Covid absolutely is like the flu in presentation to ordinary people. That's quite literally how the warning was communicated to the general public. Here's quite literally the first sentence from my local health authority's guidance.

Flu and COVID-19 The symptoms of COVID-19 (coronavirus) are like flu symptoms. The main difference is that you usually do not have shortness of breath when you have the flu.

https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/flu/symptoms-diagnosis/

At no point have I said it can't have come from China. I said quite the opposite. I'm saying the first report coming from Wuhan in particular and a single wet market from the thousands in China when the specific virus had already spread internationally anywhere from 3 to 6 months earlier is an absurd thing for you to insist it came from Wuhan originally, and a ridiculous thing to make you say 'most likely from the lab because they were studying bats'. Because yes, you did say it was 'most likely' from the Wuhan lab.

You're trying to paint me as a conspiracy theorist because you like your own baseless conspiracy theory?

[–] alternative_factor@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where did I say it most likely came from a lab, qoute me right now.

[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab

Did you, like, forget your own post? "On accident"?

Again, for the millionth time: it showing up in Wuhan in December means literally nothing to the origin of the virus if it, and I'll be very clear here and agree in principle to literally everything else you've said, if it had spread from Yunnan province (in tropical Asia) to Italy by September or indeed May.

And, because you edited in the stuff about Yunnan apparently after I'd gone to sleep: Wuhan is in Heibei province in Central China. Not Yunnan. Any pangolins in any market even if present (and scientists tracking trafficked animals from Oxford say they weren't), would have come from further south such as, yes, Yunnan. Or any of dozens of other places in tropical Asia, from where someone could also have in a single day traveled to Europe.

I simply cannot understand how an educated person would boil it down to this idea:

The virus is 99% similar to one in pangolins in Yunnan province and so if coming from a lab it must come from a lab in Wuhan, Heibei where they studied bats, and then it either spread from there in December 2019 to the people in Wuhan but also and traveled in time and space to Italy in September 2019, or spread from the lab at some undetermined time but did not affect anyone in China for 3 months, spreading instead to Italy and Spain and other places and eventually decided, like so many Chinese people, to return home for Chinese New Year back first to the exact city it came from, in Central China.