
Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally - ycombonator
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally
======
sjwalter
The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by
some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is
preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as
China.

However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to
consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history
of making mistakes leading to dangerous pathogens escaping their labs.

In 2004, SARS escaped a BS-3 lab in Beijing, infecting several and killing at
least one:

" In April 2004, China reported a case of SARS in a nurse who had cared for a
researcher at the Chinese National Institute of Virology. While ill, the
researcher had traveled twice by train from Beijing to Anhui province, where
she was nursed by her mother, a physician, who fell ill and died. The nurse in
turn infected five third-generation cases, causing no deaths.

Subsequent investigation uncovered three unrelated laboratory infections in
different researchers at the NIV. At least of two primary patients had never
worked with live SARS virus. Many shortcomings in biosecurity were found at
the NIV, and the specific cause of the outbreak was traced to an inadequately
inactivated preparation of SARS virus that was used in general (that is, not
biosecure) laboratory areas, including one where the primary cases worked. It
had not been tested to confirm its safety after inactivation, as it should
have been."

[https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-
viruses-c...](https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses-
could-escape-from-laboratories.html)

Were a lab accident the source of this outbreak, you can bet your last dollar
that the CCP would go to extreme lengths to hide that fact.

~~~
ci5er
Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested
after we received a sample and sequenced it (~36 hours), I think it is
possible (possible! not likely!) that we engineered it _, and they paid a
researcher to give them a copy.

_ * Some pretty heavy researchers in the US say that it (the virus) was not
human-engineered. I find their reasoning spurious, but they know more than I
do.

~~~
aaron_m04
> Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested
> after we received a sample and sequenced it

I'd love to read more. Do you have a link?

~~~
SyneRyder
I think this might be the official US Justice Department link. It's long, but
worth reading the whole thing since it is primary source and not some
newspaper summary:

[https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-
professor-...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-
and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related)

 _" The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard
University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese
nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of
China."_

...

 _" Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a
“Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was
a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about
2012 to 2017. China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent
Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and
cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific
development, economic prosperity and national security."_

~~~
selimthegrim
Viruses are not Lieber’s field.

------
yurlungur
The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some
other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc.

To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its
mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no
expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

~~~
erokar
Parts of the HIV virus have been identified in it:
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf+html)

"Our analysis of the spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV revealed several
interesting findings: First, we identified 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV
spike glycoprotein that are not present in any other coronavirus reported till
date. To our surprise, all the 4 inserts in the 2019-nCoV mapped to It is made
available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. preprint (which was
not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to
display the preprint in perpetuity. bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jan.
31, 2020; doi:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871](http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871).
The copyright holder for this short segments of amino acids in the HIV-1 gp120
and Gag among all annotated virus proteins in the NCBI database. This uncanny
similarity of novel inserts in the 2019- nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and
Gag is unlikely to be fortuitous."

[https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/122330594672370...](https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1223305946723704832)

~~~
drcode
Other people have written about the HIV-lookalike segment mentioned in that
paper and believe it is likely due to chance
[https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/122336155449582387...](https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1223361554495823872)

------
novaRom
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30260-9/fulltext)

Quote: 75 815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The
epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days. We estimated that if there was no
reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April,
2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2
weeks.

~~~
gstipi
To my layman's ears, some of the conclusions in the cited Lancet article sound
chilling, e.g. "...given the substantial volume of case importation from
Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple
major Chinese cities. Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen
together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel
in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing
2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020."

Any comments on the soundness of the methodology used?

------
nobrains
"13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace"

How do they know, when its know that the virus can be spread before symptoms
kick in? ([https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-
asympt...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-
spread-study/index.html))

------
diminish
> “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that
> marketplace,” Lucey asserts.

What's the original source for the "Wuhan seafood market" hypothesis?

~~~
jmccorm
Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this
was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching
environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution
better.

~~~
tgtweak
Have they seen this strain among animal populations? It seems logical to
establish that animal populations can carry it, and in doing so it should be
traceable there.

It seems in the avian flu they had established very early on the lineage of
it. It seems very unlikely that they will not be able to identify patient
zero.

There was a very far out article on zerohedge (not making any claims as to the
legitimacy of the article or the publication) which had some interesting
references about recent coronavirus research in facilities outside of China. I
wouldn't normally promote it but there are some interesting references in
there. [https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-
coron...](https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-
canada-and-weaponize-it)

~~~
ianburrell
This coronavirus is close to some found in bats and 80% similar to SARS which
came from bats through civets. Wouldn’t expect exact strain to be found in
wild cause have to mutate to jump to humans. The question is how got to humans
from bats since don’t think was direct connection. One paper suggested snakes
but others don’t think that is likely.

[https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-
theo...](https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theory/)

------
epicgiga
I've more faith in the bat origin theory than the others so far.

Don't know if the science is solid, but given how riddled bats are with all
kinds of nasty stuff, you probably don't want to be eating that unless you're
particularly keen on developing an exotic disease.

~~~
kjaftaedi
You can still have a man-made virus with the original source being bats.

[https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-
coronavi...](https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-
triggers-debate-34502)

If you're interested in the open speculation, this guy does a pretty good
breakdown of all the talking points:

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html)

------
officemonkey
The cognitive dissonance you feel between what a government says and what the
truth is often the first sign that the government is authoritarian.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
This is the FIRST sign that the Chinese government is authoritarian??

------
WaitWaitWha
[https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-
in-f...](https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-feces-may-
reveal-hidden-risk-of-spread-11580556507678.html)

“The initial focus of case detection was on patients with pneumonia, but we
now understand that some patients can present with gastrointestinal symptoms,"

------
tempsy
Yeah I have a hard time believing it has been definitively proven that the
market was the source of the virus. Wouldn’t that mean they have the carcass
of whatever animal transmitted the virus in their possession? And did the
first person known to have contracted it actually say they went there?

~~~
sct202
Why would they have a carcass of something someone ate at least a week before
they got sick they caught the virus?

~~~
fourstar
That's exactly the point of the OP.

------
anonytrary
I'm not a fan of this title. It's verbose without being explicit. Should be
"Wuhan seafood may not be source of coronavirus outbreak". Everyone already
knows it's a novel virus spreading globally, just call it by its name.

~~~
salmo
Its name is novel coronavirus or more specifically "2019 novel coronavirus
(2019-nCoV)". There are many coronaviruses that just cause colds. There's also
SARS, MERS, and now nCoV that are a lot more deadly.

~~~
anonytrary
Thank you for that clarification! I think the title makes more sense if you
know about the novel prefix (which I didn't).

------
WaitWaitWha
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo)
This guy's insight and references seem very interesting. Yes, this is a single
persons opinion on this.

------
hi5eyes
the video of oriental people eating bat soup was taken in a restaurant in
micronesia

------
Tenoke
I hate to ask again, but why is this submission _also_ getting heavily
penalized?

It seems like maybe all 2019-nCoV posts are getting penalized by mod(s)
silently? Because this one and the last one an hour ago are. [0]

I am not making any statements about whether that is sensible or not - but why
not comment on why, like you've so often done in other cases?

0\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338)

~~~
dang
Major ongoing stories, especially sensational ones like a new epidemic, lead
to tons of copycat and follow-up posts. In order for the front page not to
fill up with coronavirus stories, or some other sensation du jour, we try to
downweight follow-up posts unless there is significant new information.
Otherwise the threads fill up with repetition of what's already been said,
wild speculation, or both.

We hit on the "significant new information" test after the Snowden storm of
2013, when users justly complained that the front page had become inundated
with too many articles that added nothing substantial and were just triggering
repeat threads. As a discussion becomes repetitive, it also tends to become
wilder and more flame-prone—as if the mind has to resort to that to amuse
itself, since there's nothing new to sink its teeth into.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-
up&sort=byDate&type=comment)

Since HN's organizing value is intellectual curiosity, repetition and
groundless speculation are among the things most to be avoided here. That's
why we moderate that way.

~~~
marton78
Excellent reasoning. Thank you very much for your work of keeping this place
sane!

------
blackrock
This conspiracy idea is quite far fetched. And it was probably spread as fake
news, by someone with a political agenda to smear the reputation of China
worldwide. (And if you’ve been watching closely, this is a very well funded
campaign, that has been very active for the past 3 years.)

But let’s try to think this through.

If they (China) were researching it, then it is possible that this could’ve
accidentally escaped the lab. Although that is some serious professional
incompetence. And if they are intelligent and skilled enough to work with
dangerous diseases, then I’m sure they have proper containment and stringent
decontamination processes in place.

However, if this was a bioweapon, then a few arguments fall apart.

(1) If they engineered it, then they should’ve had the genome already.
Instead, they had to capture the strain, and sequence its genome, and it took
them three weeks to complete the sequencing. And then, they shared it with the
world, the CDC, the WHO, in order to help foreign countries contain it.

For comparison, the CDC took over 2 months to sequence the Ebola virus. The
Chinese sequenced this virus in 3 weeks. Granted, technology and techniques
improved in the intervening years.

So that begs the question: If this was a bioweapon, then why would they
quickly share its genome with the world? Why not just keep it for themselves,
while they work out some cure, and let the rest of the world flounder and die
off?

Their strength comes from their economic engine, and their exports to the
world. They can’t make things for foreign markets, if those other countries
are dying from some bioweapon that was unleashed on the world.

(2) If this was a bioweapon, and then they ‘accidentally’ released it on
themselves, which makes no sense, then what is the goal? Because the economic
fallout from this thing will cause billions in economic damages. As well as
potentially causing social instability, for a country that prizes stability
over all else. And the political fallout will be even higher.

(3) The Chinese are not suicidal. They were attacked with biological and
chemical warfare by the Japanese in the 1930s. They were threatened with
nuclear annihilation by MacArthur (to drop 50 atomic bombs) during the Korean
War in the 1950s, and were also likely subjected to biological warfare too.
The rest of the Western world prefers to ignore this, but they can never
forget, because their people actually died from biological warfare.

So given all that, they have first hand experience of what biological warfare
will do. So if they are researching bioweapons, then I’m pretty certain that
they will have stringent procedures in place to contain it.

(4) And then there is the most logical argument, that this is a very poor
bioweapon.

The goal of a bioweapon is to maximize immediate casualties, while minimizing
uncontrollable transmissions to others. Basically, there is no point in using
a weapon, if it ends up killing yourself.

~~~
9dev
China is, contrary to what media might want you to believe, not a sinister
empire of evil. They are, however, a culture with a strict requirement to save
your face at all cost.

Following Hanlon's Razor, never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. IF,
and that's a big if, this virus was somehow bio-engineered, the most probable
explanation is that it escaped from the adjacent lab due to humans making
mistakes. Now what do you do in that situation? A virus you're legitimately
researching escapes from a state sponsored lab. You try to cover it up, of
course, which isn't even hard because it might have developed in nearby bats
anyway. That way, nobody looses their face and you can try to fight the virus
with everyone else.

That is an easier and more logical explanation than some "bioweapon".

~~~
bangboombang
I wouldn't even call this a Chinese trait exclusively. It's definitely more
pronounced there, but when didn't governments and companies all over the world
lie about mishaps until it wasn't possible to hide the truth anymore? Look
back no further than Iran shooting down that plane. That thing was crystal
clear, yet they tried to deny it at first. The difference is that the Chinese
government _can_ mostly hide the truth when it comes to their own citizens
though...

------
allovernow
There is a recently opened P4 biolab in Wuhan within miles of the seafood
market in question, with researchers who have recently been working with and
publishing on the topic of Corona viruses, including research on human
transmission. Not to be sensationalist, and personally I think the title is
alarmist, but are a number of suspicious elements to this story that are worth
examining:

[https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-
part...](https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov-
part-1-d6a338eed7c5)

~~~
NathanKP
Medium account was suspended...

~~~
allovernow
[https://archive.is/kMl5m](https://archive.is/kMl5m)

~~~
thedudeabides5
Did anyone check out the claim that the address of the Wuhan Lab was moved in
google maps?

~~~
thedudeabides5
[https://goo.gl/maps/mt1nrMnP6A8QAXpn9](https://goo.gl/maps/mt1nrMnP6A8QAXpn9)

Looks like it’s in both places but wasn’t “moved” like in that link

------
blackrock
I love laughing at conspiracy theories like the fake moon landing, the flat
earth theory, and ancient astronauts built the pyramids, but this insinuation
is a step too far.

------
Asooka
Claiming that this is a synthetic virus is pretty much the height of racism
and is deeply unscientific. I hope sciencemag rescinds this story after the
backlash.

------
erichocean
"Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1
gp120 and Gag"

[https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30....](https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.927871.full.pdf)

> [ABSTRACT] _We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019
> novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive.
> We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the
> 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino
> acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in
> the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being
> discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the
> 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding
> site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have
> identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of
> HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown
> insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of
> this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus._

~~~
gravelc
This is laughable.

Table 1 shows four alignments. The first two are only six contiguous residues,
so can easily happen by chance. Three has multiple mistmatches as well as the
gap (red). Four has an even larger gap to get the alignment.

Take any two viruses and there's a decent likelihood of finding similar
alignments.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Thanks honestly reassuring.

\- Some layman.

~~~
dylz
They don't appear to even be matching entire sequences. An analogy might be
"these two web pages both contain <div>*</div>! oh no!" while completely
disregarding everything in the middle.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
If it's as bad as it sounds, would this be a neophyte mistake or deliberate
conspiracy mongering?

~~~
dylz
I don't know, nor am I in a position to really have an opinion on this, but it
might even be as small of a reason as "hey I want to get published"

The PDF itself is MS Word, has numerous typos/little care (words like
'alingment'), random font changes back and forth between Times New Roman and
the default MS Word font (Calibri?))

For HIV related fearmongering about "well, why would they know to treat it
with HIV meds??", people are looking at this already because previous SARS-CoV
has previous investigation with HIV medication, it is not unique to nCOV:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985565](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985565),
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15144898](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15144898),
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14519691](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14519691)
\- these are from 2003-2006.

------
damm
Virus's mutate and with how climate change is affecting everything; wouldn't
it be tragically ironic if climate change accelerated how fast the common cold
(for example) mutates

Great and informative article unlike my comment

~~~
FooHentai
There are several links between climate change (of any origin) and the spread
of pathogens. Not mutation rate that I know of, but the ability to break out
of existing 'reserve' locations which persistently harbor them into areas
where they're not normally found.

Case in point: the plague. Still very much alive in some areas of Asia and
Africa, and localized outbreaks still occur today. But displacement of
carriers species (e.g. rats) from those areas to others due to various
climate-shift-induced pressures (such as too much or too little food, or human
intrusion) can trigger outbreaks far and wide. The original plague period and
spread was in many ways a perfect storm of factors but a re-occurrence is
feasible (albeit today's improved knowledge of the cause, hygiene and
containment measures should prevent it reaching anything like the scale once
seen).

Another example: A few years back Myrtle Rust made its way over to NZ for the
first recorded time, and one theory of how it got here was being carried on
unusually warm/humid air currents from Australia which allowed it, as a kind
of mold, to survive the journey.

Another vector: Melting permafrost releasing preserved pathogens to which
today's populations (human and otherwise) have no immunity is another 'fun'
climate change scenario. I find that one less plausible mostly because it
would require human intrusion or some other means of transmission from the
thawing site to hosts. But eh, maybe.

------
aaron695
News at 7:00 the first African AIDS carrier may have not had sex with a
monkey.

We really need to upvote this old racist meme?

It's from poor people. Poor people who live amongst wild animals. Aka farmers.
It came from a rural location. Ie from a bat shitting on their rice while it
dries.

Does noone get what the meme about lightning deaths reducing each year means?
It's about with wealth, nature has less of a catastrophic effect on our lives
in part because people move to cities.

