(Note – this is a copy of a post I stuck on my shiny newish blog which, so far, consists solely of gibberings about Covid and vaccines! I need to expand my focus… Posting this here as it has an evolutionary flavour. Looking forward to arguing about Natural Selection for the tenth time!).
I have discussed Geert vanden Bossche’s debatable theories before. Briefly, he argues that mass vaccination in a pandemic ‘selects’ for mutants that escape the immunity conferred by the vaccine, and this threat is reason enough to just stop. He ignores selection for escape of what is loosely, but erroneously, termed ‘natural immunity’, and the enormous health and social costs attaching to the sledgehammering of this nut. Unfortunately for his theories, all variants so far have arisen in poorly vaccinated settings.
Now, Bret Weinstein – who claims to be an evolutionary biologist, yet – attempts, in his podcast and substack, ‘On Driving SARS-CoV-2 Extinct’, to rescue vanden Bossche from the dumpster and brush the banana skins from his shoulders.
Here’s an excerpt – ‘Rounding the earth’ is the work of one Mathew Crawford:
(I am aware that a properly-conducted review would include links to sources. In my defence, I can’t bear to! Do your research.)
Now, this is pretty desperate stuff. Rather than recognise the possibility that there are other causes for increase of a variant besides vaccine, it is enough that a vaccine has been used, on however small a number, within a few hundred miles of the epicentre!
Selection requires a differential in output. If one variant produces exactly the same number of secondary cases (on average) than another in the same environment – if they possess the same R value, in epidemiological terms – there is no opportunity for selection. It cannot increase relative to the other (by selection) without a differential it can affect: to get into more bodies it must have the greater R.
The role of vaccine effectiveness
Now, this selective advantage can only happen even in principle if the efficacy of the vaccine against infection (VE(i)) is greater than zero. Efficacy in ideal conditions represents the differential between a vaccinated and an unvaccinated group of the same size and composition, where no-one knows which group they are in. In real world use, the term ‘effectiveness’ is used instead of ‘efficacy’. In the real world, people know if they are vaccinated or not, affecting behaviour, and it also becomes more difficult to equalise groups with respect to other differentials such as age, comorbidity, socioeconomic factors and so on. Because of this – news though this will be to countless amateur internet data analysts – you cannot naively count cases in the two groups, and claim this accurately captures VE.
So, an accurately determined VE(i) gives the percentage differential in case count between treated and untreated groups of equivalent composition. 100% effectiveness means no cases in the vaccinated group, 0% means an identical (or a statistically insignificant differential in) case count. Intermediate values give the percentage reduction – eg 40% VE means 6 cases in the vaccinated for every 10 in unvaccinated: a 40% reduction. From this and the above, then, it is clear that VE 0 cannot generate vaccine escape – there is no possibility of getting into more bodies if the vaccine is completely ineffective; there is no selective pressure if it doesn’t work.
But the relationship is not simply dichotomous. The strength of selection in the vaccinated, minimal when VE is zero and maximal when 100%, must therefore vary continuously between those extremes. The phrase “does not stop you catching it or passing it on”, regurgitated monotonously online and whenever anyone sticks a microphone in front of a sceptic, means only that VE(i) is less than 100% – whereas the intent of most regurgitators is to suggest VE(i) is therefore zero, and there are exactly as many cases in a vaccinated as an unvaccinated group.
It is true that VE(i) is steadily going down, due to waning, antigenic drift and the generalised immune escape of variants. Many even claim (based on shoddy VE-hacking by those amateur analysts referenced above) that VE(i) is negative for omicron.That being so would mean that omicron, at least, is not the variant vanden Bossche is looking for.
For how can it select for immune escape if it confers no immunity?
We can extend this argument backwards. Each variant going forwards has successively diminished VE(i) – and, as the ‘does not stop’-ers continually remind us, immunity wanes anyway. Therefore, Vanden Bosschian Selection must have been getting steadily weaker as a force, if it ever existed. But because Crawford has managed to locate a handful of vaccinees in the vicinity of each step, he gives them the same assumed selective force as ‘wild-type’. I’d bet a pound to a peanut that Crawford and Weinstein have been pushing the implicit-0% “does not stop” narrative throughout 2021 (God forbid anyone should have a reason outside themselves to get jabbed!). And yet, a classic have-cake-eat-cake scenario, they also argue as if selective power were maximal throughout the series. No waning, no antigenic drift.
It is interesting to see how doggedly people have been pursuing the absolutist “does-not-stop” line, and they seem almost relieved that omicron and waning have come along to retrospectively justify the falsehood they have been pushing throughout 2021. “It’s going down” is a tacit admission that it was once up, no? But you’d have struggled to find a sceptic able to concede that in mid 2021. To concede it would kick one of the legs out from under their no-vax-‘cos-I’m-OK stance. Yet the graphs they gleefully point to now show clearly that, when they were vigorously arguing against there being any protective effect whatsoever, there quite clearly was.
Sure it wanes. But you don’t start off waned. Anyone commencing a course now will not have to worry about waning for a good while. Regarding waning as a justification for not getting jabbed is akin to regarding a motor vehicle’s Certificate of Roadworthiness as unnecessary, since it will expire next year. On the other hand, anyone who had the disease in early 2020 may have little protection left; renewal may be appropriate.
The role of frequency
Ignorance of diminishing VE is not even the main thing wrong with Crawford’s analysis. If we assume, for argument’s sake, that a variant can gain a copy specifically by infecting a vaccinated person, and these are rare, how is this supposed to translate into widespread transmission? The individuals in these trials were jabbed then went back to their communities, spread out; little pinpricks in the broader ground of unvaccinated individuals. Our variant gets an extra copy from infecting such a vaccinee, but it may have a long wait to find another. Remember that it only gets an advantage in vaccinees, in this example. The rest of the time, it wanders round the unvaccinated in direct competition for bodies with its ancestor, against whom it has no advantage. So this restrictive scenario isn’t going to work.
OK, you say, let’s give it an advantage in the rest of the population too. Perhaps it can evade innate immunity, or evade the immunity of the previously infected. Indeed it might, and does. But now, we have abandoned vaccination as a unique cause of selective advantage altogether. If we create a selective advantage outside of vaccinees, that could easily be a prime driver itself – especially if there are far more such individuals. It doesn’t speak well of Weinstein’s grasp of evolutionary biology that he failed to notice this effect of the rarity of the advantageous circumstance on the strength of selection.
This is what we see in practice. The variants thrown up so far do not differentially ‘prefer’ vaccinees. They are simply hyper-infectious, and evade innate, infection-acquired and vaccine-induced immunity with not much discrimination. Such discrimination as does exist appears to give greater advantage, if anything, to escape of infection-acquired immunity. This is the opposite of what is needed; people can’t argue that ‘natural immunity generates fewer cases’ at the same time as arguing ‘vaccines select more strongly’.
The role of mutation
Mutations do not necessarily arise where they find their advantage. They are a function of number of replications – the more infections there are, the more opportunity for mutation. Once arisen, mutations are metaphorically chucked against the wall to see if any stick. Outside of hosts that provide an advantage (in terms of additional bodies entered), they can only drift. Once they hit the right kind of host, they get a boost, and if there are a lot of such hosts, they get a lot of such boosts. This can be enough to drive out and replace the ancestral type, where ‘the right kind of host’ is common. But consider: if there were a way of reducing the number of replications, that would reduce the number of mutations. Do we have such a way? Well, yes. Vaccination. Sure it’s not perfect. Sure it wanes. But it will help limit the problem. If people who spent last year arguing against the protective effect had instead embraced it, we might be in a better position now Even 20% effectiveness against infection is protective – 8 cases per 10 unvaccinated, instead of 10. That’s two individuals not passing it on who otherwise would have. And because, unlike additive parameters like hospitalisation and death, the effect compounds, the benefit goes beyond one generation. With an R of 2, after 1 interval we have 16 instead of 20. After 2 we have 32 vs 40. After 3, 64 vs 80, and so on. And of course, the presence of other vaccinees in the population reduces that R anyway. Every little helps.
Oceans can’t survive without viruses… but you knew that, right?
https://www.sciencealert.com/not-all-viruses-are-bad-for-you-here-are-some-that-can-have-a-protective-effect
And…
How many viruses are embedded in the genomes of cellular organisms?
Eating is very effective. That’s why you need to keep eating fairly often. What a terrible argument for eating!
Time will tell, but I’m not aware that T-cell immunity declines quickly with time. Or that variants are eluding immunity at this level.
There are, of course many people with immune system deficiencies, but many treatment options are coming online.
A gnomic comment under the original of this from jmac, at my blog…
Flint,
I’m giving up on haircuts for the same reason. Or I would if it weren’t for Jimmy Savile (UK-centric joke).
So, we have two competing theories for the origin of variants. The one I’m critiquing in the piece is the specific role of vaccines in variant selection. Jmac is also opposed to that hypothesis. So, we’re on the same side in that regard, bizarrely.
Why do you believe that J-Mac is opposed to that hypothesis? Did he ever explicitly state that? If not, I wouldn’t assume things. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if J-Mac is just collecting contrary opinions, regardless of whether they are mutually exclusive.
I find it interesting that while there is no shortage of conjectures on the origin of covid and the origin of omicron, we have no actual evidence.
https://academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gbe/evac018/6524630?login=false
I’m ready to abandon my evolutionary faith. What have you got for me that might push me over the edge? I’m ready!
What’s the best you’ve got J-Mac?
Or more importantly, who the fuck cares? 😂
Of course I don’t expect jmac to realise it. But he supports ‘repeat lab-leak’ and considers evolutionary scenarios impossible, so it can’t be both.
Antivaxxers simultaneously believing that vaccines are ineffective and have selective power is a similar cognitive dissonance. See also: PCR doesn’t work, yet PCR-determined endpoints support ivermectin and the supposed superiority of ‘natural’ immunity.
If for once he bothered to defend his position instead of delivering the usual bluff, somebody might get something out of it.
Mainly amusement, I’d wager. But at least it’s something.
Without judging the merits of origins theories, I think it is a fact that opposition to the lab leak possibility is an argument from consequences.
Failure to find precursors in wild populations is strange, since few populations have been collected and studied as much as Chinese bats.
A fascinating sentence, here. Petrushka is noting that there are various “origins” theories but, rather than attempting to judge them based on their merits, he jumps to the conclusion (a ‘fact’, even) that people who oppose the “lab leak” theory must do so because they are indulging in the {argument from consequences} fallacy.
Why does petrushka prefer the “lab leak” theory? Well, not based on the merits, as he freely admits. Rather, he prefers the “lab leak” theory because he finds the Sinophobic consequences appealing.
It’s the fastest self-pwn ever.
Which makes it all the more impressive that petrushka should cite Jeremy Farrar. Sir Jeremy has been outspoken in his searing criticism of the Chinese and British governments and their handling of COVID-19. Now, the slightly paranoid passage that petrushka quotes here has an element of “I’ve got a book to sell” sensationalism to it, and the colleague “Eliza” from whom he gets the burner phone advice is in fact Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of the UK counter-intelligence agency: a certain amount of paranoia comes with a career in spying. But Farrar is one of the top experts in the world and the whistle-blower who originally raised the concern that SARS-2-CoV might have originated in a lab. Does he still think that it did? No he does not, writing.
Of course, to the tin-foil hat crowd, this merely proves that he’s been “got at”. Data be damned.
You neglect to mention that no theory of the oiigin of covid has any scientific evidence.
Unless you believe that 40 years of molecular evolution can occur without leaving a trace in any extant population. I leave that as a possibility, but deny that any supporting evidence has yet been published.
The alternative conjecture, which does not require intention or malice, does require one to believe the Chinese government could lie to cover up responsibility for millions of deaths.
So which is more plausible? That molecular evolution can leap tall buildings in a single bound, without a population, or that the Chinese government fibs a bit, and arrests people who step outside the party line?
If you read the entire chapters on the first months of the pandemic, you cannot miss the undercurrent of fear. Not so much personal fear, but fear of contributing to a world war, or at least to serious unpleasantness.
Not, I would assert, the conditions under which one can be a disinterested weigher of probabilities.
One other thing. The politics surrounding this is so thick, that anyone wishing to have a rational discussion on the origin if covid is immediately branded a conspiracy theorist. Any request for a discussion is immediately met with the accusation that one has already prejudged the issue.
There are, of course, nut cases jumping to conclusions, but simply not trusting the Chinese government is not sufficient to make one a nut case.
Cats have covid.
Ferrets have covid.
Hamsters have covid.
Rats are suspected of having covid.
Where I live, the wild deer that wander through my yard have covid. Or, at least a significant percentage do.
But no one finds it interesting that bats have not been found to have covid. As in SARS-Cov-19.
If only someone had taken the trouble to study bat viruses and compile and preserve a database of virus genomes.
I don’t suppose it matters to anyone here, but I agree that people who have positions of authority in science should not make serious “criminal” accusations without proof.
However, I find this reticence rather rare when it come to accusing entities less powerful and belligerent than China. But what’s the market value of integrity these days?
I still find it odd that accepted rules of thumb — such as evolution occurring one bit at a time and occurring in populations rather than in individuals — can be cast aside. Not just ignored, but deemed dangerous.
Likewise, I neglected to mention that the square root of 64 is 19, and a million other things that are factually incorrect.
To be serious though, have you reviewed
and
and
and
?
Because if you have not read, understood, and found fatal flaws in all of these, you cannot claim that no such evidence exists.
There are plenty of people having perfectly good rational discussions about the origins of SARS-CoV2. I was originally about 50:50 on the lab leak theory; but there’s a lot more data now, and (after a fair dose of rational discussion) I am more like 95:5. And not because I trust the Chinese Government: in fact, I don’t trust them at all. Did you read the section in Farrar’s Spike book where he lays out the Chinese government’s blatant dishonesty regarding SARS-CoV1?
However, if you show up spouting Republican talking points that have been repeatedly debunked, as you have on this site, then the pushback you receive is entirely justified.
Well, that really is not interesting at all. Firstly, seeing as COVID-19 is a human diagnosis, bats cannot get COVID-19, by definition. They do have viral infections closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. No idea what the hell SARS-Cov-19 might be…
Sarcasm, you are doing it wrong.
I agree. This applies even more so to people in positions of authority in politics.
Ooh, goody. An vague, unsubstantiated accusation of dishonesty. Weren’t you just complaining about well-poisoning? Are you really so unaware?
No idea what you are getting at here. The only thing I can think of is the suggestion that Omicron may have arisen as the result of a long-lasting, chronic infection in a South African individual. You do realize that it is the virus that is evolving, and not the infected individual?
Here’s the thing: you have been lied to.
Also, I find your comment re integrity disgusting.
E2fixlink
How could it have been a lab leak when none of the lab workers nor their relatives tested positive for SARS-Cov-2 antibodies?
“ Garry, 2021 “Early appearance of two distinct genomic lineages of SARS-CoV-2 in different Wuhan wildlife markets suggests SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin.”
“ Because if you have not read, understood, and found fatal flaws in all of these, you cannot claim that no such evidence exists.”
I really don’t need to find flaws in your sources, because none of them say anything contrary to what I said.
No obvious progenitor to covid has been found in the wild. The molecular distance between covid and the closest known wild viruses is estimated at 40 years.
Do we have a source for the claim that no lab worker tested positive?
Would that include the three that were hospitalized in November?
The pre-December history of covid is full of unsubstantiated claims. But it’s undisputed that the Chinese lied to WHO about human transmission in January, delaying the Western response.
https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691
I’m aware that my quotes are from responses to Garry, and not from Garry.
Doesn’t affect their validity in either direction.
Upon rereading, a small quibble.
The distinction made between hypothesis and theory is not the one currently in favor.
Regarding the rate of evolution: the possibility that omicron evolved quickly in a single person still does not shed much light on how decades of molecular evolution occurred in the covid precursor, without leaving some cousins in wild populations, or in populations of animals being farmed.
Prof. Gallaher, whom you quote here, is arguing in favor of the natural origin explanation. He and Garry are debating the potential role of the pangolin in different natural origin scenarios.
Here’s a fun fact: the data that Gallaher is citing here — all those synonymous substitutions — can actually be used as a powerful test of the man-made virus hypothesis. Duly motivated, I went to his paper [ref 2 in your quote] and reviewed the pattern of synonymous substitutions. Those wobble substitutions in SARS-CoV2 cannot be the result of any rational design, thus the ‘engineered’ explanation is pretty much dead in the water. As a result, my confidence in the natural origin explanation has increased from 95% to 99.9%. So I thank you for that.
You find it implausible that the progenitor of SARS-CoV2 was evolving away in bats and/or another wild animal for years, undetected.
I don’t: it’s par for the course.
Yes. I understand that you believe this. Hence your maintaining that there is no evidence supporting a natural origin. Pasting blocks of text written by others is not the awesome rejoinder that you suppose: they may be wrong (like random netizen “ebom”) or not saying what you think they are saying (like Gallaher).
Huh? I must admit, I had not made that connection, but you are absolutely wrong: chronic infections in a handful of pangolins and people would be sufficient to explain the mutational distance covered. And they could all be dead and buried (or eaten) before anyone started getting ill. Also, what makes you so certain that there are not any “cousins” out there — have we checked every bat in Asia?
Finally, a lot of people seem to be assuming, when they do their rate-of-evolution calculations, that synonymous mutations are under zero selective pressure; it’s a pretty standard assumption to make. With HIV and SARS-CoV, it just so happens to be WRONG.
I don’t recall ever promoting a “man made” hypothesis. At least not in the sense of designed. The concept of lab accident could include mishandling of collected specimens.
The bottom line is, the evidence for “natural” origin is zero, none. It boils down to not violating any laws of physics.
Reasons to suspect lab involvement include all the behaviors of the Chinese government.
Taking their papers and databases offline.
Arresting whistleblowers.
Destroying virus samples
Lying about the timeline of the outbreak
Lying to WHO about human to human transmission
After isolating Wuhan from internal travel, allowing the international airport to continue functioning, spreading the virus all over the world, before informing WHO of the outbreak. (This was AFTER they had sequenced the virus, so they were not ignorant of its existence.)
Lying about the geographical origins of the virus. Accusing other nations. This is part and parcel of taking steps that ensured worldwide outbreaks before admitting it was in Wuhan.
“ Serendipitously, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, over the period May 2017–Nov 2019, we were conducting unrelated routine monthly surveys of all 17 wet market shops selling live wild animals for food and pets across Wuhan City …”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2/tables/1
Strangely missing from this chart are bats and pangolins.
Is Nature a politically incorrect source?
I’m curious.
I admit the lab accident conjecture is a conjecture with no proof, and will possibly remain so.
What would it take for you to revise your probability estimate? I really can’t see anything that would move it from 50-50 to 95-5.
An I really can’t see any justification at all for asserting a consensus in favor of a hypothesis having no positive evidence.
And I think news media are, at best, disingenuous for continuing to report demonstrably untrue things about the wet markets. I can’t prove they were not involved, but there is no supporting evidence, and pretty good disconfirming evidence.
But that would still leave us with a natural origin.
And that seems inconsistent with the above.
As for the behavior of the Chinese, I have been taking that as a reaction to Donald Trump. It was clear that Trump wanted to make the Chinese a scapegoat, so they did what they could to make that difficult.
My apologies. So, when (in the thread where you uncritically posted the GOP’s crock of shit with its whole chapter on “Evidence of Genetic Modification”) you chose to post a link to the discussion of Gain of Function Research and its potential role in the 1977 flu outbreak, what you were actually doing was arguing AGAINST the Trumpian claim that the Chinese were conducting GoF research, and the COVID-19 was the result? Wow! I really misjudged you there. So you are in fact arguing that the Chinese never had any malicious intent, and — at worst– they are guilty of accidentally releasing a naturally occurring virus?
Good for you.
You learn something new every day.
Now you have lost me as well. So you are claiming that the missing 40 years of molecular evolution occurred in a freezer of some Chinese lab? This you deem more plausible than that the precursor virus lives in some as yet undiscovered animal reservoir?
If they were conducting tests with animals in the vicinity of the lab, and that’s the origin of the leak, shouldn’t it be trivial to find a proximal strain in those same animals now? Wouldn’t the fact that they can’t find it actually debunk that hypothesis?
I have no idea how covid originated.
But I see no evidence that bats were sold in Wuhan wet markets.
Nor pangolins.
And yet there is a consensus that covid originated in bats and pangolins in the wet markets.
The consensus is insane. Unsound. That’s not to say it is wrong. I can’t prove it wrong, but the reasoning is unsound, and the conclusion unwarranted.
“ Now you have lost me as well. So you are claiming that the missing 40 years of molecular evolution occurred in a freezer of some Chinese lab? This you deem more plausible than that the precursor virus lives in some as yet undiscovered animal reservoir?”
I never implied any such thing. The stored viruses presumably constituted a record of what was collected and what variants occurred in the course of research.
How is it more likely that the evolution occurred in nonexistent wet market animals? And why is everyone scapegoating the wet market, when the best available evidence says that scenario is impossible?
You are welcome to argue that I am wrong because I have bad motives, or because I cited evil politicians, but it’s a pretty weak line of reasoning.
I have never thought the deliberate release was likely, for the simple reason that virus warfare is Dr Strangelove doomsday stuff, and I have a high opinion of the intelligence of the Chinese.
I do believe the Chinese violated international agreements regarding disclosure of the outbreak, and I think it possible they hoped it would spring up in other countries before it was identified. If they did not deliberately work toward that result, they certainly stumbled into it.
I’m genuinely confused by this question. Who is “they” and what tests on what animals? Are you suggesting there were, in early 2020, lab animals that could have been tested?
Who would have tested them and reported the results? Seems to me that a number of people were arrested and re-educated just for mentioning the existence a new strain of pneumonia in an e-mail. That’s a pretty strong disincentive.
Well, it sorta is what you are implying: Most labs just freeze the samples which stops evolution of the stocks. Without modifying or actively introducing variants, 40 years worth of molecular evolution requires 40 years of cultivating viruses. Those must have been zealous researchers.
The way I understand it, the original host was bats and the immediate precursor virus made its way to the wet market via several unknown intermediate hosts, possibly even humans that got infected someplace else. We just don’t know.
The main concern of the Chinese government is its reputation, which often harms the safety of its citizens. Few people here will argue against that. That still doesn’t establish why a Chinese wet market can’t be the first known source of a new zoonotic pandemic.
I may have misunderstood. Weren’t you saying, based on that Nature article, that chinese scientists from the Wuhan lab were collecting and testing animals at the time of the outbreak, and that supports the leak hypothesis?
I still don’t understand the question.
The Chinese definitely collected bats prior to the outbreak, but I don’t know any details.
I have no evidence for a lab outbreak. I have evidence that the Chinese behavior looks like destruction of evidence. See Enron and the destruction of emails. Intimidating lab workers by arresting whistleblowers also looks like obstruction of investigation. This doesn’t prove anything, but it’s really bad PR.
My primary gripe is the claim that there is a consensus for the bat—pangolin—>human scenario. Or something like it.
A few days ago I posted an article on the recombination conjecture. My understanding is that recombination is the presumed way that a pangolin virus feature wound up in a bat virus and became covid.
There are two problems with this. One is that recombination doesn’t account for the missing decades of molecular evolution.
The other problem is more serious, and that is, an exhaustive survey of the wet markets, conducted in the years just prior to the outbreak, found zero bats or pangolins in the wet markets. This survey had no axes to grind, because there was no virus to politicize.
Also, there is no reason to suspect some secret back channel trade in bats, because the survey article notes that MOST of the trade was illegal. Bats and pangolins were not double secret super illegal. Chinese simple don’t eat bats, as a rule.
So why does the wet market conjecture persist as the consensus conjecture?
We have reason to believe bats were brought to the lab and studied. We have reason to believe this is the only population of relevant bats in Wuhan. Other than that, we have no positive evidence at all, for the origin of covid.
Two unrelated issues. Nothing about the lab activities, or possible coverup, says anything about the wet market.
Direct study of the wet market is the source of my doubt. According to the best evidence — and it Is pretty solid— there were no relevant animals in the wet market.
The continuing claim to the contrary is mystifying.
https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30292-1
This touches on the rationale for the conspiracy theory currently in vogue. I can’t judge it, but I note the lack of discussion in the press. For whatever reason, there is no public discussion.
I confess to the crime of posting excerpts from people who promoted the engineered theory. It was my intention to start a discussion of origins, and not to argue for any particular theory.
You are 99.9 percent certain that covid was not deliberately engineered, but that say nothing about the possibility of mishandling collected specimens. Or the possibility of collecting specimens much closer to covid than any publicly known.
I am 99.9 percent certain that there is no known link between the wet markets and the origin of covid.
So it’s a mystery. Could be solved by new evidence or new witnesses.
In the world of investigating the causes of accidents and calamities, intimidation of witnesses and destruction of evidence is suspicious and in some cases, criminal. The Chinese did both. And the western world continues to engage in name calling toward anyone who questions the wet market conjecture. That’s a form of intimidation.
“Or something like it” might cover a multitude of sins… The pangolin has been off the hook since October 2020, so you are misinformed. The consensus is for bat -> {another animal} -> human.
Well, given that you were wrong about the pangolin consensus, do you now see that your ‘more serious’ problem is no such thing? You are misinformed.
Lastly, what the hell does an in vitro study on polio in Cell have to with zoonoses?
Again, pasting random chunks of text, whose context you do not understand, is not the killer argument that you suppose.
Apart from the epidemiology, that is. You have been lied to.
Regarding the Cell article, I have to ask questions for which I don’t know the answer.
The article leads me to believe synonymous mutations can accumulate more rapidly in a lab culture than in the wild, because it takes time for them to be fixed in the wild population.
Is this a correct reading, and could it be relevant?
Evidence?
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abf8003
“ Our estimates for the timing of the Hubei index case further distance this individual from the outbreak at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Finding the animal reservoir or hypothetical intermediate host will help to further narrow down the date, location, and circumstances of the original SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans.”
I might point out that I have been discussing the origin of the virus in relation to the wet market. And the widespread reporting that the wet market sold the bats and pangolins presumed to have contributed to the recombination events.
This is distinct from tracing the earliest cases.
My point is, if those bats that were brought into the lab were infected with SARS-Cov-2 and that’s where the leak came from, it should be trivial to find other bats in the area infected with very close relatives to the virus, right? And even if they found them, how could they determine if the zoonotic event happened in the lab vs in the wild?
No, for the reasons given above.
Again, information that I provided on your previous muck-raking thread.
Say what? This is as epic as your “Just a little milestone you won’t read about in any newspaper.” fiasco.
What a strange state of mind.