Coronavirus outbreak

[mjr]

Austria unlocking with a lateral-flow test negative result certificate required before being allowed to go to some places like hairdressers or cinemas. Rumours that certs will be needed to enter more places soon. Govt claims lockdown is doing next to naff all against new variants at their level of cases and wider testing should perform better - if so, they will unlock to allow the economy to turnover. https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-information https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/09...trance-testing-initiative-in-shops-and-salons

Czechia unlocking but I don't know details.

Bavaria's CSU leader threatening to close borders with Austria and Czechia because of this, accusing them of being "mutation territories".

View: https://twitter.com/MarkusBlume/status/1358326200263979008

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Austria unlocking with a lateral-flow test negative result certificate required before being allowed to go to some places like hairdressers or cinemas. Rumours that certs will be needed to enter more places soon. Govt claims lockdown is doing next to naff all against new variants at their level of cases and wider testing should perform better - if so, they will unlock to allow the economy to turnover. https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-information https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/09...trance-testing-initiative-in-shops-and-salons

Czechia unlocking but I don't know details.

Bavaria's CSU leader threatening to close borders with Austria and Czechia because of this, accusing them of being "mutation territories".

View: https://twitter.com/MarkusBlume/status/1358326200263979008

So Bavarian covid now has its own Reinheitsgebot!

 

[mjr]

First press conference of WHO investigators visiting China rules out laboratory source. https://apnews.com/article/world-ne...ited-nations-7a739e01f0713ebcc031d7ca81c51345

 

[JBGooner]

After a seemingly very rapid investigation the WHO experts have ruled it 'extremely unlikely' that this deadly virus emerged from the deadly virus factory in Wuhan.
Yeah, probably just emerged naturally in the wet market not half a mile away.

 

[mjr]

After a seemingly very rapid investigation [...]

This is the first press conference, after four weeks of visit. The investigation has not concluded and does not seem to be "very rapid" to me.

 

[johnblack]

This is the first press conference, after four weeks of visit. The investigation has not concluded and does not seem to be "very rapid" to me.

With the amount of money and influence China have in the WHO, the cynic in me doesn't expect any big reveals.

 

[Rocky]

With the amount of money and influence China have in the WHO, the cynic in me doesn't expect any big reveals.

Perhaps because there aren't any big reveals. Viruses mutate naturally. Some mutations are harmless and others are deadly. That's the natural order; and there is no need to look for any conspiracy theory.

 

[Rusty Nails]

China has been less than helpful to the investigation so far, and they are not averse to promoting their own conspiracy theories about the virus having in fact been brought into the country.

Their initial response to announcing and researching the pandemic is also an ongoing subject of criticism.

Their closed book attitude to what the world is allowed to see about problems in China is bound to lead to a suspicion of cover-up.

We will probably only ever know as much about what truly happened as China allows us to.

 

[Ajax Bay]

rules out

WHO team - press report https://apnews.com/article/world-ne...ited-nations-7a739e01f0713ebcc031d7ca81c51345
"Rules out" as in: "not going to look / expend more effort on it any further" (the reporting (your link) does offer 'rule out' but that's journalists for you).
"dismissing as unlikely [the] theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab. "
"consider the possibility of such a leak so improbable that it will not be suggested as an avenue of future study "
So what has the WHO team discovered or resolved (in their 4 weeks there)?
WHO team leader said the initial findings suggest the most likely pathway the virus followed was from a bat to another animal and then to humans. Isn't that what the Chinese told us a year ago? (It's the most likely. What further lines of investigation are getting more effort?)
The Chinese have suggested as possibilities: possible origins in frozen food imports and pre-Wuhan cases in Europe.

Lab leakage does seem unlikely (imho), but even scientists at the Wuhan lab considered leakage a possibility bitd and iirc noted the risk in at least one proposal paper (building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains - balance between preparing for future outbreaks v risk of creating more dangerous pathogens).

A lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated regardless of how likely or unlikely (how will the WHO team have attempted to test such a hypothesis - with great difficulty in China I reckon).
Evidence for a natural spillover has not emerged and neither has any evidence for a laboratory accident. The first most plausible: the second unlikely.

Perhaps because there aren't any big reveals. Viruses mutate naturally. Some mutations are harmless and others are deadly. That's the natural order; and there is no need to look for any conspiracy theory.

Lab leak is not a 'conspiracy' theory. It's a 'cock-up' theory. Viruses mutate naturally (of course). Mercifully ones lethal to humans hardly ever jump across the animal/human divide. It's entirely reasonable to try to find out how it happened in case lessons can be identified.

 

[Rocky]

Lab leak is not a 'conspiracy' theory. It's a 'cock-up' theory. Viruses mutate naturally (of course). Mercifully ones lethal to humans hardly ever jump across the animal/human divide. It's entirely reasonable to try to find out how it happened in case lessons can be identified.

There were a number of people on here, and on other social media platforms, suggesting that it was a deliberate leak by the Chinese and that somehow Chinese scientists deliberately developed the SARS Covid 2 virus. It was this that behind my comment. I don't disagree with anything else you've said

 

[Ajax Bay]

Have they found the virus in pangolins living close enough to Wuhan to reasonably have been brought to market there? The cock-up lab leak theory goes: there are over 600 other 'wetmarkets' in China, so an unhappy 1 in 600+ chance of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan being the source.
Edit: As a 'johnny come lately' to this thread, I have no doubt that this unlikely possibility was masticated to death this time last year, but even I am not planning to wade back though hundreds of pages. (Edit: found an Express link @numbnuts posted and a 'refute type post from @Yellow Fang )
You'd think with all the genomic 'power' that we've got around the world (including in the Wuhan Institute of Virology) that there'd be an evidence trail (in at least one intermediary if a coronavirus in bats is the source). But perhaps it's now gone cold (frozen even).
Come to think of it, the Porton Down research establishment is just outside Salisbury, and Salisbury cathedral is quite lovely (source: Intourist).

 

[JBGooner]

Good article on Unherd on the WHO's 'investigation' into the origin of the virus https://unherd.com/2021/02/the-whos-covid-shame/

(WIV - Wuhan Institute of Virology)

..We know the controlling nature of Chinese state repression. We know there have been many leaks before from labs, including 11 Sars infections from a top-security Beijing research centre in 2004. We know there were safety concerns since they were admitted by WIV’s head of security in a journal shortly before the outbreak. We know databases of unpublished viruses were hidden from outsiders. And we know that for all the WHO team’s faith in the WIV security, much of their Sars research was carried out at lower security labs in the city,

We also know scientists in Wuhan initially feared the novel coronavirus leaked from their lab. We know they were performing risky “gain of function” research that forces evolution of viruses, which some scientists have long feared might spark pandemic. We know they were combining snippets from different strains of bat coronaviruses and creating chimeric diseases using cloning techniques that display no sign of human manipulation. We know they were injecting viruses into “humanised mice” and trying to determine how bat diseases jump the barrier between species. We know also this new disease was well adapted to human transmission, possessing a mutation that allows its spike protein to bind to many human cells that is not found on similar types of coronaviruses. And we know two Chinese scientists in February claimed “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan” before their paper was hastily deleted."

 

[fossyant]

Who goes on 'holiday' then moans about what happened. Only an idiot would travel internationally - you do it, you expect the risk of being stranded. It's been like that for nearly a year now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...esidents-trapped-overseas-by-quarantine-rules

 

[Oldhippy]

Agree Fossyant, yes we're bored, yes it's in convenient but it is a pandemic that is affecting everyone. Totally idiotic thinking 'Oh we'll be fine'.

 

[mjr]

Who goes on 'holiday' then moans about what happened. Only an idiot would travel internationally - you do it, you expect the risk of being stranded. It's been like that for nearly a year now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...esidents-trapped-overseas-by-quarantine-rules

Maybe for holiday, but plenty of non-idiots are still having to travel internationally, especially for work, so I think that's a bit harsh. Two of those in that report were visiting family and the reasons aren't given, but maybe not on a simple holiday.

Are we even sure that national travel will be immune from lockdown rules prohibiting you from returning home in an attempt to contain new variants? It hasn't happened in the UK yet, but it has in some countries. Any travel carries some risk of this now IMO.