Covid - the result a (accidental) lab leak - don't shoot me down, genuine concerns

[questioningalways]

I can't be the only one worrying about the weird coincidence that the Wuhan lab was so close to the mass spreader event of the Wuhan wet market.

What about the gain-of-function research that has focused on a number of viruses and looking at how they can become more transmissible i.e. in 2011 when two studies were suppressed involving H5N1 viruses that had been modified to allow airborne transmission from ferret to ferret.

I'm surprised main media are not focusing more on this...too many coincidences and given that the 1977/78 Russian flu was most likely due to an (accidental?) lab leak it's not inconceivable that Covid was too:

nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext

Well maybe it was a lab leak.

Perhaps that is better than a wet market jump species because there is little we can do about a jump species, you would think more we can do about lab leaks.

Need to wait and see how much access and enquiry the group visiting Wuhan come up with.

This? Still?

It's not even 100% certain that it started in China.

God, this has been circulating since last March, have you only just seen it?

I remember reading about this possibility last Easter whilst doing hundreds of middle of the night feeds.

One thing that seems certain is that it didn’t originate in Wuhan wet market in December as blood donors have been found to have antibodies in their blood in different countries many weeks before.

If I’m honest, I think it’s likely that it came from the lab but I don’t think it was deliberate. Hopefully one day we will find out the truth but I’m not convinced we will.

We back here again?

One things for absolute sure. We ain't getting any answers out of China!

Norovirus was first linked to the town of Norwalk New Jersey.
Noro can be a food borne disease.
Some of the food companies in Norwalk are:

Pepperidge Farm
Sclafani Foods
Stew Leonard's

So one of those companies must have messed up & introduced Norovirus to the food chain -- right? That's OP's logic.

O fgs. If a lion escapes from a zoo, that doesn’t mean the zoo invented lions, does it

Have you only just got an internet connection?

@Rowenasemolina

O fgs. If a lion escapes from a zoo, that doesn’t mean the zoo invented lions, does it

What if it were a lion which had been genetically manipulated to be super aggressive to humans?

...and the security at the zoo was lax?

Under those circumstances, yes, I would say that the zoo was to blame for the Resulting deaths.

Germs jump from animals to humans (and back again) all the time.

Conspiracy theories are written like novels, to make an exciting story that stokes up resentment & promotes a bunch of beliefs someone wants promoted.

Like viruses circulating , conspiracy theories reproduce repeatedly in fringe circles until they get the 'magic' set of plot points (like viral genes) that makes them especially exciting and promotes the most exciting and resentmentful (ie., especially contagious).

A faulty drainage pipe was the most likely source of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain on 3 August, official investigators concluded today. The pipe connected two world class research facilities on the same Pirbright facility in Surrey

Not unusual or conspiracy at all. It does happen. However, I suspect the Chinese Republic are not entirely up for taking the blame.

@mumlurker
@umpteennamechanges

No, seen this way back in March last year and followed the Times investigation (article July time) but I'm just wondering why not more written about it. Seems not many here have actually read the Lancet (which is one of the most respectable science publications) link I shared or looked into the issue re gain of function and the research done to make certain viruses more transmissible / airborne.

I'm not a Daily Mail reader and I deplore the use of conspiracy theorist' when this is a legitimate question and there have been several leaks from labs (in the US and elsewhere) so it's not as if it is out of the question or unreasonable to point this out.

just to throw this in the mix
a less lethal version of coronavirus may well of been spreading for sometime before - the thing with this, as has been proven by subsequent infections perhaps it started in one of the farms there where the pigs might have been in contact with bats or rats (think how the foot & mouth disease spread in the UK) then possibly the farmer went to the farm market sold his pigs & the link goes on to include & mix with other animals & people.
Wuhan in October had an International Sport Competition which is also interesting because the wet market was a well known tourist attraction - coincidence
I don't think there was any deliberate infection - I think it was matter of time before this happened

There is a lab near a food market, you say.

I'm shocked. It must mean that COVID-19 is a lab-made artificial virus that was accidentally released

@Rowenasemolina

O fgs. If a lion escapes from a zoo, that doesn’t mean the zoo invented lions, does it

Have you actually read the background or done any research? Not sure you understand gain of function research either. The lab had US and international staff onsite as it was the first high security lab of its kind in China, and received funding from the US.

Look here into their areas of research (paper from 2015):
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095288/

So, let’s say it is an accidental leak from a lab - what now?

From what I read, yes likely to be from a lab but the reason not much is written is because it won’t really help and would likely cause more problems and tension during time when that is particularly damaging to controlling COVID. China would close off even more, the US would start blame game to get eyes off them. The rest of the world would still be having deaths and maybe less information sharing. Nobody wins

I don't think it's deliberate but accidents do happen (as has been seen previously e.g. in the US but also the Russian Flu of 1977/78 is now thought to have come about due to an accidental lab leak).

@questioningalways Yes I have read the paper you quoted.

No, it makes no difference, there is still no evidence. It is, to further use a pps excellent analogy, like saying if a lion escapes from a zoo it doesn't mean that the zoo bred lions.

Are you aware that there is a WHO Coronavirus origin investigation team in Wuhan right now?

It is true, 'what now', but perhaps there should be a global suspension of GOF research from now on?

I'm not sure China has been particularly transparent to date but I do realise there were already tensions long before Covid between China and its neighbours and other countries including Australia but always uncomfortable with the calling out of 'conspiracy theories' when something very reasonable is questioned.

[quote Haffiana]@questioningalways Yes I have read the paper you quoted.

No, it makes no difference, there is still no evidence. It is, to further use a pps excellent analogy, like saying if a lion escapes from a zoo it doesn't mean that the zoo bred lions.

Are you aware that there is a WHO Coronavirus origin investigation team in Wuhan right now?[/quote]
Your analogy makes no sense at all.

Yes, of course I'm aware of the WHO but you may not be aware that some key figures involved with this 'trip', were heavily involved with the funding of the research at the Wuhan institute. Plus China have put lots of blocks in place for the WHO and other groups trying to accessing the sites, people and data.

If you want a new conspiracy theory, have a look at the number of reports of people in hospital and/or dying from a lung condition/pneumonia that was attributed to vaping over the year and months immediately prior to this.

'Commonly reported symptoms include shortness of breath, cough, fatigue, body aches, fever, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Additional symptoms may include chest pain, abdominal pain, chills, or weight loss.'

'Pulmonary infiltrate, such as opacities on plain film chest radiograph or ground-glass opacities on chest computed tomography '

'patients in narratives including the following:

Dehydration from nausea, multifocal pneumonia, sepsis, acute respiratory failure with hypoxemia, and blood clots, necessitating a medically induced coma and removal of fluid from the lungs'

Have fun.

@CoteDAzur

There is a lab near a food market, you say.

I'm shocked. It must mean that COVID-19 is a lab-made artificial virus that was accidentally released

It's a weird coincidence as the bat viruses that were investigated at the Wuhan lab do not exist in the area of Wuhan but some 7-8 hours drive away. Even the main lab head was worried initially that it could have been a leak because of this irregularity - and especially as pangolins not sold at the wetmarket - (but later said she had checked all her data and was confident it wasn't). I.e. if it would have happened as a zootropic event, it would have been much more likely in other areas of China.

This is a good paper on why it is unlikely that the virus was genetically engineered:

www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

In summary, the mutation that makes the virus good at binding to ACE2 receptors is new and was not predicted. However, there are already existing ways to modify the virus to do that, so why not use them? Why reinvent the wheel?

That doesn't mean that they didn't have the virus at the lab and it was accidentally released, of course, just that it is more likely it evolved through natural selection.

Yes, of course I'm aware of the WHO but you may not be aware that some key figures involved with this 'trip', were heavily involved with the funding of the research at the Wuhan institute.

That is a conspiracy theory, right there. Classic.

It is a never-ending rabbit hole, OP. It seems oh so reasonable at first, and you are only questioning as you should, and then suddenly the 'big pharma' klaxon is going off wherever you look and then you are stuck in it and don't know it.