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US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

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Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#431
post #53

First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…

I don't know why whenever people bring up that the virus might have come from a lab it always gets dismissed because the virus doesn't look artificial. Why is it never brought up that it could just be an accident? It doesn't need to be a weapon. Just poor safety during research.

Because some people want to believe that everything happens with intent. (note the difference between intent and reason) That may seem like a ridiculous core believe, but it is told over and over again by abrahamic monotheism, and further down might be related to how consciousness models itself.

Then a small group favors their stories to happen because of malicious intent. Like saturday morning cartoon villain style of obvious evilness. And that is often mixed with a "them (evil) and us (good)" type of self-assertive tribe behavior as well as the bitching and bickering that stems from relating social status. (USA and China are not humans, they are nations, but people anthropomorphise them)

A story about poor standards and accidents is more about empathy and carefulness, and while a wise man might tell it to his children, it is not the thing people gossip about. Everyone agrees that bio-labs should have highest standards and that is it, there is little difference to "it happened randomly", and more importantly there is little blame and fame. Have you heard what did? has another ring to it.

The human mind operates on stories, not on facts. Working with facts is hard and even the most pious intellectual can and will fall prey to nature. So it is no wonder that the most scandalous stories are the ones that get around a lot.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that is inevitable if the Chinese government continues to obfuscate?

Epidemiology. History. The Spanish Flu was called that because at the time everyone (for xenophobic reasons... sound familiar?) blamed Spain. Today we can say with reasonable confidence that the source of the 1918 influenza epidemic was.... wait for it..... Kansas

>...The Spanish Flu was called that because at the time everyone (for xenophobic reasons... sound familiar?)

No, it tended to be called the Spanish Flu because Spanish newspapers simply reported more about the epidemic:

>...Spain was not involved in the war, having remained neutral, and had not imposed wartime censorship.[17][18] Newspapers were therefore free to report the epidemic's effects, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these widely-spread stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit.

Some theorize it might have first originated in Kansas:

>...The first confirmed cases originated in the United States. Historian Alfred W. Crosby stated in 2003 that the flu originated in Kansas,[61] and popular author John M. Barry described a January 1918 outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin in his 2004 article.

But then again:

>...A 2018 study of tissue slides and medical reports led by evolutionary biology professor Michael Worobey found evidence against the disease originating from Kansas, as those cases were milder and had fewer deaths compared to the infections in New York City in the same period. The study did find evidence through phylogenetic analyses that the virus likely had a North American origin, though it was not conclusive. In addition, the haemagglutinin glycoproteins of the virus suggest that it originated long before 1918, and other studies suggest that the reassortment of the H1N1 virus likely occurred in or around 1915.

Some theorize it might have first originated in Europe:

>...The major UK troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France has been theorized by virologist John Oxford as being at the center of the Spanish flu.[63] His study found that in late 1916 the Étaples camp was hit by the onset of a new disease with high mortality that caused symptoms similar to the flu.[64][63] According to Oxford, a similar outbreak occurred in March 1917 at army barracks in Aldershot,[65] and military pathologists later recognized these early outbreaks as the same disease as the Spanish flu.[66][63] The overcrowded camp and hospital at Etaples was an ideal environment for the spread of a respiratory virus.

>...A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.[67] Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza began in Austria in early 1917.

But then again:

>...A 2009 study in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses found that Spanish flu mortality simultaneously peaked within the two-month period of October and November 1918 in all fourteen European countries analyzed, which is inconsistent with the pattern that researchers would expect if the virus had originated somewhere in Europe and then spread outwards.

Some theorize it was China:

>...In 1993, Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the Spanish flu at the Pasteur Institute, asserted the precursor virus was likely to have come from China and then mutated in the United States near Boston and from there spread to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, with Allied soldiers and sailors as the main disseminators.[70] Hannoun considered several alternative hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas, and Brest, as being possible, but not likely.[70] In 2014, historian Mark Humphries argued that the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines might have been the source of the pandemic. Humphries, of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, based his conclusions on newly unearthed records. He found archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China (where the laborers came from) in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.

On the other hand:

>...A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found no evidence that the 1918 virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers and instead found evidence of its circulation in Europe before the pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

So far the historical and epidemiological data cannot identify the geographic origin of the Spanish flu.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#433
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This seems like a supremely bad idea.

Personally, I kind of like the idea that we could know in advance if a tiny mutation could turn a known disease into something that wipes us all out. Only inside level four labs, of course. But early warning (and this work on mitigation) seems important.

Maybe in BSL-5 labs?

Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city.

The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence.

Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area.

Armed guards patrol the fence.

(EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the virus was a lab leak. But maybe you’re looking at the wrong country for it. I mean, name any other country that has a lot of biological weapons labs all over the world.

This is wrong, even deceitful, for a couple reasons: 1) No country (officially, or afaik in reality) has a bio weapons lab, and certainly not "all over the world". Nobody (well, nobody official) ever said the Wuhan virus lab was a bioweapon lab; it's a virology lab. 2) The Wuhan virus lab has been experimenting with corona viruses for a long time, including gain of function, and it had a history of problems. 3) There…

Europa had cases in september of 2019. We didn't know at the time, but checking samples from back then revealed the virus was already internationally active

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03008916209747...

Also, if you look closely, notice that the reason we have no earlier samples then september is, because we have no earlier samples. Can't test one from august, if you don't have one from august.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#435

I don't know whether SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. But if it did, then not only is it probably not the first lab-origin pandemic, but it's also not the first time the WHO initially excluded that possibility. The 1977 Russian Flu pandemic was genetically near-identical to a strain from 1950, without the expected mutations that should have appeared after 27 years of undetected circulation among humans or animals. It's…

> how could you possibly not wonder whether our current standards for the sampling and manipulation of poorly-understood pandemic-candidate viruses are adequate? Wait are we looking to improve and make sure that this doesn’t happen again, or do we just want someone to blame so we can continue to do nothing?

Doesn't it depend on what we find?

For the most probable outcomes, it's about improving (whether it's a lab escape that requires tightening how labs work, or a natural origin that requires, well, something).

Of course, if theoretically this or another pathogen was discovered to be human-made / engineered on purpose (not a real scenario in this case! Purely a hypothetical), then obviously it might have "holding someone responsible" repercussions.

And there might be other scenarios I can't think of that would engender different reactions.

Bottom line, when investigating to discover the truth, I don't think it's valid to beforehand decide on the reason that you're seeking the truth.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more plausible it evolved naturally and just jumped species. FAR FAR FAR more plausible.

Are you serious? Occam's Razor says the only (non-vet) BSL4 lab in China, studying bat coronaviruses, several miles from known first virus reports, that has had multiple previous virus leaks, with huge information shutdown by China for a year, is the more plausible culprit.

So I’m with you on this one.

Why wouldn’t CCP stop all suspicion on this and say the virus originated in another part of China? It almost feels like a murderer trying to use reverse psychology by hiding in plain sight. Like, it can’t be from Wuhan Lab because they actually reported that it came from Wuhan (what idiot that’s trying to cover it up do that?). A calculated person would make such a calculation.

The truth might be weird here.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#437
post #394
post #53

First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…

I was thinking if a virus was first spotted in New York City and it had a virus lab, would that be immediately blamed? It’s like all there is in Wuhan is a wet market and a virus research lab and they are located next to each other. I think that’s how the world perceives Wuhan.

> I was thinking if a virus was first spotted in New York City and it had a virus lab, would that be immediately blamed?

To answer your question: If NYC had a virus lab that actively mutated bat coronaviruses so that they could become infectious in humans, and then one day a human-infecting virus with 96% similarity to a bat coronavirus started popping up in New York City with no known origin… Yes, people would start asking questions about that lab.

Check out this commentary from 2015. This type of research was being subcontracted out to the Wuhan lab, despite public concerns that safety wasn’t tight enough there.

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

I get that people don’t want to discriminate against China, but this is very clearly a hypothesis worth investigating further.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#438
post #53

First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…

To whom are they worried about regarding reputation. They already have a terrible one

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#439
post #53

First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…

Well if people can't prove that Covid came from China, shouldn't they simply forget it and accept that it came from somewhere else? "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." And how dare them for even asking to see the data, those conspiracy theorists.

...Or has this logic changed since the election fraud controversy? (and no, it's not really a different situation if you think about it)

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#440
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. If it was intentionally released, it’s even more important to know by who and why.

> What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. Because it doesn't matter if it's accidentally released from a lab, if you're going to catch it from a bat cave anyway. You haven't eliminated it from the world.

The problem is this extremely dangerous research is bound to lead to a leak eventually, because in fact there have already been hundreds of lab virus leaks around the world in the past, and the stakes get higher as the viruses they engineer get more and more lethal. China is actually doubling down and increasing the amount of risky virus research they are doing. If it isn’t regulated eventually something even worse could leak out of another lab.

So yeah, it is important to find out what the origin of this virus was because whatever the reason was we want to ensure that it isn’t the same reason for the next big pandemic.

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