A theory I saw about how COVID may have escaped from the Wuhan lab

The Quarantine Zone
82

I see no reason to think this coincidence means anything. The world is a big place. Improbable events are happening all around you constantly; most of them are immaterial to the eventual outcome.

I find it very probable that the Wuhan outbreak wasn’t the first outbreak. The first outbreak may have been undetected in the backcountry, unnoticed because the symptoms are so mild for most people. It would have only become evident as enough severe cases emerged to seek more advanced treatment in a bigger cities. Wuhan is in the top 10 biggest cities in China, so it’s not that unlikely that the first large observed cluster would be found there.

Add that to the fact that Wuhan is in the range of horseshoe bats, and on the edge of the pangolin range, in a country with a history of zoonotic transmission… I see no reason to torture Occam to find some human involvement here.

83

OK, but as you state here, there is a history of zoonotic transmission in China and an ever-present risk of it. It would be a bigger surprise to me if the Wuhan labs weren’t researching viruses of this type and their means of transmission. It is a fairly parsomonious explanation as it merely requires the Wuhan labs to be carrying out research on these types of virus (which we know they were) and for some sort of accidental exposure or release (which we know can and does occur and we also know that these very labs were criticised in 2018 for presenting just such a risk). In what way is that torturing Occam?

I guess I just don’t see why the hypothesis is considered quite so extraordinary or outrageous. Sure the purely natural transmission hypothesis seems more likely but there has been no solid case yet made for bats/pangolins or the wet market and yet it seems to be accepted widely, It may be there is evidence that I have yet to see that supports it.

84

Exactly what I was trying to say in my posts. You got bats full of coronaviruses to incubate and allow for mutation, you got intermediary species carrying more than one coronavirus for some nice recombination to make a virus that can infect humans, and you got a giant, crowded city with lots of people for further mutations that result in human-to-human transmission, and you got lots of chances for superspreader events. All the positive and negative selection is there in the real world. There is absolutely no need for a gain-of-function research accident.

Plus, you have evidence that this was outside of Wuhan in Sept 2019 (as far away as Italy) and maybe even seven years before as I’ve posted.

Here’s yet another article suggesting that the strain of SARS-CoV-2 discovered in bats was more rare in Wuhan and more common in China outside of Wuhan. This author suggested at the time that it was probably already circulating in humans in Sept 2019, which is confirmed by the positive blood samples from Sept 2019 in Italy. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241

It’s one thing to speculate about something with no evidence. However, the probability is even more diminished when evidence starts mounting against it.

85

So, does it make sense that COVID would first be discovered near a lab where they probably take higher precautions with the population, and do more testing for any suspicious new diseases, specifically because the lab is there?

It would be a coincidence if it first transmitted to humans near a lab that researches similar diseases. However, if it were already in the human population, it doesn’t seem a coincidence at all that it is first identified near a lab that researches similar diseases.

86

The most parsimonious explanation is that viruses in nature did what viruses in nature have routinely done for probably a billion years.

No other explanation can be as parsimonious. If you want to advocate for a sensationalized sci-fi theory that conveniently advances American finger-pointing narratives, you need some exceptionally strong evidence, and none is on offer.

87

So far as I can discover, the Wuhan research lab was not involved in diagnosing the first cases in Wuhan or sequencing and identifying the new coronavirus that was causing those cases. So no, that does not explain the proximity to the lab in any way.

If it were an entirely natural event, there are hundreds of millions of people and very large number of major hospitals in southern China and neighboring countries where the first major outbreak could have occurred with similar probability and could have been diagnosed and sent for sequencing.

But there is only one research lab in this very large region that is the world leader in bat coronavirus research. It may have been a coincidence, but to deny that this is an improbable coincidence is simply wrong. It would, of course, be easier to dismiss it as a coincidence if we had more credible direct evidence of what was going on at the lab, but we don’t.

To be clear once again, we have dismissed the idea of an engineered strain. The ultimate source of whatever progenitor strains were involved was of course natural. So the idea that there were progenitor strains or even unconfirmed minor instances of this specific virus that occurred elsewhere is really irrelevant - of course there were. The whole point of the lab escape hypothesis that would explain the unlikely proximity of the first major outbreak to the lab would be that samples of progenitor strains, or even the fully evolved SARS-CoV-2, were brought to the lab for research purposes, and subsequently (with or without further mutation and recombination in cell culture in the lab) escaped and were the proximate cause of the major Wuhan outbreak.

88

My whole point above is that “close to the lab” covers a city larger than any city (not metro area) in the US.

89

Sure, the numerator for the probability is large. But the denominator is much larger. The total area where this first major outbreak could have occurred and been diagnosed and identified is vast, including more people than the entire U.S.

90

I didn’t say that the lab had anything to do with diagnosing or sequencing the virus. I said that the proximity to the lab may be reason why a new virus would be more likely to be detected.

As I asked in the post that you responded to:

I don’t know the answer to this question, which is why I am asking, not asserting. But, it does make a bit of sense that if people are going to doctors and hospitals in an area near a biomedical research lab with symptoms of a new pathogen, then they would look more closely at them.

If we take as given some of the information in this thread, which I don’t know exactly how credibly to take, that this virus was out and about all over the world before it was identified in Wuhan, it seems as though it could not have originated in the lab. The only coincidence would be that it was identified near the lab, and that is explained if they keep a closer eye on the health of the population near such research facilities.

It’s like a kitchen in Florida. It wasn’t turning on the lights that caused the cockroaches, it was the lights that revealed the cockroaches. There is no coincidence that they started around the light, because that’s not where they started.

91

Yes, I understood that point and I was responding to it. If that were the case, of course it would of course make discovery near the lab more likely. But I’m not aware of any such thing being true, that’s why I checked back to the Wikipedia article on the timeline that I linked to above to see if there were any mention of proximity to the lab being any factor in diagnosis and discovery of the first cases. Nothing is mentioned there. Protocols at BSL-4 labs are generally oriented toward preventing things escaping in the first place, not monitoring the health of millions of people in the adjacent city in case they screw up.

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According to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/

“The striking similarities between the Mojiang pneumonia cases and COVID-19 are noteworthy, as is the fact that RaTG13/CoV4991, the next genomic relative of SARS-CoV-2 was found in the same mineshaft. The Master’s thesis by Li Xu concludes that the pneumonia-illness in the miners was due to a SARS-like CoV from horseshoe bats. The remote consultation and diagnosis by a prominent pulmonologist in China, Dr. Nanshan, adds credibility to the diagnosis of the pneumonia cases in 2012. Although we cannot say that RaTG13 or SARS-CoV-2 infected the miners, there is a high chance that it could be a virus quite similar in genetic composition to these two. The coincidence between the 2012 illness in Mojiang miners, the subsequent samplings, and finding the nearest SARS-CoV-2 relative from this single mine warrants further inquiry, and the data along with the full history of this incident would be invaluable in the context of the current pandemic.”
The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
We thank Dr. Luigi Warren, CA, USA, for important scientific discussions (@luigi_warren). We would also like to thank @TheSeeker268 for finding and sharing links for the Master’s thesis by Li Xu (2013) and the Ph.D. thesis by Canping Huang (2016), which were both in Chinese. We are also very thankful to the Twitter group DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) for invaluable discussions, which contributed to writing this paper, in particular, @BillyBostickson, @franciscodeasis @AntGDuarte @Real_Adam_B, @DrAntoniSerraT1, @KevinMcH3, @internetperson1, and @Ersa Flavikins. We thank Dr. Rossanna Segreto for important suggestions and Dr. Jonathan Latham of bioscienceresource.org for arranging the translation of the Master’s thesis and sharing the link to the professional translation. We also thank @ franciscodeasis who translated relevant chapters in the Ph.D. thesis. In particular, would like to thank Professor Anand Rahalkar, MD radiology, Bharti Vidyapeeth Medical College, Pune, India, for reviewing the X-rays and CT scans from the Master’s thesis by Li Xu (2013). We would like to specifically thank the reviewers and the editors for their valuable comments. An earlier version of the paper has been published as a pre-print on May 24, 2020 at [Understanding the Origin of ‘BatCoVRaTG13’, a Virus Closest to SARS-CoV-2[v2] | Preprints], Rahalkar and Bahulikar (8).

This to me suggests the virus came from the miners and was due to the horseshoe bats. If true why the secretivness unless they were making a vaccine to patent because it was a novel virus.

I’m guessing they (the Chinese Gov and doctors,) thought it was contained when the sick miners died and the mine was shut down.

Then the unbefore seen novel virus spread because of the asymptomic mine workers who went home and researchers investigating the cause of the dead mine workers.

Then the researchers and workers returned to Wuhun and went home thus spreading the new novel virus prior to any symptoms.

Problem is we don’t know the answer to this question because the Chinese won’t tell us.l

" The link between the SARS-like CoV (4991/RaTG13) from mine where lethal pneumonia cases occurred, has not yet been discussed in scientific papers by the WIV laboratory before February 2020. We are curious to know what kind of samples the WIV received from the Mojiang miners, along with other questions, such as whether the samples are still stored in WIV, and whether they are available for study by other researchers. It would also be of particular value to know whether any viruses were isolated and if there is any DNA/RNA available from these samples. It would also be useful to know if PCR was performed on the miners’ samples and available sequences. According to Huang’s Ph.D. thesis, four miners tested positive in an Ab test against SARS-like CoV (Supplementary Material). However, further questions remain as to which antigen was used for the Ab detection in the pneumonia patients and what was the exact protocol used. Why is this information not available in any of the seroprevalence studies by WIV? Why were the severe pneumonia cases in 2012 not mentioned in any of the WIV publications before 2020? Were any SARS-like CoV isolated from the bat fecal samples collected in 2012–13? Why were the Mojiang miners pneumonia cases in 2012 not reported to any public health agency like the WHO? Why did programs like PREDICT not mention the lethal pneumonia cases as a mini-outbreak? Was the mineshaft in Mojiang closed, when? According to the literature, three research groups went to the Mojiang mine to collect samples between 2012 and October 2014 (5, 9, 10). The mine was promptly closed as per the (2). Why was the Mojiang mine being visited by researchers until October 2014? Questions also remain as to why Dr. Shi attributed the outbreak in Mojiang to a fungus in the interview with Scientific American. Was the mine open for researchers and were any samples brought after 2014? Did any of the researchers who visited the Mojiang mineshaft get infected by any coronavirus between 2012 and 2019? Are there any whole genome sequences available for SARS-like CoV originating from this mine? Why is the pathogen database (http://www.viruses.nsdc.cn/chinavpi/) associated with the project (2013FY113500) (10) not accessible anymore?"

Copyright © 2020 Rahalkar and Bahulikar.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited,

93

To add - an example of where this definitely was the case is the “U.K. strain”. It was discovered in the U.K. because they are doing far more intensive sequencing and phylogenetic analysis than other countries. It may or may not have originated in the U.K., so it’s certainly unfair to “blame” the U.K. for the discovery there that was primarily attributable to excellence of research.

This is indeed, an instance of the Trumpian approach - if you don’t test so many people, you won’t have so many cases!

94

Could you link that? The timeline that I was operating off of was from WHO.

Which is no longer updated.

But it all started with 44 cases of pneumonia, in a city of 11 million. I am surprised that 44 cases of pneumonia out of such a large population is even noted. Which is why I wonder if the local health agencies, not the lab itself, keeps a closer eye on the population in case of any sort of pathogen is released from the lab.

95

This is an interesting variant on the lab escape hypothesis that would account for the proximity of the first major outbreak to the Wuhan lab. Lab-based researchers, not the lab itself. And perhaps it’s more plausible - the Wuhan lab is a state-of-the-art BSL-4 facility, not a bunch a of careless amateurs. But working in the field is obviously inherently much more challenging.

96

I was just looking at the Wikipedia timeline, it’s linked in my post above. I don’t know if it’s authoritative.

97

That is the most likely explanation and I have said so several times.

And this is where you veer off the rails. The lab hypothesis as put forward by me and others in this thread is neither sensational nor sci-fi. It is absolutely worthy of careful consideration until such time as solid evidence rules it out.

Did the lab do research on similar viruses? yes
Were there concerns raised prior to the Covid-19 pandemic about the work being done there and the protocols in place? Yes
Have accidental releases from such labs happened before? Yes
Did the first know incidence of the Covid-19 virus happen in the vicinity of the Lab? Yes

Is there any firm evidence to implicate the lab? No
Is there any firm evidence yet to comfirm the wet market or bat/pangolin pathway?No.

So where are we? and what exactly makes an accidental lab release so unlikely as to label it something akin to a fantasy? I’m happy to be convinced in any direction but why take the lab hypothesis off the table?

98

Just to add to @Novelty_Bobble’s response. Once again, to avoid any misunderstanding, nobody who understands molecular biology or viruses gives any credence to the notion that this was a deliberately engineered strain. From the direct evidence we do have, that would indeed quality as “sensationalized sci-fi”.

There is no doubt that the ultimate origin of this virus, or at least of progenitor strains, was natural. The hypothesis is simply that the lab that is the world leader in researching these viruses was somehow involved, that a mistake (either negligent or just unlucky) was the proximate cause of the first major outbreak in Wuhan, explaining its proximity to the lab, something that is otherwise an unlikely coincidence.

This much is certainly not “sensationalized sci-fi”, and indeed it would not be rational to dismiss the proximity of the first major outbreak to the lab as pure coincidence unless we had clear direct evidence of the exact sequence of everything that happened. Something that just may never be known conclusively. The Chinese might be covering something up; but quite likely they just don’t know either.

99

Okay, so two possibilities are

  1. the naturally evolved virus did what viruses have done for a billion years, or
  2. the naturally evolved virus did #1, and then it was picked up by a lab for whatever reason, and then it escaped the lab causing a worldwide pandemic.

#1 is ipso facto more parsimonious and more likely. The #2 hypothesis isn’t needed to explain zoonotic pandemics, so why are we striving so hard to prove that it’s viable?

Again, it’s not that unlikely, and unlikely coincidences are typical and normal occurrences.

Until there’s evidence to support the theory, we can dismiss every explanation that’s more complicated than viruses doing what they’ve always done. We’re only talking about this because pop culture has ingrained that all deadly pandemics come from screwups in covert government projects.

People can’t process the fact that things like this can just… happen. That it’s happened many times, and it will happen again. We could eradicate COVID and have another 1918-style flu pandemic happen the following week. It’s hard to face the notion of nature being that cruel and indifferent, so we want to make this into a man-made problem with a man-made villain and a man-made solution.

100

Is there anything to the claim I’ve heard that this virus hasn’t yet been found ‘in the wild’, as it were, and that we’d expect it to have been? Or, has it actually? I guess it’s been found in minks at least.

101

It’s a far more likely prior probability but only before considering the fact of the proximity of the outbreak to the lab. You can’t credibly talk about “parsimony” when you simply ignore an important piece of circumstantial data and make no attempt to explain it. That isn’t the way probability works. You must consider the posterior probability after accounting for all the known data.

It’s analogous to the classic counterintuitive probability problem where a diagnostic test has a very low false positive rate, but the disease itself is also very rare.