zlacker

We will never know the truth to the extent that China would admit this.

It’s obvious in hindsight that what you say is likely true, but there is no feasible political route for the CCP to take blame, as their lives would be at stake due to unrest.

>>menset+(OP)
WHO should sequence all the Virus DNAs from that lab in 2015-2019 compare that with all the Covid sequences.

>>tkinom+B
I can’t find the link but the virus they took from sick miners to study and what is now called covid-19 were 95-99% the same. A fellow did their masters thesis on it in 2016 or so

>>rhodoz+E2
This https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6981198-Analysis-of-... ?

>>tkinom+B
There is no difference between WHO and China. For this problem, I don't think WHO would give any help. We would never know the true. IMHO, we shouldn't dismiss the possibility of leak, but sadly we could only dismiss it.

>>LdSGSg+qf
just a year ago on HN, we cannot openly speculate or discuss the viruses origins without first getting a barrage of downvotes, today it seems the tides are changing, it's not just WHO integrity or credibility is at stake, our entire future is

imagine another lab-virus just as contagious but one with higher infant mortality, we'd be extinct!!

>>tkinom+B
The WHO won't recognize Taiwan. I highly doubt they will do that.

>>ErikVa+dt
Of course not. You could not take the goods from China, and want to make them take the responsibility of investigation just like re-education camps in Xinjiang. Although there are some people or photos pointing out the issues.

It's lack of motivation for us to boycott the China. They are too far away from our live. We may take it serious until the nuclear submarine appearing offshore.

We don't know the New Appeasement would come out with real peace or WWIII. The deaths caused by CoVid are already more than the number of American killed in WWII.

The discussion is good, but we are not ready to face the issues come up with China. It's helpful for the labs in other countries to have new SOP. However, the problem is still there.

>>rhodoz+E2
Couple of clarifications. (The fact that the term 'Mojiang' does not show up in the comments yet is telling about where awareness currently is on the topic).

1. RaTG13 came from the copper mine in Mojiang in 2013. (The TG in RaTG13 refers to TongGuan, a township in Mojiang, all per Shi Zhengli's accounting of the sequence's provenance).

2. Prior to which and also in 2013, six miners in this same Mojiang mine came down deftly ill with a respiratory illness. Three of them died from their illness.

3. One report on their cases says they had IgM antibodies to SARS. Another report says they had IgG.

4. There's been no data to support Shi Zhengli's assertion that they died of a fungal infection. (That said, independent of her account, there is a background precedent that there have been examples of people who have had strong fungal infections from exposure to bat guano in certain caves).

5. Shi Zhengli's team returned to the same Mojiang cave again and again to sample for viruses from the mine's bats and rodents. (Goal for this and the broad purpose of her teams' research is to demonstrate for pandemic prevention purposes which viruses are evolutionarily close enough to be able to hop to humans).

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1279755695382986757?s=20 (Starting-point source for the above: Broad Institute genomics postdoc Alina Chan)

Multiple coronaviruses gathered from this mine remain unpublished, despite a year into the pandemic and an entire WHO-convened study group to Wuhan. https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1372383456081027076?s=... (source: Bloom Lab of Fred Hutch Institute)

If you're interested in learning more, I would highly recommend following members of the Washington Post-cited DRASTIC team.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/coronavir...

The DRASTIC folks, some of them postdocs themselves, have been at this for a year, gathering & archiving evidence like the case reports described above (that unsurprisingly typically become scrubbed from the source after getting brought to light).

The twitter hashtag #DRASTIC is a reasonable place to start.