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The first rule of knowledge is to ask the right questions. We’ll tell you the second later. Today, that most admirable Journal Nature gets close to asking exactly the right, sensible questions about where this whole sorry Covid mess came from:
Following a month-long fact-finding mission in China, a World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the virus probably originated in bats and passed to people through an intermediate animal. But fundamental questions remain about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.
Nature speaks to four of the WHO investigators about five questions they still want answered.Nature | 7 min read
We’re not going to steal their thunder, perish the thought, but here are the five questions
Was the virus circulating in Wuhan before the outbreak was declared ? The internet is chock full of people with opinions on this, often with agendas of their own. Here you will find some cool headed analysis-and the findings may surprise you
Was the virus circulating outside China before that fateful December 2019? We’ve touched on this before at LSS-and it looks as if some pretty thorough follow-ups are taking place at last.
Was it the infamous Wuhan meat market? Maybe everyone zoomed in too fast on this back last year. After all, where do markets get their supplies from?
What about frozen meat? Maybe it didn’t come in from local fresh sources, but from much further away!
Was it wild animals? Ah this one’s almost nostalgic now-remember all those bats and pangolins? So what other viruses are out there -and how often do they jump the species barrier?
Oh yeah -the second rule of knowledge. We almost forgot, sorry. Never listen to anyone who knows the answers, especially when they have no training in the field they are sounding off about. The ones who don’t know are usually right-and they keep asking questions. Wanting cognitive closure is a sure sign of being an idiot.
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Learning, Science and Society 