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Comment by _mlbt | Hacker News Reader

Other than politics why would you believe any other scenario to be more likely than the lab leak hypothesis at this point? It’s far too much of a coincidence that patient zero was in such close proximity to the WIV that studies and researches viruses exactly like COVID-19. The actions of the CCP and those aligned with their interests just further cements the likelihood of this hypothesis.

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Because the closest relative of the sars-cov-2 virus is found in animals in Thailand, and just before the pandemic, exotic animals from Thailand were imported directly to the Wuhan wet market, which was a regional hub for importing animals. The WIV lab did not have a copy of that virus. The original sars-cov-1 virus emerged at an animal farm upriver from Hong Kong. The MERS virus emerged at a camel farm. Seeing a pattern yet?

> The WIV lab did not have a copy of that virus.

According to the CCP, whose version of the events cannot be trusted. The reality is that they had the time, means, and motivation to destroy any samples and records related to COVID.

Also speaking of patterns, the WIV has a history of safety lapses and was known to be working with SARS family viruses in BSL-2 labs, which are wholly inadequate.

According to the Thai virus researchers who did not even discover the related virus for the first time until the year AFTER tbe pandemic started. So no, unless someone has a time machine the WIV did not have a sample in 2019. The consensus of the international virus research community is that the WIV did NOT have a sample of the covid-precursor virus.

Animals infected with the Thai virus were imported from Thailand to the Wuhan wet market. People on the north side of the river within 100 meters of the wet market got sick. People on the south side of the river within 15km of the WIV did not get sick. We are not relying on the CCP for the information that people on the south side of the river did not get sick. There were foreign citizens living south of the river and we got our information from them.

The evidence favors spread from market:

Here is a review paper of all the evidence so far:

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...

Not true, there is significant evidence that actually favors the lab leak hypothesis…

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/03/28/covid-1...

Additionally the Biden administration and other world governments suppressed the lab leak hypothesis which means that researchers seeking government funding had an incentive to support the official wet market narrative instead…

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5058339-biden-adminis...

The only paper they cite was the bat virus paper in cell, which isn’t evidence for lab leak.

The review paper I mentioned shows dozens of papers showing evidence of market as initial spread.

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