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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

#581

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

frickenhamster wrote: post #306
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…

China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had…

Or all the effort to not call it China Virus/Wuhan flu because that's racist and we don't name viruses after places anymore.

Virus variants named after places on the other hand are apparently perfectly fine. So we don't have the Chinese virus but we do have British, Brazilian and Indian variants.

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

#582

Post by durovo »

bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

"One obvious demand would have been access to the WIV’s database of some 22,000 virus samples and sequences, which had been taken offline. At an event convened by a London organization on March 10, Daszak was asked whether the group had made such a request. He said there was no need: Shi Zhengli had stated that the WIV took down the database due to hacking attempts during the pandemic. “Absolutely reasonable,” Daszak said. “And we did not ask to see the data…. As you know, a lot of this work has been conducted with EcoHealth Alliance…. We do basically know what’s in those databases. There is no evidence of viruses closer to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13 in those databases, simple as that.”"

What did she mean when she said that the database is offline? It's not like the data would be gone if the service is not running?

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

#583

Post by m-ee »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #576
yarcob wrote: post #524

One thing that's baffling to me is that I've not seen any discussion from scientists who actually know what they are talking about. All we get are articles who talk about the political side, and try to prove things by how certain actors behaved. Most of the actual science that all the articles cite are pop-sci simplifications at best. People talk about how parts from multiple viruses would be joined together etc, how…

That's because the theory is being pushed for political reasons, and most virologists think it's nonsense. The evidence for a lab leak is the same as it's ever been: nothing. There's no evidence the lab even had SARS-CoV-2 on hand before the pandemic, which is an absolute prerequisite for the lab leak theory to be possible, and all the evidence points to the lab not having had the virus. They regularly publish the ge…

If the lab even did secretly have SARS-CoV-2, they must have acquired that sample somewhere. Which means it was out in the wild spreading and ready to spillover. Even buying into the conspiracy theory a bit the lab leak still doesn't seem like the most probable outcome. It's strange that everyone pushing the lab leak ignores this.

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

#584

Post by unishark »

harryf wrote: post #6
bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

It gets worse - gain of function research was banned under Obama until the ban was lifted in 2017 under Trump - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... I can’t find sources for this right now but apparently Dr Anthony Fauci played a key role in getting the ban lifted. He’s also the head of the NIAID ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci ) which (apparently) is the ultimate source for…

Your May 2021 story includes the following quotes:

> But Fauci emphatically denied that the money went toward so-called “gain of function” research, which he described as “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.”

> “That categorically was not done,” he insisted.

> Earlier in the hearing, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) that researchers at the Wuhan lab “were not approved by NIH for doing “gain of function research” before adding “we are, of course, not aware of other sources of funds or other activities they might have undertaken outside of what our approved grant allowed.”

Are you saying these are still lies? It doesn't really matter if the NIH funded some other kind of research on coronaviruses if that research was not risky. Presumably the question is whether gain of function research performed there created covid-19. And the grant, which I assume is public record, is claimed not to be for that. Maybe there's more to the story, but seems like guilt-by-association at this point. If Wuhan used the funding for some research it was not supposed to be used for, then it might just as well have been funding for any other disease anyway.

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

#586

Post by abbassi »

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

To the Editor — Since the first reports of novel pneumonia (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, there has been considerable discussion on the origin of the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2 (also referred to as HCoV-19). Infections with SARS-CoV-2 are now widespread, and as of 11 March 2020, 121,564 cases have been confirmed in more than 110 countries, with 4,373 deaths.

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

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

#587

Post by sbagel »

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill.

On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence.

There were tons of articles and threads on it everywhere including HN, no one was being silenced, give me a break. The oppression complex is really out of control, as if people were being visited by the secret police and forced to immediately cease all discussion about the lab leak theory. It just had no credibility due to lack of evidence. As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that.

Really seems many want to feel like they've been oppressed and silenced when that couldn't be further from reality, reaching absurd levels of delusion here.

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

#588

Post by harryf »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #553
xenophonf wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a measly $120k grant, I doubt Fauci was involved in the award whatsoever.

EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7 million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples, building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were able to jump to humans. It was a $3.7million dollar grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which I wouldn't doubt he was involved with. $600,000 was sent from EcoHealth to Wuhan Institute of Virolo…

...except Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth, took it upon himself to thank Fauci for pushing the "natural causes" narrative - https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/new-emails-reveal...

More explanation of that here... https://youtu.be/jMr-fGmRGco?t=246

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

#589

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

> As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that.

The thing is, no new info supporting the lab-leak theory has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been. All the evidence still points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology not having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic, and all the new evidence is consistent with the default prior - that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from animals, just like every other novel virus in history.

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

#590

Post by harryf »

carschno wrote: post #548
baryphonic wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A conflict of interest does not depend on whether a person actually gains (or prevents himself from losing) anything, but whether he has some personal interest (such as fame, money, even gifts for a family member, etc.) that coexists with some duty-bound interest to some other party/society (e.g. fiduciary duty, professional ethical duties, etc.), and the person is entrusted with making a decision that implicated eit…

By these standards, everyone (in such a position) is always in some "conflict of interest". Had Fauci blamed that lab, he certainly would have been, as his organization also funds its competitors, and of course because he works for the US administration. The ideology behind throwing around this kind of allegations is: all facts are fabricated by somebody, nobody can be trusted (they all have a conflict of interest),…

> By these standards, everyone (in such a position) is always in some "conflict of interest".

Yes. But not everyone becomes the leading figure in a global pandemic which has killed 3.7 million people and thrown the world into complete disarray. At the point where you realise you're in that position, the correct, ethical thing to do is put all your cards on the table.

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