The thing that tickles my conspiracy theorist, is that the outbreak originated 2 km from the lab that gain-of-function research into SARS-2 strains was outsourced to.
> The thing that tickles my conspiracy theorist, is that the outbreak originated 2 km from the lab that gain-of-function research into SARS-2 strains was outsourced to
“Wuhan lab workers were sick in November 2019, intelligence suggests”
Could be correlation. There's pretty plausible reason to have a cutting edge research lab close to the highest risk place for natural outbreaks of the viruses it studies.
It's amazing that people are still repeating this line. Dr. Shi's sampling trips were to Yunnan and surroundings, ~900 miles away. Expected prevalence of SARS-like coronaviruses in the Wuhan population was low enough that they used blood samples from Wuhan as negative controls in antibody studies. (Of course that expectation could have been incorrect; but the idea that her research group was deliberately based in a region of expected natural spillover is unquestionably wrong.)
Also, the WIV was more than 2 km from the market; the grandparent is probably thinking of a different, closer lab. The market was definitely the first big super-spreader event, but not necessarily the site of introduction into humans; the earliest cases show much less clear geographic distribution.
There's no conclusive evidence for any origin of SARS-CoV-2 yet. The ODNI report clearly leans against a research-related origin, but no one except the LA Times's "business columnist" is claiming that they "debunked" anything.
> Could be correlation. There's pretty plausible reason to have a cutting edge research lab close to the highest risk place for natural outbreaks of the viruses it studies.
The bat virus they were doing gain-of-function research on at the Wuhan Lab came from miles away.
"Inside the risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan"
duckhelmet|2 years ago
“Wuhan lab workers were sick in November 2019, intelligence suggests”
https://www.livescience.com/covid-lab-leak-wuhan.html
atherton33|2 years ago
tripletao|2 years ago
Also, the WIV was more than 2 km from the market; the grandparent is probably thinking of a different, closer lab. The market was definitely the first big super-spreader event, but not necessarily the site of introduction into humans; the earliest cases show much less clear geographic distribution.
There's no conclusive evidence for any origin of SARS-CoV-2 yet. The ODNI report clearly leans against a research-related origin, but no one except the LA Times's "business columnist" is claiming that they "debunked" anything.
duckhelmet|2 years ago
The bat virus they were doing gain-of-function research on at the Wuhan Lab came from miles away.
"Inside the risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan"
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...