Thread

Nearly 200 people under observation after Irkutsk lab worker dies from plague

212 points · 187 comments · ericmay

robmusial · 1791169542 · focus · HN ↗
I literally just finished Annie Jacobsen's book 'Biological War: A Scenario' last week where the central plot point is an accidental release of modified form of pneumonic plague from a lab in Siberia. Very coincidental timing, especially since it made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.
1. petcat · 1791170758 · focus · HN ↗
  > made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.
  Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.
  1. lumost · 1791171119 · focus · HN ↗
    I recently heard a scientist use a phrase something along the lines of “when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection”.
    We’ll never know if the lab in Wuhan originated the virus. But it is awfully strange that the first patients of a novel pandemic coronavirus were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus.
    aliljet · 1791173122 · focus · HN ↗
    Were they first patients?
    jijji · 1791174307 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, according to some reports, the first reported incidents happened in November 2019 and the months prior, from people who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology (according to US government sources) [0]. Those people were: Ben Hu, Yu Ping, Zhu Yan.
    [0] <a href="https://www.public.news/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19" rel="nofollow">https://www.public.news/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19
    soganess · 1791175376 · focus · HN ↗
    Not according to them and this little-known publication called "Science." I've never heard of it, but seems legit:
    <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chinese-scientist-accused-being-pandemic-s-patient-zero" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chin...
    jijji · 1791175537 · focus · HN ↗
    yes of course they all denied ever being sick in November 2019. China even denied that the wet market was the original source of infection. China also disputed any claims that they practiced "gain of function" research at all at WIV, even though that was uncovered by the recent evidence presented in Congress against Anthony Fauci, who funded the whole thing in the first place.
    soganess · 1791175662 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, of course, the absence of evidence is always evidence of a cover up.
    jijji · 1791176334 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    panja · 1791177126 · focus · HN ↗
    He has a target on his head. I would do the same, and pretty much any lawyer would recommend the same.
    jolux · 1791178273 · focus · HN ↗
    Treating pleading the Fifth as evidence of guilt is exactly the kind of unfairness the Fifth Amendment is meant to protect against.
    Fricken · 1791181944 · focus · HN ↗
    I first came across a news item about a mysterious outbreak and lockdown in Wuhan on November 2019. In February 2020 I went looking for that news item and couldn't find it. I had also done a bunch of reading online about Level IV biolabs and gain-of-function research, and that information had changed too. So maybe I'm crazy. Or maybe not.
    happosai · 1791176813 · focus · HN ↗
    According to partisan online newsletter "public.news" that claims to have interviewed anonymous US government sources.
    Unfortunately online search has gone useless and it's not possible to find out if anyone ever confirmed anything about that report. Just gazillion of other newslets repeating the original claim.
    bulbar · 1791177221 · focus · HN ↗
    Normally, I would count that as a strong signal that the origin was said lab. But with the current government, I don't think such a report in isolation should be considered as strong evidence. The US is not trustworthy at the moment.
    nostrademons · 1791181065 · focus · HN ↗
    It wasn't the current government. The statement was published at the tail end of the first Trump administration but the Biden administration continued to say they had serious questions about the lab leak hypothesis.
    adrian_b · 1791186883 · focus · HN ↗
    Another poster above has quoted the declassified US intelligence report and the conclusion was that any connection with the lab was very unlikely.
    tzs · 1791177661 · focus · HN ↗
    That is all based on the claim that they had illnesses with symptoms consistent with COVID. But those are also consistent with the flu and with the common cold and with other seasonal viruses which were also active at the time, since November is in the respiratory illness season there.
    cma · 1791173182 · focus · HN ↗
    Source on first patients being WIV workers? I think there was a US intelligence report that claimed several fell ill in Nov., some with incompatible symptoms, and with claims from WIV they didn't test positive for antibodies (not saying take those at face value). There's also the wet market and the sampling done in gutters around the different stalls and a whole competing story there, which is also the kind of scenario in the 2002 SARS outbreak.
    fsckboy · 1791173521 · focus · HN ↗
    >...were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus...
    ...with funding from a US group that discussed conducting this gain of function research in China using a spike protein at the furin cleavage site, a group whose members were appointed to come up with an explanation for what had happened.
    tzs · 1791175568 · focus · HN ↗
    Virus outbreaks are usually first recognized in large cities. Most large Chinese cities have labs that study coronaviruses. They were established in response to SARS-CoV-1 in the early 2000s.
    So no matter where it comes from the chances are good a coronavirus outbreak will first be detected in a city that has a coronavirus lab.
    lumost · 1791177043 · focus · HN ↗
    My understanding is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of only 2 BSL-4 labs in china in 2019, and the only one focused on emergent viruses. This is out of 684 major Chinese cities.
    hypfer · 1791179257 · focus · HN ↗
    The good thing about free will is that one can just believe that something is true, regardless of how much people on the web hit oneself over the head for it.
    Ideally, said belief is rooted in scientific methods, of course.
    But there is actually no need for this "lab! No! Market! no! Lab!" ping-pong that seems to be developing here.
    siva7 · 1791178886 · focus · HN ↗
    You seem to deliberately mislead readers...
    ANarrativeApe · 1791177642 · focus · HN ↗
    Beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean impossible,any more than on the balance of probabilities means beyond reasonable doubt.
    Angostura · 1791178768 · focus · HN ↗
    > But it is awfully strange that the first patients of a novel pandemic coronavirus were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus.
    Except - as far as I know - the first patients weren’t.
    nostrademons · 1791180951 · focus · HN ↗
    What do you know?
    In 2021 the WSJ reported that 3 workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 with symptoms resembling COVID-19 that they sought hospital care. Their source was a U.S. intelligence report.
    <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/world/china/intelligence-on-sick-staff-a...
    <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210622121243/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/covid-19-origins-wuhan-lab-staff-treatment-illness-flu-14873524" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20210622121243/https://www.chann...
    The WHO responded by saying the lab leak theory was extremely unlikely, and this line of investigation was dropped (except possibly within the government - this is the sort of information that would be convenient for governments to know but inconvenient for the public to know). But then in a follow-up documentary, a WHO scientist that published that statement says that they were under heavy pressure from the Chinese government to do so:
    <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-embarek/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-...
    adrian_b · 1791186509 · focus · HN ↗
    Another poster above has quoted that US intelligence report that you mention, and it concluded that there is no evidence that any earlier illness was related to COVID.
    Lumich · 1791190642 · focus · HN ↗
    « Their source was a U.S. intelligence report. » — In other words, blowing smoke around some important government lies.
    « lab leak theory » — Doesn't matter whether you adhere to the lab leak theory or the bat market theory. I'm sure there is a theory for some fringe group that points to “clear signs of extraterrestrian origin”, or “generated by AI”. Any crap will do. The only thing that matters in this business is that you believe there is some new-fangled and dangerous “CoVID” out there to get you.
    happymellon · 1791179086 · focus · HN ↗
    > I recently heard a scientist use a phrase something along the lines of “when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection”.
    Dumbest thing I've heard today.
    Ever since we started studying autism, we found it! Therefore studying causes autism.
    fragmede · 1791180536 · focus · HN ↗
    I might not have been the best student, but I wouldn't call studying "extraordinarily improbable".
    happymellon · 1791181737 · focus · HN ↗
    So it's not improbable research lab that was testing off runs from a wet market found the stuff they were searching for?
    1718627440 · 1791191111 · focus · HN ↗
    > Dumbest thing I've heard today.
    Not really; "there is probably a connection" probably was supposed to mean "could be studied, maybe a correlation is found", rather than "surely there must be a causation", which is what some people seem to want to take it for.
    jacobolus · 1791180431 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not an accurate description. The first identified patients were people working in or living near a "wet market" where (among other things) various wild animals were sold. It's plausible that someone was infected somewhere else and the market was only the site of a "superspreader event" (rather than the earliest jump from some other animal to humans), but further details are speculative, informed by indirect phylogenetic evidence rather than direct forensic evidence.
    It's not unusual/unexpected that there were labs working on coronavirus research in several major Chinese cities: the 2002 SARS outbreak, which began in southern China and caught researchers and public health officials off guard, led to significant investment in the study of coronaviruses.
    anon48293 · 1791180955 · focus · HN ↗
    The first corona identified. The Wuhan workers got sick around a month before.
    They also didn’t find any animal corona samples at the market. Also around 50% of people of the initial cluster had no connection to the market.
    Also the hospital where the lab workers were treated was on the corner of this market.
    BonerWiener · 1791181291 · focus · HN ↗
    Now, we just need a few sources for these claims.
    jacobolus · 1791181961 · focus · HN ↗
    There was supposedly a "US intelligence report" which claimed that three workers at the lab went to a hospital for treatment for some kind of viral illness in November 2019, but it is not known what illness that was. According to journalists, within the US intelligence community opinions were mixed about possible viral origins, with some intelligence officials believing the lab had something to do with the origin of the virus while other intelligence officials considered that hypothesis implausible. There's not a lot of specific public detail about what information or analysis informed those opinions.
    All sides of the question were heavily politicized. The Trump administration and the US GOP have heavily pushed a lab leak hypothesis and used it to argue against China and against scientists (e.g. turning Anthony Fauci into a bogeyman). On the other side, China has blocked investigations and tried to steer public statements by various organizations away from anything that would question their government's motives or competence.
    jacobolus · 1791182749 · focus · HN ↗
    Update: apparently the US intelligence report was eventually declassified and published in 2023: <a href="https://archive.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://archive.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Rep...
    Quoting the report:
    • ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.
    • ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2, although for different reasons.
    • ⬛⬛ The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.
    • ⬛⬛ Almost all IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination. All IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.
    [...]
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19. The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19. [...]
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ While several WIV researchers fell mildly ill in Fall 2019, they experienced a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with COVID-19, and some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to COVID-19. While some of these researchers had historically conducted research into animal respiratory viruses, we are unable to confirm if any of them handled live viruses in the work they performed prior to falling ill.
    dualvariable · 1791182858 · focus · HN ↗
    That article was written by the same journalist who co-wrote the aluminum tubes story for the NYT that was part of the justification for the Iraq War.
    dualvariable · 1791182494 · focus · HN ↗
    It is very unlikely that the initial superspreader event of a pandemic would be in a wet market that would be the one place for an animal spillover.
    And when you look at the documented lab release of SARS-CoV-1, it killed the researcher's mother. If a lab leak happened, we would expect it to hit the people closest to the researchers at the lab who were infected, and the places they visited. Hitting only the wet market isn't very likely.
    The outbreak looks like a wet market spillover. The fact that it happened in the same city as WIV is an unusual coincidence, but if the virus developed in rural Hubei, it was likely it would spillover in Wuhan.
    Scipio_Afri · 1791184132 · focus · HN ↗
    I think perhaps there is a correlation with population density as well. Wuhan is fairly dense, and the wet market that is subject to speculation is located in the most densely populated district of wuhan.
    Is it possible that the animals at the wet market itself was the source? Sure. But it seems sort of coincidental to me it is also the most dense area of the city; could’ve already been spreading and this location just happened to be where a major outbreak occurred from density factors alone.
    soaaa · 1791186368 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    julianeon · 1791181447 · focus · HN ↗
    I think we've overcorrected.
    For what it's worth, the "first patients were lab workers" part isn't established. What is documented is that the earliest cases cluster around the Huanan market. The lab workers attribution shouldn't be carrying the argument.
    Before COVID, people were just unable to be roused out of their sleep about the dangers of cross-species virus transmission. "Wake me up when something important happens." By a certain standard nothing important had ever happened: so people slept on.
    Then COVID hit. "Time to wake up." Suddenly people went from basically unconscious to hypervigilant overnight. Something which was a clear and present danger - the wet markets - looked uninteresting compared to the lab. Environmental samples taken there tested positive. In other words: don't sleep on the wet markets again - they are dangerous, then and now.
    While paying attention was arguably an improvement over complete indifference, I don't think we landed in the right place.
    InsideOutSanta · 1791186831 · focus · HN ↗
    > “when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection”
    That's how people start believing in supernatural explanations and conspiracy theories, though. Improbable events happen all the time; just because each event is improbable doesn't mean the set of improbable events that can occur isn't large.
    Weird shit happens all the time, and we should expect it as a matter of random chance.
    freehorse · 1791190784 · focus · HN ↗
    > when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection
    If the alternative hypothesis is that the events are independent, yes. But it is somewhat more common to have labs studying viruses in regions where there are virus reservoirs. So the events "lab studying viruses" and "virus outbreak in local area" are not independent, as both are more likely in regions with viral reservoirs, and in particular, in dense urban areas thereof. A coincidence is not as extraordinary as it may seem.
    Thing is, it is not possible to know at this point, as long as the virus does not seem to be bioengineered, whether it was a lab accident while studying animal samples or an outbreak starting in the market.

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