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A comment on New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market. Parent comment

Re:New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in... by svara on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:02PM (#22148317)
This seems rather unlikely. We have the genome sequence of the Wuhan seafood market coronavirus, and it's consistent with it being a so far unknown relative of the SARS virus and other coronaviruses (see my other comment where I have posted links to the sequence alignments).

So did the Wuhan BSL-4 lab virologists discover a new relative of the SARS virus, study it in their lab, didn't publish it, then accidentally set it free? Sounds substantially less likely to me than people coming in contact with it while handling bush meat. That happens all the time, unfortunately ...

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Re:New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in... by jeffdavis on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:25PM (#22148437)
Does that contradict the idea that a similar virus was found and then modifed in the lab?
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Re:New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in... by nneonneo on Saturday January 25, 2020 @05:37PM (#22149060)
So...the Wuhan scientists are modifying viruses in their BSL-4 lab (which is no joke when it comes to safety standards) and then just letting these things escape? Sorry, that’s very far fetched. Why can’t people accept that a virus like this could evolve naturally?
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Re:New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in... by thinkingemote on Saturday January 25, 2020 @05:43PM (#22149093)
Its more likely to be accidentally released like by a worker with stuff on them as has happened previous times with SARs etc in similar viral lab in China ( and happened in other cases and countries including the UK) than intentionally released.

But it's also a hundred times more likely that the source is nature. However we should not discount the possiblity that viruses get out by accident as it's not uncommon even with top bio safety labs.

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Re:New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in... by anonsivalley652 on Sunday January 26, 2020 @03:14AM (#22151078)
Define "naturally"

Without human intention: yes.

Without repeated patterns of humans activity: no.

If meat agriculture, and meat-eating in general, were almost nonexistent, the risks of evolving a pandemic would be several orders-of-magnitude lower than exist today.

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