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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#231

Post by [deleted] »

fragileone wrote: post #200
henearkr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the situation was out they did everything properly to fix it at home, and then even contributed to the science work on the virus (just not on the lab origin hypothesis, but all other work on the virus structure, illness mechanisms, potential vaccines or medications, yes). All the geopolitical tensions around China, both Koreas, and Japan, are just about losing or not losing face. Most of the time they would larg…

I'm not sure what your point is here. That the Wuhan lab shouldn't be called out for likely causing a global pandemic? It's being done in a very fair and non-aggressive manner. I don't really see what other approach could be said to take into account this stereotype more.

[deleted]

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#232

Post by nyokodo »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #205
harryf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's shady to provide that funding. What I'm saying is it demonstrates conflict of interest. Last year in May 5 2020 Fauci dismissed the idea that the virus came from a lab that his own organisation was providing funds to - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-fauci-wuhan-lab-coronav... Whether or not anything shady was happening, the conflict of interest is clear.

Would Fauci have even known? Budget numbers say NIAID clears around $5 billion in grant funding per year and this grant was more at the $100k per year level. Another source shows that NIAID receives around 3,000 grant applications per year and that's just in two of their multiple grant types. It seems most likely to me that the grant was approved and funded by a subject-area committee without Fauci being involved at…

> Would Fauci have even known?

Firstly, he has no excuse to be ignorant. Secondly, I’d wager every administrator and CEO who has any involvement with viral biomedical research were making urgent albeit possibly discreet inquiries into any possible involvement around February 2020.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#233

Post by mc32 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #216
mc32 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt your account --but that's a distraction. There were many people in bioscience, virology, etc. who said it was possible and should not be discounted, but those people were hounded and shut up.

Shutting them up doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The lab leak theory has continued to be discussed in all kinds of media and many parts of the culture over the last year.

This claim is laughable. It was all labeled conspiracy theory, fringe, even racist.

Twitter and FB had policies against it and even now, today Twitter suspended the account for the Fauci email leaker(s). So much for open discussion.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#234

Post by mc32 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #224
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

It’s almost as if we learned new information that contradicts old information and the media is doing its job publishing articles about it. How weird.

Right, while ignoring their previous protests and their censorship of opposing voices who offered alternative theories from the beginning while theories were being developed and discussed. The CCP said "wet market" and that made it authoritative?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#235

Post by actuator »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #229
actuator wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Trump's use was to definitely please his supporter base and blame China. But except for some racist bigots, I really doubt calling it the China virus/flu means that someone is trying to blame Chinese people for it, just like you are arguing for variants. My point was, the same concerns people had for not using the country name on virus were applicable for variants too. If we chose one standard for the vi…

You don't see a difference between: "the virus that killed at least 3.5M people worldwide came from " and "as the pandemic spread globally, and as expected for almost any virus and for coronaviruses in particular, variants of the virus emerged in , and " ?

Well, both the statements are worded way differently. The same variant thing can be worded as

"Covid-19 variant wreaking havoc and causing severe hospitalisations and has killed 3.5M people came from #{COUNTRY_A}"

The same carefully worded statement like yours for the variant one can also be used for the first outbreak country's name. It is the usage that is the issue not the term itself. My point still is, if someone saw downfalls of using the country name in one situation, they should have seen it in the other as well. At least WHO did, that's why they came up with the new names.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#236

Post by SkyMarshal »

nostromo wrote: post #76
ctoth wrote: post #7

Another pretty good article, certainly higher quality than you'd consider given the source[0]. What switch flipped to make all these come out right now? [0]: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke...

The reason it's coming out now is because Trump is gone. During the election, most of the media decided to ignore anything they were afraid would help Trump or hurt Biden. Whether an activist media is good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader.

There’s an alternate interpretation.

It’s not that the media wanted to avoid helping Trump or hurting Biden, even going so far as to withhold reporting the truth of the pandemic’s origin. But rather that the media had a higher threshold of evidence for publishing accusations of malfeasance against another nationstate than Trump did, and hadn’t met that threshold till recently.

Trump was notoriously flippant, with low or no standard for truth, or even merely diplomatic tact. His MO is not truth-finding but rather saying anything distressing to his political adversaries. He is an archetypal Internet troll with the soapbox of the US presidency.

He spent four years doing that, essentially crying wolf over and over. By the time the pandemic hit, the media was universally resistant to serving as a megaphone to amplify his trolling.

Thus they held back on this story until they could piece together and verify enough of it to meet their higher threshold of evidence. That simply took until now to do.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#237

Post by graeme »

IgorPartola wrote: post #224
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

It’s almost as if we learned new information that contradicts old information and the media is doing its job publishing articles about it. How weird.

This is not at all what happened. This article has a good overview of the shifting narrative. The initial position was that it was crazy to even consider a lab leak.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#238

Post by themacguffinman »

swader999 wrote: post #188
wombatpm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When China started welding doors on high rises to keep people in, that was the signal to take it seriously-despite what the WHO was saying

They never welded people in, it was to funnel them through common exits where they could be disinfected.

It was reported that some residential unit were literally blocked from entry/exit: https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/coronavirus-residents-welded-insi...

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#239

Post by [deleted] »

fragileone wrote: post #200
henearkr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the situation was out they did everything properly to fix it at home, and then even contributed to the science work on the virus (just not on the lab origin hypothesis, but all other work on the virus structure, illness mechanisms, potential vaccines or medications, yes). All the geopolitical tensions around China, both Koreas, and Japan, are just about losing or not losing face. Most of the time they would larg…

I'm not sure what your point is here. That the Wuhan lab shouldn't be called out for likely causing a global pandemic? It's being done in a very fair and non-aggressive manner. I don't really see what other approach could be said to take into account this stereotype more.

[deleted]

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#240

Post by graeme »

tmp404 wrote: post #155

While this article is quite illuminating on the political side of the lab leak theory, on the evidence side it's mostly a rehash of some long-standing speculations. The only recent evidence it contains is the fact that 3 researchers from WIV sought hospital care back in autumn of 2019 with symptoms similar to COVID. However, this piece of evidence is hardly consequential without further details: - First, most common…

Thanks for that context. I had thought the hospital care was more significant as flu hospitalization is rare in working age people.

But medical visits are common so that is quite different.

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