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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

#781

Post by p0pcult »

logicalmonster wrote: post #548
cycrutchfield wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were no bats being sold in the Wuhan wet markets. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2

> On each visit, vendors were asked what species they had sold over the preceding month and in what numbers, along with the prices (US$1:RMB¥6.759) and origin of these goods (wild caught or captive bred/ farmed). It might be true that no bats were sold in Wuhan wet markets, but this methodology doesn't seem the slightest bit credible. Imagine if you were selling bats (is that legal in China?) from a likely illegal so…

The amount of pure speculation in this post is surprising, coming from a logicalmonster.

Are those activites illegal in China, or just in your mind? If it is not the former, then your point collapses like a two legged stool.

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

#782

Post by kordlessagain »

WaxProlix wrote: post #659
bradleyjg wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.

I saw a lot of folks saying that the theories all kinda stank at the time, and to wait and see. Interestingly, a lot of folks also kept quiet and didn't champion any theories. Maybe I can link you to a lack of comment two years ago to back up my bona fides?

When it hit, I took the first Wuhan sequence and ran it through some Python and pulled out string repeats in nucleotides. I then searched for those repeated sequences in Google and found the NIH lab in Maryland was doing research on how to better infect mice or rats with a substitution technique for twiddling into a cell's ports. So, it's entirely plausible, but without proof it isn't scientific.

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

#783

Post by JPKab »

axxto wrote: post #530
pessimizer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

A "sightly-less-shitty-than-other-theories" theory is still a shitty theory. Low-confidence means exactly what it sounds like.

Yes it's a completely ridiculous theory that the biolab that works on bat borne coronaviruses might have had something to do with the bad borne coronavirus that sprang up a mile away.

It's just a theory. Totally crackpot.

I mean come on they totally found the animal that came from to support the zoonotic origin theory.

Oh wait, they have yet to identify a spillover animal.

Anyone with common sense notice the lab leak is the most likely scenario here. But sure go ahead and continue to defend the honor of the CCP, an organization that is shortly going to be sending lethal weaponry including suicide drones to Vladimir Putin so he can murder Ukrainian civilians with impunity.

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

#784

Post by locustous »

Zetice wrote: post #706
locustous wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand "these people", your response is somewhat ambiguous. If you are referring to skeptics... Then I find your conclusion inaccurate. The response is not "measured". Shunned and ridiculed is what I have mostly observed. Society generally had adopted intolerance and seeks to punish detractors. Both sides are doing this. Again, this is not... measured...

These people who conducted the research in the article, the employees of the DoE, were not shunned or ridiculed. The only people getting shunned and ridiculed are the people who approached the issue unscientifically.

If only that were actually true.

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

#785

Post by slumos »

salawat wrote: post #323
lvl102 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deleted

Note: Wuhan was closed to interprovincial traffic very early on. The International Airport, however, was left open. There's a hanful of ways you can look at that: Wuhan International couldn't be closed without consent from Beijing. Beijing didn't grant it because A) Poor information propagation Or B) Someone made a weighty geopolitical decision that in order to best serve China's interests, it was time to make this e…

C) Trapping foreign citizens in their country would have caused an international incident when very little was yet known.

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

#786

Post by onetimeusename »

I personally am willing to wait and hear out alternatives. I think the "smoking gun" evidence is long destroyed if it ever existed. But maybe the truth is out there.

On the other hand, it seems like there are people who not only insist the Lab Leak Theory could be wrong, they don't WANT it to be right. Why is that? Why are they so concerned the theory might be true and what is the implication?

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

#787

Post by JoBrad »

kodah wrote: post #663
JoBrad wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lab leak doesn’t mean gain of function, bio-engineered virus, or other engineering. It just means that the virus was spread via a lab leak. > The October 2021 report said that there was a consensus that Covid-19 wasn’t the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program. But it didn’t settle the debate over whether it resulted from a lab leak or came from an animal, saying that more information was needed from the C…

In what way is gain of function not bio-engineering? You're modifying a virus and subjecting it to human-like tissue to observe the results. Lab leak and gain of function are inexplicably tied. I don't know what point the quote is getting to. I already said it wasn't a bioweapon.

You could bio-engineer a virus without gain of function, I presume. My point was that a lab leak does not also mean bio-engineering.

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

#788

Post by slumos »

uonpopular_th wrote: post #764
csours wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the nature of a "dog whistle" - it has a legitimate meaning, and some people use the legitimate meaning. That legitimacy gives malicious people plausible deniability. Social media sites cannot tell the difference, and quite often it's very hard for people to tell the difference as well. Social media sprays weed killer on all the discussions because they don't want their app covered in weeds; not having flower…

[flagged]

To identify a dog whistle you must merely learn its characteristics and recognize them.

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

#789

Post by shrimp_emoji »

JoBrad wrote: post #787
kodah wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is gain of function not bio-engineering? You're modifying a virus and subjecting it to human-like tissue to observe the results. Lab leak and gain of function are inexplicably tied. I don't know what point the quote is getting to. I already said it wasn't a bioweapon.

You could bio-engineer a virus without gain of function, I presume. My point was that a lab leak does not also mean bio-engineering.

I heard that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had inserted furin cleavage sites into random types of viruses in the past and that SARS-CoV-2 is unique among coronaviruses for having a furin cleavage site, but this[0] says otherwise:

``` Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2. ```

0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33340798/

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

#790

Post by vikingerik »

pessimizer wrote: post #511
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

Yeah, this is how the fake news can lie with facts.

"Most likely" might be technically true - in the sense that there might be a 2% chance it was that, but there's a hundred other possibilities each with lesser probability, so that one is on top. But it's not really likely at all. So writing the headline that way is absolutely designed to give you a false perception if you don't stop to think about that, which nobody will.

(don't focus on the actual number, that's just for illustration.)

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