Originally posted by french frank
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The mischief making potential of the whole thing is right up Johnson's street and let's face it he has nothing to lose however things play out - a threat to his MP status is unlikely to be a deterrent in my view. It all just increases his earnings. -
part 2 turned up this morning - not sure it helps any idea - I get the impression that a 20min lecture has been turn into six 30min podcasts - I somehow doubt if I'll bother with the rest as it's mostly sound effects, regurgitation of already discussed ideas + a tiny dose of journalism.Originally posted by Bryn View PostComment
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I have Devi Sridhar's book and it looks good so far, as was her sensible commentary at the height of the pandemic. David Quammen's 'Breathless' has been well-reviewed and comes from an author with a good track record in this area (I have his previous book 'Spillover').Originally posted by Mal View Post
I have to say I disliked what I saw in the early chapters of 'Failures of State' I previewed on Amazon - the authors seem far too credulous about 'lab leak' theories, and I see they are doubling down on this in the Sunday Times today, with an article that compiles the sort of stuff we see from 'internet sleuths' on Twitter, together with lurid claims about biowarfare from shadowy 'US investigators', supposedly based on secret information (which somehow hasn't convinced the majority of US intelligence agencies), and quotes from cranks like Steven Quay and Richard Ebright. This reminds me of the same newspaper's plugging of fringe theories about AIDS back in the 1990s.
While we can't absolutely exclude the possibility of some sort of lab release, we seem to be in a strange situation where the accumulating evidence for a natural spillover from the Huanan Market, which leaves most domain experts convinced that this is by far the most likely hypothesis, is disregarded by journalists who choose to seek out fringe or unaccountable sources because it gives them a more dramatic story, and the general public are seeing a highly skewed perspective. Even a neutral statement from George Gao on what can and cannot be ruled out has been spun by journalists from various respectable news sources as support for the 'lab leak'. This also ignores that Gao himself is constrained by the CCP's political stance, which avoids confirming any specific origin for the virus within China, whether from the market or a lab. Better to leave all possibilities open but unconfirmed (including fanciful sources like frozen food from abroad), because allowing an unsafe trade in live animals to continue after the lesson of SARS is no easier to explain to the world than a lab release would be. The same constraints may well be responsible for the Gao group's incomplete analysis of their own data from environmental samples taken at the market, which originally ignored the genetic evidence for the presence of susceptible animal species that the Chinese authorities had denied were there (though these animals had already been photographed when on sale). This genetic evidence only came to light when other scientists got hold of the raw data the Gao group had been sitting on since early 2020, forcing them to perform a rather half-baked re-analysis of their own data they might have preferred to avoid doing.Comment
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I was unable to listen last Tuesday and have only caught up this morning. I had a very different reaction to yours. This being a series aimed at the broad Radio 4 listenership, it gave good context and relevant information about the socio-political environment clouding the investigation into the source of SARS-Cov2. I certainly intend sticking with the series, padding and all.Originally posted by Frances_iom View PostComment
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Due to a mixup in my travel plans I found myself free this Tuesday morning to listen to episode 3 - it hasn't changed my basic thesis that Whuhan labs accidentally or otherwise was the prime cause of the outbreak - the wet market acting as an amplifier in that I suspect some of the racoon dogs on sale there became infected and for a short period acted as a reservoir of infection.
Now it is possible that the audience, as in best thriller mode, is being pushed down one route, only for the final denouement to show that the truth was otherwise and always visible if the signs had been correctly interpreted. However they did raise many of the points I mentioned in much earlier posts eg the lack of a reservoir of earlier strains of the virus in the wild (as found for the SARS outbreak - after which the Chinese government should be held criminally responsible in not shutting down the wet markets in 'exotic' animals for food). My own suspicion is that there is some hidden link between the wet market, maybe as a possible supplier of lab animals, and the Whuhan lab (possibly via the associated lab next door to the wet market mentioned in the first episode).Comment
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Sorry, that is wild speculation that reads like something from The Light, rather than anything relating to scientific method. For a start, the sale of wildlife at wet markets was officially banned by the Chinese government in 2003, though, as with the discovery of horse meat in processed foods in this country a few years ago, the ban was poorly enforced. In 2020, following the outbreak of COVID-19, stronger restrictions were imposed. As you openly admit, you start from a "suspicion" "that there is some hidden link between the wet market, maybe as a possible supplier of lab animals, and the Whuhan lab (possibly via the associated lab next door to the wet market mentioned in the first episode). That is conspiracy theorism, rather than science. That said, I continue to concur that the programmes have too much padding in them, not even really starting until around 5 minutes into each episode.Originally posted by Frances_iom View PostComment
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It is worth following up on the references in this section of the wiki item on wet markets:
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_markets_in_ChinaThe Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was shut down on 1 January 2020.[9] The Chinese government subsequently announced a temporary ban on the sale of wild animal products at wet markets on 26 January 2020,[23][24][9][10] and then a permanent ban in February 2020 with an exception for Traditional Chinese Medicine ingredients,[24][25] By 22 March 2020, at least 94% of the temporarily closed wet markets in China were reopened according to Chinese state-run media,[8][6] without wild animals or wild meat.[10] The reopening of wet markets led to public criticism of the Chinese government's handling of wet markets by Anthony Fauci and Lindsey Graham,[26][27][28] although their criticisms have been attributed to semantic confusion between the terms "wet market" and "wildlife market".[10][29][30][11] The World Health Organization responded with the recommendation that wet markets only be reopened "on the condition that they conform to stringent food safety and hygiene standards."[31][32]
In April 2020, the Chinese government unveiled plans to further tighten restrictions on wildlife trade,[8][9] with instructions and financial compensation for operations that were forcibly shut down.[15] Deutsche Welle reported that by September 2020, the Chinese government had shut down almost all wildlife farms.[15]Comment
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you amaze me - did you actually listen to the program - from the very start the Chinese Government acted in very suspicious ways eg think of the first whistle blowing doctor who raised the strange appearance of the disease, was vilified, arrested etc before actually dying from the disease, after which he was then praised, of course being dead he couldn't comment any futher. The wet market was apparently well known for what was sold so 'poorly enforced' given the cost + deaths of the SARS outbreak 17 years previously seems to be a very generous of you.Comment
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That the Chinese authorities were undoubtedly slow to act in the early stages, and have got a lot more wrong subsequently (as of course so did the UK government - remember Johnson on shaking hands.) Chinese scientists were far quicker off the mark, with SARS-Cov2 being sequenced from a sample sent to Hong Kong within days of the initial outbreak. None of that lends weight to your contention regarding the likelihood of a lab leak, rather than a species jump via the then wet market. Neither does it completely rule the latter out, a point that Prof. George Gao made recently and which was seized upon and distorted to imply that he supported the lab leak theory, which he does not. He was simply being a good scientist and not ruling it out of court.Originally posted by Frances_iom View PostComment
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they took DNA samples from the wet market which figured as the prime centre - they did not, it seems, follow up from these samples, though they luckily put their findings online (tho later removed) which revealed to western analysis that cages showing traces of Covid + racoon dogs seemed to have the heaviest concentration. Given this why not trace back as to where the animals that were in these cages came from - given the police state of China this couldn't have been that difficult - following this back would presumably led to the reservoir of infected animals (or are you claiming that covid was a parthenogenic arrival in a single animal) - recall such a detailed trace back found the reservoir of Aids in monkeys - but as the Canadian researcher pointed out Covid seemed to arrive fully formed in a highly infectious form to humans whereas many similar crossovers from animal to human arise from a less infectious entry into a human population from which it mutates to become more infectious.
There are just too many very suspicious features of this infection arriving in a city where a military research lab researching the same type of virus was located to be ignored.Comment
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Do you recall just how long it took to dispel the "AIDS, made in a laboratory" claims?* Indeed, have they quite gone away? It took considerable time for the origins of HIV (or even its precise structure) to be determined with any degree of certainty.Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
As today's edition of Fever reported, the closest match to SARS-Cov2 found in previous viruses held at the Wuhan lab achieved only 98% of a DNA match. That may seem a high concurrence to the scientifically illiterate but as you must surely well know, it is way off a close match. As to it arriving fully formed for human transmission, just look at how quickly a range of mutations emerges around the world. SARS-Cov2 appears to be a particularly fast-mutating coronavirus. As to the racoon dogs, given that under the then-obtaining but poorly enforced Chinese legislation, they should not have been there, what sort of paper trail do you think might have existed as to their origin? As I wrote earlier, the Chinese authorities (both local and national), clearly made many blundering mistakes in the early stages, something which I would agree stemmed from their particular political system and its extreme hierarchical control.
* There were even T-shirts produced with that very legend printed on them. I recall seeing them on sale in this country. Though AIDS first got major publicity in 1980 (it is now known that it has been infecting humans decades earlier in Africa), it took 3 years after it turned up in America for the pathogen concerned to be identified in 1983, when, by chance, I happened to be studying iatrogenesis, so took a considerable interest in the subject.Comment
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yes but having seen how Aids was identified gave a method for them to follow, especially as they had their ground zero which required some detective work for Aids (and of course they had the more recent SARS case to follow, again a foul up by them) - and yes I don't believe that they could not determine who supplied the animals - just follow the money - somebody owned the cages - no doubt deliveries had phone messages etc.
Yes I do understand that the virus differs from that reported by the civilian part of the lab - but consider if you had a parallel military group with access to the civilian side then their research might well be different even if 98% was 'borrowed'.
Anyway we still have 3 more episodes to wade thru' and even then I suspect no 'smoking' petri dish will be found.
Edited to add
Just how fast were Covid mutations given the huge number of initial infections - the increased infectivity was it seems due to changes in a small region - there still should have been many earlier examples given the initial strain's remarkable infectivity - as that Canadian scientist suggested it was almost designed for the job.Comment
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The level of human infectivity was not recognised at first, indeed, it has not yet been established when the jump to humans first occurred.Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
Regarding the bogus claim of close proximity of lab to wet market: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruz-wuhan-tweet/
I presume the "Canadian scientist" you refer to is Michael Worobey. You might find this of recent item interest: https://www.aol.co.uk/news/raccoon-d...G_cS3d0pVdNcD-Comment
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re Canadian scientist - no the female ex Singapore Canadian (you do seem to like arguing ad hominem as tho those you dislike have to be totally wrong in every respect) - the 1st episode mentioned an associated lab (maybe merely an office tho I recall he said lab) actually next door to the wet market - I'm assuming from the BBC's guy's personal observation (the main lab was I think some 8 miles out of town) - the increased infectivity was noted by the deceased doctor as different from flu - and if swabs had been taken then the comparison of the DNA would give some indication as to variability of the virus, I think the WHO very delayed fact finding grp went after some of these (again the 1st episode made a comment that there were 2 distinct variants and in earlier programs I think it was stated there were some infections that could not be linked to the wet market) - there was a report, tho not in this program, that the initial variant must have arisen within a few months based on the variability of subsequent variants - again this suggests that it developed close to ground zeroOriginally posted by Bryn View PostComment
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Since you continue to fail to identify the "Canadian scientist" by name, I was obliged to try and work out who you were referring to. Your accusation of ad hominem argument on my part is quite bogus. I simply continue to assert that the origin of the virus remains to be determined and that a great deal of disinformation has been spread concerning both the location and research activity at the Wuhan Institute. As to the recent piece dismissing the raccoon dog theory, it is just another evidence-based contribution to the investigation. Like the raccoon dog theory, it is open to challenge. Another recent scientific item on the origins of the pandemic can be found here: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2305081Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
It should also be noted that while the first clearly identified human infection so far detected dates from 8th December 2019, the current majority opinion among investigators is that the initial jump was probably some months earlier. As more and more human infections occurred, the opportunity for mutation increased. As to your references to "ground zero", its precise location is still yet to be determined. The nearest we have, to date, is Wuhan, not a specific location within the city of over 11 million inhabitants but the city as a whole.Comment
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