Lemdro.id

2 points

1 year ago

Well, no, it’s not an “idea”. It just means there’s nothing special about Wuhan that should make us look at everything there as a suspect.

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alternative_factor@kbin.social

[ - ]

-1 points

1 year ago

You are wrong, the assumption of people who post this is that there wasn’t COVID-19 in China before the CCP announced it was around.

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[ - ]

4 points

1 year ago

You’re the one making assumptions I’m afraid.

We don’t know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn’t spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.

Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don’t know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we’ve just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we’ve learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.

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alternative_factor@kbin.social

[ - ]

4 points

1 year ago

From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.

EDIT for sources:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

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0 points

1 year ago

Do you understand that still the leap from “It’s 99% similar to Chinese pangolin coronavirus” (and hey, you’re 99% similar to a Ugandan chimp) and “so the other 1% probably came from a lab in Wuhan”? Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first. We can say that’s a Chinese cover-up, but go ahead and say that, and recognise it as speculation.

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alternative_factor@kbin.social

[ - ]

2 points

1 year ago

Dude I’m a microbioligst, just look at the cladisitics of all the viruses similar to SARS-COIVD-2, it’s undeniable that the virus is from China because of its similarity to that of the viruses in the pangolin and, it’s like saying humans don’t come from Africa, just because 1% is a big deal does not mean that all the genetic evidence shows that ALL its relatives come from China, just as ALL early homo species come from Africa.

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https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-hokave-alibi

2 points

1 year ago

I’m absolutely 100% with you on it coming from Asian pangolins. That even quite likely ties it to Asian wet markets, or the illegal hunting trade. SARS and MERS were both zoonotic too. SARS came from the abuse of palm civets.

What you seem to not understand - and here’s where I get to dick-swing my tangentially related credentials - is that ‘wet markets’ are everywhere in China and indeed Asia. There’s a dozen in Wuhan alone. ‘Fresh market’ would be a much better name - it’s the opposite to a dry market, ie shelf-life goods and non-perishables. Google just calls them “Farmer’s Markets”, which is what they would be called in the US.

Fresh markets also happen to be places that people travel distance to get to - traders bringing produce, and people traveling to get stuff. Pangolins from as far away as India and Indonesia end up in China. The trade of exotic animals and especially ones with Chinese ‘medicine’ applications is horrendous in tropical Asia, where I spent a number of years, visiting China only once. It has a lot to do with why I turned veggie!

So again, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ‘wet markets’ in Asia. The only distinction that one of Wuhan’s has is that it was reported there first, at least three months after the virus had already spread - maybe from China - as far as Italy. It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as “oh, and there’s a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak”. We have no idea.

I’m in Ireland. My grandmother died of a sudden and rapid onset of pneumonia in December 2019 that did not respond to ordinary treatment. My son was sick with something like a flu that give him the sniffles and sapped all energy from him for 2 days, which sticks only in mind because keeping him home resulted in a fight with the in-laws which means they haven’t seen him since. Could either of those things have been Covid? Again, no idea. Nobody sent anyone for strain testing, and Ireland, like most places, does not habitually keep waste treatment plant samples for later testing. Nobody has suggested an absurd cover-up by the Irish government of course. And the stories of a “bad flu” in autumn and winter of 2019 are everywhere.

UK flu season ‘starting early’: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/12/public-urged-to-act-fast-to-avoid-festive-flu/

Europe in general complaining about flu symptoms and dry coughs in Winter 2019, analysed statistically: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81333-1

USA, higher cases than usual in South: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-an-unexpected-virus.html

And, for all that’s useful about it, at least anecdotally from non-Chinese sources in Wuhan, the particular wet market didn’t even have pangolins or bats.

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