
China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest - new_time
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/11/china-clamping-down-on-coronavirus-research-deleted-pages-suggest
======
andromeduck
Huge change of tone from 2 months ago, ok m guessing it's because because they
fear that the lab accident theory will gain more traction academically or they
fear people will reveal the scale of the damage to the public vs the clearly
fabricated stats we have now.

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/30/asia-
pacific/sc...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/30/asia-
pacific/science-health-asia-pacific/chinas-top-court-rebukes-police-virus-
rumor-crackdown/#.XpNyy0EifDt)

www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/all-signs-point-to-china/

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188557/amp/Did-
cor...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188557/amp/Did-coronavirus-
leak-research-lab-Wuhan-Startling-theory-no-longer-discounted.html)

[https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-
coronav...](https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronavirus-
is-not-a-bioweapon-they-disagree-on-whether-it-could-have-leaked-from-a-
research-lab/amp/)

~~~
tanilama
I don't think dailymail or nationalreivew are reputable source other than
presenting a story.

There is an article on Nature one month ago on this topic:

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

> Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a
> purposefully manipulated virus

~~~
godtoldmetodoit
That doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab though. "Coming from a lab" does
not = man made. If they were doing research on the bats in this lab, looking
to identify potential scary viruses to be ready, it is entirely possible the
virus jumped from bat to researcher there and that was our patient 0.

~~~
jotakami
How many times do we need to repeat this... everyone assumes that “came from a
lab” means “engineered bioweapon”. No!

Also, people quickly forget that humans have been selectively evolving plants
and animals for thousands of years without touching the actual genomes.

~~~
Klinky
How did it come from a lab? I've heard "workers got sprayed with blood and
infected", "someone screwed up"(vague), "mishandled lab waste".

Just saying it "came from a lab", makes it sound man made. If you don't want
misunderstandings, you need spell it out and make it absolutely clear. It
doesn't even sound like there is a clear narrative about _how_ it "escaped
from the lab", just a lot of rumors. Rumors about a rumor, certainly doesn't
sound more credible than China's official stance, and their credibility is
already very low.

~~~
andromeduck
You get it from a bat the same way you get it from another person you touch
the bat and touch your face or you clean the cage drop get . You dump out the
litter box/tray and huff some particles. You draw a blood sample and a drop of
it gets on your visor/goggles. You take it off late and touch your face. It's
nothing sexy.

Note that that the Wuhan CDC, the lab ~300m from the market, the lab that was
experimenting on bats, is not the BSL4 Wuhan Institute of Virology miles away
from the seafood market, that everyone loves taking about. It's probably a
level 2 or 3 lab.

Escape from a lab doesn't imply man made any more than tiger escaped from zoo
implies that the tiger was born there. SARS escaped from BSL3 labs on China on
multiple occasions, that doesn't imply that SARS was man made.

------
gerdesj
I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on
Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in
humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not
or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist
article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people,
everywhere, without fear or favour. Simply ...

Pretty much all stats I've seen relating to this thing are painfully awful.
Here in the UK (in England), care home deaths are not reported in the main
death stat etc etc ad nauseam. Scotland reports in its own way as does NI (or
not bother) compared to England and Wales. We have minimal testing anyway so
who knows what is actually going on?

Anyway, one thing I am absolutely certain of is that whilst the stats in
Europe and the US, CA etc are a bit wonky at best they are at least a decent
attempt to have a go at reporting the situation.

I think that the CN and other results that are so way off the curve that other
nations and territories are reporting are complete fiction and dangerous
fiction at that.

~~~
meowface
Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered,
and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One
possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many
viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for
current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps
through an employee unknowingly getting infected or taking home something with
a contaminated surface.

edit: Rewrote everything below here to make my probability beliefs more clear.

I think it's extremely likely to be zoonotic and not spread by anyone
intentionally. As for the chance it was an unintentional lab escape, it's
difficult to assess what the probability of that may be.

I don't think you can just simply assume "virology lab in proximity = likely
source of outbreak" without looking at a lot of other factors. Wuhan is a
massive city and economic hub, a lot bigger than NYC and the surrounding area.
From what I've heard, there's basically every kind of facility and institute
one could imagine there.

It could be a coincidence that the lab was there due to the size, density, and
economic importance of the area.

Or maybe the lab could've been established there because they knew the area
was biologically diverse and close to many species of animals carrying viruses
which could jump to humans, and that such animals were commonly hunted and
sold for food there. If that's true, then it would be a confounding variable,
and one would expect outbreaks to be more likely to occur near the lab
regardless of whether they originated in the lab.

There appear to be other potentially credible pieces of evidence which may
support the lab escape hypothesis, but I think the whole case needs to be
analyzed very robustly and carefully, with all of the possible priors and
evidence taken into account.

~~~
leetcrew
I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released
deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely
populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense.

the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two
biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses
are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; improbable
things happen all the time in a world of ~8 billion people. it would be a
pretty big one though.

~~~
endtime
So I'm definitely not advocating the lab theory overall, and even if it did
come from a lab it could have escaped rather than been deliberately
released...but to answer your question, China does/did have problems with A)
an aging population, B) a male heavy population, and C) Hong Kong streets full
of protesters. This virus "helps" with all of those.

~~~
sv9
Bioweapons are crappy precisely because of what's happening now. A good weapon
discriminates, and lets you kill exactly who you want. By that measure, a
virus is about as hamfisted as you can get. Besides, why unleash a pandemic on
the whole world when you can just do what China normally does and use
conventional military power instead? It's cheaper and easier to get some men
in boots with guns to stop a protest than it is to unleash a worldwide
pandemic that might last for years or longer.

~~~
endtime
This virus disproportionately impacts the elderly, and males. That was the
whole point of my comment.

------
justicezyx
Hi guys,

As a Chinese living in US. Please be mindful that a lot of people do not
distinguish China the government, and the Chinese people, living in or outside
of China mainland.

This type of news, are of course worth discussion.

But meanwhile, please refrain from politicizing beyond the facts. Think about
not letting what a few political figures have started, i.e., politicizing the
event without considering the impact, into actual hate crimes targeted at
minority groups.

Thanks!

~~~
abc-xyz
Foreigners all over the world are likely to be targeted as long as they stand
out. For instance, in China, Africans are being kicked out of their homes and
forced to sleep on the street (because no hotel/apartment will accept them),
countless stores, including a McDonald’s restaurant, are refusing to serve
foreigners (blacks are in particular targeted).

Please be mindful that it’s not just Chinese or Asians being targeted, and
that the racism foreigners are experiencing in China right now is far worse
than what the Chinese are experiencing elsewhere.

~~~
_iyig
Here is what the parent post refers to:

[http://shanghaiist.com/2020/04/13/even-mcdonalds-is-now-
turn...](http://shanghaiist.com/2020/04/13/even-mcdonalds-is-now-turning-away-
black-customers-in-guangzhou/)

If we're to shift the conversation towards hate crimes targeted at minority
groups, I think it's fair to consider hate crimes perpetrated by government
mentioned in the article, crimes which are perpetrated for much the same
reasons as the suppression of coronavirus research.

------
gnusty_gnurc
In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab
release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though
- as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens
from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate
bats at the wet market?

~~~
avs733
So...evidence?

Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that
appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions.

There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone
provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular
evidence.

~~~
ekianjo
Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there?
I will let you ponder on that.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Because viruses jumping between species is a rare event? People didn't stop
raising pigs after the swine flu, despite knowing the virus came from there.

~~~
ekianjo
The timing is unfortunate however. The pandemic is NOT being us. The global
economy is still actively being destroyed (including China's) and the CCP's
first thought is to re-open the wet markets as soon as possible? In what world
does that even make sense?

~~~
boomboomsubban
I don't understand what you think keeping the wet market closed accomplishes.
There isn't a significant threat that you could get coronavirus from another
animal, and the host of other areas where a virus could pass between species
weren't ever shut down.

------
radicalbyte
The the American leadership constantly calling it by the region name you can
understand why an authoritarian regime would want to control discussion of the
origins by experts. The risk is of their research being weaponized by said
demagogues.

~~~
cm2187
Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't think it is
wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the Chinese don't want the bad
publicity associated with the virus, they should do something about these wet
markets.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8)

~~~
cc81
On the other hand we did not call the "Swine Flu" the "North American flu"

~~~
Vomzor
It’s called Mexican flu in Dutch.

------
nikkwong
I'm trying to be a good bayesian reasoner here but the particulars of this
specific case are all so tangled and piecemeal. The conspiracy theorists among
us are having an absolute field day with the current events and it's easy to
see why.

According to my bayesian analysis, I believe that the most likely cause of
this virus is a wet-market infection, followed by a slip-up at a lab, with—by
high margin, in very very last place at, say, 1% probability, that this was
concocted by a nefarious player (the CCP being a favorite candidate). The
conspiracy theorists (my Facebook friends especially) seem to rank the
likelihood of this list in reverse (i.e. clearly this was concocted by the
chinese government). With how secretive and disingenuous the CCP is even on a
good day, it's easy to see why their argument has a few credence points (like
any good conspiracy).

But I can't reconcile that there's not much for the CCP to gain on the world
stage by releasing this thing. The US was already so politically tumultuous,
and the 2016 Russian disinformation campaign was _so_ much more effective at
breaking our democracy apart, with the added benefit of not sending our
economy into a global recession as a byproduct. What has the CCP gained here?
Xi's power as a leader has only weakened, and their position as the world's
factory is now only slipping faster.

So this is kind of like 9/11 to me. The people who would be the most likely to
profiteer off a tragedy like this would have not in any capacity been able to
pull it off, and the ones who are powerful or otherwise sophisticated enough
to pull it off don't have much incentive to anyways. So that's why bayesian
reasoning leads me to believe that yes, we know these viruses jump from
animals to humans from time to time, and this seems to likely be one of those
instances. What am I missing?

~~~
irishcoffee
The only reason I can possibly fathom as to why it would be nefarious would be
trade. And that’s a stretch.

~~~
nikkwong
I'm totally willing to entertain that argument, but their exports have
suffered tremendously and any forecasters could have predicted that a global
slowdown would hurt such an interconnected country like China the most. So I
am just unable to connect the dots here as to what the conspiracy theorists
think the motive is.

Conspiracy theories that end up actually being true generally have one thing
in common: they have wide consensus as to what the actual facts of the case
really are. You could sort of make this argument for the conspiracy that
Jeffrey Epstein's death was not a suicide but rather a cover up. In that
theory, most theorists posit that high powered individuals whom Epstein had
dirt on arranged to have him killed before he could get to trial and expose
them. That's actually not a completely crazy theory, in the realm of how crazy
some conspiracies really get.

Whereas, the 9/11 truthers cannot internally reconcile why the US government
may have flown our own planes into the trade towers. No good singular theory
emerges probably because not one exists. And of the theories that are floated,
they all end up being conflicting and self-cancelling. I think time will prove
that the same is true for COVID19.

~~~
irishcoffee
I agree with you, just pointing out the only thing I could come up with. Great
comment.

------
Gatsky
Now things are starting to settle down, everyone can get back to being their
usual selves, whether it is a totalatarian surveillance state or a conspiracy
theorist.

------
AzzieElbab
This is basically the end game for China. Either they buy off everything while
their economy is still running, or they face isolation. They fd us all way too
hard this time

~~~
nojvek
People want cheap goods. They don't care if their Nike shoes come from a
slaveshop, just like we don't really give much thought that most of the milk
we drink come from cows in very miserable conditions.

It's business as usual for China. As long as they keep on making those
affordable goods, other countries will consume.

If Apple moves off their entire production from China to US, and still is
competitive, then I'll be a believer.

~~~
AzzieElbab
It is not about ethics, it is about risk

------
ferest
Because academic research can't be rushed. One of the requirements for an
advanced degree is publishing papers, and if coronavirus related can easily
bring attention and get the paper published, students would try taking the
fast track. This is not good for research in general.

There was a huge debate back in late Jan. early Feb. on Chinese social network
about a paper didn't get peer-reviewed spreading all over places with
misinformation. Hence the Fudan University post in Chinese was to tighten the
publish review, and nothing about delaying the research.

This guardian news only showed the story without context, which is pretty
misleading.

~~~
nsoonhui
You don't "tighten the publish review" by submitting the research papers to
government body for approval.

------
swiley
Combined with the researcher at the lab that was disappeared this is pretty
convincing.

~~~
abc-xyz
Her name was Huang Yan Ling (黄燕玲) for anyone who might be interested in
learning more about the potential patient 0. The evidence is very compelling
and this video does a good job at presenting it:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU)

------
Razengan
Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer
drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4"
laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of
their infections in the general media (" _The Wuhan virus is now the American
virus_ "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" _What is the
worst thing the US government has done?_ ") being massively updated on Reddit
(which has a major investment from Tencent.)

This is from the country which forces foreign companies to remove flags of
countries it likes to bully (Taiwan, Japan) from their products. It's not
inconceivable that they are filtering the narrative about themselves in
something actually serious, such as this pandemic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Concerns_as_source)

~~~
godelski
I'm not so sure I buy the Reddit controlled by CCP (or heavily influenced)
argument. Simply because in /r/China, /r/ChineseLanguage, and /r/HongKong I
see frequent posts that are highly critical of the CCP and China in general.
They have many upvotes and it doesn't look like people are being banned or
posts are being removed. It is nowhere like /r/Sino.

I'm not trying to defend the CCP here, but just trying to say that maybe
Reddit isn't a CCP propaganda weapon. I'm sure there's some influence, but I
see these arguments go quite far.

~~~
coupdejarnac
I've seen way more wumao type posts in subs like r/worldnews, where typical
readers are much less knowledgeable about China.

------
ninetyfurr
Ironically in censorsed domains, the absence of information is a very clear
indicator of truth. It happens everywhere - there are many true things you are
not allowed to post on the internet.

You know the old saying, "Just because you read it on the internet, doesn't
mean it's true"? Consider the inverse: Just because you haven't read it on the
internet, doesn't mean it's not true.

~~~
treeman79
Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine.

Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media decides it’s a
political football. No more articles

~~~
acdha
Your “lots of interesting articles” were what made it a political football.
Before it was picked up by the right-wing propaganda network there was one
obviously flawed study and some fringe non-experts promoting it to people
anxious for a cure, followed by a bunch of actual experts urging caution.

~~~
acdha
For the people who might not have followed this closely, here’s a history of
the spread:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/how-
false...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/how-false-hope-
spread-about-hydroxychloroquine-its-consequences/)

------
ycombonator
They are afraid where it will lead to.

------
boomboomsubban
Given the response articles saying it would be possible to engineer the virus
have caused, this doesn't seem that extreme. The "origin" of the virus has
become a political issue that fringe extremists in many countries are using to
attack other countries.

------
ngcc_hk
They have been very successfully control who. With the same technique
controlling access, we might never know and any whistleblower ... china not
open up and free, we are playing Russian or shall we say china lottery. With
humanity fate.

No freedom of press and academic research and human rights, china pose a
danger to humanity. And regards to they might kill themselves, noticed that
they have kill 30m+ in Great Leap Forward. Not even one Memorial Or Day is in.
How many 30m we have outside china.

Wuhan virus is the 2nd wake up call. Hard to wake up people who pretend to
sleep. I would try again WakeUp.

------
dchyrdvh
My favorite theory is that the Wuhan virus lab created the virus and used bats
in experiments. One bat escaped and infected other bats that eventually ended
up on the wet market in Wuhan. Edit: a more plausible theory is that one
researcher got bitten by an infected bat and chose to hide this fact.

~~~
andromeduck
My understanding is that nobody has found signs of that in the sequenced
genome. By all accounts the jump to humans appears to have been natrual.

~~~
jotakami
It’s also “natural” to take your mare over to the prize stallion to get
impregnated. Humans can control all the conditions around the “natural”
process.

