Not true at all, but even if it was, idk how that’s evidence that lab leak was more likely.
The rumours of a leak from the laboratory were refuted categorically by the laboratory director for the following reasons:
among the three SARS-like viruses cultured in the laboratory, none are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. The only SARS-CoV-2-like virus found by this group is RaTG13, which is neither a live (cultured) virus nor the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2
a paper by leading virologists in Nature rebutted the idea of a bioengineered source
WIV has a strong biosafety management system; the biosafety laboratory comes under
different authorities, with independent assessments for the National Health Commission, for
instance
The reserved sera in April 2019 and March 2020 from all the workers and students in
research group led by Professor Shi Zhengli were seronegative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
The laboratory director, responding to laboratory-leak theories, commented that from 2010,
including the P3 laboratory, WIV has conducted experiments with more than 10,000 entries, and the P4 laboratory has conducted experiments with more than 3,000 entries in the last 3 years. No infection was ever reported. Close contacts would have been infected if there had been a laboratory leak.
I don’t have any more info, but point #1 seems important. There aren’t any records of them having a coronavirus in stock that could have been the precursor, so a lab leak now requires them covering up all the evidence and no one whistleblowing. Which I suppose is possible but idk how you’re deciding it’s now more likely.
If you look at the full post and not just the selection you quoted, you can probably work it out. The significant point is they put a ton of effort into locating COVID in animal populations and came up empty. That’s a significant distinction from SARS, where they identified the virus in civet cats almost immediately.
I can’t imagine how anyone could honestly take my posts to imply that position. For the record, though, as I said quite explicitly (and as you seemed to understand 4 posts ago), my takeaway was that it’s less likely. If you test a bunch of animals for COVID and find out that they don’t have COVID, it makes it less likely (although not by any means impossible) that there’s a big population of animals with COVID out there. The analysis is pretty simple, but I’m sure there’s a Khan Academy class for high school kids on basic probability out there that you can look up if it’s still not making sense to you.
Lol what the fuck is your deal? How is discussing the actual thread off topic? Are you dense? There is no issue about having a second thread and you guys are actually ruining this one. This is a great thread for covid news and updates. Theorycrafting about CHINA VIRUS is counter productive and can be in its own thread.
I actually am sympathetic towards CHINA VIRUS myself, and I STILL don’t wanna read this stuff. It can go somewhere else.
If people still really really feel the need to discuss it, I’ll just start my own covid thread and that can be for news/updates and no CHINA VIRUS talk.
We want to discuss the orgins of the virus. That’s why we’re discussing it. Start the thread you want and specify that you don’t want any discussion on the origin of the virus. Just news about the pandemic I guess? Obviously the origins of the virus have been very prominent in the news lately, bizarre that people are framing this as a derail.