Replies

I've posted this elsewhere, but I don't think in a daily Corona thread, so here goes...

Well, look at this:

An article published in Nature Medicine in 2015 with a co-author from Wuhan institute.
If you read the abstract it says they have assembled a virus in the lab that can transmit from bats to humans.

Remember that time when a virus escaped from a Chinese lab...

The 1977 H1N1 human influenza pandemic
Due to lab mishandling, a strain of the H1N1 influenza managed to escape from a Chinese facility that was likely trying to create a vaccine for the disease. The virus spread globally and had an infection rate of 20% to 70% among those exposed. Luckily, the strain of the virus caused only mild disease and few fatalities.

Various SARS outbreaks
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was a global epidemic in 2003 that caused 8,000 infections and 774 deaths across 29 countries.
Since the original epidemic, there have been six escapes of the virus from laboratories — four in Beijing, and an additional one each in Singapore and Taiwan.

In all cases, the virus escaped due to negligence and human error. Fortunately, none of those escapes led to a renewed outbreak.

Outside China too!

The 2007 Foot and Mouth (FMD) outbreak in the UK
FMD is a highly transmissible disease that infects cloven-hoofed animals. Outbreaks of the disease can cause billions of dollars in economic damage as millions of animals may need to be culled to limit the disease's spread. In 2007, 278 animals in the UK became infected with FMD after the virus escaped from a biosafety lab four kilometers away. The outbreak required 1,578 animals to be culled and cost an estimated 200 million pounds.

Smallpox outbreaks in Great Britain
From 1963 to 1978, there were three smallpox escapes from two different laboratories. All three were due to poor standards and bad practices within the labs. Three cases and at least 80 deaths were linked to the outbreaks.

The 1995 Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) outbreak
In 1995, 10,000 people in Venezuela and 75,000 people in Colombia fell ill with a VEE strain that had escaped from a lab. The outbreak caused upwards of 311 deaths and 3,000 cases of neurological complications.

Then there's Russia...

2000 - Russia
Smallpox infected 8 young children in Vladivostock who had played with discarded ampoules of smallpox vaccine has now been confirmed by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. Smallpox Russia

Just last year a lab explosion tore through a Russian bioweapons lab that stores Smallpox, Ebola and other nasty things.

1970 The Aral smallpox incident was a July 30, 1971 outbreak of the viral disease which occurred as a result of a field test at a Soviet biological weapons facility on an island in the Aral Sea. The incident sickened ten people, of whom three died, and came to widespread public notice only in 2002.

from your Nature Medici article, yes, they assembled a virus in the lab, but.....they used a mouse viral backbone. This backbone is identifiable, that is, it's registered and a known entity. Unfortunately, COVID-19, WuhanVirus, does not have a registered or known backbone. Meaning the chances it's lab created or derived from any backbone anywhere in the western world are next to zero.

We already know that this virus is most closely related to horseshoe bats, a fruit bat. We also know that the bats in China are eaten up with some 400 pathogenic viruses, including SARs variants, and that China has taken no measures to eradicate their infected bats. We also know that bat to human transmission is possible because villagers that live in the areas of bat caves have developed antibodies to some of the variants the local bats carry.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/mysterious-bat-cave-in-chinese-wilderness-could-hold-key-to-coronavirus/news-story/530063aeb9de7020e626f1c4839b9777

H1N1 originated in asian swine, best guess, but, could have been around back to the dinosaurs for all we know. It is a very old virus, that became more virulent when European pigs met Asian pigs. In 2009, China blamed Mexico for a H1N1 outbreak and deported all their citizens after locking them up. But the disease was imported into Mexico from infected live swine from China

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/03/china-quarantines-mexicans-swine-flu"

Hoof and mouth, or anthrax, is resident in every soil just about every where. it also has been around since dinosaurs probably. Droughts/wet seasons, increased tillage, all can provide conditions for anthrax release and growth. A virus escaped in the UK, wouldn't have affected the siberians who died from anthrax, contracting it from a defrosted caribou carcass.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/health/anthrax-thawed-reindeer-siberia/index.html

An anthrax outbreak in 2007 "released and contained in Surrey in 2007 was the advanced effluent pipes from either the Institute for Animal Health or the similar vaccine researching and producing Merial Animal Health laboratory near to Pirbright village in the county – the pipes were too old and/or insufficiently inspected..." but it wasn't a deliberate release.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak

It wasn't England's first outbreak. They had outbreaks in '67 and '80. The outbreak in 2001 was traced to a filthy pig farm, who's owner " was found guilty of having failed to inform the authorities of a notifiable disease and...later found guilty of feeding his pigs "untreated waste".: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak

Scientists who draw ice cores for research have discovered many virus and bacteria, frozen for thousands of years, but some still able to animate. Virus and bacteria can be found in hot springs, too.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-year-old-viruses-tibetan-glacier.html

Virus have survived for millinea whereas humans have been around for an ecological blink of an eye. Because of this, stories about viral outbreaks being a result of a nefarious lab release need to be taken with a tablespoon of salt.