That’s the kicker, it could be both. It could be the zoonosis happened accidentally in the animals in the lab, which then jumped to humans. There’s a term for this, LAI (lab acquired infection), the difference between this and zoonoosis might be the setting, or some other info I don’t know.
With MERS they found the intermediate animals easily because it was still jumping back and forth between animals and humans when it was discovered, as gaining the ability to infect humans is something that takes a decent amount of mutation/recombination to acheive. Supposedly the intermediate host was found in the original SARS too. These jumps leave traces, both SARS and MERS seroconversion found 0.6% of people were exposed from a group of 12,700 (across 4 studies, averaged), Covid they haven’t found that.
I’m not in the manufactured camp, or the bioweapon camp, I’m in the human error camp, with infectious diseases it just takes 1 error.
There were definitely animals in the labs there, humanized mice seem to be ubiquitous in places that study viruses with the possibility to infect humans.
I can’t say I’m an expert, but it sounds like a lot of people who are see no reason to suppose there was a lab leak, or that the lab was actually working with the virus in question.
So, Peter Daszak, the guy who led both of the papers at the beginning of the pandemic conflating the possibility of a lab leak with bioweapon conspiracy theories, who funded the coronaviurus research they were doing in WIV, and whose names appears on multiple papers with the lead scientists from the WIV who studied bat coronaviruses (many times with the scientist who first sequenced Covid-19 as well), and who has funded mutiple GoF experiments?
Lets just say he has a couple of conflicts of interest?
Daszak is only one of the names there, and I think you are going to run into the problem that the people best suited for understanding the origin of this coronavirus from China are people who study coronaviruses from China. But sure, assume that makes him so biased anyone who even talks to him is an unreliable source. That definitely doesn’t seem like motivated reasoning.
This is a classic issue; it comes up in Plato’s Charmides (the discussion of whether anyone other than a physician can have knowledge of medicine sufficient to ask them a medical question). However, surely there are virologists other than the ones from this circle who might have sufficient knowledge to form an expert opinion.
No, I’m just saying that he’s a BIG name in virology, and was directly responsible for any and all theories for the origin besides zoonosis being thrown under the conspiracy theory umbrella. I said nothing about the rest of the people, or even if they were biased…
Also, since they didn’t do a lab test or audit… what would be the evidence they could investigate for the lab leak, besides someone whistleblowing, that would appear? I think most of us are aware how the chinese government treats people who say things they don’t want said.
Wade made an ass of himself for several things (like saying that the GGG furin cleavage site doesn’t exist in beta coronaviruses), pointing out that the NIH funding that went to WiV for research into coronaviruses went through him and his company, and that does actually qualify as a conflict of interest, isn’t one of them. After all, his name was on that Lancet paper (and another) that concluded, well before any reasonable conclusion could be made, that lab escape of any sort was equal to saying it was a bioweapon.
No, you didn’t, and I don’t know why you think that’s a good thing. Instead you just picked one name you wanted to dismiss and ran with that, insinuating that he must not be trustworthy because…well, he has done a lot of work in that field.
And of course you don’t need evidence to deride him like that. Now you wouldn’t even expect to have evidence because of the Chinese government, which we all know is sinister, not at all like the great administration we had over here. Man, how could anyone treat that like a conspiracy theory?
For sure, and I would be happy to hear from them, if there were some to cite here. But I am really disgusted by the way people treat researchers in things like these.
These are people who spend their lives studying something for usually not much reward. And then the moment we don’t like what they’re saying – actually carbon dioxide needs to come down, or maybe DDT isn’t so safe, or maybe pandemics like this can happen naturally so it’s on us to be ready for them – suddenly people are happy to spit on their life’s work as inherently suspect, no proof required.
I mean, I know scientists and historians can be wrong…they have to be, because they disagree with each other a lot of the time. But there is a distinct tendency to hate on people for knowing things that I find exceptionally frustrating, and that’s what that post read as to me.
No, I am not saying he’s not trustworthy, I am saying he has a lot of conflicts of interest. He’s been involved in coronavirus reasearch with the WiV since at least 2014, a lot of it to do with funding research into exactly what happened here, a bat coronavirus gaining (though whatever means) the ability to infect humans. He has also funded GoF experiments there which did just that, artificially.
Usually, when conflicts of interest are important, the question is, what does one stand to lose/gain if a certain decision is arrived at? At the very least, I can see he has business interests in WiV, and possibly reputational ones.
As for the WHO report, all the scientists, including Daszack, were allowed to do is ask questions. No access to the lab itself, no audit of the databases, facilities or research going on at the time. I really don’t like the phrase “if you’ve got nothing to hide”, but it certainly fits here, and if it had been allowed, and had come back as inconclusive, I am more than happy to eat crow (please, hold me to it).
BTW, I’m not spitting on scientists, or their reputations, but I am well aware that at the end of the day, scientists are humans, and humans are fallible, biased, and capable of deceit.
Today’s Covid related fun, I had an hour long conversation with a mom convinced that the covid vaccine would change our DNA and the deaths from the shot “will dwarf” the casualties from the illness. Because “she has heard so many say” and is “just asking questions.” I don’t have that kind of time for this shit, and she is coming back tomorrow. Sigh.
