China would rather blame it on people eating weird shit than admit any fuckups. The Chinese government is NOT working in the interest of all humanity, and often not for its own population's well-being either.
They admit it, they get sued by everone around wanting reparations for the pandemic.
According to my mom who read WeChat: Covid was engineered by the US as a bioweapon to genocide the Chinese population. 🙄
Literally the Maga playbook but reverse the roles.
If it were a nothing burger, why is China being apprehensive about releasing any data on its true origin? There was a literal lab working on coronaviruses in the specific location of patient zero. That doesn’t at all seem suspect in anyway? This isn’t even about dumb MAGAts, this is just asking basic questions that you weren’t allowed to ask and were silenced in doing so. Some narrative it came from someone eating an exotic animal from a wet market doesn’t add up. If it were that simple, just a zoonotic transmission, you’d think China would give confirmation of that.
Because face.
It’s more preserving of one’s honour to pretend nothing ever happened.
You cannot expect rationality from irrational actors.
Because it makes no sense. Covid has been detected in waste water in Italy from summer 2019. That's not to say it originated in Italy but that connecting the Wuhan outbreak in December 2019 to a lab - or indeed a wetmarket - makes no sense.
Can you put a source to that?
Covid's presence in Europe before Wuhan was known all the way back in June 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J8/
By November 2020 it was pushed back as far as September 2019: https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-17/COVID-19-was-spreading-in-Italy-by-September-2019-study-indicates-VuSqUttP8s/index.html
Here's a scientific source:
Overall, the results of this blind retesting of a selected set of samples indicate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in some SMILE samples collected in the prepandemic period. The oldest samples found positive for IgM by both laboratories were collected on 10 October 2019 (Lombardy), 11 November 2019 (Lombardy) and 5 February 2020 (Lazio), the latter with neutralizing antibodies. Two additional samples collected on 17 December 2019 (Campania) and 28 January 2020 (Lombardy) tested as IgG positive by VisMederi and positive for IgG S1 and IgG S1+NP by Erasmus. Additional IgM positive cases could have been detected also by Erasmus by lowering the cut-off of the commercial IgM assay. The older among these putative additional IgM positive samples was collected on 3 September 2019 in the Veneto region, one of the first and mostly severely affected COVID-19 regions.
Same source says that it definitely came to Europe from China though, a few paragraphs lower:
These findings do not at all suggest that the virus originated in Italy, but they endorse the idea that the virus was likely spreading in China before the first known cases and that could have been circulated by travelers given direct the connections between China and European and US countries, particularly the Northern West and East Italian regions, which are among the most industrialized and connected areas of Italy. Evidence used to support this hypothesis comes from a comparative genomic analysis of more than 175,000 genomes, which delineated 22 distinct SARS-CoV-2 haplogroups with a broad geographic distribution within China, pointing towards an early emergence and widespread cryptic circulation of the virus well before its isolation in January 2020 [25]. Recently, Kumar et al. reconstructed the mutational history of SARS-CoV-2 using a so called ‘mutation order approach’ (MOA) [26]. From their analysis of more than 174,000 genomes, major mutational fingerprints revealed that it is useful to identify and track the spatiotemporal evolution of novel coronavirus. The progenitor genome identified differed from that of the first coronaviruses sampled in China by three variants, implying that none of the earliest patients represents the index case or gave rise to all human infections. However, multiple coronavirus infections in China, the USA and Europe harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before.
A recently published letter by Petti et al. summarizes existing evidence that corroborates the infectious disease epidemiology principle of pathogen circulation prior to the recognized outbreak [27]. The eventuality of an early SARS-CoV-2 circulation already relatively sustained in Europe and America is not so astonishing, as SARS-CoV-2 is mainly a respiratory pathogen. Therefore, a novel unknown respiratory virus responsible for severe pneumonia like SARS-CoV-2 could circulate undetected for months or years, be responsible for many deaths, and even become a pandemic, before peculiar characteristics of the disease are noticed that allow for its identification.
Looks as if the original virus that definitely came from China caused less severe symptoms and was not detected, but still caused infections thus antibody findings.
Did China do transparent peer-reviewed research into this?
I don't know. But I don't see how that's relevant to Wuhan having a lab that studies coronaviruses if the pandemic didn't start in Wuhan, which even now is still repeated as if it was truth by proper journalists and DW alike.
The first confirmed cases were in Wuhan, and right now, the state of science is that started either in Wuhan or near Wuhan. It's complicated science because where antibodies were found is still just one datapoint, a precursor can have the same molecular structure on the virus surface, so similar or exactly the same antibodies. Meaning since the discussed proCoV2 was only three base pairs away, it could be producing the same antibodies, be widespread, infect, even kill people, yet not be COVID-19.
The problem that the Chinese political system doesn't promote open academic discussion - that the virus is political - doesn't help either.
So your assertion is that we need to seriously consider that a 'wild' coronavirus with the same signature as Covid-19 evolved somewhere in China, spread to Italy and elsewhere in Europe and probably dozens of other untested places in the summer of 2019, and - coincidentally - Covid-19 itself mutated in bushmeat or was engineered in Wuhan in an unrelated zoonotic transmission or, uh, "biocrime"?
Which of us is stretching probabilities to breaking point for political purposes, 'HK'?
No, it's the conclusion of the paper cited in your source. The supposed proCoV2 is 3 base pairs away from Wuhan-1, and is 1100 base pairs away from other human-infecting SARS strains.
Basically there was another similar virus that had the same spike proteins - if you remember the photos, the virus is a spiked ball, the antibodies bond to the spikes. It was a precursor to the Wuhan strain, so basically the fact that there were antibodies in Italy before the Wuhan outbreak just means that similar shit was going around the world before, but not the same shit.
https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10287595
Because proCoV2 is three bases different from the Wuhan-1 genome, we estimate that the divergence of the earliest variants of proCoV2 occurred 5.8–8.1 weeks earlier, based on the range of estimated mutation rates of coronavirus genomes (see Materials and Methods). This timeline puts the presence of proCoV2 in late October 2019, which is consistent with the report of a fragment of spike protein identical to Wuhan-1 in early December in Italy, among other evidence (Giovanetti et al. 2020; Li, Wang, et al. 2020; van Dorp et al. 2020; Amendola et al. 2021). The sequenced segment of the spike protein is short (409 bases). It does not span positions in which 49 major early variants were observed, which means that the Italian spike protein fragment can only confirm the existence of proCoV2 before the first coronavirus detection in China.
I haven't said anything about labs. Nobody treats the lab theory as a "proven fact". But it is a proven fact that the specific strain that got dubbed COVID-19 first appeared in the general vicinity of Wuhan.
China and openly sharing data; name a more diametrically opposing duo.
I'll wait for examples of China sharing data (I'm sure a few of you are already scouting for an article) while I wonder why China won't share this data.
Anyone remember the HK protests in late 2019?
Sorry, WHO is waiting for the data ?
And here I thought who's on second... Or was he in first?
Yes, that right.
Bow ties are cool
Bush/Condi/Kofi/Rice conversation vibes
Where my .ml's at to explain this to us?
don't worry they'll be along shortly to DV you and call you a Nazi.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/