Covid origins: Genetic ghosts suggest pandemic started in market
A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.
They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.
The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.
Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.
The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.
...
Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid's early days.
I know this is off topic, but - why didn't anyone tell me there's a species called a raccoon dog?!
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-are-raccoon-dogs/
Look up some of the Japanese lore about Tanuki (the Japanese name for the raccoon dog). It involves magic, giant scrotums, and all sorts of delightful stuff.
If you like anime, Studio Ghibli (famous for a lot of classics including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and others) did a movie called Pom Poko, which is about tanuki. If you don't care for subtitles, the English dub is pretty good, and the voice cast stars a lot of well known (for the time) American actors.
what the what
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-tanuki-japan-s-trickster-god
I will always upvote a Ghibli recommendation!
You might know of the tanuki, which is specifically the Japanese raccoon dog.
I didn't know about that one either!
If you’ve ever played Super Mario Bros 3 (or other Mario games where this same suit is found) there’s a Tanooki suit, which is the one that lets you fly!
The raccoon tail lets you fly. The Tanooki suit lets you turn into a statue, but also happens to have a raccoon tail so it also lets you fly.
Ahh yes, the opposite of flying. Thanks for the correction!
There's also a tanuki critter in world of warcraft
You were told. You just didn’t listen.
Oy!
Wasn't this known already? Weren't there all kinds of discussions about shutting down wet markets because of this?
There's a bunch of indications / conspiracy theories that it might have been a lab leak. Basically there's not really a way to know unless the Chinese government starts being more forthcoming with information.
The main reason the conspiracy theory started is because the city where it started had a world renowned virus research facility in it.
Of course, the reason the facility is there in the first place is because Wuhan province is a place where a lot of viruses originate naturally (in bat colonies), so it makes sense you research the viruses close to their natural reservoir.
This is disingenuous. RaTG13 was sourced in Tongguan in Mojiang Hani Autonomous County 1800km from Wuhan.
... what? Bats are virus factories due to how their biology/immune system works. They opened a lab in Wuhan to study any novel viruses coming out of the local bat population. That's what that person is referencing. Your counter is basically a non sequitar.
My point is that the word local is both incorrect and misleading. Bats from 1800km away are not local.
I don't have any information to add one way or the other, but it kinda sounds like you're saying the fact that one bat-bourne illness was found elsewhere, it's impossible that Wuhan has many or any such viruses too, which seems pretty fallacious.
No. Its pretty fallacious to imply WIV was only looking at local bats.
The wuhan area certainty has many viruses, but none were anywhere close to the sample found 1800 km away, which WIV certainty had a copy of because they sequenced it.
I don't think anyone said they were only looking at local viri. The original comment said (emphasis mine)
So Wuhan was ideal because it's where a lot of viri originate. That doesn't imply they only looked at viri from nearby just that the location was chosen because there were so many nearby.
The prior paragraph is also important
Left on its own this implies that the lab is the source. However, the next paragraph counters that view. It erroneously implies the local area is full of bats and their species hopping coronaviruses. Not even "China's Bat Woman" thinks that is likely:-
“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir.
Yeah but the US media was too busy implying that China manufactured the virus in a bio lab.
Funnily enough China still suffered because it failed to lock down early enough because the government tried to ignore and detain doctors in an effort to control the narrative that everything would be fine.
The US suffered because they nuked their Pandemic emergency pla only like a few years before covid because Trump thought Spanish Fever wouldn't reincarnate to finish the job on its 100th anniversary lol.
So it was easy to vaguely point at China instead of actually solving the problem.
I don't know what US media you were consuming in 2020/21, but it was pretty much understood it came from something exotic in a wet market.
Most of us didn't know what a wet market existed or what it was until COVID. There was some conspiracy shit that the right ate up, and some editorial and opinions on the idea, but the whole bioengineered super virus escaping a lab wasn't taken that seriously
Excellent evidence why there is such a battle over misinformation.
Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
I do recall that story. What I don't get is why the intelligence agencies had any say in the likely origin. It's not a factor of "if the virus was in a lab." It could have been. The fact is that even back then when they had the virus sequenced, they could clearly see it came from a zoonotic source, probably the same one with SARS.
The thing that irked me so bad about it is that it highlights the discrepancy between science and suspicion. Think of how vital DNA has been to crime prosecutions or exonerations. The same thing applies here.
If it did originate during the development of a bioweapon then you would want the intelligence agencies to be as informed as possible. Thankfully none believe that to be the case.
Yes. 96% zoonotic. It's that latest 4% that is of interest. Particularly the fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction.
Wasn't this disproven already? Covid has been detected in human waste matter samples from Autumn 2019 in Italy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8778320/
I don't really understand what this is actually saying?
Surely, if this were saying "covid started in italy" or "covid was around in 2019" that would rate more song and dance than a single obscure research paper?
There's a lot more than a single obscure research paper but that's the best one in terms of science in my opinion. It was quite broadly covered news (in Europe at least?) when the virus was first found in waste water samples from Milan from the same period.
We knew it was in Europe before 2020 all the way back in June 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J8/
By November 2020 it was pushed back as far as September 2019: https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-17/COVID-19-was-spreading-in-Italy-by-September-2019-study-indicates-VuSqUttP8s/index.html
As someone else replied, it isn't saying Covid started in Italy, but rather that it definitely didn't start because someone ate bat soup from a wet market in Wuhan in December 2019. Well, the science is just stating as a fact that Covid was in these samples from Italy in 2019. Everything else is inferred.
It was 2020. We had people shouting about "the China Virus" and others defending the cultural importance of wet markets and others saying it was a bioweapon from a lab and others saying it didn't exist at all.
It seemed to suit absolutely nobody's narrative that
Off topic, but “Genetic Ghosts” would be a sweet band name. I’d go see them.
I thought the same. What kind of music do you reckon they'd play?
They’d be the opposite of religious metal, probably be like some chipper disney sounding shit with dark realistic themes.
I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I find the confidence that is used in the defense of this origin just as Shakey as the lab leak theory.
The lab location and research done means there is a lot of potential incentive for the Chinese government, the lab and even researchers in the field to not have it be a lab leak... As this would potentially cause an entire (important) field of study and their methods be regulated into oblivion by poorly written knee jerk laws.
I'm fine with this as the accepted consensus on the subject, but I'll keep my reservations for whatever good those do me.
So how's the abolishing of wet markets going? And the reduction of antibiotics use in industrial scale farming?
We'll never hear the true story thanks to geopolitics.
Frankly, the lab leak theory IMO is the most plausible. There are wet markets all over China and have been for....ever? I get that nobody can really predict a zoonotic crossover event, but they were literally experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses in Wuhan at the time of the initial outbreak.
People have been saying for decades before covid that the wet markets were a ticking time bomb. There has probably been viral outbreaks in the past, but the local population could have died off before it spread.
I think a lab leak of a natural virus is plausible, but irrelevant.
I think lax saftey when experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses is very relevant.
Either improve the protocols or don't experiment.
There's a difference between lax safety and conspiracy to engineer a bioweapon. The main motivator of people pushing the Lab Leak conspiracy is that they want some villain to blame all this on.
Not bioweapons. Covid isn't dangerous enough.
The prime conspiracy theory target is Anthony Fauci because some EcoHealth Alliance / NIH coronaviruses bat funding went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But you don't need to subscribe to the Fauci Supervillan theory to suspect an accidental lab leak. China has already had 3 (2004, 2016, 2020) in this list. Pointing this out is not sino bashing (look at the number of US incidents). Accidental lab leaks happen all too regularly.
Back to an earlier point you made, how is it relevant that it was an accidental lab leak anymore? It's China, they've either made better safe guards against possible break outs or made superficial changes for appearances. The international community can't punish them for an accident that also hurt themselves. Hell, we can't seem to keep their coast guard from ramming other ships.
Accidental lab leaks unfortunately happen. What is still relevant are the implications. The existence of the virus itself and it's cover up are the problem.
The cover up
Mainstream media labeled anyone who mentioned the lab as a racist conspiracy theorists. Commenting on social media resulted in censorship.
WHO "invesigation" and Peter Daszak investigating himself.
Deletion of data from the WIV website.
Chinese closed policy and destruction of evidence.
No questioning science
Nature published a peer review saying that a lab origin was impossible.
Scientists hypothesising about lab origins were ostracised.
Source of the virus
In the wild, the nearest documented virus is 96% similar. Where have the 4% changes in the leaked version come from?
Have these 4% changes come from purposeful gain of function research?
Gain of function research in the US was banned in 2014. Did research stop or did funding just move countries?
Where else is secret GoF research being conducted? Is there sufficient saftey and oversight?
Bioweapon is also a strawman in this case, he did not say that.
In gain of function research more virulent strains are made to study and find cures against. So we have a better understanding of how these viruses mutate, what makes them tick and how we can disrupt that.
Noone would intentionally set something like that loose.
There are definitely people saying that covid was an engineered bioweapon and the people saying that have a huge overlap with the people saying that it was a lab leak. Conspiracy theorists need a villain with a plan to make sense of the work and that's why the lab leak theory keeps coming up.
I'd more think accidentally if anything. And more obvious is just medical research.
Avian and swine industries have been around for... ever?
And causing human zoonosis for that whole time
Sure, and they all result in zoonotic illness.
I still believe it isn't that far fetched that they disposed some kind of experiment/test from the labs on the market...
They also have incentive for the origin not to be a live animal market that they very publicly had claimed to have already shut down.
It’s equally embarrassing either way, so the embarrassment proves nothing.
Equally embarrassing? Doubtful. One is a market which can be blamed on illegal activity even after being shut down and 'little' people arrested. One represents Chinas first foray into LVL 4 containment bio research and cost billions to build and government officials would have to be held accountable and foreign science assistance to that research program likely cuts off... I'm not pleading the case of a conspiracy theory here, but the lab's proximity to the outbreak is incredibly suspect.
Why does it have to be equally embarrassing? It just has to be embarrassing enough that they’d take steps to conceal it. Which they did. It doesn’t have to be the most embarrassing situation, just one of the ones that would spur them to act.
But they did shut it down and they did arrest people and they even seized and incinerated every animal at the market without taking samples or even identifying and logging the species.
On the other hand they didn’t shut down WIV, or really do anything to it at all.
It’s 8km away, across a river.
My point is they had a vested interest in the scapegoat excuse. The market is a mild embarassment compared to a possible containment breach. Not taking samples of the meat and cataloging everything actually compounds the scenario. Also if for example a CDC or USAMRIID site was 'only' 8 km away from an outbreak of a disease they were studying, it would trigger a full on investigation and full genetic comparison. Also they would be looking at any scientist as a vector. People live near where they work. Someone accidentally exposed could easily carry out daily activity in the vicinity while contagious.
Ok, and I asked you why that matters. And you haven’t said.
Well, but no, it doesn’t. For instance the CDC’s Enteric Diseases lab is in Atlanta, Georgia; it hosts the largest tissue collection of foodborne disease isolates in the world. If you were ever hospitalized for listeriosis in the United States, a sample of your disease isolate is probably located in a freezer there.
And also people periodically get food poisoning from Atlanta restaurants. About 12 a year, let’s say.
So every one of those food poisoning cases happens within 8 km of the largest food poisoning lab in the United States. Do you know how often they investigate whether the isolate leaked from the CDC lab?
Literally never. Not ever. Because there’s no reason to, because people getting a disease near where the disease is studied is not statistically significant in any way.
I've been thinking how to best respond to you at this point after looking at some of your response history. I can't tell if you revel in pedantry or are just a troll. So I'll give it one more go. I LITERALLY (since I know you like to poke holes in people using this word) state in the sentence you quote that the PROC has a vested interest in a scapegoat excuse of a wet market that they "embarassingly" (full air quotes) didn't quite shut down vs. a leak from their only LVL 4 lab that relies on international support. Oh and the little matter of saving face by blaming a world wide pandemic on random chance vs. their own negligence.
If you are really asking why that matters, let me spell it out: One embarassment is not the same as the other. They are orders of magnitude apart. Not to mention my other comment that their destruction of evidence and refusal to investigate applies even more suspicion and logically undermines their prevailing explaination of the wet market. the PROC certainly has more embarassing things like Tofu Dregs that they also have been unable to stop due to corruption, and largely the international community doesn't care, but feels bad for the populace who have their lives or life savings destroyed. Do you believe that wet markets which have been a known to the west for ages and China's inability to stop a populace with a cultural connection to them is so embarassing as to "cover it all up" and do so pretty visibly on the international stage>? So much for embarassing when they have a tight lock on news that gets out! I don't believe a rational person can say yes to that.
So the strawman argument it is. Let me quickly rip this to shreds:
Lysteria is a Biosafety Level 2 disease, endemic in that it shows up from time to time nationwide, and is unlikely to cause a ruckus. They do, however, profile it gentically when there's an outbreak, so right there they do investigate. But this is still not equivalent and is a straw man of a disease that people would consider "common" and outside of the poor souls impacted, pretty uneventful...
If a novel virus like airborn Coronavirus, which is a Biosafety Level 3 agent, were to be found in patient zero 8km from a CDC facility studying it, it would trigger a political uproar and investigation. It might get buried with national security, but we all know what that means (much like the military grade anthrax that somehow showed up in envelopes in target politician mailboxes). So your fake equivalence isn't holding up. If an outbreak of Lymes disease broke out near a CDC facility, it's unlikely to trigger a panic or investigation. Dengue is LVL 2 containment and is rare enough currently in the US that it might cause concern and investigation. An oubreak of an uncommonly found disease near a CDC facility like Lassa is going to be of interest. We've investigated CDC leaks before and those didn't even trigger events. So your "literally" wrong about "literally never".
Oh, and here's a "checkmate athiests!" on this for you (only joking - there's no clear evidence yet, but my point is that the PROC is suspect): While politically charged, the house oersight on COVID Origins Hearing Wrap Up: Facts, Science, Evidence Point to a Wuhan Lab Leak is of interest. There's a bunch of idiotic bullshit red vs. blue in there, but I'll leave this gem of an outtake:
and the BBC has Covid: Top Chinese scientist says don’t rule out lab leak indicating the PROC investigated themselves and gave their own lab a thumbs up (without that Lab's participation) and then kept those result secret.
In the absence of evidence, we can draw no complete conclusion. But leaking a pandemic causing virus from your only LVL 4 containment lab and saving face by destroying evidence, running a sham investigation that you ALSO cover up seem real problematic in the toxic brew of strict governmental control by PROC on journalists and information, plus a long history of cultural and government corruption. That's my central thesis and nothing you have stated has refuted this possibility or how a wet market is more likely given both scenarios lack the same evidence. There you have it. I doubt I'm going go convince you that the whole thing is suspect, but any scientist should conclude that it's a possibility there was a lab leak. I doubt you can conclusively prove that the wet market was the cause when there are thousands of them in china for years before and after the pandemic.
The lab that made COVID wasn't in China. It was in Kansas City.
You’re thinking of the “Spanish” flu.
Eating animals causes pandemics from zoonotic diseases. More at 11.
You don't even need to eat them; just being in close proximity to them and interacting with them is enough.
On the other hands, cows, chickens, and humans came together to create a smallpox vaccine, so there's that at least.
Yes, it’s just that eating animals has a distinct history of causing horrible pandemics in humans. See e.g. the 1918 H1N1 pandemic which killed tens of millions and was likely started by hogs or chickens farmed in rural Kansas, swine flu which killed hundreds of thousands and whose name speaks for itself, and COVID-19 which killed millions and is well-understood to have originated in a wet market.
Besides all the other reasons that it's terrible, animal agriculture is a hotbed for transmitting zoonotic diseases to humans and combining existing human diseases with animal ones.
And god forbid you should fuck them.
Points to the bar. "You see this bar? I built this bar with my bare hands from the finest wood in the county. Gave it more love and care than my own child. But do they call me MacGregor the bar builder? No."
Points out the window. "You see that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands. Found every stone, placed them just so through the rain and the cold. But do they call me MacGregor the stone wall builder? No."
Points out the window. "You see that pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands. Drove the pilings against the tide of the sand, plank by plank. But do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? No.
But you fuck one bat ...
And suddenly it's "Patient Zero" this, "Patient Zero" that...
Being near live animals is more dangerous.
Would have far less human/animal face time if we didn't eat so much of them, don't you think?
Face time probably isn't the main factor.
If we didn't eat so many birds and swine then there would be less animals in close quarters and less chance of new bird/swine flus developing.
No doubt that's a factor. Implied in my comment (though maybe not well conveyed) is that there would be far fewer animals in captivity if we didn't eat them.
But what we're concerned about in the OP and the thread is zoonotic diseases that affect humans. Those surely wouldn't infect humans at the rate we see today if we weren't raising them for food and therefore in close proximity to them.
Agreed. And un(der)regulated capitalism multiplies this by forcing cramped, low cost living conditions for animals.
As someone currently down with covid I thought that was state of knowledge long time ago.
Conspiracy theorists have still been spreading the lab leak theory without proof for awhile now because China is the current scary boogeyman. I get that there was lab there studying these diseases, but guessing isn't how science works, and the wet markets have been known to be a possible source of diseases for a long time now by scientists. I remember warnings about this scenario coming up awhile ago.
Lot of diseases come from China probably for similar reasons: it's crowded and close contacts with lots of animals. No one thought the 1956 flu could be a lab leak, or SARS, or H7N9, etc. People just have conspiracy theories about this one because it turned into the biggest pandemic of them all, which is just the roll of the dice of all the diseases coming out of there.
No, it's because leaked gain of function research is a plausible scenario
Maybe we should be more careful when manufacturing thousands of dice with sixes all over them.
No Bats? Oh maaaaaan
I think they determined that the virus that spread to humans was bats that transferred to something in the market (aka intermediate hosts). That virus would have spread there, while technically the bats could have infected humans.
Wuhan market didn't sell bats.
Also, the only bats with a (96%) similar covid strain were in caves 1000 miles away.
However, samples from those bats were stored at the wuhan institute of virology.
Very first sentence quoted above. You don't even have to go to the article:
No amount of evidence or scientific consensus can convince a conspiracy theorist...
And yes, I know:
Therefore lab leak, right?
This Part makes me question things a bit. China is not really known for being honest about things happening in China.
Questioning things is fine. On the other hand, it's pretty hard to fake the ability to trace DNA to a specific market stall.
On top of that, the person I replied to is not questioning. They've already decided it's definitely a lab leak. See all of their other comments.
Ahhh okay, nvm then
The study itself is quite balanced and honest about data collection. It doesn't rule out a lab origin like the article claims.
Duh, it's so simple. The lab released infected animals to the wet market. All bases covered.
I'll take my research grant now.
(This is all said non-serious to be clear.)
Danny Phantom caused Covid?
I would love to see a picture of that ONE STALL that is thought to have been a hotbed. Whoever runs that stall must be quite a character, too. Golly it's fun to visit markets in new countries.
Unless... a plausible alternative to my imagination is that it looks like any other open air fresh meat stall, just with more exotic flesh... And if that's the case you can keep your photos.
But just in case. Anyone?
I mean you’ve seen people with COVID by now; did they look much different?
Huh? No, I want to see how chaotic that stall might be. I'm imagining stuff and species of all varieties.
I suppose its mere coincidence that patient zero was a scientist that was experimenting with covid and its potential to transmit to humans. Pure coincidence.
In their Nazi lab on the dark side of the moon
Yes, that's exactly what happened. Except it didn't and science isn't based on your feelings on an unsubstantiated anecdote and even IF it were real, real scientists with real brains are gonna figure this out. Not you.
Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019
"Sought hospital care" = DEFINITELY COVID!
There is NO OTHER POSSIBLE INFECTION THEY COULD HAVE HAD!
The only virus that infects humans, especially humans who study viruses is COVID!
FACT!
(This is some weak-ass shit. Especially since the article you pasted even says COVID likely didn't come for a lab. You didn't even read it.)
It's clever how they mislead people into thinking that. The scientists actually say.
It is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market
Which doesn't necessarily imply a zoonotic origin.
You didn't understand it. The paper and data they are working from states
"our study does not rule out human-to-animal transmission, as the sampling was carried out after the human infection within the market. Thus, the possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold-chain products, cannot yet be ruled out."
Yes. As I said, no amount of evidence matters to conspiracy mongers. It’s always, “you can’t prove it didn’t happen!”
Note, this evidence doesn't rule out the preliminary scenario of a scientist from the bioLab visiting the wet market and infecting/contaminating some of the animal's there.