Coronavirus

[Frances_iom]

did you listen to the program - the female Canadian was interviewed - I didn't catch her name (and there is no precis of the program) but as I thought you too had listened to it the reference would be understood - the New England paper quite definitely plumps for the Wet food market as the centre of the outbreak - the Chinese Authorities must have had significant evidence that they closed the market (without testing) within hours of notifying WHO - they would, IMO, seem to have sat on this for some time until it couldn't be hidden (backed up by the treatment of the doctor who used social networking to warn of problem) - they also pushed some nonsense into the investigation prior to Trump going live with his only partial recollection of his briefing - thus I suspect they were aware of the likely coupling of a corona virus infection in the vicinity of a lab known to be researching the same, according the interview with the American/Chinese Dr Yu? Trump had been given a briefing that it appeared that the technical people on the Chinese side appeared to accept a leak of some form was a likely cause. After this name calling happened on both sides, it took a year to get an international team capable of detailed examination into Wuhan which was probably too late given the Chinese had 'cleaned' the market - even the paper suggests that Chinese Obstructionism would probably make a full investigation impossible

[Dave2002]

This surprised me ...

https://nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/

[teamsaint]

This surprised me ...

https://nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/

Why did it surprise you ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Why did it surprise you ?

Must make the pilgrimage sometimes, as it's just up the road, relatively speaking. Also Grenfell Tower, given the superlative local public support offered at the time, even exceeding in quantities of material necessities what could be of use at the time. Also the fact that birthwise it's territorically within my "manor" - Paddington.

[Frances_iom]

R4 has just spent near 10mins on the Lab leak theory - a Dr Quay? argued that he was 99.9% convinced that it was a lab leak - also built on last Sunday's article re same conclusion in Sunday Times + notes that further intelligence is to be released next week that also helps confirm the lab leak (from otherwise secret military work at Wuhan to actually make a more infectious virus.

[Dave2002]

Why did it surprise you ?

a. because I didn't know of its existence, and b. because scrolling along the image in the link just goes on and on, and there's audio too. Not sure if it's a video - but whatever it is, it is it does show the scale of the issues - at least as it must have affected some people. A few of my family died, but whether it was from Covid, or another factor is hard to say, they were really quite old so could have been written off as collateral damage. They caught it much later on - after the first waves of the pandemic had passed. One younger member had a hard time, but survived - with a long recovery. Most of us got it in the end, but were vaccinated and more protected [presumably] by then.

[Serial_Apologist]

a. because I didn't know of its existence, and b. because scrolling along the image in the link just goes on and on, and there's audio too. Not sure if it's a video - but whatever it is, it is it does show the scale of the issues - at least as it must have affected some people. A few of my family died, but whether it was from Covid, or another factor is hard to say, they were really quite old so could have been written off as collateral damage. They caught it much later on - after the first waves of the pandemic had passed. One younger member had a hard time, but survived - with a long recovery.

Roll on, roll on...

Most of us got it in the end, but were vaccinated and more protected [presumably] by then.

Touch wood.............................................. ............

[Bryn]

Phew! I salute the volunteers in this study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01961-7

[Retune]

R4 has just spent near 10mins on the Lab leak theory - a Dr Quay? argued that he was 99.9% convinced that it was a lab leak - also built on last Sunday's article re same conclusion in Sunday Times + notes that further intelligence is to be released next week that also helps confirm the lab leak (from otherwise secret military work at Wuhan to actually make a more infectious virus.

Steven Quay, one of far too many people with qualifications in other areas who became self-appointed 'experts' in coronavirus virology early in the pandemic, has made something of a name for himself on Twitter spouting nonsense about SARS-CoV-2 for the last 3 years. I don't know why the BBC persists in interviewing these fringe figures. Alina Chan, the Canadian scientist whose name you didn't catch in the podcast, is another. Neither has any real experience in emerging disease virology. Both have knocked together preprints or presentations that imply SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered, which no respectable journal will touch, not because the Virology Establishment is ganging up on Quay, or because Chan is an early career scientist (plenty of young scientists had their first publications during the pandemic), but because they fail to meet basic scientific standards. Chan's claim that the virus was already perfectly adapted to spread in humans when it emerged is a circular argument that made no particular sense at the time (throughout history, all pandemic viruses must have been 'good enough' to cause a pandemic, or there would be no pandemics) and has been falsified by events (the virus has evolved to spread much more readily in humans since 2019). Chan's particular schtick is to affect a neutral, even-handed attitude ('just asking questions') when her Twitter page makes is very clear she's anything but neutral, and has made some very nasty accusations about her colleagues (some since deleted) without evidence. Earlier in the pandemic, she was a co-author of an opinion piece in Science that made the perfectly reasonable point that we shouldn't discount any theory of Covid origins prematurely, which some real experts rather naively added their names to. Some would come to regret this, not realising how it would be relentlessly weaponised on social media by Chan and others. These days she has a book to flog, co-written with everyone's favourite aristocratic climate change denier and coal baron, Viscount Matt Ridley (who has previous form in pushing discredited theories about the origin of HIV).

I look forward to reading the declassified intelligence when it comes out. But while we wait, ask yourself this - if it is so compelling, why did it fail to convince a majority of US intelligence agencies, who still either favour a natural origin, so say they don't have enough information to say one way or the other? What I expect we'll get are reheated, unsourced claims about secret military research and WIV staff supposedly becoming infected before anyone else, which were pushed by Trump-era 'investigators' for political reasons. Pretty much all the 'evidence' for a lab release comes from people like this, or from social media. It certainly isn't in the scientific literature, where epidemiological and genetic studies are much more consistent with a natural spillover, despite what you may have read in The Sunday Times.

[Bryn]

It's a couple of years old now, but this is instructive regarding Chan: https://www.technologyreview.com/202...ak-alina-chan/

[Retune]

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.

My impression has been much more negative so far. At best, it's giving a false sense of equivalence between the natural origin and lab release theories, when published research strongly favours the former, even if we can't definitively exclude the latter. We've heard this sort of thing on the BBC before, when various programmes have given undue prominence to climate change 'scepticism' and dubious claims about the supposed benefits of Brexit (in the interests of 'balance'). But sometimes they do better - Science in Action can be very good, and I'd suggest listening to the Covid -19 origins and Animals at the Wuhan Market episodes. I don't think they have the budget for portentous sound effects, but they take the novel approach of speaking at length to the scientists doing high-quality work in this area. For much more of this (especially if anyone who favours the lab leak wants to have their preconceptions challenged) I suggest this playlist from science communicator Sam Gregson, who has a series of informal but in-depth interviews with some of the real experts. This Week in Virology is the podcast virologists themselves listen to, though they aim to engage with a general audience. They have several episodes on Covid origins, interviewing people like Eddie Holmes, Michael Worobey, Kristian Anderson and Robert Garry.

[Retune]

It's a couple of years old now, but this is instructive regarding Chan: https://www.technologyreview.com/202...ak-alina-chan/

I think this quote is quite telling here:

“I have days where I think this could be natural. And if it’s natural, then I’ve done a terrible thing because I’ve put a lot of scientists in a very dangerous spot by saying that they could be the source of an accident that resulted in millions of people dying,” she says. “I would feel terrible if it’s natural and I did all this.”

It's hard to retreat from a position where you have effectively accused colleagues of (at best) accidental mass manslaughter, however politely you say it. Lab leakers in general seem to be pretty dug into their positions, partly because the theory is ultimately unfalsifiable - you can always claim that the lab is hiding the real evidence. I think the domain experts who have concluded that a natural origin is by far the most likely explanation have done so simply because that is where the evidence has led them - some, including Mike Worobey and Kristian Andersen, were prepared to at least entertain the idea of an engineered virus or a lab leak initially, but that is not what they found when they examined the data in detail.

Any lab leak theory now has to explain why the virus appeared to emerge in exactly the kind of location that was predicted to be dangerous for natural spillovers, a wet market that hosted susceptible live animals previously associated with the SARS1 epidemic (which we now know were there in the right time frame from photographic and genetic evidence) and not a bar or a shopping centre or a sports venue. It would have to explain why there is a very significant statistical association between the market and early cases even before Chinese authorities started to focus on the market as a likely source, but no association with the lab (despite what you may see on Twitter and in certain news sources). And it would have to explain why two different lineages appeared at the market, strongly suggesting two spillover events, since the second to appear (the less successful variant) was closer to known animal viruses than the first.

[Bryn]

Coronaviruses in UK bats: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02151-1

Plus, on long COVID: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02121-7

[Bryn]

Interesting item on asymptomatic COVID. Not sure whether this link will work or not:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02318-w

[Retune]

I explicitly mentioned the calculator I used. I really don’t care if you believe me , or think the risk is different to what the BHF said it was back then ( which had nothing to do with the actual risk of getting covid of course ,) but we all have to take our data from somewhere. I chose to check what Boris, Jurgen Klopp and the council , ( not to mention the drugs companies ,who lets face it had pretty big incentives one way and another) were telling me on as reputable sources as I could find.
The UKHSA data on efficacy quite clearly was fiddled in the ways mentioned,and then discontinued. You may see it differently, but as you are well aware, data, EG on all- cause mortality is easily manipulated, and the govt / UKHSA had every reason to do exactly that.

Oh yes, and when medical “advice” turns into coercion , then yes, I have serious issues with accepting it unquestioned.
During the covid era I found myself, for the first time in my white , male, heterosexual middle class , middle aged life, on the wrong side of a fence. I learned a hell of a lot from that experience,
You can dismiss my questions and scepticism all you like. The work is done. Trust has to be earned back. There is a very long way to go.

Perhaps you can link to this calculator? BHF = British Heart Foundation or something else? What exactly do you think was fiddled and why would the UKHSA want to fiddle it? What do you mean by 'coercion'? There were lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, because it was (correctly) judged that a highly infectious virus with a population infection fatality ratio of the order of 1% would kill a lot of people if nothing were done, directly and because it would overwhelm the NHS. There's nothing more coercive than a virus that hijacks your cells and might end up ending your life. And because the vaccines were developed rapidly, the lockdowns and other interventions meant that most people did not encounter the virus until they were vaccinated, preventing hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths. Members of the medical and caring professions needed to be vaccinated to protect their patients and those they cared for (although the vaccines did not provide 'sterilising immunity' and abolish transmission, they had a significant short-term effect in reducing it, especially when they closely matched the circulating variants). But there was no general vaccine mandate.