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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

theintercept.com

341–350 of 494 posts

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments over their use and validity. Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anyth…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It all comes down to burden of proof. The more circumstantial evidence of a lab leak piles up, the more reasonably open-minded people will tend to shift their priors in that direction. You will only accept hard evidence, yet you are aware that parties in China have actively removed some possible evidentiary sources. And others in USA promoted a campaign to shut down lin…

For me the things that sticks out is that they found the origin of the original sars in mere months, but nothing when it comes to Sars-cov-2. I don’t know how big animal reservoirs can be tbh.

Btw A conspiracy theorist doesn’t change his conspiracy when new evidence comes to light. So if you are a critical thinker, you just want to know what happened there, whether lab or natural origin (or a combination of both?)

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#342
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He proudly proclaims his research in this video, he is not hiding anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w

He absolutely did try to hide things. He tried to hide his relationship to the original Lancet article denouncing the lab leak theory, because he knew it was a staggering conflict of interest: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Person organizing PR statement takes actions to make that PR statement as effective as possible? Not exactly a cover up. I don’t “like” my own instagram posts for the same reason.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#343

I don't find this evidence compelling. Also did any of you read the leaked proposal? [0] It would have been super useful to fund this! The intercept has done a massive disservice to the grant proposal here with their poor portrayal of it. Reading the introduction, it looks like it would have been incredibly useful data to have for the origins of COVID-19 since much of the work looks like it would have been surveillan…

Relevant interview with peter daszak https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-615/ recorded at the december 2019 nipah conference in singapure.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#344
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposal that this article is about weakens your argument significantly. They were going to experiment with multiple backbones, experimenting with multiple variations of spikes, looking specifically to try novel types of furin cleavage sites. There was no public reporting of what happened with this research. We don't know what they have because WIV database was taken offline. They claimed to have searched it, but…

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you…

Interesting that the no lab peole keep beating the same "evidence" drum, conflating to the public eye evidence and proof meaning.

Every single denial comment around here hinges on this confusion in terms and then tries to stick the "no proof" meaning to all the evidence, instead of bringing whatever evidence there is that it was a natural strain evolution or debating the various points.

Funny how instead a meta analysis of the discussion show one side piling up evidences while the other insists in trying to convince people that no proof equals no evidence.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#345
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as…

The “zero evidence” claim is fun because every day there is a failure to discover an origin species is de facto evidence of a non-zootonic origin, since that evidence is not subject to being hidden and is highly incentivized to find given it would be exculpatory.

The "zero evidence" claim is a blatant attempt to shift the burden of proof. In my opinion the burden of proof remains with those hypothesizing zoonotic origin.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#346

Guys, two points here. One, this proposal was rejected. This did not happen! Two, their proposal was for genetic manipulation of an existing virus, which research on the existing corona virus shows was not the case. This has nothing to do with the corona virus strains we are currently dealing with, and more importantly, there has never been any credible research proving that Covid was made in a lab. The only paper th…

The fact that the grant proposal was rejected does not mean the research didn’t happen. They could have got alternative funding. This happens a lot.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#347
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He absolutely did try to hide things. He tried to hide his relationship to the original Lancet article denouncing the lab leak theory, because he knew it was a staggering conflict of interest: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Person organizing PR statement takes actions to make that PR statement as effective as possible? Not exactly a cover up. I don’t “like” my own instagram posts for the same reason.

It’s expected that conflicts of interest be disclosed in journalism and things like this. Instead he actively worked to hide his conflict of interest.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#348
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would they stop when DARPA blocked it Because the Trump administration decided that along with a bunch of other offshore collaboration funding decided to pull the money (America First!). There's a Vincent Racaniello episode on Microbe TV that explained what happened there. I don't remember the episode but here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello/videos I think if folks would listen more t…

But why would one denial from one particularly finicky funding source (Trump-era US agencies) make researchers – who thought they were doing essential work – stop such essential work? Why wouldn't they use other funding, possibly from overhead funding or prior grants, or from other less-finicky funders? And in a jurisdiction – China – where many of the same limits or reporting-requirements might not exist? Are virolo…

Covid wasn't a brand new disease. They had most of the research necessary to create a vaccine completed two years before the outbreak. We would likely have had the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by July of 2020 if Trump hadn't shut down the pandemic response team purely because it was created by Obama. They were the ones already preparing the ground work necessary for a vaccine to existing SARS Corona virus diseases that had already emerged as far back as 2011. Project Warp Speed wasn't so successful because it provided funding or cut red tape, most of the vaccines we got didn't even participate. We got vaccines so fast because nearly a decade of related research had already been completed.

My point is it would have required a virtual miracle for the proposed gain of function research to have produced something that could have escaped in the time framed that is possible regarding the rejected grant request. Additionally, good research has proven that Covid couldn't have been due to gain of function research either.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#349
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He absolutely did try to hide things. He tried to hide his relationship to the original Lancet article denouncing the lab leak theory, because he knew it was a staggering conflict of interest: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Person organizing PR statement takes actions to make that PR statement as effective as possible? Not exactly a cover up. I don’t “like” my own instagram posts for the same reason.

Scientists have to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than PR flacks.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#350
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposal that this article is about weakens your argument significantly. They were going to experiment with multiple backbones, experimenting with multiple variations of spikes, looking specifically to try novel types of furin cleavage sites. There was no public reporting of what happened with this research. We don't know what they have because WIV database was taken offline. They claimed to have searched it, but…

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you…

You sound knowledgeable. Can you point us to any long-form discussions on these topics? As a layperson I’d like to know more.
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