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First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

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Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#251
post #225

I don't trust this article at all . > Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus. > It is unclear who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the pub…

My sources on the planet Earth say that nowadays this is the way to write news, essays, blogs, podcast videos, and books in order to attract attentions.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#252

‘Said Metzl, “Had US government officials including Dr. Fauci stated from day one that a COVID-19 research-related origin was a very real possibility, and made clear that we had little idea what viruses were being held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what work was being done there, and who was doing that work, our national and global conversations would have been dramatically different. The time has come for a fu…

In Daszak own words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksKoMZon6Y. At around 1h15m he answers a question about how they were doing gain of function research on SARS and SARS related virus with his colleagues in China (WIV).

This guy then lead the sham "WHO" inspection of WIV. And Fauci funded him to work around the Obama prohibition on gain of function research.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#253
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outbreaks can only happen in places of high density/congregation, by the nature of the required proximity. It could have been dancing around the perimeter for some time. Maybe my perspective is incorrect, but this seems trivially possible to me. This problem with proximity is why kids didn't go to school.

The wet market was one of the less densely trafficked areas of the city: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/... Check out the other figures in that paper. The epicenter was the wet market itself.

Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#254
post #30

> "If you knew that this was likely a lab-enhanced pathogen, there are so many things you could have done differently" I'm curious - if we knew in March 2020 that covid came from a lab, what _would_ we have done differently?

Presumably the people there would have knowledge of the virus's characteristics, behavior and better prepare us for dealing with it.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#255
post #27
post #2

There seems to have been covid cases in Europe in last-quarter 2019, which suggests it was there or brought there before the outbreak that made the news in 2020. Doesn’t rule out leaks and crossovers, just moves them elsewhere or else when. Viral pneumonia was occurring, symptoms turned out to match covid and nobody was saving or testing blood samples. Outside of a few places in Dec. But people had aggressive, surpri…

I got ill in a way I'd never really gotten ill before, in November/December 2019 -- after having travelled from Mexico to Norway. I was barely out of bed for the month I was in the country. I thought it might be dengue, but one of the first days there I got checked out in the hospital -- and they said I had an unidentified viral infection, but not dengue. After being released I got incredibly ill, but not much you ca…

I had a really bad cold-like illness in late November 2019, which left behind a severe sore throat which lasted about three weeks. It was notable because it wouldn't go away, to the point where I went to both urgent care and my primary doctor on separate occasions (I'm not one to go to the doctor unless I really need to.) Both times they took a look at my throat, proclaimed it to be a viral infection, and sent me on my way.

I too have wondered if I actually had Covid, but nobody knew how to diagnose it at that time.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#256
post #30

> "If you knew that this was likely a lab-enhanced pathogen, there are so many things you could have done differently" I'm curious - if we knew in March 2020 that covid came from a lab, what _would_ we have done differently?

I had personally decided by April 2020 that there was sufficient information for me to believe that Covid was a lab-enhanced pathogen that was accidentally released by researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My "source" was mainly common sense (the simplest solution is usually the right one, and guilty people doth protest too much), an understanding of probability (there is a lab studying the pathogen right n…

I'm "agnostic" whether it's lab leak or natural/from the market, but I'd like to ask how you can be certain that your gut feeling is right? I think to be certain is to be ignorant/dismiss other possibilites, and confirmation bias doesn't help in that regard, you start dismissing evidence that don't conform to your "gut feeling". I also shook my head at all the scientists that loudly proclaimed that "I'm certain it can't be from a lab, it's natural!" (A scientist should be aware, that like in a math exam, if they can be certain of something, they need to show proof/show the work!), but I'm not going to prescribe motives like a Bill Gates + Rotschild + pharma industry conspiracies behind these scientists proclaiming this. Although I am curious what did motivate them to make these very non-scientific proclamations.

If you ask me why the Chinese authorities were secretive, I can come up with many theories, it could've been a lab leak, yes, but it could also be them wanting to save face rather than face the embarassment of admitting the virus started there (is there anything to be embarassed about, or is the CCP, like many political bodies, full of men with grade-school level emotions?), heck their internal propaganda blames the US, saying they brought in the virus through the Wuhan 2019 Military World Games. Or the Chinese refusals could be them not wanting foreign organizations looking around their labs. Heck, if a virus started in Atlanta and the WHO said some their investigators from many countries, including China and Russia, would like to inspect the CDC lab there, Americans would probably scream the same amount...

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#257
post #223

Unless someone has specimen samples from the sick WIV scientists, this doesn't really prove anything. Nasty respiratory viruses with Covid-like symptoms aren't actually that rare, and there's a lot of overlap between a bad respiratory infection and a mild Covid infection. I've talked to numerous people in the US who swore they had the full checklist of Covid symptoms well before the November 2019 date they're talking…

a close family member swore they got covid at CES 2020. they went to vegas and came back real sick for a couple of days. i remember in 2020 or so they were also talking about covid being in the sewage in some european city (i think in italy? and/or spain?) but my assumption was they were detecting things that were also common in other influenza strains.

If SARS-CoV-2 was all over CES 2020 on Jan 7-10 then people would have already been unmistakably dying. Once you've infected around 1,000 people in a geographic location it has already spilled over into an elder care facility and rips through there and kills about a third of them.

The first such incident in the US wasn't until a patient got sick on Feb 19th in Kirkland, WA.

The fact that the virus doubled every 3 days and slaughtered people in elder care facilities means that it isn't credible to think that it was floating around CES 2020.

The doubling rate of 3 days and the high level of mortality means that the virus doesn't really hide for that long, although due to exponential spread it is first very slow and then it quickly becomes very, very fast.

It is good at cryptic spread for 1-2 months, where it is very difficult to detect and the first several hundred people mostly just get colds and nobody notices and it actually spreads fairly poorly and cryptically, but then it reaches a critical mass and the superspreading events start popping off and someone gives to one of those elder care facilities and then it can't be ignored.

If it was all over CES or any other tight cluster in early Jan (the usual "everyone at work was sick in Jan I bet it was COVID" idea) then that would have marked a point where the virus was changing from cryptic spread to announcing itself. You once that happens, you can't avoid the virus slaughtering a care facility before the month is out. Since that didn't happen, then the infections at CES didn't happen.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#258
post #225

I don't trust this article at all . > Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus. > It is unclear who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the pub…

You won't have to wait long for confirmation. The Director of National Intelligence will be required by law to declassify information about the infected researchers on June 18th, including their names, symptoms, date of onset and role at WIV.[1]

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619...

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#259
post #248
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a bunch of NYCers that swore they got covid in Jan 2020, but it's both mathematically impossible for all of them to have had it based on the circulating numbers at the time, and then when they actually got Covid in the coming months/years they changed their tune.

Oddly, I assumed I had it early in the waves. Never got a positive test, as folks weren't testing back then. Finally had our first positive test this year. And whatever I had at the start was way way worse than when I had covid. Such that I can understand a lot of folks being very confused on all of this.

A common cold that turns into bronchial pneumonia can be substantially worse than SARS-CoV-2 in any given person.

That doesn't make the common cold worse than SARS-CoV-2 on average.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#260
post #223

Unless someone has specimen samples from the sick WIV scientists, this doesn't really prove anything. Nasty respiratory viruses with Covid-like symptoms aren't actually that rare, and there's a lot of overlap between a bad respiratory infection and a mild Covid infection. I've talked to numerous people in the US who swore they had the full checklist of Covid symptoms well before the November 2019 date they're talking…

a close family member swore they got covid at CES 2020. they went to vegas and came back real sick for a couple of days. i remember in 2020 or so they were also talking about covid being in the sewage in some european city (i think in italy? and/or spain?) but my assumption was they were detecting things that were also common in other influenza strains.

There was a really bad flu that went around just before Covid. It was a bad enough flu for me that I actually had to take a Ventolin inhaler. When I finally got covid in late 2022, I would say the flu I picked up in 2020 was worse.
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