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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#221

Post by rossdavidh »

denton-scratch wrote: post #192
prepend wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> indication of any ill-intent I don’t think ill-intent is the accusation, I think the argument is that the lab has poor safety protocols and made errors. I haven’t studied the “lab leak theory” extensively, but everything I read seems to be about lab failures resulting in a leak, not anything purposeful or ill-intentioned.

The article claims that Chinese army researchers were at the lab researching viral weapons. That sounds like ill-intent to me. It also states that Covid-19 is the only Coronavirus discovered with a furin cleavage site on the spike, and that the lab had applied for funding to research the insertion of such a site. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the lab deliberately launched a pandemic by deliberately releasin…

Well, no one knowledgeable about the field. I have, unfortunately, heard otherwise intelligent people saying that the Chinese government doesn't mind sacrificing it's own people, and did launch it in its own city on purpose (which is, to be clear, ridiculous).

"Never ascribe to conspiracy, what is adequately explained by incompetence".

I think the evidence is pretty clear that at least the Chinese government believes that the covid-19 virus came from their lab (they could, of course, be mistaken about that).

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#222

Post by giarc »

BryantD wrote: post #170
zosima wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Huanan Seafood market paper has been heavily critized. Especially the fact that covid was not found in a single animal sample does make the evidence rather weak. In addition it seems that the lack of sampling from outside the market and the fact that the market is a busy place in the center of the city where the virus would likely be once it's spreading from person to person , does not really lend support to the…

Just to be clear, there weren’t animal samples available for testing. It’s not that they tested a bunch of animals and didn’t find covid. I know that’s what you meant but not everyone is familiar with the paper and it’s important to be meticulous here. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

I don't actually think that is what they meant. If there are no animals to even sample, you don't describe that as "that covid was not found in a single animal sample". No one would phrase it that way.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#223

Post by jakear »

andsoitis wrote: post #211
jakear wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The point is the young and healthy don’t get very sick. You get it, have the sniffles for a day or two, and move on with your life. Same for covid. We could have just embraced that blessing and let children continue to go to school and not experience massive declines in intelligence. But here we are. “Think of the really old people” was truly hilarious. Indeed, all we could do was “think” when my grandpa died alone…

What really happened, as stated in the very source you gave, was that if you had a heart attack at home an ambulance would come to “deal with you” (because of course they would), but if they attempted to resuscitate you for 20 minutes and you still didn’t recover they wouldn’t then take you to the hospital.

You should know the survival rate of a heart attack is far far lower than most expect, especially after 20 minutes of failed active attempts to resuscitate. The only real reason to take someone into a hospital after that is if they’re hypothermic or just so you can say “we did everything we could”.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-cpr-expectations-i...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#224

Post by tsss »

Xen9 wrote: post #116

I personally believe in Rootlclaim's Bayesian analysis ( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ) which states that "the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident (89% probability)" This is consistent with David Martin's speech in Europe: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1661698114917646336 I haven't checked the "publicly available references" but m…

Regardless of the merits of the lab leak theory, David Martin is a NWO-level conspiracy theorist who thinks that Pfizer colluded with Bill Gates and the US government and infected the whole world with a virus, on purpose, just to push their vaccine on people. The conference that you allude to has nothing to do with the European union. It was organized by two equally nutty far right EU-politicians in one of the parliament's public rooms to give a false legitimacy to their "conference" and mislead people to think that it was an official event.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#225

Post by jmull »

Xen9 wrote: post #116

I personally believe in Rootlclaim's Bayesian analysis ( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ) which states that "the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident (89% probability)" This is consistent with David Martin's speech in Europe: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1661698114917646336 I haven't checked the "publicly available references" but m…

> If you find any faults that can really change the results in the analysis Rootclaim made, I would be interested.

This is an interesting way to analyze the problem but the set of criteria and weights applied at each step are made up.

The flaw is that you can use this form of analysis to reach any conclusion you want.

For example, the "Already well adapted" section -- a "2x" factor for lab escape. We wouldn't even be thinking about this virus if it wasn't well adapted to spread among humans. So that's baked into the ground and isn't a factor of anything.

Then take "Furin cleavage" -- a whopping 8x factor for lab escape relative to zoonotic. This is the same thing as already well adapted, so now we've got a combined 16x for something that should be 1x.

The weight for "Chimera" -- another whopping 8x for lab escape relative to zoonotic -- seems really high for something that is found both in nature and in labs that merely "seems less likely to combine in nature". We should probably be arguing about whether this is 1.5x or 2x.

The real conclusion is we don't know. The Chinese probably do, but it would be a very closely guarded secret and obviously they would never admit to a lab leak. I lot of people hate ambiguity and want an answer, but in this case it doesn't seem that we are going to get one.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#226

Post by BryantD »

giarc wrote: post #222
BryantD wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, there weren’t animal samples available for testing. It’s not that they tested a bunch of animals and didn’t find covid. I know that’s what you meant but not everyone is familiar with the paper and it’s important to be meticulous here. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

I don't actually think that is what they meant. If there are no animals to even sample, you don't describe that as "that covid was not found in a single animal sample". No one would phrase it that way.

Easier on my general well-being to just assume positive intent. (As is obvious from my comment history I don't always succeed there, but I do try.)

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#227

Post by andsoitis »

jakear wrote: post #223
andsoitis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is the young and healthy don’t get very sick. You get it, have the sniffles for a day or two, and move on with your life. Same for covid. We could have just embraced that blessing and let children continue to go to school and not experience massive declines in intelligence. But here we are. “Think of the really old people” was truly hilarious. Indeed, all we could do was “think” when my grandpa died alone…

What really happened, as stated in the very source you gave, was that if you had a heart attack at home an ambulance would come to “deal with you” (because of course they would), but if they attempted to resuscitate you for 20 minutes and you still didn’t recover they wouldn’t then take you to the hospital. You should know the survival rate of a heart attack is far far lower than most expect, especially after 20 minu…

> What really happened.... an ambulance would come to “deal with you”

At one point, LA had to resort to Fire Trucks because ambulances were unavailable.

If you don't think health care services were severely stretched, in some cases beyond breaking point (incl. staff unavailability because they themselves were sick), I really don't know what to say. This happened in New York as well.

Of course there are also other places where that wasn’t the case, so there you could be less conservative with restrictions, but you may not know the risk in advance.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#228

Post by AbrahamParangi »

snowwrestler wrote: post #217
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure most of this is true or at least true-ish but to be appropriately skeptical, all evidence which has a Chinese source here should be considered as potentially made up. Regardless of whether or not there was a coverup, the Chinese government has certainly acted like it was covering something up. The circumstantial evidence is sort of ridiculous here though. An institute with weak safety controls experimenting…

The “circumstantial evidence” is only novel if the event in question is novel, which the emergence of a new strain of a virus is not. It is certain that a new strain of some virus is emerging right now next to a lab that works with viruses, because that is a thing that happens continuously in nature, and labs exist within nature. It’s also likely that such a new strain will not cause human illness, as most viruses do…

This would all be more compelling if the WIV were not explicitly experimenting with creating viruses like SARS-COV-2! If HIV had emerged proximal to a lab experimenting with creating viruses like HIV then that lab origin theory would be much more credible!

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#229

Post by pera »

amoss wrote: post #145
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

The map showing the clustering around the lab is not labelled in the article. It looks like the map from the senate report which used internet search history. I recall that their point in the original report was that there was a cluster of internet searches for flu-like symptoms clustered around the institute, rather than the market. There is no new direct evidence in the article, simply the weight of existing indire…

The map in the senate report comes from this paper:

https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/9/6/402

if I understand correctly it concludes that the cluster correlates with population density and a concentration of elderly population in that area.

Unfortunately that wasn't mentioned in the senate report (nor in the news article)

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