On the lab leak theory

[CharonY]

Of the virus. E.g. via accidental infection during work.

[mistermack]

26 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Of the virus. E.g. via accidental infection during work.

So you're saying that in that case the virus was a natural one, collected from wild bats for study? In that case, it would be ludicrous to suggest that it came from a lab, with all of the precautions they take, when people would be encountering it without any protection when collecting bats from the wild, or at the wet market, or in their kitchens. 

It would be millions of times more likely in that case, that it was the market and related activities that caused the first infection. 

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, mistermack said:

So you're saying that in that case the virus was a natural one, collected from wild bats for study? In that case, it would be ludicrous to suggest that it came from a lab, with all of the precautions they take, when people would be encountering it without any protection when collecting bats from the wild, or at the wet market, or in their kitchens. 

Yes, that is what the lab leak is all about. And John has mentioned the discrepancy between precautions between a BSL2 lab and wet market condition.

While I consider a natural spillover more likely I will add two general points that might be in favour of lab spillage (I am going to ignore specific events as those are hard to link to a spillage in a meaningful way, IMO). First, BSL2 conditions assume that pathogens either are do not jump to humans (which is typically true for bat pathogens) or are not known to cause severe diseases and are not airborne (e.g. certain food-borne pathogens). So while security measures are vastly superior, they are not specifically geared to prevent airborne diseases with close to 100% certainty. Often, work is also conducted by graduate students with sometimes quite significant differences in quality of work. In fact there are reports where infections or spillages (e.g. improper disposal) have occurred in BSL2 labs (and much rarer also from BSL3 labs and even BSL4 labs) throughout the world, including UK and US that I am aware of. Assuming that the Wuhan lab did not have vastly superior protocols and controls in place, it is at least possible that something might have happened.

That second is that the lab collected viruses, IIRC, so there is presumably a collection of a higher variety of viruses that you would find in the wet market. 

So as a whole (and compared to the artificial generation of the virus) it has at least a non-zero chance of happening. But again, I think most of the circumstantial evidence still point toward environmental spillage. 

If I speculate a bit more, I would actually assume that the early known clusters might happened significantly after the initial jump. The reason is based on the delay we had in detecting early SARS-CoV-2 infections through the world and where retrospective analyses of blood and wastewater points of longer circulation than previously suspected.

Considering the initial fairly low rate of transmission (and uneven severity), I would think that it would be very hard to ever figure out when the first spillage occurred (especially it first circulated among young, healthy folks).

[mistermack]

Non zero chance, of course. But I would say the chance is so close to zero as being negligible.

The covid virus isn't very easy to transmit, even now that it's much more infectious than the original. Under lab conditions, I would say you're pretty close to zero. 

Even in my family, some in the same household got it, and others didn't. 

Maybe, if they were keeping live bats, you could get transmission that way. But that would be no different to the market trade. You wouldn't class that as a lab leak.

I think the FBI are clearly trying to give the impression that it was a lab-created variant that escaped from a Frankenstein-like bio-engineering project. Not some natural virus that just happened to make the jump in or around a lab.

If that was the case, it would be undeniable that the same virus had a much easier route available to it at the markets. 

[CharonY]

12 minutes ago, mistermack said:

The covid virus isn't very easy to transmit, even now that it's much more infectious than the original.

Eh, the Omicron variant has a very high transmission rate, which is why its presence is ubiquitious now.

[mistermack]

37 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Eh, the Omicron variant has a very high transmission rate, which is why its presence is ubiquitious now.

Well firstly, Omicron is irrelevant to the lab question, as it didn't exist then. Yes, it's about five times more infectious than Delta, and Delta was five times more infectious than the first virus. But even Omicron was only infecting about 20 to 50 percent of occupants in a family home.

The first virus was only just infecting about 1.1 to 1.3 new hosts per person on average. And much of that was happening in high-risk places like packed discos, churches, airplanes and cruise liners. 

An infected human is going to produce a heck of a lot more virus than a live bat. And infinitely more than a dead bat. So the infectiousness of the first virus, in a modern laboratory, would have been very very low.

 

[swansont]

People are saying “the lab” and I ask again, to which lab are you referring? The Wuhan Center for Disease Control or the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

The former is BSL-2, the latter is BSL-4. The OP discussed gain-of-function research, which suggests the latter, but other discussion suggests the former.

[CharonY]

40 minutes ago, swansont said:

People are saying “the lab” and I ask again, to which lab are you referring? The Wuhan Center for Disease Control or the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

The former is BSL-2, the latter is BSL-4. The OP discussed gain-of-function research, which suggests the latter, but other discussion suggests the former.

That is a good point and AFAIK neither report (FBI or DoE_ was made public, which makes everything a bit speculative. However, most public health folks I have been talking to focus on accidental leaks from low security breaches (i.e. from collections) and gain of function research was generally not considered one of the high likelihood scenarios.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Well firstly, Omicron is irrelevant to the lab question, as it didn't exist then. Yes, it's about five times more infectious than Delta, and Delta was five times more infectious than the first virus. But even Omicron was only infecting about 20 to 50 percent of occupants in a family home.

The first virus was only just infecting about 1.1 to 1.3 new hosts per person on average. And much of that was happening in high-risk places like packed discos, churches, airplanes and cruise liners. 

You are mixing up different metrics and I responded specifically to your comment that even now it is not that much more infectious.

Taking your latter metric, which refers to the basic reproductive rate of the virus, Omicron is estimated to have an R0 of around 8-10, which makes it almost 10 times as infectious than its original variant. Some of the newer Omicron sub-variants are likely a tad higher, but it is hard to assess at this point as many folks have been vaccinated and/or infected.

If you talk about likelihood of getting infected within a household (i.e. household secondary attack rates), you are more looking at metrics reflected by the effective reproductive number, which considers factors that may affect the likelihood of transmission (e.g. isolation, masking, vaccination etc.). In Omicron, the first wave had a huge infection rate, especially in areas which controlled the previous variants but after the first couple of variants, the transmission levelled off a bit (still hat a decently high rate), as transient immunity was gained in the population.  

 

 

[swansont]

18 minutes ago, CharonY said:

That is a good point and AFAIK neither report (FBI or DoE_ was made public, which makes everything a bit speculative.

The reporting, which is presumably based on something, is that the two agencies saying leak are saying it leaked from WIV

 https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-02-27/u-s-agencies-divided-over-covid-19-lab-leak-origin-theory

Quote

The Energy Department joins the FBI in supporting the theory that the virus accidentally emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

While the DOE came to its conclusion with “low” confidence, the FBI reached its conclusion in 2021 with “moderate” confidence. But The Wall Street Journal reported that the agencies reached their conclusions separately for different reasons.

 

However, one must also note

Quote

Four agencies and a national intelligence panel said they believe the pandemic likely started with natural transmission from animal to human.

The remaining two agencies, which include the CIA, are still undecided.

 

[CharonY]

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

The reporting, which is presumably based on something, is that the agencies saying leak are saying it leaked from WIV

 https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-02-27/u-s-agencies-divided-over-covid-19-lab-leak-origin-theory

However, one must also note

 

I was under the impression that while WIV had a BSL4 fairly recently, they did previously a lot of agricultural and environmental microbiological research, which would be BSL1/2. While I do not know their current organization, I would be surprised if they gave up all those laboratories.

Edit: I got curious and checked their website, in addition to the BSL4 facility (from which leaks are highly unlikely) there are two BSL3 facilities (more likely, breaches happened in the UK) and 17 BSL2 facilities. Animal samples would likely be handled in those.

So at least from the available information I do not think that we can conclude that the reports specifically refer to leaks from the BSL4 facility. Though admittedly, I have not been following the news very closely, as I do not think that there are a lot insights to be gained from this.

[iNow]

7 hours ago, mistermack said:

Accidental leaks of what?

Apparently our ability to have clear cogent exchanges 

[PhilGeis]

declassification will help us understand FBI/DoE thinking

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/05/26/senate-unanimously-passes-hawley-bill-declassifying-intel-on-wuhan-lab/?sh=4e15e4f26844

[mistermack]

11 hours ago, iNow said:

Apparently our ability to have clear cogent exchanges 

I can only suggest you get the doctor to review your pills. 

[iNow]

I’m not the one who, in context of THIS thread, couldn’t figure out what accidental leaks were being described 

Edited March 5, 2023 by iNow

[MonDie]

Paranoid conspiracist cap on:

Does the biohazard mail service run from China to USA?  Could we maybe eventually prove what happened, based on what was shared?

Presumably, the zoological samples were already in stomach acid, and that's the thing noone is talking about.

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, MonDie said:

Does the biohazard mail service run from China to USA? 

Yes.
It's called "air travel".

[PhilGeis]

On 3/4/2023 at 2:36 PM, CharonY said:

Of the virus. E.g. via accidental infection during work.

To CharonY's point, to the possibility of lab worker infection , esp. in context of alleged inadequate controls

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327

[PhilGeis]

Fauci said Saturday that a coronavirus lab leak could still be considered a "natural occurrence" if the definition of lab leak meant that someone was infected in the wild and went "into a lab," was studied in a lab, and then "came out of the lab." 

and

"The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn't actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/dr-fauci-claims-a-coronavirus-lab-leak-could-still-be-considered-a-natural-occurrence/ar-AA18wSQD

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by PhilGeis

[PhilGeis]

China offers a new theory and vector for wet market source - "racoon dog' 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/new-covid-origins-data-suggests-pandemic-linked-animals-97936471

 

[iNow]

It’s a bit like a coyote 

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, PhilGeis said:

China offers a new theory and vector for wet market source - "racoon dog' 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/new-covid-origins-data-suggests-pandemic-linked-animals-97936471

 

It should be noted that a international group of folks looked at the data and found racoon dog DNA. 

[PhilGeis]

Think a bit oversold at this point.  "International group" may not be so correct.  French lab examination of sequences posted to a public genomic database by Chinese researchers and subsequently removed.

Seems others could reproduce findings but see nothing in literature yet.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-evidence-supports-animal-origin-of-covid-virus-through-raccoon-dogs

WHO asked for the data, not aware it's been released/

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/03/17/1164226694/who-calls-on-china-to-share-data-on-raccoon-dog-link-to-pandemic-heres-what-we-k

But there is relevant previous (to above) discussion relevant to racoon dog association.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abm4454

Edited April 6, 2023 by PhilGeis

[PhilGeis]

Wuhan lab scientists were the first to contract COVID-19: report

https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijs.0.65021-0

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/wuhan-lab-scientists-were-the-first-to-contract-covid-19-report/ar-AA1cvt1a

 

vs. 2021 claim it was a wet market vendor and a WHO claim  it was an accountant

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/first-covid-patient-in-wuhan-was-at-animal-market-study-finds

Edited June 14, 2023 by PhilGeis

[swansont]

1 hour ago, PhilGeis said:

_{https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijs.0.65021-0}

Is this relevant?

1 hour ago, PhilGeis said:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/wuhan-lab-scientists-were-the-first-to-contract-covid-19-report/ar-AA1cvt1a

 

Links to a substack article (not really a “report”), with Matt Taibbi as one of the authors.

How sure are we that he’s not just making stuff up or distorting the facts, like with his twitter files “reporting”? (apparently Michael Shellenberger was also involved in that fiasco)

 

[PhilGeis]

Continuation of current discussion

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-funded-scientist-among-three-chinese-researchers-who-fell-ill-amid-early-covid-19-outbreak-3f919567

Info largely based largely based personnel communications -  leaked info.  Release/declassifying of investigation will help understand issue and considerations of FBI and DOE - if it is released.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/biden-missed-deadline-declassifying-intel-origins-covid-19

Edited June 23, 2023 by PhilGeis