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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

Less probable than such a coronavirus originating in Wuhan of all places?

The WIV was in Wuhan due to the proximity of coronaviruses and other bat-borne diseases like rhabdovirusus.. this line of logic is akin to blaming shark research centers in South Africa for nearby attacks.

I don't think so? The bats are generally from Southern China, Laos, Cambodia, ..

Nowhere near Wuhan.

There are tons of horseshoe bats in Hubei, that particular misunderstanding needs to go away.

Too late to edit, but here's an article from 2018 following a group of scientists into a cave 60 miles from Wuhan to study horseshoe bats:

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002326/how-chinas-bat-caves-...

Unfortunately for us, tons of bats carry viruses of all types and some of them are literally found on the campus of the WIV:

18.5% of Japanese housebats sampled in one study had beta coronaviruses: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQ9ScdVXsAIZntp?format=png&name=...

Those bats are regularly collected for study at the same academic complex that hosts the WIV:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQ9U624XoAAvQol?format=png&name=...

There are bats almost everywhere in the world, including Wuhan. The question isn't bats, but bats carrying sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-2, not just betacoronaviruses. Dr. Shi herself has stated that she didn't expect such bats anywhere near Wuhan:

> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201206204844/https://www.scien...

I've responded to you with this link before, and you didn't reply. It begins to feel like you are willfully disregarding all evidence contrary to your predetermined view, which is unfortunate.

The WIV was not set up in Wuhan to study bats in Hubei. That is a total misconception. It was set up in 1956 with no connection whatsoever to bat-borne sarbecoviruses. That specialization arose later, but studies were made principally in Yunnan province. There is no connection between the bat specialization of the WIV and its location in Hubei.

It was not. This is a widespread misconception. The local bat populations in Wuhan were negligible and their viruses were not being studied. Indeed, the local human population in Wuhan was used as a control in the WIV's studies because of their lack of any significant encounters with bats and their diseases.

Shi Zhengli, the "bat woman" who conducted most of her research 1000 miles south, in Yunnan province, had this immediate reaction to an epidemic of bat-borne sarbecoviruses starting in Wuhan: “I wondered if the municipal health authority got it wrong. I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.”

Her first panicked thought was that the outbreak might have started as a leak from her lab. Which is kind of curious, don't you think? She reported being relieved later when she found no evidence of this, but...why was that her initial thought?

There is no proof that the Virus was passed directly from bats. And as far as I recall there was evidence for at least one intermediate host. Which makes the bat-hunting rather pointless.

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