Origins of Covid

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Look at the phylogenic tree. Cases went from Wuhan to the US before they went from Wuhan to Italy. They also spread to France, Germany and Australia in separate pathways. It's pretty clear from that data that all roads lead back to Wuhan.

Okay, when did they arrive in the US according to that phylogentic tree?

If I am reading it right, it went in around January 19th and January 22nd and January 23rd!

And to France in January 23rd and Italy as late as February 1st.

So how do we square that with Sherkeu's claims?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Stop that!

This is getting tiresome when you start making up things that I "seem" to be saying when I have not said anything remotely similar to what you say I "seem" to be saying.

This is what you said:

Quote:

So where on that tree are the ones that were "circulating globally" in November

I explained how the tree shows the virus spreading.

I don't understand your problem, I really don't.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

As far as I understand, Wuhan is the location of the emergence of Covid-19.

Do you agree with that? Yes or No.

Now, there is a question about whether or not the wet market had a role in the emergence, isn't there? Yes or No.

Yes it emerged from Wuhan. We already know the market was a superspreader event—I think 27 cases were spread from the market. But the first cases were not exposed at the market.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Now, one reason some people think otherwise is because some early victims had no connection to the wet market, right? Yes or No.

If that's the case, then we might look elsewhere for the emergence, right? Yes or No.

Yes and yes.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

If the earliest case is December 8th apparently from someone who never visited the market, then this gives rise to doubts about it emerging in the wet market, right? Yes or No.

The first case was earlier, some time in Nov.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

So how do we explain it? At this point eyes turn to another place in Wuhan... the Wuhan Institute of Virology! Hmmmm...they are doing bat research there with cultures of SARSr...

But then...Sherkeu is saying oh yeah and there may have been cases abroad, in France, Italy, the US as far back as November....

But wait...wait...wait... how does that square with the escaped from the WIV theory?

I told you, look at my post. The data from actual cultures of the virus show it was spread to Italy in Dec. The blood tested for COVID 19 antibodies is not reliable because it picks up false positives. And I posted evidence one can expect false positives.

IOW it's a red herring.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

To be honest, that is what I would expect China to want you to believe! Hey maybe it didn't start in Wuhan at all...etc...Maybe not even in China!!

Obviously this is not what I think, but where does this "circulating globally" theory however you define it help the case that it came from the WIV? What is the connection?

It's based on very strong circumstantial evidence. Is there direct evidence? There is evidence China would not disclose. In fact they went out of their way to remove the evidence.

What is based on direct evidence: it started in Wuhan near the lab sometime in Nov and spread rapidly from there to multiple countries and within China

There is direct evidence China took a lot of relevant data off the web.

There is direct evidence research was being done on this virus in the past and it was made through recombination in the lab to be compatible with infecting human cells. We know this because it was published in 2015.

Nature: Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research - Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I told you, look at my post. The data from actual cultures of the virus show it was spread to Italy in Dec. The blood tested for COVID 19 antibodies is not reliable because it picks up false positives. And I posted evidence one can expect false positives.

IOW it's a red herring.

Good! Okay, then we can forget about that. I just wanted it cleared up because I didn't know where you and Sherkeu were in agreement.

Also, you say "spread to Italy in Dec"? Where is this confirmed? In your post, and in that tree, it looks like January 19thFebruary 1st, not December.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

The first case was earlier, some time in Nov.

If this is the case, it seems we have not identified the person.

If that's the case, we cannot rule out the market either.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

If this is the case, it seems we have not identified the person.

If that's the case, we cannot rule out the market either.

There is evidence the first cases were not connected to the market. I don't understand why you keep insisting they could have been?

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

There is evidence the first cases were not connected to the market. I don't understand why you keep insisting they could have been?

There are two different claims being made and I am getting confused by them:

1.) Someone unconnected to the market was claimed to be the first known case. Apparently, the infection was from Dec 8th. As far as I know, this is all official. China and the WHO both claim the first known case. But, he wasn't connected to the market. So, this is good for the lab leak theory, as far as I understand it as it becomes, "Aha! So if not the market then....WIV???"

2.) Now there seem to be some claims by you and Sherkeu on this forum and others elsewhere that maybe it was spreading to other places, and/or may have been in Wuhan earlier than Dec. First, how does this prove it was unconnected to the market? And what evidence is there for these? Who or where are these cases? And how does this help the lab leak theory?

[angrysoba]

Hmmmm...well....Angela Rasmussen has been impressed with this research...saying it points to more evidence of a natural origin of SARS-CoV2

Quote:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1) and SARS-CoV-2 are not phylogenetically closely related; however, both use the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor in humans for cell entry. This is not a universal sarbecovirus trait; for example, many known sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-1 have two deletions in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein that render them incapable of using human ACE2. Here, we report three sequences of a novel sarbecovirus from Rwanda and Uganda that are phylogenetically intermediate to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 and demonstrate via in vitro studies that they are also unable to utilize human ACE2. Furthermore, we show that the observed pattern of ACE2 usage among sarbecoviruses is best explained by recombination not of SARS-CoV-2, but of SARS-CoV-1 and its relatives. We show that the lineage that includes SARS-CoV-2 is most likely the ancestral ACE2-using lineage, and that recombination with at least one virus from this group conferred ACE2 usage to the lineage including SARS-CoV-1 at some time in the past. We argue that alternative scenarios such as convergent evolution are much less parsimonious; we show that biogeography and patterns of host tropism support the plausibility of a recombination scenario, and we propose a competitive release hypothesis to explain how this recombination event could have occurred and why it is evolutionarily advantageous. The findings provide important insights into the natural history of ACE2 usage for both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 and a greater understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms that shape zoonotic potential of coronaviruses. This study also underscores the need for increased surveillance for sarbecoviruses in southwestern China, where most ACE2-using viruses have been found to date, as well as other regions such as Africa, where these viruses have only recently been discovered.

Link

Rasmussen's tweet is quite interesting here.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

There are two different claims being made and I am getting confused by them:

1.) Someone unconnected to the market was claimed to be the first known case. Apparently, the infection was from Dec 8th. As far as I know, this is all official. China and the WHO both claim the first known case. But, he wasn't connected to the market. So, this is good for the lab leak theory, as far as I understand it as it becomes, "Aha! So if not the market then....WIV???"

2.) Now there seem to be some claims by you and Sherkeu on this forum and others elsewhere that maybe it was spreading to other places, and/or may have been in Wuhan earlier than Dec. First, how does this prove it was unconnected to the market? And what evidence is there for these? Who or where are these cases? And how does this help the lab leak theory?

So, I don't know if you have linked to or read this paper already, but it is on the early cases that are still unknown and how there were likely mini self-limiting outbreaks of Covid happening earlier.

Quote:

Abstract
Understanding when SARS-CoV-2 emerged is critical to evaluating our current approach to monitoring novel zoonotic pathogens and understanding the failure of early containment and mitigation efforts for COVID-19. We employed a coalescent framework to combine retrospective molecular clock inference with forward epidemiological simulations to determine how long SARS-CoV-2 could have circulated prior to the time of the most recent common ancestor. Our results define the period between mid-October and mid-November 2019 as the plausible interval when the first case of SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Hubei province. By characterizing the likely dynamics of the virus before it was discovered, we show that over two-thirds of SARS-CoV-2-like zoonotic events would be self-limited, dying out without igniting a pandemic. Our findings highlight the shortcomings of zoonosis surveillance approaches for detecting highly contagious pathogens with moderate mortality rates.

Link

So my understanding is that unlike something like Ebola, it is quite difficult to notice a disease like Covid-19 until it is running wild.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'll read your links later angrysoba but as to your timeline confusion, the genetics supersede dates. And dates are often when the patient was diagnosed. They could have been infected a week or more earlier and add to that incubation after exposure.

This thing began in Nov* and exploded by December. A lot of diagnoses are compressed in that time. Trying to sort out which cases were first is better done using the genetic clock and phylogenic map.

If there is a particular mutation in a market connected case, all the subsequent cases will have that mutation. When you have a case without the mutation, it came before the market cases.


*Mid Oct to mid Nov is fine.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I'll read your links later angrysoba but as to your timeline confusion, the genetics supersede dates. And dates are often when the patient was diagnosed. They could have been infected a week or more earlier and add to that incubation after exposure.

This thing began in Nov* and exploded by December. A lot of diagnoses are compressed in that time. Trying to sort out which cases were first is better done using the genetic clock and phylogenic map.

If there is a particular mutation in a market connected case, all the subsequent cases will have that mutation. When you have a case without the mutation, it came before the market cases.


*Mid Oct to mid Nov is fine.

Okay, thanks for that.

Anyway, yes, the data that most scientists seem to be working with is that there was probably some circulation of the virus some time (yes, probably a matter of weeks or a couple of months) prior to the first official case.

But again, as far as I can see it, it doesn't rule out the market being the place from which the virus initially emerged - we simply don't know.

If the wildlife to humans theory is the most likely then clearly the places to look are the markets where wildlife could have been sold, or at the farms where it may have been reared.

[angrysoba]

Also, a bit of a Twitter spat going on about this.

Kristian Andersen, a virologist, is taking issue with some of the claims of lab leak theorists here.

In particular he is getting annoyed with the idea that a virologist is discredited just from having any association with Peter Daszak. The suggestion seems to be being made by some lab leakists, that if you argue against the lab leak, then you must be six degrees or less from Daszak.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't know about Sherkeu, but that guilt by association doesn't apply to me. It does however, put the WHO team's final report into question.

By the same token, people are dismissing Quay's work based on [fill in the woo blank] instead of looking at his actual work which stands on its own merit, IMO.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's another note that the antibody tests are not reliable for looking for circulating infections before Oct 2019. It was posted before but I wanted to quote this bit:

Where did COVID come from? Five mysteries that remain

Quote:

Some scientists not involved in the WHO investigation have already looked at blood-bank samples taken up to a year before the pandemic, in Guangzhou, southern China. (Close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in bats and pangolins in southern China.) Some of the samples tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, but Ian Lipkin, an infectious-diseases researcher at Columbia University in New York City, who worked on the analysis, says the test was not specific enough to say for sure that the antibodies weren’t caused by infection with other viruses.

He suggests looking for autopsy specimens that might show the actual virus.

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Here's another note that the antibody tests are not reliable for looking for circulating infections before Oct 2019. It was posted before but I wanted to quote this bit:

Where did COVID come from? Five mysteries that remainHe suggests looking for autopsy specimens that might show the actual virus.

That is true. The tests are indicators, not 100% conclusive without the actual virus. Need more testing! (and genomes to compare).

One assumption that seems to be made is that this virus made its initial jump to a human host from another species as a highly infectious old-people killer right out of the gate. (*not saying that you think so) I see no reason why that would be the case for a naturally emerging novel virus.

This thread should really be called the origin of human SARS-COV-2, not Covid-19.

[Samson]

It is possible that.

The virus came in the first instance from a lab in Wuhan.

This is an accident.

The Chinese will prevent any pathway to proving this by all possible means.

I would do the same I must admit and I think that is realistic.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Sherkeu

That is true. The tests are indicators, not 100% conclusive without the actual virus. Need more testing! (and genomes to compare).

One assumption that seems to be made is that this virus made its initial jump to a human host from another species as a highly infectious old-people killer right out of the gate. (*not saying that you think so) I see no reason why that would be the case for a naturally emerging novel virus.

This thread should really be called the origin of human SARS-COV-2, not Covid-19.

These are the facts that are fairly well established:

The timing is established from walking the genetic trail back: somewhere in Oct or Nov.

The genetic trail also shows the origin was not in the seafood market.

The jump to humans was made somewhere in Wuhan.

IMO we are down to 2 viable hypotheses. It came from a different market exposure in Wuhan or it came from an exposure at the lab in Wuhan.

Again IMO I think the latter has more supporting evidence. Just to review:

Research that could have led to a human pathogen was going on at the WIV in the past. That was reported in Nature in 2015: A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence

Also reported on in Nature in 2015: Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research - Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.

The market jump at this point in time is only supported by the Chinese government making sure investigators are steered in its direction.

There is documented evidence the Chinese government removed evidence from access. For example: Feb 2020: Chinese laboratory that first shared coronavirus genome with world ordered to close for ‘rectification’, hindering its Covid-19 research

Quote:

No reason was given for the closure of Shanghai facility, which released information about the virus ahead of authorities
One source at the laboratory said the closure has hampered scientists’ research when they should be ‘racing against the clock’

The WHO investigators and the Chinese government have been pushing the narrative if one suggests it was the lab they are acting in CT territory.

The Chinese government put that narrative out early and they continue to amplify it.

The WHO team is satisfied their interviews with the scientists at the WIV provided sufficient evidence to rule the lab leak out.

That's where I'm at as the evidence has come in during this discussion. If and when a clear genetic trail leads to another market in Wuhan that's about the only thing which would be convincing enough to override the obvious problem the outbreak just happened to have occurred very close to the WIV. China is a very large country.

"Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World, She Walks Into Mine."

[Skeptic Ginger]

The smoking gun just became the flash from a bullet.


The GatewayPundit ...[ hear me out I tracked it to the original source ]... Posted this 3 weeks ago: Top WHO Official [Peter Daszak] Caught on Video in December 2019 Revealing Coronavirus Manipulation at Wuhan Lab Before Pandemic (VIDEO)

The video is an interview with Daszak during the Nipah Virus International Conference in Singapore Dec 9-10, 2019 where Daszak was one of the participants.

The podcast and the video was posted on May 19, 2020 and doesn't acknowledge the date of the interview leading to one unanswered comment following it:

Quote:

1. Whycome there is no date on when this interview happened? And 2. Good lord, we cannot allow conspiracy theorists hear about manipulating coronaviruses in a lab @30:00.

I got a chuckle out of that.

However, we do know the date because in the beginning of the interview the interviewer says they are coming to you from the Nipah International Virus Conference and you can also clearly tell by the absence of any mention at all of the pandemic that was going full bore by May, 2020.

So here is the interview from This Week in Virology Podcast.

Vincent Racaniello, a virologist, conducts the interview. Start at minute 27:20 if you just want to hear Dasnik admit to the kind of live viral cultures they were studying and why. He's interested in shutting down the wildlife trade, another reason he is key on blaming the wildlife markets.

Daszak was looking at SARS-like viruses collected from horseshoe bats in the Yunnan caves which they manipulated to make them able to infect human cells in the lab.

That's right, I did say Daszak was doing that. Holy ******* ******. Can anyone listen to that and claim Dasnak has no interest in steering away any exam into the WIV and towards the wildlife trade?

This is where the evidence is, it's in papers and talks released before the first cases were detected in Wuhan. Can you listen to that discussion which took place at almost at the exact time the outbreak occurred hearing Daszak himself say he was working with live SARS-like viruses in the WIV (I can show you it was at the WIV in another link I posted) and not believe the origin was a lab accident?

[RecoveringYuppy]

Not up to speed on this thread so these may be repeats:

Pandemic almost didn't happen.

And the article in Science that article is based on.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

Not up to speed on this thread so these may be repeats:

Pandemic almost didn't happen.

And the article in Science that article is based on.

I don't know why CNN is repeating this stuff. It's either debunk a lie and weeks later people won't remember it was debunked,

or,

repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed.

Quote:

Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

Even China admits it didn't start in the seafood market.

But later they claim this:

Quote:

if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."

So at least they aren't saying someone in the market got it from an animal.

They go on to discuss someone in Wuhan got it from some animal somewhere.

Quote:

In the models the team ran, the virus only takes off about 30% of the time. The rest of the time, the models show it should have gone extinct after infecting a handful of people.

This explains why the outbreak in Yunnan managed to not spread much further.

I forgive them only if people read the whole article:

Quote:

It's likely the market was not where the virus first infected people, but just the place where it got amplified.

Which we know most readers don't. So this article is likely to amplify the myth the virus jumped from an animal to a person in the market.

But how many readers would have stopped at that second paragraph?


Other than that, it confirms what Sherkeu and I have been posting. It began in Wuhan sometime in Oct-Nov and took off in Dec.

What CNN does not address is the elephant in the room.

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the source link:

Quote:

When we simulated epidemics where the number of connections was reduced by 50% or 75% (without rescaling per-contact transmissibility), to reflect emergence in a rural community, the epidemics went extinct 94.5% or 99.6% of the time, respectively.

So not likely the beginning was outside of Wuhan.

This is why people should stop blaming China for not recognizing it soon enough to act. Something I agreed was the case early in one of these discussions:

Quote:

It is highly probable that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in Hubei province at low levels in early-November 2019 and possibly as early as October 2019, but not earlier. Nonetheless, the inferred prevalence of this virus was too low to permit its discovery and characterization for weeks or months.

Evidence it started in Wuhan:

Quote:

Even though all of the earliest documented cases of COVID-19 were found in Hubei province, we cannot discount the possibility that the index case initially acquired the virus elsewhere. Nonetheless, our dating inference is insensitive to geography. Further, our results suggest that if the virus first emerged in a rural community, it would have needed to migrate to an urban setting to avoid extinction. The lack of reports of COVID-19 elsewhere in China in November and early-December suggest Hubei province is the location where human-to-human transmission chains were first established. ...

This brief period of time suggests that future pandemics with similar characteristics to the COVID-19 pandemic permit only a narrow window for preemptive intervention.

[angrysoba]

Just to let you know, I posted that paper earlier.

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the Science paper bibio: Human-animal interactions and bat coronavirus spillover potential among rural residents in Southern China

Published Nov 9, 2019 so before the outbreak was recognized but close to that time. Daszak is one of the authors.

Quote:

This study provides the first serological evidence of bat-borne SARSr-CoVs and HKU10-CoV transmission to people and highlights potential spillover pathways through animal contact. Given the high diversity and recombination rate of bat coronaviruses, and close relationship of SARSr-CoVs to SARS-CoV, it is possible that exposure to these coronaviruses may lead to disease emergence in human populations.

All tangentially related to the lab-leak hypothesis until you get to the last paragraph:

Quote:

Considering the proven potential of some SARSr-CoVs currently circulating in bats in southern China, to infect human cells, cause clinical signs in humanized mouse models, and lead to infections that cannot be treated with monoclonal therapies effective against SARS-CoV [[58], [59], [60]], this represents a clear and present danger to our biosafety and public health.

You wouldn't know that from looking at genome data alone. You would only know that if one were experimenting with live virus in the lab.

I'm looking at more, watch this space.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Just to let you know, I posted that paper earlier.

I'm not working on posting all new papers. I'm working on putting clues together in a meaningful way.

The interview however, is new to the thread I believe.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I'm not working on posting all new papers. I'm working on putting clues together in a meaningful way.

The interview however, is new to the thread I believe.

It isn't. You posted that before as well.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

From the Science paper bibio: Human-animal interactions and bat coronavirus spillover potential among rural residents in Southern China

Published Nov 9, 2019 so before the outbreak was recognized but close to that time. Daszak is one of the authors.


All tangentially related to the lab-leak hypothesis until you get to the last paragraph:You wouldn't know that from looking at genome data alone. You would only know that if one were experimenting with live virus in the lab.

I'm looking at more, watch this space.

On this, and to give you some thing you might be interested in, Peter Daszak did indeed make a number of tweets around November 2019 to that effect.

I saw the screenshots of them but will have to look again. Someone reposted them on Twitter and they do look interesting, to say the least.

At this point, I would have to agree with you that there are certainly huge issues of transparency. If virologists are unconcerned about a lab leak, as they argue they are, then they have done a pretty poor job of explaining what it is they are looking at that makes them think a natural spillover event is head and shoulders the most likely.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

It isn't. You posted that before as well.

Hard to believe since I never saw it before.

Care to comment on the revelation Daszak himself was doing research on live bat coronavirus cultures in the WIV and showed SARS-like viruses could be coaxed to infect human cells in vitro?

That I did post before but not those specifics.

They even named it for the location they were working: Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1

Gee, what does the WIV1 stand for?

Quote:

Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1 (Bat SL-CoV-WIV1), also sometimes called SARS-like coronavirus WIV1, is a strain of Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV) isolated from Chinese rufous horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus sinicus).[1][2] Like all coronaviruses, virions consist of single-stranded positive-sense RNA enclosed within an envelope.[3]

The discovery confirms that bats are the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV. Phylogenetic analysis shows the possibility of direct transmission of SARS from bats to humans without the intermediary Chinese civets, as previously believed.[4]

Alone that only speaks to phylogenetic analysis but Daszax discusses taking it further.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Hard to believe since I never saw it before.

This interview?

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/

Yes, you did post it before.

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

From the Science paper bibio: Human-animal interactions and bat coronavirus spillover potential among rural residents in Southern China

Published Nov 9, 2019 so before the outbreak was recognized but close to that time. Daszak is one of the authors.


All tangentially related to the lab-leak hypothesis until you get to the last paragraph:You wouldn't know that from looking at genome data alone. You would only know that if one were experimenting with live virus in the lab.

I'm looking at more, watch this space.

Seems like the paper they published in 2018 was rolled into the 2019 paper in your post.
(2018: testing done in 2015, 2019 testing done 2015-17). If it wasn't, it would be odd not to mention the previous findings. Shi and Daszak are on both.

In the 2018 paper they compared the villagers samples (n=218), all within 3mi of the 2 most interesting bat caves, to a similar sample size from Wuhan (n=240). Testing found 6 positives, all Yunnan villagers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/

Quote:

The 2.7% seropositivity for the high risk group of residents living in close proximity to bat colonies suggests that spillover is a relatively rare event, however this depends on how long antibodies persist in people, since other individuals may have been exposed and antibodies waned. During questioning, none of the 6 seropositive subjects could recall any clinical symptoms in the past 12 months, suggesting that their bat SARSr-CoV infection either occurred before the time of sampling, or that infections were subclinical or caused only mild symptoms. Our previous work based on cellular and humanized mouse infection studies suggest that these viruses are less virulent than SARS-CoV

In the 2019 paper with expanded testing (1,497) to areas outside Yunnan with farming and wildlife, the SARS-CoV responsive samples are still all from Yunnan (but now there are 7 positives). The findings in the 2019 one expand to animal and food safety and non-sars illnesses from unsanitary practices. First one was mainly about the bats.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Other than that, it confirms what Sherkeu and I have been posting.

This appears to be in response to a link I posted and I would just like to go on record right now that I have no idea if what I posted confirms anything Sherkeu and Skeptic Ginger have said.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

This interview?

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/

Yes, you did post it before.

That's a link to the interview. Where's a link to my post?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

This appears to be in response to a link I posted and I would just like to go on record right now that I have no idea if what I posted confirms anything Sherkeu and Skeptic Ginger have said.

I don't care if you do or don't have any idea that it confirms anything.

It does and is easily checked. We've been discussing the genome mutation record that establishes the timing of the first cases: mid Oct to mid Nov in Wuhan before the seafood market super-spreader event.

And at that point the virus was ready to go, no period needed to simmer in Wuhan or anywhere else while it further adapted to human cells.

We have also discussed the antibody trail looking at cases much earlier and I've posted a discussion of research that those antibodies are not specific enough so they are not reliable: i.e. it's a red herring.


I should also like to point out that we've found and posted a lot of material that backs up Dr Quay's 2 papers and nothing that refutes his hypothesis.


Are we there yet, are we there yet? I do believe we are close. And Peter Daszak especially doesn't want anyone looking for a lab leak.

I should like to point out as a side note that the more I have learned about Daszak besides this big lab leak problem, I think the projects his organization has been working on sound fantastic! Believe it or not, I no longer think he was only interested in keeping his research grants going for personal reasons. IOW I don't think the issue here was financial gain for himself. He wants to stop the wildlife markets.

But he's still an ass for not disclosing his work at the WIV which is an important piece of evidence the scientific community needs.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

That's a link to the interview. Where's a link to my post?

This one...

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

More Taiwan News but the podcast they are reporting on is embedded in the article

From Dec 2019 podcast uncovered by DRASTIC:


More:

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

This one...

Thank you for finding that. Guess it's what happens to one's memory as one ages.

The thing is, I only had some of the story at that time. And I didn't know as much about Daszak as I do now.

Now I do have more evidence to go on.

I'm looking for the last piece of evidence right now. While a segment of the COVID genome matches the coronavirus in a pangolin, the rest of the pangolin coronavirus is not a match. In fact the bat viruses are much more closely related.

I'm looking for more information about a bat virus picking up that genome segment in the wild. I already mentioned the coronavirus from a bat could have infected a pangolin and then been passed back to the bat.

And of course, the coincidence this virus emerged near the lab that was studying bat coronaviruses close to SARS genetically cannot be dismissed until a pangolin is found with COVID 19. And that doesn't look very likely.

[Pixel42]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

And of course, the coincidence this virus emerged near the lab that was studying bat coronaviruses close to SARS genetically cannot be dismissed until a pangolin is found with COVID 19. And that doesn't look very likely.

I don't dismiss the possibility it was an accidental lab leak, it certainly can't be ruled out, but is that really a coincidence? The lab's location wasn't chosen by sticking a pin randomly in a map, I assume some thought went into it.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

I don't dismiss the possibility it was an accidental lab leak, it certainly can't be ruled out, but is that really a coincidence? The lab's location wasn't chosen by sticking a pin randomly in a map, I assume some thought went into it.

The key issue is that there is a solution.
The Chinese can and will prevent the balance of the world from understanding why their lives were wrecked.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Thank you for finding that. Guess it's what happens to one's memory as one ages.

The thing is, I only had some of the story at that time. And I didn't know as much about Daszak as I do now.

Now I do have more evidence to go on.

I'm looking for the last piece of evidence right now. While a segment of the COVID genome matches the coronavirus in a pangolin, the rest of the pangolin coronavirus is not a match. In fact the bat viruses are much more closely related.

I'm looking for more information about a bat virus picking up that genome segment in the wild. I already mentioned the coronavirus from a bat could have infected a pangolin and then been passed back to the bat.

And of course, the coincidence this virus emerged near the lab that was studying bat coronaviruses close to SARS genetically cannot be dismissed until a pangolin is found with COVID 19. And that doesn't look very likely.

Okay, but this is where things get way, way complicated, from what I understand.

The way that most virologists are talking is something like this...

...yeah, sure, in theory it is possible for it to escape from a lab, and such lab escapes have happened in the past.

But most of the arguments that it escaped from the lab are not just "It's right there in Wuhan" but they also include "Daszak and the WIV have been dicking around with the virus and this is the virus that has escaped."

So, the evidence that the particular virus we are talking about has escaped should be in the genome somewhere.

Some people are looking at various parts of it and saying, "Oh look, this is the bit! This bit proves that there has been some kind of manipulation of the virus!"

BUT.... the way that most virologists have been talking, either on Twitter, in pre-prints, in peer-reviewed papers, and on podcasts such as TWiV is that...no... this does not look like this. It really looks just like a natural spillover.

Do I understand any of it? Absolutely not. So what do you do when you don't understand the particular science? Well, you have to put your trust in those that do.

So, anyway, just today, on TWiV, there are a group of virologists talking about this. I have to say that I don't understand what they are talking about. For the most part they are pretty engrossed in the nitty gritty details and then they do a little aside, beginning somewhere around 20 or 25 minutes in which they talk about how there are some lab leak theories and how the stuff they are talking about makes this really unlikely.

The whole thing is quite long and I am listening to it now, but maybe you might be interested in it...

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I AGREE

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

I don't dismiss the possibility it was an accidental lab leak, it certainly can't be ruled out, but is that really a coincidence? The lab's location wasn't chosen by sticking a pin randomly in a map, I assume some thought went into it.

From my understanding, Wuhan, and Hubei in particular are not particularly well known for either:

a) SARSr viruses
b) the types of wildlife trade and culinary culture that was much more common in the south of China such as Guangzhou where the first SARS outbreak begun, and which was seen as a major cause of the problem.

That said, neither are completely unknown, and the response to SARS that happened in China, namely the closure and sanitization of a lot of wet markets drove a lot of the trade underground making it more difficult to trace.

Apparently also, there had been a state-sponsored programme of having rural and poorer provinces in China sell certain types of wildlife to the big cities and Wuhan is the ninth largest city in China.

I think the scientists who believe this is a zoonotic spillover are looking perhaps for traces of the virus sputtering and dying out until eventually there was a full-fledged emergence.

David Quammen in his book, Spillover (£4.37 on KindleAmazon.co.uk) or $5.99 on Kindle in the US Amazon defines emergence as this...

"an infectious disease whose incidence is increasing following its first introduction into a new host population".

So, I wonder if there has been some confusion here.

From what I can see, it could be that the "spillover" event is specifically the first moment when a pathogen moves from one species to another, while emergence is the increase in new infections.

If virologists are talking about the market being a superspreader event that allowed the virus to get a proper foothold on the human population then from what I understand, that might be what they mean by saying it emerged there.

It would not necessarily mean that that was the moment of spillover from bats (or an amplifying host) to humans.

By the way, there are a few passages that I have read in Spillover that might make some people's hair stand on end. I will hopefully get round to sharing them soon, but they are related to SARS.

That said, I really recommend reading the book. It has given me a view of viruses that I think makes me sympathize with the views of those who argue for a zoonotic cause.

[angrysoba]

Anyway, I think we need to be a little bit cautious about how much we use some rhetoric about some of the scientists here.

Basically, the conclusion is the difference between saying that the people who have invested their lives in investigating viruses that they have been warning could result in millions of deaths worldwide either:

a) should have been listened to more carefully

OR

b) have been responsible for these deaths

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I don't care if you do or don't have any idea that it confirms anything.

It does and is easily checked. We've been discussing the genome mutation record that establishes the timing of the first cases: mid Oct to mid Nov in Wuhan before the seafood market super-spreader event.

That is not an accurate description of what you and Sherkeu have been claiming.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

I don't dismiss the possibility it was an accidental lab leak, it certainly can't be ruled out, but is that really a coincidence? The lab's location wasn't chosen by sticking a pin randomly in a map, I assume some thought went into it.

It's a good question. Here is the answer:

They built the level 4 biological safety lab at the University of Wuhan. It's one of China's best universities and had a whole program on virology with a level 3 lab.

State Key Laboratory of Virology

about

Quote:

The State Key Laboratory of Virology (SKLV)was established in 2004, founded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and supported byWuhan University and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.Up to date, it has been recognized national wide for studying virology, training high level talents, and conducting scientific collaboration in China and abroad and has became the most active center for virology research.

2004 was circa the SARS epidemic when China undertook SARS research (as did labs in other countries.) The initial SARS research was carried on in Beijing.

SARS escaped Beijing lab twice

Quote:

"We suspect two people, a 26-year-old female postgraduate student and a 31-year-old male postdoc, were both infected, apparently in two separate incidents," Bob Dietz, WHO spokesman in Beijing, told us.

The woman was admitted to hospital on April 4, but the man apparently became infected independently 2 weeks later, being hospitalized on April 17. Both worked at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing, part of China's Center for Disease Control.

So they could have built the level 4 biological safety lab there but the University in Wuhan was chosen as a superior option.


From the first link:

Quote:

SKLV has cutting-edge technology platforms, such as ChinaCenter for Type Culture Collection, China Viral Resources and Information Center,Biological Safety Level 3 Laboratory, Biological Safety Level 3 AnimalLaboratory, and Biological Safety Level 4 Laboratory (In construction).

The level 4 lab had since been completed just before the COVID outbreak.

And it should be noted that as they began research in the level 4 lab, it was reported the staff complained they were understaffed and especially didn't have enough people who were familiar a level 4 lab. The link is here somewhere, I'll have to find it. They were pleading for more funding from the US.


So there is nothing particularly risky in the area. The bat caves where they collected specimens was 800 miles away,