[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-...

[peytn]

Hmm, I’m looking at the Forster paper and I don’t see where they wrote that the origin might not be Wuhan.

Unless it’s peer-reviewed and published, I’m not going to count it as evidence. As far as I can see, you’re citing one dude’s speculations. Unless somebody’s followed up on those speculations in the past year, I’m not sure there’s a case here.

[forcry]

>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.

To be frank, that article is speculation, because they assume a certain variant to be the "founding variant" because of its similarity to existing/known virus. It looks like a bit of circular reasoning to me.