[albinofrenchy]

The article addresses this very point. I have 0 trust in the CCP to do or say anything not in it's own interest, but on the whole the "They found a novel virus in the wild, sampled it, and then it escaped their lab" seems a lot less likely than "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick".

[mandmandam]

> "Some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, and got sick".

More like, "some random person ran across a novel virus in the wild, a thousand miles from the nearest bat population, while they were hibernating; and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses, and didn't let independent examiners in for a year, even then limiting their time and access severely."

[mikem170]

There's evidence pointing to an origin 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on sampled early cases and genetic sequencing.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[twobitshifter]

That research presupposes that the virus came from bats to uses this to draw the conclusion that a more bat like variant found elsewhere is the origin point - however researchers know that COVID binds more tightly to human cells that both bat and pangolin, and more strongly to pangolin than bat.

https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-find-covid-19-virus-was...

“The computer modelling found the virus’s ability to bind to the bat ACE2 protein was poor relative to its ability to bind human cells. This argues against the virus being transmitted directly from bats to humans. Hence, if the virus has a natural source, it could only have come to humans via an intermediary species which has yet to be found,”

[mikem170]

I don't think that the source I quoted was saying that the virus jumped directly from bats to humans. I believe they were attempting to track mutations from the closest currently known/sequenced genetic relative, which happened to be that bat virus.

I don't think that changes my point in bringing this up, that it is not a foregone conclusion that Wuhan was the location of the first human infections, that in fact there is some genetic evidence pointing in other directions.

> Asked if his ongoing research should quash speculation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, Forster is circumspect. "It's not black and white. All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."

Full disclosure: I've be made aware of papers pointing out that Forster's methodologies may be unreliable, that the gap between bat and human viruses are too large to say definitively which varient of the human virus is older. But I don't think this materially changes the fact that his paper casts a good bit of doubt on Wuhan being the location of the first human infections, showing that there may be evidence to the contrary in his collected and sequenced genetic samples. He admits that himself in the same article:

> "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't have many samples from the early phase," he says. "But it seems to me we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wuhan when looking for the origin." [0]

The source you quote jives with what I have read in other places, that there are still missing pieces to this puzzle.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[Maursault]

>and this all just happened to be within a few miles of a laboratory with sketchy safety history that literally studies coronaviruses

If the argument is:

1) a lab was built in Wuhan that studied coronaviruses, then a global coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan

2) Therefore the lab caused the global pandemic

then it is a fallacious argument.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

[blast]

That's not the argument. Nobody's pretending that propositional logic can decide this. It's a question of how to weight empirical evidence. Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses, especially since concerns had been raised about unsafe conditions there.

[mikem170]

But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuhan [0], based on genetic sequencing of collected samples from infected people:

> In a recent paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Forster reported he found three main strains of the virus that he labeled A, B and C.

> His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan.

> Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types.

It doesn't seem fair to assume this originated in Wuhan. Instead the Wuhan markets may have been the first super-spreader site.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[forcry]

>But there's evidence that it emerged 600 miles south of Wuh..

I see you repeat this all around this thread. Can you show me where it says evidence is for emergence?

[mikem170]

I was replying to a post that said "Some people think it's relevant that a new coronavirus emerged next door to a lab working on new coronaviruses".

There's that word "emerged" (in reference to Wuhan) that you pointed out that I also used in my post. I was replying, with a supporting source, that this is not a certainty.

From the source I quoted earlier [0]:

> "I would be a bit careful about pinpointing a place (of origin), because we don't have many samples from the early phase," he says. "But it seems to me we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wuhan when looking for the origin."

> Asked if his ongoing research should quash speculation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, Forster is circumspect. "It's not black and white. All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."

I've repeated this because it seems to be a common misconception that the virus first appeared in Wuhan when in fact there is some evidence to the contrary.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[canoebuilder]

There is a wide literature on this at this point. Please don’t make conclusive statements that also indicate you don’t have the faintest bit of background in what you are talking about.

At this point, this is not a complete black box, “novel virus.” There is a scientific understanding of the virus. There are known related viruses in the wild, just not anywhere near Wuhan. There are multi-pathway paper trails linking this class of viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the people working there.

I don’t mean to be too harsh on you, the media environment around all this has been so bizarre, how various waves of suppression have ebbed and flowed. But if you’ve known where to look, are an independent thinker, not one who just repeats what the large media bullhorns are trumpeting, and can connect dots for yourself, there’s been discussion, discourse, evidence gathering of the very likely source of this virus since the beginning.

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal swipes and flamewar in HN threads. It leads to hell and discredits the position you're arguing for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[albinofrenchy]

> At this point, this is not a complete black box, “novel virus.”

Not sure why you insist on being pedantic on word choice here. It obviously isn't a novel virus at this point; but it was in 2019 -- or whenever WIV would have found it.

I'd also bet dollars to donuts you have no experience in virology apart from participating in online forums. Which I don't think is any kind of point against you; but it makes it weird when you come out swinging with "you don’t have the faintest bit of background in what you are talking about."

> I don’t mean to be too harsh on you, the media environment around all this has been so bizarre, how various waves of suppression have ebbed and flowed. But if you’ve known where to look, are an independent thinker, not one who just repeats what the large media bullhorns are trumpeting, and can connect dots for yourself, there’s been discussion, discourse, evidence gathering of the very likely source of this virus since the beginning.

I laughed out loud at this. If this is satire it was really well done.

[dang]

Please don't respond to a bad comment, or a provocation in a comment, by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only takes us deeper into hell. We're trying to avoid that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[canoebuilder]

Quote marks can be easily misinterpreted, I was just using the phrase you used, my bad.

“Faintest bit of background” Meaning, your two competing hypotheses leave out pretty much everything that is known at this point, not an academic credential or such, just a basic reading on the known facts at this point.

“Natural origin” was the leading hypothesis from the start more than a year ago. At this point, there is no evidence for it, there is substantial evidence against it, and the pile of circumstantial evidence for the Wuhan lab being the source is a mile high.