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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#241
post #166
post #108

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I would hate to live in a world where, when people randomly guess something correctly, they feel vindicated and emboldened to say other random guesses that are as completely unfounded as the one they happened to get correct.

Well you live in that world, and it's always been that way. This propensity is the fundamental cause of gbling addiction and superstitious behavior.

But I'd point out, this wasn't a random guess. There has been a whole lot of circumstantial evidence for a long time, it's not quite a smoking gun but better than a guess for sure.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#242

IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…

Of course there's a reservoir. That's why there was a lab in the first place. There are many more viruses in those caves. Many many. And tourists literally pay money to go into such caves, and look up to the ceiling to look at the bats. Bats that may at any time shit into their eye with one of these new viruses. And then on top of that people catch them and sell them live to slaughter them at home to eat.

Again, this is all well known and the reason the lab was there in the first place. That's why the techs go into these caves wearing full haz mat. Unlike the tourists who are oblivious.

Not saying it's not a lab leak. But you seem confused about some basics facts...

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#243
Considering everything in the current US regime would be pushing against this to be the conclusion and it is still the finding, I suspect the "low confidence" is a managerial stamp based on high level skepticism of likely inscrutable work from lower analysts.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#245

Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly a…

I'd still say the Iraq War was most costly and fatal mistake in the 21st Century. Hard to compare, admittedly.

Based on what exactly? According to Wikipedia, the Iraq War produced a total death count of 25,071 and a total wounded count of 117,961. Also according to Wikipedia COVID-19 has produced a death count of 6,868,964 and an infection count of 674,809,997.

I'm all for complaining about US tactics, but it's 100% incorrect to try and claim that the Iraq War was "worse" than COVID-19.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…

What about the request to use gain of function research to add furin sites to coronaviruses? That seems to me the smoking gun, since this lab asked for funding to do exactly that. It’s a bit like Jaime Meitzl (sp?) said - for the first time in history you find a unicorn (furin binding site in a coronavirus) next to a lab that asked for funding to make regular horses into unicorns. But the lab says it’s “natural origi…

The PRRAR FCS not a known FCS prior to the pandemic so it is unlikely the lab would have genetically engineered it and they would have used something like RRXRR instead.

Other coronaviruses have an FCS and they have evolved multiple different times, independently:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...

The fact that we knew that adding an FCS to a virus would likely enhance its ability to produce a pandemic really isn't a smoking gun that we actually did it, because we're just studying and copying what nature is already doing (who is actually a much better geneticist than we are, with vastly greater tools).

And since you want to talk about suspicious "unicorns" how about the idea that a lab worker was infected in the lab, and then the only thing that they did was visit the wet market. They didn't infect anyone they lived with, or go to any restaurants, or go visit grandma and this Typhoid Mary/Mike has no existence outside of working in the lab and visiting the wet market. And this idea gets worse if you include more workers in WIV having supposedly been exposed.

What fits with the facts better is that they genetically engineered the virus in perfect secrecy and deliberately let it loose in the wet market, which is just insanity--nobody gains anything from doing that, but it is also impossible to argue against.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#247
post #242

IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…

Of course there's a reservoir. That's why there was a lab in the first place. There are many more viruses in those caves. Many many. And tourists literally pay money to go into such caves, and look up to the ceiling to look at the bats. Bats that may at any time shit into their eye with one of these new viruses. And then on top of that people catch them and sell them live to slaughter them at home to eat. Again, this…

[deleted]

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#248
post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

Governments cannot be sued in foreign courts, so there’s no liability.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#249

IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…

Lockdowns serve a purpose: to slow the spread of the virus.

That’s not what china was doing though. They were attempting total elimination.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#250
Labeling something as "misinformation" is asymmetric: being right 90% or even 99% isn't good enough.

Being wrong about a misinformation label, even if there's nuance about confidence levels, or even moving from "misinformation" to "probably wrong, but maybe" does more damage than all help done by all of the other correct labelings.

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