totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[KerikBalm]

16 minutes ago, MKI said:

To help get an idea of why looking into China's actions to find "reasoning", let me just make up another random theory, and say that the US engineered the virus and dropped it in Wuhan and it got out of control. Even if the Chinese government knew this is exactly what happened, they would act essentially the same. They would deny they created anything, hide whatever they have, fake how much control they have over the situation, and leverage how much control they have over their citizens to actually control it.

They have already spouted that theory, saying that the US made it in Fort Deitrich, and that they should be given access to Fort Deitrich if other countries want to audit their lab. Then, as if they know its a ridiculous proposal, they mention how other countries wouldn't allow stuff liek that, so they shouldn't have to allow access to their lab... ignoring the fact that their labs are directly adjacent to the first know cases...

16 minutes ago, MKI said:

I couldn't find out if they determined if they got it from inside the lab, or out in the environment and just happened to work at the lab. 

Oh it most definitely came from the lab: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content_344755.htm

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17319269/

April and May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004

Note that the Chinese CDC in Beijing was conducting research on coronaviruses... they had samples in their labs. Now they are claiming that the CDC lab in Wuhan was not conducting coronavirus research and had no such samples. I find that hard to believe that there were no collaborations between them and the Wuhan Inst. of Vir (WIV). The WIV may be a P4 lab in name, but the Wuhan CDC was only a P2 lab... and moved.  [speculation] SARS-CoV-2s immediate precursor may have only been classified as a P2 level pathogen before the outbreak[/speculation] SARS-CoV-2 is now classed as a P3 level pathogen. Even so, the original SARS leaked form P3 labs in China multiple times.

[GDJ]

All I can tell you is this COVID situation is ticking me off to no end, and it looks like we're entering/entered Wave #3, politicians are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, media is doing double-talk...

....and I have no idea when I will be next to get a vaccine. Could be months.

 

But I feel fine. Really. If I caught it, it was so minor that it could have been a sniffle. Hell if I know.

Edited April 4, 2021 by GDJ

[MKI]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

April and May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004

This page points out a clearer timeline. The "lab-leak" it mentions here is already near the end of the previous SARS version.

When I originally stated "lab-leak" I meant more that it was created in a lab and leaked, not so much it existed out in the wild, was brought to the lab and was leaked. Because to me that doesn't mean much if it already existed out in nature and leaked more or less as-is.

At the end of the day it is one of those things that doesn't really matter all too much. Because its not like the Chinese government will ever admit anything, or really any government would admit to it. So they wont let themselves be accountable, so trying to "find the truth" doesn't get anyone anywhere. 

 

[Lewie]

1 hour ago, MKI said:

This page points out a clearer timeline. The "lab-leak" it mentions here is already near the end of the previous SARS version.

When I originally stated "lab-leak" I meant more that it was created in a lab and leaked, not so much it existed out in the wild, was brought to the lab and was leaked. Because to me that doesn't mean much if it already existed out in nature and leaked more or less as-is.

At the end of the day it is one of those things that doesn't really matter all too much. Because its not like the Chinese government will ever admit anything, or really any government would admit to it. So they wont let themselves be accountable, so trying to "find the truth" doesn't get anyone anywhere. 

 

Isn’t that something China is would do? Try to kill off their elderly population. They spend billions of (USD) on them, so to bump them off...

Besides, they are a huge country. Plenty of people. I’m not saying I think China intentionally created covid, but it’s definitely something they’d do. 

[SunlitZelkova]

10 hours ago, MKI said:

This page points out a clearer timeline. The "lab-leak" it mentions here is already near the end of the previous SARS version.

When I originally stated "lab-leak" I meant more that it was created in a lab and leaked, not so much it existed out in the wild, was brought to the lab and was leaked. Because to me that doesn't mean much if it already existed out in nature and leaked more or less as-is.

At the end of the day it is one of those things that doesn't really matter all too much. Because its not like the Chinese government will ever admit anything, or really any government would admit to it. So they wont let themselves be accountable, so trying to "find the truth" doesn't get anyone anywhere. 

 

Trying to "find the truth" is important insofar as it is important to know what happened, to design new measures and take steps to prevent something like this from happening again.

But yes, there is nothing that can be done to "hold China accountable" as China hasn't violated any laws that would result in reparations for the other countries affected by the virus anyways.

[KerikBalm]

13 hours ago, MKI said:

This page points out a clearer timeline. The "lab-leak" it mentions here is already near the end of the previous SARS version.

Yes, as I said:

On 4/4/2021 at 9:43 AM, KerikBalm said:

But that was after it had already been identified.

My point is:

1) Lab leaks happen, and China has a history of lab leaks of coronaviruses (3 times with SARS).

2) The first SARS came from an area without a bunch of labs working on coronaviruses, near an area with closely related endemic coronavirus infections of wild animals. SARS-2 is the exact opposite of this: close ot labs working on coronavirus, far away from animal populations with endemic closely related coronaviruses

3) This Chinese admits that the Wuhan CDC lab (distinct from, but likely engages in substantial collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology) moved shortly before the first confirmed cases were detected (6 days, not much longer than the incubation period of the virus). The Chinese admit that samples of the closest known coronavirus were sent to Wuhan.

4) The Chinese don't even deny that they conduct gain of function experiments when asked about it.

5) The Chinese did not provide meaningful access to their records of their virus stocks or experiments.

6) The Chinese jailed the first guy to publicly raise an alarm about the virus. They promote crazy theories like that it started in the US at Fort Deitrich, or that it came into their country from frozen products from undetected outbreaks in other countries...

 

What it comes down to is that there is a lot to suggest that a lab leak is at least plausible. To discount the hypothesis requires simply taking the Chinese at their word, as there has been no independent investigation to rule it out. Given the way they act towards their own doctors, and the outside world, I am not willing to do this.

That leaves just a set of suspicious facts that are, admittedly, not conclusive.

 

[DDE]

16 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

They have already spouted that theory, saying that the US made it in Fort Deitrich, and that they should be given access to Fort Deitrich if other countries want to audit their lab. Then, as if they know its a ridiculous proposal

That's exactly how a BWC verification mechanism would work... and exactly why it can't.

16 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

ignoring the fact that their labs are directly adjacent to the first know cases...

Well, they have two narratives to counter that:

1. Accusations of deliberate dispersal at the World Military Games in Wuhan;

2. Claims that COVID-19 spread through the US for much of 2019 while being dismissed as "a mysterious vaping-related illness"

 

Which, for one thing, is a fascinating bit of projection right there from Comrades Arrest-The-Whistleblower.

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

Well, they have two narratives to counter that:

1. Accusations of deliberate dispersal at the World Military Games in Wuhan;

With zero evidence.

Epidemiology, phylogenetics disprove this

2 hours ago, DDE said:

2. Claims that COVID-19 spread through the US for much of 2019 while being dismissed as "a mysterious vaping-related illness"

Utterly incompatible with the facts

2 hours ago, DDE said:

Which, for one thing, is a fascinating bit of projection right there from Comrades Arrest-The-Whistleblower.

It does come off looking lik projection, increasing my suspicion.

[MKI]

10 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

What it comes down to is that there is a lot to suggest that a lab leak is at least plausible. To discount the hypothesis requires simply taking the Chinese at their word, as there has been no independent investigation to rule it out. Given the way they act towards their own doctors, and the outside world, I am not willing to do this.

That leaves just a set of suspicious facts that are, admittedly, not conclusive.

Sure, its plausible (which is what I said earlier) but isn't it just more likely that it occurred naturally and jumped onto a person and spread? I discount it because natural occurrence is just simpler, not because I trust China. 

That's the thing with all conspiracy theories, they are essentially impossible to "disprove", which means if you believe hard enough in them, and search hard enough to believe, you can end up believing almost anything. Usually this means finding more "evidence" to support the claim, rather than evidence to firmly disprove the currently accepted claim.

Humans are wired to try to find patterns, which is great when you need to watch out so you don't get eaten by a lion, but not so great when it means looking into every nook and cranny to believe in something of which has minimal actual value. 

Now I present another theory: China provide doesn't much insight into how it occurred naturally/not-naturally because it wastes everyone else's time, money and effort in trying to find the truth. This is something that China would do, because it means they can focus on more important tasks while everyone else is fumbling around and pointing fingers. 

 

So yea, lab-leak is plausible, but diving deeper to "find the truth" doesn't get anyone anywhere when the current claims suffice (natural occurrence).

 

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by MKI

[KerikBalm]

11 hours ago, MKI said:

Sure, its plausible (which is what I said earlier) but isn't it just more likely that it occurred naturally and jumped onto a person and spread? I discount it because natural occurrence is just simpler, not because I trust China. 

That would normally be the case, except Wuhan isn't near any known animal reservoir for coronaviruses. That requires a rather complicated explanation as to how the spillover from the animal reservoir didn't cause a local outbreak first, before spreading to Wuhan, where it seems it was already well adapted to humans when spread began in Wuhan.

The prior probability is in favor of a natural outbreak, because since the dawn of life on Earth, natural outbreaks have been happening, and since human experimentation with pathogens has begun, we have just 1 conclusive example of a large scale outbreak of H1N1 flu in 1977 (the rest were only small outbreaks that were quickly contained).

I initially discounted the lab leak theory as crazy Trump linked propaganda, but there are various bits of information that shift the relative probabilities towards a lab leak

Quote

That's the thing with all conspiracy theories, they are essentially impossible to "disprove",

Yes, I acknowledge that is a problem. Anytime one can't find evidence/evidence contradicts the hypothesis, its because "they" covered it up or something like that.

But I also must point out a difference between concluding something happened, without sufficient evidence, and concluding that something is plausible.

It is equally wrong to conclude that something did not happen without sufficient evidence.

The correct answer is "I don't know"

Quote

which means if you believe hard enough in them, and search hard enough to believe, you can end up believing almost anything. Usually this means finding more "evidence" to support the claim, rather than evidence to firmly disprove the currently accepted claim.

Well, for the part of evidence to disprove the currently entertained claim, I have looked for it. Evidence in favor of the natural spillover hypothesis would count as evidence against the lab leak hypothesis, yet the report failed to find any plausible animal source for this spillover. You can keep finding zero evidence in favor of natural spillover, because absensce of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this way, the natural spillover hypothesis is just about equally disprovable. This is the strange case where we cannot really imagine any evidence that disproves either theory, except for evidnce that proves the other theory, and that evidence is lacking both ways.

I had hoped to find evidence proving the natural origin/disproving the lab leak origin in the WHO report that concluded that it was extremely unlikely. The 120 page report is remarkably short when dealing with this possibility, and cites no evidence.

Quoted in its entirety here:

Spoiler

Introduction through a laboratory incident

Explanation of hypothesis
SARS-CoV-2 is introduced through a laboratory incident, reflecting an accidental infection of staff from laboratory activities involving the relevant viruses. We did not consider the hypothesis of deliberate release or deliberate bioengineering of SARS-CoV-2 for release, the latter has been ruled out by other scientists following analyses of the genome (3).

Arguments in favour
Although rare, laboratory accidents do happen, and different laboratories around the world are working with bat CoVs. When working in particular with virus cultures, but also with animal inoculations or clinical samples, humans could become infected in laboratories with limited biosafety, poor laboratory management practice, or following negligence. The closest known CoV RaTG13 strain (96.2%) to SARS-CoV-2 detected in bat poophole swabs have been sequenced at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2nd December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market. Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory.

Arguments against
The closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 from bats and pangolin are evolutionarily distant from SARS-CoV-2. There has been speculation regarding the presence of human ACE2 receptor binding and a furin-cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2, but both have been found in animal viruses as well, and elements of the furin-cleavage site are present in RmYN02 and the new Thailand bat SARSr-CoV. There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome. Regarding accidental culture, prior to December 2019, there is no evidence of circulation of SARS-CoV-2 among people globally and the surveillance programme in place was limited regarding the number of samples processed and therefore the risk of accidental culturing SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory is extremely low. The three laboratories in Wuhan working with either CoVs diagnostics and/or CoVs isolation and vaccine development all had high quality biosafety level (BSL3 or 4) facilities that were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring programme with no reporting of COVID-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019, and no serological evidence of infection in workers through SARS-CoV-2-specific serology-screening. The Wuhan CDC lab which moved on 2nd December 2019 reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move. They also reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.

Now the arguments against section contains extraneous irrelevant details, which when trimmed is simply this:

Spoiler

[...] There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome. [...] The three laboratories in Wuhan working with either CoVs diagnostics and/or CoVs isolation and vaccine development all had high quality biosafety level (BSL3 or 4) facilities that were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring programme with no reporting of COVID-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019, and no serological evidence of infection in workers through SARS-CoV-2-specific serology-screening. The Wuhan CDC lab which moved on 2nd December 2019 reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move. They also reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.

None of which was actually investigated by the international team, and some of which is contradicted by reports of poor adherence to safety protocols, or a poor record of other chinese labs (3 independent escapes from chinese BSL-3 labs of the less infectious SARS-CoV-1).

Quote

Now I present another theory: China provide doesn't much insight into how it occurred naturally/not-naturally because it wastes everyone else's time, money and effort in trying to find the truth.

If they thought it was a waste of time and money trying to find out how it occurred naturally, the Wuhan Institute of Virology wouldn't be doing the research that it has been doing.

Here is one such study that they have been doing since at least 2014:

https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304

Quote

We will combine these data with bat host distribution, viral diversity and phylogeny, human survey of risk behaviors and illness, and serology to identify SARSr-CoV spillover risk hotspots across southern China. Together these data and analyses will be critical for the future development of public health interventions and enhanced surveillance to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or the emergence of a novel SARSr-CoV.

Finding out how it happened can be very usefull to prevent similar things from happening again. They were already very interested in finding out how SARS-CoV-1 happened, now we are supposed to believe they have no interest in finding out how SARS-CoV-2 happened, despite it being much worse?

They are interested in how it happened, but they are more interested in not being blamed for it.

 

Back to that study, we know about it because they applied for (and received) grant money from the USA, which funded it because, again finding out how natural spillovers happen can be very usefull to prevent similar things from happening again. 

Quote

Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.

What does this mean?

The first part I put in bold means that they will be doing spillover studies in vitro (cultured humna cells), and in vivo (likely humanized mice models).

The second part in bold means that they will be producing infectious virus starting from nucleic acids (something I have done with adenovirus in a P2 lab) https://www.virology.ws/2009/02/12/infectious-dna-clones/

The third part implies that they will test the divergence limits, which could mean that they will see how far the sequence must diverge before they get efficient infections in humans ("spillover").

The description of this research is concerning.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7859469/

Quote

The data currently available are not sufficient to firmly assert whether SARS-CoV2 results from a zoonotic emergence or from an accidental escape of a laboratory strain. This question needs to be solved because it has important consequences on the risk/benefit balance of our interactions with ecosystems, on intensive breeding of wild and domestic animals, on some laboratory practices and on scientific policy and biosafety regulations.

In bold is the conclusion we should all have in our minds.

Edited April 6, 2021 by KerikBalm

[KerikBalm]

Another good article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7703598/

Quote

Even though strong opinions abound, none of these scenarios can be confidently ruled in or ruled out with currently available facts. Just because there are no public reports of more immediate, proximal ancestors in natural hosts, doesn’t mean that these ancestors don’t exist in natural hosts or that COVID-19 didn’t began as a spillover event. Nor does it mean that they have not been recovered and studied, or deliberately recombined in a laboratory.

Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again. Rather than resorting to hunches or finger-pointing, each scenario must be systematically and objectively analyzed using the best available science-based approaches. There is a path to greater clarity. It requires scientific rigor, forensic approaches, deliberate methods, transparency, and cooperation.

In an effort to reveal the origins of the pandemic, researchers so far have focused on the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence. However, the sequence of the pandemic virus tells us only so much. First, the closest known relatives, RaTG13 and RmYN02, are not that close (4). Second, there is probably more than one recent ancestral lineage that contributes to SARS-CoV-2 because its genome shows evidence of recombination between different parental viruses. In nature, recombination is common among coronaviruses. But it’s also common in some research laboratories where recombinant engineering is used to study those viruses. The bottom line is simple: We need to identify the immediate parent(s) of SARS-CoV-2, and they’re missing.

We need to keep up the search, we would be remiss if we just said it was a natural spillover, case closed, and forget about further investigation. Even if it turns out to be a natural spillover, we still need to find out how it happened.

Closing off further investigation is just negligent.

*edit*, update, more suspicious activity:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_investigation_into_the_WIV_databases_that_were_taken_offline

They have shut off access to their database, which contained sequences of unpublished viruses. The existence of unpublished virus sequences pulls the rug out of the WHO assertion that there are no reports of viruses close to SARS-CoV-2, because they had a huge array of unpublished viruses at the lab. Publicly availanble information shows that they were characterizing "new" viruses in humanized mice, and in cell culture of various species.

Edited April 6, 2021 by KerikBalm

[DDE]

13 hours ago, MKI said:

That's the thing with all conspiracy theories, they are essentially impossible to "disprove", which means if you believe hard enough in them, and search hard enough to believe, you can end up believing almost anything. Usually this means finding more "evidence" to support the claim, rather than evidence to firmly disprove the currently accepted claim.

Hey! The lack of evidence for my claims are because They covered it up, and any evidence against my claims are Their machinations!

Who's They?

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

On 4/2/2021 at 10:13 PM, DDE said:

the "perfect storm" of initial occurence in Wuhan just before Chinese New Year

could indicate a lack of discipline and sloppiness in anticipation of coming holidays and gifting rush.

Then somebody just suddenly drops a wet cloth in a bucket instead of killing it with fire.
A janitor dumps the bucket thinking it's safe, then goes to the food market.

They should look at the schedule of janitor shifts. Who got ill that week.

Edited April 6, 2021 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

could indicate a lack of discipline and sloppiness in anticipation of coming holidays and gifting rush.

If only that reminded me of something.

[cubinator]

I am feeling a bit of an immune response to my vaccine today, about 3/4 day after I got the injection. It feels just like a mild cold, plus my shoulder is a little sore when I lift it. I expect it'll go away tomorrow.

[DDE]

Welp... it's hapenned. Looks like Yakutia is going to start fining companies that don't suspend employees who refuse to vaccinate. The official statement is garbled, but it's being widely interpreted as the beginning of a compulsory vaccination program.

https://www.sakha.gov.ru/news/front/view/id/3274402

[MKI]

11 hours ago, DDE said:

Welp... it's hapenned. Looks like Yakutia is going to start fining companies that don't suspend employees who refuse to vaccinate. The official statement is garbled, but it's being widely interpreted as the beginning of a compulsory vaccination program.

https://www.sakha.gov.ru/news/front/view/id/3274402

Are the pre-existing requirements of some capacity in Russia for vaccination for other things?

I know in the US most public schools require kids to be vaccinated for stuff like polio and measles to be admitted. Its the only reason why measles and polio basically don't exist anymore, at least in the US. 

[kerbiloid]

The children are made of vaccines.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://www.mulamb.ru/personal/natsionalnyy-kalendar-profilakticheskikh-privivok.php

[KerikBalm]

Nobody commented on this?

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

It is looking really implausible that a natural spillover happened, while a lab leak remains plausible

[Beccab]

43 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Nobody commented on this?

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

It is looking really implausible that a natural spillover happened, while a lab leak remains plausible

What? From the very article you linked:

"the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely”"

[KerikBalm]

12 hours ago, Beccab said:

What? From the very article you linked:

"the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely”"

I must question if you read the whole thing [snip]

Right before the part you quoted was: "Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident,"

and right after the part you quoted was: "Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5)"

The point is that the WHO report's conclusions were not justified or based upon any actual evidence. Furthermore there is a more subtle jab near the end: 

"A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest."

Because the WHO team had major conflicts of interest. Half the team was Chinese (it was a joint Chinese-WHO report, rather than a WHO only report), and on the WHO part of the team you had people who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute on coronavirus research, or obtaining funding from Chinese sources.

The takeaway from that letter should be that the WHO report's conclusions are not fact and evidence based, the report is deeply compromised by conflicts of interest and bias.

In short, the reports conclusion is only usefull if you print it out, because then you can use the paper to wipe your butt.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Vanamonde

[Beccab]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

I must question if you read the whole thing, or if you have a reading comprehension problem (indeed many forum users are not native english speakers).

Right before the part you quoted was: "Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident,"

and right after the part you quoted was: "Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5)"

The point is that the WHO report's conclusions were not justified or based upon any actual evidence. Furthermore there is a more subtle jab near the end: 

"A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest."

Because the WHO team had major conflicts of interest. Half the team was Chinese (it was a joint Chinese-WHO report, rather than a WHO only report), and on the WHO part of the team you had people who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute on coronavirus research, or obtaining funding from Chinese sources.

The takeaway from that letter should be that the WHO report's conclusions are not fact and evidence based, the report is deeply compromised by conflicts of interest and bias.

In short, the reports conclusion is only usefull if you print it out, because then you can use the paper to wipe your butt.

I read the whole thing, yes. I was questioning where exactly you saw the fact that a natural spillover was "extremely unlikely" while only the lab leak was "plausible", given that nothing in the article you mentioned or in the quotes you posted supports any of that

Edited June 2, 2021 by Beccab

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens | Nature

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence | Nature Medicine - posted because the bat-human crossover potential was known in 2015, and being studied in CN.

Bat origin of human coronaviruses | Virology Journal | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)

Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus (nih.gov)

These kinds of pre- 2018 articles put forth support both for a natural cross-over, as well as acknowledge the potential for a lab-leak.  I find it highly unlikely that COVID-19 was a crafted/weaponized strain.  Again, following the 'when you hear hooves, think horses - not zebras' philosophy... accidents happen.  To suspect nefariousness when mere incompetence is most likely?  Not the wisest course.

Lest we forget: these kinds of accidents are not exclusive to paranoid hermit kingdoms who resent foreign intrusion and have no free press

Newly disclosed CDC biolab failures 'like a screenplay for a disaster movie' (usatoday.com)

[Vanamonde]

Some comments removed. Don't make it personal, please. 

[mikegarrison]

All of a sudden this is getting massive play in multiple forums I participate in.

It seems pretty clear that the virus (or some precursor) has a natural reservoir in bats in China. Whether it crossed into the human population via zoonotic transmission directly or via a lab accident studying zoonotic viruses, what's the difference?

If it was a lab accident, does that mean we don't have to worry about viruses from animals? Because no, we definitely do have to worry about viruses from animals.

Or if it was not a lab accident, does that mean we don't need to worry about lab accidents? Because no, we definitely do need to worry about lab accidents.

So ... why does it matter?