Nope. No evidence at all. Kind of hard to do when it’s all been destroyed.
Really? Which virus specifically again?
Coronaviruses
From WIKI:
In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line (HeLa). The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.
In December 2019, cases of pneumonia associated with an unknown coronavirus were reported to health authorities in Wuhan. The institute checked its coronavirus collection and found the new virus had 96% genetic similarity to RaTG13, a virus its researchers had discovered in horseshoe bats in southwest China.[20][21]
You might want to read this thread from the beginning. We’re were discussing that way back in February and March. We can rehash it if you found something new and interesting, but if you just want to trot out things we’ve already discussed in depth without any new data, I’ll let you have that discussion on your own.
You asked me a question and I answered it. Then you hand waved it away. There’s nothing to discuss with you. Everything I said was true.
No, I asked for a specific virus because you stated:
- the lab in question specifically did research on the virus
I assumed you were referring to SARS-CoV-2, since that would be interesting.
Turns out you meant coronaviruses in general, not “the” coronavirus. Not nearly as interesting as that’s why the lab is there, not the other way around.
I would think you’d find it interesting that they engineered a hybrid virus combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that was able to infect human cells.
I found the discussion around the work done in Wuhan extremely interesting. Back in February. If you have proof of something that we haven’t already discussed, that would be great. In the meantime, have fun!
We have a lab that was deliberately engineering a hybrid virus able to infect humans and they destroyed the evidence, threatened people and punished nations.
and you thought it was interesting in February but apparently have moved on.
Well bless your heart.
But not definitively
The bat virus is similar to SARS CoV 2, but not the same. So far, almost two years into the pandemic, no animal host of the virus has been found. And Laos is a fair distance from Wuhan.
They also found some samples that were a mix of lineage A and lineage B, which rather muddies the waters.
Also notable is that no one has found an earlier sample with evidence of animal to human transmission, before the virus achieved human to human transmission.
For the sake of argument, say the COVID virus did escape from the lab and the result is the world pandemic we find ourselves in today. Assuming we cannot go back in time to prevent the escape nor have any additional forewarning, how would/should have the world reacted, being 100% certain of the knowledge of its origins?
Wouldn’t we still find ourselves here and now, with the same set of challenges?
How would having undisputed knowledge that China is to blame for this accident - I assume you agree it was an accident and not intentional - change the realities we’re faced with?
Would the addition of ensuing geopolitical persecution and isolation of China make matters better or worse?
Are you claiming that SARS-COVID-2 is an engineered virus? Because I’d like to see a cite for that. If you’re not claiming that, than what are you claiming? The virus may have escaped from the lab because people at the lab work with coronaviruses, but that’s orthogonal to the question of whether COVID was engineered.
There seems to be a tendency to mash these two together, which Rand Paul was doing – he talked about GoF work, but when Fauci pushed back on whether this virus was the result of that, Paul backed down.
If this is a natural virus that escaped from the lab due to improper handling by people who work there, that’s bad, but not a conspiracy. It’s just a mistake, although a deadly one.
If it’s an engineered virus that was developed to infect humans and then got out, that’s much, much worse, but I don’t think there is evidence for this.
Which one are you claiming?
Moderator Note
Dial it back, please. This is something that can easily be discussed without getting snippy.
I can’t speak for others, but i think there’s a very high probability that covid accidentally escaped from that lab. But we’ll never be able to prove it due to the Chinese cover-up. This is unfortunate as “lessons learned” are often helpful to prevent a similar accidental release in the future.
I think the odds that it was created in that lab are miniscule. Again, we’ll never know for certain, but thousands of scientists have independently sequenced the virus, and none of them thought it looked engineered. So we have quite a lot of evidence that the virus is natural.
I feel that people keep emphasizing the lab leak theory, causing a minimization of the blame inherent in the other likely possibility, that the virus jumped from animals to humans “naturally”.
If it did jump from animals to humans in the wild, it wasn’t just some random, freak occurrence, that was like winning (for the virus) the lottery. It was the predicted consequence of increased wild animal and human interaction. This was not a blameless and unfortunate event. Reckless behavior by the Chinese government which supported wild animal ranching made a species jump extremely likely.
Scientists have long warned that reduction in wild habitats, which brings animals and humans in closer contact, will lead to more zoonotic diseases. The Chinese were taking it even further by deliberately bringing humans into close contact with wild animals on an industrial scale.
The point being, anybody attracted to the lab leak theory because it lets you blame somebody, should also pay attention to the “natural” theory, because it still comes with plenty of blame.
I believe they thought those were genotyping errors. Either due to sample contamination, or data muddling. As somebody who works with genotypes, I can confirm that these kinds of things happen.
Any method that it can be hypothesized as causing an accidental lab leak, also could result in sample contamination. Invisible particles are hard to keep track of.
I’ve seen bizarre data errors, like two “brothers” who are in different families, and upon closer inspection it turns out that half of their genotypes are completely identical, and the other half are completely unrelated. It’s then obvious that it is some sort of data corruption.
The article is still in the pre-print stage, so I’m sure reviewers are looking at those virus genotypes and debating whether they are errors or represent real findings. As in my example, sometimes these things are obvious to the experts.
I thought the “natural” theory included also that people were exposed at a market that featured live animals for purchase as food. That’s not exactly “habitat reduction”.
We KNOW that farming animals creates fertile ground for new viruses to evolve. That’s where most of the new flu strains come from, for instance. And a lot of other infectious diseases are thought to have jumped from domestic animals. I think including measles, although it’s been years since I read about the origin of infectious diseases.
i don’t mean to say that habitat reduction can’t also lead to people and wild animals rubbing up against each other. But I feel like there are a host of ways that viruses can spread from humans to animals.
I think it’s a shame that China destroyed most of the samples from the Wuhan animal market, too.
That’s not quite what I meant. There have long been warnings about habitat reduction bringing people into contact with wild animals.
In this case, people were brought into contact with wild animals because they were raising on them on a large scale, and then selling them in markets. Or, they were going into the wild to trap them. The contact was deliberate.
It’s the difference between “cool, a racoon dog nest, I want a closer look” and “lets raise thousands of racoon dogs in little cages and be near them.”
The jump also didn’t have to happen in the markets, just the spread. At that point the spread could have been from human to human. The people transporting and selling the animals had been close to them, and also close to the people who were raising the animals.
I imagine something like: Ranch hand catches the virus after being close to many animals → passes it to a truck driver → the truck driver passes it to a market worker → the market worker spreads it to customers and others.
Of course, it could have happened: Lab worker catches the virus → passes it to others, or carries it themselves → infected person goes to the markets and spreads it.
People keep bringing up that we know there was coronavirus in the lab. We also know there was coronavirus in the animals.
If it was made in good faith, maybe. There are those who really want to create a slope and then grease it up. The entire “gain of function” gambit is part of that.
Getting to the lab leak is the first step towards “China engineered this deliberately”, which few but some hardcore proponents are currently willing to advocate. “China had policies making it more likely or even guaranteed for viruses to naturally and increasingly jump from animals to people” is not ‘sexy’ enough for that train.
Yes, that is pretty much exactly how I feel. I keep wanting to call the lab leak theory “sexy,” too. I mean, it has an evil foreign government, the hubris of poisoning ourselves with advanced science, and all kinds of attractive moral lessons to take away.
I have the same reaction to it being a natural event as other people do to the lab leak.
Lab leak boosters: “There was a lab in that same city that collected and studied coronavirus, how can you think it came from anywhere else?”
Me: “The initial outbreak came from markets that are the end point of a supply chain that provides wild animals for sale and slaughter, how can you think it came from anywhere else?”
I will change my views in the face of new evidence.
“We’ve found something that looks a whole lot like SARS-CoV-2 in a sample the lab collected in 2016, and we have testimony from lab employees they were working with that sample in the summer of 2019” is evidence.
“We’ve found something that looks a whole lot like SARS-CoV-2 in specimens collected in the summer of 2019 from sick farm workers 250km away” is also evidence.
“I think there is a coverup” is not evidence.
It’s not just close proximity, it’s a lab that specifically designed a corona virus so that it affects humans. That’s their base of study. It’s a lab where scientists fell ill during the early stages of the outbreak. They’ve been asked to produce the medical records of those scientists but to my knowledge that hasn’t happened. They’ve also asked for the medical records of miners who fell ill in 2012 from entering a bat cave (3 of whom died).
None of this compares to their behavior in covering it up and punishing those who tried to warn the world or nations who dare suggest culpability. Their delays certainly added significantly to the death toll.
If there’s an indication it came from local markets it seems odd they chose to destroy the evidence rather than preserve it for scientific research.