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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

#331

Post by phyalow »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #277
hayst4ck wrote: post #214

Earlier 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…

There is a 3rd option. I'm going to repost a comment I made a few days ago regarding the labs in Wuhan: The "Wuhan Institute of Virology" is named in a couple of news articles and scientific publications. However what is rarely discussed is that the Wuhan CDC (武汉市疾病预防控制中心), which also has a virus lab and was also researching coronaviruses is in walking distance from that wet market! I took a screenshot of it, in the…

If anyone is interested in the Job posting story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU&t=122s

Webarchive links are in the comments.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#332

Post by rubatuga »

hayst4ck wrote: post #214
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 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…

No, idea 1 has not been debunked.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#333

Post by basch »

rogers18445 wrote: post #311

Gain of function research is not engineering, they are often conflated for some reason. Gain of function is essentially artificial selection with bells and whistles. Such manipulation would leak some information into the virus. Already it seems like the virus has great difficulty spreading outdoors while great success spreading indoors. It may be a coincidence but evolution does encode environmental assumptions into…

Building an artificial selection machine / process sounds like a form of engineering, no? It’s fairly systematic.

It almost sounds to me like a semantics argument arguing whether injection molding is manufacturing or applied physics.

A chimera followed by gain of function would be engineering as well.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#334

Post by sitkack »

divbzero wrote: post #330
smallnamespace wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere FYI, this really doesn't match my experience. I got curious and Googled about the lab's location myself about a year ago, not long after the outbreak, and found the hypothesis tantalizing, even in the absence of hard evidence. I've seen ongoing discussion about this since then on various blogs and on Twitter. As a more meta-comment, we're all in tiny, pers…

To add one more data point, for the past year I’ve been following this story passively — reading articles I’ve come across but never searching actively — and this is the first I’ve heard of the coincident location of the Wuhan CDC.

Replying to you and @smallnamespace, not only are we in extremely small silos, you can realize how small the silo is by

1) taking sporadic notes, but not full urls

2) attempting to follow your same trail again

I often find I can't even, with knowledge of what I read/saw find the same sources again, using the same tools and sites without basically taking detailed notes. The idea that information is public and can be connected in the same way is preposterous, but only via experience.

If you have an insight, or a linkage between facts and events, please document it in a way that is shareable and findable. I too saw the ad for the virologist post-doc position in the Wuhan lab. I think lab escape of either a wild virus or a slightly modified one is likely. It doesn't mean that it is nefarious.

I think a full text and graphical log of the research process would be highly productive.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#335

Post by [deleted] »

dirtyid wrote: post #257
natch wrote: post #187

Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here is a list of them: https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... Spoiler: They are all “mysteriously” missing or at least have disappeared from their normal lives.

"Some scientist" = couple doctors "whistle blowers" without virology background, couple blogger journalists, and couple activists who got on Beijing's shit list for wrongthink politics. Aka exactly zero scientists with credible subject matter knowledge. Whistle blowers were initially "correctly" punished for spreading rumors that literal SARs came back, later their images rehabilitated as "heros" for domestic politic…

[deleted]

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#336

Post by swader999 »

strken wrote: post #315
swader999 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You think they wouldn't clean house if the virus had naturally hopped to humans but the WIV was still being publicly blamed? I think they responded to the accusation, not to the reality on the ground. That's not to say that I think it didn't come from the WIV, just that they'd act the same way regardless of where the first transmission occurred.

I never really considered this point. Just assumed cover-up equals culpability. Thanks.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#337

Post by matt_kantor »

franciscop wrote: post #254
matt_kantor wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about Galileo.

I didn't forget about Galileo, it's literally my first link and it's the same link that @jimmygrapes shared later :)

Sorry about that!

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#338

Post by natch »

dirtyid wrote: post #257
natch wrote: post #187

Some scientists in China have been questioning things too. Here is a list of them: https://twitter.com/brendancarrfcc/status/124844281241420186... Spoiler: They are all “mysteriously” missing or at least have disappeared from their normal lives.

"Some scientist" = couple doctors "whistle blowers" without virology background, couple blogger journalists, and couple activists who got on Beijing's shit list for wrongthink politics. Aka exactly zero scientists with credible subject matter knowledge. Whistle blowers were initially "correctly" punished for spreading rumors that literal SARs came back, later their images rehabilitated as "heros" for domestic politic…

Nevertheless, these are people who apparently have been disappeared by the Chinese government.

That's not something to be brushed off lightly.

Not only because of the effects on them personally and (best case scenario) their careers.

But also because of the chilling impact on scientific and public discourse.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#339

Post by antattack »

kossTKR wrote: post #134
antattack wrote: post #48

It's not going to be possible to prove lab origin w/o Chinese cooperation. However, lab origin should not be totally dismissed, so we can have a discussion about safety of gain-of-function research now, rather than waiting for some verifiable event to happen in the future.

Why are people acting like China is doing anything in isolation? The Wuhan Lab was funded through the american Ecohealth alliance, and a dozen american scientists probably know just as much as the Chinese do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432

According to this fact-check only small amount, 600k USD, was distributed to the Ecohealth Alliance/Wuhan: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fac...

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#340

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

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…

> "If you think SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab, please unfollow me. "

You'd believe scientists should know better that it's not about "China is guilty, they should pay for their crime" at all but "Let' us understand the origins so that we might prepare and protect ourselves better for another pandemic outbreak."

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