One might be forgiven for being curious as to the likelihood of the virus emerging from this particular wet market as opposed to all others.
TWO BLOCKS? Or a 40min drive? This is why the lab leak theory feels conspiracy-adjacent. Too much exaggeration.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/D961/production/...
> The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged in Wuhan.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57268111.amp
There’s plenty of valid scientific inquiry to be had regarding the theory once you get past the misinformation. But the political showmanship and the attraction of conspiracy theorists doesn’t help.
Which then discredits their own position -- even if the conspiracy actually happened -- because it didn't happen the way they claim it did.
There is a conspiracy theory that this method is used by conspirators to effect a coverup by discrediting skeptics of the official narrative.
This is actual public disinformation practice, not a "conspiracy theory".
Distinguishing this from the other thing is the issue. They do it because it works.
I thought you were talking about cases when “conspiracy theorists” are actually right, but their positions get poisoned by attributing some ridiculous stuff to them, and/or by artificial influx of similar “conspiracy theories” that are easy to disprove, so that the original theory is dismissed by association. For example, in Russia they love to flood the information space with bullshit theories a lot to “dilute” the truth and to disorient the public so that you can’t distinguish between truth and conspiracy theories anymore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Center_For_Disease_Con...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/head-of-who-team-investigating-...
> “They also reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs [coronaviruses] or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.”
> The lab is classified BSL-2, a safety level at which air ventilation controls aren’t particularly strict, as they are in more secure labs. At that level, lab workers are usually dealing with pathogens that either cause mild disease in humans or which don’t typically spread through small particles that linger in the air. Researchers at that level don’t necessarily wear masks.
> The Wuhan CDC lab tested all of its staff for Covid-19 antibodies, it told the WHO in February. All staff tested negative, except one who tested positive, it said. That person was infected “due to family cluster transmission,” the WHO-led team’s report’s annex says.
> But Dr. Ben Embarek is the first to so explicitly question the team’s conclusion, published in a joint report with Chinese counterparts, that a lab accident was an “extremely unlikely” hypothesis.
> That wording was only reached after a 48 hour period of intense negotiations with Chinese counterparts said Dr. Ben Embarek, who said he would have preferred to designate an accident inside a lab as merely “unlikely.”
> The lab hadn’t published any work with bats since 2013, he said.
> “As far as we understand, they work mostly with parasites, not as much with viruses, so they have worked on parasites from bats.”
Yet, after fighting to label the lab leak theory “unlikely”, he throws a bone to the conspiracy theorists:
> “It’s also possible that someone is trying to hide something,” he added. “Who knows?”
It is indeed a level 2 facility, and it was being used to perform the bat coronavirus research outsourced to the WIV [1]:
The NIH decided the risk was worth it. In a potentially fateful decision, it funded work similar to Baric’s at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which soon used its own reverse-genetics technology to make numerous coronavirus chimeras.
Unnoticed by most, however, was a key difference that significantly shifted the risk calculation. The Chinese work was carried out at biosafety level 2 (BSL-2), a much lower tier than Baric’s BSL-3+.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...
Also from the article:
> The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1, and Baric says he still believes a natural spillover is the most likely cause.
The timelines and genetic profiles don’t match up for a level 2 lab leak 2 blocks from the wet market.
It moved just before the outbreak [1]:
The lab, where Chinese scientists research mild human diseases with bats, was moved near the seafood market where the first COVID-19 cases were found just days before the outbreak, WHO investigators said.
Classified with a “Biosafety Level of 2,” the lab also has ventilation controls that aren’t as strict as other more secure facilities, according to the report.
I find it surprising how little attention this tidbit got; a move of lab equipment and animals probably involved external personnel not used to bio-safety procedures. Perfect opportunity for a virus to escape.
> The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab
The key words here being "was known", since the WIV notoriously took its database offline and even requested the deletion of sequences stored on US servers [2][3].
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/08/13/who-scientist-eyes-on-wuhan-la...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/u-s-confi...
[3] https://www.science.org/content/article/claim-chinese-team-h...
They did do coronavirus experiments in level 2 facility.
[edit] replaced link as FT makes it difficult to refer to them.
Regarding the 2016 work:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...
> Since bat viruses like WIV1 haven’t been confirmed to cause disease in human beings, her biosafety committee recommended BSL-2 for engineering them and testing them and BSL-3 for any animal experiments.
> In response to questions about the decision to do the research in BSL-2 conditions, Peter Daszak forwarded a statement from EcoHealth Alliance stating that the organization “must follow the local laws of the countries in which we work” and that the NIH had determined the research was “not gain-of-function.”
> The genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 does not resemble that of any virus the WIV was known to be culturing in its lab, such as WIV1, and Baric says he still believes a natural spillover is the most likely cause.
This theory is more than a few steps away from being a smoking gun.
The idea of COVID leaking from a Level 2 lab 2 blocks from the Wuhan wet market is solely circumstantial.
Someone really really didn't want anyone near those mines.
Fair to also entertain the possibility that they were tracking him because of his previous reporting on land reform in remote villages, when he travelled into remote areas again 4 years later. He had to sign a forced confession the first time and if they caught him interviewing disgruntled villagers again, I’m sure they were ready to ratchet up the punishment.
The 2021 Twitter story sounds very similar to the 2017 one: being followed and physically blocked by people.
> As they walked towards her house, a group of men blocked their way, pushed Sudworth and smashed and snatched the crew’s cameras.
> “As soon as we arrived in Yang Linghua’s village it was clear they were expecting us,” Sudworth wrote in his account, referring to the woman the BBC wanted to interview.
Could be the mines, or could be the Chinese government harassing a Western journalist they already had an issue with.
Will add a source later when not on mobile.
Still not completely random. And yes labs and wild animal markets tend to met in high population density area, so that's another non-random factor I presume.
This coincidence is indeed troubling, but before jumping to conclusions it's good to remember why there is such consensus against lab leak theory, by (re)reading the original report on the origin of SARS-Cov2 (https://zenodo.org/record/5075888) and the short history of SARS past outbreaks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Outbreak_in_South_China - which interestingly lists several past lab leaks).
I don't find any of the competing theory very obvious to be honest. What is very obvious though, and was made even more obvious to me when I was looking for that source, is the amount of political manipulation around this topic. The epidemic of manipulation of opinion is a greater concern that the epidemic of that virus if you ask me.
Can we refrain from posting articles about science from political newspapers, maybe?