Without delving into conspiracy theories, it can be argued that the Chinese government did not want a thorough investigation that might have revealed they failed to fulfill their promises after SARS to clean up their farming practices and live animal markets.
The covid research has become highly political. It would be naive not to appreciate this. So why not try to protect folk by more practical remedies such as raising the population vitamin D levels to aid immunity? Improving ventilation and masking might help too! Targeting more vulnerable groups would be a good start.
I think the problem is now is that there were so many different hypothetical Lab-Leak theories, ranging from at one extreme that the virus was an entirely synthetic bioweapon, to at the other, it was merely an escape of a wild type virus which had been collected in the field and then was being stored / propagated in a laboratory. Some bits of data are incompatible with many of these theories, but the minimalist lab-leak one is almost identical in expectation of observed outcome to what might be seen with a direct zoonotic spillover from a wild species. Place and opportunity are the main differences, a laboratory with animals and lab workers to infect, or a market selling wild animals for meat and the presence of human shoppers and market workers to infect. The Chinese authorities haven't been very co-operative with making all the data and samples readily available, but their secrecy and obfuscation of the details could be for many different reasons, including at its simplest that they were embarrassed to admit that the trade in wildlife meat for human consumption is still very active and not under control.
I tend to agree with you on both points, first that a zoonotic spillover from the meat trade is still the most probable explanation for the origin given the available observations, but second this does not mean that gain of function experiments with collected animal viruses offers rewards that outweigh the possible risks.
Adam, thank you for this reflection! did you take into account that data showing the virus was in Italy earlier than Wuhan? I thought there was so much smokes thrown in on Covid-19 that really hinders us trying to understand the origin and spread of this pandemic. Looking forward to read your Bloomberg article at the library.
There really is no hard data i.e. identification of the virus by sequencing of samples from infected individuals, to corroborate these earlier reports. Respiratory infections and their symptoms are common to many different pathogens, so unless fully identified it isn't possible to say these earlier reports were from a SARS-CoV2 infection.
Without delving into conspiracy theories, it can be argued that the Chinese government did not want a thorough investigation that might have revealed they failed to fulfill their promises after SARS to clean up their farming practices and live animal markets.
The covid research has become highly political. It would be naive not to appreciate this. So why not try to protect folk by more practical remedies such as raising the population vitamin D levels to aid immunity? Improving ventilation and masking might help too! Targeting more vulnerable groups would be a good start.
I think the problem is now is that there were so many different hypothetical Lab-Leak theories, ranging from at one extreme that the virus was an entirely synthetic bioweapon, to at the other, it was merely an escape of a wild type virus which had been collected in the field and then was being stored / propagated in a laboratory. Some bits of data are incompatible with many of these theories, but the minimalist lab-leak one is almost identical in expectation of observed outcome to what might be seen with a direct zoonotic spillover from a wild species. Place and opportunity are the main differences, a laboratory with animals and lab workers to infect, or a market selling wild animals for meat and the presence of human shoppers and market workers to infect. The Chinese authorities haven't been very co-operative with making all the data and samples readily available, but their secrecy and obfuscation of the details could be for many different reasons, including at its simplest that they were embarrassed to admit that the trade in wildlife meat for human consumption is still very active and not under control.
I tend to agree with you on both points, first that a zoonotic spillover from the meat trade is still the most probable explanation for the origin given the available observations, but second this does not mean that gain of function experiments with collected animal viruses offers rewards that outweigh the possible risks.
Adam, thank you for this reflection! did you take into account that data showing the virus was in Italy earlier than Wuhan? I thought there was so much smokes thrown in on Covid-19 that really hinders us trying to understand the origin and spread of this pandemic. Looking forward to read your Bloomberg article at the library.
There really is no hard data i.e. identification of the virus by sequencing of samples from infected individuals, to corroborate these earlier reports. Respiratory infections and their symptoms are common to many different pathogens, so unless fully identified it isn't possible to say these earlier reports were from a SARS-CoV2 infection.