Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

[Chronic]

Not something on the top of most minds, but a reminder that we still don't know the actual origin of the disease. The possibility that it leaked from the Wuhan lab (even if it wasn't manmade, just a natural virus studied there) or even leaked via a researcher or viral sample collector getting sick themselves is still a viable possibility.

Experts weigh in on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis

If it leaked from lab they would've known about the transmissibility of the virus and it genetic makeup and quickly stomped it out like how previous leaks in China and US was handled. The fact that the local government and CDC wasting several weeks arguing whether the virus is human transmissible or from multiple contacts with animals indicates that they don't have previous knowledge about this virus and ended up underestimating it.

Also, Wuhan is a big city with busy airport, universities and also a transit hub for China's railway systems. There's a big chance someone from rural southern China either brought wild animals to Wuhan or he caught the virus and then traveled to Wuhan thinking it's just normal cold.

Unless there's solid evidences this is just like claiming US orchestrated 9/11 or faked moon landings.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

If it leaked from lab they would've known about the transmissibility of the virus and it genetic makeup and quickly stomped it out like how previous leaks in China and US was handled. The fact that the local government and CDC wasting several weeks arguing whether the virus is human transmissible or from multiple contacts with animals indicates that they don't have previous knowledge about this virus and ended up underestimating it.

Also, Wuhan is a big city with busy airport, universities and also a transit hub for China's railway systems. There's a big chance someone from rural southern China either brought wild animals to Wuhan or he caught the virus and then traveled to Wuhan thinking it's just normal cold.

Unless there's solid evidences this is just like claiming US orchestrated 9/11 or faked moon landings.

Not necessarily. It could have been something that was brought back to the lab recently, or something that had recently mutated, perhaps even mutated at the very moment that it jumped to a researcher.

One of my favorite theories is that some poor Chinese field researcher caught the shyt out in the field while he was digging guano samples out of some godforsaken cave, came back to Wuhan unknowingly sick, and spread the shyt out in the streets without it necessarily every crossing into the lab itself.



But oh fukk when I was searching for all the past times that I've said a lab leak was possible....look at the shyt I just found from November 28, 2019:

https://www.thecoli.com/threads/nee...t-down-this-rabbit-hole.746735/#post-35740077

 

[Kyle C. Barker]

It’s crazy to think that at the start of the pandemic there was such certainty that the virus emerged from a wet market and jumped from bat to humans.

The fact that we can’t categorically rule out that this was a possible man made virus is chilling...

I wonder what else we don’t know.

It's not always for nefarious reasons.

I was reading an article the other day where virologists cultivated 4000 different strains of the coronavirus to see which possible future mutations could bypass antibodies. For the record they found 5.

The coronavirus is mutating — does it matter?

 

[null]

Your post boils down to ..

If it leaked from lab they would've known about the transmissibility of the virus and it genetic makeup and quickly stomped it out

And this is not true.

1. knowing what it is composed of doesn't mean that you can stop it.
2. knowing what is is composed of doesn't mean that you fully understand how it behaves.

Contemporary (and relevant) examples:

The world has known the composition of SARS Cov II since Jan 2020 - China releases genetic data on new coronavirus, now deadly .

It took the world time to understand some aspects of transmissibility (and some aspects are still open questions). For example we still do not know the infective dose do we? More than one year later.

We have known what it is composed of for more than a year and we haven't been able to stop it.

I suspect that you do not understand what it means to genetically modify a virus and how those studies approach making changes (in particular GOF). You do not know how it will behave BEFORE you make the change. To fully understand it you have to study it (empirically) and that takes time.

Furthermore you do not know how much time and study time (could have) passed between genesis of said virus and escape.

It is a statistical endeavour and it is an empirical discipline.

 

[Chronic]

One of my favorite theories is that some poor Chinese field researcher caught the shyt out in the field while he was digging guano samples out of some godforsaken cave, came back to Wuhan unknowingly sick, and spread the shyt out in the streets without it necessarily every crossing into the lab itself.

I agree this is also a possibility but since they didn't find any match in the samples they collected in the lab and they have most likely also searched the caves where they had collected their previous samples but didn't found anything so far I think it's more likely something unrelated to the lab.

Your post boils down to ..



And this is not true.

1. knowing what it is composed of doesn't mean that you can stop it.
2. knowing what is is composed of doesn't mean that you fully understand how it behaves.

Simple obvious examples:

The world has known the composition of SARS Cov II since Jan 2020 - China releases genetic data on new coronavirus, now deadly .

It took the world time to understand some aspects of transmissibility (and some aspects are still open questions). For example we still do not know the infective dose do we? More than one year later.

We have known what it is composed of for more than a year and we haven't been able to stop it.

I suspect that you do not understand what it means to genetically modify a virus and how those studies approach making changes (in particular GOF). You do not know how it will behave BEFORE you make the change. To fully understand it you have to study it (empirically) and that takes time.

Furthermore you do not know how much time and study time (could have) passed between genesis of said virus and escape.

It is a statistical endeavour and it is an empirical discipline.

Knowing about the behavior and makeup of a virus certainly could help in their first response. If they know the virus is human transmissible they would've prepared test kits for the virus to check if their scientists or lab workers are infected and implemented a lockdown the moment someone tested positive. This is why previous leaks are easily contained.

The more likely explanation is they underestimated this virus and thinking this is not human transmissible like bird flu or it will simply burn itself out like MERS and decided against lockdown because China didn't even had lockdown during 2003 SARS.

After situation getting worse, local government afraid of getting punished and banned doctors from spreading "rumors" and stopped sending reports to Beijing. This caused Beijing to think the virus had burn itself out since no new cases are reported. The head of China CDC whose responsible to monitor disease only found out about Wuhan cases in late December after watching local media report instead from doctors in Wuhan.

After new cases detected outside China, Beijing got suspicious and sent a team of doctors including their SARS expert from 2003 to Wuhan. After they found out how bad the situation is the experts recommended Beijing to put Wuhan on lockdown while economic minded advisors warned them putting Wuhan on lockdown will hurt the economy.

Unlike Trump and Bolsonaro apparently Xi Jinping sided with medical experts and ordered Wuhan to be put on lockdown and the Wuhan officials fired and replaced by his trusted men.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I agree this is also a possibility but since they didn't find any match in the samples they collected in the lab and they have most likely also searched the caves where they had collected their previous samples but didn't found anything so far I think it's more likely something unrelated to the lab.

They?

You know 100% that if China had that sample they buried that fukking shyt 300 feet under the ground and probably buried every researcher who knew down with it too.

 

[Chronic]

They?

You know 100% that if China had that sample they buried that fukking shyt 300 feet under the ground and probably buried every researcher who knew down with it too.

The problem with the lab worker theory is if the scientists know that the newly circulating virus match with the sample they collected from bat thousand of km away that would be a definite proof that the virus is human transmissible since the lab worker is the only one who could've brought it, so why they still arguing about human to human transmission for weeks? Although it could also due to Wuhan officials pulling a Trump/GOP and simply refused to listened to scientists despite evidences about human to human transmission.

I didn't deny they would try to hide the evidences if it escape from their lab. But if they had the samples in their lab they would had a far better response to the outbreak even if they deny it later. Also if they already know where the host animal originated since their lab workers collected it why would they hide it? It would prove the virus isn't manmade and they could just claim some farmer brought it to Wuhan after collecting guano.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

The problem with the lab worker theory is if the scientists know that the newly circulating virus match with the sample they collected from bat thousand of km away that would be a definite proof that the virus is human transmissible since the lab worker is the only one who could've brought it, so why they still arguing about human to human transmission for weeks? Although it could also due to Wuhan officials pulling a Trump/GOP and simply refused to listened to scientists despite evidences about human to human transmission.

How quickly would they have known that the viruses matched? If the worker had just recently caught that shyt in a cave or if the researchers had just recently deposited the sample in the lab, they might not even have sequenced it yet. Even if they had sequenced it, it may have originally been a virus that didn't transmit easily to humans and only some later mutation allowed it to jump to the researchers.

I didn't deny they would try to hide the evidences if it escape from their lab. But if they had the samples in their lab they would had a far better response to the outbreak even if they deny it later. Also if they already know where the host animal originated since their lab workers collected it why would they hide it? It would prove the virus isn't manmade and they could just claim some farmer brought it to Wuhan after collecting guano.

If the virus originated a good distance from Wuhan it would be a smoking gun that a researcher had likely brought it back. They may have decided that if they gave out too much information the dots would be too easy to connect. I definitely see the CCP as going the route of denying everything / hiding everything rather than leaving bread crumbs.


Again, I'm not saying this is the explanation. But I've been saying for over a year that it's a plausible possible explanation, and I've never seen any evidence to contradict that yet.

 

[null]

I agree this is also a possibility but since they didn't find any match in the samples they collected in the lab and they have most likely also searched the caves where they had collected their previous samples but didn't found anything so far I think it's more likely something unrelated to the lab.

They could have made it in the lab.

I
Knowing about the behavior and makeup of a virus certainly could help in their first response.

Knowing the makeup doesn't necessarily tell you about the behaviour. We see this every day on TV with the "variants"

I
If they know the virus is human transmissible they would've prepared test kits for the virus to check if their scientists or lab workers are infected and implemented a lockdown the moment someone tested positive. This is why previous leaks are easily contained.

By the time someone show symptoms (typically after or on the 5th day) it could have been already passed on.

also: Asymptomatic is what? 40+%?

That is why Covid is so hard to control.

Have you missed these issues over the last year+?

What do you think the entire "contact tracing" and "social distancing" is about?

People do not necessarily know if they have Covid and that goes for the scientists in Wuhan as well.

Covid cannot be "easily contained" for these reasons.

as for "previous leaks" .. you cannot be serious. Each virus has its own characteristics. What will stop one (MERS for example) will not stop another Covid. C'mon now.

I
The more likely explanation is they underestimated this virus and thinking this is not human transmissible like bird flu or it will simply burn itself out like MERS and decided against lockdown because China didn't even had lockdown during 2003 SARS.

That's only "more likely" if your above statements are correct. They are notcorrect for reasons detailed above. Hence this "more likely" statement lack basis.

After situation getting worse, local government afraid of getting punished and banned doctors from spreading "rumors" and stopped sending reports to Beijing. This caused Beijing to think the virus had burn itself out since no new cases are reported. The head of China CDC whose responsible to monitor disease only found out about Wuhan cases in late December after watching local media report instead from doctors in Wuhan.

After new cases detected outside China, Beijing got suspicious and sent a team of doctors including their SARS expert from 2003 to Wuhan. After they found out how bad the situation is the experts recommended Beijing to put Wuhan on lockdown while economic minded advisors warned them putting Wuhan on lockdown will hurt the economy.

Silence is my only answer to that level of conjecture.

Unlike Trump and Bolsonaro apparently Xi Jinping sided with medical experts and ordered Wuhan to be put on lockdown and the Wuhan officials fired and replaced by his trusted men.

Likewise with the politics.

 

[null]

The problem with the lab worker theory is if the scientists know that the newly circulating virus match with the sample they collected from bat thousand of km away that would be a definite proof that the virus is human transmissible since the lab worker is the only one who could've brought it, so why they still arguing about human to human transmission for weeks? Although it could also due to Wuhan officials pulling a Trump/GOP and simply refused to listened to scientists despite evidences about human to human transmission.

I didn't deny they would try to hide the evidences if it escape from their lab. But if they had the samples in their lab they would had a far better response to the outbreak even if they deny it later. Also if they already know where the host animal originated since their lab workers collected it why would they hide it? It would prove the virus isn't manmade and they could just claim some farmer brought it to Wuhan after collecting guano.

repeating the same crap.

for a start the virus in the cave is NOT the same as the one circulating around nor is it the same as the one that China sequenced and shared with the world.

secondly you do not necessarily know if you have covid. that is the entire point and why it is HARD to control.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

They could have made it in the lab.

For a long time I dismissed those possibilities based on the papers I read. I'm somewhat more favorable to the idea now though I still think it's unlikely. I don't think they would have made the virus as a weapon (it's a terrible weapon and a lot of its individual characteristics wouldn't make sense as intentional creations), but I could believe the remote possibility that it was created in a sequence of randomly-created mutations during a more benign virus study.

 

[null]

For a long time I dismissed those possibilities based on the papers I read. I'm somewhat more favorable to the idea now though I still think it's unlikely. I don't think they would have made the virus as a weapon (it's a terrible weapon and a lot of its individual characteristics wouldn't make sense as intentional creations), but I could believe the remote possibility that it was created in a sequence of randomly-created mutations during a more benign virus study.

they were doing Gain of Function research on corona viruses in that very lab.

 

[Chronic]

They could have made it in the lab.



Knowing the makeup doesn't necessarily tell you about the behaviour. We see this every day on TV with the "variants"



By the time someone show symptoms (typically after or on the 5th day) it could have been already passed on.

also: Asymptomatic is what? 40+%?

That is why Covid is so hard to control.

Have you missed these issues over the last year+?

What do you think the entire "contact tracing" and "social distancing" is about?

People do not necessarily know if they have Covid and that goes for the scientists in Wuhan as well.

Covid cannot be "easily contained" for these reasons.

as for "previous leaks" .. you cannot be serious. Each virus has its own characteristics. What will stop one (MERS for example) will not stop another Covid. C'mon now.



That's only "more likely" if your above statements are correct. They are notcorrect for reasons detailed above. Hence this "more likely" statement lack basis.



Silence is my only answer to that level of conjecture.



Likewise with the politics.

The sequence of events isn't something I made up. I've been following this pandemic even before you started that TLR thread. I've been chatting with Chinese posters in another forum about any info from inside China and trying to connect the dots with what reported in western media. It's more about incompetence rather than malicious intention.

I agree they share some responsibility about botched early response but this lab leak thing seems politically motivated to potray China as some sort of supervillain so it's easier to push even crazier propagandas to turn the world against China (ex: Iraq's WMD)

Zhong is known as the "SARS hero" in China for combating the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003. This time around, he has led the country's coronavirus response -- especially in the critical early stages of the outbreak.

On January 20, it was Zhong who confirmed on state broadcaster CCTV that the coronavirus can be transmitted between people, after Wuhan health authorities had maintained for weeks that there was no clear evidence for human-to-human transmission, and that the outbreak was "preventable and controllable."

Heading a team of experts dispatched by the NHC to investigate the initial outbreak, Zhong visited Wuhan on January 18. He said that upon his arrival, he received many calls from doctors and former students, warning him that the situation was much worse than the official reports had claimed.

"The local authorities, they didn't like to tell the truth at that time," Zhong said.

"At the very beginning they kept silent, and then I said probably we have (a larger) number of people being infected."

Zhong said he became suspicious when the number of officially reported cases in Wuhan remained at 41 for more than 10 days -- despite infections emerging overseas.

"I didn't believe that result, so I (kept) asking and then, you have to give me the real number," he said. "I suppose they are very reluctant to answer my question."

Zhong Nanshan speaks at a press conference in Beijing on January 20.

In Beijing two days later, on January 20, he was told the total number of cases in Wuhan was now 198, with three people killed and 13 medical workers infected.

In a meeting with central government officials, including Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, that same day, he proposed to lock Wuhan down to contain the virus' spread.

The move was unprecedented. The central government placed Wuhan under lockdown on January 23, canceling all flights, trains and buses in and out of the city, and blocking major highway entrances.

The Wuhan lockdown was eventually lifted 76 days later.

In an interview with CCTV on January 27, Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that his government did not disclose information on the coronavirus to the public "in a timely fashion," saying, "as a local government, we can only disclose information after being authorized."

In February, China fired several senior officials amid widespread criticism of the local authorities' handling of the outbreak. They included the two officials in charge of the provincial health commission, as well as the Chinese Communist Party chiefs of Wuhan and Hubei province, according to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency.

For a long time I dismissed those possibilities based on the papers I read. I'm somewhat more favorable to the idea now though I still think it's unlikely. I don't think they would have made the virus as a weapon (it's a terrible weapon and a lot of its individual characteristics wouldn't make sense as intentional creations), but I could believe the remote possibility that it was created in a sequence of randomly-created mutations during a more benign virus study.

We're back to "it might be experimented in the lab" theory again now? I thought you said you believe the virus might have just recently brought to lab by lab worker so they haven't sequenced it yet.

How quickly would they have known that the viruses matched? If the worker had just recently caught that shyt in a cave or if the researchers had just recently deposited the sample in the lab, they might not even have sequenced it yet. Even if they had sequenced it, it may have originally been a virus that didn't transmit easily to humans and only some later mutation allowed it to jump to the researchers.

 

[null]

The sequence of events isn't something I made up. I've been following this pandemic even before you started that TLR thread. I've been chatting with Chinese posters in another forum about any info from inside China and trying to connect the dots with what reported in western media. It's more about incompetence rather than malicious intention.

I agree they share some responsibility about botched early response but this lab leak thing seems politically motivated to potray China as some sort of supervillain so it's easier to push even crazier propagandas to turn the world against China (ex: Iraq's WMD)







We're back to "it might be experimented in the lab" theory again now? I thought you said you believe the virus might have just recently brought to lab by lab worker so they haven't sequenced it yet.

is that meant for me? you side-stepped what I wrote and then spoke about things which I haven't said. "blame", "malicious" is nothing to do with what I said.

do you have an opinion on the hard topic of genetic distance between covid and other know corona viruses?

i am guessing not.

all that political / emotional stuff is for CNN and is a wholly different discussion.

i am talking about the scientific basis for the genesis of covid.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

We're back to "it might be experimented in the lab" theory again now? I thought you said you believe the virus might have just recently brought to lab by lab worker so they haven't sequenced it yet.

Are you not reading three different options there in that quote?

#1. "If the worker had just recently caught that shyt in a cave"
#2. "or if the researchers had just recently deposited the sample in the lab"
#3: "it may have originally been a virus that didn't transmit easily to humans and only some later mutation allowed it to jump to the researchers"


Those are three different options. It may have first infected a worker in the field, or it was recently collected in the field and infected a worker in the lab, or it was being experimented with in the lab and developed a mutation that then allowed it to jump to workers in the lab.

I haven't seen anything that definitively eliminates any of those three possibilities, even if they aren't necessarily the most likely possibilities.