On: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

[WithinReason]

> What would you accept as evidence of "no lab involvement"?

Read the last sentence.

[igouy → WithinReason]

You seem to want to play a guessing game.

[tharne → igouy]

> COVID was never found in any animal from the Huanan market

Seems pretty straightforward to me. The Chinese said it came from a market, but never found a single animal in that market with COVID.

[igouy → tharne]

"Trump says that 'if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases' of the coronavirus."

Apparently "No reports are known to be available for SARS-CoV-2 test results from these mammals at the Huanan market" and "we do not have access to any live animal samples from relevant species" and "The animals on these farms (nearly 1 million) were rapidly released, sold, or killed in early 2020 … apparently without testing for SARS-CoV-2 … Live animals sold at the market … were apparently not sampled either."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

[igouy → tharne]

And the question I asked someone else was —

What would you accept as evidence of "no lab involvement"?

[seer-zig → igouy]

Not the poster you're responding to, but a start is to allow external investigation into the labs by a third party.

[igouy → seer-zig]

The only way that could resolve these questions is if evidence of lab involvement was found.

Not finding such evidence has WithinReason saying "There is also no evidence that the epidemic had no lab involvement."

one cannot prove that ghosts do not exist

[seer-zig → igouy]

There is enough reason to suspect something is going on though, especially that the CCP is known to lie and cover up.

[igouy → seer-zig]

> … something is going on…

Something not very mysterious —

2022 "Wildlife trade is likely the source of SARS-CoV-2"

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8384

2003 "Asymptomatic animal traders prove positive for SARS virus"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140695/

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The scary part is that there's every reason to expect this to happen again and again.

[WithinReason → igouy]

Not sure why I have to spell it out: Finding COVID in animals in the Huanan market and tracing them back to a wild population infected with COVID would be a knock down argument against a lab leak.

[igouy → WithinReason]

Spelling it out avoids unnecessary misunderstanding, thank you.

Apparently "No reports are known to be available for SARS-CoV-2 test results from these mammals at the Huanan market" and "we do not have access to any live animal samples from relevant species" and "The animals on these farms (nearly 1 million) were rapidly released, sold, or killed in early 2020 … apparently without testing for SARS-CoV-2 … Live animals sold at the market … were apparently not sampled either."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

So the evidence you require will never be found.

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otoh "Multiple positive samples were taken from one stall known to have sold live mammals, and the water drain proximal to this stall, as well as other sewerages and a nearby wildlife stall on the southwest side of the market, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2."

[WithinReason → igouy]

They could still find a recent common ancestor of the original strain in a bat species for example.

COVID samples from the market could have come from a human spreader.

[igouy → WithinReason]

Would you accept that as evidence of "no lab involvement"?

Would we hear bat species SARS-CoV-2 could have come from a human spreader :-)

[WithinReason → igouy]

I think it should be possible to tell which direction evolution went