The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19

[Cyclops]

Regarding Dominic Dwyer's opinion piece:

Phrases like "we spoke to" and "we heard that" aren't going to satisfy anyone calling for an independent investigation.

Likewise:

In other words, they didn't actually look at the closest virus to Sars-CoV-2 that the WIV were working on, and they accepted a ridiculous excuse for its disapearance.

In support of the lab leak hypothesis is the fact that the virus first appeared already well-adapted to infecting people in Wuhan far away from any likely natural sources and without any identified sister or precursor clades in the population. The seemingly pre-adapted state of the virus when it was first documented could be accounted for if the virus had been pre-circulating in humans for some time and only coincidentally first appeared in Wuhan near the one lab in the country doing the exact types of experiments that would produce such a virus. If this were the case, ancestral and sister clades should appear in pre-COVID blood samples. These have not been found, at least not that anyone is willing to admit to. I say the latter, because this best alternative (and natural) explanation for the peculiarities of the virus is also something the Chinese government would want to cover up, because it could potentially indicate incompetence on their part in that they had failed to recognize the risk or that they did know but hid it from the rest of the world for much longer than is already suspected.

Yes thats the sensible part of the debate, and its worth discussing.

I was interested at the extent of involvement of US interests in Wuhan you pointed out much earlier on (I think Fauci had skin in the game? not a great look at all), its completely against the "Us vs Them" narrative the Trump simps pedalled when he was on that particular bull**** jag. Generally these issues are so much more complex than the knee jerk ideologues paint them, as with the "injecting fishtank cleaner" and "shine a light up your butt" stuff: there were worthwhile threads to be had but it got drowned out in the gotchafest.

I mean painting the rotten Chinese oligarchs as the sole cause of the plague is as stupid as blaming Trump solely for the mess. Previous versions of Corona jumped species without lab help (whether or not that happened this time), and it'll happen again.

Looking forward if we have another halfwit president in a system that spins every mfing detail into red and blue blamethowers we're done. As coronaviruses go it was stronger and weaker in different ways to the last couple. The mix could have been far far worse, imagine a longer incubation with pre-symptomatic infectivity and higher mortaility and another blabbercratican in charge.

I like my allies strong, and Big Oil and Big Tech have managed to weaken the system badly. Hopefully we see both, and the virus, reined in.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I mean painting the rotten Chinese oligarchs as the sole cause of the plague is as stupid as blaming Trump solely for the mess. Previous versions of Corona jumped species without lab help (whether or not that happened this time), and it'll happen again.

Again, it’s been objectively shown through a cross reference between a UK study on the timing of the Chinese government’s eventual response, and public reporting, that the CCP coverup made the difference between a global outbreak and a 95% reduction in the number of cases that would also have confined the disease to a regional level. Furthermore, as a party to the WHO IHR, Chinese authorities were obligated to notify the WHO of any “public health emergency of international concern” within 24 hours of discovery. The CCP coverup meant the WHO was not notified for weeks after the illness was first detected by doctors in China, all while the CCP cracked down on journalists and doctors for trying to raise the alarm.

Even then, the CCP only acknowledged the outbreak to the WHO after the latter had already found out about it from their own online sources, and pressed the government for information. Moreover, the WHO facilitated the CCP coverup by going along with the Politburo’s narrative, and declining to publicize warnings from Taiwan’s CDC about the evidence of human transmission in December 2019. “Taiwan’s government believed the evidence of human-to-human transmission to be so great that on the same day they contacted the WHO, the Taiwanese instituted enhanced border control and quarantine measures ‘based on the assumption that human-to-human transmission was in fact occurring.’” By reacting earlier and more swiftly than any other country on earth, Taiwan was able to remain an outlier in the pandemic, while the rest of the world, relying on information from the Politburo and the WHO, was hit hard.

By January 6, the US CDC was repeatedly asking the PRC for access so that US experts could assist in the response. They were refused until mid-February as part of a WHO team, weeks after the US confirmed its first case, a traveler from Wuhan. Even the Chinese government’s decision to provide the genetic sequence of the virus to the WHO was forced, a week after a Chinese doctor in Shanghai had leaked it online anyway. Weeks after Taiwan had sounded the alarm about human transmission to the WHO, the latter was still publicly denying they had any evidence for it, all while CCP officials were privately panicking about the rapid spread.

On January 20, one month after Wuhan officials were formally notified of the new virus, the Politburo publicly acknowledged the outbreak for the first time, and urged a strong response. By then, the virus had already spread internationally. As the Axios report concludes, “China is now trying to create a narrative that it's an example of how to handle this crisis when in fact its early actions led to the virus spreading around the globe.” You can read the fully sourced Congressional report here. Painting this as some kind of partisan opinion is as stupid as accepting the WHO findings at face value.

[chriscase]

Please keep in mind the debate forum rules, particularly the first two:

Forum Rules

1) Debate in good faith and respect other members. Elaborate and further develop your arguments whilst trying to respond to other members' arguments. Do not continue to repeat the same arguments.

2) Address the argument, do not attack the person. Debates should be as detached and impersonal as possible. Do not post in such a manner that would elicit a strong, emotional response if possible. Your argument should be phrased in such a way that minimizes the ability to misread the post.

[Ludicus]

The CCP coverup is the direct cause of the global pandemic.

The direct cause of the pandemic is the COVID-19 virus.Totalitarian regimes, just because they are totalitarian, are not always to blame for everything (1). Trump would be the first to hide or downplay the risks, and under those circumstances we would have China now blaming the US.When they had the full understanding of what was happening,within 3 weeks from the identification of the virus,they put themselves into action (2)

(1)Matthew 7:3-5.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Fort Detrick: When Institutions Fail to Protect Us | Time
John Hopkins It Would Break Your Heart - Death & Data - Sections
Stop and Listen to the People: An Enhanced Approach to Am J Public Health. 2014 July;
Thousands sign petition to renew search for Fort Detrick

-----
(2) Courrier International, French magazine, March 2021. Rough translation.

The differences between Europe and Asia

It's a cold Wednesday in Wuhan and the Vox Livehouse bar, famous for its rock concerts, is overflowing with young people who have come to party. "Tonight forget your worries. Let's just dance high," urges the lead singer of the local band. The audience responds with redoubled energy, mingling among the crowd, shaking their heads to the rhythm of the music, raising their fists in the air. While several countries are fighting new waves of COVId-19 and imposing tighter restrictions, life goes on at full speed in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, the starting point of the epidemic: restaurants and cinemas are filling up, the streets are bustling, and large conferences are again being organized. The city has not registered a single case of local infection for several months

----

Let's go back in time.
Genava’s opening post, January 26, 2020, thread Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

Yazdanpaneh, a leading French expert who heads Bichat's infectious diseases unit...said, the chance of "an epidemic in France or in Europe is weak, extremely weak."

I wrote, on January 28,

Wuhan virus is more dangerous than the SARS. Why? unlike SARS, the new virus is infectious during its incubation period.Add to that the incubation period, the Wuhan virus can be contagious for as many 14 days before the first clinical symptoms. SARS virus was contagious only when patients have symptoms- such as fever or cough. In fact, no cases of SARS were reported among persons who were exposed to a SARS patient before the onset of the patient's symptoms.

On the same day, Common Soldier writes,

I wonder if the US or other governments would have the courage to quarantine LA or New York during New Years to prevent the spread of a similar disease.

Legio, focused on blaming China, disagrees,

quarantines tend to backfire, if only because their punitive nature incentivizes people to work against them... Mitigation through transparency and public information renders drastic measures like quarantines, that have mixed effectiveness in the first place, counterproductive under most circumstances”

Oh really, “counterproductive”. Now that the US has surpassed half a million dead, whom is to blame?

--
The Lab theory revisited.
Angela Rasmussen- objective investigations have been derailed by politics and conspiracy theories.
On the origins of SARS-CoV-2 | Nature Medicine Published: 13 January 2021

(...) Despite much noise to the contrary, there is no credible evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was ever known to virologists before it emerged in December 2019, and all indications suggest that, like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, this virus probably evolved in a bat host until an unknown spillover event into humans occurred.

(...) A favorite version of the laboratory-origin stories relies on the fact that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered for gain-of-function studies that were also previously performed with bat SARS-like coronaviruses to understand cross-species transmission risk (Nat. Med. 21, 1508–1513; 2015). The irony is that those gain-of-function studies provided valuable information about the biology of SARS-CoV-2. Gain-of-function research is also subject to intense scrutiny and governmental oversight, precisely because of the high risk involved in conducting it safely; thus, it is extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar.

Moreover, there is an extensive history of pathogen emergence by natural means: most novel viral pathogens that have caused epidemics or pandemics in the human population have emerged naturally from a wildlife reservoir. Therefore, the overwhelming conclusion is that this virus, too, found its way into a human host through a series of unhappy accidental encounters with animals. The laboratory origin stories have taken on a new life as political propaganda, with wide-ranging, deeply harmful implications.
In February, US senator Tom Cotton appeared on Fox News to share his fervent belief that the virus was a biological weapon. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also heavily implied that SARS-CoV-2 has anthropogenic origins. US president Donald Trump himself has given the theory further credence.
In addition, the Rule of Law Society, an institution with no clear scientific mandate that was directed by former Trump White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon until his recent indictment for fraud, has sponsored two preprints claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered as a bioweapon and alleging an international cover-up by the global scientific community.

The lead author of those preprints, Yan Li-Meng, has personally attacked scientists engaged in combating this misinformation with evidence, including me. As a result, I’ve been threatened with violence and sexual assault, an occupational hazard of misinformation debunking that I’ve unfortunately come to expect.
Although this is deeply unpleasant, I am more concerned about the long-term effects of this type of misinformation for scientists around the world and our ability to conduct impactful scientific research on emerging viruses with pandemic potential.
In April 2020, we witnessed firsthand how misinformation about the virus’ origins can destroy research when President Trump ordered the National Institutes of Health to strip the EcoHealth Alliance of a grant that involved close collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The NIH justified the cancellation by saying the research, which investigated bat SARS-like coronaviruses circulating in China and zoonotic spillover, did not align with NIH priorities, which strains credulity. This work produced some of the strongest corroborating evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is a naturally emergent pathogen, as serological surveys demonstrated that people living in close proximity to colonies of bats had antibodies to bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
The NIH has since set impossible conditions for restoring the grant, ensuring that this research will never resume. This set a chilling precedent by imposing a tremendous and unnecessary setback on the efforts to understand SARS-CoV-2, eroding trust in scientists and disrupting productive international collaborations that are essential both in this pandemic and to global health security over the longer term.

Public health is an enterprise that requires the engagement of the global public health community. As such, countering the corruption of science with politics will require a community effort. The stakeholders in public health—scientists, clinicians and, most importantly, the public—must push back against political interference in essential, objective scientific investigations. We must demand that funding agencies such as the NIH justify overtly political funding decisions for critically important work. A great amount of good can be done by debunking misinformation consistently and educating the public about the need for unbiased, data-focused research into virus origins.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The direct cause of the pandemic is the COVID-19 virus.Totalitarian regimes, just because they are totalitarian, are not always to blame for everything (1). Trump would be the first to hide or downplay the risks, and under those circumstances we would have China now blaming the US.When they had the full understanding of what was happening,within 3 weeks from the identification of the virus,they put themselves into action (2)

(1)Matthew 7:3-5.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Fort Detrick: When Institutions Fail to Protect Us | Time
John Hopkins It Would Break Your Heart - Death & Data - Sections
Stop and Listen to the People: An Enhanced Approach to Am J Public Health. 2014 July;
Thousands sign petition to renew search for Fort Detrick

-----
(2) Courrier International, French magazine, March 2021. Rough translation.


----

“What about if Trump did the same as the CCP if Covid started in the US” is not only meaningless conjecture, it also has nothing to with the basic facts you continue to reject, deflect, and dodge in defense of the Politburo. Your denials have been completely refuted.

Let's go back in time.
Genava’s opening post, January 26, 2020, thread Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

I wrote, on January 28,

On the same day, Common Soldier writes,

Legio, focused on blaming China, disagrees,


Oh really, “counterproductive”. Now that the US has surpassed half a million dead, whom is to blame?

The purpose of quoting my accurate and fully sourced statements from another thread is....?

[Ludicus]

“Trump would have done the same as the CCP” is not only meaningless conjecture

Not at all, it is highly predictable. All The Times Trump Compared Covid-19 To The Flu, Even ...

The purpose of quoting my accurate and fully sourced statements from another thread is....?

..is to show the obvious.The so- called "totalitarian counterproductive measures" (strict lockdowns) are/were the only ones that made a real difference.It would be much worse if the epidemic had started in the US - or in Europe.

Again, it’s been objectively shown.. that the CCP coverup made the difference between a global outbreak and a 95% reduction in the number of cases that would also have confined the disease to a regional level.

Where? not in the planet Earth, I suppose.

-----------

Back on the topic,
Angela Rasmussen, “

While we can't rule out a laboratory origin for the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence to date suggests zoonotic emergence.I'm going to scream if I have to explain the fact that many viruses have cleavage sites”

[Lord Thesaurian]

Not at all, it is highly predictable. All The Times Trump Compared Covid-19 To The Flu, Even ...

So you admit it’s meaningless conjecture?

..is to show the obvious.The so- called "totalitarian counterproductive measures" (strict lockdowns) are/were the only ones that made a real difference.

This lie was debunked in the post you took the quote from. I’ll consider such tactics a concession your refuted claims have been reduced to unfalsifiable whataboutism; a fitting addition to the mindless defense of the CCP.

[Cyclops]

...Not at all, it is highly predictable. All The Times Trump Compared Covid-19 To The Flu, Even ...
“

People tied themselves in knots trying to make sense of this babbling git. I feel bad for most republicans bound by party loyalty to observe due diligence defending possible sensible interpretations of this guff. Weirdly the Democrats rarely landed a glove on him, I think they have gotten lazy just waiting for the pendulum to swing.

...
Back on the topic,
Angela Rasmussen, “

I think the thread has run its course, we can't know but its been interesting following the informed debate between the witless ranting.

Its been helpful for an ignoramus like me. The fact coronaviruses (I want to say coronavirii so badly) don't mutate as readily as say the flu was a surprise. Its a sad indictment that places like the US Brazil and South Africa have been unable (and even more damning that the UK was unwilling) to restrict the spread, leading to possibly significant mutations.

[Infidel144]

Judicial Watch: New Emails Detail WHO/NIH Accommodations to Chinese Confidentiality ‘Terms’
"Judicial Watch announced today that it and the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) received 301 pages of emails and other records of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showing that National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020."

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-...ils-who-terms/

[Lord Thesaurian]

WHO caught once again between CCP narratives and the public demand for evidence:

The World Health Organization hasn’t ruled out any hypotheses about the roots of Covid-19, according to the group’s chief, after a fact-finding mission to China rejected speculation that the coronavirus could have leaked from a lab.

All avenues of research remain open, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing Friday. The investigation “has added important information that takes us closer to understanding the origins of the virus,” particularly in the early days of the pandemic.

The mission followed months of negotiation with China. Stung by criticism that it initially covered up the extent of the crisis, Chinese state media and officials have promoted the theory that the virus didn’t start in China, but was brought in.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ab-leak-theory

Preliminary evidence provides ample grounds for more research, but its virtually impossible to imagine that research will ever happen.

Many questions remain unanswered about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Prominent virologists have implicated in a Nature Medicine letter that laboratory escape, while not being entirely ruled out, was unlikely and that no sign of genetic manipulation is present in the SARS-CoV-2 genome4. However, here we show that genetic evidence within the spike gene of SARS-CoV-2 genome (restriction sites flanking the RBM; tandem rare codons used at the inserted furin-cleavage site) does exist and suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 genome should be a product of genetic manipulation. Furthermore, the proven concepts, well-established techniques, and knowledge and expertise are all in place for the convenient creation of this novel coronavirus in a short period of time.

http://gnews-media-offload.s3.amazon...an_Report-.pdf

On the basis of our analysis, an artificial origin of SARS‐CoV‐2 is not a baseless conspiracy theory that is to be condemned[66] and researchers have the responsibility to consider all possible causes for SARS‐CoV‐2 emergence. The insertion of human‐adapted pangolin CoV RBD obtained by cell/animal serial passage and furin cleavage site could arise from site‐directed mutagenesis experiments, in a context of evolutionary studies or development of pan‐CoV vaccines or drugs. A recent article in Nature[67] affirms that a laboratory origin for SARS‐CoV‐2 cannot be ruled out, as researchers could have been infected accidentally, and that gain‐of‐function experiments resulting in SARS‐CoV‐2 could have been performed at WIV. Genetic manipulation of SARS‐CoV‐2 may have been carried out in any laboratory in the world with access to the backbone sequence and the necessary equipment and it would not leave any trace. Modern technologies based on synthetic genetics platforms allow the reconstruction of viruses based on their genomic sequence, without the need of a natural isolate.[68]

A thorough investigation on strain collections and research records in all laboratories involved in CoV research before SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreak is urgently needed. Special attention should be paid to strains of CoVs that were generated in virology laboratories but have not yet been published, as those possibly described in the deleted WIV database. Because finding a possible natural host could take years, as with the first SARS,[67] or never succeed, equal priority should be given to investigating natural and laboratory origins of SARS‐CoV‐2.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...bies.202000240

The search continues, likely cloak and dagger stuff as western intelligence agencies try to penetrate CCP propaganda and get to the truth:

A Western intelligence official who has seen classified material told NBC News the U.S. has substantial intelligence that has not been made public about actions the Chinese government took — related to the Wuhan lab and other issues — that were designed to obscure the origins of Covid-19 and conceal its early impact. A former U.S. official who has also seen the intelligence agreed that it was significant, if inconclusive.

U.S. intelligence agencies and scientists say they have ruled out that Covid-19 was human-made or intentionally released. The lab theory hypothesizes an accidental release of a virus found in nature by researchers and brought in for study.

They say it's suspicious that the virus outbreak arose in Wuhan, a hub of virus research in China, while the bats that commonly carry coronaviruses are typically found in caves a thousand miles from that city.

They note that scientists also have not found a host animal that could have transferred the virus to humans, after a year of looking.

WHO researchers acknowledged last week that the "wet" or live-animal market in Wuhan, which was originally thought to be a likely source of the outbreak, may not be the whole story, since early cases have been identified in people who had no connection to the market.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...ident-n1258032

[Ludicus]

This lie was debunked in the post you took the quote from...a fitting addition to the mindless defense of the CCP

Legio, a large part of your posts constantly mention the "lies" of those who debate with you. It's a repetitive, agressive behavior. No, you stated wrongly that “Mitigation through transparency and public information renders drastic measures like quarantine counterproductive under most circumstances”
It rarely works. Look at the complete disaster that happened here Portugal extends COVID-19 lockdown,
Europe is using longer, stricter lockdowns to fight coronavirus ...
-----------------
And look at China. China beat the coronavirus with science and strong public Health measures, not just with authoritarianism-The Conversation...

I live in a democracy. But as Thanksgiving approached, I found myself longing for the type of freedom I am seeing in China. People in China are able to move around freely right now. Many Americans may believe that the Chinese are able to enjoy this freedom because of China’s authoritarian regime.
SARS exposed serious weaknesses in China’s public health system and prompted its government to reinvent its public health system. COVID-19 has exposed similar shortcomings in the U.S. public health system. To date, however, the current administration has taken the exact opposite approach, devastating our public health system.

-----------------
Legio, you already know all the facts, but Biden doesn't know them yet. It seems that the President of the US is not as well informed as you are.Biden dodges question about punishing China over handling
Biden knows that a substantial percentage of the population of his country (the negationist Party of Trump) shun masks and social distance; a majority of Republicans across the US don't want the vaccine, and lockdowns are are a Chinese invention, “abusive,dictatorial, tyrannical”(!)'Abusive, dictatorial, tyrannical': Republicans ramp up attacks ...

Last year,the conservative website The Federalist published a piece proposing a model for spreading the coronavirus: “It is time to seriously consider voluntary infection”. Three days ago, the Conservative conference in Orlando -colonized by Trump- was an amazing festival of negationism.
And again,here’s the thing: For antisciencers, it wouldn't have made any difference if they had had earlier warning. Biden knows that very well,and does not want to expose himself to ridicule.



---------------
Science denial on the right hampers US response to COVID-19

A decade ago, Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard history of science professor... wrote a science fiction novel, "The Collapse of Western Civilization," that explored a future where denial about climate science in Western countries kept them from responding to the climate crisis, while an authoritarian China did.
The argument about the role of government and its relationship to science remains tragically relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservatives have for 30 years been promoting the myth that there’s no way to solve problems like climate change without succumbing to totalitarianism.

The False Logic behind Science Denial - Scientific American

The U.S. could have acted more quickly to contain COVID-19. If we had, we would have saved both lives and jobs.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Legio, a large part of your posts constantly mention the "lies" of those who debate with you. It's a repetitive, agressive behavior. No, you stated wrongly that “Mitigation through transparency and public information renders drastic measures like quarantine counterproductive under most circumstances”

You lied, and I pointed that out. Any controversy there is a result of your own choices. Furthermore, all you’re doing is dragging in off topic material from another thread after your denials of the CCP coverup and its impact were refuted. If you want to debate lockdowns, feel free to do so in the appropriate thread, where I have only recently cited several studies on the topic. You can certainly continue to deflect from the topic of discussion in this thread by heaping praise on the CCP for their handling of the pandemic response, in contrast to western countries. No matter how many off-topic posts you may produce in this thread, you are unable to contend with the following facts, which were highlighted in response to the fallacious narrative you’ve clung to for about a month now in this thread alone:

A) An official EU report categorized your chosen narrative as an example of pro-CCP disinformation

Public coverage related to the coronavirus and China includes the issue of censorship by the Chinese Communist Party and the aim of the party to present itself as strong and successful in face of the pandemic. Chinese platforms YY and WeChat also seem to have automatically censored posts critical of the Chinese government. Some of the main pro-Chinese narratives include the following:
* China and especially Xi Jinping have done an admirable job of containing the coronavirus; a centralised state such as China’s is actually an asset in such a crisis because the processes (and citizens) can be more thoroughly controlled.
* The West, and especially the United States, should be grateful to China for their quick reaction and containment of the virus – the West and especially the US worked too slowly and are now in total disarray over the virus.

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/eeas-special-...n-environment/

B) the CCP coverup directly caused the global pandemic, and is merely the latest in a long tradition of political coverups motivated by the nature of the communist system, and worsening numerous high profile health crises.

A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.
This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China's cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-e...l&stream=world

C)The Biden Admin rejected the WHO findings on the origins of the pandemic, and will instead rely on other sources to corroborate or elaborate on the reality of the situation.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that it is imperative that the report be independent and free from "alteration by the Chinese government", echoing concerns raised by the administration of former President Donald Trump, who also moved to quit the WHO over the issue.

"Re-engaging the WHO also means holding it to the highest standards," Sullivan said. "We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the Covid-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them."

"It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government," Sullivan said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe...mands-n1257850

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

WHO investigators, after visiting three labs in Wuhan, said last week they found no signs that a lab accident could have caused the outbreak. One WHO researcher told reporters at a news conference the organization was halting any further inquiry into that theory.

But the director general of the WHO appeared to walk back that definitive statement a few days later, saying that "all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study."

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...ident-n1258032

[Ludicus]

all you’re doing is dragging in off topic material from another thread after your denials of the CCP coverup

....because it matters,making you feel uncomfortable, and exposing the ridiculousness of your unproductive complaints.

And I didn't lie.This is what I have been saying, along the same lines of thinking of... Brookings- August 2020,
Let's end the COVID-19 blame game: Reconsidering China's ...

However, greater initial transparency from China would not necessarily have prevented the worldwide spread of the disease. With relatively few confirmed patients in the first weeks and not yet understanding that up to 80% of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or have mild symptoms, it seems unlikely that officials would have restrained people without suspicious symptoms from traveling, or have locked down Wuhan, before the outbreak exploded in late January.

More importantly, while some countries performed well, many other countries, including the United States, did not adopt aggressive testing, contact tracing, social distancing, and other measures that China successfully deployed to contain spread outside Wuhan, even after Chinese authorities and scientists confirmed human-to-human transmission on January 20, locked Wuhan down on January 23, and warned in a January 24 Lancet paper of a “novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern.”

China certainly mishandled information about COVID-19 in the early days. But the U.S. government also mishandled information it had. Despite all the evidence by the time of the Wuhan lockdown, the U.S. government downplayed the threat and failed to prepare for the near-certain spread of the disease here. The fact that the United States suffers the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the world is in large part the result of our own leaders’ actions and inactions. Blaming China without also blaming ourselves is not an honest reckoning.

Only a fanatic does not recognize the truth of what is said here.
One year ago,
Trump aides pound on China. Health experts say: Please stop

A lot of these emotional and punishment policies will over time come back to bite us,” warned Paul Haenle, a former National Security Council official who dealt with China under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

What Biden says, “It's not so much about punishing China...it's a simple proposition”
A "simple proposition". Translating: a political speech to satisfy the internal audience.

------
What lies at the heart of the matter: there is an extremely populist policy in the US and Brazil, "people and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate", (Gov. Abbott, Texas) based on anti-scientific discourse, that is contrary to restrictions and the use of masks.
If you want to punish China, punish yourselves too. If you want to blame someone, blame the current criminals, they are fully aware of what they do. CDC director Rochelle Walensky strongly cautionated against the rollbacks that Abbot and Reeves were about to implement.
Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates and roll back covid restrictions... - NBC News

'Catastrophe' as Brazil hits record-high daily ... - YouTube

And Bolsonaro makes fun of using masks: “Did you know that there was a guy on the beach swimming with a mask? I dived with a mask too, so as not to give Covid to the fish”

Meanwhile, the Brazil variant P1 was now in eight countries,and Brazil Must Now Contend With Two SARS-CoV-2 Variants

The blaming game doesn't help your case, and it doesn't help anyone else's.
--

Edit. Lets talk about transparency.
Gain-of-function began in 2011 on the influenza virus. On January 2020,US officials revisit rules for disclosing risky disease ... - Nature

In 2014, after a series of accidents involving mishandled pathogens at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the NIH announced that it would stop funding gain-of-function research into certain viruses.
The NIH lifted its ban on funding gain-of-function research in December 2017, after the HHS and the White House developed a system for vetting proposed experiments — creating the expert panel in the process.
The related debate over how much to disclose about such research reignited in 2019 following media reports that the government had approved two gain-of-function experiments.
Kenneth Bernard, an NSABB member who advised former president George W. Bush on biodefence, said that releasing too much information could give other nations the wrong impression about the nature of the research the United States is backing.
“ If you open up a review process... there’s a 100 percent chance nothing will get approved”. If you open up a review process to a public review, that includes ethicists and security people and scientists, there’s a 100 percent chance nothing will get approved — if it’s serious enough discussion about a serious enough” potential pandemic pathogen, Bernard said. “Science can’t work that way.”

And yet, none of the gain‐of‐function research conducted since 2011 in the US or anywhere else has provided the scientific community with any tools at all to fight back against ongoing pandemics.

[Lord Thesaurian]

....because it matters,making you feel[/COLOR] uncomfortable, and exposing the ridiculousness of your unproductive complaints.

And I didn't lie.This is what I have been saying, along the same lines of thinking of... Brookings- August 2020,
Let's end the COVID-19 blame game: Reconsidering China's ...



Only a fanatic does not recognize the truth of what is said here.
One year ago,
Trump aides pound on China. Health experts say: Please stop


------
What lies at the heart of the matter: there is an extremely populist policy in the US and Brazil, "people and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate", (Gov. Abbott, Texas) based on anti-scientific discourse, that is contrary to restrictions and the use of masks.
If you want to punish China, punish yourselves too. If you want to blame someone, blame the current criminals, they are fully aware of what they do. CDC director Rochelle Walensky strongly cautionated against the rollbacks that Abbot and Reeves were about to implement.
Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates and roll back covid restrictions... - NBC News

'Catastrophe' as Brazil hits record-high daily ... - YouTube

Meanwhile, the Brazil variant P1 was now in eight countries,and Brazil Must Now Contend With Two SARS-CoV-2 Variants

The blaming game doesn't help your case, and it doesn't help anyone else's.

You selectively quoted posts from another thread and lied about the conclusions of the studies contained in those posts, supplanting them with your own counterfactual opinions about lockdowns. If you think the basic facts I’ve laid out are so ridiculous, surely you’d be able to address them at some point in the last month, rather than continually deflect to various insinuations, insults, off topic text walls, and irrelevant whataboutism. Yet, you have not addressed anything I’ve said at any point, and instead exposed the inane dishonesty and determination to promote CCP disinformation inherent to your arguments.

A) You declined to respond


B) An opinion piece from a blog written by a lawyer is not an answer to a timeline of basic facts corroborated by a an academic study confirming fact B. The points of fact the blog post does include corroborate everything I have said and directly contradict your fallacious, blanket dismissal of the CCP coverup as “American propaganda.”

Ms. Horsley may disagree with the findings of Dr Shengjie Lai becuase she simply doesn’t believe the disease could have been contained regardless of the CCP coverup, but I’ll take research from an epidemiologist cross referenced with an indisputable timeline of events over a blog post from a lawyer whose sole counterpoint is “I doubt it.” Given the Congressional report I cited came to the same conclusions I have, a blog post is not an answer to established fact.

C) You declined to respond.

[Ludicus]

You selectively quoted posts from another thread and lied about the conclusions of the studies contained in those post supplanting them with your own counterfactual opinions about lockdowns

Link,please.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Interesting that you’d demand the links you declined to post yourself when you went hunting for year-plus old quotes in a different thread.

Post 124: You quoted from this post containing the CFR report from Yanzhong Huang, which specifically corroborated the section you quoted.

Post 126: When I asked why you were quoting my comments on H1N1 from another thread, you lied, claiming my statements were inaccurate and unsourced, countering the latter with your own unsourced opinion which was debunked in the post you took the quote from.

Furthermore, I also posted these studies on the efficacy lockdowns in relation to the pandemic, which, rather than addressing in the appropriate thread, you seem determined to rehash here, off-topic.

[sumskilz]

The Lab theory revisited.
Angela Rasmussen- objective investigations have been derailed by politics and conspiracy theories.
On the origins of SARS-CoV-2 | Nature Medicine Published: 13 January 2021

Regarding this:

A favorite version of the laboratory-origin stories relies on the fact that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered for gain-of-function studies that were also previously performed with bat SARS-like coronaviruses to understand cross-species transmission risk (Nat. Med. 21, 1508–1513; 2015). The irony is that those gain-of-function studies provided valuable information about the biology of SARS-CoV-2. Gain-of-function research is also subject to intense scrutiny and governmental oversight, precisely because of the high risk involved in conducting it safely; thus, it is extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar.

Her argument here is ridiculous. Labs in China aren't under "intense scrutiny and governmental oversight" by the US government.

From the publication of the experiments she's referring to:

Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.

In plain language, the Wuhan Institute of Virology created a chimeric SARS coronavirus which they inserted the spike protein of a bat coronavirus into. They then adapted it (via guided evolution) to infect human ACE2 receptors with a great degree of efficiency. Now only a conspiracy theorist would suspect the possibility that a chimeric SARS coronavirus with a spike protein insert highly adapted to infecting human ACE2 receptors could have escaped from the one lab in the world that was creating precisely this type of virus.

At best, this sort of research seems a misallocation of resources, for this reason. It's not unreasonable for US citizens to be concerned about US tax dollars funding it. Hmm... I wonder what kind of research Angela Rasmussen is involved in?

[Ludicus]

Post 126: When I asked why you were quoting my comments on H1N1 from another thread, you lied, claiming my statements were inaccurate

Of course they were inaccurate.

You quoted from this post containing the CFR report from Yanzhong Huang, which specifically corroborated the section you quoted.

The Council on Foreign Relations reporting,comparing the H1N1 Crises and Responses in the US and China is a political report.Things like “the Politburo’s heavy-handed approach” could have been written by you.

In that post, you said that “mitigation through transparency and public information renders drastic measures like quarantines counterproductive under most circumstances”- and I don’t agree.No, they are not couterproductive in most circumstances. Curiously, in this case (H1N1), you are mixing apples with oranges. In China,it seems that the containment was less than it should have been. I quote, Evaluation of containment and mitigation strategies for an influenza A pandemic in China (study published in 2015)

There are some alternative control strategies based on non-pharmaceutical interventions, including school closures and travel restrictions for mitigating an H1N1 pandemic, which had been adopted by China government to deal with SARS. Figures 4 and 5 give the effectiveness of additional school closures and travel-related intervention strategies, respectively. It is clear that the additional school closures and travel-related interventions could mitigate the influenza pandemic situations. If the additional school closure strategy was only implemented at the beginning stage, that is, stage 1, the total infectious cases would decrease by 19.2%. The strategy at stage 2 also gave a decrease of 47.5% of total cases, which resulted in a decrease of 55.8% at stages 2 and 3.

If the Chinese government adopted the additional school closure strategy during the period of an H1N1 pandemic, the total infectious cases would decrease by 58.7%.
It is clear that the efficiency of this strategy at stage 2 with 80 days closure (from September 1 to November 25, 2009) was highest. From Figure 5, it is clear that stricter travel-related interventions lead to fewer total infectious cases. The additional 50% reduction in trans-city and local travel at stage 2 would result in 50.2% reduction of total cases. The travel-related interventions in the latter stage had almost no effect that could be found from the comparison of various travel-related interventions at stages 1 and 2, with three stages.

A recent study has claimed that travel restrictions have a very low effect on reducing the burden of an epidemic, because after an initial delay of the seeding event, when a local outbreak starts, the importation of infectious cases is negligible with respect to the local exponential growth of the infection.3Here, our results indicated that it would produce a significant compound effect on reducing epidemic burden when the travel-related interventions were implemented together with other mitigation strategies, such as those adopted by China mentioned above. The large-scale school closure and travel restriction strategies would bring much social and economic burden to the government, and also lead to public panic. Therefore, the Chinese government did not adopt these additional strategies considering the mild impact and low fatality rate of an H1N1 pandemic compared with SARS.
in China The large-scale school closure and travel restriction strategies would bring much social and economic burden to the government, and also lead to public panic. Therefore, the Chinese government did not adopt these additional strategies considering the mild impact and low fatality rate of an H1N1 pandemic compared with SARS.

Many research papers on the epidemiology of the pandemic have been published in Western countries but these results are not suitable for application to a large country, such as the People’s Republic of China. In the current modeling field, there are two major classes of methodologies for the simulation of influenza pandemic outbreaks. One is agent-based models and the other is meta-population models.

In China, the initial containment measures that healthy people having close contact with H1N1 patients were quarantined at assembly sites also received crimination. It is true that no country took stricter measures than China to protect residents from H1N1 since the first imported infectious cases on May 11, 2009, considering the experiences of handling SARS. Screening overseas passengers before they disembarked, isolating and treating all cases, and quarantining contacts at assembly sites were the main containment measures until mid-July 2009. Medical institutions for testing patients with influenza-like illness (ILI)
for H1N1 were added to detect and treat infectious cases.

China was one of the earliest countries with vaccination measures against the H1N1 virus. Whether these containment and mitigation strategies that were adopted in China were successful or not should be evaluated for future influenza pandemic considering a huge population, poor health care, and disease surveillance infrastructure in rural areas, and a limited stock of antiviral medicines in China.
Many research papers on the epidemiology of the pandemic have been published in Western countries, but these results are not suitable for application to a large country, such as the People’s Republic of China.

The simulation results showed that these strategies were successful to deal with this influenza pandemic on the whole, although some additional strategies would further reduce the total infectious cases. Contact tracing and CTQ at assembly sites in the early stage, and more medical institutions to detect H1N1 cases and treat serious patients with the increasing cases, effectively delayed the epidemic. The measure of rapid vaccines delivered to students first was evidenced as a correct vaccination strategy in decreasing H1N1 cases.
Closing schools and reducing travel were not undertaken as control strategies in China, but the simulated results indicated that the additional school closure from September 1 to November 25, 2009, would reduce by 47.5% the total infectious cases, and the additional 50% reduction in trans-city and local travel from July 9 to November 25, 2009, also resulted in a 50.2% reduction of cases.

Furthermore, I also posted these studies on the efficacy lockdowns in relation to the pandemic

Don’t patronize me. As I said before, key mitigation practices, physical distancing and hand hygiene, are good practices, but not enough in the real world full of negationists, where a mask is a symbol of tyranny.The lockdown as a strategy, is effective. When the number of hospitalizations drive the pressure on the intensive care units, who saves you is the confinement, lockdowns. Ask our intensivists.

I already showed you this. After the Christmas disaster,Portugal tightens Covid-19 lockdown amid record numbers of ...
Obviouly, it's working, the numbers started to go down.

Ask us, ask Israel.

If you think the basic facts I’ve laid out are so ridiculous

It's the intention and perception of the facts that matter. It's been a year since China controlled the coronavirus. That's the pot calling the kettle black,fiercely accusing China of spreading the disease,in Trump's (ex-Trump, now) country where coronavirus break records, isn’t that ironic?
Nobody disputes that we need to know where the coronvirus come from, and that matters. WHO’s Mike Ryan rigthly said "Understanding the origin of disease is not about finding somebody to blame. We are looking for the answers here that may save us in the future, not culprits".
----

Labs in China aren't under "intense scrutiny and governmental oversight" by the US government.

As far as I know, the labs in the US are not under intense scrutiny and government oversight by the Chinese government.And, btw,the labs in the US do not want to be under any kind of surveillance.Read a previous post,

...The related debate over how much to disclose about such research reignited in 2019 following media reports that the government had approved two gain-of-function experiments.
Kenneth Bernard, an NSABB member who advised former president George W. Bush on biodefence, said that releasing too much information could give other nations the wrong impression about the nature of the research the United States is backing.
“ If you open up a review process... there’s a 100 percent chance nothing will get approved”. If you open up a review process to a public review, that includes ethicists and security people and scientists, there’s a 100 percent chance nothing will get approved — if it’s serious enough discussion about a serious enough” potential pandemic pathogen, Bernard said. “Science can’t work that way.”

[Lord Thesaurian]

Of course they were inaccurate.Now, what should I call you? calling others liars is your speciality. Read below.

The Council on Foreign Relations reporting,comparing the H1N1 Crises and Responses in the US and China is a political report.Things like “the Politburo’s heavy-handed approach” could have been written by you.

In that post, you said that “mitigation through transparency and public information renders drastic measures like quarantines counterproductive under most circumstances”- and I don’t agree.No, they are not couterproductive in most circumstances. Curiously, in this case (H1N1), you are mixing apples with oranges. In China,it seems that the containment was less than it should have been.

Why deny the lie if you’re only going to double down on it? You have no basis for denying my statements are accurate and fully sourced just because you don’t like the sources, which I also quoted from directly. You lied. Plus, There’s nothing wrong with the CFR report apart from the fact you don’t like what it says, and it’s awfully rich that you would accuse me of “mixing apples and oranges” when you’re the one who brought this up. “Could have been written by me?” Are you insinuating I fabricated the CFR report? Anyway, the author is a professor who specializes in global health governance, health diplomacy, health security, and public health in China and East Asia. You’ll have to do better than “muh politics.”

I quote, Evaluation of containment and mitigation strategies for an influenza A pandemic in China (study published in 2015)

Citing “simulated results” that don’t even attempt to prove the point you’re trying to make, nor even address the original comparison between US and Chinese responses, suits your nonsensical argumentation. However, it is not a counterpoint to my source.

Don’t patronize me. As I said before, key mitigation practices, physical distancing and hand hygiene, are good practices, but not enough in the real world full of negationists, where a mask is a symbol of tyranny.The lockdown as a strategy, is effective. When the number of hospitalizations drive the pressure on the intensive care units, who saves you is the confinement, lockdowns. Ask our intensivists.

I already showed you this. After the Christmas disaster,Portugal tightens Covid-19 lockdown amid record numbers of ...
Obviouly, it's working, the numbers started to go down.

You bring up lockdowns from another thread, lie, reject sources you don’t like just because. I link the relevant post for you so you can review the academic studies I posted on the subject, and your only response is to hurl accusations and post a news article that says nothing about how effective lockdowns are or aren’t. GG

[sumskilz]

As far as I know, the labs in the US are not under intense scrutiny and government oversight by the Chinese government.

Rasmussen's argument is that it is "extremely unlikely that gain-of-function research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses (such as bat SARS-like coronaviruses) could occur under the radar" because of "intense scrutiny and governmental oversight" and that therefore we would know exactly what research had occurred and exactly what viruses were manipulated, which is absurd. If more gain-of-function research than is already public knowledge occurred at the WIV, only the Chinese government and those directly involved in the research would be sure to know.

The EcoHealth Alliance grant application indicates that there was more (at least in the works) that hasn't been published. Before the outbreak, they wouldn't have had any obvious reason to hide anything other than to keep specifics quiet prior to publication. Nevertheless, the WIV have been keeping a lot of relevant evidence to themselves:

At the core of Dr. Shi’s work is a database at the institute. According to research by DRASTIC, a network of researchers and scientists, this is the most important bat coronavirus database in China. Overall, it holds records of some 22,000 samples and some of their genetic sequences, including for WIV virus sampling trips going back many years. The institute collected more than 15,000 samples from bats, covering over 1,400 bat viruses. The database holds more than 100 unpublished sequences of bat coronaviruses that could significantly help the probe into the origins of the pandemic.

Of particular interest are the full sequences of eight viruses sampled in 2015 in an unidentified location in Yunnan province, which was only recently disclosed. In 2012, six people who were clearing bat feces from an abandoned mine in Yunnan developed an illness with symptoms very similar to covid-19. Three eventually died. The results of the investigation into the cause of their illness have not been fully disclosed. A bat-virus sampling trip by WIV-EcoHealth was underway in nearby locations while these six people were infected. A virus designated RaTG13 was sampled from the mine in 2013 and has been described as the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2. Based on limited information about their sequences, the other eight viruses are very similar to RaTG13 and may hold evolutionary clues.

A section of the database was password-protected and not accessible. This may well have been to protect the materials so that scientists from WIV could be first in writing scientific papers about the viruses and sequences. But except for that private section, the database was accessible until Sept. 12, 2019, when it became unreachable from outside the institute, according to DRASTIC, which has studied the database usage records. Why then? Dr. Shi has said it was taken offline for security reasons. “We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC.

The WIV would go a long way to allay suspicions if they started making evidence available with their publications so that other scientists can check their work (as is standard practice) rather than expecting everyone to simply accept what they say on faith. Although to be fair, I don't assume that's their choice to make.