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Comment by canoebuilder | Hacker News Reader

>The bottom line is that the evidence we have at this time points to nature as the most probable origin,

Highly tendentious claim...

>and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out.

Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months. Are you privy to some valuable knowledge that is not widely dispersed in the literature? Because what you’re saying would seem to contradict it.

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So you think that it's less than 51% probable that this virus jumped from nature (from animals) into people, like every other virus we know about?

There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just this article.

EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence he references points to covid originating 600 miles south of wuhan [1], which was also discussed in this writeup by another virologist [2] who also got into detail on the genetic evidence that we do have. Here's another article on how common it is for humans to be infected by bat viruses [3], here's the infectious disease expert from Biden's treansition team saying covid likely jumped from animals to humans [4]. The original article detailed how it took 15 years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with that, too.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[2] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

[3] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...

[4] https://text.npr.org/1000780650

Yes, similar viruses are known far outside Wuhan. In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan and no known bat coronavirus source anywhere near Wuhan, other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology..., lends credibility to the lab theory, does it not?

Infections from nature aren’t rare, unfortunately neither are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the relative few places on earth where this type of viral and pathogen research occurs to all the places humans interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world, you could say infections coming from labs are actually are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted. There is even a paper trail of government officials expressing concern about lax safety measures at this particular lab. Well before the world heard of coronavirus.

If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses, I don’t see that as a point against the theory that one or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside the lab.

I understand that there are a shocking amount of lab leaks in the world. Hundreds in the U.S. in the last decade, for example. Scary stuff.

> In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan

Do you have a source for that? I was seeing sources stating the opposite, based on genetic sequencing of collected samples, like this [0]:

> His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan.

> Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types.

And this [1]:

> Upon further investigation, the first case detected from December 1st was found to have no connection to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was never linked to any future cases of COVID19. A third of the first 41 cases had no connection to the market, including 3 of the first 4 cases reported. Given this data, we have a new hypothesis: The first human cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened before December 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

I'm not sure of your sources. I went back and re-read your original reply. You stated that "previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months". Did you know that it took 15 years to identify the source of SARS, from 2002 until 2017? [2]

I don't know if any of that might change your thinking on this. I've paid the most attention to genetic evidence like the above. Ultimately I think that's what will lead to a definitive answer.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

"The original article detailed how it took 15 years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with that, too". Wrt SARS, other animals in the wild were identified as mostly asymptomatic carriers long before scientists found that bat cave. Not so with COVID

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