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The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

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Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#121

Post by ttoomm28 »

towergratis wrote: post #108
camjohnson26 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is proof that the slippery slope of social media censorship already has a causality. Twitter banned ZeroHedge, an irreverent but very well known financial website, for months just for pushing this theory. Yesterday’s crazy conspiracy theories become today’s plausibilities. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

To be fair, although we are a bit better here in west, we are still far from perfect. Letting the POTUS call it China virus, is despicable.

Strange word to describe that, seems rather fair actually. Do you think UK, south African, brazilian variant are 'despicable' ?

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#122

Post by drran »

rhino369 wrote: post #113
phroobster wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A never before seen coronavirus was found just miles away from one of only two BSL-4 laboratories in all of China, which also happens to publish gain of function research on coronaviruses. I find it amusing that anyone can claim a lab accident origin is “crazy”.

Especially since US and European labs have had a lot of accidents that risked viruses escaping the lab. I really don't have any reason to believe or disbelieve it came from a lab. But that possibility certainly is not crazy.

> Especially since US and European labs

Hey, Russian Federation still exists on the map.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#123

Post by EMM_386 »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #105
EMM_386 wrote: post #101

Remember that US State Department members were warning of risky coronavirus research at the lab in Wuhan years before this pandemic happened. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin... That isn't proof of anything but all of this makes for interesting reading.

Josh Rogin has been misrepesenting these diplomatic cables for a year now. If you read the actual cables (which Rogin refused to publish when he wrote his first story - they only came out later due to a FOIA request), they did not warn that the lab was unsafe. The cables stated said that the lab did not yet have enough technicians to run at full capacity. As of the time of writing of the cables, the lab had not yet o…

I disagree. You are referring to part (5).

Part (6) in the cable specifically warns with regard to WIV scientists studying SARS viruses that interact with human ACE2 receptors.

The cable is here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#124

Post by blueboo »

syrrim wrote: post #112
scythe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZH singled out an individual and made statements that could subject him to harassment. That's not merely a case of having the wrong suspicions about globally significant events.

>made statements that could subject him to harassment Not sure what said statements were, but as described, that is not at all a reason to ban someone. On the internet, legitimate criticism very frequently leads to harassment. That is not at all the fault of the critic, and as long as they didn't intend to cause harassment, it's no reason to ban them.

Perhaps some details will clarify things. ZeroHedge published and publicized an article "Is This Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?" with the face, address, and phone number of an individual -- along with an invitition for readers to pay him a "visit".

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#125

Post by gred »

peytn wrote: post #117
williamdclt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be because you were saying it was "likely" despite any evidence? Ending up being right isn't a to anybody's credit if the original assumption was groundless. (I'm not attacking you, I don't know what was your exact argument)

The initial outbreak was literally covered up. Conditioning on that fact, common sense would place more belief on “lab leak” and less on “natural origin.” Thus, in the Bayesian sense, one might describe a lab leak as “likely” relatively speaking despite lacking direct evidence such as lab notebooks for or against that hypothesis.

Partly agree, but also keep in mind that the CCP is by nature secretive and authoritarian. IMO the cover-up still shifts the probability, but less than it might in another country where cover-ups are less "business as usual".

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#126

Post by fendy3002 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #116
jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

I don't see why 1) is unlikely - people that work with bats have antibodies to bat (corona)viruses already, and we know that even in a vacuum people often have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It's even more likely since the virus was probably not adapted to human hosts initially. 2) is also likely, for some viruses it took years and years, sometimes even more than a decade to find the actual intermediate an…

That point 1 is interesting. Got any articles/papers?

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#127

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

EMM_386 wrote: post #123
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Josh Rogin has been misrepesenting these diplomatic cables for a year now. If you read the actual cables (which Rogin refused to publish when he wrote his first story - they only came out later due to a FOIA request), they did not warn that the lab was unsafe. The cables stated said that the lab did not yet have enough technicians to run at full capacity. As of the time of writing of the cables, the lab had not yet o…

I disagree. You are referring to part (5). Part (6) in the cable specifically warns with regard to WIV scientists studying SARS viruses that interact with human ACE2 receptors. The cable is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

Part 6 is about a paper published in PLoS Pathogens. It says nothing about safety concerns.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#128

Post by flavius29663 »

williamdclt wrote: post #84
lordnacho wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even limited to authoritarian governments.

I think it mostly is, we're just not always happy about which countries actually are in the "authoritarian" bucket

most modern governments did similar stuff in the past few decades. I 'm having trouble thinking of one that didn't.

You can call them all authoritarian, but then the word loses all meaning, you would just say "any strong modern government is authoritarian"

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#129

Post by EMM_386 »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #127
EMM_386 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. You are referring to part (5). Part (6) in the cable specifically warns with regard to WIV scientists studying SARS viruses that interact with human ACE2 receptors. The cable is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

Part 6 is about a paper published in PLoS Pathogens. It says nothing about safety concerns.

You are pointing out one section while ignoring another.

What about the last sentence regarding WIV scientists studying human-disease causing SARS coronaviruses until "permission is granted" by China's NHFCP? The one with the redacted bit at the front?

I'm not sure if you are intentionally playing games with words here but let's cut to the chase.

Edit: Reading through your comment history and submissions, I can see this is an account used to spin discussions.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#130

Post by analyte123 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #116
jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

I don't see why 1) is unlikely - people that work with bats have antibodies to bat (corona)viruses already, and we know that even in a vacuum people often have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It's even more likely since the virus was probably not adapted to human hosts initially. 2) is also likely, for some viruses it took years and years, sometimes even more than a decade to find the actual intermediate an…

It's not "quite unlikely" for a virus to adapt to humans when you are digging through a lab archive of wild coronaviruses and injecting mice that express human proteins with them to see how sick they get. For example the president of EcoHealth, which sponsored bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raved in November 2019 about all the exciting work they were doing filtering bat coronaviruses and even recombinant viruses for ones that look like they could infect humans and infecting humanized mice with them [1].

Researchers at the same lab published a study in 2017 where they tested the infectivity of 8 artificial coronaviruses (having been edited with 8 different spike proteins) on primate and human cell lines [2].

[1] https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1197631383470034951?s...

[2] https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... "Rescue of bat SARSr-CoVs and virus infectivity experiments"

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