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Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

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Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#281

Post by rawgabbit »

defen wrote: post #223
arthur2e5 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China too. With the foreign ministry spokespersons repeatedly making US bioweapon suggestions, believing otherwise is more political than just following the rest of weibo. The media is more than happy to report on early detections out of China, and let suggestions that the vape lung (now linked to vit. E cutting agent) is COVID run free. We left the realm of rationality long ago, when the government did a tribalis…

> The govt still funds crackpots to argue against Chinese people originating in africa, to call greco-roman and egyptian history faked, and don't even get me started on their insistence on 5k years Wait what? The Chinese government does this? Who do they claim faked Greco-Roman and Egyptian history, and to what end? And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something?

Chinese propaganda claims 5000 years of unbroken history. One Han people. One language etc. They conveniently ignore when China was ruled by ethnic Khitan-Jurchen-Manchus. The Chinese literary classic On the Water Margin aka All Men Are Brothers is about local heroes of the Song rising up against a corrupt government which was completely ineffective against the Liao.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#282

Post by skinkestek »

jng wrote: post #164
skinkestek wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how did one new strain suddenly amass 17 previously unseen mutations? Normally we should have sampled a number of strains with fewer of the same mutations, shouldn't we?

Not an expert here, but there probably are many other strains out there with fewer mutations (and some with more). Most of them residual because they don't provide a clear advantage. The reason we know about this 17-mutation one is that this specific one turned out to have such an advantageous infectivity that it's displacing all other strains and becoming the dominant one.

Thanks.

That would make sense, if it was the 17th mutation that (possibly together with the rest of the mutations) gave it this advantage.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#283

Post by ilaksh »

bearbin wrote: post #36

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…

I'm going to go ahead and be the "crazy" person in this thread.

In my "bat-shit insane" worldview, wars (including recent ones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) are fought for power and control over resources and global policies. They are not fought for the reasons given such as deposing dictators because they are dictators.

So in this "insane" worldview, the activities of some states take on a less altruistic character and more a brutal practicality. In this worldview, the operating paradigm is not essentially civil. It is "might makes right".

Now if you go further and put the deployment of nuclear weapons into that context, you will have an even more "extreme" worldview.

So in this paradigm, China may, like other countries before it, seek to improve it's access to resources and general power. And like other countries before it, it would be operating in the "brutally practical" paradigm.

So if one was brave and "crazy" then one could speculate that the Covid-19 event may have been the Hiroshima of the bioweapon age. And even if it wasn't intentional, it could be said to serve that purpose.

Even "crazy" people hope that isn't truly part of the paradigm now. But some of the braver "crazies" might still be able to admit some slight possibility.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#285

Post by skinkestek »

twicetwice wrote: post #278
skinkestek wrote: post #104

One thing I wonder is: How did the UK virus suddenly get 17 mutations at once if it's not a new engineered release by someone? I'm not a biologist, but that part had me wondering. Any biologists here who want to explain for a layman?

I'm not a biologist either, but I've been told recently by someone who's likely to know what he's talking about (albeit also likely to be a bit "rah-rah Britain") that the UK is doing far more genetic sequencing of the virus than the rest of the world, which would explain why it gets noticed more in the UK.

Thanks! Makes sense that it gets found in Britain. Still seems like a large number of mutations.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#287

Post by MichaelZuo »

incrudible wrote: post #257
Someone1234 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole lab thing is people getting cause and effect mixed up, the lab is there because novel coronaviruses keep happening in that region, but because all people know is that COVID-19 is new (and none of the history) they immediately jump to that the lab specializing in this type of disease at the epicenter is too big of a coincidence to ignore (rather than it being there exactly because it is a common epicenter).…

> The whole lab thing is people getting cause and effect mixed up, the lab is there because novel coronaviruses keep happening in that region... That is not the case, the outbreak in Wuhan came as a surprise even to the virologists there. The region where you would expect this to happen is Southern China, where there's bats living close to humans, not Wuhan, where there aren't any bats at all. The virologists in Wuha…

The chief virologist heading bat research at the lab also was very surprised and gave an interview describing her efforts to see if it came from her own lab, being the only known store of bat viruses in Wuhan. Thankfully the genomic sequences were too far apart to make a direct jump credible so at the very least there must have been one intermediary carrier regardless. How the intermediary carrier, i.e. the pangolins, got it, either at bat caves in southern china or otherwise is the part still being explored. This may be the sort of thing where 100% proof is impossible, and a probabilistic answer is the best we will ever achieve.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#288

Post by MichaelZuo »

messe wrote: post #239
defen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The govt still funds crackpots to argue against Chinese people originating in africa, to call greco-roman and egyptian history faked, and don't even get me started on their insistence on 5k years Wait what? The Chinese government does this? Who do they claim faked Greco-Roman and Egyptian history, and to what end? And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something?

> And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something? I believe it's the claim that China has 5,000 years of written history. I'm not knowledgeable on this however, so this is a vague memory semi-confirmed by a cursory internet search.

I’ve never heard a credible source state 5000 years of written history, just 5000 years of history, where the inference is that the earlier parts were orally transmitted.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#289

Post by thelittleone »

thelittleone wrote: post #197
tomp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree with you based on my political views, but in this case.... Chinese were pretty reserved about outsiders meddling in their internal affairs already before Covid, so this isn't necessarily indicative.

China has claimed that COVID started in anywhere but China. Australia: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9024311/China-claim... India: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8993667/Now-Chinese... Italy: https://www.the-sun.com/news/1824950/china-accuses-italy-sta... US Army: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-claims-that-the-u... Since the common belief is that COVID originated in China, they stand…

Here is a new article from the Associated Press "China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins".

https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-coronavirus-pandem...

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#290

Post by flukus »

defen wrote: post #223
arthur2e5 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China too. With the foreign ministry spokespersons repeatedly making US bioweapon suggestions, believing otherwise is more political than just following the rest of weibo. The media is more than happy to report on early detections out of China, and let suggestions that the vape lung (now linked to vit. E cutting agent) is COVID run free. We left the realm of rationality long ago, when the government did a tribalis…

> The govt still funds crackpots to argue against Chinese people originating in africa, to call greco-roman and egyptian history faked, and don't even get me started on their insistence on 5k years Wait what? The Chinese government does this? Who do they claim faked Greco-Roman and Egyptian history, and to what end? And what is 5k years supposed to be? The age of the earth or something?

Not sure about that one but there's similar stuff in the world of archeology (https://www.nature.com/news/how-china-is-rewriting-the-book-...) , a political motivation to say that humans evolved in China and not Africa. It's a shame when there's so much potential for genuinely exciting finds to come out of the country.
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