How did Covid Pandemic start?....

[DBP66]

What are the Republican's going to do now.....Faucci was right...

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

 

A young raccoon dog at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City in 2015.

1.8k

Benjamin Mueller

Fri, March 17, 2023 at 7:37 AM EDT

 

 

An international team of virus experts said Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through the illegal wildlife trade.

The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, shortly after Chinese authorities had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus. By then, the animals had been cleared out, but researchers swabbed walls, floors, metal cages and carts often used for transporting animal cages.

In samples that came back positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, three scientists involved in the analysis said.

 

The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.

But the analysis did establish that raccoon dogs — fluffy animals that are related to foxes and are known to be able to transmit the coronavirus — deposited genetic signatures in the same place where genetic material from the virus was left, the three scientists said. That evidence, they said, was consistent with a scenario in which the virus had spilled into humans from a wild animal.

A report with the full details of the international research team’s findings has not yet been published. Their analysis was first reported by The Atlantic.

The new evidence is sure to provide a jolt to the debate over the pandemic’s origins, even if it does not resolve the question of how it began.

In recent weeks, the so-called lab leak theory, which posits that the coronavirus emerged from a research lab in Wuhan, has gained traction thanks to a new intelligence assessment from the U.S. Department of Energy and hearings led by the new Republican House leadership.

But the genetic data from the market offers some of the most tangible evidence yet of how the virus could have spilled into people from wild animals outside a lab. It also suggests that Chinese scientists have given an incomplete account of evidence that could fill in details about how the virus was spreading at the Huanan market.

Jeremy Kamil, a virus expert at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport who was not involved in the study, said the findings showed that “the samples from the market that had early COVID lineages in them were contaminated with DNA reads of wild animals.”

Kamil said that fell short of conclusive evidence that an infected animal had set off the pandemic. But, he said, “it really puts the spotlight on the illegal animal trade in an intimate way.”

Chinese scientists had released a study looking at the same market samples in February 2022. That study had reported that samples were positive for the coronavirus but suggested that the virus had come from infected people who were shopping or working in the market, rather than from animals being sold there.

At some point, those same researchers, including some affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, posted the raw data from swabs around the market to GISAID, an international repository of genetic sequences of viruses. (Attempts to reach the Chinese scientists by phone Thursday were not successful.)

On March 4, Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, happened to be searching that database for information related to the Huanan market when, she said in an interview, she noticed more sequences than usual popping up. Confused at first about whether they contained new data, Débarre put them aside, only to log in again last week and discover that they held a trove of raw data.

Virus experts had been awaiting that raw sequence data from the market since they learned of its existence in the Chinese report from February 2022. Débarre said she had alerted other scientists, including the leaders of a team that had published a set of studies last year pointing to the market as the origin.

An international team — which included Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona; Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in California; and Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney — started mining the new genetic data last week.

One sample in particular caught their attention. It had been taken from a cart linked to a specific stall at the Huanan market that Holmes had visited in 2014, scientists involved in the analysis said. That stall, Holmes found, contained caged raccoon dogs on top of a separate cage holding birds, exactly the sort of environment conducive to the transmission of new viruses.

The swab taken from a cart there in early 2020, the research team found, contained genetic material from the virus and a raccoon dog.

“We were able to figure out relatively quickly that at least in one of these samples, there was a lot of raccoon dog nucleic acid, along with virus nucleic acid,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virus expert at the University of Utah who worked on the new analysis. (Nucleic acids are the chemical building blocks that carry genetic information.)

After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID.

It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down.

Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.

Scientists involved with the analysis said that some of the samples had also contained genetic material from other animals and from humans. Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who worked on the analysis, said that the human genetic material was to be expected given that people were shopping and working there and that human COVID cases had been linked to the market.

Goldstein, too, cautioned that “we don’t have an infected animal, and we can’t prove definitively there was an infected animal at that stall.” Genetic material from the virus is stable enough, he said, that it is not clear when exactly it was deposited at the market. He said that the team was still analyzing the data and that it had not intended for its analysis to become public before it had released a report.

“But,” he said, “given that the animals that were present in the market were not sampled at the time, this is as good as we can hope to get.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

[FreeBird]

[DBP66]

22 minutes ago, FreeBird said:

old news....😉

[FreeBird]

12 minutes ago, DBP66 said:

old news....😉

Two weeks is old news?

[DBP66]

6 minutes ago, FreeBird said:

Two weeks is old news?

apparently...😉

[On2whls]

51 minutes ago, DBP66 said:

What are the Republican's going to do now.....Faucci was right...

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

 

A young raccoon dog at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City in 2015.

1.8k

Benjamin Mueller

Fri, March 17, 2023 at 7:37 AM EDT

 

 

An international team of virus experts said Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through the illegal wildlife trade.

The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, shortly after Chinese authorities had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus. By then, the animals had been cleared out, but researchers swabbed walls, floors, metal cages and carts often used for transporting animal cages.

In samples that came back positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, three scientists involved in the analysis said.

 

The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.

But the analysis did establish that raccoon dogs — fluffy animals that are related to foxes and are known to be able to transmit the coronavirus — deposited genetic signatures in the same place where genetic material from the virus was left, the three scientists said. That evidence, they said, was consistent with a scenario in which the virus had spilled into humans from a wild animal.

A report with the full details of the international research team’s findings has not yet been published. Their analysis was first reported by The Atlantic.

The new evidence is sure to provide a jolt to the debate over the pandemic’s origins, even if it does not resolve the question of how it began.

In recent weeks, the so-called lab leak theory, which posits that the coronavirus emerged from a research lab in Wuhan, has gained traction thanks to a new intelligence assessment from the U.S. Department of Energy and hearings led by the new Republican House leadership.

But the genetic data from the market offers some of the most tangible evidence yet of how the virus could have spilled into people from wild animals outside a lab. It also suggests that Chinese scientists have given an incomplete account of evidence that could fill in details about how the virus was spreading at the Huanan market.

Jeremy Kamil, a virus expert at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport who was not involved in the study, said the findings showed that “the samples from the market that had early COVID lineages in them were contaminated with DNA reads of wild animals.”

Kamil said that fell short of conclusive evidence that an infected animal had set off the pandemic. But, he said, “it really puts the spotlight on the illegal animal trade in an intimate way.”

Chinese scientists had released a study looking at the same market samples in February 2022. That study had reported that samples were positive for the coronavirus but suggested that the virus had come from infected people who were shopping or working in the market, rather than from animals being sold there.

At some point, those same researchers, including some affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, posted the raw data from swabs around the market to GISAID, an international repository of genetic sequences of viruses. (Attempts to reach the Chinese scientists by phone Thursday were not successful.)

On March 4, Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, happened to be searching that database for information related to the Huanan market when, she said in an interview, she noticed more sequences than usual popping up. Confused at first about whether they contained new data, Débarre put them aside, only to log in again last week and discover that they held a trove of raw data.

Virus experts had been awaiting that raw sequence data from the market since they learned of its existence in the Chinese report from February 2022. Débarre said she had alerted other scientists, including the leaders of a team that had published a set of studies last year pointing to the market as the origin.

An international team — which included Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona; Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in California; and Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney — started mining the new genetic data last week.

One sample in particular caught their attention. It had been taken from a cart linked to a specific stall at the Huanan market that Holmes had visited in 2014, scientists involved in the analysis said. That stall, Holmes found, contained caged raccoon dogs on top of a separate cage holding birds, exactly the sort of environment conducive to the transmission of new viruses.

The swab taken from a cart there in early 2020, the research team found, contained genetic material from the virus and a raccoon dog.

“We were able to figure out relatively quickly that at least in one of these samples, there was a lot of raccoon dog nucleic acid, along with virus nucleic acid,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virus expert at the University of Utah who worked on the new analysis. (Nucleic acids are the chemical building blocks that carry genetic information.)

After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID.

It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down.

Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.

Scientists involved with the analysis said that some of the samples had also contained genetic material from other animals and from humans. Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who worked on the analysis, said that the human genetic material was to be expected given that people were shopping and working there and that human COVID cases had been linked to the market.

Goldstein, too, cautioned that “we don’t have an infected animal, and we can’t prove definitively there was an infected animal at that stall.” Genetic material from the virus is stable enough, he said, that it is not clear when exactly it was deposited at the market. He said that the team was still analyzing the data and that it had not intended for its analysis to become public before it had released a report.

“But,” he said, “given that the animals that were present in the market were not sampled at the time, this is as good as we can hope to get.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

LMAO.  Now they’re blaming Racoon Dogs.  Hey, wait a minute, I thought the Racoon dogs were responsible for inflation and pangolins identifying as bats were Covid.  You lefties throw so much blame about it’s hard to follow.  
 

But, I’ll give you credit for an early April Fools attempt.   Go grab a green beer if you haven’t already. 
 

[FreeBird]

8 minutes ago, On2whls said:

LMAO.  Now they’re blaming Racoon Dogs.  Hey, wait a minute, I thought the Racoon dogs were responsible for inflation and pangolins identifying as bats were Covid.  You lefties throw so much blame about it’s hard to follow.  
 

But, I’ll give you credit for an early April Fools attempt.   Go grab a green beer if you haven’t already. 
 

Dbp is already drunk lmao, this 2016 election denier, is shooting off raccoon 🦝 dog conspiracies at 9am on a Friday 

[DBP66]

8 minutes ago, FreeBird said:

Dbp is already drunk lmao, this 2016 election denier, is shooting off raccoon 🦝 dog conspiracies at 9am on a Friday 

N.Y. Times...your worse enemy...😉

[Warrior]

1 hour ago, DBP66 said:

What are the Republican's going to do now.....Faucci was right...

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

 

A young raccoon dog at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City in 2015.

1.8k

Benjamin Mueller

Fri, March 17, 2023 at 7:37 AM EDT

 

 

An international team of virus experts said Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through the illegal wildlife trade.

The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, shortly after Chinese authorities had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus. By then, the animals had been cleared out, but researchers swabbed walls, floors, metal cages and carts often used for transporting animal cages.

In samples that came back positive for the coronavirus, the international research team found genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, three scientists involved in the analysis said.

 

The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.

But the analysis did establish that raccoon dogs — fluffy animals that are related to foxes and are known to be able to transmit the coronavirus — deposited genetic signatures in the same place where genetic material from the virus was left, the three scientists said. That evidence, they said, was consistent with a scenario in which the virus had spilled into humans from a wild animal.

A report with the full details of the international research team’s findings has not yet been published. Their analysis was first reported by The Atlantic.

The new evidence is sure to provide a jolt to the debate over the pandemic’s origins, even if it does not resolve the question of how it began.

In recent weeks, the so-called lab leak theory, which posits that the coronavirus emerged from a research lab in Wuhan, has gained traction thanks to a new intelligence assessment from the U.S. Department of Energy and hearings led by the new Republican House leadership.

But the genetic data from the market offers some of the most tangible evidence yet of how the virus could have spilled into people from wild animals outside a lab. It also suggests that Chinese scientists have given an incomplete account of evidence that could fill in details about how the virus was spreading at the Huanan market.

Jeremy Kamil, a virus expert at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport who was not involved in the study, said the findings showed that “the samples from the market that had early COVID lineages in them were contaminated with DNA reads of wild animals.”

Kamil said that fell short of conclusive evidence that an infected animal had set off the pandemic. But, he said, “it really puts the spotlight on the illegal animal trade in an intimate way.”

Chinese scientists had released a study looking at the same market samples in February 2022. That study had reported that samples were positive for the coronavirus but suggested that the virus had come from infected people who were shopping or working in the market, rather than from animals being sold there.

At some point, those same researchers, including some affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, posted the raw data from swabs around the market to GISAID, an international repository of genetic sequences of viruses. (Attempts to reach the Chinese scientists by phone Thursday were not successful.)

On March 4, Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, happened to be searching that database for information related to the Huanan market when, she said in an interview, she noticed more sequences than usual popping up. Confused at first about whether they contained new data, Débarre put them aside, only to log in again last week and discover that they held a trove of raw data.

Virus experts had been awaiting that raw sequence data from the market since they learned of its existence in the Chinese report from February 2022. Débarre said she had alerted other scientists, including the leaders of a team that had published a set of studies last year pointing to the market as the origin.

An international team — which included Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona; Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in California; and Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney — started mining the new genetic data last week.

One sample in particular caught their attention. It had been taken from a cart linked to a specific stall at the Huanan market that Holmes had visited in 2014, scientists involved in the analysis said. That stall, Holmes found, contained caged raccoon dogs on top of a separate cage holding birds, exactly the sort of environment conducive to the transmission of new viruses.

The swab taken from a cart there in early 2020, the research team found, contained genetic material from the virus and a raccoon dog.

“We were able to figure out relatively quickly that at least in one of these samples, there was a lot of raccoon dog nucleic acid, along with virus nucleic acid,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virus expert at the University of Utah who worked on the new analysis. (Nucleic acids are the chemical building blocks that carry genetic information.)

After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID.

It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down.

Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.

Scientists involved with the analysis said that some of the samples had also contained genetic material from other animals and from humans. Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who worked on the analysis, said that the human genetic material was to be expected given that people were shopping and working there and that human COVID cases had been linked to the market.

Goldstein, too, cautioned that “we don’t have an infected animal, and we can’t prove definitively there was an infected animal at that stall.” Genetic material from the virus is stable enough, he said, that it is not clear when exactly it was deposited at the market. He said that the team was still analyzing the data and that it had not intended for its analysis to become public before it had released a report.

“But,” he said, “given that the animals that were present in the market were not sampled at the time, this is as good as we can hope to get.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

Crazy how all the sudden they magically find this new Data just as the lab leak is becoming the most logical origin of the China Virus? Crazy isn't it after over 3 years. 

[concha]

 

So we are to believe that of all the places and markets in the massive country of China that Covid could have come from, it came from a primarily SEAFOOD market in Wuhan.

We are asked to shy away from any logical or critical thought and dismiss that it could have come from the one Level 4 research lab in all of China. One that we know was actually doing work on the very type of virus that Covid is. In... wait for it... Wuhan.  Just a few miles from the market.

Pure.

Fucking.

Coincidence.

🤡

 

[DBP66]

33 minutes ago, concha said:

 

So we are to believe that of all the places and markets in the massive country of China that Covid could have come from, it came from a primarily SEAFOOD market in Wuhan.

We are asked to shy away from any logical or critical thought and dismiss that it could have come from the one Level 4 research lab in all of China. One that we know was actually doing work on the very type of virus that Covid is. In... wait for it... Wuhan.  Just a few miles from the market.

Pure.

Fucking.

Coincidence.

🤡

 

it was an International team of Scientists...that gives them credibility in my book....nice try Don....🤡 ..I bet Rand Paul feels like a complete moron....he needs to go back to doing his eye exams.

[concha]

 

The article literally provides no conclusive evidence and the scientists admit it.  In the article.

😂

[FreeBird]

[OldTerrapin]

30 minutes ago, concha said:

 

The article literally provides no conclusive evidence and the scientists admit it.  In the article.

😂

 

Since when does what the article actually says matter.. Only the headline matters.. National Enquirer 101

 

 

[Bormio]

After all the misinformation fed us by “experts ”, people are supposed to swallow this?

[Bormio]

2 minutes ago, OldTerrapin said:

 

Since when does what the article actually says matter.. Only the headline matters.. National Enquirer 101

Which is what the NYT is fast becoming 

[Warrior]

1 hour ago, DBP66 said:

it was an International team of Scientists...that gives them credibility in my book....nice try Don....🤡 ..I bet Rand Paul feels like a complete moron....he needs to go back to doing his eye exams.

Critical thinking was never your strong suit. 

[World Citizen]

2 hours ago, DBP66 said:

it was an International team of Scientists...that gives them credibility in my book....nice try Don....🤡 ..I bet Rand Paul feels like a complete moron....he needs to go back to doing his eye exams.

Don't waste your time.  These people obviously didn't read the article.  Not one of them.  If they did they would know that the article did not state anything as fact.  Just more data that further points to the possibility of the virus starting in the market.  

Nobody knows for a fact where or how it started.  But that doesn't stop them from raging at everything they are told they are supposed to rage at.  

Lol@ the dummy freechicken posting what the head of FBI THINKS is likely.  Ignore every expert but go to the top cop for infectious disease opinions.  Super convincing.  

Lol@ our resident quack on posting about misinformation.  Thanks quack for your continued stupid takes.  

Lol@ our resident rage monkey concha for posting that the article did not post conclusive evidence.  Thanks genius for stating the obvious.  Nobody said that it was conclusive.  🤡

[noonereal]

5 hours ago, DBP66 said:

What are the Republican's going to do now.....Faucci was right...

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

 

I know you did not read this or you would not have posted it. All it says is Raccoon dogs had the virus at the market. It draw no link as it implies in the headline that the Raccoon dogs were the cause of the pandemic. 

And don't forget, it was Oct, Novermber of 2019 that lab workers started to get sick. These dogs could have well caught it from the workers. The story also says the dogs were found to have had it at the "very end" of 2019. We know the virus was already in circulation at this time. 

[noonereal]

3 minutes ago, World Citizen said:

Don't waste your time.  These people obviously didn't read the article.  Not one of them.

I did, did you? 

 

If so, you did not understand it in context of what we know not contained in the story. 

 

Hey, I am as anti MAGA sickness as they come but fact is fact and it takes president over tribe in my book. 

[World Citizen]

1 minute ago, noonereal said:

I did, did you? 

 

If so, you did not understand it in context of what we know not contained in the story. 

 

Hey, I am as anti MAGA sickness as they come but fact is fact and it takes president over tribe in my book. 

Of course I read it.  

I did not, however, read what wasn't in the article.  Lol

 

[concha]

9 minutes ago, World Citizen said:

 

Lol@ our resident rage monkey concha for posting that the article did not post conclusive evidence.  Thanks genius for stating the obvious.  Nobody said that it was conclusive.  🤡

 

"What are the Republican's going to do now.....Faucci was right..."

- Dumbass66 in the OP

Sounds pretty conclusive.

Imbecile.

🤡

 

[World Citizen]

5 minutes ago, noonereal said:

I did, did you? 

 

If so, you did not understand it in context of what we know not contained in the story. 

 

Hey, I am as anti MAGA sickness as they come but fact is fact and it takes president over tribe in my book. 

I agree with this and I am not in a tribe.  Being that you were slow to recognize the problems with Trump and MAGA I will give you a pass on this.  😋  This is why I posted.  The absurdity of the MAGA crowd attacking anything when they do not know for certain.  Nobody does.  

[noonereal]

5 minutes ago, World Citizen said:

I agree with this and I am not in a tribe.  Being that you were slow to recognize the problems with Trump and MAGA I will give you a pass on this.  😋  This is why I posted.  The absurdity of the MAGA crowd attacking anything when they do not know for certain.  Nobody does.  

It is true, I never believed a grown adult would act as Trump did during the campaign after being elected.

If not for that list of potential judges he put out before the election (2016) I may have well voted for him. 

[FreeBird]

8 minutes ago, World Citizen said:

I agree with this and I am not in a tribe.  Being that you were slow to recognize the problems with Trump and MAGA I will give you a pass on this.  😋  This is why I posted.  The absurdity of the MAGA crowd attacking anything when they do not know for certain.  Nobody does.  

So how was Fauci right about Origin  if no one knows??? That math ain’t mathing