Interesting premise. But why doesn’t anyone look at the bigger elephant in the room?
Sometime in April 2019, reports of a mysterious illness started surfacing. They thought it was related to vaping products. [1]
Then in July 2019, a respiratory illness hit a retirement home in Virginia, and killed a bunch of old people. [2]
Then the Wuhan military games was in mid October 2019.
Then China reported of an unknown pneumonia in early December. They thought it came from a seafood market, which was proven incorrect.
The western world harassed them and accused them of eating bats, and transmitting the disease, which is also proven to be incorrect.
China then back-traced the earliest case to mid November. Which happens to coincide a few weeks after the Wuhan military games. Just the right amount of time for the virus to incubate and wreck havoc.
New evidence is suggesting that the virus was in Italy before it was in China. [3]
But the interesting thing, is that when they took MRI scans of the vaping outbreak patients, they saw white orbs in the picture in their lungs. Coincidentally, Covid-19 victims also had these white orbs in their lungs.
The whole origin of this virus was always very mysterious. Something just never seemed right about it.
The vaping thing just came and disappeared. Nobody really knows what caused it, just a few random theories about contaminated cartridges. But here’s the strange thing. Those vaping pens, are all made in China. And are sold all over the world. People in China uses those vaping pens everywhere, but there were no reports of a mysterious illness from it in China. Only in the United States and a few in Canada. Not even Europe reported any issues.
Why was it reported only in the United States? Then soon after, all the other pieces began to fall into place, one after the other.
To get down to the true origin of this virus, then they need to check those vaping people. Check them for the Covid-19 antibodies.
Then check the nursing home people from Virginia, for those that survived, for Covid-19 antibodies.
Then check the people that went to the Wuhan military games for Covid-19 antibodies.
Or not. And just conveniently blame China for being the origin of the virus, just because they were the first ones to detect it, and report it.
The vaping issue was related to Vitamin E in THC vaping and was not related to vaping in general.
The Vitamin E was being vaporized and inhaled directly into the lungs, which caused the problems. Inhalation of Vitamin E into the lungs is a known cause of lung disease symptoms.
I know vitamine E acetate is a scourage in the vaping community, but I was under the impression that outbreak was a distincly different thing, at a different time.
Although the uninteresting answer is often true, I do dislike that people refuse to entertain anything remotely fringe. Some of the declassified CIA documents stated that they intentionally furthered this attitude as much as they could, as it allowed them to make many of thier projects dissappear.
What is the most promising theory of origin? A 5-10min search didn't help.
The lab theory is of course the most fun, but not the most probable. The fact that they were working on similar diseases, the lab was newish, and the country itself isn't exactly well known for IP security make me not discredit it as fast as I normally would.
The animal->human route via food (or less likely, bites/other contamination) seems to be most likely. It's happened plenty of times in the past, and given the SES level of the area and cultural norms, it could have definitely happened.
The rest of the ideas seem like a long tail where all of them have fairly obvious "gotchas" that make typing them out a waste, but I'd love to hear what other people think.
Looks like the CDC investigated the outbreak - if there was a virus responsible, wouldn't it have been found then? If it was related, it doesn't make sense that it would not have easily begun to spread at that time.
If it was SARS-CoV-2, the CDC could confirm that now retroactively with stored blood samples. I suggest it was probably not.
However, then, it does point to proto-pandemics happening as a regular occurrence. A fatal viral outbreak is contained within a care home rather than spreading - either by being slightly sub-exponential in the general population (R<=1), or perhaps just by pure luck.
That trope again. First, that's spilled milk, even it were true, and thus is a pointless discussion. Second, local Chinese authorities screwed up. That was followed by one of the quickest, strictest and most effective reactions. As for the international response, that could be based on cases in Korea and Japan, for example. Europe reacted quick enough in Spring, after Italy waited a couple of days to long. Which is now followed by a real screw up in Germany. So no, China didn't hide anything once central government took over. And no, even if they had that would not be an acceptable excuse for screwing up ones response.
It's not a "trope". Several papers ended up getting censored, and local samples getting destroyed. I was around and combing through the news stream at that time. Project Evidence was the group of people collating the circumstantial evidence around it, and I've seen a notable dearth of material that doesn't smell of some level of having been contrivance to put the field of virology squarely outside the crosshairs of the public's ire, or having been motivated by plausible geopolitical motivations or face saving measures.
If you look at the locality of happenstance, the lab escape is more than worth looking into. Just because search engines are bombing anything with regard to it to the bottom of search results, and press farms are working hard at propagating the zoonotic origin without touching on any of the impracticalities inherent to making that full set of connections feasible does not mean the information is not out there to be found.
I think you’re just engaging in conspiracies here.
It’s possible that China’s central CDC ordered the local samples to be destroyed, because the local facility was not authorized or equipped, to handle infectious diseases properly.
Think of it this way. Do you want junior high school kids, handling contaminated biowaste, where the probability or risk of infection is very high.
And this was at the very beginning, when the science behind this virus and disease was not fully known.
It’s safer to throw the samples into a fire furnace, than to risk transporting it or storing it, where its leakage could further infect more people.
There's truth in this, but you need to ask, why did local officials screw up? And it's probably related to the way mistakes are treated by central government. So, even if central government was not responsible for the individual actions early in the pandemic, they set the framework for how they interact with local governments, and thus still bear responsibility.
You want examples outside of China of more serious screw ups, once the real seriousness was known?
Ok, then. Bavaria had beer festivals in February and March, Austria kept Ischgl open and infected most of Europe. Other regions let the German carnival running. Leipzig had Champions League match. All in Feb and March. Just from top of my head.
At least local Chinese authorities still had the benefit of doubt. And did we already forget how fast they built hospitals and how many people the tested?
Yup, all screw ups. In my opinion, the scientific community should be held to a higher standard on this, but sure, you can judge them alongside the local beer festival I guess.
Setting aside the idea of intentional coverup, China is still the most likely area origin.
Normalized working/eating close to all animals, wet markets, pollution, lack of food care (incl refridgeration), unclean water, and more all make for a hotbed of potential disease.
Sometime in April 2019, reports of a mysterious illness started surfacing. They thought it was related to vaping products. [1]
Then in July 2019, a respiratory illness hit a retirement home in Virginia, and killed a bunch of old people. [2]
Then the Wuhan military games was in mid October 2019.
Then China reported of an unknown pneumonia in early December. They thought it came from a seafood market, which was proven incorrect.
The western world harassed them and accused them of eating bats, and transmitting the disease, which is also proven to be incorrect.
China then back-traced the earliest case to mid November. Which happens to coincide a few weeks after the Wuhan military games. Just the right amount of time for the virus to incubate and wreck havoc.
New evidence is suggesting that the virus was in Italy before it was in China. [3]
But the interesting thing, is that when they took MRI scans of the vaping outbreak patients, they saw white orbs in the picture in their lungs. Coincidentally, Covid-19 victims also had these white orbs in their lungs.
The whole origin of this virus was always very mysterious. Something just never seemed right about it.
The vaping thing just came and disappeared. Nobody really knows what caused it, just a few random theories about contaminated cartridges. But here’s the strange thing. Those vaping pens, are all made in China. And are sold all over the world. People in China uses those vaping pens everywhere, but there were no reports of a mysterious illness from it in China. Only in the United States and a few in Canada. Not even Europe reported any issues.
Why was it reported only in the United States? Then soon after, all the other pieces began to fall into place, one after the other.
To get down to the true origin of this virus, then they need to check those vaping people. Check them for the Covid-19 antibodies.
Then check the nursing home people from Virginia, for those that survived, for Covid-19 antibodies.
Then check the people that went to the Wuhan military games for Covid-19 antibodies.
Or not. And just conveniently blame China for being the origin of the virus, just because they were the first ones to detect it, and report it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/virginia-retirement-commun...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...