WHO report: covid likely not from Wuhan

[PicsInRed]

Covid not from Wuhan, not there before December 2019 and may even have been imported into Wuhan/China in frozen food.

Definitely, 100% not from a lab but may have mutated bit by bit and crossed different animals and borders whilst doing so in order to reach the current covid we know and love.

So there ya go.

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55996728

Also this virus is intelligent its behaving in a way to suggest some man made intervention or modification

Um really?

A ‘man-made’ virus would have genetic material with very obvious synthetic hallmarks
not man made, more cultivated.....perhaps you arent scientifically minded enough to appreciate the nuances?

lljkk
I can tell you why I believe its man made. Its got nothing to do with China. For me its the actual virus itself. The fact it is not stable outdoors either in the air or on surfaces shouts lab to me.

Yes it might have come from a bat cave and an animal that went in the bat cave - but it is unstable at high humidities also so that puts a question over that for me as bat caves are usually quite moist.

Yes the poor animal that went to the bat cave that got it might have spread it around its pals. Assuming its the pangolin here. Who is also nocturnal so that holds water. But pangolins are solitary animals. So maybe the pangolin who was infected happened to be captured and put in a pangolin farm. Could have happened. But the fact that it then jumped to a human even though it doesnt survive outside in daylight doesnt sound plausible.

So the only way I see this happening is we have midnight farmers in China cuddling pangolins in the dark who subsequently culled all of the livestock in their farm at the same time - some time in the last year and as such there is no trace. Seems implausible.

@jasjas1973

Ask yourselves why China locked down almost immediately?

They don't care about human life & and can hide any issues with their health service, its almost as if they knew what would happen if they didn't.

Because SARS-1.

And they are not idiots. They know that an early lockdown, masks and disinfection, work better than leaving things roll out, then lockdown when hospitals are already too full.

They are still doing it. Locking down even with a relatively small number of cases.
Their cities have a high density of people and transmission can be very fast indeed.

Also, Wuhan was locked down on January 23rd, well into the epidemic, not the first days of January.
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55628488

They are doing a lot better than Europe, btw, at 3 deaths per million people.
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

@Kdubs1981

Bloody hell. The Mumsnet crazies are out in force today

I know! Bloody scary.

1) The public are scientifically very poorly educated and that needs to be changed
yer but that would make it harder for govt etc to fool people, govt dont want a population of independent thinkers, too unruly!!

I have to say that Times report on a possible leak from the Wuhan lab was ever so compelling. We know they were studying a mystery coronavirus from a bat cave and visiting scientists had expressed concerns about security and safety. But I suppose it could all just be coincidental. Does it even matter?

The fact it is not stable outdoors either in the air or on surfaces shouts lab to me.

That's based on your extensive knowledge of pathogens, and labs, is it?

Here's some more on the WHO suggesting an external origin as, yes, the BBC is a little weak on this point.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-extremely-unlikely-novel-coronavirus-came-from-wuhan-lab-incident-says-joint-mission-12213121

Specifically:

"Investigators should now look at studying bats outside of China to see if they carry genetically similar viruses, the WHO's Dr Peter Ben Embarek said."

"China's National Health Commission spokesperson Professor Liang Wannian also suggested more research is needed into whether felines could have hosted the virus."

"The susceptibility of mink and cats to SARS-CoV-2 suggests there may be additional animals, such as those belonging to the feline family, who may act as reservoirs for the virus. But there is not yet enough research to know for sure," he said."

"It is also thought likely the virus could have been transmitted from frozen food, according to Dr Embarek."

"He added the virus could have emerged this way through "convoluted pathways that may have taken a long time and moved it across borders"."

"Scientists also revealed the novel coronavirus could have been circulating in regions outside Wuhan before the first reported cases of the outbreak."

"Unpublished data suggests samples of SARS-CoV-2 were found several weeks before the first reported cases in Wuhan, Professor Liang said."

"However, he added there was no evidence that COVID was spreading in Wuhan before December 2019, when the first cases were reported, after officials looked at research samples, pharmaceutical sales and hospital records."

Also this virus is intelligent its behaving in a way to suggest some man made intervention or modification

Real evolution is no match for most scientists.

Most tools used in molecular biology, even many drugs, are found in nature, and weren't designed from scratch by scientists. Scientists only make tweaks, which, even so, require a lot of work.

I think most people watch too much sci-fi.

Lweji
You said you liked creative fiction so I wrote you a nice creative fiction version of my thought track.

It was meant to be lighthearted but obviously missed the tone here.

Wuhan was locked down on January 23rd, well into the epidemic, not the first days of January

Yes, and they waited until very many had already travelled for Chinese New Year, which hardly seems a wise thing to have done

I'm not among those who believe it was created deliberately, but all the same I'd love to know why that choice was made ... and it certainly wasn't because they were worried about upsetting the public

@LemonSwan

Lweji You said you liked creative fiction so I wrote you a nice creative fiction version of my thought track.

It was meant to be lighthearted but obviously missed the tone here.

I said what?

There's a bit of fiction there...

(The above is a combination of WHO and Chinese government comments in tandem)

Oh sorry Lweji - I thought you were lljkk

Too many Ls in my life lol.

lljkk said they liked creative fiction on page 1. It was for them. I hope they enjoy.

@o8O8O8o

A ‘man-made’ virus would have genetic material with very obvious synthetic hallmarks not man made, more cultivated.....perhaps you arent scientifically minded enough to appreciate the nuances?

Strange, given how I’ve just successfully defended my PhD thesis in infection biology 🤨

Full media briefing here if anyone has a spare 3 hours (I don't, I'll wait for the next episode of Dr WHO: The Three Doctors). It's a joint press conference from WHO and the Chinese health authorities which is why it's so long - everything gets translated to and from Chinese.

Warning: expect extreme diplomacy:

You can’t have any sort of meaningful investigation in a country that opposes free speech and promotes censorship. I’m not sure what the point was. Maybe they would be better off investigating all of the ‘enemies of the state’ who have ‘disappeared’.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Wuhan was locked down on January 23rd, well into the epidemic, not the first days of January

Yes, and they waited until very many had already travelled for Chinese New Year, which hardly seems a wise thing to have done

I'm not among those who believe it was created deliberately, but all the same I'd love to know why that choice was made ... and it certainly wasn't because they were worried about upsetting the public

They didn't realise initially that it was that transmissible.

SARS-1 and MERS had been fairly efficiently contained with test and trace, and isolation. This was escaping their control.

To understand how China and other countries reacted to COVID initially, we need to be familiar with the previous coronavirus outbreaks and what was expected.

Well if China was threatening to make me disappear and I wrote that report, that might also be my conclusion.

No one believes it for one second though ..

But it was known about in November in Wuhan wasn’t it? Connor Reed, the student (who has since tragically died aged 26) reported he had it in November and they were seeing plenty of hospital cases then.

I wonder how the US got everyone to say it was Spanish flu?
Nobody was reporting it because they didn’t want to affect morale around the time of WW1. Spain didn’t have reporting restrictions so they were talking about the flu publicly, which is why it came to be known as Spanish flu.

Nothing of the sort happened in China though. It’s not a coincidence that this virus emerged near a bio research lab. They falsely claimed it came from the nearby market then admitted it didn’t. Key scientists disappeared and were probably killed. And now of course it came from somewhere else! China are liars and don’t want to take responsibility, and WHO are obviously in their back pocket. How do they explain all the missing scientists?!

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Looking on the bright side, I'm sure it'll earn them even greater funding from China

Exactly!

There was a Brit who appeared on channel 4 at the beginning who caught it in wuhan in November. He lives in wuhan.

Sounds legit .....