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More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

nytimes.com

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Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#241

Post by swader999 »

astrobe_ wrote: post #128
adrianb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you made statements like "this started in Wuhan, in the lab there, not in the animal market next to it," you were called racist, even though race had nothing to do with it. Honestly I always felt like "a scientist working with dangerous pathogens had an accident" is way less racist than "someone ate a weird animal from a wet market"... And yet the backlash was stronger for the lab leak scenario, almost as if the…

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.

Dropping 'flat earth' every time someone questions something off the official narrative is such a weak cop out.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#242

Post by swader999 »

jostmey wrote: post #69
screye wrote: post #22

Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…

How is this the lab origin story more plausible than the original hypothesis that sars-cov2 originated from the wet-markets? Both are places where human and exotic animals closely interact, where sars-cov2 could have jumped. Why do you think the odds of the virus jumping are higher in one place than another?

This article does a decent job of answering your question. The subject is too dense to answer in evan a long reply. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#243

Post by swader999 »

elliekelly wrote: post #31
screye wrote: post #22

Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…

Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.

There is plenty of evidence. CCP cleaning house at Wuhan Institute and purging online references is one item to question.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#244

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ummonk wrote: post #240

It’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…

China has been the only country to grow their economy during Covid. Given the likelihood of the cause being preventable, I’m not sure how bad I feel for China nor do I think they would have been any more forthcoming if no one had pressured them for answers. The latter part just doesn’t seem how the CCP works.

While we agree gain for function is bad. Do you think China will stop it now? Sort of a new arms race.

ETA: Does no one else remember those videos out of China with people foaming at the mouth, convulsing, and literally lying dead in the street? Does anyone seriously think that was some weird organic for-fun deception? I have no proof that was a state run for-western media campaign.... buuuuttt...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#245

Post by timr »

throwawaysea wrote: post #239
mellosouls wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). - Her…

Trevor Bedford is one scientist at the Hutch. He is certainly qualified to have an opinion, but his opinion is not the conclusive determination on the matter. Other scientists whom I respect have different opinions:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

The other links you provide are rebuttals of particular arguments, but in no way settle the entire question. Knowing that bits of HIV weren't inserted into SARS-CoV2, for example, tells you nothing about whether this virus may have emerged from natural selection experiments in the lab. There are good arguments on both sides, but Twitter, in particular, seems stuck on the pronouncements of early 2020, when nobody knew much of anything about the virus and a certain prominent politician was speculating wildly, thus setting up a left/right polarization over what should be a factual debate.

We need to stop this hostile form of "scientific debate" where one person's opinion is held up as "the science", while all other voices are dismissed as fringe.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#246

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

alisonatwork wrote: post #191
jostmey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this the lab origin story more plausible than the original hypothesis that sars-cov2 originated from the wet-markets? Both are places where human and exotic animals closely interact, where sars-cov2 could have jumped. Why do you think the odds of the virus jumping are higher in one place than another?

I don't know anything about virology, but I do know about wet markets. Every working class neighborhood in every city in China has at least one wet market. I would guess that hundreds of millions of people in China shop at wet markets every day. Even if you filter out all the wet markets that do not sell exotic animals like bats and pangolins, it still seems suspicious that this outbreak appears to have been centered…

Not to mention the dozens of expert virologists that agree the virus characteristics do not seem to be natural.

I have to wonder though if the wet market was a CCP smoke screen... why wasn’t it further from their lab doing exactly this type of viral work? IDK, maybe that was the point to cause suspicion? I’m not crafty enough to know my ability to write world deceiving half-truths.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#247

Post by JPKab »

throwawaysea wrote: post #239
mellosouls wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). - Her…

Define "engineered".

If it was bred in a lab via humanized mice engineered with human ACE 2 receptors, would you consider that? What about forms of "no seeum" splicing?

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#248

Post by swader999 »

99_00 wrote: post #176

I'm convinced that it's a lab leak. I'm also convinced the slow reveal is a psyop and I don't disagree with it's objectives. The sudden revelation that China screwed up and lied to the world is too shocking for the vast majority of people. The global public's response would not be optimal. The slow reveal gives societies around the world time to adjust to the new reality. If we were all thrown into that reality overn…

I don't disagree but you should probably say CCP instead of such a broad stroke with the word China.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#249

Post by cheeri0 »

kossTKR wrote: post #112

What 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…

There's [plenyu of blame to go around. May I ask why you wouldn't blame China at all if the virus leaked from their lab in Wuhan?

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#250

Post by throwawaysea »

alphabet9000 wrote: post #204

here is a collection of news articles and headlines since early 2020 that reference the 'lab leak' theory in some way. https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets

What exactly is that site? Is it an automatic indexer of news articles? Or someone's personal curated list of articles? If automated, I am really curious how it manages to crawl and capture some of the news articles that are behind a paywall.
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