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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Coronavirus ‘Bioweapons’ From China: Bats in A Mine

Coronavirus ‘Bioweapons’ From China: Bats in A Mine

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If COVID-19 did come from a ‘lab leak’ — no more than a 15% probability, IMO — 99% odds it was an accidental-exposure failure, not an OMG the ChiComs are plotting to kill us all horror-movie scenario:

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged China to release information about six labourers who fell ill after working in a mine in Yunnan province in 2012, and are now seen as a key part of efforts to find the origins of COVID-19.

The workers, ages 30 to 63, were scrubbing a copper seam clean of bat faeces in April 2012. Weeks later, they were admitted to a hospital in the provincial capital of Kunming with persistent coughs, fevers, head and chest pains and breathing difficulties. Three eventually died…

According to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli, China’s top bat coronavirus researcher, the workers’ pneumonia-like symptoms were caused by a fungal infection. Shi and her team also said in research published last November that they had retested 13 serum samples from four of the patients and found no sign they had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…

From 2012 to 2015, WIV researchers identified as many as 293 coronaviruses in and around the mine.

The institute in November 2020 disclosed the existence of eight other “SARS-type” coronavirus samples taken from the site.

In a preprint last month, Shi and other researchers said none of the eight was a closer match to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13. Crucially, none of them possessed the key receptor binding domain that allows SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans so efficiently.

The paper concluded that “the experimental evidence cannot support” claims that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from the lab, and called for “more systematic and longitudinal sampling of bats, pangolins or other possible intermediate animals” to better understand where the pandemic originated.

As the specialists have been saying for the last fifteen months, a pandemic wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when.

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    MAGAt outbreak wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when.

    I hear that injecting them with Lysol clears that infestation up PDQ. Maybe we should try that.

  2. 2.

    Geminid

    People who used to praise trump for his strong and effective leadership now complain that he was a victim.

  3. 3.

    craigie

    based on the 4-5 articles you read on the internet that fit your priors

    I feel like this describes most people’s beliefs, except 4-5 is way too high a number.

  4. 4.

    jl

    15% for lab leak seems high to me. I haven’t given much thought to putting a number on it. I guess I should since am a stats person, but then stats people also have some knowledge about when such exercises are pointless. I will admit it’s > 0%.

    I highly recommend this episode of the This Week in Virology that AL kindly posted a few days ago in her daily covid-19 round-up.

    TWiV 762: SARS-CoV-2 origins with Robert Garry
    May 30, 2021
    https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/

    Garry reports new results that show there are lots of covid bugs around SE Asia, and Japan that are as close or closer than the supposed smoking gun, or some say completely fabricated, covid bugs from the mine. IIRC, those results will be published very soon.

    Actually, that last bit about totally fabricated is a hilarious example of how far these bad faith BS artists will go. The RaTG13 virus found in a mine was supposed to be the smoking gun, it was supposedly used in gain of function experiments and out popped SARS-CoV-2. When that story fell apart because RaTG13 was too different from SARS-CoV-2 for that story to be plausible, the rumor mongers latched onto a some research that said that the RaTG13 samples were of poor quality and more needs to be found to get a better sequence, and then said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology people just made up the virus and typed up a pastiche viral genome into the computer.

    I think if it was a lab leak, we can be sure what happened had nothing to do with the ever changing tall tales that these BS artists are selling.

  5. 5.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Gerry Doyle is right, and I’m a bit surprised that Lindsey Graham is saying it out loud, but that’s the Repub approach these days.

    I think we will eventually find, if enough reporters do a good enough job, that this whole furor has been stoked by Trumpies trying to clean up their reputations. I will name Matt Pottinger for one example.

  7. 7.

    BruceFromOhio

    OMG the ChiComs are plotting to kill us all

    If they were really shooting at us, we’d be dead by now.

    If that Jim Cramer is the Jim Cramer from CNBC, fear not, he’s just a fucking clown.

    @jl&:

    When that story fell apart because RaTG13 was too different from SARS-CoV-2 for that story to be plausible, the rumor mongers latched onto a some research that said that the RaTG13 samples were of poor quality and more needs to be found to get a better sequence, and then said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology people just made up the virus and typed up a pastiche viral genome into the computer.

    Alien birdbath washing machine cooked up the zebra particles that funneled into my G5 magnetic field coil, and we all died from COVID! It’s TRUE GAIA DAMMIT LOOKIT THE KEY STICKING TO MY TITS​​

  8. 8.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    It doesn’t even matter where it came from.
    Either way Dump covered it up, telling people it was a hoax, it was the flu, it would go away on it’s on, pushing a quack and dangerous drug (hydroxy) and worse – mocking people for wearing masks.​

  9. 9.

    jl

    Also, an earlier TWiV podcast had good info on the origins of SARS-CoV-2. I haven’t finished listening to it, since by the supernatural sympathetic magic that infests BJ blog, I was listening to it when I pulled up the blog, after remembering I missed my daily dose of AL’s covid updates.

    TWiV 760: SARS-CoV-2 origins with Peter Daszak, Thea Kølsen Fischer, Marion Koopmans

    https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-760/

  10. 10.

    jl

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    I think the origins of the bug are extremely important to investigate. But that will be longer term project, and like many emerging diseases, and many olde-tymey diseases, it may take decades, or 100 years, or forever, to get a conclusive answer.

    For right now, you are 100 percent right. We know enough about the bug, regardless of how it came to be transmissible between humans, to control it. And implementing adequate control measures, and vaccinating the globe asap are far far more important tasks right now.

  11. 11.

    Wag

    I would like to second the plug for the TWIV podcast linked above. A really detailed 2hour listen that refutes the “born in a lab” bs quite nicely

  12. 12.

    chopper

    @jl:

    when was the last time a lab leak led to the introduction of a novel virus into the human population? never, in history.

  13. 13.

    jl

    @BruceFromOhio: Those weirdo multi-flavored kit-kat bars started showing up stores in the US in 2019. Obviously from kit-kat gain of function experiments funded by Fauci, the evil tyrannical mastermind, probably same person as Bill Gates.

    The plot is deep, very deep. And those key lime kit-kats are pretty good, not like the crummy over salted white chocolate ones, so the rot is spreading.

  16. 16.

    jl

    @chopper: In the Garry interview I think they talked about a recent flu pandemic was caused by an accident at a lab. Whether that flu strain was new, or just old enough so that a lot of people didn’t have immunity, I don’t know.

    But, generally, you are correct. There have been a number of leaks of dangerous bugs from labs, but they’ve been discovered very quickly and therefore controlled after a scary outbreak.

  17. 17.

    sdhays

    @jl: 15% for lab leak seems high to me. I haven’t given much thought to putting a number on it. I guess I should since am a stats person, but then stats people also have some knowledge about when such exercises are pointless. I will admit it’s > 0%.

    I’m not a stats person, but this reminds me of my high school physics teacher. He was a real character. He liked to say that according to quantum physics, there was an infinitesimal chance that when he dropped a piece of chalk, it would actually fall up. So when he dropped a piece of chalk, he would always look up so that if that once in a universe chance happened, he would see it.

    Based on the evidence I’m aware of, the chance that this is a lab leak is less than 1%. Is there any evidence at all that suggests this is a leak, beyond some employees at the Wuhan Virology Institute caught the flu in flu season?

  18. 18.

    billcinsd

    @jl: I had a mocha one yesterday to reward myself for voting in the local school board election. It was pretty good. O had a mint one a few years ago and didn’t care for it. I have not seen the key lime one

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @Wag: A really detailed 2hour listen

    TL;DL

    Is there a 30-second summary somewhere?  Though even that would have to be cut considerably before it could be run on the nightly news.

  21. 21.

    randy khan

    I’ve been having a cordial argument with a smart guy (but not a science guy) about the lab leak hypothesis on Facebook for a while.  He’s got himself convinced that not finding a specific natural origin yet meaningfully increases the probability that the lab leak hypothesis is right.  I try to explain that in a world with effectively infinite pathways to human transmission not finding the particular needle quickly tells you nothing, but it just won’t sink in.

  22. 22.

    randy khan

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I thought the green tea ones weren’t bad.  I was a bit disappointed in the special apple flavor that was on offer when I was in Japan, though.

  23. 23.

    jl

    @sdhays: I don’t have the fortitude to keep track of all the belly wash about it. There was a big to-do about mysterious parking and traffic patterns in Wuhan Institute of Virology and local hospitals. Then a confused fuss about the patterns of underground versus above ground parking garages in Chinese metros, an apparently bad flu season in 2019 in China, and God only knows. I just gave up.

    For me, evidence keeps trickling adding more support to a natural zoonotic event. Listen to the TWiV podcasts and see what you think. In the one with Garry, it was noted that the US intelligence services judged the report on the hospitalizations of the the three virology institute workers to have low credibility because the report was full of other stuff that was known to be BS.

    I know due to jackassery by US and PRC governments, hard to get objective and trustworthy new evidence on lab leak hypothesis. But, evidence of a natural zoonotic origin is much harder to fake or hide, and more coming in is more informative and pushes things more in its favor than none coming in.

  25. 25.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Nice thread on a new finding.

  28. 28.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    That sounds like some of the soon-to-be published research mentioned in the TWiV Garry interview.

    But actually, it will be revealed that these findings actually support the sinister lab engineered virus theory. The lab leak gumshoes know that the RATG-13 (or whatever, not sure I spelled it right) was just a ruse. See, those evil Wuhan virologists made up and published a bunch of fake viruses, just letters typed into the computer, to hide the fact that their real dirty work was on some unknown virus that they didn’t tell anyone about! And now, we’re on the trail of that virus they hid in some drawer.

    Case closed, end of story. GUILTY!

    It’s simple logic and you know it and you’re a bad person if you don’t admit it.
    /snark, if needed.

  29. 29.

    TKH

    @ jl: It was an old known strain that was temperature adapted. That in essence was the “smoking gun” that pointed to either a lab leak or an experiment gone wrong.

  31. 31.

    steve g

    @jl: Larry Moran also did a post on the Robert Garry video. The link below is a new post on the Newsweek article, or rather a fisking and take down of it. It is the best thing I’ve seen to illustrate that the virology is elaborate, much more so than any sound bites can do justice to. There are lots of bits and pieces, but it is clear that the scientists are quite up front about all of it. They don’t have the answer yet, but it does not look like a leak or conspiracy.

    lets-analyze-newsweek-lab-leak

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    no more than a 15% probability, IMO

    Inflated by a factor of, at minimum, 10.

    Would assign a higher probability to Netanyahu retiring to run a pig farm.

  34. 34.

    jl

    @steve g: Thanks, have it up now, looks good.

    @NotMax:  Well, going from way back, Netanyahu is a sort of prodigal son.  Went prodigal a long long time ago though.

  36. 36.

    mrmoshpotato

    In the meantime, I do enjoy hearing from all of you who have developed a conclusive theory of how COVID-19 originated and who is to blame based on the 4-5 articles you read on the internet that fit your priors.

    Hahaha. That’s a perfect “Fuck off.” to the kooks in Patrick’s timeline. Bravo!

  39. 39.

    randy khan

    @chopper:

    I have more or less said that.  Nicely, though – he’s a good guy, not some kind of Q crazy.

    It is my experience that non-science people – and particularly non-biology non-science people – often have a tough time understanding just how wild and chaotic the natural world is.  I think this is one of those times.

  42. 42.

    randy khan

    @Keith P.:

    Citrus Kit Kats are the best imo. Tastes like Fruit Loops.

    You say that like it’s a good thing.  At least you didn’t say they tasted like Lucky Charms.

  43. 43.

    Fair Economist

    15% is crazy high for the chance of it being from a lab leak. If it came directly from bats, the chance would be less than 1% – it’s vastly more likely that it hopped over via one of the thousands of people who have antibodies to bat viruses in SE China than some far-out lab accident. But in addition, it almost certainly had an intermediate host, which makes it nearly impossible, because that’s a bat virus lab so they wouldn’t even had had it. So a tiny fraction of 1%.

  44. 44.

    patrick Il

    If the infection spread was purposeful (as is implicit in Republican assertions that the virus came from the Wuhun lab) they would not have infected themselves first. There would have been a breakout somewhere in the U.S.​</p
    And just a reminder, we had a CDC employee in that lab until Trump fired her as part of his Obama accomplishmet destruction that seemed to be his highest policy priority. We would have a better idea of what happened.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @steve g: Thanks for posting the Larry Moran link. I’m no expert, so have to judge from common sense understanding of how his analysis lines up with stuff that a reasonably informed layperson knows by now about viruses.

    And I can see how some of the conspiracy theorists maybe aren’t knowing frauds, but, rather, not very thoughtful or maybe not very bright goofballs.

    If Moran’s analysis is accurate, it just blows all the goofier lab leak theories out of the water into tiny bits that then sink to the bottom of the abyss.

    For example, it hadn’t been clear to me before that it is not really known if the WIV people ever had an actual intact RATG-13 virion. What they found were segments of genetic material (RNA, I assume) that looked like they were from one virus. So, the RATG-13 ‘genome’ is incomplete. It’s really a patched together hypothetical virus from linking up the genetic material, and what its genetic code probably is has been incrementally developed over the years from bits of RNA that look like they come from the same virus.

    If you are a goofball, who just maybe skims over stuff until you find a phrase or two that fits your preconceived conspiracy theory, it’s a short step to thinking the virus is actually fake and WIV was just typing crap into a computer and making things up. Now, if you are a normal person with the wits to get a HS diploma, and you have some focus, that is irresponsible and goofy bullcrap produced by a looney person. But, YMMV.

    Maybe the knowing bad faith conspiracy theorists knew that they had to move beyond the gain of function experiment story on RATG-13 when they realized that no one has actually been able to be sure they had a whole virus, and do a reliable high quality genome extracted from it.

    I very highly recommend everyone interested in the lab/nature debate read the link.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    In all honesty don’t believe I’ve ever eaten one. Of any flavor.

    Used to pass out candies of one sort or another at the flag lowering assembly which followed dinner at the summer camp where I worked.

    Candies of cheapie off brands never seen at the corner store. Can well recall the regular handing out of Klein’s Lunch Bars (“Still 3¢!” in large print on the wrapper), a chocolate bar* so thin one could practically read a newspaper through it. When I became Head Counselor one of my minor duties was ordering the candy, so switched to stuff more mainstream. On the first day, IIRC, they got rolls of Starburst, and a spontaneous cheer erupted.

    *Charitably put, chocolate colored moreso than chocolate flavored.

  48. 48.

    Peale

    @Steve in the ATL: Japan is the epicenter of all innovative Kit Kat flavors. The diversity available there is astounding, indicating that Kit Kat’s may have first evolved there and then dispersed during the last ice age. This theory runs counter to the long held theory that they first were developed in the Lake Country in England.

    china, though, is where new potato chip flavors are engineered in some kind of cultural appropriation run amok. Cucumber and chicken flavors are o.k. Cuttlefish is a revelation. But Tomato and tossed salad are proof that some flavors can leak from the lab without testing,

  49. 49.

    jl

    @patrick Il: “they would not have infected themselves first.”

    Just shows how cleverly they hid their intentions.

    Any child can see it all makes perfect sense and obeys all the laws of strict geometrical logic.

  51. 51.

    TKH

    Think about how many different animal species have already been infected by SARS CoV-2:

    minks (on farms in Denmark and the Netherlands), gorillas (San Diego zoo), tiger (zoo in India), ferrets are the first to come to mind. This list is not comprehensive by any means. In fact, the broad range of animals readily susceptible to the virus is pretty extraordinary. This means that it is not going to be easy to find out the intermediate host with certainty.

    Christian Drosten, one of the co-disverers of SARS 1, recently made the point that one should look in sites where large numbers of animals are kept in close quarters, such as farms involved in the fur trade. This would be raccoon dogs in China, as it would have been mink in Europe. If these farms have been closed down in the interim, because of government intervention or market disruption, and the workers have dispersed, it will be really hard

  54. 54.

    jl

    @TKH: ” animals readily susceptible to the virus is pretty extraordinary ”

    But not unique. Rabies infects almost every mammal, and birds, except mostly asymptomatic in birds. Henipavirus species infect many mammals and birds, and jump from them to humans. If some of those viruses mutate to allow human to human transmission, that will make covid look like an ice cream social.

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    As the specialists have been saying for the last fifteen months, a pandemic wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when.

    Yes, that’s obvious to any person who is capable of reason. I mean why would the CCP unleash such a thing on their own population first when they are facing a demographic crises from lack of young people? But, you have to consider the world from the point of view of dimwit like Louie Gohmer. The man is the common clay of the West, a dumbass in other words, impersonal things like natural forces are scary to his mind, it’s comforting to him to put a face on it.

  57. 57.

    Major Major Major Major

    I thought this was a good thread

  59. 59.

    Ten Bears

    I’ve got to admit that’s not on my bingo card ~ thawed out of the thawing tundra a viri that hasn’t seen a human since before we were human, eyup; jump from raw bat to under-cooked dog to stressed human, eyaaaaa, ok; “escape” a bioweapons facility in Cincinnati, St Petersberg, or Tel Aviv …

    No batcave on my bingo card …

  60. 60.

    sab

    @Major Major Major Major: Michael Gordon, at NY Times says he has no evidence but it would be irresponsible not to speculate that China done wrong.

    Nicole Wallace keeps having these people on her show. Ken Vogel re Hunter Biden. Michael Scmidt to refurbish Rod Rosenstein. Michael Gordan with Cheney warmongering (we think we could actually fight China?!! in a war?!! They have several billion people who love their country more than Republicans love ours.) We need to treat this delightful, charismatic lady with a whole lot more skepticism.

  61. 61.

    trnc

    @Geminid: People who used to praise trump for his strong and effective leadership now complain that he was a victim.

    He portrayed himself as a victim non-stop. One of the things that surprised me the most about his supporters was that they’re made up of “no pansies” types, and yet they cheered on his constant whining.

  62. 62.

    trnc

    @craigie: I feel like this describes most people’s beliefs, except 4-5 is way too high a number.

    Well, it’s kinda both too high and too low. People can find dozens of facebook posts or articles on Newsmax to shape their opinion of something, but they’re all sourced on the same flimsy or completely made up bullshit.

  63. 63.

    VOR

    @Geminid:  People who used to praise trump for his strong and effective leadership now complain that he was a victim.

    Of course. Being a victim is pretty much the entirety of Conservatism and Trumpism. The Libs are being mean to us so we have to fight back. TFG’s entire policy was “treat me fairly or else I’ll throw a tantrum”.

    I’m also mystified by how failing to adequately respond to an attack from a foreign power makes TFG look better. So you knew it was an attack the entire time you were saying it was nothing to worry about? How is that better? I think at best it is a shiny object to distract from the 600k dead Americans.

  64. 64.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    China is not only the horrible, evil, yellow menace for maybe having let the virus escape.
    (NB: this is a way of saying that “China is *so much* better than Trump’s United States that we *know* China could have contained it, even though Trump was an abject failure at containing it.”)

    It’s also a horrible, horrible nation for complaining about the US civil rights record, and, of course, any US citizen who makes a similar claim is therefore spouting “communist party” propaganda, and thus, tainted by association.

    Historical note: the USSR complained about the US not protecting Black people on interstate buses. Lots of people complained bitterly about Black people’s complaints, for giving the Soviets propaganda fodder. This was while Freedom Riders were being attacked, and even killed, under the protection of the law(!!). (Yes – cops would occasionally watch beatings being applied – one of the “good cops” kept terrorists from blocking the doors, on a bus, *AFTER SETTING IT ON FIRE*. So, you see, ‘not all cops…’. He wouldn’t let them burn people to death, just, you know, beat downs, concussions, broken bones.)

    The idea that you should *fix* civil rights problems, rather than whine about the people demanding justice, hasn’t occurred to the Republican Party.

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