Extending the timeline from the first case to the first detected outbreak doesn't strengthen the theory though? If anything a longer timeline means more time for the virus to travel to Wuhan from somewhere else...

Anyway, the early cases that most closely match the supposed bat-virus ancestor aren't even from the same province as the Wuhan virus lab.

> the early cases that most closely match the supposed bat-virus ancestor aren't even from the same province as the Wuhan virus lab.

Which province were they from? I know that related samples were found in bat guano from Yunnan province, but I've never heard of earlier human cases in another province.

Not earlier but rather just some of the early cases.

The precise timeline of the outbreak is in any case very sketchy due to the natural circumstance that nobody was testing for it before the Wuhan outbreak, but of course the first time you find something doesn't have to be the first time you could have found it.

In https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2004999117 they report that (at the time) the known samples closest to the bat progenitor were collected 3-4 weeks after the outbreak was declared, and could be connected to a cluster (cluster A) of cases connected to Guangdong detected starting from two weeks after the outbreak.

It's important to highlight that while these cases were picked up later and outside of Wuhan, the genetics of the viruses were closer to the supposed ancestral bat virus, so in some sense this is a sample of an "earlier" part of the epidemic.

They probably won't be found. Needle in a haystack problem, compounded by the fact most Covid cases are minor and the major ones just look like atypical pneumonia if you don't know what to look for.

There's dozens of naturally occurring virus outbreaks every year; why do you think a lab produced one is the most likely?

Also, who gained from the virus?

They didn't say lab produced. The prevailing theory among those that are suspicious of the Wuhan lab is that it was a natural virus being studied in a lab from which it escaped.

Also, Occams Razor has nothing to do with 'who gained' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

The things is the Wuhan lab usually publishes on new viruses they discover and this one hadn't appeared in the literature previously. Which isn't to say that a Wuhan researcher couldn't have carried it back home from a bat cave in their lungs.

The popular hypothesis includes Gain of Function research in the lab to make it so contagious (which, per your claim, would mean that they would have published about it?). If it came from the cave directly into the lungs of patient zero, I'd think it'd effectively be considered zoonotic.

Have you poured over the literature? Where are you getting this information? Do you think China is open and transparent and wouldn't cook their books?

Being a regular listener to This Week in Virology where they've had a number of guests on who discussed this. The thing is the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a normal lab collaborating with researchers around the world. I'm sure it's possible that the local books could be cooked by the government but that doesn't change the fact that the collaborators also have the books. If they'd known that this particular virus would escape then obviously they wouldn't have shared info about it. But how would they know that unless they planned to release it? And planning to release it doesn't make sense for all the normal reasons.

Not lab produced. Simply lab leaked. There seems to be a conflation between "covid was cooked up in the Wuhan virology lab" and "covid was naturally occurring in bats being examined in the Wuhan virology lab, which ended up being ground zero for the pandemic due to poor containment practices." In this scenario, no one "gained from the virus" because releasing the virus was unintentional.

There's little hard evidence for the lab-leak theory, but there's little hard evidence for any other theory as well. There is however, a large amount of circumstantial evidence that makes the lab-leak theory more compelling.

    - The earliest known cases have no connection to the wet market, meaning the wet market likely was not where a crossover event would have occurred. We've known this for nearly a year now.

    - No actual intermediate host has been found, to this day.

    - The closest naturally occurring coronavirus that has been discovered in the wild occurs in a type of bat that is thousands of kilometers away from Wuhan. However, this type of bat is among those being studied in the Wuhan Virology lab.

China has been extremely uncooperative in efforts to discover the origins of the outbreak:

    - In the early days of the pandemic, after shutting down the wet market in question, they euthanized and sterilized the entirety of the market over the objections of international community, effectively making it impossible to know what intermediate host there might have been (though this was later made less important, given that earlier cases with no connection to the wet market were discovered)

    - They resisted allowing international investigators into the country to probe for the origins of the virus for nearly a year. WHO investigators, who were only allowed into the country in recent months, have concluded that the virus likely came from wild animals and not the lab, but in the same breath says their report is inconclusive because they weren't actually much to work with by the Chinese governemnt. Additionally, questions have been raised about raw data regarding several hundred of the earliest known infections either going "missing" or simply being withheld by the CCP. 13 countries, including the US, today have basically called the report a joke given how little data they were given to work with

    - US intelligence agencies have claimed to have some information backing the theory of a lab leak. This could simply be sabre-rattling, but its worth noting.

    - Labs in the US stopped performing similar research to the one in Wuhan have stopped in the last decade or so specifically due to concerns over scenarios just like the current pandemic. On the other hand, the Wuhan lab in question was specifically called out for lacking the proper personnel and safety containment protocols for this type of research by international inspectors going back several years ago.

- Experts like former CDC Director Robert Redfield, who have worked extensively in virology, have gone on the record to say that the lab-leak theory is in their opinion the most likely given what we know.

Meanwhile, many attempts to discredit the lab-leak theory generally fall into one of two camps:

    - People conflating "lab-leak" with "artificially created virus", which are not the same thing

    - Reports from the WHO, who has shown extreme reticence to do or say anything critical of the Chinese government

Literally none of the above is concrete evidence of the lab-leak theory actually being the case. It's still entirely plausible there was a spillover the same way there has been with many other viruses in the past. But in total, all of the circumstantial evidence, combined with the lack of any real evidence regarding spillover theories, make it at least as likely as anything else we have.

Thanks for putting this together, it's odd how others are so quick to dismiss this line of thinking.

There's highly suspicious actions of the Chinese government along with the near-perfect human host tropism of the virus - but then also no evidence of zoonosis or any type of ongoing reservoir or circulation outside Wuhan.

It's bizarre to conclude that it's obviously just natural origin.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Viruses jumping from animals to humans is a very well-established theory. What makes this virus so different that you make the extraordinary claim that in this particular case, that didn't happen?

Viruses escaping from labs are also well-established, frequently occurring incidents [1]. Both should get attention and investigative effort.

[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2021/03/22/why-covi...

I think the idea is that that did happen, but it happened in a lab for studying bat viruses, rather than in a cave. SARS-1 escaped from labs numerous times.

The "virus lab leak" hypothesis is primarily based on proximity. If the first human infection occurred a long time before the first recorded case, the virus could have travelled a long distance in the meantime, which makes proximity less of a factor. I.e. this is evidence against a leak, not in favor.

No it’s not.

There are thousands of wet markets throughout China. Even if you restrict your view to major cities only, there's over 100 cities in China with a million inhabitants.

There were 2 known locations in China where coronaviruses were being studied - Beijing and Wuhan.

Now apply Bayesian analysis.

This is before you look at the coverup and the history of diseases escaping from research labs all over the world and the documented inadequate safety measures in the Chinese labs.

The longer time-line makes a lab leak incredibly unlikely. WIV publishes data and shares it with international collaborators frequently, given the fact that every paper on bat coronaviruses from the WIV has international collaborators, how does it make sense that the sample wasn't known to anyone else in the months between the leak and detection?

It doesn't appear to be evidence in either direction, honestly. They stick with the bat > human jump theory in the article, but it's more of an offhand remark than anything else.

I've seen no evidence either way. How are you so sure one way or the other?

yes, it is... There's no evidence of cases months earlier. Virus don't typically jump species and are effective immediately. They need time to adapt. Therefore:

a) The virus learned about humans over weeks or months in public with no one noticing

b) The virus learned about humans in a lab then leaked resulting in a fast moving pandemic