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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

#291

Post by willcipriano »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #271
ethbr0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to start thinking of politically-impactful truths in terms of probability distributions and outcome possibility spaces, rather than absolutely. If it were a lab leak, there are probably a handful of eyewitnesses. Any information (not leak; was leak) would have serious ramifications to the political systems of the two largest economies in the world (the US and China). What are the chances that we'll ever h…

> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?

China wouldn't be solely responsible, this was a US project.

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

#293

Post by evandale »

predictabl3 wrote: post #186
pessimizer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles. None ever will from your perspective if you're citing "head nods" and dog whistles.

I don't know what that's supposed to mean. No, sorry not sorry, I don't really put much stock in the analysis of people that immediately link this into their unsubstantiated handwavey global conspiracies. I've seen articles, research, professionals talking about the evidence. Which aren't headnods and whistles. And I read it. And that's why I don't have any strong opinion, contrary to whatever I think is being implie…

> I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles.

> None ever will from your perspective if you're citing "head nods" and dog whistles.

It means that if you consider mentioning the lab leak theory an automatic dogwhistle for bioweapon then of course every single discussion about these lab leak immediately dove-tails into various other conspiracies or whistles. It's circular reasoning and you're making it impossible to express nuance.

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

#294

Post by kornhole »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #271
ethbr0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to start thinking of politically-impactful truths in terms of probability distributions and outcome possibility spaces, rather than absolutely. If it were a lab leak, there are probably a handful of eyewitnesses. Any information (not leak; was leak) would have serious ramifications to the political systems of the two largest economies in the world (the US and China). What are the chances that we'll ever h…

> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?

The Ecohealth Alliance received funding from NIH for the gain of function research which means it would not be just China to blame. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...

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

#295

Post by taeric »

lamontcg wrote: post #280
taeric wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, odds are high I did have an early covid case. Was like an asthma attack with a few nights of fever. And I had every symptom. (Though, my understanding is loss of smell came and went as symptoms? I can't remember what the final call on that was.) I never got a confirmed test, as they weren't testing then. Mostly irrelevant, as I don't think it would change anything else. Keep your distance and try not to get…

My understanding is that the loss of smell from early COVID tends to be fairly profound. It makes food disgusting. You can burn food on the stove and not smell it even after the fire alarm goes off. And it recovers slowly. It isn't like the usual changes in taste/smell during an infection which are mostly due to the symptoms of rhinitis and clear up when they clear up.

Yeah, that was my understanding, and is what I had. Was odd to find I could breath just fine, but couldn't smell coffee.

Had a similar thing happen a year ago, where I couldn't even smell menthol rub. Could breath, just couldn't smell. That time, though, I was testing and never got a positive test. I thought, at the time, the general idea was that loss of smell wasn't a thing, anymore. Maybe not?

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

#296

Post by kneebonian »

aredox wrote: post #212
kyleblarson wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is peculiar how all of these recent "conspiracy theories" as named by corporate media eventually turn out to be true.

It is peculiar that not many of these conspiracy theories eventually turn out to be true. See Twitter's own lawyers: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyer...

[flagged]

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

#297

Post by zvmaz »

In an interview with biologist Richard Lenski (of the famous experiment), the latter discusses controversial research on selecting H5N1 viruses for greater transmissibility and their potential to be airborne viruses that are of public health concern [1]. That was in 2017...

I have no definitive opinion on the origin of Sars-Cov-2 (will we know the truth one day?), but I don't think the lab leak theory is crazy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr8ldEeO04

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

#298

Post by kornhole »

wsatb wrote: post #274
geuis wrote: 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…

All you need to do is take a quick look at one of the author's other stories[1] and your skepticism will grow further. [1] https://substack.com/@shellenberger

Or it could do the opposite. Both Taibbi and Shellenberger are independent investigative journalists with no party loyalties. Their funding comes directly from readers rather than corporations or billionaire owned outlets. They can make a few mistakes from time to time but own up to them. Their opinions are their own, but they rarely report anything not factual.

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

#299

Post by streptomycin »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #292

I keep asking myself, "who gives a shit?". When the virus was first discovered, it was important to pin down who and where Patient zero was. Now? Pure politicking. It isn't even a slow news day!

10 million people are dead. I find it hard to believe how anyone could not be at least mildly interested in obtaining more details about the origin of Covid-19, whether it's from the market or the lab or somewhere else.

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

#300

Post by evandale »

jb12 wrote: 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?

Closing the borders wouldn't have been seen as racist, it would have identified as a valid tool to stop the spread, and we would have had an extra 2 months early on in the pandemic preventing the spread in a major way.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-...

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