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

vanityfair.com

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

#331

Post by knowaveragejoe »

jkhdigital wrote: post #127
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an actively status-quo favoring media, not an activist one. The former president was a pathological liar (thousands of documented clear lies during his office), and there were (and are) extremely good reasons to ignore more or less anything he said.

To paraphrase one of my favorite comedies, Super Troopers : “But Trump’s lies are cheeky and fun! Yeah, and the establishment’s lies are cruel and tragic.” Of course this is an overstatement; Trump’s lies were not pretty but the point is that obvious lies are significantly less damaging than well-hidden lies. It’s the skillful liars that one needs to be wary of.

This is massively downplaying the amount of damage trump & his cohort's lies have done and continue to do.

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

#332

Post by mikem170 »

kaesar14 wrote: post #54

It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums. Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.

I too am disappointed at how politicized this is. That includes the Vanity Fair article, which was mostly about press coverage, funding, memos, and circumstantial evidence.

Here's some good science sources:

- Comprehensive reddit post [0] from a virologist (table of contents, also linked as a 34 page pdf), referencing over 150 sources, with several sections going into the details of the genetic evidence, also interesting to read the comments.

- Here's an article [1] talking about different origin theories and the related genetic evidence, having a section I was interested in about the cleavage site and o-linked glycan, something apparently that has to develop in an animal with an immune system (this is something I haven't seen any lab-made proponents speak to yet).

- Lastly, here is an article [2], much more scientific than the Vanify Fair article, in favor of a lab connection (unfortunately, for me, this article doesn't mention the o-linked glycan, nor the genetic evidence that covid-19 may have originated hundreds of miles from Wuhan [3])

That's as far as I've gotten so far following the science. I'm hoping there will be more virologist commentary as more data comes out, perhaps something based on the full WHO report/data that I heard was released last week. I'd like to think that science will give us more definite answers eventually. It could take years.

I'm not so much interested in conjecture from politicians and journalists. I'm really taken back by all the inaccuracies, half-truth's, innuendo, and conspiracy theories floating around. Are we all led so easily by the headlines they feed us?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

[1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

[2] https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

[3] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

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

#333

Post by rayiner »

seaman1921 wrote: post #42
mmcgaha wrote: post #4

If anything good can come of this, I hope some of the folks who trusted the science begins to realize that people are behind science and people often act in their own best interest. Not that it will change much but we can at least stop yelling down and shaming skeptics.

this is terrifying.. who can we even trust then :\ Such exposed dishonesty leads to more and more people completely losing faith in everything that the scientists say and turning into anti-vaccers etc.

You can’t trust anybody, not structurally anyway. Western civilization has spent literally hundreds of years developing various ideas, such as free speech and democracy, to deal with that fact of life.

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

#334

Post by Izkata »

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…

> 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.

Even that is something people uncovered online and we were talking about a year ago.

Quick edit: Here's a video from April 2020 that touches on this at 6:38 (and a whole lot more otherwise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

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

#335

Post by knowaveragejoe »

mayama wrote: post #255
SkyMarshal wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Media and threshold of evidence? You need suspension of belief if you even want to consider it for a moment. The case of 5g causing corona being covered recently, without instant ban like lableak theory, is a case in point.

Show examples and be specific, otherwise you're conjuring up a comparison between the two out of thin air.

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

#336

Post by chasd00 »

timelincoln wrote: post #307

I think the real point that no public figure is willing to say, is that if this virus did leak out of a CCP lab after being modified the entire world will to some degree or another demand consequences for the CCP. While doubtful the consequences would lead to nuclear war that’s not outside the scope of possible outcomes. What’s more likely is the vast consumer public rejecting the relationship with the CCP, leading t…

I think many people who make important decisions related to things that explode would rather just not know.

“To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind

There’s no comfort in the truth, pain is all you’ll find”

- careless whispers

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

#337

Post by henearkr »

jkhdigital wrote: post #197
542458 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help but feel you’re taking all the “for” factors and none of the “against”, then bending the “for” factors even further. Calling the market “right next to the lab” is a bit of a stretch - it’s a three and a half hour walk. The scientists getting sick early doesn’t actually seem to be confirmed - there’s still debate in the US intelligence community whether it’s true. And going to the hospital because you’re…

> no mention of the virus not matching any backbones in use for genetic experimentation, or the suboptimal binding to humans Are you going to cite sources? And then are you going to cite the other sources which have addressed both of these weak counter arguments? Some of us have done a lot of homework on this one, so you need to bring your A game.

The optimal binding for humans would have been SARS-COV1 at that time, so the fact it was not reused shows the suboptimality.

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

#338

Post by knowaveragejoe »

deugo wrote: post #133

https://drasticresearch.org/ to see some real hackers at work. Media, governments, and scientists should take a stronger stand now, or they will not protect amateurs against the full wrath of more unsavory elements of hostile state actors.

This site smacks of people starting from a conclusion and working backwards.

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

#339

Post by unishark »

peter422 wrote: post #56
yumraj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did any of them originate a few miles from a pathogen research lab that handled such pathogen that caused those outbreaks?

I don’t dispute it is one point of suspicion, but Wuhan is also one of the 10 biggest cities in China. It isn’t a surprise the first US outbreak was in the biggest city. The first cases could have been anywhere. If there were more evidence that it was lab made then the location would be another point, not to me without further evidence it doesn’t mean all that much. And there have been 2 emerging coronavirus outbreak…

> I don’t dispute it is one point of suspicion, but Wuhan is also one of the 10 biggest cities in China. It isn’t a surprise the first US outbreak was in the biggest city. The first cases could have been anywhere.

Is that really so for animal-borne viruses though? I thought they came from place with lots of animals, hence the focus on the market. If it just showed up on some random high-rise employee downtown that would be hard to believe.

And after it starts, of course a highly-infectious virus shows up at densely populated places quickly. But for the same reason, I would also think it's hard for the first cases to travel to dense areas and spread the disease there without leaving a trail of cases along the trip. Ultimately they should point back to the animals they came from and testing can confirm it. Or at least rule various places out, if the govt was accommodating.

Plus wasn't the first US case somewhere in Washington state.

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

#340

Post by wwweston »

harryf wrote: post #77
arrosenberg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting downvoted because it's muckraking. There is nothing shady about NIAID giving a (verrrry small for this type of research) grant to a foreign research lab, which is doing research about a topic of interest. That's how you ensure the U.S. government gets a copy of the results.

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.

"Conflict of interest" primarily describes situations in which you're deciding policy that applies to personal financial stake.

A situation in which you've (a) contributed to decision-making on multiple public funding priorities including this lab and (b) state a judgment that lab was not the source of the outbreak isn't a conflict of interest, it's everyday policy life. Especially given that there's nothing glaringly wrong with the reasoning Fauci gave for that judgment in the article you linked.

If you think that reasoning has shortcomings, by all means, feel free to actually come up with something resembling a counterargument instead of vaguely implying "whether or not anything shady was going on."

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