this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.

They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.

Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.

The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.

...

Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid's early days.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I know this is off topic, but - why didn't anyone tell me there's a species called a raccoon dog?!

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-are-raccoon-dogs/

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Look up some of the Japanese lore about Tanuki (the Japanese name for the raccoon dog). It involves magic, giant scrotums, and all sorts of delightful stuff.

If you like anime, Studio Ghibli (famous for a lot of classics including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and others) did a movie called Pom Poko, which is about tanuki. If you don't care for subtitles, the English dub is pretty good, and the voice cast stars a lot of well known (for the time) American actors.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You might know of the tanuki, which is specifically the Japanese raccoon dog.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I didn't know about that one either!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you’ve ever played Super Mario Bros 3 (or other Mario games where this same suit is found) there’s a Tanooki suit, which is the one that lets you fly!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The raccoon tail lets you fly. The Tanooki suit lets you turn into a statue, but also happens to have a raccoon tail so it also lets you fly.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

You were told. You just didn’t listen.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

Wasn't this known already? Weren't there all kinds of discussions about shutting down wet markets because of this?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

There's a bunch of indications / conspiracy theories that it might have been a lab leak. Basically there's not really a way to know unless the Chinese government starts being more forthcoming with information.

The main reason the conspiracy theory started is because the city where it started had a world renowned virus research facility in it.

Of course, the reason the facility is there in the first place is because Wuhan province is a place where a lot of viruses originate naturally (in bat colonies), so it makes sense you research the viruses close to their natural reservoir.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah but the US media was too busy implying that China manufactured the virus in a bio lab.

Funnily enough China still suffered because it failed to lock down early enough because the government tried to ignore and detain doctors in an effort to control the narrative that everything would be fine.

The US suffered because they nuked their Pandemic emergency pla only like a few years before covid because Trump thought Spanish Fever wouldn't reincarnate to finish the job on its 100th anniversary lol.

So it was easy to vaguely point at China instead of actually solving the problem.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know what US media you were consuming in 2020/21, but it was pretty much understood it came from something exotic in a wet market.

Most of us didn't know what a wet market existed or what it was until COVID. There was some conspiracy shit that the right ate up, and some editorial and opinions on the idea, but the whole bioengineered super virus escaping a lab wasn't taken that seriously

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do recall that story. What I don't get is why the intelligence agencies had any say in the likely origin. It's not a factor of "if the virus was in a lab." It could have been. The fact is that even back then when they had the virus sequenced, they could clearly see it came from a zoonotic source, probably the same one with SARS.

The thing that irked me so bad about it is that it highlights the discrepancy between science and suspicion. Think of how vital DNA has been to crime prosecutions or exonerations. The same thing applies here.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Off topic, but “Genetic Ghosts” would be a sweet band name. I’d go see them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I thought the same. What kind of music do you reckon they'd play?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (10 children)

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I find the confidence that is used in the defense of this origin just as Shakey as the lab leak theory.

The lab location and research done means there is a lot of potential incentive for the Chinese government, the lab and even researchers in the field to not have it be a lab leak... As this would potentially cause an entire (important) field of study and their methods be regulated into oblivion by poorly written knee jerk laws.

I'm fine with this as the accepted consensus on the subject, but I'll keep my reservations for whatever good those do me.

So how's the abolishing of wet markets going? And the reduction of antibiotics use in industrial scale farming?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Eating animals causes pandemics from zoonotic diseases. More at 11.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

You don't even need to eat them; just being in close proximity to them and interacting with them is enough.

On the other hands, cows, chickens, and humans came together to create a smallpox vaccine, so there's that at least.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yes, it’s just that eating animals has a distinct history of causing horrible pandemics in humans. See e.g. the 1918 H1N1 pandemic which killed tens of millions and was likely started by hogs or chickens farmed in rural Kansas, swine flu which killed hundreds of thousands and whose name speaks for itself, and COVID-19 which killed millions and is well-understood to have originated in a wet market.

Besides all the other reasons that it's terrible, animal agriculture is a hotbed for transmitting zoonotic diseases to humans and combining existing human diseases with animal ones.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As someone currently down with covid I thought that was state of knowledge long time ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Conspiracy theorists have still been spreading the lab leak theory without proof for awhile now because China is the current scary boogeyman. I get that there was lab there studying these diseases, but guessing isn't how science works, and the wet markets have been known to be a possible source of diseases for a long time now by scientists. I remember warnings about this scenario coming up awhile ago.

Lot of diseases come from China probably for similar reasons: it's crowded and close contacts with lots of animals. No one thought the 1956 flu could be a lab leak, or SARS, or H7N9, etc. People just have conspiracy theories about this one because it turned into the biggest pandemic of them all, which is just the roll of the dice of all the diseases coming out of there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

People just have conspiracy theories about this one because it turned into the biggest pandemic of them all,

No, it's because leaked gain of function research is a plausible scenario

which is just the roll of the dice of all the diseases coming out of there.

Maybe we should be more careful when manufacturing thousands of dice with sixes all over them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (7 children)

including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats

No Bats? Oh maaaaaan

>

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I think they determined that the virus that spread to humans was bats that transferred to something in the market (aka intermediate hosts). That virus would have spread there, while technically the bats could have infected humans.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Duh, it's so simple. The lab released infected animals to the wet market. All bases covered.

I'll take my research grant now.

(This is all said non-serious to be clear.)

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