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China lab suspected of Covid leak stripped of US funding for violating biosafety rules (www.telegraph.co.uk)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 4 points 3 years ago (10 children)

You're the one making assumptions I'm afraid.

We don't know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn't spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.

Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don't know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we've just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we've learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (9 children)

    From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.

    EDIT for sources:
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    Do you understand that still the leap from "It's 99% similar to Chinese pangolin coronavirus" (and hey, you're 99% similar to a Ugandan chimp) and "so the other 1% probably came from a lab in Wuhan"? Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first. We can say that's a Chinese cover-up, but go ahead and say that, and recognise it as speculation.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Dude I'm a microbioligst, just look at the cladisitics of all the viruses similar to SARS-COIVD-2, it's undeniable that the virus is from China because of its similarity to that of the viruses in the pangolin and, it's like saying humans don't come from Africa, just because 1% is a big deal does not mean that all the genetic evidence shows that ALL its relatives come from China, just as ALL early homo species come from Africa.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (4 children)

    I'm absolutely 100% with you on it coming from Asian pangolins. That even quite likely ties it to Asian wet markets, or the illegal hunting trade. SARS and MERS were both zoonotic too. SARS came from the abuse of palm civets.

    What you seem to not understand - and here's where I get to dick-swing my tangentially related credentials - is that 'wet markets' are everywhere in China and indeed Asia. There's a dozen in Wuhan alone. 'Fresh market' would be a much better name - it's the opposite to a dry market, ie shelf-life goods and non-perishables. Google just calls them "Farmer's Markets", which is what they would be called in the US.

    Fresh markets also happen to be places that people travel distance to get to - traders bringing produce, and people traveling to get stuff. Pangolins from as far away as India and Indonesia end up in China. The trade of exotic animals and especially ones with Chinese 'medicine' applications is horrendous in tropical Asia, where I spent a number of years, visiting China only once. It has a lot to do with why I turned veggie!

    So again, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of 'wet markets' in Asia. The only distinction that one of Wuhan's has is that it was reported there first, at least three months after the virus had already spread - maybe from China - as far as Italy. It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as "oh, and there's a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak". We have no idea.

    I'm in Ireland. My grandmother died of a sudden and rapid onset of pneumonia in December 2019 that did not respond to ordinary treatment. My son was sick with something like a flu that give him the sniffles and sapped all energy from him for 2 days, which sticks only in mind because keeping him home resulted in a fight with the in-laws which means they haven't seen him since. Could either of those things have been Covid? Again, no idea. Nobody sent anyone for strain testing, and Ireland, like most places, does not habitually keep waste treatment plant samples for later testing. Nobody has suggested an absurd cover-up by the Irish government of course. And the stories of a "bad flu" in autumn and winter of 2019 are everywhere.

    UK flu season 'starting early': https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/12/public-urged-to-act-fast-to-avoid-festive-flu/

    Europe in general complaining about flu symptoms and dry coughs in Winter 2019, analysed statistically: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81333-1

    USA, higher cases than usual in South: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-an-unexpected-virus.html

    And, for all that's useful about it, at least anecdotally from non-Chinese sources in Wuhan, the particular wet market didn't even have pangolins or bats.

    https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-hokave-alibi

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

    Everything you posted is circumstantial and CVOID is not like the flu in presentation. In fact to compare COVID to flu is conpiratorial in nature so I'm cutting it off with you here.
    "It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as “oh, and there’s a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak”. We have no idea."
    I did not say for sure it came from a lab, I am saying that if it did it probably came from the one in Wuhan, and you even aknowledge that I said the most likely case is pangolins in China, I'm going to just cut it off with you now because unfortunately you contradict yourself way to much and you're basically stuck in circular logic that it can't have come from china because you don't want it to have come from China.
    You admit the first report comes from Wuhan, and all the genetic evidence points to it having come from an animal that had to be from asia at the very least, but then do another 180 and say well maybe it was from another place in asia, even though the first reports are from china, then you say I for sure said it was from a lab while I did not say that.

    But for the last thing I say let me show you what COVID relatives we are talking about here, in order of how related they are to covid:
    -RPYN06- first sequenced in China's Yunnan provience
    -RMYN02 - Also Yunnan province
    -PrC31- also Yunan province
    These are the closest relatives of COVID, they are ALL from China's Yunnan province.

    Other relatives:
    RAtg13 - Also Yunnan province
    RshSTT183 - Actually cambodia! only five degrees of seperation!!
    RshSTT200- Cambodia too
    CoVZC45- Uh oh! China again!
    CoVZXC21- China again again
    longquan140- China

    so yeah, it's obviously from china. All of is ancestor are from China, except for the two from Cambodia and there's no contesting that.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Covid absolutely is like the flu in presentation to ordinary people. That's quite literally how the warning was communicated to the general public. Here's quite literally the first sentence from my local health authority's guidance.

    Flu and COVID-19 The symptoms of COVID-19 (coronavirus) are like flu symptoms. The main difference is that you usually do not have shortness of breath when you have the flu.

    https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/flu/symptoms-diagnosis/

    At no point have I said it can't have come from China. I said quite the opposite. I'm saying the first report coming from Wuhan in particular and a single wet market from the thousands in China when the specific virus had already spread internationally anywhere from 3 to 6 months earlier is an absurd thing for you to insist it came from Wuhan originally, and a ridiculous thing to make you say 'most likely from the lab because they were studying bats'. Because yes, you did say it was 'most likely' from the Wuhan lab.

    You're trying to paint me as a conspiracy theorist because you like your own baseless conspiracy theory?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Where did I say it most likely came from a lab, qoute me right now.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab

    Did you, like, forget your own post? "On accident"?

    Again, for the millionth time: it showing up in Wuhan in December means literally nothing to the origin of the virus if it, and I'll be very clear here and agree in principle to literally everything else you've said, if it had spread from Yunnan province (in tropical Asia) to Italy by September or indeed May.

    And, because you edited in the stuff about Yunnan apparently after I'd gone to sleep: Wuhan is in Heibei province in Central China. Not Yunnan. Any pangolins in any market even if present (and scientists tracking trafficked animals from Oxford say they weren't), would have come from further south such as, yes, Yunnan. Or any of dozens of other places in tropical Asia, from where someone could also have in a single day traveled to Europe.

    I simply cannot understand how an educated person would boil it down to this idea:

    The virus is 99% similar to one in pangolins in Yunnan province and so if coming from a lab it must come from a lab in Wuhan, Heibei where they studied bats, and then it either spread from there in December 2019 to the people in Wuhan but also and traveled in time and space to Italy in September 2019, or spread from the lab at some undetermined time but did not affect anyone in China for 3 months, spreading instead to Italy and Spain and other places and eventually decided, like so many Chinese people, to return home for Chinese New Year back first to the exact city it came from, in Central China.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago

    Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first.

    And this is how you can completely deny reality.

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