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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

#521

Post by cygx »

shri_krishna wrote: post #508
cygx wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia [...] How come no US citizen is attacking Russians [...] Quoting https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russia... As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine intensifies, some Russian-themed businesses and Russian Americans in the United States are suddenly getting a frosty reception — and in a few cases, experiencing outright hostility. A Russian restaurant i…

Okay and have these attacks stopped coverage against Russia in the US media? If the argument for censoring lab leak discussion is "attack on Asians" then why isn't coverage on Russia censored for "attack on Russians"?

I don't believe the main reason for suppression (insofar as that happened) and ridicule of the lab leak theory was a reasoned evaluation of any negative consequences. Rather, it became a partisan issue, and instead of being seen as an independent hypothesis that one should evaluate on its own merits, it became part of a whole package contentious issues (masks, vaccines, ivermectin, ...) that divided people along party lines. That the lab-leak hypothesis was pushed by the conspiracy crowd of course did not help.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#522

Post by sharperguy »

BurningPenguin wrote: post #520
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

Not from the US, but i don't see how it was ever a "taboo". The general gist was "we don't know" or "unlikely". However, what i did see on Social Media, was a bunch of nutjobs pushing their nonsense about "deep state", "population control" and so on.

I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association.

In many ways, it makes sense to try to get the entire population on board with a single narrative, in order to have a coherent response to an emerging situation. On the other hand, it opens the doors to corruption by leaving those in charge with no credible voices willing to criticize or draw attention to the holes in that narrative.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#523

Post by tim333 »

masswerk wrote: post #415
tim333 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had data that is new to me. Especially: >They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa. That procedure is pretty much exactly what you'd have to do to make covid in a lab. Assuming that's true, it's pretty much a smoking gun.

For a smoking gun, I'd expect evidence. This is just reporting on a diffuse claim of hearsay, allegedly by what might be labeled a party with geopolitical interest in the public narrative. It may be disinformation just as well. (Especially, as similar claims were already repeatedly made based on what turned out to be false links, like the Wuhan Institute being just around the wet market.)

Well yes, is the claim true or not? The article has:

>The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists...

So presumably The Times has the names of the researchers and someone like the FBI could investigate and see what correspondence if any they have with Wuhan about it.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#524

Post by AdamN »

jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

The problem was that almost nobody was saying the source 'might' have been a lab leak - they were saying that the source was 'definitely' a lab leak and then usually adding that Fauci sponsored gain of function research into viruses and then into conspiracy theory land.

Most of us were open to the idea of a lab leak but the disinformation was so hard around the topic that sensible people had to push back and the loser was the legitimate 'theory' that a lab leak was a possible source.

This is still a theory btw and not proven.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#525

Post by Fomite »

dehrmann wrote: post #383
Fomite wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've jumped from "do research" to "making frankenviruses" - which beyond being a sensationalist term with no formal definition, isn't necessarily the sum totality of viral research. Just the bit that the popular press likes writing lurid articles about.

Fair enough, but I'd file gain of function research in that category, it's common, and seeing a possible outcome of it, it's something we need to rethink very carefully.

In that regards, I actually agree with you. It's been the better part of a decade since I saw a talk by a colleague I immensely respect arguing against it, and I think it's value (whether it caused this outbreak or not) is speculative at best.

But I should not that not all viral engineering is gain of function, and while it gets a lot of attention, even in laboratory virology is relatively rare.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#526

Post by nosianu »

coding123 wrote: post #446
ra1231963 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was absolutely taboo. If you tried to bring it up you were shouted down as a far right conspiracy theorist, or racist. Mashup of clips from the news: https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 Jon Stewart was the first to call this into question publicly, which was brave at the time. Watch Colbert push back on Stewart’s line of reasoning: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Honestly questioning anything covid-related was taboo at that…

[flagged]

As the other commenter said, I'd like to add an example because I think it's worth it adding this to the discussion given that you are angry about a death in your family.

Just imagine, there are - to pick an example - new cancer cases (or anything really) every single day. Therefore, the vaccination will coincide with the diagnosis perfectly for a pretty large number of people.

But as should be obvious, that is not because of the vaccine. For there to be no diseases exactly following vaccinations there would have to be a stop of all disease for a week or two for anyone getting vaccinated. Now that would be an outlier.

If you want to see if a disease cold be because of vaccination you would at the very least have to show that among those getting vaccinated statistically significantly more people get the disease than normal.

Just remember, normal life and normal things - including all kinds of diseases - go on all the time. Vaccinations take place in this context, not "outside the environment" (to use a quote from a famous sketch).

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#527

Post by Nemrod67 »

realjhol wrote: post #517

It's going to take a long time before the mainstream is ready to think critically about the COVID narratives, but it's good to see first steps toward the recovery of rationality. But there's still a lot to cover: - Lockdowns did little to prevent the spread of COVID and lead to increased deaths by other causes, egregious violation of people's fundamental rights, massively destruction of the economy, and many people's…

looking at the majority of comments here, I'd say it'll take more than a decade...

People just seem to blank out anything really bad done by "their team" (be it either orange man bad or clinton is a traitor).

I fear for the future of Human civilization

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#529

Post by ftxbro »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #434
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

Was it really taboo? I didn’t get this feeling where I live (admittedly not the USA). It’s just that it became clear pretty quickly that the investigation was going nowhere as China wasn’t going to honestly cooperate. That didn’t leave much to discuss. For the official response, it was to be expected. The UN does plenty of compromises with authoritarian countries for the sake of being able to operate. It would have b…

yes it was taboo in the media and even on hacker news. if you mentioned it then you were literally laura ingraham

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#530

Post by ricksunny »

ricksunny wrote: post #319
ricksunny wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chief among key new assertions the parent article makes, https://twitter.com/BlockedVirology/status/16676623250907463... • WIV added FCS's to coronavirus(es?) exactly as described in DEFUSE, according to a US lab collaborator. • Zhou Yusen "fell" off the roof of the WIV in May 2020 • WIV was working on a 'closer [than published] unpublished variant' • Of all caves/mines, only scholarly attempts to access the Mojiang…

• an item covered that isn't strictly new but is probably unfamiliar to many even so, is: Of the researchers who the Jan 2021 State Dep Fact Sheet described as having fell sick with 'Covid-like symptoms' in Nov 2019 • they were taken to hospital, desoite being in their 30's and 40's (age) • one of their relatives died • they were working on advanced coronavirus research in the laboratory The WaPo journalist Josh Rogi…

Just updating my above comment that the observations about the sick researchers did actually make it into print in 2021 thx to Ian Birrell in DailyMail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9410163/US-State-De...

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