A team of scientists say it is "beyond reasonable doubt" the Covid pandemic started with infected animals.
A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.
They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.
The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.
Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.
The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.
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Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid's early days.
I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I find the confidence that is used in the defense of this origin just as Shakey as the lab leak theory.
The lab location and research done means there is a lot of potential incentive for the Chinese government, the lab and even researchers in the field to not have it be a lab leak... As this would potentially cause an entire (important) field of study and their methods be regulated into oblivion by poorly written knee jerk laws.
I'm fine with this as the accepted consensus on the subject, but I'll keep my reservations for whatever good those do me.
So how's the abolishing of wet markets going? And the reduction of antibiotics use in industrial scale farming?
The lab location and research done means there is a lot of potential incentive for the Chinese government, the lab and even researchers in the field to not have it be a lab leak...
They also have incentive for the origin not to be a live animal market that they very publicly had claimed to have already shut down.
It’s equally embarrassing either way, so the embarrassment proves nothing.
Equally embarrassing? Doubtful. One is a market which can be blamed on illegal activity even after being shut down and 'little' people arrested. One represents Chinas first foray into LVL 4 containment bio research and cost billions to build and government officials would have to be held accountable and foreign science assistance to that research program likely cuts off... I'm not pleading the case of a conspiracy theory here, but the lab's proximity to the outbreak is incredibly suspect.
Why does it have to be equally embarrassing? It just has to be embarrassing enough that they’d take steps to conceal it. Which they did. It doesn’t have to be the most embarrassing situation, just one of the ones that would spur them to act.
One is a market which can be blamed on illegal activity even after being shut down and 'little' people arrested.
But they did shut it down and they did arrest people and they even seized and incinerated every animal at the market without taking samples or even identifying and logging the species.
On the other hand they didn’t shut down WIV, or really do anything to it at all.
but the lab's proximity to the outbreak is incredibly suspect.
We'll never hear the true story thanks to geopolitics.
Frankly, the lab leak theory IMO is the most plausible. There are wet markets all over China and have been for....ever? I get that nobody can really predict a zoonotic crossover event, but they were literally experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses in Wuhan at the time of the initial outbreak.
People have been saying for decades before covid that the wet markets were a ticking time bomb. There has probably been viral outbreaks in the past, but the local population could have died off before it spread.
I think a lab leak of a natural virus is plausible, but irrelevant.
There's a difference between lax safety and conspiracy to engineer a bioweapon. The main motivator of people pushing the Lab Leak conspiracy is that they want some villain to blame all this on.
The prime conspiracy theory target is Anthony Fauci because some EcoHealth Alliance / NIH coronaviruses bat funding went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But you don't need to subscribe to the Fauci Supervillan theory to suspect an accidental lab leak. China has already had 3 (2004, 2016, 2020) in this list. Pointing this out is not sino bashing (look at the number of US incidents). Accidental lab leaks happen all too regularly.
Back to an earlier point you made, how is it relevant that it was an accidental lab leak anymore? It's China, they've either made better safe guards against possible break outs or made superficial changes for appearances. The international community can't punish them for an accident that also hurt themselves. Hell, we can't seem to keep their coast guard from ramming other ships.
how is it relevant that it was an accidental lab leak anymore?
Accidental lab leaks unfortunately happen. What is still relevant are the implications. The existence of the virus itself and it's cover up are the problem.
The cover up
Mainstream media labeled anyone who mentioned the lab as a racist conspiracy theorists. Commenting on social media resulted in censorship.
Bioweapon is also a strawman in this case, he did not say that.
In gain of function research more virulent strains are made to study and find cures against. So we have a better understanding of how these viruses mutate, what makes them tick and how we can disrupt that.
Noone would intentionally set something like that loose.
There are definitely people saying that covid was an engineered bioweapon and the people saying that have a huge overlap with the people saying that it was a lab leak. Conspiracy theorists need a villain with a plan to make sense of the work and that's why the lab leak theory keeps coming up.