351–360 of 578 posts
Note that there was an interview with a virologist last October that raised most of the same points as this article : https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...
The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think everyone had the best of intentions and either they found something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting links https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01A…
I thought you misrepresented the linked paper - as it was clearly about checking some cross-immunity and not recombining genes - but then I found out deeper in the abstract: """ Since SHC014 could not be success fully isolated, a recombinant virus (rWIV1-SHC014S) was constructed based on the WIV1 backbone with the replacement of SHC014S gene, as described previously (Zengetal.,2016). The S sequence of SHC014 was ampl…
One analogy for developers: Bad persons are using git to develop ransomware, and company X is also using git, therefore company X is developing ransomware.
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You make a very good point (and thanks for the links). However i would not let China off the hook until we have figured out exactly what happened. If nobody is held "accountable" (for a certain definition of this word) it is bound to happen again and the next time it most certainly will be "biological warfare". This needs to be treated as seriously and as comprehensively the way we treat Nuclear Weapons.
I really think it's just the other way around. The more people make this about China, the less likely we are to find out the truth. If it's used as a geopolitical chess piece, it will get bogged down forever in political mud, which is kind of where the question is right now anyways. People will decide what they think about it based on how they feel about China. That's crazy.
This isn't a China thing. It's a human thing. No one wants to be known as the person who destroyed the world like this.
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I see very little incentive for China to release covid intentionally . What could they possibly have gained from that? Mind you, I'm becoming increasingly convinced it was an accidental lab leak due to negligence, so this isn't my attempt at defending China in any way.
>What could they possibly have gained from that? Global power shifts to their favor by slowing down democratic economies, sacrificing parts of their own population and economy in the short term. As a collectivist dictatorship tracking every move of its population a pandemic is easier to handle.
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It could be that you're confusing cause and effect, though. How do we know that the virus (or a precursor) wasn't already circulating in China, and was simply detected in Wuhan because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there? (Also I'm not entirely sure your statement about the gain of function research is correct. A Google search doesn't seem to provide any evidence one way or another.)
> How do we know that the virus [wasn't]...simply detected in Wuhan because of the fact that there are experts in coronaviruses who reside there? Even if true, that would not explain the elaborate story, regarding the wet market there and species-jumping. Also, seems unlikely, as there'd have to be reason to suspect a new virus was circulating at scale that required investigation by these scientists, which could have…
"... proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence." "The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities." This is a fantastic article, but amazingly almost all of it is year-old news. Most of this was known in March 2020, and nearly all of it by the end of 2020. How does it take so long for the trut…
What bothers me about it is not only did it take a long time for the “truth to win”, but mainstream media orgs actively suppressed it because of tribal stupidity. It was used as an example of “fake news”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/technology/biden-reality-... > “ Hoaxes, lies and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be. Thirty percent of Republ…
However I think the CCP are overplaying their hand now. They are doing too much too fast too aggressively. Hong kong, NBA, now going after Australia. It's going to backfire IMO.
Especially if you start to think about non first world countries. What's india going to do once they're massive covid wave is over? Is it going to improve india-china relations? You are going to have 1bn people with a border with China very very pissed I think at them.
We are only 1 year into this pandemic, and I think many geopolitical issues haven't been worked through yet.
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Sure, > The prior probability of a lab escape is low but the prior probability of "a pandemic from natural causes envelops the world" is also low, say below 1% a year. But now, given that "a pandemic does envelop the world", the posterior probability of lab escape and natural cause of course rises dramatically... and then saying "we didn't see much evidence for it" on a superficial tour organised by those responsible…
Except there have been leaks for this specific lab and it has been known to have flawed training on handling of biohazardous material before.
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> He also recently implicated Fauchi for covertly funding gain of function research I'm sorry, that essay (which is an opinion piece, not a work of investigative journalism) says absolutely nothing of the sort. What's your source on that? That's a pretty ridiculous accusation if you don't have evidence.
Rogin covers this in his book “Chaos under heaven” and his earlier articles. Here is Rogan/Rogin snippet https://youtu.be/IqhKlkkc2Eo
Yeah, this didn't happen.
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> [...] China’s behavior early in the pandemic. I have a difficult time understanding why they would have been arresting doctors who were talking about the virus if it were natural. I'm ambivalent about the two hypotheses, but China's early behaviour fits either, I think. I do think that the instinct of the regional bureaucracy is to control the flow of information, and punish those that proceed outside the party hie…
It’s plausible either way, and the behavior is by no means a smoking gun, but it seems slightly more consistent with a lab leak hypothesis. I’d expect a slightly different pattern of attempting to control information if there wasn’t any connection to the lab. The disappearance of Huang Yan Ling is another bit of evidence that pushes me towards the lab leak. If I were to assign a percentage to it, I’d say about 60% ch…
Do you actually have any evidence in which to compare and contrast how a government behaves when trying to cover up a manmade virus vs how a government behaves when trying to cover up a natural virus that has hopped species? Genuinely asking because we absolutely need to be pinning conclusions on evidence and not conjecture here.
My counterpoint is Ai Wei Wei was disappeared for barely anything at all, dude was producing art that people don’t like. And Jack Ma also disappeared for a period of time right? The Chinese government disappears people like I have coffee in the morning. I would need more evidence to presume this disappearance of a doctor is somehow more significant.
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Well, I can relate to that. Most of 2020 we were focused on fighting the aftermath of the crisis. Now that things slowly are getting back to normal, at least in some Western countries, our focus shifts to the origins. I was also very skeptical in the beginning about the escape theory tbh. But after reading a couple of pieces I’m opening up to the possibility.
And how does this justify moral superiority to those of us who understood from the beginning that the lab hypothesis was the most likely? Or was that not true until you decided it was true?
Besides, it doesn't really matter. Lab accidents were going to happen and are going to happen regardless of where COVID came from. China as a nation isn't exactly responsible and whatever people do next will be more about geopolitics than about details like the virus' genesis. And a natural origin can't be ruled out either.