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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? And how many of those are within driving distance of the one lab where: - They study novel coronaviruses - They sampled the same regions where the closest relatives to the virus were found - They applied to put a furin cleavage site in a coronavirus before the pandemic - They were ci…

>It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? This is why "common sense" is very often wrong and we have to refer to data instead. You're making assumptions that are very wrong. The wet market was over 50,000 square metres in size and one of the largest in China. The idea that there are hundreds or millions of these things is c…

Well, according to a quick search there are 40k wet markets in China. How big do you think the average wet market is? Even guessing 1000 square meters, which is very conservative, the wuhan wet market only represents about 0.1% of wet market square footage in China. By this back of the envelope math, the chance that a zoonotic spillover at a wet market would occur so close to the lab is less than 0.1%.

And sure, the wuhan market is a great place for a zoonotic spillover to occur, but any wet market would be, so the wuhan market in particular isn't the exact place you would expect. In fact I would expect it to occur at a market much closer to where the most similar viruses were found.

However, since the wuhan market is the enormous unsanitary market near the novel coronavirus lab, it is the exact place I would expect the first super spreader event to occur following a leak at that lab.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater" https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501

That's great. I am countering the notion that evidence is not required because it is 'common sense'.

Actually you just said that common sense would indicate a natural origin, which was, at least in the case of SARS, just refuted.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been plenty of lab leaks in history too.

There have been more cases of 'almost epidemic but for action by health officials' with SARS and avian flu etc which makes it 'common sense' that these things occur pretty frequently and would be happening more often naturally if not for luck and structures in place to mitigate them. Those structures also happened to be dissolved by the US leaders in charge at the time, which seems to fit the puzzle. So, 'things happ…

So tell me, looking at history, of all outbreaks that have occurred within 20 miles of a biolab studying the same disease family, how many were zoonotic versus lab accidental?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#944
post #448
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…

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

Hiding the truth because some bad people might do bad things is a pitiful excuse. Absolutely shameful to anyone with even a teardrop of integrity.

Few people want war with China. But I know of plenty that think China should be footing the bill and paying the entire world damages for their incompetence (or malice) in mishandling their bioweapon.

Communists have no integrity. ChiComs blamed the US for the virus, which is ironic, since the NIH knowingly or unwittingly (incompetence) funded it through Eco Health Alliance.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. None of these require gain of function research. > You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. All of these have…

> None of these require gain of function research. Please elaborate on this. How should I go about anticipating which mutations in which genes / protein will result in resistance to a candidate therapy / molecule / mechanism that I am considering advancing into phase 1 trials?

It is dangerous to play bio-engineer, and then handle what you create like Gomer Pyle.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a Russian post-invasion, I feel this is awfully familiar.

This may not be entirely fair but citizens of a country which is being shit to others feeling negative consequences due to their countries shitty actions is generally a good thing. It's up to Russians to fix their government and its up to Chinese to fix theirs - unless you are advocating for foreign invasion, which will probably make things a lot worse for you no matter where you currently live. Add to that that ther…

> Add to that that there are many Russians publicly supporting the war

There are many white people being racist towards white people, should I give all white people the cold shoulder so one day it will end racism?

I think it is unkind to treat people in a punitive manner for something that is beyond that individual person.

> you fit into a pattern of shitty people

What an awful thing to say to another person

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#947
post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and i still havent been given an explanation why I'm just guessing, but an obvious reason would be because the vaccines were not as effective against the new variants? As in, while the vaccines still protected the vaccinated person, they did not effectively prevent spread of the disease, so other ways to do so remained relevant...

who cares if the disease is spreading if your arent gonna die from it?

Not everyone chose to get vaccinated.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now what we read is that the virus was man made and the WIV was doing secret military work for the PLA, with the idea being to create a virus and vaccine simultaneously so the attacker controls who survives i.e. a bioweapon. That's the same as what the BBC called a false claim and conspiracy theory. In a tabloid, recycling claims that have already quite questionable without any additional evidence (ie. the Mojiang…

The Sunday Times isn't a tabloid!

I did not realize The Times (a tabloid) and The Sunday Times (broadsheet, but still...)

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#949
post #448
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…

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

“conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US,”

Extremely dubious.

Your first paragraph was on point. Then you descend into ideologically driven speculation. You also seem to not grasp the basic chronology of how the early pro-China slant of the WHO plays into the whole gestalt. And overlook the fact that social media companies are filled with government workers who are paid to manipulate (censor) views that don’t align with those of the government, a government who in this case funded the research that caused the pandemic.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#950
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…

> 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 (...) and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media.

I would like exactly the same about anti-vaxxers but excluding those people who are against any other vax. Anti-covid-vaxxers in other words. Covid is not a pox and all the strict measures were happened just because our digital world just allows such a blatant declassification of freedom people. Compare the peak number of deaths from Covid with the average deaths from alcohol and you realize that this is just a normal year. BTW mass deaths from non-violent reasons is not something totally bad in obviously overpopulated world. And I do not see much discussions about who sets the borders to our government's behavior in such a situations.

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