Covid 'fuse' may have been lit weeks or months before the 'bomb' in Wuhan market

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/mar-27-covid-pandemic-origins-nature-sounds-good-why-humans-have-such-big-brains-and-more-1.5965083/covid-fuse-may-have-been-lit-weeks-or-months-before-the-bomb-in-wuhan-market-researcher-1.5965090

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

43 54 5 years ago

cbc.ca

PartiallyTyped2• 5 years ago

Perhaps monitoring twitter and other social media for symptoms that deviate from the expected for the timeframe is the kind of surveillance mentioned in the article [1]. It is definitely unrealistic to be on the hunt for pathogens by inspecting every single person, but using social media for guided search could prove useful.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32937679/

mc32• 5 years ago

There was the Wuhan ophthalmologist[1] who pulled the alarm but got a visit by police and eventually succumbed to the disease.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang

SiempreViernes2• 5 years ago

He was the first that publicly recognised the original outbreak as something new, but that's not the sort of preventive surveillance we're interested in.

Of course it would have been great if the Chinese were more transparent during those early days (and in general honestly), but it's pretty clear that the original outbreak was just the first smoke escaping from inside the burning roof: by late December it was already an uncontained epidemic that had spread far outside Wuhan.

We'd like something that would pick up the disease before it makes it to the epidemic status.

beagle32• 5 years ago

Which is weird in itself -

The probability of death for a healthy 30-something year old is lower than their probability to die in a car crash (1/10 to 1/100 of all cause mortality for that age group).

It’s a game of probability, of course, but it turns out that whistle blowers often suffer from “coincidences” and “low probability events”, and whenever that happens, I try to take note.

johnchristopher2• 5 years ago

There are already long term studies (in France for instance there is the constance cohorte https://www.constances.fr/cohorte/presentation-constances.ph...) that ask volunteers to come and get tested for a lot of things.

This data is being looked at and it seems there were already covid cases months before reports of cases in Wuhan https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/samedi-investigatio....

PartiallyTyped2• 5 years ago

This is very interesting, do you have a translated article?

underseacables3• 5 years ago

The more we learn the more it points to a lab leak, but Chinese commenters will deny it, claim racism, many on the left will say it’s simply not true, and yet here we are. Something caused it and it came from China. With a government that 100% cannot be trusted to tell the truth let alone defend human life, it’s more likely than not this was an accidental leak.

cmrdporcupine• 5 years ago

Was with you until this "many on the left" nonsense. Been "left" all my life and I don't recognize myself in your comment nor do many others.

It's not team sports, it's world issues.

meddlepal• 5 years ago

Thats why he said many not all.

simonh• 5 years ago

Many on the right will say the lab leak theory is definitely true and has been 'proved'. So yep, we're in this together. I'm on the right, have been all my life, but nonsense is nonsense whoever is saying it.

kenjackson• 5 years ago

Nothing in that article suggests a leak. If maybe your own personal theory, but this article doesn’t support it.

jkaplowitz2• 5 years ago

Nothing in the article talks about how the virus first got into humans, beyond assuming an animal (not lab) source. It simply focuses on how unlikely it was, according to simulations, to survive the chain of initial infections long enough to fully develop into a pandemic.

The researchers discussed in the article believe the virus was present in a small number of people before the spread at the Wuhan market and view the spread there as among large numbers of people, not between the animals at the market and people there. So it's the crowds that were important there, not the seafood. Many countries around the world have densely crowded areas.

In order words, this was probably an unlikely event that could have happened in any country worldwide with densely crowded areas. It happened to be China this time, but that's coincidence and should not lead to anti-Chinese or anti-Asian hate.

Criticizing governments in China, the US, etc for aspects of their early pandemic handling is of course perfectly valid, as opposed to generalizing to the populations or ethnicities as a whole. But one should not discriminatorily focus on what China did wrong early on while ignoring the early mistakes of Western countries like the US, nor praise the US's mediocre pandemic results throughout most of 2020 while overlooking China's fast recovery through strict (albeit quite authoritarian) lockdowns.

For reference, I am American and not Chinese, but I still don't blame Chinese people generally for their government's bad handling of the early containment stage of the pandemic, nor for the coincidence that this virus spread from China.

kryogen1c• 5 years ago

But one should not discriminatorily focus on what China did wrong early on while ignoring the early mistakes of Western countries like the US

this is wildly inaccurate. china single-handedly delayed world response by at least a month by jailing journalists, destroying samples, and lying to the WHO. comparing that to some degree of ineptitude in the US or anywhere else is nonsensical.

SketchySeaBeast5• 5 years ago

Something caused it

Yes

and it came from China.

Yes, it seems that way.

With a government that 100% cannot be trusted to tell the truth let alone defend human life,

Sure.

it’s more likely than not this was an accidental leak.

This does not follow your other points. Just because it's within the realm of possibility that someone could have done it doesn't mean they did it. Just because someone is a bad guy doesn't mean you can attribute everything bad that happens in their house to them. Sometimes bad stuff happens and it's not anyone's fault.

underseacables3• 5 years ago

There’s no evidence that it’s a deliberate leak, and it’s highly doubtful we will ever learn what exactly happened, but I think it’s highly likely that this came from a Chinese lab and the apologists for China decry this line of inquiry

randomopining• 5 years ago

CCP is hiding some raw data.

Most likely they tried to cover it up and that led to it spreading more and around the world. If there was a true investigation, it would go up to upper/mid levels in the CCP and show how corrupt they were. In Asian cultures, saving face is everything.

lordnacho• 5 years ago

Aren't all exponential processed like this? Fragile in the beginning, unstoppable past some point?

I don't think we were unlucky at all. If there was a 70% chance of this petering out it doesn't take a lot of tries to get one that doesn't.

SiempreViernes2• 5 years ago

Even if the outcome isn't particularly rare, I still think any bad outcome from a random process counts as unlucky.

SketchySeaBeast5• 5 years ago

I suppose you're right, but if you're paying Russian Roulette with 5 out of 6 bullets loaded I'm going to be more predisposed to thinking you were playing a really stupid game. I don't consider my lottery losses every time I buy a ticket unlucky, I just consider them the expected result.

eCa• 5 years ago

The 70% is my issue with the article as well. That seems to indicate a 30% chance for the pandemic that actually happened, but that seems awfully high.

Retric2• 5 years ago

30% chance for a pandemic not necessarily this pandemic. Assuming they are correct the outbreak could have easily been noticed in a different city for example.

dls2016• 5 years ago

Aren't there other outcomes, like the relatively contained SARS/MERS outbreaks of the past?

abrowne• 5 years ago

Or, to quote Ernest Hemingway, "Gradually, then suddenly."

Symmetry3• 5 years ago

If this was flu, say, with a smaller k then you'd see a more normal exponential increase. With this it probably looked more like 1 person, 1 person, 1 person, 1 person, 1 person, 2 people, 30 people. Even absent protective measures most people who get Covid transmit to 1 person or nobody. But some spread it to dozens of others and a small number to hundreds.

I'd guess this is mostly driven by the orders of magnitude difference in peak viral load we see with SARS-CoV-2? But that's really something that needs research.

JulianMorrison2• 5 years ago

Next question y'all should be thinking about: how many other fuses are smouldering right now?

adolph• 5 years ago

Probably most “research” labs are fuses, the smoldering part is tougher.

Symmetry3• 5 years ago

Zoonotic coronavirus infections from bats are pretty common in south east Asia when scientists have done antibody surveys of villagers. Most of those probably aren't well suited to human to human transmission. And if a virus spreads to infect everybody in a village and herd immunity is reached that's the end of that. But as commerce increases we're going to have to worry about taking more preventative measures.

maxerickson2• 5 years ago

Seems like it wouldn't be that expensive to do routine genetic surveillance of symptomatic infections in regions of concern.

And of people that work with livestock.

Setting it up would be hard, and pulling the interesting data out of the firehouse would likely be hard.

drran• 5 years ago

About 100.

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/emerging-infectious-disea...

illiilliiililil2• 5 years ago

The way HN comes down so hard against the lab leak hypothesis is spooky. Opinion about this is thrown around so heavily. Credentials: NPR listener AKA elite understander of things? The tide of understanding the origin of this virus is turning as Chinese propaganda wears thin. Many of you may recieve your comeuppance and I hope you're embarassed by your sheepishness.

Loughla3• 5 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, is the problem.

Animal to human transmission is a thing that exists and is known. Much less extraordinary, much more mundane, but much more plausible.

Until there is extraordinary proof of your claim, and not just 'I feel it' type of arguments, I will steadfastly believe it started from a bat, as originally claimed.

If you have proof of your claim, and I have missed it, please provide it. I would appreciate it.

illiilliiililil2• 5 years ago

You speak on the virus as if you have expertise, or have studied the subject. Yet I suspect you, and so many posters here, are mere podcast listeners. The arrogance is almost a virus in spirit.

underseacables3• 5 years ago

Most posts which are critical of China get a lot of downvotes. The reason for that is speculation as HN does not publish statistics or transparency, but the issue of lab leak versus occurring outside of the lab has become so political that it has divided rational people who might otherwise question more honestly.

Symmetry3• 5 years ago

I sort of think the most likely origin is that some pangolin farmer from the back end of rural Yunnan was the first host but the virus couldn't explode until someone went to bring the pangolins to market in a city with real crowds.

adrianb2• 5 years ago

Not impossible, but how plausible is that a farmer sells his animals in a single location in a big city more than 1000 km away? More likely the animals would be sold closer to his farm or sold in multiple big cities igniting separate outbreaks with distinct lineages.

Loughla3• 5 years ago

In my experience, it is relatively plausible that the animals are sold in a single location, that far away. Granted, this is absolutely anecdata, but it does prove a point.

My experience: For decades, my father, my grandfather, and my great grandfather sold cattle via the Chicago markets. This is a trip of around 1000 km. This also originally started when our part of the US would have been no different than a very backwater part of a developing nation. No roads, no rail, no infrastructure, really, until you got to within 400-500 km of Chicago from where we live. And yet, they moved cattle that far to one single marketplace.

freddealmeida• 5 years ago

I highly doubt this. Lab leak while unpopular is hard to disprove. While these fictions are easy to do so.

curmudgeon222• 5 years ago

I’m curious what people make of coronavirus antibodies being detected in Italy in September 2019: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/coronavirus-italy-cov...

SketchySeaBeast5• 5 years ago

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-circulating-italy-ea...

There's some good points about jumping to conclusions in this article.

curmudgeon222• 5 years ago

Interesting, thanks for the link. The livescience article mentions the possibility of false positives and doing different types of antibody testing to confirm, not only with potential WHO involvement. Do you know if there was any further testing? A quick search didn’t yield helpful results.

adrianb2• 5 years ago

The paper has earned an expression of concern regarding its peer review process, I don't think many scientists rely on it at the moment:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0300891620987756

Covid 'fuse' may have been lit weeks or months before the 'bomb' in Wuhan market

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