
The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 - sohkamyung
http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398
======
throwawaysea
I think it is totally fair game to speculate about whether this was an
accidental release from a government lab. Such a release has already happened
before. See
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak).
And of course everyone said it was not possible and that such claims were
unsubstantiated, until the truth came out years later.

Also, read the article blamed for spreading misinformation, from Zero Hedge:
[https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-
coronavir...](https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavirus-
pandemic)

As in, actually read it directly. Not an article or opinion about it, but the
actual article linked above:

This lab publicly (on the Internet) advertised jobs concerning bats and
coronavirus research. The scientist they named was the listed head of the lab
that the job is for. His contact information is publicly available. And yet
everyone demonized Zero Hedge for doxxing.

Often times, such research requires handling infected organisms,
manipulations/modifications of the virus, and so on. Why would the release of
a virus from a lab (accidental or otherwise, engineered or not) be out of the
question? Why is it irresponsible to point at the possibility?

~~~
RoyTyrell
Sure, it's entirely possible the virus was accidentally released from a lab.
Maybe we're all living in a simulation. Maybe this virus is punishment from
God for PHP.

There are all sorts of conspiracies and things to speculate on in this world
but very little evidence for most of it.

~~~
chrisco255
Right, because human error is so rare in the world that it's unrealistic
conspiracy to believe that this was caused by it.

------
aaron695
"Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease
Control & Prevention(WHCDC). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research
purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and
identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus
affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in
Zhejiang province

The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT) Moreover,
he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and
websites in 2017 and 2019. He described that he was once by attacked by bats
and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the
infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days. In another accident, he
quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for
capturing a bat carrying a live tick

[https://www.scribd.com/document/447056518/Originsof2019-NCoV...](https://www.scribd.com/document/447056518/Originsof2019-NCoV-
XiaoB-Res)

This was the paper that got taken down. The take down was perhaps fair enough,
it's just speculation.

But what is in it, is I believe true. The labs in Wuhan studied bats. Stop the
lie we think it was engineered, no one credible is saying that, it's
reasonable to think it was an accidental release from a lab.

~~~
Fnoord
> Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease
> Control & Prevention(WHCDC)

If you look at the picture in the linked item from Scribd, the location is
shown west of "Tianya Shengyan" and south of "Huanan Seafood Market".

If I look at the very same location on Google Maps, west of "Tianya Shengyan"
and south of "Huanan Seafood Market", there is no "Wuhan Center for Disease
Control & Prevention (WHCDC)". If I search for "Wuhan Center for Disease
Control & Prevention (WHCDC)" it shows several locations, but not that one.

Hence it appears to me it either got censored on Google Maps (I did not verify
other sources), or the linked item made it up. If you look at the linked item,
it uses a different font for the text "Wuhan Center for Disease Control &
Prevention (WHCDC)". Why?

------
dboreham
Not lab engineered, it says.

~~~
mantap
I don't understand why people would believe that it is. It has all the wrong
properties to be a bioweapon: it mainly kills the weak and elderly (unlike the
2009 "swine" flu which most severely afflicted the young), it isn't targeted,
it's seemingly uncontrollable, and it isn't all that deadly.

~~~
echelon
Go for a stroll on /r/coronavirus or /r/China_flu to see how panicked and
uninformed people are about this. They enjoy spreading fake news and
misinformation and downvote any attempts to reason with data and logic. It's
almost like they want this to be as dramatic and horrific as possible.

These are the kind of people making and spreading these claims.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
I think you're being a bit too dramatic. For instance, read this
[https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126](https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126)
where a senator raises several possibilities (ascribing the most probability
of being true to the most reasonable one) yet several articles were written
about what he's saying as if he's one of those people spreading "fake news"
and "misinformation" that you dislike. Many people are making simple
statements that are reasonable and possible but being called conspiracy
theorists just for bringing the possibility up at all.

You don't get to the truth of a matter by rejecting anything that has a small
possibility of being true and labeling it fake news and misinformation. If the
claim is extremely unreasonable then it shouldn't be a problem, most people
can tell it's unreasonable. If it's not that unreasonable then maybe people
should be allowed to speak about it, given that it's not clear how or why it
isn't unreasonable.

~~~
nneonneo
I don’t know where to start with your comment.

> If the claim is extremely unreasonable ... most people can tell it’s
> unreasonable.

Surely you must have far more faith in humanity than I do, or you would not
make this statement. One only needs to look at the prevalence of vaccine
skeptics, climate skeptics, creationists, ... to know that unreasonable claims
can garner significant support despite considerable scientific evidence to the
contrary.

> rejecting anything that has a small possibility of being true

Actually, this is called not placing undue weight on fringe ideas. There’s
arguably a small possibility of practically _anything_ being true. That
doesn’t mean we need to sink time and energy into them. Should our current,
most probable line of reasoning display flaws that can’t be remedied, then the
scientific method dictates that we explore alternatives. Until then, the most
probable explanation reigns.

> given that it’s not clear how or why it isn’t unreasonable

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are unlikely to understand the
subtler parts of a scientific concept (or really anything they aren’t experts
in, in general), and consequently can fail to grasp why something is clearly
unreasonable to someone more well-trained.

A conspiracy theorist _is_ someone who brings up possibilities that are
extremely unlikely to be true. That would fit your senator to a tee. He’s not
backing any of this up with actual evidence, he’s just bringing up scary
possibilities. We don’t need that kind of fearful reaction in a public health
crisis.

~~~
cameldrv
I can't speak to this article, because I don't have the technical knowledge to
evaluate it.

I think that if you don't accept that it's a reasonable possibility that this
escaped from one of the labs in Wuhan, you're being unscientific. The evidence
for it having come from the lab is:

1\. The Wuhan Institute of Virology published papers in the past two years
about their experimentation with chimeric coronaviruses. Viruses similar to
this one were without question present in that lab.

2\. The lab is about 25 miles from the seafood market.

3\. The true source of the virus couldn't have been the seafood market. We
know this because four of the original cases have no apparent connection to
the seafood market. The Chinese government has not identified a source of the
virus given this information.

4\. SARS has leaked from other Chinese research labs in the past.

5\. H1N1 probably leaked from a Chinese lab in 1976 and caused a pandemic.

6\. China covered up the virus in its initial stages as it tried to contain
it, which would be expected if the virus originated from the lab.

~~~
mantap
You know, people said the same things about Porton Down when the Novichok
nerve agent was released in Salisbury UK. It was mightily suspicious that this
nerve agent was released just down the road from the UK government
bio&chemical research station. But the Russians have practically admitted to
it now.

Wuhan is a huge city, larger than London. It's unsurprising that it has a lab
that researches coronavirusee. It's especially unsurprising that the Chinese
would be researching coronaviruses as they were previously affected by SARS-1.

Everybody should keep an open mind to all possibilities when the Chinese
government is present. It's not wrong to consider the possibility that this
might have been an accidental release. I just don't see the evidence for it.

