Comment by l332mn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by l332mn | Hacker News Reader

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It's transparently obvious that the whole Wuhan lab-leak narrative is purely a smear, possibly even a deflection. It's extremely unlikely that the virus even originated in Wuhan.

https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-...

Moreover, it has likely been present in the US around that time, perhaps sooner:

https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-united-states-december-...

Considering the spread of COVID since March 2020, with major epicenters in Europe and the US, on the bare face of it makes Wuhan and even China as a whole look like an extremely unlikely candidate for the place of origination. A much more likely hypothesis is that the virus has been around for a long time in both the US and Europe before it was first discovered in Wuhan. That is simply the most reasonable explanation. There was a major outbreak of lung illness in the US in early 2019, which has mostly just gone under the radar for most people during the pandemic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...

Not saying that it's Covid necessarily, but drawing on both the fact that (serious) researchers are up in the air about the place of origination of the virus, and the widespread presence of lung illness outbreaks in the US, it is more likely than not that that the virus originated in the US sometime during 2019.

This is such a bizarre comment and your thesis is nowhere near being “transparently obvious”. You’re trying to link the people whose lungs were harmed by vitamin E acetate in black market vaping cartridges to COVID?

Credible genetic analysis of the virus shows nearly incontrovertibly that it originated in Wuhan.

It's generally understood that due to the major overlap in symptoms, the lung illness from the vaping disease could easily have been misdiagnosed cases of Covid. This due to the fact that Covid was unknown. Misdiagnoses are extremely common during outbreaks, which is well-known. I never claimed this as evidence, only as a possible indication which is consistent with the thesis.

Besides, vaping demonstrably leads to a higher risk of serious lung illness by Covid:

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/researchers-find-n...

Again, not evidence per se, but it is consistent with the thesis.

No it is not generally understood, the symptoms are quite different. There is no evidence that the thousands of people who suffered from vape-related lung issues in 2019 had a concomitant coronavirus infection.

The incidence of vape-related lung issues has been in decline since the issue was first raised, and black market manufacturers stopped using vitamin E acetate.

The symptoms are quite similar actually.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

"The paper emphasises that EVALI remains a diagnosis of exclusion, highlighting the importance of thorough history taking, especially given that symptoms and clinical manifestations overlap with those of some infectious respiratory diseases, including COVID-19."

https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-pro...

In addition, vaping seriously increases risk of serious illness by Covid.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/08/vaping-linked...

> Credible genetic analysis of the virus shows nearly incontrovertibly that it originated in Wuhan.

What are you talking about? That's just not true. There is zero incontrovertible evidence that it originated in Wuhan.

"https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-china..."

'“The possible path from whatever original animal species all the way through to the Huanan market could have taken a very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders,” Embarek told a nearly three-hour media briefing.

Embarek said work to identify the coronavirus’s origins points to a natural reservoir in bats, but it is unlikely that they were in Wuhan.'

- Peter Ben Embarek, who led the team of independent WHO experts in Wuhan.

You’re mixing up a debate of whether the first human cases of COVID in Wuhan came from an animal vs a lab leak. The same article you linked to contains this quote from Embarek:

“And the conclusion was we did not find evidence of large outbreaks that could be related to cases of COVID-19 prior to December 2019 in Wuhan or elsewhere.”

Not really. The lab leak theory was always dismissed by the WHO team of researches. However, I brought up the fact that the virus unlikely originated in Wuhan according to the WHO researches as an additional piece of evidence of how unlikely the Wuhan lab leak theory is.

That quote indicates precisely what I said, that researches are up in the air about the probable place of origin of Covid.

That first link just says that the virus was unlikely to have originated in the Wuhan wet-market, which does not disagree with the lab outbreak hypothesis (whether or not that hypothesis is wrong).

Otherwise, what you've cited disagrees with the WHO timeline, which says pretty definitively that the first COVID-19 cases were in Wuhan (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...). Whatever disagreements one might have with the WHO, this timeline seems pretty well documented and supported by cross-referenced citations.

The first confirmed Covid cases were in Wuhan, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the place of origination. The lead researcher of the WHO team says himself it's unlikely to have originated in Wuhan, and indicated that it has probably originated from elsewhere, possibly in other countries.

"https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-china..."

The WHO has a distinct conflict of interest in making that statement, however.

And what conflict of interest is that?

You are a few months late friend. Flagging the lab leak hypothesis as fake news stopped being credible a few months ago.

Why was it credible to reject in the first place? Because Biden hadn't said it was a possibility, yet?

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