Too bad the article is from a UK equivalent to the National Inquirer...
Nonsense. The Times is one of the main UK publications along with the Guardian and The Telegraph.
Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#292Leaving aside the question of where and how the virus emerged, it's interesting to note that the lab was nigh useless during the pandemic, despite its main specialty was investigating Coronaviruses! It looks like a lot of dangerous research went on, and even if nothing bad happened because of that research, nothing was gained. A lot of risk for nothing.
Yes, the whole virus hunting grift that Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance and PREDICT tout has been exposed as ineffective. Now they are doubling down with further funding and blanket denials that it could have come from a lab accident. They never mention the nearest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 are found in Yunnan and Laos. And that happens to be where WIV sampled.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#293If anyone's in for a long read, despite the hokey sounding name, I found this to be one of the best contemporaneous explorations of Covid in china that I've seen to date: https://project-evidence.github.io/
Its a good compilation that I saw in mid 2020 that was one of the sources of data leading me to question the zoonotic spillover hypothesis that I had read in Zhou et al (RaTG13 paper) and Anderson et al. That the WIV was conducting exactly the type of research that could have led to a highly human infectious novel SARS-CoV was poo-pood and cast as a conspiracy theory. As Ian Lipkin stated following the Fauci teleconf…
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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#294If anyone's in for a long read, despite the hokey sounding name, I found this to be one of the best contemporaneous explorations of Covid in china that I've seen to date: https://project-evidence.github.io/
Its a good compilation that I saw in mid 2020 that was one of the sources of data leading me to question the zoonotic spillover hypothesis that I had read in Zhou et al (RaTG13 paper) and Anderson et al. That the WIV was conducting exactly the type of research that could have led to a highly human infectious novel SARS-CoV was poo-pood and cast as a conspiracy theory. As Ian Lipkin stated following the Fauci teleconf…
And helpful that it's hosted on GitHub. PRC can't block Github on a strategic level. So content can be hosted there that gets through the GFW that PRC netizens can see.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
>50 years of evolutionary changes separate RaTG13 and BANAL-52 from SARSCoV2 Do you have a source for this? Also, I'm no biologist, but is comparing the base rate of evolutionary changes still relevant if SARSCoV2 wasn't of natural origins? E.g. through creating chimeras or 'serial passaging' as described in this article? Wouldn't that create an environment where 50 years could pass in a way shorter timeframe?
This is the study I alluded to: >Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID- 19 pandemic >Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed i…
What about Ralph Baric's method for splicing viruses? It's apparently really hard or impossible to detect, and that's plausibly something that could be used to make a chimeric coronavirus.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing. - We have a bunch of evidence of WIV engineering SARS-1-like viruses because they talked about it before the pandemic. - We have zero evidence of them ever doing experiments on live SARS-2-like virus - We have zero evidence of the existence of a SARS-2-like progenitor virus - Before the pandemic th…
> If it was transported to the seafood market by someone who worked at the lab that is highly coincidental that the place they infected first just happened to be the most likely place for zoonotic spillover
If we're going with highly coincidental pairings, it seems like we can't ignore "the disease originated in the only city in China to have an institute that specializes in virology, viral pathology and virus technology."
I'm not convinced of any particular conclusion as to COVID's origin, but I don't down-weight the coincidence of the city of origin hosting WIV nearly as much as you appear to.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#297After 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 Times is not a great source. It’s just tabloid style journalism targeted at a higher ‘reading age’. Can’t remember the exact figures but something like 16 compared to ‘The Sun’ which targets 10. A better source would be The Telegraph, if you like your opinion pieces right leaning. The Economist, The Financial Time and The Guardian are also good sources if we’re talking about British newspapers here.
The Telegraph published a supplement written by the Chinese government until April 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/14/daily-telegrap...
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#298I 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 parlia…
He seems to have worked on projects that are questionable in importance / authenticity but likely to have made profits. Claiming that the video filmed in EU was from an "official EU conference" would be uniformed or mispresenting him, indeed. But I think it's worth watching; Phizer's patent application and other claims he made are interesting and haven't been repeated elsewhere (from my perspective).
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a terrible article. “Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.” The rate of hospitalization among 18-49 year olds with flu in the US was 54.1 per 100K in 2019-20. It’s rare, sure, but that kind of absolute statement from an anonymous researcher doesn’t instill confidence.
> What a terrible article. > “Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.” > It’s rare, sure Then what makes an article terrible when you agree with the statement?
It really shouldn't be phrased as an absolute. But read charitably, when you have low N combined with rates that low, to expect that you wouldn't see noticeable illness in a small group of young, healthy people.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> it would be a very closely guarded secret and obviously they would never admit to a lab leak A complicating factor is that some (much?) of the funding came from the US. Which means admitting to a leak is against the interest of not only Chinese but also the US government which would have a hell of a time explaining to taxpayers how pandemic was engineered on their money doing research banned in the US. (Though I do…
Idea:
Community / site for collective truth-seeking. Possibly integrated with Metaculus.
One can submit new pieces of evidene which would be commentable (in threads), votable, and programmable (to toggle / affect of other submitted evidence threads).
Users can adjust the weights, vote on them (to generate a certain consensus / prediction), and even toggle of pieces of evidence manually.
The site automatically gives the probabilities for different scearions. I don't have an instant vision on how "all" possible scenarios would be chosen.