[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619...
> When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”
...
That's until I saw that Act on Congress' website. It'll be interesting to see what information is declassified. If there's proof that the mentioned scientists were first to fall ill, I wonder what the consequences are.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/14/politics/blinken-china-an...
Blinken to travel to China this weekend as US looks to reset relations after spy balloon incident
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
What could 'national security' be construed as? : https://twitter.com/gdemaneuf/status/1669165325722722306?t=M...
This is just a stamp on various anonymous "sources" on what we have heard already.
Confirmation that they were sick. Not confirmation of what they were sick with.
I tell this story whenever it is possible, to educate people about what the flu is capable of doing, whenever someone says the flu is "no big deal." Statistically, perhaps not. Unless you're the statistic that is.
A real (non-covid) flu had me feeling like I was on death's door for a week, and much of that time was spent wishing it would take me.
In comparison, I had corona last week and it was a walk in the park (I am also quad-vaccinated, that might have helped).
I can attest that somewhere between vaccines, potential acquired immunity and variants having reduced strength, my pair of confirmed Covid experiences (March 2020, July 2022) went from "the sickest I've ever felt, with symptoms recurring for months and persistent-to-present reduced smell capability" to "a mild cold".
Haven’t had Covid either, despite being exposed to it (our son had it) and we tested regularly for over a year too
Except that’s not true. Chinese culture is different.
"There is no culture of staying at home for minor symptoms," he said. "When people feel sick they all go to hospitals, which may easily crash the healthcare system."
1. They made a mistake in the lab, exposing themselves to a virus (not covid-19)
2. That virus was non-human-transmissible
3. The exposure happened 1-several weeks before the actual start of covid-19 at the market
Given the early concentration of cases around the market, and the detection of covid-19 on market materials, the lab-leak coincidence seems to be:
1. They made a mistake in the lab, exposing themselves to covid-19
2. They nearly-immediately went to the market, and spent significant time there to get the place loaded up with the virus
3. They didn't go much of anywhere else
4. They didn't interact much with others at the lab
To be clear, is your "likeliness" determined on whether we can find a creature that is more similar to covid than RaTG13 (we haven't) or something else?
But a key difference between SARS-CoV-2 and it's wild relatives is the spike protein with affinity for the ACE2 receptor, so it would have had to have evolved through an intermediate host with a human-like ACE2 receptor. For example, ACE2-transgenic lab mice.
This does not itself rule out the wild-origin theory, but no wild host that could explain the missing link from RaTG13 to SARS-CoV-2 has yet been found.
If there was GoF being done on the sample (adding of the spike protein to infect humans), that could be the remaining percentage.
> If there was GoF being done on the sample (adding of the spike protein to infect humans), that could be the remaining percentage.
I do not believe one bit the only "reasonable conclusion" is it has to be from nature.
Between the lab sample, the outbreak area, the GoF program being run, the timing, history of lab leaks, and the reaction, a lab leak is very reasonable...
> The lab-leak scenario presumes zoonotic jump, too. Just rather than from something in the wild, it's from humanized (ACE2-transgenic) mice
> So the only reasonable conclusion so far is that we haven't found the reservoir host yet.
> I do not believe one bit the only "reasonable conclusion" is it has to be from nature.
If it's discovered that the reservoir host was a mouse in a lab at WIV then "we will finally be able to make another step in this whole saga" in the same way as it being discovered as a wild host. It might be worth reading their comment again.
(Again, I'm not deeply familiar with this topic and may be totally off base; gluing together my personal understanding of the meanings of these words has me arriving at this conclusion. I'm also attempting to clarify someone else's statements so take another grain of salt for that.)
Obviously the implications matter whether it occurred in nature or deliberately by man. If it was the latter, then the program that was supposed to prepare against the potential of a natural virus actually made something that may never have happened, and then went on to kill millions.
Yeah, I have difficulty with this, in particular trusting sources. Wikipedia is almost always correct on a technical level but very information dense (Good Thing! Recently I looked up “captain obvious disambiguation” for a joke and learned the word “lapalissade”) so it sometimes requires a certain mindset to learn from there. Some public school teachers don’t like being questioned(!!) and I think that’s caused me to have an internalized skepticism of academics, ironically despite the likelihood they’re more informed. Rando stranger on the internet can be good source but maybe a bullshitter instead.
On the whole, and especially in particular if one pays attention, people here tend to make “good faith” statements such that a difference of opinion similar to this thread is genuinely informative if one is willing to consider the possibility of any particular thing being true (or not). It helps to understand the difference between statements of fact and opinion. I’ve found it helps also to be open about a lack of knowledge if one is willing to ask questions and “be taught” in a fashion, despite the reputation that such leading statements have.
I try to remind myself that all topics which are able to capture academics’ attention have a lot of depth to them, practically by necessity. My physics teacher in high school was fantastic so I have a solid understanding of the concepts taught in that class -- in my experience, MKS logic has been a helpful mental exercise for understanding any abstraction. But it would still take years of study for me to really understand the things we can’t explain about the physical world. And that’s true of almost anything. Best to keep an open mind.
That turned into a bit more than I expected. I appreciate your comment, if it’s not already obvious! I hope you have a nice day, whenever you read this.
It sounds like the claim is that it’s “from humanized (ACE2-transgenic) mice“. I assume “humanized” is referring to the genome or something else about the genetics but these organisms still shouldn’t be considered humans (or at least this opinion seems reasonable; if it’s factually wrong I’m open to being corrected).
But if it’s “from” non-human “to” human, isn’t that a zoonotic jump, or is there some mistake in this understanding?
Wouldn't it be enough to just go there, buy some food, caugh on a few of the workers there, and they'd spread the thing around to other shoppers in the next few days?
So the idea that all of these researchers would have contracted Covid and present with symptoms specific/indicative of Covid is absurd. The chances of that must be infinitesimally small.
If they had the typical, flu- and cold-like symptoms that most people experience, why would anyone ever even notice? It's extremely common to have illnesses with these symptoms in an office environment, to the point it would be strange if they didn't.
Correct, but I don't recall this being the narrative the media were following in 2020, despite stuff like this:
"After nearly 45,000 Covid deaths in England and Wales, we can see that people of different ages have been exposed to dramatically differing risks. Fatalities among school-children have been remarkably low. Taking women aged 30–34 as an example, around 1 in 70,000 died from Covid over the 9 peak weeks of the epidemic. Since over 80% of these had pre-existing medical conditions, we estimate that a healthy women in this age-group had less than a 1 in 350,000 risk of dying from Covid, around 1/4 of the normal risk of an accidental death over this period.
Healthy children and young adults have been exposed to an extremely small risk during the peak of the epidemic, which would normally be deemed an acceptable part of life. Risks can be far higher for the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions."
https://medium.com/wintoncentre/what-have-been-the-fatal-ris...
"Data on deaths from covid-19 show an association with age that closely matches the “normal” age-related risk of death from all other causes that we all face each year, says statistician David Spiegelhalter in The BMJ today.
His findings are based on analysis of death certificate data for England and Wales over a 16 week (112 day) period between 7 March and 26 June 2020."
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/covid-deaths-closely-ma...
Not entirely true. The UK definition was death _within 28 days_ of the first lab confirmed, positive Covid test. Not "any time prior".
In England, a new weekly set of figures will also be published, showing the number of deaths that occur within 60 days of a positive test. Deaths that occur after 60 days will also be added to this figure if COVID-19 appears on the death certificate. This will provide an additional measure of the impact of the disease over time.
This follows concerns raised by academics from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine about the original measure, which counted anyone who had ever tested positive as a COVID-associated death. They called for the introduction of a 21-day measure in order to accurately assess the impact of the virus on mortality rates
If you're claiming that, for instance, those aged under 40 without any comorbidities were at significantly higher risk of dying due to the impact of Covid-19 I think it would be good to post a reference for that.
The CDC publishes data showing causes of death by age cohort[0], it's worth looking at for the year 2020. Apparently they're still working on the 2021 figures.
The short version: Covid-19 just isn't a random killer - and certainly not of otherwise healthy under 40s - that everyone thinks it is/thought it was.
Look at data here:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
These numbers show that the number of deaths observed is beyond the sum of reported covid deaths + expected deaths from all other sources. Which indicates either that many covid deaths were misclassified as something else, or that the strain on the health system caused by covid resulted in significantly more deaths. If deaths were misclassified, it is certainly possible that some percentage of people in their 40s or 50s died of Covid, with cause of death listed as something else.
The severity also depends a lot on viral load.
No, the only SARS-Cov-2 strain with (likely) decreased mortality is Omicron, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2 The fact that Covid (as an illness) has become milder is due to the hosts adapting, not the virus being milder.
> The severity also depends a lot on viral load.
Yes, that is a factor.
Don't get me wrong, Covid is a deadly disease with a lethality of 1-2 %, but the typical symptoms for a 30 year old are mild.
Not my experience! OG Covid (March 2020) was just as severe as alpha/beta (December 2020). My most recent infection (August 2022) was much milder, but that could also be explained by being vaccinated.
> The fact that Covid (as an illness) has become milder is due to the hosts adapting, not the virus being milder.
I've had Covid three times (March '20, December '20, August '22) and as a healthy middle-aged adult, I'm not sure I'd agree.
The first two times were pretty wretched: I was sick enough that I could barely eat or get out of bed for a week or so, and it was many weeks before I felt completely recovered. The third time (after getting vaccinated) was definitely milder and I recovered much more quickly, but was still pretty ill for a couple of days.
But notably, the symptoms for me were quite different from a typical 'flu. One thing that was very distinctive/specific for me was the wild changes in taste perception: I couldn't even eat some foods that I normally like due to them tasting so bad. I struggled to brush my teeth because I couldn't taste the mint flavour in toothpaste, only bitter chemicals!
Of course, it's fair to say that it doesn't affect everyone equally: some of my friends and family had similar experiences to me while others only had fairly mild symptoms.
What percentage of those facets are city centers near level 4 bio labs that research these types of viruses?
Can grifters sometimes be correct? Yes. On a topic that happens to be culture war catnip? The odds reduce greatly.
1. The lab was doing gain of function experiments on coronaviruses
2. They wore limited PPE while working with these viruses
3. The first reported cases were near the lab
then I think there's a high likelihood the virus came from the lab. I don't know why this would be controversial.
Here are the actual BSL2 requirements: https://uwm.edu/ibc/bsl2_requirements/
If COVID had an incubation period of a 1-2 weeks, it's also possible for the outbreak to occur in a city center that is not a likely location for human/bat/animal interactions, so the percentage will increase further.
If they have that, it's pretty clear cut.
If they don't ... meh.
> Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act…
It looks like it was signed into law by the President on 3/20/23
<<NOTE: Deadline.>> Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall-- (1) declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), including-- (A) activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People's Liberation Army; (B) coronavirus research or other related activities performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak of COVID-19; and (C) researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019, including for any such researcher-- (i) the researcher's name; (ii) the researcher's symptoms; (iii) the date of the onset of the researcher's symptoms;
[[Page 137 STAT. 5]]
(iv) the researcher's role at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology;
(v) whether the researcher was involved with
or exposed to coronavirus research at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology;
(vi) whether the researcher visited a hospital
while they were ill; and
(vii) a description of any other actions taken
by the researcher that may suggest they were
experiencing a serious illness at the time; and
(2) <<NOTE: Reports.>> submit to Congress an unclassified
report that contains--
(A) all of the information described under paragraph
(1); and
(B) only such redactions as the Director determines
necessary to protect sources and methods.which happens to be a Sunday...
Funny how congress isn’t focusing on the stuff they have direct jurisdiction over, like refusing to fund similar programs in the future unless there is additional oversight.