Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A Chinese scientific paper has suggested careless biosecurity at a disease research laboratory just 280 yards from the market where the outbreak was originally detected was responsible for the Covid-19 Chinese Corona Virus.
Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market
- Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that ‘the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan’
- It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
- WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 00:22 AEDT, 17 February 2020 | UPDATED: 03:00 AEDT, 17 February 2020
Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.
A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.
‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,’ penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats.
It also mentions that bats – which are linked to coronavirus – once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’
…
The abstract of the paper.
The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus
Botao Xiao 21.93 South China University of Technology
Lei XiaoThe 2019-nCoV has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were almost identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory. Our proposal provided an alternative origin of the coronavirus in addition to natural recombination and intermediate host.
Original link (deleted): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
PDF Backup Copy: Click here
There have been suggestions that Wuhan was performing biological warfare research, a claim China strenuously denies.
The paper cited above does not go into detail about exactly what the Wuhan laboratory was doing with their infected animals, but careless biosecurity is a plausible explanation for what happened; researchers in constant close contact with infected mammals, obviously not wearing proper protective clothing to prevent injury or contamination, getting scratched and urinated on, not taking proper precautions, would have created plenty of opportunities for cross over and hybridisation between bat and human Corona viruses, and whatever else they were keeping in their cages.
If the claim of careless biosecurity is correct, the emergence of a dangerous hybrid virus capable of infecting humans was always a possibility. Through their carelessness, the virus researchers may have been inadvertently creating and incubating a stream of increasingly dangerous hybrid pathogens, until finally a potential pandemic escaped their laboratory.
Update (EW): h/t Danny Davis – Corrected the name John Hopkins -> Johns Hopkins and fixed the link to the Corona Virus dashboard in the top caption.
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Strange enough, this virus is dangerous for Asian men only.
Apparently, it uses ACE2 receptors to dock at the cells. Asian male population has 2.7% of lung cells with ACE2 receptors.
Caucasian population just 0.4%.
For Europeans, this virus causes a mere cold.
For Chinese it is a deadly plague.
Biological weapon that targets a particular ethnic population seems to be feasible…
Is that some sort of common knowledge, or do you have a reference for that info?
It may be well known and 100% true…but new information cannot be expected to be just accepted by people who think critically.
You can Google at biorxiv as well.
There is a good scientific preprint on the topic.
I am writing from phone.
Here is the reference for you:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full?fbclid=IwAR3_sXIqB6gjrGC2Sx8FcWLZUs0dt8DlSYuol5In404-appJXB1cjnN9_fo
Abstract
A novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) was identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December of 2019. This new coronavirus has resulted in thousands of cases of lethal disease in China, with additional patients being identified in a rapidly growing number internationally. 2019-nCov was reported to share the same receptor, Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), with SARS-Cov. Here based on the public database and the state-of-the-art single-cell RNA-Seq technique, we analyzed the ACE2 RNA expression profile in the normal human lungs. The result indicates that the ACE2 virus receptor expression is concentrated in a small population of type II alveolar cells (AT2). Surprisingly, we found that this population of ACE2-expressing AT2 also highly expressed many other genes that positively regulating viral reproduction and transmission. A comparison between eight individual samples demonstrated that the Asian male one has an extremely large number of ACE2-expressing cells in the lung. This study provides a biological background for the epidemic investigation of the 2019-nCov infection disease, and could be informative for future anti-ACE2 therapeutic strategy development.
Thank you Alex.
Isn’t that the paper with only 8 persons and later retracted or dismissed ? I believe there is another paper around with more than 100 individuals showing no difference because of race.
Isn’t 8 person’s enough??? 100??? Actually you would need several hundred thousand, and you would need the study to be able to be corroborated by many other labs, taking years of research. Also, there is much too much certainty in the ‘results’ of this study. It is not simple or easy or even reliable to perform the above sequencing.
So, thank you for a sensible comment Golfsailor. There is very little reason on this thread. People are talking about ‘studies’ they have no understanding of, and are making mind-boggling leaps of imagination and ludicrous, speculative connections amongst information they have no real understanding of, but they have seen movies and read science-fiction about. Almost everyone on this thread is doing it, normally rational people are leaping to mind-boggling conclusions based on ‘studies’, fake news, science fiction, and suspicion of China. Mind-boggling.
Or maybe Holly, you just have really bad reading comprehension, and are in fact ludicrously uninformed on the subject to be making such assertions.
Considering how poorly you understood what I was saying in your other comment upthread, the available evidence is that you do not know what the hell you are talking about, do not read very well, and are prone to making completely uncalled for and rash pronouncements.
IOW…why the hell should anyone take your word for anything?
As for certainty expressed in this study, this is what the authors had to say:
“This might explain the observation that the new Coronavirus pandemic and previous SARS-Cov pandemic are concentrated in the Asian area.”
This might explain.
That does not sound like certainty, it sounds like a suggestion that there may possibly be something that needs to be looked at.
Golfsailor did not say anything specific, but if he is talking about the paper from Guoshuai Cai, that one does not say anything with any certainty either.
In fact, the author of that one said he found that tobacco usage seems to be associated with greater expression of the ACE2 receptor, but also offers several caveats against making too much of his work, such as when he says:
“This study has several limitations. First, the data analysed in this study were from the normal lung tissue of patients with lung adenocarcinoma, which may be different with the lung tissue of healthy people. Although we observed no difference between male and female healthy samples from GTEx, further validation studies are required for other factors. Second, our analysis was based on the average expression from bulk tissue. This may lead to a power loss in detecting the expression from particular cell types such as the AT2 cells in which ACE2 are specifically highly expressed. Whether ACE2 is the only or major receptor of 2019-nCov is unknown.”
He was looking at the cells of cancer patients, lung cancer patients, and found an association with tobacco usage.
Gosh…no reason to be skeptical of a skewed result in that study, eh?
How then to explain only 7 deaths , at least one of them a woman, among 1,716 infected Chinese doctors and nurses?
Yes, I read this early on. About two weeks ago. I didn’t see anything official on it and treated it as anunknown possibility.
Hi Alex, – The existence of ACE2 receptors at cells does not automatically result in this coronavirus being able to successfully use them. From memory, this coronavirus success rate using ACE2 & subsequently get into a cell is less than 80%
Sorry am not able to cite my source; but being a 2020 report maybe interested individuals can track that down. The same report discussed how other recent coronavirus (SARS) that also uses ACE2 reception for poising fared with it’s success rate.
I think, recollection is vague here, that SARS coronavirus actually had a higher success rate (over 80%) than this new 2019 coronavirus (under 80%) in utilizing the ACE2 receptor tactic. Specific success rates coming to mind were something like 82% for SARS & something like 75% for this novel 2019 one; but, although there were different %s my numbers given here are subject to error.
Chinese children 8&9 years old and in another study 4-14 years old as well ke-mo sah-bee– seems kids bounce well.
This seems on closer look as you have as almost age specific…stronger immunities in children and because they mainly are family clusters could be prominent.
“The clinical manifestations in children with 2019-nCoV infection are non-specific and are milder than that in adults. Chest CT scanning is [helpful] for early diagnosis. Children’s infection is mainly caused by family cluster outbreak and imported cases. Family daily prevention is the main way to prevent 2019-nCoV infection”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32061200
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32062875
How then to explain only 7 deaths , at least one of them a woman, among 1,716 infected Chinese doctors and nurses?
A biological weapon that mostly causes mild illness and mostly kills old people with underlying medical conditions?
Not a clever one.
That is not cytokine storm profile whatsoever…it is the opposite.
Cytokine storm etiology is not a slow burn death after many weeks and a late stage turn for the worse…It is the opposite of that.
Evil genius bioweapons program scientists who “obviously wear no protective clothing”?
Nothing incongruous about that oicture, eh?
Bioweapons research next to a hospital in a crowded city…or a research facility?
One sounds dumb.
One makes perfect sense.
And of course…no one likes the Chinese government…but no one inside China would make some crap up, or speculate with the intention of smearing that universally loved and admired government, right!
Just like here.
Just like anywhere.
And the people quickest to latch onto a horror story based on flimsy evidence or rank speculation…those are the people who have the most unerringly perfect judgement, right?
Forming strong opinions on weak evidence is a character flaw, not a hallmark of intelligence.
Consider this, not a bio-weapon, and not natural;
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
What happens if in the body it is only capable of so many replications of the virus. And so Telomerase shortens telomeres in RNA. Stop at a specific count of the virion, therefore in older folks, the damage is done with very little as they are lung compromised to begin with, but, in children and higher functioning immunities, the war will be won. As virion count has to be significantly higher…
Maybe this is why serum levels come so up so negative, and asymptomatic for kids mainly…
A biological weapon that mostly causes mild illness and mostly k*lls old people with underlying medical conditions?
Not a clever one.
That is not cytokine storm profile whatsoever…it is the opposite.
Cytokine storm etiology is not a slow burn death after many weeks and a late stage turn for the worse…It is the opposite of that.
Evil genius bioweapons program scientists who “obviously wear no protective clothing”?
Nothing incongruous about that picture, eh?
Bioweapons research next to a hospital in a crowded city…or a research facility?
One sounds dumb.
One makes perfect sense.
And of course…no one likes the Chinese government…but no one inside China would make some crap up, or speculate with the intention of smearing that universally loved and admired government, right!?
Just like here.
Just like anywhere.
And the people quickest to latch onto a horror story based on flimsy evidence or rank speculation…those are the people who have the most unerringly perfect judgement, right?
Forming strong opinions on weak evidence is a character flaw, not a hallmark of intelligence.
I am unconvinced its from a weapons lab, but the Chinese are at least as interested in fighting an asymmetric war as a big, shoot-em up war.
Chinese hackers take down Us infrastructure and then the Internet. An easily transmitted but low lethality virus is released. Health services in the US are overwhelmed, maybe a Carrier Group or two in port has 35% of its sailors laid low.
China lays claim to Taiwan and the Spratlys and a bit more. The US is in chaos, the military response confused and slow, and by then it’s a done deal. No big shooting war, no risk of a nuclear exchange, Chin gets what it wants.
I doubt if someone was thinking of doing it, they would start with a virus that is a close genetic match for one that everyone knows where it comes from, or do it in such a location.
After WWI, it was easy for everyone to agree that chemical weapons should be banned.
They make bad weapons.
They are as likely to hurt the side using it as the side they are using it on.
There are diseases that spread like wildfire through populations, exist everywhere, or else are in widespread lab usage, and that a country could devise a vaccine for ahead of time.
So probably the first thing any person embarking on such an endeavor would do, would logically have some way worked out to make sure it their own side would be immune.
AFAIK, corona viruses have resisted attempts to make a vaccine.
A SARS vaccine was in development, but was put on hold when that disease was brought under control.
AFAIK, they are just now working on testing it in clinical trials.
Many vaccine candidates fail, for any number of reasons.
It might not be safe, it might not cause a person getting it to make antibody sufficient to be protected, it could be it does not last long, or it might cause a virus to quickly evolve around it, etc.
I think the reason the US military has or had biological and chemical weapons, like VX or anthrax, is as a deterrent against an enemy using one of those types of things.
If some country used biological warfare against the US, the response would be overwhelming and final.
Speculation and wild conspiracy theories. I expect better from my favourite scientific blog
Agree! A vaccine against fake news is urgently needed.
Not everything that counters the “official” story is ” wild conspiracy theory”
Consider…
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
State your objections to this story and my link by addressing the assertions, not blanket labeling.
Why don’t you trying saying something instead of posting a link and demanding people read it?
In case you are new to the internet, most people will not click on a link just because someone posts it.
And if you are too lazy to state an opinion or an idea, or to summarize what you wish to bring to the conversation, why should anyone else.
Finally, after posting the link for the umpteenth time, don’t you think that everyone who is likely to click on it already has?
You might have the best argument in the whole world, but if you do not make it, it hardly matters.
They tried planned parenthood (e.g. one-child). It is not beyond belief that with progress, and desperation, they would try planned population, again. Their first PP scheme left their population with a male bias, and senior heavy, a burden on the community, and less viable by the day. The Chinese regime is known for implementing wicked solutions to hard problems. In fact, they are first in order of regimes that have prosecuted planned populations justified by social progress and other purposes.
hard to believe you would put a biological warfare in the middle of a town to me..
i don’t see much evidence there..may be in the article..
Nothing indicates bioweapons or warfare.
People have conflated “biological research lab” with “government biowarfare program”.
As if one implies the other.
Then when I have pointed this out, people have started calling me names, insulting me, called me shill for …IDK… big tobacco, George Soros, the Koch Brothers, the Chinese bioweapon program, the Illuminati…you name it.
I do not know if this is some sort of mental pathology, or a strategy (warmistas have done this for years), or just emotional outburst…but it sure is dumb.
Some people are incapable of discerning the difference between a question and a criticism, and often it seems those same people have no ability to respond constructively or even rationally to criticism.
In the voice of Johnny Depp at a drunken Chinese New Years party.
“*Slap*…For God’s sake’s man pull yourself together, you sniffling in front of the children. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, there’s work to be done, by God. Jesus Christ riding a unicorn we’re balls deep in this…we can’t quit now.”
“Some people are incapable of discerning the difference between a question and a criticism […]”
“Eh, youuu… talkin to me?”
No, the weapons labs are surely in the Gobi. But China is the USSR – no mistakes are ever admitted at any level. So a Gobi lab worker spills something, says nothing to anyone, and they all set off for home for Chinese New Year the next day…
Do I believe that’s happened? No. Is it possible? Yes.
I don’t believe it yet, but I note that there have been several unfortunate incidents of this kind of thing, including a researcher in Russia who died from accidentally pricking herself with a needle with Ebola, and a researcher in the uk who died from a ventilation duct from another room containing a sample of smallpox.
I’d like to see more than proximity-‘280 yards away’ though. A Pakistan military school were less than a mile from Osama Bin laden, doesn’t mean they knew he was there, and a govt chemical research lab with military connections wasn’t far from the UK cases of Russian spy poisoning, but again it doesn’t mean the lab was involved. Same here. Needs more actual evidence than proximity.
Another factor is that the Chinese lost most of their pork supply during the past year and it won’t be replaced for a few years.
Large Swine Herd Losses in China Pressure Protein Industry – Jennifer Shike – May 8, 2019 08:50 AM
“… We are entering a period without precedent in the global production of protein,” Bendheim said. “Rabobank recently published an estimate of 30% of herd loss a few days ago, and my personal opinion is that the loss would be much greater than that.” His sources in China estimate more than 50% losses in China’s 700-million-head herd. This is equivalent to all of the pigs the rest of the world raises. ASF [African Swine Flu] is not a new virus, and over the years, many have responded with good biosecurity to manage the virus. Bendheim believes it will be extremely hard for China to manage the virus, however, because they have such a high number of backyard farms. “You just can’t solve this problem,” he said. “But the size of the problem or the opportunity, which is always the other side of a problem, is so great that this will be with us for a long time. This is going to have a phenomenal effect on all protein production around the world.” https://www.porkbusiness.com/article/large-swine-herd-losses-china-pressure-protein-industry
i.e. Thus alternate sources of meat sate the continuous demand, making viral exposure more likely.
A female pig can have two litters a year, and as many as 12 per litter.
I think they will be able to restock quickly.
I think the big hurdle is farmers being hesitant to make an investment when the disease is not known to be fully eliminated.
This article from Bloomberg seems to indicate they will be able to bounce back relatively quickly.
Compared to most species of food animals, pigs, it seems, breed like flies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/china-s-mammoth-pig-purge-to-shake-up-118-billion-pork-industry
*In the same drunken Johnny Depp voice*
“Ah now we’re talking about trichinosis, or…it could be Toxoplasma gondii…good god man are there two i’s in gondii…anyway an old Chinese compadre of mine, a honorable and well to do cat rancher tells me sales are up…BTW where there cats ‘on’ the menu at that market? Civet…cat…yummy.”
Don’t quit your day job.
Thanks for playing, drive safely!
*Maybe best call an Uber…I think you had a few too many*
Here, consider this….
( Not a bio-weapon theory)
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
This story has undergone a few interesting mutations of its own.
Don’t throw out the theory of a natural, animal-to-human morph quite yet. It’s happened many times in the past and would seem to be the most likely occurence this time. The deprivation and repression that led to the Chinese “diverse” view of food is hard to imagine, but a culture emerging from centuries of starvation learns to make do. The Han embrace it still. Millions of people starved under Mao’s Cultural Revolution and “Great Leaps” forward. It’s a hard lesson to forget in a generation or even two.
If someone in Wuhan demurred at the roast bat, there is a long list of reptiles, plants, mammals, birds and insects that he would still find on the menu or in the local apothecary’s shop. Not hard at all for me to believe that this virus sprang from the Wuhan wet market.
There’s now a WHO “advance team” on the ground in China. Hopefully they will make a convincing report to the public – and soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKvFZj3nQkI
Against all logical investigation practices, apparently China simply made the market disappear; no animals preserved, tested etc…
Consider this as a possible scenario
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
A general comment about “Biological Research Labs”: every college and university with a Biology Department has “Biological Research Labs” and you would be surprised at what can happen in those labs. Controls are much better now but about 50 years ago (grad school, I think) I was given some nitrosoguanidine (search it) and told to go see what it would do. I’m lucky I did not mutate, replicate and infect half the globe! Fortunately, I selected my test organisms carefully and did employ some controls based on common sense so that no disaster occurred.
“you would be surprised at what can happen in those labs. ”
Yea we would.
Way back in the dark ages circa 1966 when genetic research was primitive, and I was in the 11th grade high school, I was offered a chance to work in a university lab on the weekend. My first day I was assigned to feed mice which lived in racks of somewht improvised slide out/slide in metal pans similar to very large dog food bowls. When you slid the pan into its shelf, the top was sealed against the shelf above by a screen so that the mice were contained. When you pulled it out of the slot, the pan was wide open and the mice could be handled, fed, and cleaned.
Unfortunately, I had never been around mice at all and was unaware of their amazing ability to squeeze themselves through small openings.
I began feeding the mice one pan at a time and by the time I had done about 15 pans I noticed escapees. Apparently, I had not pushedsome of the pans ALL the way in so that there was a small area not covered by the screen ceiling.
The PhD student looked aghast at the scene as she and I captured what I hoped was all of the ‘samples’ in her study. We also hoped they had not introduced themselves into the wrong pans and done what mice are famous for. It was a genetics lab after all.
Lee, fortunately my test organisms would stay in a beaker and have their lives resolved by autoclave!
Good God man, you don’t mean Methylnitronitrosoguanidine (that’s a twenty-five cent word) do ya…I have some of that stuff leftover from college too… from, fifty years ago ya say…I think you and I went to separate schools together… “mutate! replicate!…infect half the world.”
Oh oooh I think we found the source of this corona beer virus Pensacola.
Ha! And, very good, Michael! (But, not a beer drinker.) I did wind up with a skin anomaly (relatively small) on the back of my hands a short time after, which finally disappeared after some liquid nitrogen treatments a few decades later. Don’t know if they were related to the use of ntg or not. Interesting times, they were! (And, a lot of beer does flow around here, particularly at McGuires’ Irish Pub!)
Thank you.
I get the idea a lot of people have either never worked in a lab, took classes with labs, or thought much about how so much is known about viruses and the details of how they infect cells and reproduce.
John Tillman and I discussed such possibility just over a week ago
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/10/wuhan-coronavirus-a-wuwt-scientific-commentary/
Bad idea, this thread. Let’s stick to global warming stuff and ignore unrelated conspiracy theories. Dabbling in those damages the standing of this site.
Some points:
“There’s no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find”
https://www.ft.com/content/a6392ee6-4ec6-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5
A biosecurity lab is NOT the same as a biowarfare lab. The CDC has them and I myself worked at a lab with a level 2 security wing.
An accidental escape of a virus being researched, maybe. A deliberate release, unlikely.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find”
Really????
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
October 2007
“Recent studies have suggested that bats are the natural reservoir of a range of coronaviruses (CoVs), and that rhinolophid bats harbor viruses closely related to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) CoV, which caused an outbreak of respiratory illness in humans during 2002–2003. We examined the evolutionary relationships between bat CoVs and their hosts by using sequence data of the virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene and the bat cytochrome b gene. Phylogenetic analyses showed multiple incongruent associations between the phylogenies of rhinolophid bats and their CoVs, which suggested that host shifts have occurred in the recent evolutionary history of this group. These shifts may be due to either virus biologic traits or host behavioral traits. This finding has implications for the emergence of SARS and for the potential future emergence of SARS-CoVs or related viruses.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/10/07-0448_article
Which supports this…
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
For anyone unaware of how common it is for a new infectious disease to be the result of a spread from an animal to a person…it is by far the primary way new diseases have infected people:
“Abstract
Zoonoses with a wildlife reservoir represent a major public health problem, affecting all continents. Hundreds of pathogens and many different transmission modes are involved, and many factors influence the epidemiology of the various zoonoses. The importance and recognition of wildlife as a reservoir of zoonoses are increasing. Cost-effective prevention and control of these zoonoses necessitate an interdisciplinary and holistic approach and international cooperation. Surveillance, laboratory capability, research, training and education, and communication are key elements.
Throughout history, wildlife has been an important source of infectious diseases transmissible to humans. Today, zoonoses with a wildlife reservoir constitute a major public health problem, affecting all continents. The importance of such zoonoses is increasingly recognized, and the need for more attention in this area is being addressed.
Wildlife is normally defined as free-roaming animals (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians), whereas a zoonosis is an infectious disease transmittable between animals and humans. The total number of zoonoses is unknown, but according to Taylor et al. (1), who in 2001 catalogued 1,415 known human pathogens, 62% were of zoonotic origin. With time, more and more human pathogens are found to be of animal origin. Moreover, most emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonoses.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/12/04-0707_article
How important are so-called wet markets, and other trade practices that mix animals of various species in confined spaces?
“Using three different assays, we examined 103 serum samples collected from different civet farms and a market in China in June 2003 and January 2004. While civets on farms were largely free from SARS-CoV infection, ≈80% of the animals from one animal market in Guangzhou contained significant levels of antibody to SARS-CoV, which suggests no widespread infection among civets resident on farms, and the infection of civets in the market might be associated with trading activities under the conditions of overcrowding and mixing of various animal species.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/12/04-0520_article
“blood of bat was on his skin”, sounds convincing to me! It is the bat-lab.
More on how frequently new emerging diseases are the result of a spread from an animal to people:
“Since 1980, >35 new infectious diseases have emerged in humans (13), ≈1 every 8 months. The origin of HIV is likely linked to human consumption of nonhuman primates (14). Recent Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in humans have been traced to index patient contact with infected great apes that are hunted for food (15). SARS-associated coronavirus has been associated with the international trade in small carnivores (16), and a study comparing antibody evidence of exposure to this coronavirus demonstrated a dramatic rise from low or zero prevalence of civets at farms to an approximately 80% prevalence in civets tested in markets”
Search engine queries turn up many hundreds of studies like these I have posted…thousands if considered across keyword searches.
Every 8 months!
That is how often (at least…this is a minimum) between 1980 and 2005 a new disease emerged in people.
Seen in that light, is it unlikely, or is it in fact likely, knowing nothing else, that this new disease came from the wet market where a large percentage of the original patients had contact?
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/7/05-0194_article
Also it is a matter of sheer numbers. With billions of people chances increase of virus jumping to humans, if human/animal practices do not change.
One site that is giving good updates
https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/news
Some stories from there:
– 3500 medical workers have died, not the 1700 that China says
– patients can get reinfected and reports are that reinfected patients can go into sudden cardiac arrest
– studies show potential for virus infection to cause male infertility
Sorry meant medical workers infected, not died.
The cardiac arrest is from damage caused by drugs administered during initial treatment. I would love to see the data showing the mortality rates for those treated by establishment medicine and those treated by traditional Chinese medicine.
Nice. A firehose of information
The headline that stood out most to me was “India Slammed For Proposing Usage of Homeopathy to Prevent Coronavirus”. FWIW, homeopathic doctors are recorded as saying they experienced zero to very few deaths during the Spanish Flu pandemic. One thing they refused to do that establishment medicine did with abandon was administer aspirin to patients. Aspirin poisoning is believed by more than a few to be the primary cause of the excessive deaths.
So it may not be a question what good homeopathy does so much as a question of what harm it doesn’t do. WuFlu patients in China are basically being used as guinea pigs for, IMO, really toxic treatments.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-KFxCqV1fPQ
This via DougRoss@journal, also look for videos by Chris Martenson and ‘Zooming In’ with Simone Gao. The official infection numbers are not exponential as expected at this juncture and the case death rate is holding improbably day after day at 2.1%.
Those whose knee jerk reaction is to wail “Conspiracy” are allergic to work.
No samples were taken and sequenced at the Wuhan ‘wet market’. It was cleared and disinfected and is utterly useless to support conjecture. No bats were present as they ‘hibernate’ at this time of year(although small mammals don’t actually hibernate but merely sleep most of the winter). The R(0) of zoonotic viruses SARS, MERS and Ebola are comparatively low with regard to the aerosolized COVid-2019.
“May have” & “Probably” are tells for speculative/fake news.
We (skeptics) of all people know that theories need proof to become fact; Correlation does not prove causation.
Im wondering about the poor people who liv in those horrible multi layer cage type setups crammed in like lab animals themselves
if they were all lowpaid workers and confined together for 2 weeks or more with little space to move excersize and even be able to remain apart from neighbours at all.. theyre not listed as dwelling but are hidden in “factory/workshop/storage/ areas..
and the doorknocking being done presently would miss them
but I suspect theres going to be quite a few found dead in flats and apartments/rooms etc
too poor to be able to go to a hospital or pay for any meds anyway.
My friend from China who was involved in bringing SARS under control said the Wuhan live markets were technically illegal but corruption among Chinese officials allowed the market to flourish. It was his hope that this crisis would mean they would finally shut down the markets. However now they have a perfect scapegoat. It was not a corrupt bunch of officials allowing traditional and extremely dangerous wildlife live markets. It was stupidity in a lab. Now a bunch of workers can be taken out and shot and the markets can start up again as soon as things calm down. Of course this doesn’t mean the Chinese weren’t doing bioweapons research and something got out. They could have put the research facility next to the market for exactly that reason, a cover in case something got out. It could also be just another case of China infiltrating a western laboratory, stealing all the secrets, and taking the secrets home, like they always do for everything, but then this one got away on them. I’m more inclined to think that. If it was bioweapons development it would seem they didn’t get very far along because the sequence does not show tampering (based on what is publicly available) and the whole project has backfired on them rather badly.
China quarantined 50 million people before anyone else had even heard of corona virus. That is the smoking gun. They would not have done this except that they knew something they have nor told the rest of the world.
I can’t find any mainstream news organization (liberal, conservative, or otherwise) that can confirm this study actually occurred and was released. Looks like fake news to me.