
Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan - Donckele
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-to-wuhan/
======
Traster
I'm actually going to flag this, since basically it seems to be working quite
hard to pretend that the US was funding Gain of Function research in Wuhan,
when that doesn't seem to actually be the case. There has been joint research
about outbreaks in the wild - which is where the funding link seems to come
from, and also the claim that there was a moratorium on GOF research is
horribly misrepresented.

I spent some time looking at where the factual claims come from and I've sort
of come to the conclusion that what we have here is an eco-system of sites
that are publishing more and more articles, citing each other slowly moving
further and further away from the core facts each time. Until you're entirely
removed the facts and the whole thing is just a web of speculation. The
closest I could get to any real claims about the lab was this Daily Mail
article[1], but again, it's things like

>The news that COVID-19 bats were under research there means that a leak from
the Wuhan laboratory can no longer be completely ruled out.

and

> According to one unverified claim, scientists at the institute could have
> become infected

You see, its this reporting of completely unverified speculation, that gets
laundered through site after site until you end up with

>The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Well, yeah, it's the center of scrutiny because you and your buddies decided
to make it the centre of scrutiny with no evidence. Here's a wild thought:
Maybe it's necessary to do research on diseases near to the source of the
disease. It's not a conspiracy when the lab studying mad cow disease is
located in the UK either.

[1]:[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-
governm...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-
gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html)

------
teruakohatu
> It is understandable that the Chinese lab likely struggled with safety
> issues given the fact US labs share similar problems

This line is what makes me think I am reading propoganda. It starts as a news
story but continues as a opinion piece.

It is never understandable that a lab of this nature, regardless of country,
has safety issues. I don't think Chinese authorities nor US authorities would
agree it is understandable. Or at least I hope they wouldn't.

~~~
mehrdadn
The part of it that stuck out to me wasn't the "understandable" part in
itself, but the fact that it said the US labs "share similar problems", since
these "problems" appeared to be just cases of people mishandling these viruses
(i.e. negligence?), rather than cases of the viruses being too difficult to
handle even when protocols are properly followed. A problem arising due to
negligence doesn't seem like something I'd characterize as "struggling" with
safety.

~~~
james_s_tayler
>A problem arising due to negligence doesn't seem like something I'd
characterize as "struggling" with safety.

Why not?

If safety relies on negligence not occuring then negligence compromises
safety. If safety is regularly comprised that would be considered "struggling
with safety".

------
chvid
"The virus is created in a lab" is a conspiracy theory that is being kept
alive because of the way American politics work.

People asume that all this writing is "organic". It is not. It is orchestrated
and coordinated. Basically the current US administration gains politically by
keeping war rhetorics; the "maybe the virus is created in lab, maybe released
by accident, maybe on purpose, we don't know, China is not being transparent"
is a key part.

Accepting the virus as a natural phenomenon puts the focus on the actual
policy response and that is much less of a winner.

~~~
pritovido
"The virus is created in a lab" is not a conspiracy theory, it is just a
plausible possibility that we should study.

There is no "conspiracy" in the theory in fact. The most probable cause is an
accident. Nobody is going to create it as a weapon without creating the
vaccine first.

We should not be "accepting" any prejudice, the one that "favors" US
administration, or the opposite one, but we should be studding and working
around evidence.

By the way, if it actually was an accident, accepting that it was a natural
phenomenon favors the interest of China administration too.

It can't be natural, even accepting China's side's theory of the market, it
would be made by human intervention mixing in the market bats with Armadillos.

~~~
chvid
But it has been examined and the virus traces back to animals and earlier
strains which were not as contagious.

This is one of the many papers on the subject:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9)

So why are we still discussing this? Because we are being manipulated.

~~~
papermachete
You don't just publish a study and have it cemented as fact to end all other
studies.

~~~
chvid
It is no just one paper. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers out there,
published in reputable outlets, that analyzes the origin of the virus and none
of them indicate that it is artificially made.

~~~
wayneftw
It doesn't have to be artificially "made". It could still be "fostered" in a
lab.

------
acqq
I like the following two paragraphs appearing exactly in this order in the
text:

"If evidence is found that Covid-19 is a biological weapon, some pundits such
as Fox News host Lou Dobbs have called for the US to declare war on China.

Nonetheless, it is unclear what the legal ramifications would be if the virus
was indeed leaked from a Chinese lab, but as a result of a research project
that was outsourced and funded by the US government."

~~~
roenxi
It is people being silly. COVID-19 is a terrible biological weapon. As in
ineffective. And prone to misfiring.

~~~
tromp
It's very effective at causing massive economical damage...

------
api
What is the point of doing actual GOF research? We already know viruses can
gain function. We already know that bat viruses can infect humans. Is this
backdoor bioweapon research framed to avoid breaking the letter of treaties
banning it? But if that's the case, outsourcing it seems totally insane.

~~~
Traster
Well one way to put it is: We already know these viruses can gain function. If
we can simulate that in the lab and then study the results we can plan how to
deal with the situation if it arises in the wild. It's worth noting that this
article isn't being completely transparent about the moratorium, it wasn't
just a decision by the US to no longer do that sort of reseach, they were just
pausing whilst they reconsidered how they evaluate whether to allow & fund
that research. There was no real question of completely banning GOF research.
They released that report in 2016[1].

Secondly, they cite a weird website called nationalfile.com for the claim
Fauci funded the Chinese lab (in an article written now, not at the time the
funding was claimed to be made) - I don't believe that. If you actually look
at the NIH website what they're passing off as Fauci fundign the Chinese lab,
is a _2018_ article about collaboration with the lab in studying an outbreak
of a disease in pig farms in Guangdong. Which is not exactly the shooting up
bats with SARS is it, and it's certainly not the type of research that was
effected by the GOF moratorium.

>The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic.

This is entirely speculation. There's _no_ evidence of this being the case.

Basically what I'm saying is that this website is a fake news site. It's
citing other fake news sites, spreading misinformation and mis-representing
government reports.

The controversial claims are baseless - and often uncited, and the citations
that are there are either to other misinformation sites- literally, waht is
the nationalfile.com?

[1]:[https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Fina...](https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf)

~~~
api
I can see that, but it still seems risky and of dubious value. I am not
convinced any vaccine research is going to transfer from a synthetic virus to
humans, and animal studies also have issues transferring. Good high risk
research is high risk high payoff. This seems very high risk low payoff to me.

Then there is smallpox. The idea of doing anything with smallpox samples other
than placing them in an ultra high temperature autoclave is horrifying. That
stuff is extinct in the wild. It should be extinct from the timeline entirely.

I am suspicious of Asia Times, but also of the drive to blame this on China. I
raised my question in the abstract since so far I see no concrete evidence
that COVID-19 originated in anyone's lab whether Chinese or American.

~~~
Traster
Absolutely true, it's risky, and that's why we have strong government
regulations about what research to do and how to do it. I think we can
reasonably argue about whether those regulations are strong enough, but I
actually think the process (in the US atleast) is working. They were allowing
this research under strict conditions, they found out that actually mistakes
were more likely to happen after some incidents, so they took a full 2 years
to completely re-evaulate, produce a full report and a new regime designed by
experts.

------
mehrdadn
> Republican lawmakers such as Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Dan
> Crenshaw have also introduced legislation that would allow Americans to sue
> China in federal court over the deaths and economic damage wrought by the
> virus.

Does the notion of ex-post-facto not apply to foreigners? (Although the
concept of a domestic lawsuit against foreigners is itself weird to me.)

~~~
Arnt
Has happened before — if the court finds that it has jurisdiction then it
won't mind that one party is absent. If you sign a contract in country X, the
courts in country X will hold you to it.

But that legislation sounds weird. I wonder whether those republicans have any
idea what Westphalia is or what was agreed there.

------
guiriduro
The first time this article was posted, it was flagged (I might dispute its
content and sourcing, but not the free-speech aspect to discussing it.) My
earlier comment:

So what is the source of this info? Turns out it is the Daily Mail, a right-
wing UK rag of highly questionable quality and history of economy with the
truth. In the referenced DM article, the only attribution we hear about are
"documents obtained by the Mail"... Fake FB news are also documents obtainable
by the Mail. Post originals or it didn't happen.

~~~
krona
It was the The Mail on Sunday, actually.

