Some of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations (1918 influenza, SARS-CoV-1, most likely SARS-CoV-2). It seems like these farms are massive accidents waiting to happen.
> Some of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations
Before that they emerged from small-scale farming. “Whooping cough comes from pigs as does flu as well as from birds; our friend the cow alone is responsible for measles, tuberculosis and smallpox” [1]. Proximity, to humans and animals, drives disease.
> Pertussis is a bacterium that is a human only thing
B. pertussis “evolved from Bordetella bronchiseptica or a B. bronchiseptica-like ancestor… B. bronchiseptica infects a broad range of mammals, including humans, and although it can cause overt disease such as kennel cough in dogs and atrophic rhinitis in pig” [1].
In some instances, it comes from feisty bureaucracies:
The San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1979, p. 5 reported a claim by the Church of Scientology that the CIA conducted an open-air biological warfare experiment in 1955 near Tampa, Florida, and elsewhere in Florida with whooping cough bacteria. It was alleged that the experiment tripled the whooping cough infections in Florida to over one-thousand cases and caused whooping cough deaths in the state to increase from one to 12 over the previous year. This claim has been cited in a number of later sources, although these added no further supporting evidence.[52][53]
"Some of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations (1918 influenza, SARS-CoV-1, most likely SARS-CoV-2). It seems like these farms are massive accidents waiting to happen."
What source says 1918 came from large scale farms?
Large scale farming in 1918 would not have existed as we think of it today, as average farm size was about 150 acres with approximately 6 million farms.
For reference, 2022 average farm size was 464 with approximately 1.89 million farms.
Wasn't SARS-CoV-1 from a wildlife market, not a farming operation? Factory farming wasn't the issue there if it was from trapping in the wild, but maybe cramped conditions before sale made it spread more amongst the confined animals in a similar way?
When SARS broke out in 2002 the first case was an animal handler on a medium size farm in Foshan, 50 miles upriver from Hong Kong. Our best guess is that the domesticated animals were infected by wild rodents. The initial spread of the SARS virus infected farm workers, butcher shop workers, grocery store workers, and people at farmers markets.
I don't like the name, but "bush meat" is also a common vector for past infections. I believe HIV was thought to have transferred to humans via non-farmed simian blood.
It's fairly likely that covid was from the large coronavirus research lab just down the road that was experimenting on making coronaviruses more transmissible to humans
During the first month of the covid-19 outbreak, there were no cases within a 15 mile radius of the WIV lab south of the river. Zero. All the people infected had been within 200 meters of the wet market north of the river. Wuhan imports food animals from all over southeast asia and animals from Laos are known to carry the BANAL coronavirus which looks like it's an ancestor of sars-cov-2. Also, the WIV did not perform any gain-of-function experiments during 2019/2020; the people who would have done that were working on other projects.
There is zero evidence for this theory. On the other hand, we know that dangeous viruses emerge from farms every couple of decades (see above). I find it prudent to focus on the known risk, rather than speculate on a hypothetical one.
There is quite a lot of evidence, it's a lie to say otherwise. I don't think there's a smoking gun, but there is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence.
> there is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence.
In other words, there's literally no scientific evidence that SARS-CoV2 and the pandemic emerged as the result of lab-based activity, either malicious or accidental. This is despite huge efforts to prove so.
There is, however, a wealth of scientific evidence that SARS-CoV2 is the result of zoonotic transmission, as has been seen for similar viruses in the past (SARS, MERS), as well as for hundreds of other pathogens throughout history.
You're correct that the immediate host animal hasn't been found. But that problem also applies to the lab leak hypothesis, since there's no evidence in the genome of SARS-CoV2 that it is an artificial virus. It is in fact over 95% similar to similar viruses isolated in the wild.
The first patients were all associated with the market, and genetic evidence shows that the virus was circulating there for weeks (at least) before the first recognized case of covid. That is consistent with what we now know, i.e. that most SARS-CoV2 infections do not lead to severe disease.
Amusing to see the NY Times, which hysterically screamed about misinformation and its dangers for several years during a certain pandemic and a certain presidency, now doing a neat 180-degree turn on the lab leak theory from its previous and blatantly political stance. The same paper, by the way, that also lovingly supported the WMD claims against Iraq during the Bush administration. I personally believe the lab leak theory extremely plausible, but the general and persistent mendacity and hypocrisy of this particular newspaper are staggeringly massive enough to form their own gravitational field..
The narrative grifters posing as reporters and editors at the NY Times robustly deserve every ounce of scorn that can be dumped upon them.
This is not a NYT article, it is an opinion piece written by a third-party author. The NYT editors often don't apply very strict journalistic standards to opinion pieces. This is an (in my opinion somewhat misguided) attempt to be "neutral".
Really? So it's not an article written for the New York Times despite being an article posted on the website of the New York Times? Are opinion pieces, which indeed do get vetted too, somehow categorized as things that randomly form into existence within their own rules of causation, as if they were like sinkholes or lightning strikes?
Also, to clarify better, I guess, I don't disagree with the plausibility of the arguments in this particular piece. My main point was about the NY Times in general and its past actions.
I'm still on the fence about the origins of COVID, but I generally disregard an opinion when a comment attacks a publication rather than facts, uses phrases like "hysterically screamed".
One can agree with the plausibility of a publication's argument in one articule (as I actually do in this case) and still make a general point about the nature and tendencies of the wider publication/media organization behind it. This is an obvious thing, and nitpicking about it is ridiculous. The NY Times has indeed performed many internally, centrally guided ideological contortions to suit its own cynical motives (like many other media sources do) and absolutely deserves being called out on its bullshittery.
Okay, now you're just being disingenuous. There is plenty of actual evidence and a timeline of events in the linked article, and that's not what "Gish gallop" means.
This is a lie. There is plenty of evidence. What has no evidence is that it transferred from an animal. There is zero evidence for that. It’s been over 4 years and they haven’t found the source yet which has never happened before.
It’s weird you are religiously and piously pushing a line of thinking that is essentially dead among not only scientists except Fauci and Dasak but every class of political belief as well.
I find it difficult to understand how you’re still propagating the “Wet Market Theory”. Please further explain why you don’t believe that COVID-19 did not emerge from a laboratory.
During the first month of the covid-19 outbreak, there were no cases within a 15 mile radius of the WIV lab south of the river. Zero. All the people infected had been within 200 meters of the wet market north of the river.
We know that farm-raised animals in China pick up coronavirus infections from wild animals such as rodents. The 2002 SARS epidemic started from natural animal-to-human transmission, in an animal-handling complex, with a naturally occurring coronavirus. If there had been a second outbreak of the same SARS virus in Wuhan in 2019, at the Wuhan wet market, would you decide that the sars-cov-1 came from natural transmission from animals?
When a milkmaid picks up a cowpox infection, do we run around screaming that there's no proof the cows had cowpox? When a person who works with animals develops rabies, do we assume that he was not bitten?
The comment was about evidence, you've linked one opinion of Dr. Alina Chan who has also written about how it was not a lab leak origin - she literally made cases early on for either side of a possibilty.
To this day the lab leak theory is plausible (literally "low confidence" probability in the DoE report) with no real evidence and the weight of opinion on the wet market origin side.
Consider that if there was any actual solid irrefutable evidence that COVID did come from a lab leak then Saar Wilf would not have lost $100,000.
He was convinced it was true, put money in escrow, organised a debate, set the rules, and then .. lost.
There is no direct evidence. Due to the experience with SARS-CoV-1 and fear of repercussions, farmers in China mass-culled susceptible animals before any testing could take place. However, SARS-CoV-1 was traced to palm civets, and both -1 and -2 seem to be very well adapted to small carnivores. So a fur/meat farm with civets, raccoon dogs, minks, or something like that is probably a good guess for the origin.
But not the laboratories doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in the exact vicinity of the virus’s origin? Even considering that several workers of this laboratory got sick with COVID in 2019, right before the outbreak? C’mon, it’s been 4 years already, this is becoming ridiculous.
Pandemics need high population densities to start, so it is very likely to have the origin in a large city. Even if a virus did emerge in a smaller city, it would probably fizzle out without raising alarm and being detected. At the same time, large cities in industrialized countries usually have at least one virology lab. I could easily find one in each of the top-10 most populous Chinese cities (which includes Wuhan). SARS is relatively new and hit China pretty hard, so it is also not surprising to have a lot of research in the country. Overall, it would probably be more surprising not to have a SARS research group close to the origin of a pandemic.
You’re linking a study from early 2021, which is before the admissions began to start. The WHO was dishonest throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, at this point in time this is well-known.
The Wuhan Virology Institute is in the heart of the city, and a quick Google search shows a population of 11 million in 2018. Is this not a large city?
I find it seriously troubling that people still believe the nonsense spewed about COVID-19 and it’s origins in 2020-21.
The WIV is 17 miles away from the wet market outbreak and they are on opposite sides of the river. The WIV did not do any gain of function experiments during 2019. Within a 15 mile radius of the WIV there were no covid cases during 2019. If lab workers had been the origin, the outbreak would have started near the lab, but it did not start near the lab.
So you accuse me of presenting a theory with zero hard evidence (lab leak), only to immediately admit that your theory (zoonotic origin) also has zero hard evidence.
It's 2024, you obviously missed the Ministry of Truth updating the status of the lab leak hypothese from "conspiracy theory" to "that's what happened (PS: China bad)".
The statements from CDPHE sound to my ear like boilerplate 'downplay' language. There are 55 symptomatic people, that's amazing. Confirmatory tests are important of course, but what a data point.
How large would the workforce have to be for 55 concurrent symptomatic (safe to assume those included have clear symptoms) people to be uninteresting?
If this is only "bird to human" infection, isn't that a notable rate of transmission? I'd think even a workforce of 1000 handling dangerous pathogens daily would be getting ill more like 10 per week over a period of time. Its alarming that 55 are ill all at once.
We are all going to be reading a firehose about physical contact vs. respiratory transmission again just like the old days. I haven't forgotten that it was something like 6 months before the government revealed that Cov-19 was a respiratory transmission despite knowing in Dec 2019.
If there was a single case of bird-to-human transmission, and that person went to the canteen when they were at the peak of their contagiousness and passed it to 54 others, you'd see the same impact.
> I haven't forgotten that it was something like 6 months before the government revealed that Cov-19 was a respiratory transmission despite knowing in Dec 2019.
Can you expound upon this? Your claim is some government said in May that Covid was a respiratory disease?
I'll dig it up, but it wasnt that long agi. We all lived through it.
Remember washing vegetables and surfaces because they were telling us in the US about fomites and surface transmission after touching your face? It was a long time before the CDC recommended masks, and that outdoor transmission was far less likely.
You mean sleight, not slight. That’s no slight on you, anyone can make a slight mistake.
That said, the way you put it sounds cruel. Is it your claim that a cull wasn’t necessary or that not culling would have left more birds alive long term?
Yes, I did mean sleight. Thanks for the correction there.
My claim was more simple than either option you gave. My claim is that the virus didn't kill 6 million. Those deaths would be attributed to the proximal cause of whomever decided they needed to be culled. I'd also argue there's a longer timeline culpability for anyone who decided to raise flocks of birds in such terrible conditions as is found in industrial bird operations.
Though yes, I would be surprised if every bird in those facilities died from the flu had they not been culled. We don't know nearly enough about how the virus spreads, especially in the context of large scale industrial operations, to predict how many birds in the region would have died without the culling.
After the CDC just gave Moderna $176m to develop another vaccine[0] and the possible fatality rate of H5N1[1], I'm stocking up on masks again. Not to be alarmist, but it sucked last time around when all hell broke loose and I couldn't find any masks anywhere. That said, hopefully if anything DOES get bad, mask production will ramp up must faster next time around.
That’s the people who had any symptoms of anything at all who were in the test set. Only three of them tested positive, for a grand total of 5 cases since May 2022. Yellow journalism at its finest.
Edit - shows we didn't read the article properly, which states the 48 are not yet returned- from the article:
On Friday, the CDPHE returned with a larger team to the site and tested 48 additional symptomatic workers, a spokesperson said in an email to Denver7 Friday evening. "The test results from samples collected today (July 12) are still pending," the spokesperson added, saying those samples will be tested this weekend.
--- previous post - - -
At least according to twitter (which may or may not be correct) - the results for 48 of the 55 are not yet available, so only 4 people have had a negative test so far, and 5 have been positive.
-- 2nd edit - -
Looks like you edited your previous post, where you claimed the 48 tested negative. Posting this here for completeness so that my post makes sense.
Nobody has tested positive since the 2 from 2022. The three counted in this article are what’s known as “presumptive positive”, which is a different term reserved for those who have not tested positive.
It’s just another scare tactic, one which saw heavy exploitation in the COVID era. I personally tested presumptive positive once: they treated me as though the test was positive and prohibited me from receiving medical care. In fact it was explicitly not positive, I never experienced any symptoms, and they relented and let me recover the procedure some number of weeks later – with no change in testing.
edit: I neither made nor recanted any claims as to the positivity of the other 48 in my first comment, I do not know why you are asserting I edited claims out.
"Presumptive positive" means that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has tested them positive, but the CDC has not yet confirmed it.
Not at all. It means Colorado DPHE has performed a test and concluded the subject requires further testing by the CDC before any diagnosis can be made.
These are well documented established protocols created by domain expert scientists folks, let’s not completely ignore them for the purposes of FUD.
Their funding is very directly tied to how big of a deal people consider the issues they’re tasked with to be. You ever see a government bureaucrat argue “the mission my agency handles is really easy and not very important, we could make do with a much smaller budget without any downside for the people”?
Initially, sure. But the incentives of everyone involved are aligned to make the organization tend to grow in budget and scope bounded only by the public’s willingness to pay for it. The more they can convince the public to pay, the more money there is to go around. Fear happens to be a great motivation to this effect, and unscrupulous bureaucrats have been quick to find every opportunity to jump on that.
You know those youtube videos where a puppet in an arena is shown and it’s iteratively selected/respawn/retrained for getting across an obstacle field? This is exactly that. First obstacle has been cleared and now the population is waiting for a mutation that gets them compatible with the human cell wall.
This is only true of the virus population in the infected people. The virus population still in birds is still at square 1. When the virus is eradicated from the infected people, we go back to square 1.
No, it was funny as satire for this reason: Governments were derelict in any attempt to slow the spread of the pandemic. So of course straight-to-vaccine strategy is the only option they will talk about.
