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Comment by aliljet | Hacker News Reader

Were they first patients?

Well, according to some reports, the first reported incidents happened in November 2019 and the months prior, from people who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology (according to US government sources) [0]. Those people were: Ben Hu, Yu Ping, Zhu Yan.

[0] https://www.public.news/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19

Not according to them and this little-known publication called "Science." I've never heard of it, but seems legit:

https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chin...

yes of course they all denied ever being sick in November 2019. China even denied that the wet market was the original source of infection. China also disputed any claims that they practiced "gain of function" research at all at WIV, even though that was uncovered by the recent evidence presented in Congress against Anthony Fauci, who funded the whole thing in the first place.

Yes, of course, the absence of evidence is always evidence of a cover up.

Conspicuous absence of evidence in a place where there'd almost have to be evidence one way or another, may be evidence of a cover-up, yes.

Just based on the logic of institutions, I'd expect all the parties involved here to start covering up before they even know themselves what the truth is.

According to partisan online newsletter "public.news" that claims to have interviewed anonymous US government sources.

Unfortunately online search has gone useless and it's not possible to find out if anyone ever confirmed anything about that report. Just gazillion of other newslets repeating the original claim.

Normally, I would count that as a strong signal that the origin was said lab. But with the current government, I don't think such a report in isolation should be considered as strong evidence. The US is not trustworthy at the moment.

It wasn't the current government. The statement was published at the tail end of the first Trump administration but the Biden administration continued to say they had serious questions about the lab leak hypothesis.

Another poster above has quoted the declassified US intelligence report and the conclusion was that any connection with the lab was very unlikely.

That is all based on the claim that they had illnesses with symptoms consistent with COVID. But those are also consistent with the flu and with the common cold and with other seasonal viruses which were also active at the time, since November is in the respiratory illness season there.

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