If you wonder about the “escaped from a lab” theory, ^^^, please listen to the TWiV podcast (this week in virology). They have made it very clear many times that this virus is from nature, and only from nature. For example, bats in southern China harbor an estimated 1.7 million novel coronaviruses - they are inevitable. The bats have contact with people, especially rural people, in countless ways, and mainly stealthy ways since they are active at night. If a lab had been studying this particular virus it would have been known in much of the world because the scientific community is very much an international community - they talk to each other, share information, resources, etc. If it “escaped” from that lab it would have hit the lab workers and their associates and families first. I could go on.
We need lots of wildlife sampling in China to find out exactly how it got to that wet market.
I’ve read that the people may have come out of the wet market with the virus because people came into the wet market with the virus. We know the virus came from bats, we know that viruses jump from bats to people, we know that the virus can be around at a low level in a population for a while before exploding in a superspreading event.
I don’t recall where I read it. It seems so long ago!
I read the Wuhan lab had been studying bat coronaviruses & there was open speculation about the possibility a virus (not made in the lab) might have escaped.
The panelists on TWIV seemed to knock that one down firmly, vouching for the integrity of the lab & its director.
My VISA sent out new contactless cards a few weeks ago, even though our old ones weren’t expiring. I used it at Trader Joe’s a couple of weeks ago, and both the clerk and I were impressed. It was the first time she had seen one used, which makes me think they might have recently installed the readers.
I’m guessing more and more credit card companies will send out contactless cards, and more and more businesses will switch to machines that can read them. Hopefully medical offices will be among them.
We got new ones from Citibank Mastercard in April. I was pretty impressed at how quickly they got on it. Of course, I’m doing everything over the phone/online so haven’t been able to test it out yet.
@emilybee, I’m confused by the chart that you posted. It shows less than a 50% chance of hitting 200,000 by Sept 1st, yet you state it predicts 212,000 by that date. Seems like 49% is basically a coin flip as to whether that prediction is accurate. Am I missing something?
A coin flip is not the right comparison here. We’re not talking about a 50% chance of 112,000 more people dead and a 50% chance of no more deaths.
Their best estimate is 212,000 deaths. They think there is about a 50% chance that there will be more than 212,000. But as you can see, by September 1 they have a wide uncertainty.
So many states are just a hair below or even above RO of 1.0 which means cases will increase as they open. That’s scary. Too bad we couldn’t have gotten that RO way, way down super low in the months we stayed home. I worry about the states that are above it already and opening and what that means for the country as a whole.
I’ll bite, since I believe I agreed with a post that referenced this.
Not much doubt we’ve been reading different sources but that goes without saying.
I doubt there would be that much traction in what y’all seem to be classifying as ‘conspiracy’ or ‘UFO’ theory, if the Chinese government had done a few things differently.
First, is what was done after the fact at the Wuhan wet market. I too, was reading months ago when the news was that the market had been speedily cleaned out and disinfected. Some consternation in medical circles at that, since it looked like that would make it extremely difficult to trace the animal to human vector that was put forth for this one.
Second, is the news that the Chinese government did take samples, but are loath to share them with the West.
Third, is the fact that they were doing ‘gain of function’ viral work in Wuhan.
Most, if not all of this, I’ve seen in the WSJ over the last couple months. The ‘gain of function’ work was published in a 2015 paper and elicited the same ‘consternation’ from Western scientists back then, that the sanitizing of the market and hoarding of samples has recently.
(Honest question: has anyone seen an authoritative source substantiate the claim that China continued allowing international flights to depart Wuhan/Hubei after shutting down the domestic ones?
Not the US sponsored flights out, but general departures)
