(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Still no evidence for the 'lab leak' theory of COVID, but now scientists have fingered a new suspect [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-28 Did China try to suppress early information about COVID-19? Absolutely. Did it interfere with initial investigations of the virus origin? That, too. Did some of China’s actions make it more difficult to tell where the virus actually originated? They sure did, There are two good reasons for this. Actually, make that three. First, China was very probably concerned about the possibility that the virus … escaped from the virology lab in Wuhan, China. Because that seemed like a very real possibility that should not have been discounted without at least some investigation. That’s why President Joe Biden ordered all U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of COVID-19 back in 2021. The result of that investigation was that the agencies could not reach consensus, or find any evidence to support a particular theory. Chinese officials were probably in that same place when the virus appeared. They certainly knew they had a virology lab in the city where the virus appeared. They knew that lab had sometimes come under criticism for its containment policies. They were in no hurry to point the finger at themselves. Second, Chinese officials were also likely suspicious of the “wet market” at Wuhan, where live animals, including exotic animals and wild-caught animals, were sold for food, fur, and traditional medicine. These markets have come in for almost universal criticism, not just for sanitary reasons, but because they routinely deal with endangered and protected animals—not just just those native to China, but also animals that have been illegally imported. Chinese officials also routinely ignore every law that’s supposed to regulate such markets, and their looking the other way probably represents a cash flow no one was eager to interrupt. Third, China … is China. Everyone employed by the Chinese government in a task more sensitive that scraping gum off the sidewalk has long ago learned that sharing information is dangerous. Ask a Chinese official to see photos of their new cute puppy, and you’re likely to get stock photos of Lassie or a blank stare accompanied by “Dog? What dog?” However, there have been multiple investigations into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and they’ve all come to the same conclusions. As this article in Science noted in July 2022: The precise events surrounding virus spillover will always be clouded, but all of the circumstantial evidence so far points to more than one zoonotic event occurring in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, likely during November–December 2019. Investigations have continued since then, but the answer that keeps coming back is still the same: The virus most likely originated in a cross-over from animals to humans. That event (or events) most likely happened at the wet market. However, writing at The Washington Post, science journalist David Quammen reports on a new aspect to the investigations into how COVID-19 became a human disease. Based on generic analysis following a report that appeared last week, the bat-to to-human chain of events has a new prime suspect when it comes to filling that middle step. Their report on the data—previously unpublished genomic sequences, which turned up on a public online data platform and then were abruptly removed—casts suspicion on one particular wild animal as an intermediate host of the virus, a link between its inferred natural source in bats and its entry into humans: the raccoon dog. The common raccoon dog, Nyctereutes procyonoides, is neither a raccoon through a dog—though it is in the dog family. It’s a chunky little boi more closely related to foxes than domestic dogs. (It’s also a different species than the Japanese raccoon dog, Nyctereutes viverrinus, which is featured at the top of the page mainly because Getty had such a nice photo of one being charming during a LPGA tournament). They do share this trait with raccoons: They will eat anything. Their diet includes bugs, mice, birds, frogs, fish, snakes, clams, crabs, sea urchins, bird eggs, fruit, nuts … and garbage. These days, they eat a lot of human garbage. A raccoon dog chilling in Switzerland. They also breed well and spread rapidly. They eat almost anything. And Thanks to a Soviet plan to make food out of them, they’re now an invasive pest throughout large areas of Europe. Cute invasive pests. But still invasive pests whose omnivorous diets make them a threat to displace native populations of just about anything. In Sweden, Quammen reports that the government has asked hunters to shoot raccoon dogs on sight, in an effort to slow their spread. However, that’s far less disturbing that how they’re treated back in China. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/28/2160699/-Still-no-evidence-for-the-lab-leak-theory-of-COVID-but-now-scientists-have-fingered-a-new-suspect Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/