[tbenst]

No, it is not a coincidence.

There are a lot of bats in Wuhan. There are a lot of bats carrying coronaviruses. Coronaviruses have triggered past epidemics. Ergo, there’s an institute for virology in Wuhan.

Listen starting at 6:30 in the podcast I posted from Nature. There is indeed strong correlation but no causal relationship established.

[SpaceRaccoon]

> There are a lot of bats in Wuhan.

Except everything I've read indicates the bats carrying the most closely related virus are not in Wuhan, not even close:

> The SARS-CoV-2 virus is most closely related to coronaviruses found in certain populations of horseshoe bats that live about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Yunnan province, China. [0]

[0] https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicate...

So why would the virus so strongly appear to originate in Wuhan, and not in another city, closer to the bats' native regions? Appears quite statistically unlikely.

[tbenst]

What you’re saying is all possible. But there’s no evidence to support leak from a lab, and there is a lot of evidence supporting the natural spillover hypothesis. As such, the latter interpretation is more likely to be correct.

For example, there were cases as early as December 2019 that did not come from Wuhan. Wuhan was no doubt a key early hotspot.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market...

There has been rigorous scholarship done on this question. I recommend reading it given your interest in the subject.

[SpaceRaccoon]

Thanks for the link.

I read the article, but it only states that the first case from December was not linked to the seafood market ("wet market"), but not that it occurred outside of Wuhan. Did I misread something?

By the way, early on I believed that the virus jumped to humans at the seafood market, which was the prevailing theory at the time, it seemed. But as evidence like the above article came out - noting that many early cases had no link to the seafood market, while still being in Wuhan - it raised suspicions, and lent credence to the lab-leak theory.

> There has been rigorous scholarship done on this question. I recommend reading it given your interest in the subject.

I do, but I'm not convinced. A lot of reporting either relies on appeal to authority ("I'm a PhD, and this couldn't possibly happen, so don't question it"), or is purposely obtuse, confusing lab-leak with lab-synthesized, and by dodging the point, hardly alleviates suspicion.

You must understandably excuse me for being a sceptic. I started wearing masks back in February or March, against the advice of the CDC who was telling me masks increase the rate of spread. At the same time I believed that borders should be closed to limit the rate of spread, while the WHO was telling me that closing borders would do no such thing.

So I am not going to believe something just because an expert tells me to, nor do I find it at all scientific to dismiss politically inconvenient possibilities.

[tbenst]

No you didn’t misread, I did, my apologies. And I appreciate your skepticism! While responding to you I did a lot more reading, and I’m more sympathetic to the possibility of “lab leak” than when we started discussing. Ultimately this needs a transparent investigation to resolve, but as it stands the data best supports a natural spillover hypothesis. But I regret the extent to which I characterized this as a foregone conclusion.

[caminante]

The study also calls into question information reported by Chinese authorities.

>The Lancet paper’s data also raise questions about the accuracy of the initial information China provided, Lucey says.

If anything, this source strengthens the possibility of lab leak hypothesis.

[caminante]

> For example, there were cases as early as December 2019 that did not come from Wuhan.

No.

This isn't deducible from the article YOU linked!

Not having a link to the seafood marketplace in Wuhan != originating from outside Wuhan.

> The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers

> Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace.

> the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December.

[Enginerrrd]

The article that you linked, if anything, offers more support for a lab leak.

Chiefly, it says that there is evidence that not only did the virus NOT originate from an animal source in the seafood market, but they suggest that Chinese officials knew that it did NOT originate in the Market, yet they issued statements saying that it did anyway.