need be. But 1 post a day is a bit much.
I get this thread is going to be lit…
But at the same time origins of COVID is crazy important
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Yeah, let them fight I say
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They didn’t test nearly enough to rule the market out, to say nothing of the farms around Wuhan. Also, the first comment responding to the post addresses this.
Just not true. And you guys on team Lab Leak still need to explain where the second lineage came from, which is the whole point of his argument that you’re casually ignoring.
Every chance I’m missing something, but reading that post and going back to the WHO report I don’t know why an answer about lineages, regardless of whether the first infection was lab or animal based, is that they could have evolved in humans.
The post never suggests that is not possible. It says at one point that “[i]t is possible that humans involved in the wildlife trade were also infected and involved in this pathway.”
The WHO report looked at 16 studies that modelled the most recent common ancestor of the December + January sequences and concludes:
The point estimates for the time to most recent ancestor ranged from late September to early December, but most estimates were between mid-November and early December.
In other words seems extremely possibly during the time at which it was infecting humans in Wuhan. At no point in the discussion do they say the divergence of the two must (or even is likely to) be associated with animal rather than human infections.
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It may be important, but new information is very slow to come out, and no one here has any particular insight or firsthand information of their own. As such the only thing to do on a day-to-day basis is snipe at each other over the same old set of facts. This serves mainly to foment animosity rather than generating any kind of enlightenment.
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This feels like making up new rules without community input. By this standard, every thread would be one a day. I think this restriction should be removed.
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I puzzled over this some too. One problem I see is that the lab-leak hypothesis needs to explain both the Huanan market outbreak and the linkage between cases and other wildlife markets. One explanation is that someone gets infected from the lab (directly or indirectly), then goes to Huanan market and kicks off a big cluster, and then the virus spreads to other markets through vendors, etc. But that theory is not correct, because the genetic evidence said the lineage present at Huanan descended from the lineage seen elsewhere, not vice versa.
That said, I also don’t see why there couldn’t have been a cluster at another market sparked by a lab-linked chain that then kicked off the big Huanan cluster (though that may not be consistent with the other epidemiology). It starts to seem like a lot of coincidences though… why is the virus so good at spreading in markets and not elsewhere?
One hypothesis is that the apparent linkage between markets and early spread is sampling bias. If people expect to see a SARS-like outbreak, then you ask people who show up with mysterious flu-like symptoms if they’ve been to a wet market and call in the CDC if they have, but if they haven’t, you give them 2 aspirin, etc. Not sure how that hypothesis looks from other evidence. But if it’s true, maybe there are unidentified restaurant clusters and workplace clusters that make the market spread seem more typical.
On the other side of things, I haven’t heard of any COVID lineages that are unrelated to the original Wuhan ones. (Possibly wrong here?). It seems implausible that there’s some animal reservoir that people are in regular contact with and that transmitted the virus to people exactly twice, then just stopped.
Anyways, interesting stuff. Let’s snipe at each other some more tomorrow!
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Just jumping in to say that I think only being allowed to read one post per day in this thread is totally fine!
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This post makes me wonder what we’re even doing here. The ‘blog post’ is on the edge of what I can conclusively say I understand, and you just casually dismiss a major expert in virology as a ‘blog post’. You obviously don’t understand what’s going on in that post. He addresses your concern directly btw:
Proponents of the Lab Leak theory will point out that none of the animals sold at the Huanan Market tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (WHO, 2021). Although mentioned in the WHO Report, but not discussed in detail, several independent sources indicate that wildlife species susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, including civets and raccoon dogs, were sold at the Huanan market (Stout, 2020; Yee, 2020; Zhang and Holmes, 2020). Similar species were likely to have been available to purchase at other wildlife markets in Wuhan. Certain species of animals may have been removed after the appearance of the first COVID-19 cases and the linkage of COVID-19 cases to the market, but prior to the closure of the Market on January 1, 2020. It should also be noted that environmental samples that did test positive were associated with the portion of the market where wildlife or wildlife products were sold. A temporal analysis of the early human cases at the Huanan market confirms the pattern of spread from the areas of the market where wildlife products were sold to other parts of the market. (WHO, 2021).
Now I suppose I don’t know if this is actually Dr Garry, but you should take a look at his resume before flippantly dismissing him. His work on ebola was especially interesting.
As for a cliffs version, what Trolly said. The lack of a positive test does not rule anything out.
I think it’s also useful to compare the WSJ report (which is not new) about 3 lab workers who got sick (but never tested positive for covid) versus
Among the first 168 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan with onset date prior to December 31, 2019 and a known history of exposure to wildlife markets 55.4% (93/168) reported such exposures. Of the 168 cases, 28% (47/168) had only been to the Huanan market, 22% (38/168) had exposure to another wildlife market and 4.7% (8/168) had exposure to the Huanan market and another market (Annex E2, Table 1 of WHO, 2021).
Garry doesn’t claim that it rules lab leak out, it just adds another uncommon thing to get to the lab leak result. His point is that not only do have to overcome how people who worked in and around wet markets were vastly overrepresented in the initially sick, but you would need for covid to diverge genetically early on.
That means that if there was a lab leak, there would have had to be a leak of two different lineages of covid at the same time or that there was a near immediate divergence of a lab leaked covid.
Both of those are very improbable. It makes far more sense that this came from a natural reservoir.
I’m not sure exactly how I want to address this because both of these things are true:
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This is the third major coronavirus outbreak with a significant amount of death, all likely from a bat as a source, in the past 20 or so years. It’s the second in China. So your premise is completely wrong from a longer term point of view.
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On a shorter term, it’s very difficult for viruses to jump from species to species. It’s more difficult for it to spread efficiently after the jump. It’s more difficult for it to be clinically significant. This is a common mechanism for how a pandemic happens. SARS, MERS, H1N1, swine flu and more all happened this way, yet didn’t happen over and over again immediately.
I think the paper is somewhat convincing but very speculative still.
Right, but the alternative explanation is this:
In one possible scenario divergence of SARS-CoV-2 to lineages A and B occurred prior to the transport of infected animals to Wuhan and the infected animals were subsequently distributed to different wildlife markets.
But if a large population of animals were infected we might expect to see more than two points of initial spread, while if a small population is infected I don’t see why it’s more probable for this divergence to occur in animal hosts rather than human. It’s not clear to me that divergence within an animal population followed by exactly two transmissions of different lineages to humans is more probable than one transmission to humans followed by divergence; the paper just asserts this is so. If we had two confirmed outbreaks in wet markets the case would be a lot stronger, but the paper doesn’t even identify a specific second site, it’s just wet markets in general:
Among the first 168 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan with onset date prior to December 31, 2019 and a known history of exposure to wildlife markets 55.4% (93/168) reported such exposures. Of the 168 cases, 28% (47/168) had only been to the Huanan market, 22% (38/168) had exposure to another wildlife market and 4.7% (8/168) had exposure to the Huanan market and another market (Annex E2, Table 1 of WHO, 2021).
This is kind of meaningless because it lacks base-rate information on how probable it is for people to have attended one of these markets. I don’t know what percentage of people in these areas of Wuhan regularly visit such places. Like if you looked at a Western outbreak and were like “omg a lot of these people have been to supermarkets recently” that’s obviously meaningless. That’s before we get into bobman’s point about possibly biased sampling of people who had attended known sites of COVID outbreaks, or people who had attended wet markets in general.
The conclusion of which is that exactly two jumps of two different lineages into humans is an improbable event. Less improbable than a divergence almost immediately after jumping into humans? I don’t know. It seems like we’re looking at an improbable sequence of events either way. The paper just asserts that it knows which is these sequences is more improbable. Maybe that is obvious to an experienced virologist, but I’d like to see a bit more detail backing this up.
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I was poking around that virologist site Lawnmower_Man linked to yesterday and found this thread by a professor of microbiology, immunology & parasitology where his findings were eventually published in a journal. The subject is about whether the closest publicly known relative to CoV2 could conceivably have been engineered or gain-of-functioned or whatevered into our current plague. His conclusion, like many others, was no, and I’m certainly not qualified to question the science there (although others have).
However, he made some other observations along the way I found interesting.
So the definitive source of the pandemic is a mixed infection of viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 and Bat HKU9 – copy choice error resulting in an insert in SARS-CoV-2. Could occur in bats, intermediate animal or human.
Human in incubation with SARS-CoV-2 could hop a max speed train, direct line from Kunming in Yunnan Province and disembark in Wuhan train station 6.5-8 hours later, sometime last fall. The line began service in 2017.
Infected in Yunnan, does not spread it there, but goes to Wuhan, where he/she either falls ill or spreads it asymptomatically to another person, initiating the pandemic there. The initial outbreak occurs a short distance from the Wuhan train station for good reason – that is where it arrived.
This accidental mixed infection in the wild, and infection of a human by some form of bush meat or bat guano, who carries it by high speed train to Wuhan – this is the most likely series of events leading to the pandemic.
We have too ample evidence now that the animal that can transport SARS-CoV-2 from point A to point B, and spread it the fastest is a human being. Caged animals of any kind need not apply – and no animal reservoir for the virus has been found, now several months into the investigation. It is not for lack of the Chinese looking - they are far more motivated to understand the genesis of this than anyone.
The "pangolin hypothesis’ was based on faulty molecular analysis of sequence similarity, which turned out to not be that similar at all. That explanation was debunked 2.5 months ago.
I am not a fan of “gain of function” experiments at all, but the work of Zhengli and colleagues has shown that direct bat to human Coronavirus infection is possible. We are certain of it for Ebola.
The overall sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is closest to Yunnan isolates – only a bit appears to come from a virus that is HKU9-like. So it most likely came from Yunnan – but the outbreak occurred 700 miles away in Wuhan, not in Yunnan. Not along the way there either. The sole human traveler on high speed train while still in incubation is the best fit to the known information, in my view.
So for this to be true we need people traveling to Yunnan where they engage in risky behavior that could lead to infection, and then promptly returning to Wuhan. Turns out we have a large pool of people who frequently did just that - the researchers and their assistants from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They have been making repeated trips several times each year to area bat caves, collecting 15,000 samples and finding around 400 novel coronaviruses so far.
How were the safety protocols, you may wonder?
From 4:45 to 4:56, a scientist can be seen holding a bat with his bare hands. Team members from 7:44 to 7:50 can be seen collecting potentially highly infectious bat feces while wearing short sleeves and shorts and with no noticeable personal protective equipment (PPE) other than gloves.
From 8:31 to 8:34, some team members can be seen wearing complete hazmat suits while many others are interacting with them in ordinary clothing and scrub caps and still others have no head covering at all. The camera then cuts to a container full of live, thrashing bats.
From the 8:42-8:47 mark, one team member is wearing full scrubs, mask, and scrub cap, while another is in street clothes, scrub cap, and mask, and the third person, possibly Shi, is handing samples with her bare hands.
Virus researcher Cui Jie (崔杰) relates his experiences of being bitten from 8:47 to 8:50.
Again, a scientist is seen holding and touching a live wild bat from the 8:51-9:06 mark. The video cuts back to the interior of the lab, where Hu Ben (胡犇) is shown overseeing a woman as she handles specimens from 10:26 to 10:33. Neither is wearing a mask.
From 10:45 to 10:50, a team member in a camouflage shirt and without any PPE can be seen at the entrance of a cave in Yunnan, where many coronaviruses originate, with bats flying all around him. From 10:51 to 11:12, the video cuts to three lab technicians handling samples as the narrator describes “three live viruses” collected from Yunan. None are wearing masks.
Oh, you want to see the video itself? OK.
But surely things were much more secure back in Wuhan, under Shi’s careful leadership.
Google translation of the third to last paragraph on this page about her (archive.org in case it gets deleted):
Zhang Huajun said: “The research team captured a few bats from the wild to be used as experimental animals. They need to be fed every day. This Spring Festival, the students went home for a holiday, and Teacher Shi silently undertook the task of raising bats.” Regarding this matter, many No one knows until now.
Great, that’s great. She kept bats as pets.
So, how about those market origin theories? According to both NPR and the Kaiser Foundation, the two most high profile scientists pushing the animal origin theories - Peter Daszak and Robert Garry - have long-standing ties to and a close working relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Gee, I wonder if they have any biases or conflicts of interest?
Whatever and wherever the point of transmission ends up being, if found at all, it seems beyond obvious that there is a fairly high probability the Wuhan Institute played some key role in the initial outbreak.
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using my window to grunch and say
WERE U ABSENT THE DAY THEY TAUGHT LAW AT LAW SCHOOL
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I’m using my 24 hour post to call you guys dumb for whatever drama this thread spawned. Told you it was a good idea to split it off from the main thread.
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US President Joe Biden has ordered intelligence officials to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China.
He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it was the result of a lab accident, or emerged from human contact with an infected animal.
Mr Biden asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.
Assume virus escaped China lab after gain of function research, what implication? International oversight of Chinese labs, sanctions, war? Good luck with those.
I submit that there’s basically no practical difference with wet market vs lab (and obv lab probably wouldn’t mean human influence, just that they did field work and some samples were “hits”). In either case the CCP has likely already taken major steps to limit future events. As vaccine development and deployment shows viruses are a bigger threat to China than US/EU.
China will continue to be a much bigger factor in global warming than the US (same with India). What international pressure works with regard to covid but not the more significant issue of global warming? Global warming is a much more certain if slow moving disaster than covid but the US, thanks to incoherent politics, can’t even offer de minimis international leadership or pressure.
China lab theory being practically meaningless, its only useful to gin up racists and thus help people like Cotton, which is a strong basis for skepticism, because his interest is in making the accusation, regardless of truth. Would I like to know the 100% accurate story? Sure. Does it matter? Not at all.
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It makes sense as I understand it (I could be misreading things). You have an area outside Wuhan with many animals in close contact, some variant is more effective at spreading in one population of animals and becomes variant B. You ship some animals to one market and other animals to another and boom, two lineages blow up at the same time. It’s harder (but not impossible) to square how this happens with a lab leak of one variant. There could certainly have been more than one animal-human transmission at each location. Given how slowly this mutates and how little we know about the specifics I’m not sure how many variants we’d expect to see on this animal farm.
Yeah, it fucking matters if we’ve spent the past year demonizing people who are actually doing incredibly important research. If we ever rule out a lab leak* we ought to send them a Hallmark apology card or something. “Sorry we called you guys cartoon supervillains and tried to defund your work, we’re just really bad at using Occam’s Razor,” something like that.
- – Which we haven’t done yet. Which I have to say explicitly every time now because people seem to get confused about what I’m actually saying.
