Thursday 30 March 2023

From whence came Covid?


"I’ve never understood why it’s become such a big deal about where the [Covid] virus came from—unless for some reason you want to blame the Chinese government, but knowing the original source is helpful in giving early warnings of pandemics and working out how to stem them. A wet-market origin would lead to a very different strategy from a lab-leak origin."
~ Jerry Coyne, from his post 'Paul Offit: Covid came from the Wuhan wet market'

6 comments:

Rehoboth said...

Wonderful post

Tom Hunter said...

Jerry Coyne has a point but is also being obtuse about the need to resolve this.

The driving reason is the fact that TPTB insisted it wasn't a lab leak and backed this up with a two-year long, relentless drumbeat of propaganda combined with censorship of those who made arguments about the virus's genetic structure not being one that would appear via evolution.

The fact that last point developed right in the beginning with Anthony Fauci's combined group of scientists doing a 180 on the subject - with tens of millions of dollars of grants at stake via Fauci's fingertips - should be reason enough.

Questions about bureaucrats like him being able to defy a Presidential order and play Sir Humphrey to get around them need to be resolved. The capabilities and weaknesses of Chinese labs need to be resolved. There are a hell of a lot of big, important issues arising from the question of where this virus came from that need resolution if things are going to be done better in the future.

MarkT said...

I have very limited knowledge on this subject and no preconceived view, but after reading your post I still have no idea why you consider this issue has any importance. You seem to be suggesting that if we could determine that someone in a Chinese lab fucked up and caused covid, we could hold them responsible, demand change, and decrease the chance of something like covid happening again. But I have no idea how you could remotely achieve that feat in communist China. China will do what China does, and the only thing we can control is how we react to it.

Tom Hunter said...

But I have no idea how you could remotely achieve that feat in communist China.

We do it all the time by demanding quality control on the products and services we buy from China so there should be no difference in demanding such from a lab that we pay money to conduct genetic research on viruses.

If you don't get that last reference (I have very limited knowledge on this subject ) it's to the following:
- President Obama banned such research in the USA a few years ago.
- Fauci obviously did not agree and felt such research was valuable.
- He granted millions of dollars to a private group called EcoHealth Alliance
- they in turn funded the Wuhan lab to conduct "to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans.”

BTW, EcoHealth was led by one Peter Daszak, who led an effort with other scientists in early 2020 to publish a paper in The Lancet denouncing the lab-leak idea. At the time of publication people weren't aware of his connections, otherwise they might have been a bit more skeptical.

Going back to the post I was interested in this line...
A wet-market origin would lead to a very different strategy from a lab-leak origin."
... so clicked on the original article for an explanation. There was none and I can't see there could be a difference. Once the virus is "out" from whatever source, the methods to tackle it will be the same - as per the NZ MOH Flu Pandemic Plan (dumped BTW) - although knowing if the virus was genetically engineered to start with might help with vaccine development I suppose.

Peter Cresswell said...

@Mark: Re your first line ("I still have no idea why you consider this issue has any importance"), you should read mine ("I’ve never understood why it’s become such a big deal").
In other words, we agree.

MarkT said...

Yep Pete, I know we agree. I was responding to Tom Hunter, but for some reason it's not showing as a reply to his post.