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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#401
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…

That Rootclaim analysis seems sloppy as hell. From the "Show More" of the outbreak location section:

>Thus, the ratio of zoonotic:bioweapon:zoonotic collection:modified lab escape is 2:5:100:50, or a reduction of a zoonotic origin by 50x, a bioweapon origin by 20x, and a lab escape by 0.5x.

Those aren't the same ratio.

>To account for the possibility that there is a yet unidentified reason why Wuhan is a more likely location for a zoonotic outbreak, these numbers are generously adjusted to a reduction of a zoonotic origin by 20x and a bioweapon origin by 15x, with lab escape remaining at 0.5x.

But what they actually apply is a reduction of a zoonotic origin by 20x and a bioweapon origin by 15x, with zoonotic collection at 2x. Which isn't the result of applying that adjustment to either of the original ratios, so apparently they've just applied the lab escape factor to wrong category

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the mid 1960s, my mom worked in an infectious disease lab. One day, her and her colleagues were tasked with cleaning out a freezer full of samples. Shortly thereafter her and everyone else in the lab got a flu-like illness that did not clear up for many days. It really makes me wonder how many lab leaks may have happened during this time period when we started collecting and storing samples but we didn't yet have…

Back in 2009 I used to date a girl in Connecticut. She was attending Yale. She was a very nice person but very sloppy. She would always break something or spill something, it was her nature. One day she told me she's running late with school stuff so "meet me at the lab". I came in, got thru security and went to her lab. There she was feeding some 200 mosquitoes sick with malaria, buzzing in a rather small jar, all p…

Well I don't have any mildly interesting anecdotes about dating a bat who got sick in a cave, so I guess all the evidence points to a lab leak.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, zoonotic transfer happening naturally in any particular time and place is extremely unlikely, even in places where the conditions are optimal. I always thought this was a good test for whether someone can apply Bayesian reasoning. It turns out not many can, including a lot of highly educated people. Without hard evidence to contradict it, lab leak should have always been the default hypothesis. That it hasn’t i…

Bayesian reasoning is that your prior is a 99.999% chance that the virus is natural, as all other viruses are. The probability that a virus would crop up in Wuhan out of all cities in China is 1/70. Feel free apply Bayes' formula.

Where's the part with the virus being collected and brought to a lab in Wuhan where gain of function research was done prior to the outbreak? Feel free to include that in your formula.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#405
post #315
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still don't know what happened to JFK, 60 years later.

Yikes. I mean, yes, in this sense you're right. We've never found conclusive disproof of the various conspiracy theories around the assassination and have been forced into a consensus that, y'know, Oswald shot him. But you don't believe that. And nothing is going to make you. So from you're perspective "we still don't know". WIV is going to be the same. You'll never get the disproof you demand, so you'll continue to…

More to the point— the US Government still hasn't released the classified documents that describe what happened to JFK.

I don't personally hold an opinion one way or another on JFK, but the fact is that the information on what happened still hasn't leaked out.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#406
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw an interview with a virologist, but I don't remember where (somewhere on YouTube). He said that there _is_ a moratorium on gain of function research, but that it's a joke because virology is pretty much about studying gain of function.

There was a NIH moratorium, but it was lifted in 2017. I don't agree about the point of virology being just about studying gain of function. There are tons of things you can study in virology without needing to create novel viruses.

Yes, but are those things going to get you grants, tenure, and the recognition that doing something more... "cutting edge" (blech) like GoF research?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#407
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…

> Additionally, the closest relative to SARSCov2 that has been identified (RaTG13) was found in a cave in Mojiang county in Yunnan, over 1,000 km away, with no evidence that it was ever studied in the Wuhan lab.

The article says that the viruses from Mojiang were transported to the Wuhan lab and studied there.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so the original motivations for some making that claim were suspect. Should that automatically excuse or prevent discussion that better safety protocols should be used or a better “ways of doing things” should be undertaken when handling viruses and pathogens that are capable of killing 7M people? I think it’s a valid topic and important one that should be verboten lest the next time we accidentally kill 14M with…

If the people making that claim had been sane, instead of pushing it in the middle of; "it's not deadly, just a flu," "masks do nothing," "maybe a bit of bleach is fine in the lungs," "hydroxychloroquine cures everything," "no, wait, it is horse paste that cures everything," "the vaccine will kill you in X months, guaranteed," and "GREAT RESET," it'd be easier to transition into a serious discussion about studying de…

So you want to let the conspiracy theorists dictate discussion. And not everyone claiming there could have been a lab leak was pushing for those other things. There were sane claims. You seem to want to ignore the possibility that the Chinese and American governments had something to coverup, if there was a lab leak given the kind of research done there.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the gain of function thing always thrown in? This makes the case much harder to prove and seems entirely unnecessary. The family of viruses is already very contagious and potentially dangerous with covid19 hardly being the worst combination of the two properties.

Because if it so happens that gain of function research accidentally caused a global pandemic, we need to know so we can properly evaluate the risk of continuing such research. Which could also be part of the motivation for governments to cover that up. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but I haven't seen that it's false either, and the way China and other officials and related expecrts have acted, trying to di…

Your argument here is circular. There are other viruses from the same family that nearly caused a global pandemic.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesnt. All the “indirect evidence” of the lab leak hypothesis could be interpreted multiple other totally reasonable and likely ways, and it would be irresponsible to motivate foreign policy on that “indirect evidence”.

Can you please list the other "totally reasonable and likely ways"? I'm interested.

"they didn't make the research archives disappear intentionally, lee from accounting just dropped some tea on the server"
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