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by throwanem
2255 days ago
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Can we please cite something a little more substantive than random Youtube videos made by people with no apparent familiarity with the fields of endeavor they're trying to report on? I mean, I don't doubt the guy's good intentions, but this is like if I were trying to make a technical argument about the physics of string theory. |
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-A lot of chinese papers have been published through the years on the topic, during multiples waves of sample collection over all the chinese mainland. Showing there was/is a notable interest about this pathogen issue.
-One can also easily spot which research center were/are the most active on the topic and its related research teams. Wuhan research center is not excluded from the list as some others main big labs.
-Each entry sequence in the database is dated with a location, publishing team and associated paper. It is useful for following the pathogen evolution building phylogeny trees.
-Aligning a lot of sequences clearly show that this strain is separated from the rest of the others mains strain. The only related sequences are the one released by the chinese team.
-The closest related sequences are 2013 year dated and other from 2015/2017/2019, which per se does not provide a lot of information about the real pathogen evolution.
-The different gain of function that this pathogen got compared to its predecessors is quite remarkable and hard to overlook.
-The overall AT/GC sequence content have also evolved from its predecessors showing rich AT content that is generally related to higher host habit and expression.
So yeah, knowing china is not smiley kind shaped, one can still question the research and lab habit as one would do for any other country. A theory based on excessive and unregulated animal sampling could have exacerbated the real cross-transmission issue is as valid as the one about pathogen leaking from the lab or simply by natural evolution.
Anyway one can clearly take a moment to question the overall package, along the safety lab practices deployed around the world when dealing with potential pathogens.