A forgotten social media post may hold key clues to Covid-19's origin
science.org33 points by bookofjoe 10 hours ago
33 points by bookofjoe 10 hours ago
And I still think the lab leak is the most likely source.
What would persuade you otherwise?
I also think it was a lab leak for sars-cov-2. I would be convinced otherwise if they found evidence of its predecessor in animals like they did for sars-cov-1, fairly promptly once they looked. But no - nothing like that and a lot of iffy stuff with the lab.
Look, that virus was ready to spread without any mutations. As if it was packaged to do so.
Not sure why there is pushback on this idea (remember the media buried this as a story), lab leaks are a common occurrence unfortunately.
And far more viruses spread naturally from animals to humans and far more epidemics have been caused by that.
So the logic of “they are a common occurrence” speaks to the opposite conclusion.
I think so, too.
An exotic disease breaks out right on top of a lab where disease cultivation occurs. Then government coverups begin.
Future generations will be amazed that anyone dismissed this very, very strong possibility.
Also— in a few years, when the politicization has faded, we need a comprehensive study on which countries took the right steps at the time. ( How much shutdown was beneficial. )
"SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had arrived in the country on frozen lobsters from Maine that were sold at the Wuhan market"
..... I know, strongly, that this is purely an anecdote.
But this was kind of crazy to see. In Dec 2019 my family and I traveled from Europe to visit family in Maine. We returned around new year's and all got what was by _far_ the worst flu any of us had every had in our lives. And weirdest - it was consistent with covid symptoms.
My youngest was 2 months old (we flew back with her to meet family) and she was quite ill - we still suspect long covid affects her.
Now, entirely possible this is confirmation bias, and airports would have been full of travellers from all over, not just Maine, but still...
The Dec 2019 bug also hit me (living in NYC). I wasn't mentally myself for three weeks. I'm not even sure I fully recuperated. It was intense, and worse than when I eventually did experience COVID a couple years later.
From what I read at the time, there was a non-COVID flu at this time throughout the east coast. Tests months later did not show I had COVID antibodies. It remains to me a remarkable sickness unlike anything else I've experienced.
Same with my sister and her husband (London) Worst flu they ever had, I was looking after their kids. That said, later they tested positive for Covid antibodies
My child and mother both got super sick like this in March 2019 also, so naturally my wife and mother both think it was early covid. What makes me doubt this is the fact that when Italy and NYC got hit in 2020, there was a HUGE jump in deaths. They couldn't keep up with the bodies. If this thing was circulating earlier than 2020, we surely would've seen the Italy/NYC pattern very quickly. I think the 2019 flu virus or RSV strains were perhaps a very harsh one and that's what people are mistakenly believing was "early covid".
To my recollection Italy had an unusually high amount of strong pneumonia at the end 2019, apparently not covid.
The deaths sure spiked later though.
I wonder if it was an earlier variant of Covid, but I guess they would have detected that.
Perhaps the virus evolved to be more deadly after the initial wave of “flu”?
Could it be worth reaching out to a researcher? If you've NOT had Covid since, you may have evidence in your own bodies that would be useful.
> If you've NOT had Covid since, you may have evidence in your own bodies that would be useful.
Unlikely. By this point, hasn't pretty much everyone had COVID? My understanding is recent variants often don't even lead to very severe symptoms and may not be recognized as COVID.
China has consistently pumped out alternative origins for Covid. It was on frozzen lobsters, they paid youtubers to promote it was frome whitetail deer, biolabs, anything to regain face. Meanwhile the rest of the world, just moved on .. its kind of funny, these dictator neurosis in public. Almost a 2nd loss of face after the first.
The article teaches you alot about soviet systems though the incompetence repairing perceived damage not by reform, but by rewritting history and narratives.
It's clear COVID was circulating by then. I remember a story about an American guy in the US, west coast somewhere, in whose Nov 2019 blood samples they found antibodies. IIRC first reports of unusual respiratory disease in China are from October.
If that was indeed COVID then this stuff was around and not only in Wuhan.
To me it's kinda like 9/11 in that ultimately I don't really care about the cause, I saw what was done with it. That was very fucked up regardless of the origin being synthetic or not, in both cases.
Van Kerkhove says Débarre’s analysis is “interesting,” but cautions that the provenance of the data is unclear. “The way in which the information is identified is highly suspect,” she says.
This has all the hallmarks of a CCP disinformation campaign to shift blame to foreign sources. This started almost as soon as the quarantines began, such as the baseless accusation that the US Army was responsible (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-chinese-offic...).
They then started erasing sampling data from the Wuhan outbreak and cracked down on anyone memorializing Dr. Li Wenliang while planting "evidence" that they knew conspiracy theorists would pick up and spread.
> But a new analysis suggests the post may hold clues to the pandemic’s origin—and further evidence that China is withholding vital data on the contentious issue.
> Evolutionary biologist Florence Débarre of CNRS, France’s national research agency, who firmly believes SARS-CoV-2 jumped into people from live animals at the market, calls the WeChat post “extremely elaborate disinformation.” But when she recently translated the post and compared the detailed maps of the market it contains with other, official ones, Débarre found surprises. The maps identify specific stalls as having live animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and vendors with antibodies to the virus—data China has never shared.
tl;dr: a post pushing a bogus conspiracy theory contained real (and undisclosed) information as background.
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