Origins of Covid

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I believe they said in that piece that Dr Li sent a message via ProMedmail, the International Society for Infectious Diseases general email feed.

https://promedmail.org/

There is a 30 December 2019 "Undiagnosed pneumonia - China (HU): RFI" post on ProMed. The source though is Finance Sina. It looks like articles from the newspaper with a mobile feed and a moderator comment.

Frontline A Timeline of China’s Response in the First Days of COVID-19

Quote:

DECEMBER 30, 2019 Around this time, hospitals in Wuhan start seeing dozens of patients with severe pneumonia.

More virus samples are sent to other labs for sequencing. One lab tells Wuhan Central Hospital, mistakenly, that the virus is SARS itself. The lab’s results circulate quickly among the doctors and reach Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist.

Li forwards a message to a group of doctors with a warning: “Don’t circulate this information outside the group, tell your family and loved ones to take precautions.”

His message goes viral.

The local health commission orders Wuhan hospitals to report new cases directly to them and bars the release of information to the public. The orders leak and spread online.

Word of the virus also reaches Marjorie Pollack, an epidemiologist, in New York. “My reaction was ‘we’re in trouble.’ It was very much a deja vu of what happened with SARS-1.” Her organization, Promed, sends a notification out to around 80,000 subscribers around the world.

Thsn

Quote:

JANUARY 1, 2020 Wuhan police reprimand several of the doctors who spread news about an outbreak. Chinese state TV labels them “rumormongers.” Li Wenliang is called to a police station to sign a confession that accuses him of “publishing fictitious discourse” that has “severely disrupted social order.”

The Chinese government disputes that what happened to Li is proof that they were trying to suppress information about the outbreak. They maintain he was merely urged not to spread unconfirmed information.

There was an order that no lab results be published without authorization. The full genetic sequence showing the virus to be SARS-related was done on 5 January 2020 and released on 11 January 2020.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Reality Check

... Everyone also agrees that the scientific evidence makes the animal origin more plausible.

This is not supported in the report. Everybody does not agree the evidence favors a natural event. It doesn't surprise me though that some people can't let go of their preconceived belief thus see things that are not in the report.

[angrysoba]

Good episode of TWiV. They talk quite a lot about SARS-CoV2 origins.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

They discuss the paper that is coming out in Cell.

Link

(There has already been some discussion of that on here when it was just a pre-print).

This page also has links to other papers that they talk about such as the letter in Nature by the original WHO team and their calls for what should be done, and a paper about coronaviruses found in rats.

Link

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Just watched that excellent documentary and I see that it supports the things I've been saying and and posting about in this thread. Everything in that video has been posted about here except for a more recent HPAI GoF research I was unaware of.

And no, it isn't a Loose Change CT video like the 911 inside job stuff though I suspect at least one or two people in this thread, being incapable to evaluating the validity of evidence, to dismiss it out of hand.

And yet in a way it is like the Loose Change video in the sense that we have a lot of innuendo but no real clear argument.

There are competing lab leak arguments, and proponents will pick and choose the evidence from each of those arguments.

[angrysoba]

Stuart Neil had a Twitter thread about this. He has some positive things to say about it, such as this...

Quote:

It was also a very eco-friendly doc – made from 100% recycled material

Link

Quote:

2. Much of what was presented is either ambiguous or presented in such a way to allow the audience to draw inferences that aren’t there (or at least not yet). There was no counterpoint to any of the claims. Also no attempt to explain the science by any actual expert in the field

He concludes...

Quote:

Ultimately, a one-sided documentary with no new insights, lacking basic information to allow the viewer even to hear why most virologists find the whole hypothesis wanting. This was a FOXnews/SkyAustralia-like expose. In the UK we should expect better of
@Channel4

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Good episode of TWiV. They talk quite a lot about SARS-CoV2 origins.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

They discuss the paper that is coming out in Cell.

Link

(There has already been some discussion of that on here when it was just a pre-print).

This page also has links to other papers that they talk about such as the letter in Nature by the original WHO team and their calls for what should be done, and a paper about coronaviruses found in rats.

Link

Do you really watch those 2 hour programs? I'll give the new one a try later tonight. The rats I am already aware of, links and discussion is upthread and no COVID 19 has been found in any of them.

Back to the preprint, yes that has been linked here along with the faux claim there was supporting evidence about cases in Wuhan linked to other wet markets when they weren't. And they rely on unconfirmed evidence that no WIV staff were ill or had antibodies and that was challenged as the Chinese merely told the WHO team that fact but would not allow them to see the actual data.

It's bothersome that all those researchers seemed to have glossed over the significant problems with the WHO report and they simply accept it without question.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Do you really watch those 2 hour programs? I'll give the new one a try later tonight. The rats I am already aware of, links and discussion is upthread and no COVID 19 has been found in any of them.

I usually have this on in the background while I am doing other things. If you want to get through it more quickly just speed up the video to 1.25 or maybe 1.5.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Back to the preprint, yes that has been linked here along with the faux claim there was supporting evidence about cases in Wuhan linked to other wet markets when they weren't. And they rely on unconfirmed evidence that no WIV staff were ill or had antibodies and that was challenged as the Chinese merely told the WHO team that fact but would not allow them to see the actual data.

It's bothersome that all those researchers seemed to have glossed over the significant problems with the WHO report and they simply accept it without question.

The thing about zoonosis, is that the market theory is just one of potentially infinite ways in which a virus may have infected people from the wild. It is certainly worth pursuing given that if it came from a wild animal in a market, then it would make sense to follow the trail back to the farms where wild animals were reared. That is the important point.

Now, as for the question of sick lab workers, the point is that there is no evidence for that.

I think the important question is if it was a lab leak then by the very nature of the question it would require a virus that has in some shape or form come from nature itself. Then, you either assume it has been tampered with and then got out.

Okay, fine, but what is that virus? Is it RaTG13? Well, that's where the Critical Review comes in, as the scientists there say it is basically impossible to have come from there.

In addition, we have this...

Quote:

However, past experimental research using recombinant coronaviruses at the WIV has used a genetic backbone (WIV1) unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 (Hu et al., 2017) and SARSCoV-2 carries no evidence of genetic markers one might expect from laboratory experiments (Andersen et al., 2020). There is no rational experimental reason why a new genetic system
would be developed using an unknown and unpublished virus, with no evidence nor mention of a SARS-CoV-2-like virus in any prior publication or study from the WIV (Ge et al., 2012; Hu et al., 2017; Menachery et al., 2015), no evidence that the WIV sequenced a virus that is closer to
SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13, and no reason to hide research on a SARS-CoV-2-like virus prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under any laboratory escape scenario SARS-CoV-2 would have to have been present in a laboratory prior to the pandemic, yet no evidence exists to support such a notion and no sequence has been identified that could have served as a precursor.

In other words, the theory is lacking the all important virus.

It's almost like the question, "Where did the universe come from?" Easy! God did it! But where did God come from? The labdidit explanation doesn't explain the origins of the virus because we still need to know what the virus was. If we were talking about an Ebola outbreak and the lab had Ebola in it and we knew that for a fact, THEN the lab leak scenario would be highly plausible, and in fact almost irrefutable. But that is NOT the case here.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

I usually have this on in the background while I am doing other things. If you want to get through it more quickly just speed up the video to 1.25 or maybe 1.5.

The thing about zoonosis, is that the market theory is just one of potentially infinite ways in which a virus may have infected people from the wild. It is certainly worth pursuing given that if it came from a wild animal in a market, then it would make sense to follow the trail back to the farms where wild animals were reared. That is the important point.

Now, as for the question of sick lab workers, the point is that there is no evidence for that.

I think the important question is if it was a lab leak then by the very nature of the question it would require a virus that has in some shape or form come from nature itself. Then, you either assume it has been tampered with and then got out.

Okay, fine, but what is that virus? Is it RaTG13? Well, that's where the Critical Review comes in, as the scientists there say it is basically impossible to have come from there.

In addition, we have this...

In other words, the theory is lacking the all important virus.

It's almost like the question, "Where did the universe come from?" Easy! God did it! But where did God come from? The labdidit explanation doesn't explain the origins of the virus because we still need to know what the virus was. If we were talking about an Ebola outbreak and the lab had Ebola in it and we knew that for a fact, THEN the lab leak scenario would be highly plausible, and in fact almost irrefutable. But that is NOT the case here.

You're missing some alternatives here.

One, the RaTG13 is not genetically close enough to fit the scenario.

Two, we don't know anything about the very first cases because the Chinese refuse to release the data on those cases. So whether or not it starts with a lab worker, we only know there is data missing.

And by that same token, we only have the Chinese's word for it none of the lab workers were ill or had relevant antibodies. They refused to share the actual data.

And there is the possibility an infected lab worker was asymptomatic.

Then we have the issue of the data base that was taken down on Sept 9th. And for all the research Shi was doing since they started collecting samples in 2012 and earlier, where were all those genomes, samples etc that should have been in the WIV records?

One thing I found interesting in the paper was the mention of the virus being ready to go from the first infections. But that actually fits the lab accident scenario better than a natural spillover when one considers there has after all this time and effort still no species has been identified with the virus that was supposed to be the source. There's no circulating virus that could become more adapted to humans, no series of human infections where the virus became more efficient at transmission. This is a very serious problem for anyone who favors the natural spillover.

One doesn't have to engineer a virus to get a lab culture with better and better adaptation to human cells.

And to that issue, Shi has denied they had cultures or live bats and there is a lot of evidence that simply is not true.

Your nonsense about the 'god did it' is just sidetracking. There were WIV students and researchers collecting specimens from bats in the Yunnan mine for a decade. It comes back to the problem the Chinese are hiding some very specific evidence that could demonstrate a natural spillover. Why are they refusing to disclose evidence of those very first cases?

Bottom line, you don't have direct evidence of spillover and I don't have the direct pathway from the lab to the first human cases. But the evidence does not favor a natural event and saying it does is an unsupportable assertion.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Then we have the issue of the data base that was taken down on Sept 9th. And for all the research Shi was doing since they started collecting samples in 2012 and earlier, where were all those genomes, samples etc that should have been in the WIV records?

One thing I found interesting in the paper was the mention of the virus being ready to go from the first infections. But that actually fits the lab accident scenario better than a natural spillover when one considers there has after all this time and effort still no species has been identified with the virus that was supposed to be the source. There's no circulating virus that could become more adapted to humans, no series of human infections where the virus became more efficient at transmission. This is a very serious problem for anyone who favors the natural spillover.

As the paper points out:

Quote:

No bat reservoir nor intermediate animal host for SARS-CoV-2 has been identified to date. This
is presumably because the right animal species and/or populations have not yet been sampled
and/or any progenitor virus may be at low prevalence. Initial cross-species transmission events
are also very likely to go undetected. Most SARS-CoV-2 index case infections will not have
resulted in sustained onward transmission (Pekar et al., 2021) and only a very small fraction of
spillovers from animals to humans result in major outbreaks. Indeed, the animal origins of many
well-known human pathogens, including Ebola virus, Hepatitis C virus, poliovirus, and the
coronaviruses HCoV-HKU1 and HCoV-NL63, are yet to be identified, while it took over a
decade to discover bat viruses with >95% similarity to SARS-CoV and able to use hACE-2 as a
receptor (Hu et al., 2017).

So it isn't really that surprising.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

As the paper points out:

So it isn't really that surprising.

It's not surprising, it's what one would expect if the origin was in a lab.

So basically they are saying they haven't looked what: far enough, wide enough, at enough different species?

It's absurd. It's been almost 2 years. What's the holdup? They've rationalized that missing this key piece of evidence is because of [fill in the blank].

Keep in mind that with the civet cats the SARS virus was circulating in that species. It wasn't one needle in the haystack they lucked upon. It was a species SARS was evolving in. And when it did move into humans it also percolated in humans before becoming well adapted. And it only took 4 months to pin the source animal down. Four months, not 2 years and counting.

Dr Redfield is one example of a virologist who notes the significance of this virus jumping into the human population ready to go. That has not been refuted. It was a single event, not multiple events. There has been no evidence it adapted further before spreading around the world. Yes the delta and other strains my indeed be better at spreading but COVID didn't need that mutation to spread rapidly around the world.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's not surprising, it's what one would expect if the origin was in a lab.

No, what is unsurprising is that initial spillover events may well have gone undetected.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

So basically they are saying they haven't looked what: far enough, wide enough, at enough different species?

Yes.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's absurd. It's been almost 2 years. What's the holdup? They've rationalized that missing this key piece of evidence is because of [fill in the blank].

Keep in mind that with the civet cats the SARS virus was circulating in that species. It wasn't one needle in the haystack they lucked upon. It was a species SARS was evolving in. And when it did move into humans it also percolated in humans before becoming well adapted. And it only took 4 months to pin the source animal down. Four months, not 2 years and counting.

In fact, it absolutely was like a needle in a haystack when they found the palm civets that were infected. With SARS-CoV2 things are more difficult because of asymptomatic spread. Your theory is that it broke out in September. Putting aside the fact that almost nobody agrees with that theory, if you had three months of asymptomatic spread, how easy would it be to trace back the origins of the virus?

How do you know SARS-CoV2 didn't percolate in humans or go from an animal host to humans, and back again a number of times, such as on a rural wildlife farm?

It seems highly possible that outbreaks that occur in non-populous areas are self-limiting and die out quickly. This has been the subject of a paper on this...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709179/

In fact, this is what is believed to occur with a lot of viruses that later become epidemics or pandemics such as HIV which likely originated as far back as 1908 and bubbled along in Congo before the city of Leopoldville became big enough to create a larger epidemic which later was transferred to San Francisco before becoming a pandemic.

This is the likely significance of Wuhan in the zoonosis scenario. It is a large population centre, whereas Yunnan province or other rural areas wouldn't have the numbers of people to sustain onward transmission easily.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Dr Redfield is one example of a virologist who notes the significance of this virus jumping into the human population ready to go. That has not been refuted. It was a single event, not multiple events. There has been no evidence it adapted further before spreading around the world. Yes the delta and other strains my indeed be better at spreading but COVID didn't need that mutation to spread rapidly around the world.

Well, I am no virologist, but Stuart Neil is, and his comment on this is....

Quote:

And then there is Alina’s tired old claim that because CoV2 didn’t undergo the level of changes that CoV1 did, that is somehow evidence of artificial adaptation. It simply isn’t, and any half decent viral geneticist would have explained that.

But beyond that, the Cell paper pointed out that, yes, there have been plenty of mutations that have made it more infectious to humans. As you yourself point out the variants (not strains!) of concern even have names like Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. But they point to these:

Quote:

since its emergence, SARS-CoV-2 has experienced repeated sweeps of mutations that have increased viral fitness (Deng et al., 2021; Otto et al., 2021; Simmonds, 2020). The first clear adaptive mutation, the D614G substitution in the spike protein, occurred early in the pandemic (Korber et al., 2020; Volz et al., 2021). Recurring mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein, including N501Y, K417N/T, L452R, and E484K/Q— constituent mutations of the variants of concern—similarly enhance viral infectivity (Cai et al., 2021; Khan et al., 2021; Kuzmina et al., 2021) and ACE2 binding (Liu et al., 2021; Starr et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2021a), refuting claims that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was optimized for binding to human ACE2 upon its emergence (Piplani et al., 2021)

Look! They referenced Piplani et. al!

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

One doesn't have to engineer a virus to get a lab culture with better and better adaptation to human cells.

Could you explain what you mean by this.

The problem I have is that I don't really know what claim you are making.

Many of the claims made by the lab leak theorists is that they did something to the structure of the virus itself. The whole smoking gun talk etc.. was that the virus had been engineered. At times you appear to be pushing that theory and at others... I don't know.

Maybe you could clarify the particular lab leak you support.

[angrysoba]

Okay, so I have just read a thread from one of the co-authors of the Cell paper, Angie Rasmussen.

She has clearly become frustrated with the deluge of Twitter sleuths so limits who can reply to her, but she has a three part series answering many of the questions that she has been receiving on this topic.

You can probably start at the link here.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Could you explain what you mean by this.

The problem I have is that I don't really know what claim you are making.

Many of the claims made by the lab leak theorists is that they did something to the structure of the virus itself. The whole smoking gun talk etc.. was that the virus had been engineered. At times you appear to be pushing that theory and at others... I don't know.

Maybe you could clarify the particular lab leak you support.

It's like breeding a dog, you pick the more and more adapted strains and the mutations add up eventually to be fit to infect humans version. Humanized mice, for one thing can be used in this way. Lineages that weren't adapted wouldn't reproduce well in the mice while lineages that were would.

You can't find a single post of mine in this thread that claims scientists built the virus with genetic pieces. I think it was clear from the start that wasn't what happened here. I may have used imprecise wording talking about GoF research but I think construction of the virus was ruled out with the first genetic examinations.

As for the premise the virus could have sputter out multiple times, yadda yadda, it more speculation. It doesn't explain the lack of a source animal being found. And asymptomatic sputtering, again the genetic trail walked backward does not support this scenario.

How you can say the civet cat was a needle in a haystack suggests you didn't read that history very carefully.

Quote:

How do you know SARS-CoV2 didn't percolate in humans or go from an animal host to humans, and back again a number of times, such as on a rural wildlife farm?

Because it wouldn't have suddenly shown up in Wuhan and spread out of control as fast as it did. We have experience with this kind of potentially pandemic pathogen. Cases of severe disease show up even with a lot of milder cases. The outbreaks don't show up as an isolated event.

For those opinions there are many more which don't agree.

As for strain vs lineage vs variant, What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology

Quote:

A variant is referred to as a strain when it shows distinct physical properties. Put simply, a strain is a variant that is built differently, and so behaves differently, to its parent virus. These behavioural differences can be subtle or obvious.

For example, these differences could involve a variant binding to a different cell receptor, or binding more strongly to a receptor, or replicating more quickly, or transmitting more efficiently, and so on.

Essentially, all strains are variants, but not all variants are strains.

We aren't writing research papers here. Sometimes 'strain' is just easier to use.

[Dr.Sid]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's like breeding a dog, you pick the more and more adapted strains and the mutations add up eventually to be fit to infect humans version. Humanized mice, for one thing can be used in this way. Lineages that weren't adapted wouldn't reproduce well in the mice while lineages that were would.

But isn't this engineering as well ?

Anyway, that's irrelevant. First question is if lab was involved in any way, even as little as lab worker getting infected outside lab (while collecting samples) and spreading it outside lab.

If lab was involved, there are several scenarios from the one I just mentioned, to getting infected inside from samples, improving the samples involuntarily, improving them on purpose using simple cultivation and selection, to full fledged targeted gene manipulation.

Most people seem to rule out right out genetic manipulation. But that's about it. We wouldn't be able to rule out natural, if assisted, adaption to humans.

So to support lab leak we have to find very specific evidence, that it happened. To support animal source, we need to find intermediate species or intermediate virus sample.

But most likely we will stay where we are .. we just won't know.

Arguing which of unsupported scenarios is more likely is just pure sport, not science.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

But isn't this engineering as well ?

It looks different in the gene code.

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

Anyway, that's irrelevant. First question is if lab was involved in any way, even as little as lab worker getting infected outside lab (while collecting samples) and spreading it outside lab.

If lab was involved, there are several scenarios from the one I just mentioned, to getting infected inside from samples, improving the samples involuntarily, improving them on purpose using simple cultivation and selection, to full fledged targeted gene manipulation.

Most people seem to rule out right out genetic manipulation. But that's about it. We wouldn't be able to rule out natural, if assisted, adaption to humans.

Not from the genome we wouldn't.

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

So to support lab leak we have to find very specific evidence, that it happened. To support animal source, we need to find intermediate species or intermediate virus sample.

But most likely we will stay where we are .. we just won't know.

Arguing which of unsupported scenarios is more likely is just pure sport, not science.

You were doing well until your last sentence.

It's science to look at the strength of evidence supporting each hypothesis. The longer it goes without finding even a hint of the natural reservoir, the less likely the natural spillover hypothesis becomes. Whereas there is a growing body of evidence supporting the lab accident hypothesis. And the Chinese are the ones with the key evidence but they are refusing to share that evidence.

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

This is not supported in the report. Everybody does not agree the evidence favors a natural event.

It is what the summary you linked to missed out. That nitpick is correct:

Originally Posted by Reality Check

What they are saying in that 5 intelligence elements have low confidence in a natural origin while 1 element has a moderate confidence in an lab incident origin. That confidence is presumably about the intelligence data. A scientific analysis would follow The scientific consensus of a most probable animal origin and a less probable lab incident origin.
The assessment is correct. Everyone agrees that both scenarios are plausible. Everyone People who objectively study the evidence also agree that the scientific evidence makes the animal origin more plausible.

There is no evidence that the origin is a lab incident other than the fact that they happen.
The evidence for an animal origin and against a lab incident includes

• The fact that they happen, e.g. SARS.
• The similarity to the bat coronavirus.
• The evolutionary distance of several decades between bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2.
  This says that there needs to be decades long experiments with bat coronavirus for them to mutate into SARS-CoV-2. The more likely scenario is evolution of a progenitor virus in an intermediate host such as pangolins.
  If I recall right, there is also evidence or opinion that the evolution happened in a immune system, i.e. an animal or human.
• The Wuhan labs were well run (more exactly there is no evidence of lax safety).
• No Wuhan lab worker had antibodies.
• No Wuhan lab worker was in the early cases.

Anyone who can read (or even count ) can see that an animal origin is more plausible. This does not rule out a lab incident origin. It makes it less plausible.
WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Back to the preprint, yes that has been linked here along with the faux claim there was supporting evidence about cases in Wuhan linked to other wet markets when they weren't. And they rely on unconfirmed evidence that no WIV staff were ill or had antibodies and that was challenged as the Chinese merely told the WHO team that fact but would not allow them to see the actual data.

Wrong, Skeptic Ginger. The soon to be published paper says

Quote:

Despite extensive contact tracing of early cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been no reported cases related to any laboratory staff at the WIV and all staff in the laboratory of Dr. Shi Zhengli were said to be seronegative for SARS-CoV-2 when tested in March 2020 (WHO, 2021), with the laboratory reportedly following the appropriate biosafety protocols during their coronavirus work (Cohen, 2020).

That is reported tests done in early 2020. The Chinese government refused access to raw patient data in 2021 to the WHO team who were in China from 14 January 2021 to 10 February 2021. March 2020 is not January 2021. Raw patient data is not non-patient lab worker blood tests.

A "cases in Wuhan linked to other wet markets when they weren't" error. Figure 1A is the linage of the early cases with a "linked to other market" set of data that is not shown on the chart (maybe under a "Journal Per-proof" banner). In the paper body is "while lineage A contains a case with exposure to other markets (Figure 1A-B)".

WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part

Quote:

Many of the early cases were associated with the Huanan market, but a similar number of cases were associated with other markets and some were not associated with any markets. T

[Dr.Sid]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's science to look at the strength of evidence supporting each hypothesis. The longer it goes without finding even a hint of the natural reservoir, the less likely the natural spillover hypothesis becomes. Whereas there is a growing body of evidence supporting the lab accident hypothesis. And the Chinese are the ones with the key evidence but they are refusing to share that evidence.

It's either proved or not. I'm not interested in odds. Yeah, I would bet on lab leak, from the start actually, but I wouldn't call I won the bet just yet.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Reality Check

It is what the summary you linked to missed out. That nitpick is correct:

There is no evidence that the origin is a lab incident other than the fact that they happen.
The evidence for an animal origin and against a lab incident includes

• The fact that they happen, e.g. SARS.
• The similarity to the bat coronavirus.
• The evolutionary distance of several decades between bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2.

This says that there needs to be decades long experiments with bat coronavirus for them to mutate into SARS-CoV-2. The more likely scenario is evolution of a progenitor virus in an intermediate host such as pangolins.
If I recall right, there is also evidence or opinion that the evolution happened in a immune system, i.e. an animal or human.

Yeah—no. Re that bolded part and I'm not going to repeat this **** again and again:

You are making the unsupported assumption that the WIV had collected relatively few specimens from the Yunnan mine when here they were going to collect specimens for a decade and it was the main thing Shi was studying! A decade! Where are all those specimens? Why did Shi lie that the 6 miners had a fungal disease when that clearly wasn't true. And the pangolin source was ruled out long ago. Only one piece of the COVID genome matches the pangolin coronaviruses. The whole pangolin coronavirus is a very poor match.

I have no idea what you mean about the virus developing in an immune system. I think you might be conflating something like the people with immune systems that don't fight COVID very well might have acted like a crucible for variants to emerge. It has nothing to do with using humanized (respiratory cells) mice in the lab.

Originally Posted by Reality Check

• ...
• The Wuhan labs were well run (more exactly there is no evidence of lax safety).
• No Wuhan lab worker had antibodies.
• No Wuhan lab worker was in the early cases.

Anyone who can read (or even count ) can see that an animal origin is more plausible. This does not rule out a lab incident origin. It makes it less plausible.
WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part

The WHO report is biased. Even the head of the WHO was dissatisfied with it.

Regarding this bolded part:

The labs were not well run, we have Shi herself saying so, we have the diplomatic cables in 2018 that warned the US government of that fact, there are half a dozen sources in this thread documenting problems with the labs at WIV and there is more than one lab in Wuhan.

We only have the word of the Chinese about the next 2 and they refused to show the WHO the actual documentation of those blood tests and and evidence of who the early cases were.

[steenkh]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Now, as for the question of sick lab workers, the point is that there is no evidence for that.

I can’t understand why this argument is still brought up when we know that for lots of patients COVID-19 is asymptomatic.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's science to look at the strength of evidence supporting each hypothesis. The longer it goes without finding even a hint of the natural reservoir, the less likely the natural spillover hypothesis becomes. Whereas there is a growing body of evidence supporting the lab accident hypothesis. And the Chinese are the ones with the key evidence but they are refusing to share that evidence.

LOL! The longer it takes to find out what exactly went bump in the night, the more we must conclude it was a ghost! That’s science!

Ummmm….no! Nice try at making up your own epistemology though.

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Yeah—no. Re that bolded part and I'm not going to repeat this **** again and again:..

Followed by mostly nonsense irrelevant to the fact that there are decades of evolution between bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2.

The number of collected bats for a decade is irrelevant (decades of evolution!).

Nonsense about a "biased" WHO report.

My English was clear: "If I recall right, there is also evidence or opinion that the evolution happened in a immune system, i.e. an animal or human.". As I recall, this was that the genetic changes looked like natural selection in immune systems. You should be comfortable with my reliance on memory when you do the same .

A "pangolin source was ruled out long ago" error. WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part

Quote:

Although the closest related viruses have been found in bats, the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link (either a
missing progenitor virus, or evolution of a progenitor virus in an intermediate host). Highly similar viruses have also been found in pangolins, suggesting cross-species transmission from bats at least once, but again with considerable genetic distance

Both bats and pangolins were sold in wet markets. A still plausible animal origin is bat to pangolin to humans.

A "labs were not well run" error. Shi and others complained about a lack appropriate technicians back in 2017 for the new BSL4 lab.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by steenkh

I can’t understand why this argument is still brought up when we know that for lots of patients COVID-19 is asymptomatic.

It was a claim that was made as part of the initial accusations against the lab.

Mike Pompey claimed “we have totally evidence that people from the Wuhan Institute of Virology went to the hospital because of Covid 1111!”

Now it is “Yeah well maybe they were sick and they didn’t even know it!”

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by steenkh

I can’t understand why this argument is still brought up when we know that for lots of patients COVID-19 is asymptomatic.

A reason is that a worker involved in a lab incident will interact with their colleagues at work, their family and friends. They may be one of the 1 asymptomatic cases in 5 infections. But the chances of everyone they infect being asymptomatic is low. There should be reported cases a step away from that worker. Competent contact tracing might extend that to 2 or more steps away from the worker.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's like breeding a dog, you pick the more and more adapted strains and the mutations add up eventually to be fit to infect humans version. Humanized mice, for one thing can be used in this way. Lineages that weren't adapted wouldn't reproduce well in the mice while lineages that were would.

Well, this is Angie Rasmussen's answer to that:

Quote:

hACE2 transgenic mice are not "humanized." They express the human ACE2 gene & you can see if a virus can infect a host in vivo using this system. This is basic virology research.

But there's no evidence that this virus was "pre-adapted" to a human host via serial passage in cells or in mice. Even in hACE2 transgenic mice, serial passage will result in rodent adaptive mutations throughout the entire genome. There's also zero evidence of that.

Plus, the strongest evidence that this virus wasn't well adapted to humans when it emerged has been accumulating right before our eyes.

They are called alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. And all the other variants that have emerged.

he emergence of variants with improved fitness and infectivity show that the early viruses weren't well-adapted to human hosts at all. Not from studies in cell culture, or in transgenic mice, or in employees of the WIV.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Well, this is Angie Rasmussen's answer to that:

First, they were also using human respiratory tract cells in petri dishes (see the links to Baric's work).

Second, Baric sent the humanized mice to the WIV (also in cites upthread).

Third, the proof is in the pudding: Nature: The pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 in hACE2 transgenic mice

Quote:

... Here we infected transgenic mice that express human ACE2 (hereafter, hACE2 mice) with SARS-CoV-2 and studied the pathogenicity of the virus. We observed weight loss as well as virus replication in the lungs of hACE2 mice infected with SARS-CoV-2. The typical histopathology was interstitial pneumonia with infiltration of considerable numbers of macrophages and lymphocytes into the alveolar interstitium, and the accumulation of macrophages in alveolar cavities. We observed viral antigens in bronchial epithelial cells, macrophages and alveolar epithelia. These phenomena were not found in wild-type mice infected with SARS-CoV-2. Notably, we have confirmed the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 in hACE2 mice.

I don't see then how one can claim:

Quote:

But there's no evidence that this virus was "pre-adapted" to a human host via serial passage in cells or in mice. Even in hACE2 transgenic mice, serial passage will result in rodent adaptive mutations throughout the entire genome. There's also zero evidence of that.

If that were the case then how does the process work in reverse with COVID 19 readily able to infect the mice?

The idea the original virus collected in Yunnan couldn't have been adapted toward a human pathogen is refuted not just with direct evidence, but Daszak also noted in that interview that the coronavirus was easy to manipulate in the lab.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I remind you once again, take that CT crap to the CT thread and stop tying to slip a false accusation in again that people in this thread are CTers.

The lady do protest too much, methinks.

What's a conspiracy, SG?

Let me give you a hand - I have my Dictionary.com ready to go.

Quote:

noun, plural con·spir·a·cies.

the act of conspiring.

an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.

a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.

any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.

You are proposing that there is a conspiracy. The lab, the researchers, the Chinese government and some others are all involved in attempting to cover up a leak from a lab. That's your entire shtick. You have no evidence of a leak, and claim everyone who says it's not a lab leak has a vested interest, from Fauci to Daszak.

That is the perfect example of what a conspiracy is.

Your defensiveness is telling.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Do you really watch those 2 hour programs?

You really should watch it. It's always best to listen to what actual experts have to say on any issue, in this podcast series you get to see what a wide range of actual virologists think about how unlikely a lab leak is.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Back to the preprint,

No longer a preprint, as it's already cleared peer review.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

yes that has been linked here along with the faux claim there was supporting evidence about cases in Wuhan linked to other wet markets when they weren't.

The reviewers clearly saw no problem, and as I recall your "complaint" wasn't about this paper at all, but an interview segment from a paper you refused to read in the fist place. (Like so many other actual scientific sources you have refused to look at)

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

And they rely on unconfirmed evidence that no WIV staff were ill or had antibodies and that was challenged as the Chinese merely told the WHO team that fact but would not allow them to see the actual data.

Mushy thinking on your part. There is no evidence anywhere for any WiV staff being sick and the serology data reported by the WiV showed no SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in any of the staff. Even if you dismiss the information the WiV provided you still have no evidence for illness, and don't get to say a lack of evidence "confirmed" you claims some of the staff were infected.

Also, if you are going to reject the information being provided why the **** would anyone think your demands for "more openness" are honest? If you are already rejecting any data that doesn't fit your belief, what good would providing more data do? You'd just reject that as a coverup as well.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's bothersome that all those researchers seemed to have glossed over the significant problems with the WHO report and they simply accept it without question.

You say all 18 researchers from countries all over the world in this paper, a dozen or so more from the WHO team and the hundreds of researchers publishing and reviewing papers are all out to hide the supposed lab leak. How is this anything but a conspiracy theory?

[Capsid]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

First, they were also using human respiratory tract cells in petri dishes (see the links to Baric's work).

Second, Baric sent the humanized mice to the WIV (also in cites upthread).

Third, the proof is in the pudding: Nature: The pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 in hACE2 transgenic mice

I don't see then how one can claim:If that were the case then how does the process work in reverse with COVID 19 readily able to infect the mice?

The idea the original virus collected in Yunnan couldn't have been adapted toward a human pathogen is refuted not just with direct evidence, but Daszak also noted in that interview that the coronavirus was easy to manipulate in the lab.

Weren't the ACE2 mouse studies done in Beijing? Zhengli Shi isn't an author.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

You're missing some alternatives here.

One, the RaTG13 is not genetically close enough to fit the scenario.

There is no know virus that is genetically close enough to fit any form of the lab leak hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Two, we don't know anything about the very first cases because the Chinese refuse to release the data on those cases.

The earliest cases occurred 4-6 weeks before there was any possibility of detecting the outbreak. How can they "release data" they can't plausibly have?

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

One doesn't have to engineer a virus to get a lab culture with better and better adaptation to human cells.

SARS-CoV-2 in it's original form was sub-optimal in terms of binding to human ACE2. It only has a partial furin cleavage site instead of a full cleavage site. There are other corona viruses that are already more efficient at binding to human ACE2 and most of these have never circulated in humans.


There is also the problem that the culturing technique used by the WiV is know to destroy furin cleavage sites, and so could not have produced SARS-CoV-2

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

And to that issue, Shi has denied they had cultures or live bats and there is a lot of evidence that simply is not true.

You claiming evidence is not the same as you presenting convincing evidence. I have seen not seen you produce satisfactory supporting evidence for this claim.

The origin of the video self styled internet sleuths are claiming as evidence is purportedly a promotional video released for the lab opening. There is no evidence where the video was actually taken, but it seems unlikely that it was the lab that was just opening.


Even if there were live bats there, SO WHAT? It's not unthinkable they would study live bats but neither is there any reason for the WiV to lie about it if they did. The idea that live bats would be some sort of smoking gun is silly.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's not surprising, it's what one would expect if the origin was in a lab.

NO. This is completely backwards. Researchers don't work with viruses without cataloging them first. If it was a lab origin it should have been easy to find the proximal ancestor because it would have been cataloged and studied.


Tracking down the wild animal source for a novel virus is something you expect to take decades if it's possible to find at all.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's absurd. It's been almost 2 years. What's the holdup?

The "holdup" is that it's something that normally takes decades.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's like breeding a dog, you pick the more and more adapted strains and the mutations add up eventually to be fit to infect humans version. Humanized mice, for one thing can be used in this way. Lineages that weren't adapted wouldn't reproduce well in the mice while lineages that were would.

This sounds like it's nearly impossible to do this in living organisms. If someone was attempting such a thing it would almost certainly be in vitro. Again, as the Holmes paper points out the culturing techniques used by the WiV destroys furin cleavage sites and therefor could not produce SARS-CoV-2

[steenkh]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

It was a claim that was made as part of the initial accusations against the lab.

Mike Pompey claimed “we have totally evidence that people from the Wuhan Institute of Virology went to the hospital because of Covid 1111!”

Now it is “Yeah well maybe they were sick and they didn’t even know it!”

Pompey had political reasons for saying what he did. Political lies are not the subject of this discussion.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Capsid

Weren't the ACE2 mouse studies done in Beijing? Zhengli Shi isn't an author.

That article is about infecting the mice after the pandemic was going. Angrysoba cited a source claiming work with the humanized mice could not have resulted in COVID 19.

Baric sent the mice to Shi at the WIV after they ended their joint study on the chimera coronavirus in the NC lab. The source said at that point they quit collaborating and became more competitive. And from there on the US had no eyes on the ground observing what research was going on at the WIV.

Feel free to weigh in if you think the GoF research could not have produced a gradually modified SARS CoV 2 adapted to humans. I'll be happy to go back over the sources linked in this thread which said a modified virus could have been created in the lab which looked no different from one which evolved in the wild.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by steenkh

Pompey had political reasons for saying what he did. Political lies are not the subject of this discussion.

This ^

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I don't see then how one can claim:If that were the case then how does the process work in reverse with COVID 19 readily able to infect the mice?

SARS-CoV-2 readily infects many different animals for which it has no prior adaption. It's therefor silly to suggest it had or needed to have any prior adaptation to infect humans. Once in humans, however, it developed human specific adaptations. Per Dr Rasmussen, we see no similar rodent specific adaptations.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

...
What's a conspiracy, SG?
[snipped a bunch of BS].

The off-topic one you tried to slip in:

Quote:

Looks like the conspiracists have been handed a green card, with an inconclusive consensus from US intelligence agencies.

You shouldn't pretend you aren't obvious.

[steenkh]

Originally Posted by Reality Check

A reason is that a worker involved in a lab incident will interact with their colleagues at work, their family and friends. They may be one of the 1 asymptomatic cases in 5 infections. But the chances of everyone they infect being asymptomatic is low. There should be reported cases a step away from that worker. Competent contact tracing might extend that to 2 or more steps away from the worker.

I agree. But the claim was that it was evidence that none of the lab workers were registered as having been sick. We don’t know if relatives of lab workers were sick with with Covid-19 because this would have been at a stage when nobody would have connected a bout of cough or influenza with having an unknown disease, and I don’t think anybody would have started contact tracing at this stage.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by steenkh

Pompey had political reasons for saying what he did. Political lies are not the subject of this discussion.

Pompey!

Of course, I meant Pompeo.

Anyway, we are still at "no evidence of infected lab workers". As mentioned, if they got infected but were asymptomatic, then presumably they would have passed that on to their co-workers and families. Apparently we don't see evidence of that either.