An origin hypothesis
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I have no idea who this guy is, and for all I know he's just filling pixels. Nevertheless, he pulls out an interesting theory.
tl;dr version:
Wuhan lab doing experiments on virus using bats. Experiment ends, and bats are to be destroyed. Some asshat sells a bat to wet market, and boom....
https://ombreolivier.liberty.me/wuhan-coronavirus-an-origin-hypothesis/
I believe the virus was probably created in a research institute – most likely the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) – as part of the ongoing research into coronaviruses. My guess is that some clever researcher did a CRISPR-like replacement of a section of the original bat virus with the bit from the pangolin virus to create this new one. Why would a researcher do that? One reason would be to prove that they really had decoded the genome sufficiently well that they knew what part controlled where it bound to in mammalian cells and they changed it to bind to ACE2 from whatever it was in the bat version.
This also explains how the Chinese were so quick to release the full sequence of the virus (it’s easy to do that if you created it yourself).
But, you say, that still doesn’t get us to the market. Well now. Let us assume the researcher has done his edit, infected a bunch of bats and seen that it spread from one to another and still bound to ACE2. Great. Can write paper. But what to do with the infected bats? Who mostly probably haven’t died bet who are still full of the virus because the testing can be done pretty soon after infection occurs.
Obviously as a researcher you simply send a note to facilities to ask them to remove the bats. You assume the facilities staff will kill them and dispose of the bodies. But this is the PRC. I suspect the chances are high that some lowly paid janitor type sees an opportunity to make a quick yuan or thousand by not actually killing all of them but having a few fall out the back of the cage into a sack in the hands of a buddy who knows someone who knows a guy in the wet market that deals in exotic meat and has customers for bat soup.
This gets us infected and infectious live bats with the right coronavirus into the market where their blood and other bits can be spread around to infect people. But just because most of the infected bats went to the market doesn’t mean that all of them did or that they went there directly. Chances are that they got stored in someone’s apartment or garage or back garden shed or similar and quite possibly numerous grandmas, grampas and other relations, friends and acquaintances of the various middlemen in the chain got to see, poke and maybe even cook and eat some of these bats. And probably some of them got a bonus coronavirus as part of the deal.
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I have seen the theory that unwanted animals from the lab were sold at the market (good profits) many times.
The first part reminded me of a Michael Chrichton book.
It could be 100% true or Russian bots sewing discord throughout the planet. Who the hell knows
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If true, that means the virus killed maybe 30 times more Americans than the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
And the Japanese were kind enough to tell us it was coming. (Even though Trump screwed up and didn't get the word to Hawaii)
How do we retaliate, assuming retaliation is in order?
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@Copper said in An origin hypothesis:
If true, that means the virus killed maybe 30 times more Americans than the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
And the Japanese were kind enough to tell us it was coming. (Even though Trump screwed up and didn't get the word to Hawaii)
How do we retaliate, assuming retaliation is in order?
Dude, I think it's on, like donkey-kong with the Chinese. For lying their butts off about the virus, if nothing else.
And the main thing they understand is money.
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@Rainman said in An origin hypothesis:
I don't know about you guys, but I am DONE with bat soup.
Period, end of discussion,
and I'm throwing away all Mik's batass soup recipes.I'm going back to Voodoo donuts, heck with the carbs.
I'll live on the edge for a while.Mik's batass soup! That's where he's been using his ass-salt!
Thanks for clearing that up for us, Rainman!
