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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

#751

Post by greenwich26 »

op00to wrote: post #721
greenwich26 wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be absurd. Every single major social media platform banned even the most gentle suggestion that the lab was involved. And everyone who mentioned it was called "racist". Now that the scientific consensus is settling and lab leak does indeed seem to be true, they are all in major damage control. And you are trying to change the narrative by introducing some silly victim-blaming charade about "oppression complex",…

> Every single major social media platform banned even the most gentle suggestion that the lab was involved Citation requested. I remember seeing a LOT of insane bullshit on Twitter which was never removed. get out of here with that drivel.

Don't be silly. Obviously the bans were not perfectly enforced and you could still find hushed conversations in the corners. This was true on all platforms. What, exactly, is your argument? Or your point? Are you really going to try to claim that the lab leak hypothesis was not widely censored in social media? "We have always been at war with Eastasia"...

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

#752

Post by meowface »

freeflight wrote: post #739

The article claims "the Lancet statement rejected the lab-leak hypothesis", which is a bit misleading considering what the Lancet statement actually did was reject a human origin of the virus, based on genome sampling and other evidence. The two are not equal, the virus could be of natural origin but leaked from a lab, that scenario is still very much possible even in the context of the Lancet statement. Gilles Deman…

>the virus could be of natural origin but leaked from a lab, that scenario is still very much possible even in the context of the Lancet statement.

That's absolutely true, but one of the main corollary claims is also that SARS-CoV-2 may have resulted in part from gain of function research. People making that claim have said that the virus seems to be particularly effective against humans despite no intermediate forms discovered yet and that a natural virus leaking from a lab would be less likely to spread so widely. They've also cited the fact that the lab does do gain of function research on coronaviruses.

If it were true, that definitely wouldn't imply it's a bio-weapon (such research happens everywhere all the time, etc.), but it would be important to know.

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

#753

Post by geofft »

thu2111 wrote: post #609
geofft wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I do incident command at my workplace, there are two goals in dealing with an incident: solving the problem, and preventing it from happening again. They are both extremely important, but they happen in order. While the incident is ongoing, any attempts to prevent the problem from happening in the future are a complete distraction. Write down notes and ideas somewhere so we don't forget, but the priority is on s…

And I certainly don't see the conflict of interest - what was Fauci gaining? His continued role? Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires, so if this information had come out early last year then he would have lost not only his role much sooner, but also his social status and career. If what's coming out now came out last year, Trump's replacement of him with Scott Atlas would have been mo…

> Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires

Sure, but to go back to my analogy, you absolutely do put the guy who hit the power button by mistake in charge of pressing it again - they know exactly where it is and they're already in the datacenter. You put the team that deployed a new service that's DoSing your infrastructure in charge of rolling it back. You don't say "You broke the system, so we're finding someone else to do the rollback."

If the allegation is that Fauci intentionally funded a lab in Wuhan to work on gain-of-function research with the express purpose of having the virus escape and cause a global pandemic because Fauci is a murderer rivaling Hitler, that's a very different (and much harder to substantiate) claim than that he merely was causally involved in an accident and like anyone else wants the accident to not have happened.

And if that is the claim, the "conflict of interest" argument becomes clearer: Fauci is on the side of COVID-19 and in charge of stopping it. It's the same conflict of interest as putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.

Short of that, the idea that he had a conflict of interest is like the idea that the team that accidentally DoS'd the infrastructure has a conflict of interest because they each get Fauci-scale salaries and they might be fired. Technically yes, but we all know that firing them wouldn't help solve the problem and losing their expertise would make other things work, so it's not even on the table unless we suspect malice is involved.

(And if it is on the table, either at my workplace or in Fauci's case, so is criminal prosecution. Loss of salary is the least of your worries.)

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

#754

Post by eutropia »

bananapub wrote: post #635
dosman33 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separate from the article, the damming thing in his email release is the strong suggestion that he knew it was engineered early on and may have participated in hiding this fact.

er, who has shown any evidence at all that covid-19 was "engineered"? this whole discussion is about the unproven possibility that it leaked from a lab.

The article mentions the state department had Steven Quay present an analysis of the origin of the virus: https://zenodo.org/record/4642956#.YIa66ehKhPY

The “engineered” component is about the Furin cleavage site on the sars-cov-2 spike protein.

The virus shares 92% genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses, except the spike protein, which is nearly identical to a pangolin coronavirus(which is otherwise only ~38% similar) with one key exception: The Furin cleavage site using “lab standard” sequences.

  The gene sequence for the amino acids in the furin site in CoV-2 uses a very rare set of two codons, three letter words so six letters in a row, that are rarely  used individually and have never been seen together in tandem in any coronaviruses in nature. But these same ‘rare in nature’ codons turn out to be the very ones that are always used by scientists in the laboratory when researchers want to add the amino acid arginine, the ones that are found in the furin site. When scientists add a dimer of arginine codons to a coronavirus, they invariably use the word, CGG-CGG, but coronaviruses in nature rarely (

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

#755

Post by rvanlaar »

deeviant wrote: post #131
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…

If this is the most shocking article you have ever read in your life, I feel you haven't read many articles in your life. There is absolutely no evidence in it. Just a pile of conjecture. It is absolutely the stuff of conspiracy theories. The truly shocking thing is that world does not hold China liable for this disaster. It really doesn't matter if it started in a lab or in one of their wet markets; it was incompete…

The origin does matter.

If it evolved in a lab, it is highly likely that the virus is better at infecting people in lab conditions, for example that would mean inside.

Which, coincidentally is exactly what we're seeing. People with masks on get infected inside buildings. Outside the risk is much much lower.

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

#756

Post by myfavoritedog »

peter422 wrote: post #90
jkhdigital wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Listen, if you are prepared to seriously consider a lab leak, then you have to assume that any public statements from Chinese authorities are dubious. I’m pretty sure my own government makes dubious statements all the time so it’s not hard to imagine.

I’m seriously considering it and put it higher than 0%. But if you think your hypothesis is the most likely outcome (>50%), and your defense at any evidence that discounts your view is that it is a giant and incredible cover up by the Chinese government then I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies. And also remember the people that leaked that 2-3 employees were hos…

your view is that it is a giant and incredible cover up by the Chinese government

Really? My starting point is that the Chinese government would likely cover up being blamed for a deadly pandemic that has killed millions.

They haven't even admitted their COVID death statistics since early on last year: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda759474...

They stopped counting COVID deaths after the first 100k or so... in February.

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

#757

Post by toshk »

texasbigdata wrote: post #694
toshk wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strong sentiment that it couldn't have come from the lab was suspicious from day one. It was not even allowed to be a consideration. Also, here on this forum, I was downvoted for saying it shouldn't be ruled out that the lab might be the source.

Maybe this is naive, but what the issue here? These people are alive, the documents exist, the physical locations are accessible. This isn’t archeology. Couldn’t we ... just... check? Like maybe the UN or the group of 7 or something similar? You shut down the globe for a year, seems like it’d be worth running down all the Rabit holes.

You don't seem to understand China.

Hollywood actor Cena just begged in Mandarin for forgiveness after mentioning Taiwan is a country (which it is). Local Amsterdam politicians are not allowed to go on the photo with Taiwanese politicians etc.

The Communist Party is overly controlling and will not allow anything that will challenge their vision.

While Europe and the US were busy with their internal quarrels the last decades, China has been making moves.

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

#759

Post by Mordisquitos »

ddxxdd wrote: post #734
armada651 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact checkers were definitely too eager to mark this as debunked, but it still lacks real evidence. No fact checker would mark this theory as true even now. So let's not make the same mistake by eagerly jumping to conclusions that it was engineered in a lab based on assurances from a different set of scientists.

So are we to believe that, out of 200 million square miles on this planet, this novel bat-related coronavirus just naturally emerged within 8 miles of a facility that specializes in novel bat related coronaviruses? During a season when bats hibernate to areas thousands of miles away? If you look at the circumstances behind this pandemic's origins, and do some basic back-of-the-envelope math, the lab-leak hypothesis i…

> So are we to believe that, out of 200 million square miles on this planet, this novel bat-related coronavirus just naturally emerged within 8 miles of a facility that specializes in novel bat related coronaviruses?

No, of course we are not "to believe" that. What we are to do is to consider it is a possibility. Or are we to believe that SARS-CoV-2 could only have emerged as a lab leak? Both the natural and the lab-leak hypotheses are feasible, but treating either of them with near certainty or as impossible is not justifiable with the current evidence.

Imagine an alternate universe where all events played out the same as in our own, with the exception that the Wuhan laboratory's existence was a perfectly kept secret by the PRC. In that case, would the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan lead to the certainty that there must be a secret facility nearby that specializes in novel bat-related coronaviruses?

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

#760

Post by snowwrestler »

chasd00 wrote: post #712
dTal wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you? All the research is ( supposed to be ) shared with the world anyway. If you're interested in a topic, and some other country is also interested, and they have a lab ready to go - why not throw some money at them to study your thing? Cheaper than building your own lab - especially when the phenomenon is regional.

How could you ever expect the CCP to be even remotely honest in any “share this with the world” R/D scenario?

At the height of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union governments were sworn enemies and on the verge of shooting nuclear weapons at each other, U.S. and Soviet scientists collaborated openly and productively on a wide variety of subjects. Even with government funding.

It’s not unusual to expect scientists to collaborate openly across national borders despite political winds, and in fact it is desirable.

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