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More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
231–240 of 382 posts
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That sounds like the worst of the Internet in action. You disagree with someone's off-handed remark on social media, so you want to remove their funding source? It's not about removing, it's about finding who they are speaking out for.
But you all are so quick to assume that people have a financial agenda rather than their own thoughts. Like maybe people just think things and say them, and it's not all some propaganda campaign.
Career scientists not motivated by money assumes there is something that would dissuade them from not being so. Is there anything that motivates a scientist to avoid tailoring a response beyond personal moral codes? We do have a replication crisis mind you https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Overall
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair the lab escape scenario looks a lot like a conspiracy theory. One should remember that around that time the "flat earth" theory was still going on (IIRC), and there are similar lab escape theories about AIDS.
There have always been conspiracy theories but I think it's more relevant to note how quickly this theory was co-opted by anti-asian racism and converted into a version where that lab escape was interpreted to be an intention action to cause a world wide pandemic. I really sympathize with both sides here - I think it's quite possible a lab accident was involved with the virus escaping into the world... but the benefi…
Seriously? We should lie and deceive on a global scale in order to prevent a tiny number of people from being assholes when you know very well that they’re just going to find another reason to be hateful. Lying to everyone isn’t going to prevent hate, I really don’t understand this reasoning. Any time I’ve come across people who express hateful opinions about other groups of people it’s always due to the fact that a) they don’t have any close interactions with people of that group and b) their own social group is similarly isolated and ignorant. Lying to people in situations like that will never change their opinions, the only thing that will is direct face to face communication where trust can be built with them and their peers.
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#234What does it matter, beyond natural curiosity, whether it was released from a lab or not? It is of no real consequence because: (1) if it *was* released from a lab, its highly suspect that it was intentional due to it infecting China's own citizens; if it was some kind of "attack" you would think they would plant it somewhere else. (2) this is somewhat of the price we (as a society) pay for experimentation on disease…
Because it calls into question the whole value proposition of gain-of-function research. If this was released from a virology lab, it calls into question whether we should be funding this kind of research at all. Further, the unwillingness of many virologists to even consider non-wild origins brings a lot of ethical questions to the forefront: these folks used their authority and bully pulpit to influence public opinion, and it’s important to determine the implicit and explicit conflicts of interests that are influencing their decision making.
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair the lab escape scenario looks a lot like a conspiracy theory. One should remember that around that time the "flat earth" theory was still going on (IIRC), and there are similar lab escape theories about AIDS.
There have always been conspiracy theories but I think it's more relevant to note how quickly this theory was co-opted by anti-asian racism and converted into a version where that lab escape was interpreted to be an intention action to cause a world wide pandemic. I really sympathize with both sides here - I think it's quite possible a lab accident was involved with the virus escaping into the world... but the benefi…
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Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#236What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanati…
> It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York
The controversy around Peter Daszak goes deeper. First off, he was the only American on the WHO team that visited Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) earlier this year. Per the WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-china-hunt-covid-origins-11...) the WHO rejected three different nominees from the Trump administration and instead chose Daszak. That seems suspicious to me, because Daszak's prior work with WIV means there is a clear conflict of interest, and it puts the WHO's judgment into doubt since it would seem like a convenient pick for the CCP, given how tightly they managed the WHO's visit and subsequent report.
Furthermore, Daszak's name appears as an author on a WIV paper that concerns coronavirus research (https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/90/6/3253.full.pdf), and the text within suggests WIV was actively performing gain of function research with SARS-like (SL) viruses:
> "We recently isolated a bat SL-CoV strain (WIV1) and constructed an infectious clone of another strain (SHC014); significantly, these strains are closely related to SARS-CoV and capable of using the same cellular receptor (angiotensin-convert-ing enzyme 2 [ACE2]) as SARS-CoV"
Note that EcoHealth's grant was omitted from the oversight process concerning research involving dangerous pathogens (https://news.yahoo.com/hhs-board-never-approved-wuhan-155055...). Per this article, Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard H. Ebright said that NIH and NIAID "systematically thwarted — indeed systematically nullified — the HHS P3CO Framework by declining to flag and forward proposals for review."
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While all of this could just be strange coincidence, incorrect speculation, or reasonably explained with more information, it has all the markers of something that deserves scrutiny and transparency. I feel like everyone who was and still is quick to shut down the lab leak possibility is acting against the spirit of open inquiry and thwarting the best understanding that we could have from this entire saga.
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#237What i find weird is the extreme and very unscientific agression among certain virologist: "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. " https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1390720308265508871 Then you have other academics in the comments saying nothing is certain yet, and other prominents labs like Gupta Labs at Cambridge and Bloom Lab from Seattle saying there could be multiple explanati…
> It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York The controversy around Peter Daszak goes deeper. First off, he was the only American on the WHO team that visited Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) earlier this year. Per the WSJ ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-china-hunt-covid-origins-11... ) the WHO rejected three different…
This article does a thorough examination of the origination, covers your points on Daszak well.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>I know the issue is politicized This is becoming more and more common, Pure Science is almost never practiced anymore. The Hard sciences like Immunology, virology, general medicine used to be some what insulated from politics however in the last few years all sciences are no longer data driven. You form a conclusion then find the facts that fit your narrative, and if your narrative is not the "correct" one you bett…
Is it? Since the beginning the science has been in conflict with politics (or the Church, or the Kings/Emperors before democracy). Notable political/social opposition to the sciences are well documented. Couple of examples: doctors washing their hands was a controversial issue [2] and how being able to eat "higher-class" food killed thousands of Japanese, who rejected eating other food even when it was known it was k…
Being in Japan, 3 was fascinating. I feel like Japans strong cultural belief in their own superiority and love of hierarchy make it especially susceptible to these type of issues.
If you’re interested, here is a more recent example of “politics vs science” and politics losing badly: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Abe-declares-e...
Here’s a fun quote from the article:
"We have managed to bring the outbreak under control within just one and a half months. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the Japan model,"
Meanwhile at the time of writing Japan is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases and Abe has resigned.
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 2 concrete distinct ideas, but many are conflating both of the ideas. It results in it being very hard to have a conversation because it's unclear which idea people are talking about. Idea 1: SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab Idea 2: SARS-CoV-2 was in/around/related to WIV and escaped Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists. Idea 2 is an idea that there is a considerable body of circumstantial ev…
Idea 1 was widely debunked by American scientists I don't personally doubt it's a conspiracy theory but would you clarify exactly where "American scientists" debunked this - is it in the link you provided, it's not clear, it appears to only deal with claim 2?
For evidence about debunking, you can check out Twitter threads from Trevor Bedford (bio: https://bedford.io/team/trevor-bedford/) that are linked from https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1339266367522918400
In this discussion and the older threads he links in there, Bedford basically rules out an 'engineered' virus, does not rule out a lab leak, but leans towards zoonosis (pathogen jumping from animal to human).
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Here are Thread reader links for the older threads he references:
Were parts of HIV inserted into SARS-CoV-2? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1223666856923291648.html
What do the number of amino acid and nucleotide changes tell us? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224207086013149184.html
Which data point are consistent with zoonosis or lab escape? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230634136102064128.html
Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins
#240It’s unfortunate that the reaction to the outbreak has been to sue China (and even see first world countries talking about getting reparations), creating even more pressure for China to cover up any details of a potential lab leak. It’s imperative that the world puts an end to dangerous gain of function research, particularly given how little such research has actually contributed to our understanding of virology and epidemiology, while potentially resulting in a pandemic that killed several million people.