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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

#951

Post by skylabmelody »

sbagel wrote: post #939
skylabmelody wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to rewrite history after the facts and invent another smearing label to wave off the reality. Social medias implemented CCP-style censorship on their platform on anything related to the lab leak theory for more than a year. Posts and comments were systematically deleted, users accounts were suspended. At some point you couldn't even share a link in a private message as it was blocked. You are the one re…

Citation needed. Please direct me to any user or accounts banned or suspended for discussing the lab leak theory. You're the one rewriting history here.

Citation provided, and this is just a tiny fraction of the censorship that was unleashed on this topic:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ends-ban-on-posts-asse...

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

#952

Post by eutropia »

lamontcg wrote: post #935
eutropia wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “smoking gun” was the “human” (arginine as CGG) way the AA seq was coded for at the furin cleavage site: Only 5 percent of SARS2’s arginine codons are CGG, and the double codon CGG-CGG has not been found in any other beta-coronavirus.

> has not been found in any other beta-coronavirus. That does not mean it doesn't exist, just that we haven't found it. We didn't know of any other sarbecoviruses that had furin cleavage sites, then we found them in bats in Thailand, then the goalposts moved to how this paricular furin cleavage site is weird. Once a decade passes and we find animals with beta-coronviruses which have the same kinds of furin cleavage s…

Granting that, or even granting that the virus wasn't modified in the WIV (merely collected and then accidentally released) at all: we need to find the animal population that it supposedly jumped into people from -- and 18 months later we haven't.

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

#953

Post by freeflight »

meowface wrote: post #821
freeflight wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People making that claim have said that the virus seems to be particularly effective against humans despite no intermediate forms discovered yet But such forms were already discovered back in 2015 as a result of the research that's now labeled as "GoF research", even tho it didn't actually fall under the GoF moratorium back then [0]. Imho the whole thing has a very "shooting the messenger" vibe to it; The evidence…

>But such forms were already discovered back in 2015 as a result of the research that's now labeled as "GoF research", even tho it didn't actually fall under the GoF moratorium back then [0]. I think I'm having difficulty understanding what you mean. Your link is referring to an engineered SARS hybrid virus. If SARS-CoV-2 is indeed also an engineered virus or a descendant of one, then this 2015 virus wouldn't be an i…

> Isn't that the whole crux of the debate and dilemma in the first place?

It's not like researchers are "engineering a virus to do exactly what they want it to do", what they do is observe the evolution of cultures of viruses, in an environment that's conductive to it, to see where that ultimately leads.

All of that also constantly happens in nature, but in a controlled lab environment we can accelerate and observe this process, like in a simulation, to see what viruses might be capable of evolving to be dangerous to us in the long term.

Sure, an argument can be made how that's one way of how we could end up creating and releasing such a virus ourselves, but even then: Wouldn't it be preferable for that to happen in a controlled research environment, instead of it just emerging in some remote obscure place? At least then are in a way better position to understand why and how it happens, giving us an edge in fighting it.

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

#954

Post by Jarwain »

bartimus wrote: post #681
Jarwain wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many "shocking" articles, but here's something I don't get: The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar. When it only has 29,903 base pairs, that's 1,136 mutations. I'm no bioscientist but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutation…

> The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar. How did you come by 3.8%?

What the sibling comment said, I meant 3.8% different

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

#955

Post by wkearney99 »

intricatedetail wrote: post #644
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.

One simply don't give funding to an openly racist state that runs concentration camps. That's insanity!

by that same metric doing business with the US could likewise be problematic. Are you calling for that to stop, too?

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

#956

Post by tim333 »

jonplackett wrote: post #698
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…

I read Biohazard by Ken Alibek years ago and the current situation reminds me of one of the anecdotes in it. He was a Soviet scientist in charge of creating bio-weapons- the book starts with him planning world war 3. In one of the anecdotes talks about a lab leak they had, caused by someone not replacing a filter and the the lab accidentally pumping out anthrax all day and killing a lot of people. The government blam…

There's a bit on the leak in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

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

#957

Post by mrguyorama »

ramraj07 wrote: post #510
GavinMcG wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump didn't exactly follow Fauci's advice, so it's odd that you'd blame Fauci's "method of approaching pandemics" for "this mess." Was there some other, better, established method?

I meant Fauci at al.’s approach of proactively looking for the next pandemic via sample collection and lab engineering of new variants which predates the trump administration. By all appearances Faucis performance during the pandemic is nothing to be questioned. These are different topics.

Indeed, Obama created a literal "Pandemic response team" and setup some useful stockpiles of materials that would be needed.

Trump threw it all away very early on.

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

#958

Post by dTal »

loveistheanswer wrote: post #861
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.

Because we're talking about research of biological weapons of mass destruction.

No, we're not. That wasn't the stated purpose of the research, and is deeply unlikely to have been a covert purpose either. What is the use of a "weapon" you can't aim?

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

#959

Post by sbagel »

skylabmelody wrote: post #951
sbagel wrote: post #939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Please direct me to any user or accounts banned or suspended for discussing the lab leak theory. You're the one rewriting history here.

Citation provided, and this is just a tiny fraction of the censorship that was unleashed on this topic: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ends-ban-on-posts-asse...

Zero references of any users suspended or banned in your linked source.

Posts were removed for 'Asserting Covid-19 Was Man-Made' which is very different from discussing the possibility and calling for further investigation.

> Facebook in February began the ban on claims the virus was man-made or manufactured as part of a list of misleading health claims that aren’t allowed.

During that period with the widespread dangerous misinformation spreading all over socials (questioning mask usage, recommending false treatments etc) it's easy to see how this was caught by that web.

Still waiting for a citation of your claims of 'censorship on their platform on anything related to the lab leak theory for more than a year.' or users being suspended for discussing it, not asserting it, which are very different.

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

#960

Post by tim333 »

nraynaud wrote: post #761
DebtDeflation wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research — some involving live SARS-like viruses — had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories." This is important for another reason that may not be immediately obvious. The WIV (BSL-4) is ~8 miles from the Wuhan Market. There's a BSL-2 lab (the CCDC) that's literally just a few hundred yar…

do you have a map? I tried to look for things, but it's really hard with the Chinese datum obfuscation. the best I could do was 3km, but I don't recognize anything from google pictures https://imgur.com/KxOT84W

there this https://s.rfi.fr/media/display/2f7b52c0-87b0-11ea-b8a0-00505...

the Botao Xiao paper

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