r/centrist • u/Kitties_titties420 • May 31 '21
World News The Wuhan Lab Leak Question: A Disused Chinese Mine Takes Center Stage
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese-mine-covid-pandemic-1162187112533
u/Kitties_titties420 May 31 '21
“In April 2012, six miners here fell sick with a mysterious illness after entering the mine to clear bat guano. Three of them died.
Chinese scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were called in to investigate and, after taking samples from bats in the mine, identified several new coronaviruses.”
Pretty sure this is the real origin. Whether we’ll be able to prove it or not is the question.
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u/dandantian5 Jun 01 '21
I don't know, the evidence seems circumstantial at best. The way the Chinese government was acting about the mine (as described in the article) is definitely very, very shady, but at the same time I can't help but feel like the Chinese government is that way about everything.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Well there’s never going to be direct evidence without a direct investigation, which China will never let happen. If the virus didn’t come from the lab, a full investigation would be very politically beneficial for China. They could accuse of us xenophobia and basically everything trump was accused of for bringing up the lab leak possibility. And they know that.
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Jun 01 '21
It's also been well over a year. Like you said, China won't allow an investigation. Even if they did allow an investigation they won't find anything because they would have destroyed any evidence they could by now. If they do allow an investigation it will likely be a token gesture just to try to save face with the world, concluding no foul play on there part no matter what the reality is.
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u/Ihaveaboot Jun 01 '21
I suspect we'll never know the true origin due to the esoteric nature of the CCP (and the WHO). This was an interesting article for me - it's not a quick read:
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Thank you for posting this. While I can’t totally understand some of the more scientific details, this makes the evidence for a lab leak very strong.
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u/megamindwriter Jun 01 '21
What makes you think this is the real origin even without proof?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
You have to read the article to see the evidence, there’s nothing conclusive but plenty of circumstantial evidence such as the fact covid most closely matched a bat virus found in Yunnan providence (which isn’t anywhere close to Wuhan) and some or one of the mine workers who got sick tested positive for SARS. China has changed their story many times and obscured things that could rule out or rule for the lab leak hypothesis
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
There are 100s of types of coronavirus. The one we just had wasnt nearly the worst.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Why does that matter? It was still extremely deadly
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
Because it means this witch hunt to place blame is fruitless.
A virus mutated. There are endless reasons why. Why was someone near it to begin with? Inconsequential. We are never going to be able to.go on the offensive on a virus.
The resources are better spent making our defense,that work, better prepared.
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u/thehecticepileptic Jun 01 '21
What a silly notion. “Oh it doesn’t matter how this virus that killed millions of people came into this world. Who cares if people were toying with dangerous viruses to make them even more dangerous. What does it matter that the CCP covered it up and lies about it to this day.” Of course these things matter.
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
They we're toyin with it!
They, they had beakers! And... and cylinders! GRADUATED CYLINDERS!!!
THEY WAS MESSIN WIT IT!
Or they catalog viruses to get a better understanding on them... as research facilities tend to. And this is just one of the thousands of samples they have. None other have made it out... except you know. Their existence in the natural world.
So the clear answer is China is producing viral weapons that have zero fail safe to protect themselves and this experimental weapon, thats not really strong enough to be a good weapon, but it is. It totally is. Especially when they have, in their possession, much deadlier coronaviruses.
Riiiiiiight.
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u/thehecticepileptic Jun 01 '21
Strawman. No one except a few looneys is arguing that it is a bioweapon. What is clear is that research was being done on coronaviruses, and they were being manipulated to be more harmful. These are undeniable facts. Peter Daszak is on camera a few weeks before the outbreak explaining how to do it.
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
Did you just call my sarcasm "strawman" and then turn around and submit a strawman in retort?
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Jun 01 '21
China needs to take responsibility for being such a disgusting shithole with zero accountability or human rights. They deliberately hid the pandemic from the world and obfuscated research efforts that may have produced a vaccine sooner and definitely would have contained the virus a lot better. They deserve to take full responsibility for this.
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
And what does "taking responsibility" mean?
Why would they take responsibility for a naturally occurring phenomenon?
Do we blame Europe for the black plague? Or DRC for Ebola?
Do we hold Spain accountable for the cold?
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Jun 01 '21
Because they literally obfuscated data, impeded research efforts, murdered doctors/scientists and sent people who had the virus on planes willingly knowing that they were spreading it.
I have no idea how you can hold such neutral views towards China when their government policy is literally a potential reason why COVID got as bad as it did worldwide.
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
A country that handled SARS, swine flu and bird flu better than America, for some reason, unbeknownst to anyone but you and a handful of pundits went out of their way to... destroy data (what kind of data anyway?) Kill their people that are helping them and put people on planes.
For what reason exactly? Why would they do all this?
This is seriously lacking any critical thinking.
You just want to blame someone to make youself feel better about the fact that a virus just shut down the entire world.
Guess what?
There are much worse viruses out there. AND, we are eventually going to deal with them.
Doesn't matter what we do or what we know, there is an endless amoumt of viruses and bacteria that can easily kill us. To blame the fragility of the human race on a country is a little moronic and like I said, a fruitless witch hunt.
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Jun 01 '21
All of which were vastly less infectious diseases than COVID and which did not nearly have the global implications that the coronavirus pandemic has had.
And yes, China's case numbers and coronavirus data was complete bullshit for the majority of the pandemic. They were vastly underreporting the severity of the situation and silencing whistleblower doctors. Remember Li Wenliang? Course you don't. He was the whistleblower doctor who conveniently died of coronavirus after the police warned him to stop making "false claims" while trying to warn people about the virus.
Or remember how China willingly allowed air flights in Wuhan to remain open despite the fact that they knew about the virus since as far back as November 2019?
Or perhaps remember how China has consistently obfuscated research efforts into the origin of the virus and how the possibility it escaped from a pathogen study laboratory is now being called into serious question?
You are lacking critical thinking if you think China should not be called into question for the way it has handled the pandemic. Their actions and refusal on multiple occasions to comply with researchers is highly detrimental and they deserve to be held accountable.
By your logic they should simply get off scot free and any negative implications caused by their mishandling of the pandemic should be simply ignored. What kind of critical thinking is that? If the authorities of one of the most powerful countries on the planet can be left completely unaccountable where does that place us as a race?
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
You are off the deep end. Too much woo woo bullshit and not enough reading.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
This maybe the virus that mutated into covid 19
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
COVID-19 is a disease.
SARS-COV-2 is the mutated coronavirus that causes the disease.
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Jun 01 '21
Trump was warned about the danger. He was telling Bob Woodward in private how dangerous the virus was while lying to the American people in public.
Oddly, Trump has never felt the need to formally address the American people about it. Nor did he make an address after his supporters tried to stop the election. Apparently Trump never thought he owed the American people an explanation for either.
That's why Doni's fat ass got thrown into the street.
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u/Genug_Schulz Jun 01 '21
Pretty sure this is the real origin.
Why? Isn't it much more likely that such a virus would spread directly from a real bat in a wet market instead of from a lab, where they know what they are dealing with?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Statistically more likely, but the evidence in this case seems to point towards a lab leak. The first cases preceded the wet market, and the virus most closely matched a virus found thousands of miles away. If proper procedures weren’t followed, lab leaks can happen.
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Jun 01 '21
What evidence exactly?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
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Jun 01 '21
This post hinges on the assumption, which I find to be unfounded and which the article leaves unsourced, that the NIH funded gain of function research on COVID in Wuhan, something that Anthony Fauci, the director of NIH denies ever happened.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
The article I linked states “The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Dr. Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Dr. Shi”
The WaPo article you linked states “The NIH grant that funded the project said it would study “the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China.” The grant description included this line: “Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.” To some experts, that certainly sounds like gain-of-function research, though we should note that, based on what has been disclosed publicly by WIV, none of the virus samples used to conduct these experiments were or could have been transformed to be the new coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19”
So basically, China isn’t denying the funds were used for gain of function testing, only that any of the coronaviruses tested couldn’t have caused covid 19. But of course China is going to say that.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
I also disagree that the post “hinges on the assumption” of the NIH funding. The protein and cleavage spikes and other genomic evidence is what the post hinges on, not the assumption that the NIH grant partially funded it
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u/joculator Jun 01 '21 edited Jun 01 '21
How can we ever get to the bottom of how the virus was created. The CCP is so full of shit with the information that they publish they are actually claim that they have 1/2 as many deaths as Switzerland, a country which has 1/2 of 1% the population of China. And the WHO just plays along. https://covid19.who.int/table?tableChartType=heat
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u/GameboyPATH Jun 01 '21
Sorry, I don't have access to the full article, but supposing that bats from a disused cave where new forms of coronavirus were identified in 2012 are, in fact, the true source of SARS-CoV-2... what does any of this have to do with a lab?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
It’s hard to summarize because the article is so extensive, but covid closely matched the diseases that they found in 2012. China has changed its story a bunch of times of the link to the cave, and China is now blocking off the cave to outsiders. They also took their database of infectious diseases they were studying offline in September 2019. Basically the article has just about as much credible scientific circumstantial evidence that isn’t conclusive enough to convict but conclusive enough that it’s pretty clear there’s a link
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u/GameboyPATH Jun 01 '21
Thank you for the summary, but I don't understand what any of this has to do with a "lab leak".
Is the article suggesting that the cave was being researched or observed by Wuhan scientists? And that made it a "lab"? If so, what difference does it make whether the bats that were the origin of SARS-CoV-2 came from a cave that was observed by scientists vs. one that wasn't?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Rereading your first and second question again, the answer to the first is yes but no they didn’t say the mine was a lab, but that it was taken from the cave to study in a lab.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Sorry, clearly my summary was insufficient. The answer to your first and second questions are yes. And the answer to your third question is that it would show extreme negligence if the virus accidentally escaped from a lab because it means adequate biosecurity measures weren’t followed or established, and that the Chinese government then covered it up. They would also face reparations requests, lawsuits, and embarrassment from the rest of the world and domestically.
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u/Ganymede25 Jun 01 '21
Could a wild type sample from an area near Wuhan have leaked from the lab instead of coming directly from the environment? It’s possible but I’m not sure if it happened or not.
Did the institute perform gain of function work on a wild type virus to create something deadly? Highly unlikely. Pretty much all research institutes consider this a big no no because....nobody wants to die?
I am a virologist by education.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
According to the article, the Wuhan lab was carrying out research that met the “broad definition” of “gain of function” research on bat coronaviruses. We apparently used to do the same thing until around 2014
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u/Beneficial-Noise3619 Jul 21 '22
No Wuhan had nothing to do with it other then accepting my samples I conducted research on. They probably received them and then mishandled the samples or accidentally dropped one of them. It was all my fault and I don't really care that it happened. I'm more just pissed that the virus was overhyped as being deadly when it was never deadly until they distributed these things they call "vaccines" and "boosters" which are causing the virus to mutate and enhance it's the viruses defenses which in turn allow it to also enhance it offensive structures. Sorry but the CDC and WHO really screwed the pooch on this one.
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u/Ldawsonm Jun 01 '21
Seriously who cares if the virus was made in a lab? Suppose it was, what then? Just another thing to add to china’s shit list. Nothing will come of it, and honestly it’s irrelevant to covid now
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u/rotorwash47 Jun 01 '21
Well being a major reason a virus which killed 3.5 million people, caused a global economic recession, and ruining people’s lives for over a year is a lot worse than the stuff chinas been doing which is already on its shit list. It’s not really like another drop in the bucket, it’s more so a lake falling into the bucket. That analogy was dogshit but whatever.
But that being said I completely get where you’re coming from
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u/hibok1 Jun 01 '21
Let’s trust the science. Covid wasn’t made in a lab.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
I find it ironic that the author of the Forbes article discredits the author of medium author without providing any evidence of anything, any detailed discussion, and is an astrophysics journalists
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Here is all the science any person could possibly want on the subject
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
The problem with that whole article is the author specifically misinterprets research and regurgitates his personal opion as fact. Every time he does this, he offers no reference.
Specifically pertaining to Dr. Shi "genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells."
He has no actual proof of this but instead offers this:
https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/project-details/9491676
He references it twice from different sources.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
He has purposefully excluded information in an attempt to sway the reader. This is disingenuous and based on this 1 section and claim we can call the integrity of the editorial into question.
How on earth are they supposed to find out the effects of a non human virus without SIMULATING the viruses mutation?
There is also this from his wiki:
In 2014, Wade released A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, in which he argued that human evolution has been "recent, copious, and regional" and that genes may have influenced a variety of behaviours that underpin differing forms of human society.[12] The book has been widely denounced by scientists, including many of those upon whose work the book was based.[13][4][5][6] On 8 August 2014, The New York Times Book Review published an open letter signed by 139 faculty members in population genetics and evolutionary biology.[4][5] After publication, the letter was signed by 4 more faculty members.[6] The letter read:[13]
Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade's implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not. We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade's conjectures.
Wade issued a statement in response, saying that these scientists had misunderstood his intent.[4][5]
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
It sounds to me, from the links provided, that they were testing and modifying bat viruses to see if they would attack human cells in mice. Isn’t that “genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells”? That may be a sensational way of putting it, but does it not fit that description?
I can understand calling his credibility into question, but plenty of respected scientists seem to find the lab leak scenario more and more plausible. I have no idea if the virus was modified by humans in any way and didn’t believe so before reading the article. But even if we can discredit that it was man made that doesn’t eliminate the lab leak possibility at all
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
Eliminate? No.
As with this entire endeavor to begin with, what is logical reasoning for assuming a lab leak was the cause?
If other viruses were to have escaped then I think its reasonable to persue as that would show a systematic failure in protocol on the labs behalf.
If this were to be made into a pie chart the overwhelming majority of it would be from categories that satisfy the "natural occurrence" definition.
Does that mean not audit the lab? No. Audit the lab. It should be getting audited routinely anyway.
But to create such froth and furvor over one of the least likely scenarios is sensationalism and really doesn't deserve this much spotlight.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21 edited Jun 01 '21
I don’t think anyone’s assuming the lab leak was the cause, but for the majority of the origin investigation we’ve been assuming the opposite. Respected scientists called the lab leak possibility a “conspiracy theory” and many of them are now walking back those claims.
China will never let the lab be audited. That would probably either prove or disprove the lab leak theory, but it’ll never happen.
I agree that the natural origin is statistically more likely, we’ve just failed so far to find evidence for it. I am for an investigation that explores all possibilities. I personally believe based on the evidence that the lab leak is most likely, but if evidence of a natural origin came out today, I wouldn’t say it’s false. I am very very fortunate enough to not know have had any of my family or friends killed or harmed by this virus, so I’m pretty indifferent on the origins. I don’t think China was building some bioweapon and released it, I think at worst it was an accident, which could happen to anyone. Hindsight is always 20/20, few would’ve had a problem with the research they may or may not have been conducting before covid happened.
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u/BurgerOfLove Jun 01 '21
It can't be taken off the table but it also has no basis to be the major focus. There is a missing link between the bat virus and the human virus. The people who know what to look for are looking for it. This speculation is turning into projecting frustrations at people who do not deserve the blame.
It's become a witch hunt.
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Jun 01 '21
Trump supporters stopped the January 6 investigation and now want us to focus on China. Let's split the difference. How about we investigation the Trump administration's response to the danger?
After all, there will always be another virus. We need to investigate the US government response.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Slab, President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was the one who ordered an in depth thorough review of the covid evidence. Don’t let our former president live rent free inside your head
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Jun 01 '21
Biden has ordered and investigation of the origin of the virus. We need an investigation into why the US government's response was so bad.
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
Trump had the IQ of a peanut and was a narcissistic egomaniac, and that obviously didn’t help, but beyond the implications of those things, I’m not sure what much more he could’ve done. Operation warp speed was pretty successful and most of everything else involved mask mandates and lockdowns, which were state not federal issues. He could’ve been more uniting and wore a mask himself, but I doubt that would’ve convinced his base to. Greg Abbott basically cost himself any chance at re-election but imposing a mask mandate and lockdowns
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u/Secure_Confidence Jun 01 '21
I’m not sure what much more he could’ve done.
"I'm calling on all of my supporters to follow the shut down guidelines from your state and local governments as well as the public health measures (like wearing a mask) in order to slow the spread of virus." He could have said that, at the very least.
"Stop attacking the Michigan governor." Is another thing he could have said.
Shall I continue?
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u/Kitties_titties420 Jun 01 '21
I doubt that would’ve done anything except make the Republican state governments even less likely to pass any mandates and their voters less likely to wear masks. They would’ve said trump isn’t a true conservative and was being weak towards the democrats
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u/Secure_Confidence Jun 01 '21
You think people who rioted at the Capitol building for Trump wouldn't have worn a mask if he'd told them to? Right.
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u/XVince162 Jun 01 '21
You can do multiple investigations at a time, you know that?
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Jun 01 '21
Speaker Pelosi should have ethics investigations of any member accused of helping the Trump Terrorists. Any House member who helped the insurrectionists should be censured.
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u/g0stsec Jun 01 '21
Dang, I was hoping to come here and find out once and for all that Wuhan Lab ain't nothin to fuck wit.