220
China lab suspected of Covid leak stripped of US funding for violating biosafety rules
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
220 points (86.4% liked)
World News
32285 readers
1057 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is stupid. There is just as much evidence it came from Fort Detrick.
For the record I don't think it came from either.
I don't know why anyone is still talking about a lab outbreak in Wuhan because of the wet market nearby being suspected in mid December, when we know for sure that Covid was in Italy in September/October and possibly as early as May. The world just shrugged at this info because faecal treatment samples aren't as interesting as as bat soup and bioterrorism.
Racism mostly. Easier to just be racist against the Chinese than to admit COVID is the result of something more nuanced and systemic
It's also about laziness. It's much less effort to just point a finger than to think about the complexities of a situation.
It's also really easy to dismiss the uncomfortable origin (It came from a Chinese lab) and point to the "complexities of the situation" instead.
Nobody has a problem with Chinese people.
But the CCP needs to be given the Beria treatment.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/tucker-carlson-guest-military-doesnt-193556601.html
Yeah, and hitler didn't like jews.
It's tucker fucking Carlson, duh.
Ask him about gay people and immigrants next.
The clip is actually mainly about his guest, but anyway my point is that your claim was clearly false.
“We don’t hate the Chinese just the government that they like and has made their people prosperous.”
Check what happened to the Russians after the Soviet Union fell and tell me it’s not hate to wish that on the Chinese next.
The USSR (Stalin mostly) broke the Russian people, which is why they're so weak after its fall.
The CCP broke the Chinese people too. Seems like a common theme.
What does it mean to "break" a people?
The Chinese people were certainly already "broken" in 1949. They had undergone a century of collapse, most were illiterate, women were essentially chattel, and every single grain of wheat or rice more than what was required to keep them alive was stolen by unelected landlords.
The communists took power and every single one of them was taught to read, women were enfranchised, no-fault divorce and abortion were legalized, political rights were expanded, opium and gangs were chased out of the mainland and the feudal lords were held to account.
30 years after the revolution they had turned a society of feudal peasants into a nuclear power, 30 years after that and it's the world's largest economy by PPP.
The same things can be said about the Bolsheviks, who defeated a nazi army which sought to annihilate them.
"I'm not racist, nobody has a problem with Chinese people."
"Also, the Chinese are wild animals that were broken and domesticated."
Okay there, buckaroo. Keep telling yourself that.
Hahaha what the fuck
who broke you?
I'm not racist, but here's my thoughts generalizing entire populations of millions as "weak people" because of their Asiatic brainpans.
And by every major polling organizations metrics the Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of the CPC.
Typical westoid wants to destroy a government that is liked by it's people. What's your countries government approval rating? Do you want to overthrow your government too?
I worked there for a good while.
They don't hate it, they treat it like the weather, something to fear, but nothing you can do anything about.
The CCP broke them completely, much like the USSR broke the Russian people.
Tell us of the deep abiding wisdom you gained from teaching English at a barely-regulated "school" for 12 months.
Yeah man definitely no racism here
Any sources on the virus being discovered in Italy before China? That would change the entire discussion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2
There’s no similar tests done in China (that I can find traces of) so we have no idea when the virus started circulating in China. Just like Winnie the Poo likes it.
"signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought."
they still suggest Chinese origin
Yup, this idea only works if you believe what the CCP says verbatim.
Well, no, it's not an "idea". It just means there's nothing special about Wuhan that should make us look at everything there as a suspect.
You are wrong, the assumption of people who post this is that there wasn't COVID-19 in China before the CCP announced it was around.
You're the one making assumptions I'm afraid.
We don't know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn't spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.
Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don't know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we've just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we've learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.
From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.
EDIT for sources:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117
Do you understand that still the leap from "It's 99% similar to Chinese pangolin coronavirus" (and hey, you're 99% similar to a Ugandan chimp) and "so the other 1% probably came from a lab in Wuhan"? Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first. We can say that's a Chinese cover-up, but go ahead and say that, and recognise it as speculation.
Dude I'm a microbioligst, just look at the cladisitics of all the viruses similar to SARS-COIVD-2, it's undeniable that the virus is from China because of its similarity to that of the viruses in the pangolin and, it's like saying humans don't come from Africa, just because 1% is a big deal does not mean that all the genetic evidence shows that ALL its relatives come from China, just as ALL early homo species come from Africa.
I'm absolutely 100% with you on it coming from Asian pangolins. That even quite likely ties it to Asian wet markets, or the illegal hunting trade. SARS and MERS were both zoonotic too. SARS came from the abuse of palm civets.
What you seem to not understand - and here's where I get to dick-swing my tangentially related credentials - is that 'wet markets' are everywhere in China and indeed Asia. There's a dozen in Wuhan alone. 'Fresh market' would be a much better name - it's the opposite to a dry market, ie shelf-life goods and non-perishables. Google just calls them "Farmer's Markets", which is what they would be called in the US.
Fresh markets also happen to be places that people travel distance to get to - traders bringing produce, and people traveling to get stuff. Pangolins from as far away as India and Indonesia end up in China. The trade of exotic animals and especially ones with Chinese 'medicine' applications is horrendous in tropical Asia, where I spent a number of years, visiting China only once. It has a lot to do with why I turned veggie!
So again, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of 'wet markets' in Asia. The only distinction that one of Wuhan's has is that it was reported there first, at least three months after the virus had already spread - maybe from China - as far as Italy. It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as "oh, and there's a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak". We have no idea.
I'm in Ireland. My grandmother died of a sudden and rapid onset of pneumonia in December 2019 that did not respond to ordinary treatment. My son was sick with something like a flu that give him the sniffles and sapped all energy from him for 2 days, which sticks only in mind because keeping him home resulted in a fight with the in-laws which means they haven't seen him since. Could either of those things have been Covid? Again, no idea. Nobody sent anyone for strain testing, and Ireland, like most places, does not habitually keep waste treatment plant samples for later testing. Nobody has suggested an absurd cover-up by the Irish government of course. And the stories of a "bad flu" in autumn and winter of 2019 are everywhere.
UK flu season 'starting early': https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/12/public-urged-to-act-fast-to-avoid-festive-flu/
Europe in general complaining about flu symptoms and dry coughs in Winter 2019, analysed statistically: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81333-1
USA, higher cases than usual in South: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-an-unexpected-virus.html
And, for all that's useful about it, at least anecdotally from non-Chinese sources in Wuhan, the particular wet market didn't even have pangolins or bats.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-hokave-alibi
And this is how you can completely deny reality.
That’s the thing, the COVID conspiracy people now posting this shirt saying, “SEE!?! IT WAS LAB LEAK!!” as if that justifies every single other insane thing they’ve ever said about COVID. Because there’s a huge difference between “covid CAME FROM a lab” and “lab leak possible origin.” One implies conspiracy, the other implies carelessness. What’s the old saying? ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to greed?’ I very much think the same applies to stupidity—and honestly, in this case, greed probably caused the stupidity. How much funding-slashing has led to calamity in recent times? Plenty.
I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation. The issue is not so much about how/when it was leaked, but more along the lines of how poorly they handled the whole situation and subsequent coverup. For all we know, it could have been leaked by accident way earlier.
I personally don't think it came from Detrick, but I don't fault you for thinking so
It came from the lab in Wuhan, not Detrick. We shall never really know since every govt, especially China will deny and cover up the truth.
It didn't come from a lab in Wuhan, it was first discovered in Wuhan but was already going around in Italy for months at that point based on waste samples.
The point was that we have just as much evidence to say it came from Detrick as we do to say it came from a Chinese lab. It most likely didn't come from either, but only one of these conspiracies gets pushed. If you provide any pushback that maybe China isn't responsible for COVID you get met with "well they would lie and cover it up, so I might as well be right"
Yeah, I don't really have any issues with accepting a lab leak possibility, but the lab leak people generally add a whole bunch of other conspiracies on top of that (it was designed as a bioweapon, leaked intentionally, etc), and nobody can really explain why this would be any good as a bioweapon if it hurts you as much as your enemies, and if you release it without having a vaccine for it.
I think the bio weapon part is from people who don’t understand what research is going on lab. They hear “gain of function” research and immediately think Resident Evil type bio weapon.
Not that I agree that type of research is good for us to be doing in the first place. But I do understand the reason we do that type if research is to learn about viruses and how to combat them as they mutate. I think it’s stupid to be doing that type of research anywhere, especially finding China.
“Gain of function” is an extremely broad category that is an absolutely necessary part of molecular biology research.
Exactly The issue is how China handled all of this. America has had leaks before as have other countries. China has several well known leaks.
China is still trying to hide the origins which to me heavily suggest a lab leak.
The original saying is "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It came from the wild. They, along with Germany and other labs, were researching Sars related wild vectors and the possibility of natural selection causing a new outbreak.
I find it reasonable to believe a biosafety incident at the Wuhan lab infected several of the lab researchers and that led to the pandemic.
But that's the extent of where things go. Conspiracies about bioweapons are idiotic.
I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that's probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that's true.
However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.
Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the "safe umbrella" of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about
I thought this as well (massive safety events being a pretty normal thing, after all) until last year when the wet market swab data was finally analyzed. (After apparently being leaked? Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose?)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
"Both early lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were geographically associated with the market"