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Comment by masswerk | Hacker News Reader

What has become of early Covid reportings, like the (alleged) Italian finding of Covid-19 in blood samples from Sept. 2019 taken in Lombardy (and similar findings in sewage sampoles from Barcelona)?

Has there been any clear proof established, either for the support of this or to the contrary?

[1] "Coronavirus emerged in Italy earlier than thought, Italian study shows" (Reuters, 2020-11-15): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

[2] "Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thought" (Reuters, 2020-11-16): https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

[3] "WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy" (Reuters, 2021-06-01): https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

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The laboratory leak could have happened anywhere between the first collection of a virus sample from bats in 2017 and up until the pandemic start in end of 2019. It is likely the virus was transmitted by personel from Wuhan Institute of Virology to Italy before the first doctors pushed the big panic button.

Hum, there are a few things promoters of the lab theory haven't accounted for: meanwhile, strains that are closer related to the wild type have been found in Laos and Vietnam and the Wuhan lab didn't sample there; the (in)famous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is actually quite a distance from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it's about half an hour by car and there's a river in between) and there have been no traces found related to this route or to the geographical and/or social vicinity of the lab.

Meanwhile, there has been quite a number of reportings (on two studies) severely undermining the lab leak theory. Generally speaking, these (US) studies claim to have genetic evidence for an animal-human-animal-human transfer in Nov. 2019 at the wet market and swab samples of cages tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Here's a sample:

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

[2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/covid-19-originated-at-...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383

[4] https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-undermined-ne...

(For me, there are political motives too strong behind the lab leak theory, to accept a mere conjecture that fails to connect the dots. Grave accusations require proof. Especially, if you haven't ruled out contradicting candidates.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN312670.1

Bat sample from Laos submitted by Wuhan institute of virology in 2019

But this is neither similar to SARS-CoV-2 nor to BANAL-236 or BANAL-52 (the close relatives found in Laos).

The OP said the WIV didn't sample in Laos. Just wanted to show it did.

Who knows what they sampled but haven't released - the WIV took down their virus sequence database in November 2019 and it has not been shared since.

I think, they didn't sample actively there. (That's what I read.) If someone shared samples with the WIV, this would have probably become known by now.

My problem is really with building evidence by "unknown unknowns": we don't know neither object, nor subject, nor circumstances, but, if we ignore all we do know, this is clear evidence. (Hum.)

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