[EA_itsinthegame]

The Proximal paper was used by Chinese disinformation bots to skelch any debate about a lab leak. I take that as a Streisand effect. Same when Fauci strongly and publically rebuked the Indian bioinformatics pre-print paper talking of the GP-120 HIV inserts. That is how I came to know about those inserts and their interesting history.

So strangely, the grossly unscientific propaganda effort that was the Proximal Origins paper may have had the reverse effects, at least, it had on me.

Anyone contributing to this virology conspiracy (why they were put in charge to lead the investigation and theory building, and not the way more qualified biosecurity experts?), including voluntarily, like Angie Rasmussen, has Chinese propaganda tainted blood on their hands.

[xadhominemx]

What’s your scientific criticism of the paper?

[fortuna86]

Also, it's not either/or. COVID could have come from nature, captured and studied in a lab, then escaped.

[warning26]

Considering this literally happened before at the Wuhan lab (among a group of sample collectors), this is, I think, the most likely scenario.

[fortuna86]

I agree. What is the previous case you mentioned, do you have a citation ?

[warning26]

Ah, of course! I was thinking of this incident specifically, though it seems I remembered the details wrong; the miners who died seemingly did so before the WIV got involved:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

> From 2012 to 2015, WIV researchers identified as many as 293 coronaviruses in and around the mine. (...) The institute in November 2020 disclosed the existence of eight other "SARS-type" coronavirus samples taken from the site.

[fortuna86]

> Since the middle of last year, Li's postgraduate thesis has been circulated online as purported evidence that a coronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 could have been infecting humans as early as 2012.

> Some also believe the paper provides circumstantial evidence for broader allegations that WIV had captured, studied and conducted "gain of function" experiments on viruses found in the mine, including RaTG13.

Wow, thank you I haven't seen this before. If true, that's smoking gun stuff.

[ikrenji]

not for wuhan but lab workers got infected with coronaviruses in the past...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

[shadowgovt]

Indeed. It could also have come from nature and while it was being studied in the lab, a similar strain made a jump to humans.

[fortuna86]

Yes but in that case, why would it emerge in Wuhan, hundreds of miles away from Southern China, where Coronaviruses actually exist in nature ?

[mikeyouse]

I'm not sure where people developed this idea that coronaviruses don't exist near Wuhan. I've corrected it like a dozen times in this thread, but there are absolutely horseshoe bats in Hubei and there are absolutely coronaviruses in those bats -- including some close ancestors to SarsCov2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711/figures/1

See the RF1 and RM1 in the bottom chart? Sars-like bat coronaviruses from Hubei Province!

[fortuna86]

Thanks for the correction. So some coronaviruses have been found in nature in Hubei, but surely in rural areas correct? Why would the center of a dense city like Wuhan be the epicenter for an outbreak (according to the official story a wet market that contained no bats walking distance from the Wuhan laboratory), and not an area where bats exist?

[shadowgovt]

Vehicular transportation is quite fast these days.

[xadhominemx]

Did you click on the link and read the thread?