COVID-19 #06: A Debunking (Still Optional)

BD brought up conspiracy theories in class the other day. That’s a fine thing to bring up, but it’s my responsibility then to go out and fill in the blanks for you all.
*************************************************
Here is a fact that makes that seem plausible to some posters on the internet:

… The location of China’s premier virology institute and only BSL-4 virology laboratory within 20 miles of the outbreak’s origin …

Now, do keep in mind that while this has been the subject of a lot of fictional video games, movies, and books (so many are primed to believe this). And, it has actually happened in the past (unintentionally here and intentionally here, although doubts remain about this one).
Having noted this, Twitter banned a well-known blogger/tweeter for doxing a scientist from that lab.  Keep in mind that the blogger/tweeter was banned for the doxing, not for their speculation about the origins of the virus. And, in his own defense, he wrote that it’s a funny definition of doxing that includes copying and pasting the personal information off the public website of that virology institute.
And, now we have this: that blogger/tweeter is now being commonly referred as “pro-Trump”. I view that as wishful thinking that probably ought to be penalized as well. But BuzzFeed went ahead and doxxed him, and no one is complaining much.
We live in pretty weird times …
*************************************************
Part of this speculation is due to research published online prior to peer review, that many experts believe non-experts could have easily misinterpreted.

… Unique elements of the 2019-nCoV genome which noted some similarities to elements of the HIV genome. The authors seemed to suggest that these similarities couldn’t have arisen randomly, so people can be forgiven for jumping straight to “it’s a bioweapon” after reading it.

What non-experts do not generally know, and what makes this result problematic, is that most viruses have some similarities to HIV. Viruses trade genetic information with other viruses in the same host. That’s what they do. It’s how they evolve. It’s super-probable that the gene sequence the new virus shares with HIV aren’t original to either one of those, but were shared from other earlier viruses to both of them. It’s correlation not causation. Experts get that; non-experts … not so much.
*************************************************
BUT, here’s what the serious people are actually looking at:

Take this to the bank: 2019-nCoV continues to give every appearance of being a wild coronavirus that jumped from bats to humans by way of an animal intermediary in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan in late 2019. It is not an escaped bioweapon.

Or:

In responsible circles, the current theory about the virus’s origin is that it was very similar to the origin of SARS: an endemic coronavirus in bats spread through an intermediary wild animal sold as food in an exotic meat market in China. The initial cases of the Wuhan strain were all confined to vendors and customers from a small number of nearby stalls in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where exotic meat was sold with few or no safety precautions.

And:

Brandon J. Brown, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the International Society of Vaccines, and the Global Health Council, told BuzzFeed News it makes sense that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching the coronavirus in bats.
“One reason why this institute would be doing immune research would be to prevent what we are seeing right now with the novel coronavirus outbreak,” Brown said. “They have studied other coronaviruses at that site including SARS, where they discovered that it originated in bats.”
Brown also said that the entire idea of the coronavirus working as a bioweapon is pretty silly. “The fatality rate [of the coronavirus] is 200/10,000, which is currently lower compared to many other viruses including SARS, so if it was meant as a bioweapon, it is not a good one,” Brown said.

So, we’re still at 1) not as deadly as influenza, which we take for granted, but 2) easier to spread to others than influenza … it’s the common cold “on steroids”.
*************************************************
Here’s one more analogy for students in Utah. The press continues to emphasize poor hygiene at the wet market in Wuhan. Maybe. Do consider that it may still have been better than typical hygiene during deer hunting season.