Theories on the origin of Coronavirus (split from Is it OK to go Caving)

[Mrs Trellis]

My two penn'orth:-

The UK , particularly England , has many large , densely populated conurbations.  The UK spends more time indoors , particularly in the evenings and at work.

The virus seems to be more fatal to :- age > 70, men, people of Bangladeshi origin,  underlying health conditions "the obesity syndrome" of diabetes type 2 & hypertension, bald people, BAME ethnicity, lack of vitamin D (possibly the main common factor in BAME covid deaths plus possibly care home residents). Of course the more of these factors being present the worse the prospects.

We walk every day locally and our observation is that the older the other people out the more they respect the 2m. distancing. The worst offenders are cyclists. They never stop or give way and will bisect two couples keeping 2m. apart. Very few cycles these days have bells or other warning devices nd thus are often undetected when approaching rapidly from behind. Joggers are very similar plus they exhale forcefully when passing. We've had to step onto roads, into nettle beds, into brooks to keep the 2m. Dog walkers, particularly a couple with one or more dogs each tend to spead out over the path/pavement and never think of walking in single file.

Joggers, cyclists and dog walkers  :chair:

 

[Mrs Trellis]

The "More or Less" programme on BBCRadio 4 is very informative on the modelling & stats.

Link:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jw02

 

[MarkS]

The worst offenders are cyclists. They never stop or give way [...] Joggers are very similar [...]

Please avoid sweeping comments like these. I agree that many do fit your descriptions, but many also don't.

 

[mikem]

& the chances of them passing it on to you is proportional to the distance AND the amount of time - if they stopped they'd be increasing the latter. You're still more likely to get mown down by one than to catch anything off them!

Same with the dog walkers, if they walk in single file, they are increasing their exposure to the air that previous person has occupied.

 

[Mrs Trellis]

The worst offenders are cyclists. They never stop or give way [...] Joggers are very similar [...]

Please avoid sweeping comments like these. I agree that many do fit your descriptions, but many also don't.

I can only speak as I've found.  Others may have different experiences but please don't tell me to lie about our own experience - as I made clear.

As for cyclists stopping - if they stop 2m. away that's fine but riding less than 1m. away isn't.

 

[Alex]

Sorry bit of a rant...

I think it's because dog walkers are across the paths all the time that cyclist get impatient. If joggers and cyclists had to stop every 20m they might as well walk, is it too hard for people to pay attention to their surroundings? I always slow down when on my bike, but because of this it makes it a very frustrating and a bit scary situation as I am getting too close for comfort to those people as other people are approaching who don't care. Also some of those cyclists may be nurses or doctors going to work, they have time to keep so can't afford to keep stopping frequently. Why do people pay no attention when they are on a cycle path, I mean what do you expect, it's like going on a road and being surprised to see a car. There also seems to be so many people out and about recently too (until it started raining, phew), so I have basically given up using off cycle routes in urban areas and have to dice with death on the roads and piss drivers off instead (I piss them off just because I am there).

Also why is it people spread out all across the path if they are in the same household? If you are a couple, you don't need to give a 2m gap why you spread out forcing anyone moving faster than you (even someone else walking at a faster pace) to go through the middle and getting within 2m, stick to one side. Lots of people do this on roads too, what if a car came? Large families too also spread across an entire 4m wide track, so how is anyone meant to get past, without getting too close?

Thankfully where I live at least I can run right into the moors and not see a soul, it's great or now drive off somewhere and go down down caves where I don't see anyone either, fantastic. Finally why is it people all go to the same place as everyone else? Carparks full, then F off somewhere else, don't just park on the road on a double yellow also stop following everyone else when there are many other path's available, its amazing at Greenfield Res it's like a bloody festival there last weekend on the bottom res, but the upper res's have no one at all! (I cycled there so did not use up a car parking space)

We are suppose to avoid everyone but for some-reason the "great british" public follow each other around like those dumb fluffy things on four legs. I don't get it, no wonder we are all F'd.

 

[Alex]

BTW how did we get onto complaining about each other path user from the origins of the virus?

 

[mikem]

Coz there's only so many conspiracy theories we can come up with 😉

 

[droid]

Please avoid sweeping comments like these.

If everybody on here did that then discussions would be very short.

specially where CRoW is concerned....

 

[ZombieCake]

Coz there's only so many conspiracy theories we can come up with

I've thought of a couple:

> It's a deep economic conspiracy by shampoo makers.  No one can get haircuts anymore (I'm not obsessed!), so you have to buy more stuff from the shampoo isle.

> If it was a lab release then a natural (or at least started as natural) virus stockpiled and used for 'research' would be best.  A man made virus that effectively says 'Made in China' or 'Property of the CIA' in its makeup wouldn't be good as a bio weapon as it gives the game away.  Easy to then divert attention and point the finger at other sources as well. Bats and pangolins don't have good lawyers.  Think of the good old days when the UK and others had buckets of anthrax and smallpox lying around.

 

[mikem]

so you have to buy more stuff from the shampoo isle.

Going to the dogs:
https://www.cherrybrook.com/grooming/shampoos-and-conditioners/isle-of-dogs-shampoo/

 

[DaveK]

Just to throw some more conspiracy theory into the mix, I thought people may be interested in the below, especially as some points have already been made in this thread.

https://project-evidence.github.io/

The paper basically lists a lot of coincidences and invites you to make your own conclusion (although it's clear what the authors think), but regardless of what you decide it is interesting at least. 

Plus in the best conspiracy theory fashion, it hasn't been peer reviewed, it's published on github (rather than in a journal), and the authors are anonymous.  At least the sources appear to be credible though.

 

[PeteHall]

Thanks for sharing that DaveK, a very interesting read so far (I've not finished it yet and I certainly haven't looked up every citation).

This particular quote pretty much sums up what I've thought about it for a while...

In order for this pandemic to have originated outside of a Wuhan biological laboratory, the following would have had to take place:

?  An unknown animal comes into contact with a bat carrying the virus that would become SARS-CoV-2. This bat, for some reason, is not hibernating during the winter unlike most other bats.

?  This animal is then hunted and killed by some unknown person who does not fall ill and does not spread SARS-CoV-2 to anyone else.

?  This animal is then sent from its original location to the Huanan Seafood Market. Along the way, it is handled by dozens to hundreds of transportation employees, all of whom do not get sick and do not spread the virus.

?  The animal finally reaches the market, at which point multiple people who encounter it are hospitalized, and the virus begins to spread at very high rates.

Perhaps this virus had been spreading undetected amongst animal populations for the past few months prior to the outbreak. But if this is the case, why would the spillover event to a human occur in Huanan Seafood Market? China has many hundreds of these markets in every province. We are looking at 1-in-several-thousand-odds that a natural outbreak would begin in this market versus all the others.

Consider the odds we are looking at of a natural outbreak occuring in a market less than 10 miles away from two labs which have previously housed bats and conducted research on bat coronaviruses, rather than any other market in China.

Four months into the outbreak, China, with its vast electronic surveillance network and army of CCTV cameras, still has not been able to provide any evidence that this virus originated anywhere other than the market in Wuhan.

We argue that it would be incredibly unlikely for a virus to materialize out of thin air in this particular market.

 

[mikem]

I believe the whole point was that the bat was collected (possibly from a winter roost) & came into contact with another species at the market - which avoids all those middle men...

 

[PeteHall]

Except that there were no bats at the market, as it doesn't sell bats.

 

[mikem]

Since when has anyone believed news from China...

Having said which, even they are coming to the view that it didn't originate at that particular market:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189599.shtml

 

[ZombieCake]

No sensible government would willing destroy their economy for a few years, have massive future redundancies, and effectively stop other actions such as cancer treatment referrals etc. for a bit of glorified flu from a single market place in a Chinese backwater that doesn't quite meet Michelin star standards.  There's more to this.

 

[pwhole]

That's pretty much what I said on the phone to my mum a couple of hours ago. This may go some way to explain the reasoning:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/15/covid-19-can-damage-lungs-victims-beyond-recognition-expert-says

?What you find in the lungs of people who have stayed with the disease for more than a month before dying is something completely different from normal pneumonia, influenza or the Sars virus,? he said. ?You see massive thrombosis. There is a complete disruption of the lung architecture ? in some lights you can?t even distinguish that it used to be a lung.

?There are large numbers of very big fused cells which are virus positive with as many as 10, 15 nuclei,? he said. ?I am convinced this explains the unique pathology of Covid-19. This is not a disease caused by a virus which kills cells, which had profound implications for therapy.?

 

[andrewmcleod]

We argue that it would be incredibly unlikely for a virus to materialize out of thin air in this particular market.

Well of course it's horrifically unlikely. There are 1.3 billion people in China alone, with who knows how many wet markets, and how many animals in close proximity to people, yet despite this major outbreaks of disease on this scale are very rare.

The virus that was circulating in animals would probably not have been infectious to humans (in the main) since the mutation required to jump species would provide no advantage in the animal host. The act of jumping species to humans probably only happened once, so it is not a surprise there is a single point of origin. If it was easier, we would get viruses jumping the species barrier all the time.

Also we don't think MERS, or SARS, or Spanish Flu, or swine flu, or H1N1, or all the other species-jumping viruses were grown in a lab. When you look at the one coincidence of a nearby viral lab against this context it is less of a coincidence...

 

[mikem]

Indeed, not only are there millions of people, but there are millions of bats in the area as well! (Part of the reason the lab was set up there in the first place).

& as they now don't believe the market to have been the origin point of the virus, it may even have followed the convoluted course decried by the conspiracy theory (& have infected those people along the way).