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Thread: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

  1. #281
    swabian's Avatar igni ferroque
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Thesaurian View Post
    It’s a shame we’ll never know what happened, because even if there is any hard evidence left, the Politburo will never permit a real investigation.
    There is simply no trustworthy information coming out of that damned country. This applies to economical data at the most obvious and it certainly applies sensitive stuff like that. We really will never know. However, since the Chinese pretend to be offended at any point of negotiation very readily, I think it's time to 'insult' them some more and to just ruthlessly infiltrate all of their crap. It's unfortunately very important and necessary to be prepared for their screw ups, because there will be much more on various levels in all kinds of matters.

  2. #282

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Possibly (hopefully probably) nothing but:

    A novel form of Langya henipavirus, LayV, has been found in the Shandong and Henan provinces of northeastern China. 35 cases are known thus far with no deaths yet reported.
    "The virus caused symptoms including fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and muscle aches" this Guardian article states:

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ozens-of-cases

    Its natural reservoir is thought to be mainly wild shrews. No human-to-human transmission has been confirmed to date. Oddly, it appears the Taiwanese CDC appears to be taking the lead in monitoring the situation:

    CDC to monitor novel virus after China infection reports - Focus Taiwan

    An article providing additional epidemiological information with a cautiously optimistic prognosis:

    A Newly Discovered Virus Has Likely Sickened Dozens in China—How Worried Should We Be? (msn.com)

    One posts this item here as it may be of tangential interest to the thread.

    "You know… the thing" - President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., vaguely alluding to the Declaration of Independence


  3. #283
    Praeses
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Thought I'd bump this as there's a recognition the thesis that COVID19 was leaked from a lab isn't just crazy conspiracy theory.

    I don't know if the previous naturally evolved thesis was a political con job or not but I certainly bought it, even though intellectually I had to admit it was possibly a cooked up virus I thought it most likely not. China has had a lot of species jumping viruses before.

    I guess the US wanted to hose down suspicion of China during a crisis? Are they beating this up again for the same reason? Or is the scientific community slowly painfully trying to clear a bit of politics off the floor so rational debate can continue?

    Certainly there were political decisions to obfuscate the science during the crisis. The suppression of advice about masks, vagueness about length of lockdowns etc stemmed in my view from government unpreparedness and willingness to lie to people. The excuse was probably "we want to avoid a panic" but I think it was as much about "we want to look like we know what we are doing but we forgot to stockpile N95s".

    I definitely bought the "very little chance it was leaked" line.
    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

  4. #284

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Or is the scientific community slowly painfully trying to clear a bit of politics off the floor so rational debate can continue?
    There hasn’t really been much change in this regard. The issue for those scientists who have been doing everything in their power to suppress inquiry is about personal conflicts of interest. The political situation just happened to benefit them. Now, the House of Representatives has unanimously voted to declassify everything that the US government knows, but I doubt there will be any smoking gun. Even if something more than circumstantial evidence comes to light, I suspect the reaction will be as Ebright predicts:

    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  5. #285
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    There hasn’t really been much change in this regard. The issue for those scientists who have been doing everything in their power to suppress inquiry is about personal conflicts of interest. The political situation just happened to benefit them. Now, the House of Representatives has unanimously voted to declassify everything that the US government knows, but I doubt there will be any smoking gun. Even if something more than circumstantial evidence comes to light, I suspect the reaction will be as Ebright predicts:

    Well I was pretty condescending to you about the lab theory "there's a theoretical chance it could be correct", but even I had to agree the financial interest a guy like Fauci had in this areas of research was a bad look.

    The Chinese lab research doesn't seem to have borne fruit, I'm told their vaccines are weak and from Xi down they have flipped from uberlockdown to let her rip.

    Very sad, in the past the "we know best" crowd in China enacted savage lockdowns and were somewhat effective in limiting outbreaks because the human cost was distegarded. The populist politicians have taken over from the callous technocrats and we have the worst of both in China now, unscientific but almost as uncaring.

  6. #286

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Regarding this recent news: The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic

    It’s more research done by the same cohort of known liars, only this time, they’ve started their media campaign before even posting a preprint, so no one can independently examine their data and methods. From what they say, there were swabs taken at the market that had both virus RNA and raccoon dog DNA, therefore it’s possible that raccoon dogs were infected, to which I would respond “so?” I’m sure that there was DNA from a lot of animals at the market. How would a virus that jumped from raccoon dogs have immediately been highly adapted to infecting human ACE2 receptors? There were also a lot more swabs that contained both virus RNA and Human DNA of course, so in light of the characteristics the virus was already known to posses at that time, it’s considerably more likely that humans brought the virus to the market, perhaps from the BSL-2 lab in the same neighborhood, that we now know they were doing experiments at with chimeric bat coronaviruses adapted to infect human ACE2 receptors, presumably because it was less expensive than working at their BSL-4 lab that was only a bit further away.

    They didn’t actually find SARS-CoV-2 in racoon dogs, but even if they had, the obvious explanation would be that it jumped from humans, just like it jumped from humans to so many other species. In order to identify an intermediate host to support natural origin, instead, they would need to find precursor or closely related virus that is (or was) not already highly adapted to infecting humans. If the virus was completely of natural origin without ever having passed through a lab, that would mean that it had been circulating through the population for a long time before Chinese authorities ever noticed it, or that if anyone had noticed it, they deliberately kept that information to themselves.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  7. #287

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Thought I'd bump this as there's a recognition the thesis that COVID19 was leaked from a lab isn't just crazy conspiracy theory.
    There is something fundamentally wrong with our culture if suggesting that an accident happened qualifies as a conspiracy. I really wish such sloppy language was not used at all.

  8. #288
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    Regarding this recent news: The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic

    It’s more research done by the same cohort of known liars, only this time, they’ve started their media campaign before even posting a preprint, so no one can independently examine their data and methods. From what they say, there were swabs taken at the market that had both virus RNA and raccoon dog DNA, therefore it’s possible that raccoon dogs were infected, to which I would respond “so?” I’m sure that there was DNA from a lot of animals at the market. How would a virus that jumped from raccoon dogs have immediately been highly adapted to infecting human ACE2 receptors? There were also a lot more swabs that contained both virus RNA and Human DNA of course, so in light of the characteristics the virus was already known to posses at that time, it’s considerably more likely that humans brought the virus to the market, perhaps from the BSL-2 lab in the same neighborhood, that we now know they were doing experiments at with chimeric bat coronaviruses adapted to infect human ACE2 receptors, presumably because it was less expensive than working at their BSL-4 lab that was only a bit further away.

    They didn’t actually find SARS-CoV-2 in racoon dogs, but even if they had, the obvious explanation would be that it jumped from humans, just like it jumped from humans to so many other species. In order to identify an intermediate host to support natural origin, instead, they would need to find precursor or closely related virus that is (or was) not already highly adapted to infecting humans. If the virus was completely of natural origin without ever having passed through a lab, that would mean that it had been circulating through the population for a long time before Chinese authorities ever noticed it, or that if anyone had noticed it, they deliberately kept that information to themselves.
    Burned up my Atlantic access for the month Can you summarize a more expansively if you have the time or is there good alternative link?
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

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    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  9. #289

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    Burned up my Atlantic access for the month Can you summarize a more expansively if you have the time or is there good alternative link?
    These two articles summarize everything of substance:

    New COVID origins data suggests pandemic linked to animals

    Genetic Data Links Covid Origins To Raccoon Dogs Sold At Wuhan Wet Market, Reports Say
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  10. #290
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Thanks
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  11. #291
    swabian's Avatar igni ferroque
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    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Having "survived" covid by now, i must say that it impresses me, after having been vaccinated 3 times, it still laid me low for 5 days. Which is more than most viruses could achieve in my life.

    I'm still asking myself why this cannot come from some gross bat soup in China. It certainly was not someones deliberate attempt at killing people.

  12. #292

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by swabian View Post
    I'm still asking myself why this cannot come from some gross bat soup in China. It certainly was not someones deliberate attempt at killing people.
    The most obvious explanation is and has always been that the virus escaped the lab accidentally and China tried to hush it up and contain it in all quiet. And when they failed and realized it is going to be all over, they warned the rest of the world and shared their information, including detailed data on mortality rates. Nothing that I have seen would even remotely point at a deliberate attempt to harm everyone, including themselves. Sometimes things happen when you play with fire.

    EDIT: Of all the places in the world, a bat coronavirus starts to spread from a location basically right across the street from a lab that experiments on bat coronaviruses. The whole world starts screaming that this could not have come out of a lab. And ridiculing those who say it could have. That is one of the most bizarre things I have witnessed in all of my life.
    Last edited by Septentrionalis; March 18, 2023 at 05:46 AM.

  13. #293

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by swabian View Post
    I'm still asking myself why this cannot come from some gross bat soup in China.
    In addition to the Chinese authorities evasive behavior and withholding of evidence, here are a few reasons why I think a lab leak is the most plausible explanation:

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology were using a “reverse genetics” technique that allowed them to seamlessly create new viruses based on RNA code from two or more different viruses. A virus made from the parts of two or more different viruses is called a chimeric virus. SARS-CoV-2 is a chimeric virus made out of the parts of at least two distantly related viruses.

    Using their reverse-genetics system, the Wuhan Institute of Virology were grafting spike proteins from various coronaviruses they’ve found into other coronaviruses. The specific way that SARS-CoV-2 is chimeric is that it has a spike protein from a different lineage of distantly related coronaviruses.

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology was passaging the chimeric viruses they were creating through mice who were genetically engineered to express human ACE2 receptors. They were creating chimeric coronaviruses that they believed would be more able to infect human ACE2 receptors and testing them in such a way that they would inevitably increase that infectivity further. SARS-CoV-2 is highly adapted to infecting human ACE2 receptors.

    The only close relative of SARS-CoV-2 ever found in the wild was in Mojiang cave about 1600 kilometers away from Wuhan where the Wuhan Institute of Virology collected it and several other coronaviruses that they brought back to their storage facilities in Wuhan. They have never published the sequences of the other viruses they found there.

    In summary, the Wuhan Institute of Virology were genetically engineering the exact type of virus that SARS-CoV-2 is, using the code of multiple viruses, which may have included SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relative or an even closer relative found in the same cave. Plus, they were doing this in a low bio safety level facility.

    In the interest of being concise, I’ve simplified things a bit in this post, but I should add one caveat: A chimeric coronavirus can occur naturally if viruses of two or more different strains infect the same cell of the same animal at the same time, because the RNA from two strains can recombine together. However, in SARS-CoV-2 it looks like all the RNA came from the same lineage as the related virus from Mojiang cave except for the spike protein code, which suggests to me that it was done deliberately, rather than the result of a random event.

    In my opinion, it’s the characteristics of the virus itself that make the lab leak the most plausible explanation, and my opinion is the same as what several of the virologists who are arguing for natural origin are on record as having said in private.
    Last edited by sumskilz; March 18, 2023 at 11:42 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  14. #294

    Default Re: The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    [MiniTru enters]
    In addition to the Chinese authorities COOPERATIVE behavior and SHARING of evidence, here are a few reasons why I think a lab leak is NOT the most plausible explanation:
    Fauci is Always Right
    [Thought Police are coming to reward you for your support]
    Last edited by Infidel144; March 18, 2023 at 11:52 AM.

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