Origin of COVID (hijack from Rand Paul Called Fauci a Liar)

[Alex_Krycek]

55 minutes ago, iNow said:

Simply sharing how I perceive you. 

You seem to like to do this a lot.  It's not relevant to the debate so I'd prefer if you keep your biases to yourself.

Regarding the matter at hand, I do not in fact believe the Chinese released this intentionally.  Why?  It would be completely illogical.  An unintentional lab leak, however, is entirely plausible.  Lab leaks of dangerous pathogens, including from Sars, have happened before.  In 2004 a lab leak involving Sars-1 was linked to the deaths of several scientists in Beijing.  

April 23, 2004 -- Chinese health officials have confirmed four suspected cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), including one death, which appear to have been caused by a safety breach at a laboratory studying the SARS virus.

If confirmed by an independent international reference lab, this would be the third outbreak of SARS to be traced back to inadequate laboratory safety procedures. Two cases of SARS have been reported in laboratory workers in Singapore and Taiwan since the first outbreak ended.

Source:  https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death

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A report from the NIH / National Center for Biotechnology Information:

SARS escaped Beijing lab twice (2004)

The latest outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, with eight confirmed or suspected cases so far and hundreds quarantined, involves two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday (April 26).

At a news conference in Manila this morning, Associated Press reported, WHO Western Pacific Regional Director Shigeru Omi criticized the laboratory's safeguards and said the authorities did not know yet whether any foreigners had been carrying out medical research in the facility and had since left the country. Laboratory safety "is a serious issue that has to be addressed," he said. "We have to remain very vigilant."

"The lab might have all the right rules, but the people may not comply! For example, notebooks are not supposed to be taken out, a lot of things like that. A virus doesn't jump on people!" Danchin said.However WHO Beijing is relatively sanguine about the current threat, despite the fact that the 26-year-old infected had taken a long journey on the country's rail network. The index cases are known, and contacts had been traced, Dietz said. "We see no significant public health threat at this point."

Source:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/

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The fact is, both scenarios - zoonotic spillover and a lab leak have precedent and should be taken seriously.

Edited July 24, 2021 by Alex_Krycek

[iNow]

53 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

You seem to like to do this a lot

Do what, exactly?

53 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

The fact is, both scenarios - zoonotic spillover and a lab leak have precedent and should be taken seriously.

To what end, then? Can we not proceed with improving the horrid response that’s wedged people against vaccines, masks, and social distancing based purely on political affiliation or “news” source AND strive for continuous improvement of lab safety protocols? 

Summarized: You seem to me to be focused on the wrong things. Bright shiny object syndrome.

Perhaps instead consider focusing  on how to stop active disinformation campaigns from splitting us apart as a society and causing millions to act in ways deleterious to our collective health as if this is just another edge issue AND explore procedures for further minimizing lab leaks / breakage of safety rules and how best to enforce those rules and protocols just in case the origin wasn’t natural. We can, and should, do both IMO.

You seem to be singularly focused on one narrow piece of this puzzle and I believe it’s distracting you from other more important pieces that make up the larger whole.

And TBH, I don’t really care what you think I like to do a lot. These are my thoughts, being added authentically to a discussion in a discussion forum consistent with the forum rules to which we each agreed when joining. You’re free to ignore them, but not free to stop me from sharing them. 

54 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

I’d prefer if you keep your biases to yourself

And I’d prefer that the phrase “avoid it like the plague” still actually meant something and hadn’t been cheapened by tens of millions of idiots who distrust experts and refuse to take obvious and simple steps to mitigate spread and needless death (not speaking of you, of course). 

Edited July 24, 2021 by iNow

[Alex_Krycek]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

And TBH, I don’t really care what you think I like to do a lot. These are my thoughts, being added authentically to a discussion in a discussion forum. You’re free to ignore them, but not free to stop me from sharing them. 

Of course - you can label me a Trump loving conspiracy theorist all you want to.   I find such aspersions ridiculous, as I am very much against Trump and what he stands for overall.  And I do ignore such statements, as your biases are not relevant to the debate.  

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Do what, exactly?

To what end, then? Can we not proceed with improving the horrid response that’s wedged people against vaccines, masks, and social distancing based purely on political affiliation or “news” source AND strive for continuous improvement of lab safety protocols? 

Yes, agree.  We should do both.  But ignoring the fact that this pandemic may have come from a lab will do little to build public confidence in institutions such as the WHO, NIH, etc.  You can say "Who cares what the rabble think?", but such an attitude will only exacerbate the issue of waning public confidence in science.

Quote

Summarized: You seem to me to be focused on the wrong things. Bright shiny object syndrome.

Perhaps instead consider focusing  on how to stop active disinformation campaigns from splitting us apart as a society and causing millions to act in ways deleterious to our collective health as if this is just another edge issue AND explore procedures for further minimizing lab leaks / breakage of safety rules and how best to enforce those rules and protocols just in case the origin wasn’t natural. We can, and should, do both IMO.

You seem to be singularly focused on one narrow piece of this puzzle and I believe it’s distracting you from other more important pieces that make up the larger whole.

All of the above.  There's a simple solution:  full transparency / objectivity regarding these issues.  Leave politics out of it.  If there's a problem with a vaccine in terms of safety, communicate the risks.  If there's an effective treatment that isn't a vaccine, allow physicians to use it if they're seeing positive results.  If there is a possibility that the virus escaped from the lab, have an open dialogue about corrective action. 

The problem comes when these issues get politicized.  That Lancet letter back in 2020 dismissing the lab leak as a racist conspiracy theory is an example.  That's an attempt to shut down the discussion and ostracize those who may be offering valid criticism.  The authoritarian censorship and control is the real problem, in my view.  That's what ultimately feeds the anti-vaxxers and disinformation - this notion that facts are being distorted for whatever reason.

And as far as what should be done specifically: it seems that in 2004 the WHO, China, and other countries studying SARS had a chance to get it right before something like this happened.  For whatever reason, here we are 17 years later with an unprecedented catastrophe that probably could have be avoided.  

Edited July 24, 2021 by Alex_Krycek

[iNow]

11 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Of course - you can label me a Trump loving conspiracy theorist all you want to. 

I could indeed, but I didn’t. 

12 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Yes, agree.  We should do both.  But ignoring the fact that this pandemic may have come from a lab will do little to build public confidence in institutions such as the WHO, NIH, etc. 

I’m not ignoring it. I’m treating it as much less likely. 

[John Cuthber]

10 hours ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Determining corrective action in response to a pandemic that has thus far killed over 4 million people, and seriously disrupted the lives of billions, requires that we know as accurately as possible what the cause was.  Dismissing the pandemic as inevitable, or as a matter of course, is a grossly negligent attitude. The mission of science should always be to seek the truth with the goal of reducing the risk that such an event will occur again. 

All too often these days we hear the pontificating "experts" on television musing how another pandemic will surely happen (it's just a matter of time, don't you know) and society should just accept it.  Fine, society must increase its readiness potential exponentially, that's a no brainer - but what is being done to understand how this pandemic arose in the first place?  At the very least there should be a serious dialogue about one of the most likely causes - an accident at the WIV - a dialogue which so far has been stifled and ignored.  Those select few with a conflict interest can forget and move on - the world will not.  

If there was gain of function research happening in Wuhan, what are the implications for future global policy?  What global policies (such as funding GOF) should be changed?   In May 25, 2021 the Senate passed an amendment to ban all funding of GOF research in China.  Should more steps be taken?  Were Chinese virologists following the proper safety protocols, or were there lapses in safety as have been reported?  If they in fact were following proper protocol, what lessons could be learned for other laboratories researching dangerous pathogens around the world?

These and a litany of other questions demand real answers.  Unfortunately it's not enough just to shrug one's shoulders and say "So what?".

 

Are you saying that, if it turns out to have escaped from a lab we do not need to worry abort wet markets?

Are you saying it it escaped from the wet market we do not need to worry about labs?

Or are you, as I am, saying that we actually need to look carefully at both of those because, whichever one was the source this time, that doesn't mean the other won't be the cause of the next outbreak?
If both look like plausible sources we need to reassess both.
 

 

[Alex_Krycek]

1 minute ago, John Cuthber said:

Are you saying that, if it turns out to have escaped from a lab we do not need to worry abort wet markets?

Are you saying it it escaped from the wet market we do not need to worry about labs?

Or are you, as I am, saying that we actually need to look carefully at both of those because, whichever one was the source this time, that doesn't mean the other won't be the cause of the next outbreak?
If both look like plausible sources we need to reassess both.
 

 

I agree.  My view is that all probable causes need to be investigated fully, and all risks need to be assessed fully, even if it it turns out it didn't come from one of the suspected sources.  For example, wet markets are still a huge risk factor even if Covid-19 did not originate there.  GOF research also carries extremely high risk, even if Covid-19 turns out not to be a result of GOF. 

What I find unacceptable is ignoring / downplaying the lab hypothesis for whatever reason, which thankfully doesn't seem to be the case anymore as far as the WHO is concerned.  This latest audit request demonstrates they are doing their due diligence and putting the onus on China to be transparent.

[TheVat]

The Atlantic recently had a piece on sorting out all the lab-leak and other scenarios...

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/lab-leak-trap/619150/

 

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The microbiologists Michael Imperiale and David Relman, both former members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, told me several weeks ago that lab-leak scenarios of this rather more innocent variety—involving the collection and accidental release of a naturally occuring pathogen—were the most probable of all the non-natural possibilities. Yet the most prominent opinionating on this topic has clustered at the other end of the continuum, at first around the dark-side theory of a bioweapon gone awry, and then around the idea that a harmless virus had been deliberately transformed into SARS-CoV-2 (and released by accident) after a reckless series of tabletop experiments.

That’s another pitfall in this debate: a tendency to focus only on the most disturbing and improbable versions of the lab-leak hypothesis, and to downplay the rest. The mad-scientist trap sprays a mist across the facts by presuming scientific motivations; it posits that researchers could have caused the pandemic only if they’d been trying to create infectious pathogens....

 

Quote

The problem is, depending on how one chooses to define gain-of-function research, it could well include most virological research, some forms of vaccine development, and a healthy portion of biology writ large. Anytime a scientist tries to probe or tweak the function of a gene, she could be working in this vein. In that sense, yes, the National Institutes of Health is a “huge gain-of-function bureaucracy.” So what?

 

[John Cuthber]

If a sovereign country like China (or the US or UK) chooses to do GoF research clandestinely then there's nothing that another country can do about it.

So, if we were magically able to prove that China had been doing it (And it seems unlikely that they would be stupid enough to do it essentially on an open lab bench) there's nothing we could do about it.

So there's not much point wasting time on trying to find out.

[TheVat]

It seems unlikely that nations who themselves openly do GoF research (i. e. pretty much all wealthy nations) would have much basis for sanctioning other nations for doing it.   Even if one nation were farcically incompetent at one of its labs,  it's hard to see how a world policing body could bludgeon away incompetence, without some international accreditation/funding agreement that all the nations had signed onto.  

[Alex_Krycek]

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

The Atlantic recently had a piece on sorting out all the lab-leak and other scenarios...

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/lab-leak-trap/619150/

 

 

 

I don't find these psychological projections to be particularly helpful.  "You believe in the lab leak hypothesis because you're drawn to the darkest scenario."  Ok, one could just as easily assume that those who favor the zoonotic spillover theory do so because it's the most benign, and the least disturbing.  It's an arbitrary and subjective way to delegitimize an argument.  It's a kind of surreptitious, ad hominem attempt.  

[iNow]

I actually enjoyed the article. Nearly upvoted it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess 

You literally picked out one sentence from a long-form article. While you don’t find “psychological protections” to be “particularly helpful,” I feel the same way about cherry-picking. 

[Alex_Krycek]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

I actually enjoyed the article. Nearly upvoted it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess 

You literally picked out one sentence from a long-form article. While you don’t find “psychological protections” to be “particularly helpful,” I feel the same way about cherry-picking. 

I was responding to The Vat's quoted statements above, not the entire article.

[iNow]

When read in total, the article does a fairly nice job of being respectful to the multiple positions. You wouldn’t know that by reading only the brief quoted snippets, though 

[swansont]

 

NIH: Statement on Misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 Origins

Unfortunately, in the absence of a definitive answer, misinformation and disinformation are filling the void, which does more harm than good. NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.

Full statement:

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-misinformation-about-sars-cov-2-origins

 

[CharonY]

Another study looked at the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and found additional evidence poi tinting to the Huanan market.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454

Quote

Thus, 10 of these hospitals’ 19 earliest COVID-19 cases were linked to Huanan Market (~53%), comparable both to Jinyintan’s 66% (of 41 cases) (4) and to the WHO-China report’s 33% of 168 retrospectively identified cases across December 2019 (1). Regarding cases at the Wuhan Central Hospital and HPHICWM, patients with a history of exposure at Huanan Market could not have been “cherry picked” before anyone had identified the market as an epidemiologic risk factor. Hence, there was a genuine preponderance of early COVID-19 cases associated with Huanan Market.

How can this knowledge inform our understanding of the pandemic? If Huanan Market was the source, why were only one- to two-thirds of early cases linked to the market? Perhaps a better question is why would one expect all cases ascertained weeks into the outbreak to be confined to one market? Given the high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 and the high rate of asymptomatic spread, many symptomatic cases would inevitably soon lack a direct link to the location of the pandemic’s origin. And some cases counted as “unlinked” may have been only one or two transmissions away, as exemplified by the second patient identified at Zhongnan Hospital. That so many of the >100 COVID-19 cases from December (1) with no identified epidemiologic link to Huanan Market nonetheless lived in its direct vicinity is notable (see the figure) and provides compelling evidence that community transmission started at the market.

Additionally, the earliest known cases should not necessarily be expected to be the first infected or linked to Huanan Market: They probably postdated the outbreak’s index case by a considerable period (10) because only ~7% of SARS-CoV-2 infections lead to hospitalization (11); most fly under the radar. Similarly, it is entirely expected that early, ascertained cases from a seafood market would be workers who were not necessarily directly associated with wildlife sales because the outbreak spread from human to human. The index case was most likely one of the ~93% who never required hospitalization and indeed could have been any of hundreds of workers who had even brief contact with infected live mammals

 

[StringJunky]

On 11/19/2021 at 6:55 PM, CharonY said:

Another study looked at the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and found additional evidence poi tinting to the Huanan market.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454

 

Something about this is mentioned in Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/market-chinas-wuhan-likely-origin-covid-19-outbreak-study-2021-11-19/

Edited November 21, 2021 by StringJunky