Do you think covid started in a wet market?

[sleepyhorse]

.....Or accidentally released from a laboratory?

@KeepWashingThoseHands

If you work in the field then you'll probably already know that they've been doing Gain-of-function experiments using SARS in the Wuhan lab since at least 2013.

There are moral and ethical issues here that the general public are not aware of.

As far as I know cancer is not contagious yet but GOF with contagious pathogens is another matter. People need to know what's going on.

You've literally got no context to what you're taking about.

But keep Googling. I'm off.

Accidentally spread from lab, massively covered up by the Chinese who locked down internally, knowing the risks but allowed international travel to continue so as not to spook other countries

This sounds likely to me. It is too coincidental that there is a lab in Wuhan and that’s the start place.

The genome indicates the virus started in bats, but has come via another animal, such as a pangolin, but of this the scientists are not sure.

Released from the lab does not mean it is man made. I am sure that the lab actually has plenty wild type virus cultures on site.

I think that China's secretiveness has done them no favours with this. It makes it look as if they're covering up what really happened, which is playing into Trump's hands.

Quite clearly, neither explanation covers China in glory, I think, so they should just come clean and allow the WHO to come in and undertake a thorough investigation, maybe along with an observer from the US who Trump trusts.

I don't think they'll do that, any more than Trump will accept the conclusions of any such investigation. Because both sides want to be able to continue blaming each other.

Scientists have said that the virus is natural, not man-made. Still, they could have had 'wild' samples in the lab which they were studying. If so, more likely that it was an accidental release as there was no real benefit to a deliberate release.

Whether it came from the wet market (poor animal rights) or from the lab (lack of honesty and disclosure) , either way it doesn't reflect well on them.

"But the lab, just up the road, with known previous poor standards was specifically working on the bat viruses.

Don’t forget the last outbreak of Foot and Mouth in the UK was an accidental lab release. "

Yep, it could be an accidental lab release, because too many sloppy bastards around the world - including the UK - are researching infectious diseases

Lab release or market ...
the Chinese regime covered up for weeks, to hide face and in the hope they could contain it within China without having to tell the world how badly they fucked up

They should pay massive compensation to the world

China had no need to deliberately release a virus - they are overhauling the USA all the time and will become the world's No 1 economic power within about the next 30 years

Besides, any self-respecting bio-weapon would kill the young, not the very old

• unless it's from the West, trying to solve their looming demographics / pension disaster

And with ¼ million dead globally, cases rocketing in Russia, maybe still growing in the USA (NYT leak) ....
very unstable Trump & Putin rattling their sabres / willies at every chance ....
a deliberate release would mean war against China,
or at the least - crippling sanctions, confiscation of all assets in the West and isolation as a pariah state

Honestly, it's too much of a coincidence that bats with coronavirus were being studied in Wuhan. Imagine if seagulls with Ebola were being studied in Grimsby. And then a breakout of seagull-originated Ebola came from grimsby. You wouldn't even need to think about it would you? It's clearly from the lab.
But the reason theres a lab studying coronaviruses in Wuhan is because there are, locally, a lot of bats carrying various coronaviruses.

I lean towards wet market.
I think accidental escape from a lab is possible.
Deliberate release sounds a bit ridiculous to me.

It's worth remembering though that labs in the UK have accidentally released smallpox though. He without sin and all that...

This is most cited paper on pangolin theory,

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982220303602

it convinced me

I still think it’s just another one of the several coronaviruses we’ve already seen naturally. The research seems to suggest it came from an animal too.

Wet market. It suits Trump and Bojo to focus everyone on who to blame for the origin, rather than the terrible decisions they have made in the handling of the pandemic.

Probably not Wuhan market, because earlier unrelated cases.
Not human made because sequencing data shows unknown sequence and not the most efficient acquired sequence.
Unlikely lab leak, unless it was from something very new that they never got to sequence. And the paper and the sequences had already been published. One thing the chinese researchers are keen on is publishing. If lab leak I'd expect news of lab people infected early on.
Not sure it would matter much for the Chinese either way, so I don't think they'd have the motivation to hide if it had been released from the lab.
A purposeful release is just nuts.

There's not a shred of evidence it came from a lab. And there is outright evidence against the idea it was genetically engineered.

I'm going with the leading theory at the moment, that it spread from animals to humans in a live animal market. You've got all sorts of wild animals in one place along with humans, it's the perfect environment for a disease to make the species jump.

This sounds likely to me. It is too coincidental that there is a lab in Wuhan and that’s the start place.

Most large cities have labs in them.
Not all study coronavirus, but considering SARS, I'd expect most virology labs in China to have more than a passing interest in coronavirus. More so close to where bats with coronavirus live.

Like I expect labs in the Arabian Peninsula in particular to be interested in MERS.

I think released from lab. They have two labs in Whuhan. Whether accident or deliberate I doubt we will never know. They should have informed WHO straight away not tried to conceal it and stopped flights leaving country. Instead they killed whistleblowers for trying to allergy rest of world. They won't allow WHO access to inspect labs and participate in investigation. This is also second respiratory virus starting in China. Deliberate or not they should be made accountable.

Accidental release, or maybe not accidental !

But scientists who have studied it outside of china do say it shows it's clearly from an animal

Sure, but that does not in any way preclude that it may well have been leaked from a lab. The lab in question was studying natural animal viruses.

I have no idea. I don’t have any expertise in this area and don’t consider any of the available information to come from reliable sources.

I believe it came from eating wild animals, and sorry but those who believe it was intentional from a lab sound incredibly stupid to me.

Is there a chance that it could have been released on behalf of another foreign agent, to make it look like it was either a natural event from the wetmarket or that the Wuhan lab would get the blame?

It doesn't have to be man made to be deliberately released.

It makes more sense that someone did this TO China to make the world turn on them, than China deliberately doing it to themselves.

Who gains if China is trusted even less and is economically ruined? Who gains if the West have reason to blame China for economic and human losses, when they owe lots of outstanding debt to China?

In which part of the world, is there a leader mad enough to want a reason to go to war and reinstate their superiority over China?

If it was designed and released then they did an incredibly poor job, given the fatality rate, and the fact it hardly effects children. If I'd asked someone to design a killer virus and got this, if be asking for my money back.

I don't mean it's not scary etc. but if it was designed surely the fatality rate would be at least 10 times higher.

That doesn't rule out that it was in a lab for other reasons and got out accidentally of course. But I'd say it's probably from a wet market.

Not a wet market

🤷🏻‍♀️

I think it’s not man made but was released accidentally from the lab in Wuhan. I think scientists from the lab tried to tell us and were seen off. 😢

What worries me if whether they were messing around with coronavirus generally to make them more “potent” and this is what happened here:

What if this happens again?

We shouldn’t be fucking around with viruses and we shouldn’t be fucking around with nature