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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

#361

Post by brippalcharrid »

mistermann wrote: post #282
riyadparvez wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always surprised how the virologist community have sacrificed their integrity. From the article titled "Scientists: 'Exactly zero' evidence COVID-19 came from a lab"[1]: > But that was before he learned more about COVID-19 and related coronaviruses, which have features already seen in nature. "There are lots of data and lots of evidence, as well as previous examples of this coming from nature," he said. "We have…

Surely epistemology and logic must be part of scientific curriculum, no? Maybe some scientists don't take it seriously.

I don't think that people are doubting the virologists' epistemic ability; it's the fact that their reasoning seems to be motivated by a desire to deflect blame away from the NIAID/CCP/virology field which is the problem.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#362

Post by lordlimecat »

syshum wrote: post #123
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…

>>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…

If you want to see this in full force, go try to find out from medical organizations whether there are irreversible health effects for gender transition therapies in adolescents.

APA (and WHO, and...) will say no. But you'll see curious notes about recommendations to monitor bone density, and curious usages of auxiliary drugs whose purpose is to combat osteoporosis. Turns out, the therapies are well known to permanently and negatively affect bone density and long term effects-- while assumed to include osteoporosis and more frequent fractures-- are simply unknown.

But the science and statistics cannot be allowed to trump the politics, so you will see no mention of this in complete contravention of traditional Hippocratic responsibilities and medical ethics.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#363

Post by feanaro »

saas_sam wrote: post #113
feanaro wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the Spanish flu also manufactured? Clearly there is such a thing as natural pandemics.

OP: "This virus was natural therefore any investigations into its artificiality are moot." Me: "This virus has unique qualities that made it especially contagious, so its artificiality is not moot." You: "Other viruses in the past were also bad." Me, now: Yes, other viruses in the past were also bad. If you meant that to relate to the previous comments I think you left out the important bits. It's like if we were dis…

I wasn't arguing not to investigate. I don't think there's a good reason to say with certainty that it shouldn't be looked into.

What happened is that (I think) I misinterpreted this statement:

> Or would you take it as pure coincidence that the first truly global pandemic in however many decades you'd like just happened to be lab made?

Upon re-reading, it seems you're saying that if this virus turned out to be lab-made, this fact might have something to do with it becoming a global pandemic (through an increased probability of spreading worldwide).

Whereas you're not saying that the fact that this became a global pandemic indicates that it is lab-made, which is how I misinterpreted it initially.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#364

Post by trompetenaccoun »

sitkack wrote: post #334
divbzero wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

That's important advice. The thought of documenting anything didn't even cross my mind in the early days of the pandemic. It was all so blatantly suspicious that I had no doubt large news outlets would report on it any day, and then there would be international pressure for a proper investigation. But that day never came. Instead they started spreading the bat-eating story after Chinese state media claimed the virus originated in the market, without evidence. People don't even eat bat in Wuhan. And when that got questioned they switched to pangolins. To this day no such link was found. And the Wuhan CDC lab was never investigated.

There's so much distraction, hysteria and extremely questionable science reporting. Without having in depth knowledge about Mainland China, I'm not sure if I'd not fallen for some of the misinformation as well. So yes, it's extremely important people document what they see and understand, and share it with other in a way that makes it easily accessible. When many journalists do a bad job at fact checking and questioning their sources, we have to be better than that, else we just contribute to the noise.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#365

Post by throwaway316943 »

jl2718 wrote: post #350
throwaway316943 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve been repeatedly conflated, either purposefully or carelessly. Almost no one was actually pursuing the engineered bioweapon angle but anyone who even suggested that it may have leaked from a lab that studies bat coronaviruses was treated like a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut. It’s pretty dismal that no one is going to be accountable for their behaviour through this whole mess, nothing will be learned and we’ll pro…

The behaviorist interpretation of belief is that beliefs expressed will be based on whatever is the most socially acceptable, and that that internal beliefs are formed to be consistent with outward expression of belief. Nobody will be able to look at this rationally until nobody cares either way. That’s what makes history interesting. It always changes.

I think prohibition is a good illustration of why that interpretation is inaccurate. When one group’s beliefs become dominant in society it doesn’t result in everyone’s opinions changing. People will pay lip service to the commonly held belief but will act otherwise behind closed doors. The people that carry the internalized belief are often entirely oblivious to how much of a lie it actually is since they never get invited to the speak easy.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#366

Post by austincheney »

dkersten wrote: post #353
austincheney wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a conspiracy theory to qualify a clear example of a logical fallacy is pretty weak.

Are you saying that the CCP did, in fact, let people talk about it? That they didn't cover it up for months before admitting that there was a pandemic, after it had already spread around the world? That they did, in fact, let the WHO investigate last year rather than a year later? That the WIV didn't research bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses? There's also the reports about the leaked state department cables from 201…

I am not providing any opinion as to the origins of the virus. You seem to believe otherwise due to poor objectivity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#367

Post by saas_sam »

feanaro wrote: post #363
saas_sam wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP: "This virus was natural therefore any investigations into its artificiality are moot." Me: "This virus has unique qualities that made it especially contagious, so its artificiality is not moot." You: "Other viruses in the past were also bad." Me, now: Yes, other viruses in the past were also bad. If you meant that to relate to the previous comments I think you left out the important bits. It's like if we were dis…

I wasn't arguing not to investigate. I don't think there's a good reason to say with certainty that it shouldn't be looked into. What happened is that (I think) I misinterpreted this statement: > Or would you take it as pure coincidence that the first truly global pandemic in however many decades you'd like just happened to be lab made? Upon re-reading, it seems you're saying that if this virus turned out to be lab-m…

Thank you, upvoted. I appreciate your politeness.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#368

Post by austincheney »

titzer wrote: post #212
austincheney wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an argument from ignorance logical fallacy. The inability to find something has no bearing on whether it exists or not and thus has no bearing on the probability of an inverted outcome. Dark matter/energy also frequently fall into this sort of argument. There is no evidence that they do exist, which does not suggest the absence of their existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

> The inability to find something has no bearing on whether it exists or not Bigfoot has entered the chat. > Dark matter/energy...There is no evidence that they do exist, Except there is plenty of evidence for dark matter. It's stuff that has observable mass and is found in countless galaxy rotation curve studies, gravitational lensing, etc.

Dark matter has never been observed or detected.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#369

Post by Izkata »

LatteLazy wrote: post #201

If I have a virus, how do I tell if its natural or man made? Unless someone has gone out of their way to add an indicator won't all viruses just be the same? It's not like you can leave finger prints or a "made in China" sticker on a virus right?

It depends on if by "man made" you mean "engineered" or "artificial selective pressure".

If it was full-on engineered, as in splicing RNA from different viruses together (or other such direct modifications), there would actually be fingerprints based around the method of splicing used.

Artificial selective pressure (introducing a virus to different hosts and selecting for desired random mutations) would look natural.

Re: More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins

#370

Post by Izkata »

varispeed wrote: post #34
Bayesian_bro wrote: post #23

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…

> China's global reputation is going to take a hit. If having openly racist culture and running concentration camps has done nothing to their reputation, I don't think anything will. > I don't think they did this intentionally. Regardless if this was intentional or not, they should take responsibility. Imagine if Russia dropped a nuclear bomb on Europe by mistake. This is the same calibre of "oops my bad.". It's not…

> and running concentration camps has done nothing to their reputation

I think most people just don't know about the Uyghur camps.

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