A researcher in France has identified previously undisclosed genetic data from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, that she and colleagues say support the theory that coronavirus-infected animals there triggered the COVID-19 pandemic. Science has more.
Several of the researchers presented their findings on Tuesday to the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), an expert group convened last year by the World Health Organisation.
“The data does point even further to a market origin,” says Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research who attended the meeting and is one of the scientists analysing the new data. If so, the findings weaken the view of a vocal minority that a virology lab in Wuhan was the likely origin of SARS-CoV-2, perhaps when the coronavirus infected a lab worker, who spread it further.
Florence Débarre, a theoretician who specialises in evolutionary biology and works at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, unearthed the data, which consists of genetic sequences posted in GISAID, a virology database, by Chinese researchers. The Chinese team had collected environmental samples from the Huanan Seafood Market, which was connected to a cluster of early COVID-19 cases and despite its name also sold a variety of mammals for food. Since Débarre spotted the sequences, GISAID has removed them, noting that this was at the request of the submitter.
Given that the mystery of SARS-CoV-2’s origin has been a matter of intense global interest and divisive debate, the data’s discovery and subsequent disappearance will certainly raise questions about why the Chinese team — which includes the former head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), George Gao — did not make the sequences public earlier. Contacted by Science, Gao said the sequences are “[n]othing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down”.
But Andersen and his colleagues hope Gao’s team will now make the sequences widely available. “We have urged China CDC and our colleagues there to release this data as soon as possible,” he says.
Gao’s team used swabs to collect environmental samples from many of the stalls of the Huanan market between January 1st, the day it was shut down, and March 2nd 2020. The group reported last year that some of the samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 also had human genetic material, but no DNA from other animals. The team concluded in a preprint posted on Research Square on February 25th 2022, that this “highly suggests” humans brought the virus to the market — a finding that Gao and co-authors wrote meant the marketplace was not the origin of the pandemic but simply amplified early spread of SARS-CoV-2.
To some Chinese researchers and officials, that scenario suggested the virus originated outside China and somehow found its way to Wuhan. To lab leak supporters, it implied the pandemic might have started at the Wuhan lab.
Worth reading in full.
Lower down, the article notes that Andersen adds he does not expect the new data to convince everyone that the virus originated at the market as “he suspects some people may interpret the new information to mean simply that humans infected with SARS-CoV-2 transmitted the virus to the animals at the market”.
We’ll have to wait to see the detail when it’s published, but from these reports it sounds like it’s pretty inconclusive. If it did corroborate the wet market theory it would be very surprising at this point, as the evidence that the virus did not originate there is now very strong. It includes not only the fact that no animal reservoirs of the virus were found there but that many of the early sequenced cases had no connection to the market, that the cases at the market were all (except one) of the later lineage B, plus all the evidence that the virus is engineered including being immediately well-adapted to human transmission with a unique (in SARS-like viruses) furin cleavage site in its receptor binding domain. Traces of the virus have also been found in Brazil, England and the U.S. during November 2019, strongly challenging the idea that the December wet market outbreak was the point of origin.
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Till the lunatic Starmer gets in….why were conservatives ever funding this bs.
Because they’re just politicians, like all the rest.
It was a very normie post, apologies.
“No current plans to do so”
I seem to remember:
”We have no plans to introduce a vaccine passport”
Is there a general election coming up?
No need to fund GDI any more – they did more than ‘uphold [the govt’s] values’, their control & censor ideology is now fully embedded.
They won’t notice. It’s already privately funded by busybody billionaires with highly questionable motives.
No government (ie our) money should be spent on this tripe.
What is disinformation? Who decides its definition? Why does the government think that countering ‘disinformation’ is its job? And more to the point, why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
They can counter “disinformation” if they like. They can do so by putting out what they think is the right information and then let each of us decide what we think about it all.
The best response to bad information is good information, not shutting people up.
But this assumes this is all actually in good faith and the government is actually worried about bad information. What they’re really worried about is perfectly good information that is a threat to established power. And of course, they can try to counter that with bad but more persuasive information, but that doesn’t really work. Censorship is the only real remedy to inconveniently true information.
Accusing others of lying to cover or promote their own lies is just yet another form of gaslighting of the population.
I do believe in the ‘Online Harms’ bill there is legislation that addresses censorship of true but problematic information.
“problematic” ——-Usually because it interferes with and has the potential to lower confidence in government policies on the 5 main agenda’s. —–Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate
why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
Nobody in the cabinet is elected, they’re all appointed by the monarch on advice of the prime minister (which is itself principally appointed by the monarch as he sees fit although the convention is that it should be the leader of a party which commands a majority in the house of commons).
Yes but ideally in order for our dropped and run over pizza of a democracy to be taken seriously they have to be an elected MP surely? And Cameron is not.
I don’t think so. At least, that’s not mentioned in here:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9877
On a not unrelated note, UK Column delved into C40 cities and the big players & Foundations behind it….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.
“….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.”
Yes, but he’s ambitious Ron.
But why (if it still is) is the Conservative party funding Hope Not Hate HNH the far left pressure group that Reform didn’t have to spine to tell, go do one!
Correction: The taxpayers will no longer be funding the global disinformation index. Fear not, the government will have something else planned to fritter our taxes away.
That’s for sure. And they almost certainly have some other way of censoring and don’t need the GDI any more.
Penny Mordaunt has simply re-directed the funds as the article I have posted from Off-Guardian makes clear.
Oliver Cromwell’s speech shows politicians haven’t changed much …
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not process? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lords temple into a den of thieves, by you’re immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”
Oliver Cromwell’s speech to Parliament on April 20, 1653.
A very nice Philippic.
A key requirement for countering disinformation is the ability to recognise it. I don’t think anyone in government or opposition has that skill. The skill they are required to have is the ability to present whatever the government line currently is in a convincing manner, or to put it another way, lying with a straight face.
Thus we have Zelensky a paragon of virtue, whose every word is the shining truth and Putin who is a slippery-tongued dissembler. There is Biden, the virtuous leader of the free world and Xi, a ruthless dictator.
Then back home we have Sunak and Starmer, but no-one can really tell the difference, they just have different flavours of the same “truth”.
As this article makes clear the UK government is still fighting the good fight on the “misinformation” garbage and so ‘Just Call me Dave’ is, no surprise, telling porkies. And look at who funded the guide:
https://off-guardian.org/2024/05/08/new-guide-teaches-uk-mps-to-spot-conspiracy-theories/
“The report was co-written by “experts” representing several non-governmental organisations, and fact-checkers including:
FullFact – funded by (among others) Google, Facebook and the Open Society Foundation.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue – funded by (among others)
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, over a dozen national governments and the UN.
Global Network on Extremism and Technology – The academic research arm of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a thinktank “designed to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms”…and which is funded by (among others) Facebook, Amazon, Youtube and Microsoft.
In short, it’s all a rather incestuous funding pool of the same handful of tech giants and billionaires paying “experts” to tell them what they want to hear.
But we probably shouldn’t judge until we’ve read the “guide” itself, which is tricky because it doesn’t seem to be publicly available (seriously I looked everywhere, if you’re aware of a copy online post it in the comments and we’ll add it the link here).
Fortunately, our old friends at the Guardian have given us a little taste, here’s three things they’re warning about.
The Great Reset, which the Graun describes as…
…a vague set of proposals from the World Economic Forum to encourage governments to move to adopt more equitable policies, the concept has been hijacked by conspiracy theorists claiming it is a bid by a small group to exert control.
…which is wonderful, because it’s essentially admitting it’s true and then pretending it’s not.
The Great Reset is, indeed, a WEF initiative. It was launched in June 2020 with the backing of world leaders and captains of industry, it aims to totally and completely rebuild the way our society works, including how we travel, what we eat and where we live.
You can read about it in Klaus Schwab’s own words here, or see their handy diagram:
How is that NOT “exerting control”? How does one go about transforming the farming, travel, taxation and employment policies of every nation on Earth without “exerting control”?
Eating Insects is another “conspiracy theory”, apparently. With the Guardian warning that:
[conspiracy theories] have included claims – fuelled by attempts to reduce meat consumption – that the WEF wants to make people eat insects.
The only problem being that the WEF really does want people to eat insects:
Like, a lot:
You know what? The Guardian wants people to eat insects too. So does the BBC. And Time. The list is endless.
This is – to use an overused word – gaslighting of the highest degree.
They are at once saying “hey, we all need to eat insects to save the world”, and then claiming anyone who repeats it back at them is a conspiracy theorist.
To encompass how mad this is you have to picture it being done on an interpersonal level.
Imagine a double-glazing salesman comes to your door, wearing a double-glazing company logo and holding a double-glazing sales catalogue and says “I think you should buy some double-glazing”.
To which you reply, “No thanks I don’t need any double glazing.”
At this point the man screams “Double glazing? Who said anything about double glazing!? You lunatic!” storms off down the path, gets in his double-glazing van and drives away.
It’s just that insane.
Climate Lockdowns are the third “conspiracy theory” the Guardian warns us about, claiming:
The ISD identified “climate lockdown” as the catchphrase for the conspiracy that the climate crisis will be used as a pretext for depriving citizens of liberty.
But climate lockdowns are not a conspiracy theory either, they were first posited in a report in October 2020 published by Project Syndicate and the World Council for Sustainable Development. The proposed lockdown included banning private vehicles, the consumption of red meat and “extreme energy-saving measures”.
Since then we have been inundated with peer-review studies, claiming lockdown is good for the environment.
The Guardian itself headlined, in March 2021:
Global lockdown every two years needed to meet Paris CO2 goals – study
It was such an unpopular story that they sneakily changed the headline.
It’s fairly clear that “climate lockdowns” are far from a conspiracy theory, that they were planned and then abandoned (or delayed) due to public anger at the first lockdown.
*
The report is on the ISD Global website:
https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conspiracy-Theories-Guide.pdf
I’ve had a quick scan through. It appears to be the usual double-down, deny-everything propagandist guff, complete with picture of Trump under the QAnon heading (as if that applies to the UK). It also seems to claim that everything should be treated as potentially anti-semitic (‘Numerous conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Jewish racism.‘) – the list of conspiracy theories on page 11 has anti-semitism linked to every single one. WTAF?
There is of course absolutely no mention of all the ‘conspiracy theories’ which have been proven to be factually correct.
They might take a leaf out of their own recommendations:
1. Check before sharing. It is vital to check that information has a solid factual basis.