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The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

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Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#531

Post by onethought »

didericis wrote: post #525
onethought wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Right across from”? If you are familiar with Wuhan, you’d know you are talking crap. The virology lab is on the East side of the river in the University sector of the city. The market is on the west side of the river and is in the cbd sector of the city. We are talking 10km distance apart, with a huge river between. And there are many other wet markets between that would more likely service the community closer to t…

Map for others to reference and judge whether “right across” is a reasonable description. https://www.breakingasia.com/wp-content/uploads/Wuhan-Virolo... A virology lab studying the human transmissibility of bat corona viruses ~10km away from the purported epicenter of the outbreak of a bat related coronavirus is notable.

Epicentre of the outbreak != the origin. But sure... let just pretend that Wuhan is a single lab, a single road going 10km and a wet market.

How come no one at the lab? Or the University got it? How come initially it was Hankou (west side) that was locked down and not Wuchang (east side)?

Surely the folks leaking (given the equivalent of the cdc is in the same location) it would have thought of that and locked it down first?

Sorry that facts keep spoiling the juicy narrative.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#532

Post by zpeti »

dumb1224 wrote: post #203
zby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural origin hypothesis is also pushed for ideological reasons - at this level of meta analysis we are at a stalemate. The article was good at revealing that there is not just ideology - but also material interests involved and that the two prestigious letters that were so categorical in dismissing the lab escape hypothesis were quite a bit tainted by conflicts of interests.

My colleague, an evolutionary biologist's comment on this: the virus is unlikely to prevail if manually tweaked since evolution does such an amazing job that it's very unlikely it alone could dominate and infect large populations.

How about a virus that's just allowed to evolve inside human tissue? Not "manually tweaked" just allowed to evolve faster.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#533

Post by zpeti »

misja111 wrote: post #208
roenxi wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> generally it’s beyond current science to independently create mutations for a specific purpose. Labs are the places where people go to push the boundaries. If we go with lab-leak, it is extremely possible that they had figured something new out. They were doing something novel in there, because they were paid money to do novel things.

It's true that labs were pushing boundaries, the Wuhan lab as well. But every time they succeeded in doing something novel, they were celebrating it in the media. If they really had been able to reach this major technological breakthrough, one would expect that they would have made this one public as well. I would say that it's more likely that this was a natural mutation that got its chance to survive natural select…

It depends how quickly the mistake was made. Totalitarian states are not famous for admitting mistakes, in fact they hide them with all their tools. So I don't think your media hype story is a good explanation.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#534

Post by davenquinn »

It's interesting to think about the interference between the politics and the science of looking too deeply at this last year. Essentially, the Trump administration came out strongly for the lab theory early on and linked it to their "China virus" narrative.

This was a rhetorical bludgeon (like so much from that administration) to avoid dealing with the problem, with the likely added effect of fomenting reprisals towards Asians. So the science and media had to (or chose to) avoid the issue for fear of the baggage entailed.

Now it's becoming safe to question scientists again without looking like you're on the side of the crazies. So we are elevating these voices now. There are many things to take away from this, but institutional rot and bad incentives from the top start shading everybody's actions.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#535

Post by djmips »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #339
gonehome wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly! 2020 will be forever the year I lost total trust in mainstream media. It's one thing to just "get it wrong" it's an entirely different thing when the powers that be are actively trying to promote a false narrative. And then to turn around and label actual journalism and truth seeking as "conspiracy-theorist" and "crack pots" it is just too much to bear. Filling the news with endless critiques and shaming of…

It's always been this way.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#536

Post by rcxdude »

celticninja wrote: post #394
dont__panic wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate, wouldn't COVID-19 also spread particularly efficiently in, say, a cave? Where bats live?

Wouldn't they have located the cave by now, and a load of bats infected with the virus.

There's a lot of bats, caves, and viruses. Virologists find new viruses all the time, why would you expect that they have surveyed enough that the fact that they haven't found a particular one is evidence it's not present?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#537

Post by dumb1224 »

zpeti wrote: post #532
dumb1224 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My colleague, an evolutionary biologist's comment on this: the virus is unlikely to prevail if manually tweaked since evolution does such an amazing job that it's very unlikely it alone could dominate and infect large populations.

How about a virus that's just allowed to evolve inside human tissue? Not "manually tweaked" just allowed to evolve faster.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist. I merely want to pass on his comment. He studied the viral genome segments inserted in human genome. I can pass that question to him if you want.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#538

Post by newacct583 »

guesst wrote: post #504
AzzieElbab wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rogin covers this in his book “Chaos under heaven” and his earlier articles. Here is Rogan/Rogin snippet https://youtu.be/IqhKlkkc2Eo

You shouldn't have used the word "covertly". That completely distorted your point and made it false. I watched the Joe Rogan Josh Rogin clip you linked to. It's very interesting. But what Rogin says is that Fauci "found a way to turn gain-of-function research back on". He doesn't say that Fauci did anything covertly. He's describing effective bureaucratic maneuvering, which Fauci must be good at. He couldn't have sta…

> By overstating the claim, you distracted from the significant thing, which is that Fauci was a major funder of gain-of-function research

I'm sorry, but I've been digging and I just don't see any major justification here. I'm sure there's subtlety, but there's just no one in the research world coming out to say this. There are no accusations being made. There's no memo with his name on it. There's no specific study cited that he pushed. There's nothing. No one is covering this.

This is just the next conspiracy theory, isn't it? It's not falsifiable, so everyone is going to believe it anyway. This is how we got Q. You're doing it again.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#539

Post by dopidopHN »

raducu wrote: post #377
dopidopHN wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be unlikely for a pandemic to also affect wuhan?

To START in Wuhan, the only place doing gain-of function on the closest known virus to SARS2 and to not find a natural source for it given the source was found within months for both SARS1 and MERS.

Did it start in wuhan? I thought we found trace of COVID in urine elsewhere
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