Independent probe into the origin of SARS-COV-2

[JadeOrchidSong]

This is science, not politics. A pandemic this devastating deserves to be independently investigated to get to know it better and to prevent future pandemics. I applaud Australia for initiating this, backed by 116 countries so far. 

[bolt.]

It makes sense to try to do this kind of analysis.

Quibbles:

1. I'm not sure of how the idea "independent" might apply. I don't know which nation or body could be considered to have no particular perspective or agenda (just because the impact of Covid19 is completely widespread) that they would bring to the investigation. Medical science acknowledges that even people who try to work without bias are still impacted by their preexisting contexts and perspectives. True independence will be hard to find. We may have to settle for representation of a variety of perspectives instead of relying on people capable of being actually impartial to this issue.

2. It's inevitable that, regardless of the results, the information will be conditioned by political reality. If the results suit the political narrative of certain folks, it will be considered credible. It will be distributed, trusted, and relevant policies will be implemented where those folks have influence. If the results don't suit other folks, those people will discredit and ignore the information where they have influence: no matter how sciency it is. (I don't mean just that the US will go one way or another. I mean that all countries will undergo this process, and each will have its own result.)

So I'm not sure the information will be as good as one would naturally hope for when we say we are looking for and independent review of Covid19 as a worldwide phenomenon. It's better than not investigating it, for sure. And hopefully actual medical science will take it seriously regardless of quibble #2. So, by all means. I'm just not fully confident we can get what we want.

[ScoutTN]

 I am probably missing something obvious, but why does it matter whether it exists in the wild, in nature or whether the biological research facility in Wuhan made it? 

Would it help us to combat it more effectively? 

 

[ScoutTN]

44 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

Well, if it came from a lab, wouldn't the research the lab was doing probably aid in combating it?

Yes, but China is not going to share their research - most likely intended for the development of weapons - with us. 

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, ScoutTN said:

 I am probably missing something obvious, but why does it matter whether it exists in the wild, in nature or whether the biological research facility in Wuhan made it? 

Would it help us to combat it more effectively? 

 

I would think it’s more about preventing the next one.  

[Ausmumof3]

I think it’s important.  I’m not sure whether we will really get answers though.  If it was a mishap in a lab in China evidence is most likely destroyed.  It would be good I think to look into whether WHO could have sounded the alarm more clearly more early particularly on things like border closures and whether that could make a difference. And maybe just giving people a chance to talk about their experiences and concerns is what these things are really about.

As far as the Aus role goes I don’t personally think it’s about playing up to the US because I think there’s a fair bit of ground support for it here.  The trade war is going to hurt for sure.  I have some suspicion that this was already going to happen.  The free trade deal with the US requires China to buy more agricultural products from them if I understand it correctly so they already needed to redirect agricultural spending.  Also one of the big Aussie beef farms up north that was Chinese owned was sold back to an Australian family the day before the announcement about not buying Aussie beef and wine which makes me wonder if it was already in the works and someone had inside knowledge to make that sale.  Anyway that’s just my thoughts.  I am an “information is power” kind of person so I think knowing whatever we can is important.

[EmseB]

6 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

What have you seen that supports that?

I'll be honest, I haven't read much about the question of origin, but what I have read seems to hypothesize that China was investigating viruses for benign reasons, and did a crummy job of containment and the thing escaped.  And then, because they're China and their go to mode is censorship, they didn't tell anyone what happened, resulting in a delay in responding that compounded the problem.  

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/11/china-clamping-down-on-coronavirus-research-deleted-pages-suggest

The Orwell version, lol

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3078497/coronavirus-china-pulls-plug-wasteful-unnecessary-research-covid

[Ausmumof3]

13 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

What have you seen that supports that?

I'll be honest, I haven't read much about the question of origin, but what I have read seems to hypothesize that China was investigating viruses for benign reasons, and did a crummy job of containment and the thing escaped.  And then, because they're China and their go to mode is censorship, they didn't tell anyone what happened, resulting in a delay in responding that compounded the problem.  

I don’t think this is specifically related to Covid19 but research of that nature was happening- not aimed at a bio weapon specifically but definitely involving modifying coronaviruses

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

at this point the science indicates it’s not directly genetically modified but

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06199
 

this guys paper shows that it seems to be better adapted to human cells than other species.  I can’t find the other article I read but I think basically he thinks that indicates that thought it’s not artificially genetically modified it’s kind of selectively bred in a sense.  Maybe not with intention to harm but for benign research purposes.

ultimately if there is a bio security issue with labs studying these viruses we really need to work out where it is and prevent a repeat.  

[EmseB]

12 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Neither of those mentions that the original research was focused on creating bioweapons.  That's the part that I was questioning.  

I have no doubt that China is trying to cover up a huge mistake, or that they could have handled this much better.

 

13 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Neither of those mentions that the original research was focused on creating bioweapons.  That's the part that I was questioning.  

I have no doubt that China is trying to cover up a huge mistake, or that they could have handled this much better.

Sorry, I though you were asking scout what she had seen that supported that China wasn't going to share their research with us, but it was the other part of her statement you were asking about.

[Ausmumof3]

1 minute ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Absolutely.  But our response if this was an accident will surely be difference than our response if it turns out they were making bioweapons, or worse that they released it intentionally.

Maybe.  Definitely if it was an intentional release it would change the whole dynamic.  I don’t really know how you’d even work that out though.  I mean from a science point of view the research is going to look the same.  Identifying whether a virus can infect humans severely with the intent of developing treatments and vaccination and identifying those viruses for the purpose of a bio weapon is going to look mostly the same I think.  It’s hard to imagine it was an intentional release given the huge damage it’s done to their own people.  

[JadeOrchidSong]

4 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I would think it’s more about preventing the next one.  

Exactly!

[JadeOrchidSong]

6 hours ago, StellaM said:

Oh yes, this is what my nation decided to risk a trade war with China for.

 

Excuse me, are you time traveling or what? What happened first? 

[JadeOrchidSong]

4 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Maybe.  Definitely if it was an intentional release it would change the whole dynamic.  I don’t really know how you’d even work that out though.  I mean from a science point of view the research is going to look the same.  Identifying whether a virus can infect humans severely with the intent of developing treatments and vaccination and identifying those viruses for the purpose of a bio weapon is going to look mostly the same I think.  It’s hard to imagine it was an intentional release given the huge damage it’s done to their own people.  

Considering the history of China, that in late 1950s and the whole 1960s, at least 60 million Chinese people lost their lives to the Communist government, something like this is not beyond what that government is capable of doing. We, a good number of Chinese, believe it was possibly an intentional release to distract from the increasingly tough Hong Kong protest and the trade conflict with the US. It would take an insider deflector to reveal the destroyed evidence. But just as June 4th Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, the truth (of how many students were killed) may never be revealed officially by China voluntarily. 

[JadeOrchidSong]

And again, I want to repeat that investigating the origin helps prevent another pandemic if there is one. SARS happened 17 years agao. SARS-COV-2 aka COVID-19 happened in late 2019. I bet no one wants to deal with SARS-COV-3 or COVID-any-number down the road, right? This virus is so new we need to learn as much as we can about its origin. The scale of this pandemic and the 327k who died from it call for the investigation. 

[mathnerd]

 

6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I would think it’s more about preventing the next one.  

If someone did this intentionally (bioweapon) or some bumbling idiot released it by mistake from a lab where it was supposed to be contained, the public would like to know about it. If someone knew about its origins, then, finding a vaccine or cure would be easier and we could prevent deaths of many millions. 

If a virus that always existed in bats suddenly jumped to humans in 2019 for no special reason, I would like to know how this can be prevented in the future. It is said that there are many more viruses similar to the CV19 virus in bats in the caves near Wuhan. So, it is good to dig out the truth.

If the Communist Party of China had a hand in it and was trying to cover up, I would like to know about that as well.

Edited May 21, 2020 by mathnerd

[Melissa in Australia]

10 hours ago, JadeOrchidSong said:

This is science, not politics. A pandemic this devastating deserves to be independently investigated to get to know it better and to prevent future pandemics. I applaud Australia for initiating this, backed by 116 countries so far. 

So because Australia initiated this China has punished us by wacking huge tarrifs on barley imports. an 80% tarrif. The barley is already mostly planted. Today it was announced that USA has quickly signed a deal with China to supply the barley.

Thanks a million for standing by an ally. (not) 

[Melissa in Australia]

7 hours ago, StellaM said:

Here's my reading:

US Feds want to deflect blame from their own shortcomings by focusing on China. 

They don't want to risk their own farmers.

So they get a lap dog country like Australia to do it for them.

Our barley growers have just seen their industry demolished in a direct hit back from the Chinese. Dairy and wine are rumored to be next.

But hey, ho, this is life as a middling nation. You do what you're told.

I can't imagine it makes an ounce of different to effectiveness of response or treatment.

I read the thread from the bottom up

I feel it is even worse than using Aus as a lapdog. It  is looking like it is so USA can take over Aus export markets

 

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I read the thread from the bottom up

I feel it is even worse than using Aus as a lapdog. It  is looking like it is so USA can take over Aus export markets

 

Well I’m thinking we’ll be eating lots of barley soup this year ...

I know this doesn’t fix the problem though.  
 

i really don’t think the China trade war is just about the virus inquiry I think there’s more to it than that and it gave the needed excuse.  But I may be wrong.  I do really think the inquiry is important though.  

[JennyD]

In an alternate universe, one could imagine that a discovery that the virus had escaped from a laboratory might prompt a US-led international effort to cooperate on improved safety standards and procedures in these sorts of laboratories.  Much more narrowly, one could also imagine an alternate US administration deciding to re-establish the federal position that -- before it was eliminated last July -- had an American epidemiologist embedded with the Chinese CDC for the purpose of detecting disease outbreaks in China.

Edited May 21, 2020 by JennyD

[Ausmumof3]

2 hours ago, mathnerd said:

 

If someone did this intentionally (bioweapon) or some bumbling idiot released it by mistake from a lab where it was supposed to be contained, the public would like to know about it. If someone knew about its origins, then, finding a vaccine or cure would be easier and we could prevent deaths of many millions. 

If a virus that always existed in bats suddenly jumped to humans in 2019 for no special reason, I would like to know how this can be prevented in the future. It is said that there are many more viruses similar to the CV19 virus in bats in the caves near Wuhan. So, it is good to dig out the truth.

If the Communist Party of China had a hand in it and was trying to cover up, I would like to know about that as well.

Not only bats either.  There were researchers in Aus looking into whether coronaviruses carried by migrating birds pose a potential threat.  
 

I guess that’s where for me it’s slightly less about where it came from and why the Surveillance systems that should have identified and contained it failed.  Because realistically there will always be potentially new viruses and we probably can’t identify every one but if we can step up bio security earlier in an outbreak it should be able to be contained.  I would still like to know why WHO advocated for open borders for as long as they did. 

[Ausmumof3]

3 hours ago, JadeOrchidSong said:

And again, I want to repeat that investigating the origin helps prevent another pandemic if there is one. SARS happened 17 years agao. SARS-COV-2 aka COVID-19 happened in late 2019. I bet no one wants to deal with SARS-COV-3 or COVID-any-number down the road, right? This virus is so new we need to learn as much as we can about its origin. The scale of this pandemic and the 327k who died from it call for the investigation. 

Also increase in international travel has been a pretty significant part of the problem.  Opening up international travel to the level it was previously I assume is a goal shared by most countries and figuring out how to prevent a repeat occurrence seems important.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

 I am probably missing something obvious, but why does it matter whether it exists in the wild, in nature or whether the biological research facility in Wuhan made it? 

Would it help us to combat it more effectively? 

 

I mostly feel this way, too. My dh always wants to talk about origins and whether they were intentional or accidental, natural or bio-engineered. I care very little about that aspect, though sure, if someone did this with malicious intent, certainly they should face sanctions. But bolt is right afa where do you find an impartial “jury” on this matter? And what I care about most is what we do now,