Covid-19 lab-leak theory debunked by Australian professor | Hacker News Reader

Covid-19 lab-leak theory debunked by Australian professor

abc.net.au

9 pointsakdor11547 comments

Yes, it came from the market; miles away from the lab. Great work.

That falls short of "totally proves the lab wasn't involved," which seems to be the only assumption that doesn't make one a dangerous conspiracy theorist.

I said it in Feb 2020: I think someone at that lab got told to destroy some bats, decided that "sell them at the market" was close enough, and the fun began. I dunno how much more talk about "it started at the market" will be required before we can move on to "but where did the infected animals at the market come from?"

> His research pinpoints a few square metres where the virus is likely to have been transmitted between animals and humans

To your point, there's still no proof, only "likely". The guy had a theory prior. Now it appears as if he predicted the future. That's it. That's all there is. His self-bias is not proof.

It's these type of "scientist" and this type of "journalism" that gives science and journalism a bad name.

Yes when it started out with a discussion of how he knew in 2014 an epidemic would emerge from the market I immediately became skeptical.

At this point, I'm deeply skeptical of any attempts to prove anything about COVID origins, short of maybe some leaked records or something.

Any epi analysis is based on known cases which is horribly naive when approaching this subject.

I realize this sounds closed minded or something but to me it's just a matter of time. Too much time passed, with too much interference from too many parties, to make much sense of it.

I would doubt we will ever know with certainty if the lab was involved or not.

With respect to where did the infection come from if we all agree it spread from the market, what I can say living on a farm is that viruses and bad ones can and do mutate and leap between humans and other animals.

Origin in the lab or market aside, for the sake of humanity these types of unsanitary conditions of animals and people in close proximity needs to end as does the notion of eating inadequately prepared and cooked bush meat.

The Chinese CDC's Wuhan epidemiology lab, where they dissected and analyzed bat (and all sorts of other) tissue, is at the medical center a quarter mile from the market.

Trash-loving mice and rats are close bat relatives, and frequently carry diseases from other species to humans.

American researchers finally mapped hundreds of the earliest cases. An early proponent of the lab-leak theory was involved, but then had to admit recognizing that "clustering is very, very specifically in the parts of the market" where they now know people were selling wildlife, such as raccoon dogs, that are susceptible to infection with the coronavirus.

https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-china-pandem...

That's multiple clusters in stalls at the market. Even with cases with no known link to the market, still "There was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market."

Also, there's the fact that two different strains appeared in humans. Besides the existence of multiple strains, they were also different enough that the virologist (in this ABC article) says it proves that mutation had to have already been ongoing in animal populations, "and it's mutated amongst them before it jumped to humans."

Two strains and still no wild reservoirs identified though. Everything about this runs into roadblocks.

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