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Comment by dualvariable | Hacker News Reader

It is very unlikely that the initial superspreader event of a pandemic would be in a wet market that would be the one place for an animal spillover.

And when you look at the documented lab release of SARS-CoV-1, it killed the researcher's mother. If a lab leak happened, we would expect it to hit the people closest to the researchers at the lab who were infected, and the places they visited. Hitting only the wet market isn't very likely.

The outbreak looks like a wet market spillover. The fact that it happened in the same city as WIV is an unusual coincidence, but if the virus developed in rural Hubei, it was likely it would spillover in Wuhan.

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> The outbreak looks like a wet market spillover.

Zoonotic spillover is not a spontaneous 0->100 event, there should be a trail of intermediate hosts and adjacent infections that there is zero evidence of.

> If a lab leak happened, we would expect it to hit the people closest

thats not representative of sarscov2. People in the same household could fail to spread infection.

> Hitting only the wet market isn't very likely.

It didnt. There were early cases outside of the wet market.

> unusual coincidence

A novel coronavirus appearing outside a coronavirus gain-of-function research lab is not a coincidence. Id sooner believe it was a sleight of hand to cover for a terrorist attack.

> there should be a trail of intermediate hosts and adjacent infections that there is zero evidence of.

just because we are missing a link does not mean it doesn't exist. Christians use similar arguments to try and disprove evolution.

> thats not representative of sarscov2. People in the same household could fail to spread infection.

so you think a single person in the lab was infected (with no evidence), and then right as they were contagious, went straight to the wet market and on the way, infected not a single person related to the lab or degrees of separation from it? this is the case you are making?

> There were early cases outside of the wet market.

no there aren't

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454?referrer...

> Id sooner believe it was a sleight of hand to cover for a terrorist attack.

that's because your way of thinking is conspiratorial and so you assume malintent with very little evidence

> just because we are missing a link does not mean it doesn't exist.

yes and no. in every other zoonosis, we have lineages and source animals and collateral infections. we have none of that for covid. its not definitive, but it is strongly dispositive.

> no there aren't

the article you linked is contradicting you, but regardless the claim isnt falsifiable:

"If Huanan Market was the source, why were “only” one- to two-thirds of early cases linked [...] why would one expect all cases [...] to be confined to one market?"

the article's thesis is that there are multiple cases not linked to Huanan market, but thats expected because of asymptomatic transmission. That argument could be used in favor of either side, so its not particularly meaningful.

> infected not a single person related to the lab or degrees of separation from it

as I just mentioned, the article you linked makes this very claim. you cant have it both ways.

I mean you need to show that trail Covid was very infectious even before it mutated more. It's been estimated to have a R-naught above 2. It seems incredulus that their is a hypotehtical lab worker who is infected who takes the train 7 miles to the wet market (distance from lab) infects no one, but than infects 1 person at the wet market. Than goes home on the train, infects no one afterwards after proving they have virulent infection. It seems to go against how virus work. Because they need to not only infect anyone after the ride home but also no infect anyone ever again execpt at the wet market. You need to show evidence of or you are just engaging in conspricy thinking

Also we don't have the Zoonosis of the plauge, or the spanish bird flu but we are very confident they came from animals because we can tell that. So that claim we always now is just dumb we are mising many origin animals for many diseases because can back generate dieasese lineages from the DNA of the disease sometimes we can't and I am sure there are some back traces that just go to the wrong animal.

China didn't help with the fact they killed and bleached every animal at that wet market but that is documented to have happened but that is not proof of lab leak.

Yeah, it would have killed a friend or relative of the lab worker, or someone living in the same building as the lab worker, and then you would have your smoking gun of a lab leak.

Going from infecting a lab worker to a high-precision spillover in a wet market, without leaving a trace anywhere else, is just not how a viral infection is likely to work.

SARS-CoV-2 has relatively low IFR, especially among younger people, and a mild case is easily dismissed as a flu or cold. Transmission is also heterogeneous, with most patients infecting no one while a few infect huge clusters; R = 2 absolutely does not mean one patient infects two, who infect four, who infect eight, etc.

> An important feature in this distribution, consistent with earlier findings (4), is that the majority (76%) of infected cases shows no evidence of onward transmission amongst any of their contacts.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7523148/

So there's no reason to expect that the first cluster that generates enough sickness and death to attract official attention will occur near the point of introduction. If we look at North America, then it in fact did not--the introduction must have been at an airport or seaport, but the first large clusters were in nursing homes, church choir practices, etc. This is different from SARS-1 or MERS, which were deadly enough to make that cryptic spread much less likely.

> but the first large clusters were in nursing homes, church choir practices, etc.

which are not supermarkets.

Can you clarify your point? Crowded, poorly-ventilated wet markets like the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market are quite different from American (or Chinese) supermarkets, and uncommon in the USA. American-style nursing homes are likewise uncommon in China, where it's more common for elderly parents to live with their children.

The conditions for a super-spreader event can arise in many different ways--before the contact tracers gave up, they found clusters in that wet market, those nursing homes, cruise ships, meat processors, migrant worker dormitories, and many other types of venues. I don't see why we'd ever expect the first cluster in the same type of venue in both countries, except by chance.

-- There's so much heated speculation in this thread as to make all arguments worthless. What isn't speculation however, is that the international treaties against bio-weapons are a joke that can result in a global tragedy at any moment.

Bio-weapons are untraceable, one side can seed an infection in a way to frame another player, and all that could be done about it, would be heated but fruitless speculations. There's no point in arguing about "who's done it", actually that line of argument is a huge distraction causing a lot more harm than good.

Learn and argue about the dysfunctional internal and international bio-regulations, they are the reason for the uncertainty and lack of accountability which enable and invite truly global and truly disastrous villainy.

> in every other zoonosis, we have lineages and source animals and collateral infections. we have none of that for covid

I'm ignorant but thought that the evidentiary record for ebola was also really thin? Where we have lineages and source animals, sometimes that has taken many years, I think?

I think perhaps there is a correlation with population density as well. Wuhan is fairly dense, and the wet market that is subject to speculation is located in the most densely populated district of wuhan.

Is it possible that the animals at the wet market itself was the source? Sure. But it seems sort of coincidental to me it is also the most dense area of the city; could’ve already been spreading and this location just happened to be where a major outbreak occurred from density factors alone.

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