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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

#331

Post by GolfPopper »

kornhole wrote: post #298
wsatb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Um, among the "mistakes" Taibbi recently "owned up to" is falsifying information in his Twtter Files reporting. Among other things, he deliberately misrepresented mentions of the non-profit Center for Internet Security (CIS) as the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). It's clear that was not a mistake, but a choice he made in order to further a specific narrative - one that he only admitted when confronted about it. [1]

1. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/07/mehdi-hasan-dismantles-t...

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

#332

Post by NotYourLawyer »

squalo wrote: post #108
sixQuarks wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? What evidence do you have that his reporting is suspect?

I take it you haven't been keeping up with the twitter files controversy?

His involvement there makes him the opposite of suspect.

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

#333

Post by rnk »

mock-possum wrote: post #287
wsatb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Why Politicians Are Trying To Take Your Children > California legislation would punish parents who don't affirm gender dysphoria wow yeah that's a take

Also, how the media is really mean to RFK junior, the crazy RFK by the way. Supporting him puts you on the Bozo list.

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

#334

Post by brvsft »

basisword wrote: post #311
kneebonian wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it isn't about the effectiveness or the blame it was that we spent 2 years where many fundamental and basic rights were suspended because of fear. For me it is not about blame it is about reminding people how fragile our rights are and that there are people all to willing and eager to take them. Combined with the massive redistribution of wealth that happened as a direct result of government action that furthe…

I’m sure the millions that died are also frustrated our rights were infringed temporarily due to…fear.

You'd have a point if these actions saved lives, but they didn't. And it turns out in some cases, the actions probably led to more deaths, e.g. NY quarantining patients in nursing homes.

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

#335

Post by freeopinion »

Reason077 wrote: post #286
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You won't have to wait long for confirmation. Confirmation that they were sick. Not confirmation of what they were sick with.

Given the location, the timing, the symptoms, the severity of the illness (it's unusual for 'flu to put healthy young adults in hospital) I think we can be pretty confident in our guess.

Except, of course, we don't know who they were, let alone whether they were otherwise healthy or whether they were young adults. Whether somebody is confident in your guesses is up to them I guess.

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

#336

Post by Izkata »

stubybubs wrote: post #181
TechBro8615 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My "source" was mainly common sense (the simplest solution is usually the right one https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html 75% of all new infectious diseases come from animals. Isn't the simplest solution that COVID also came from animals? Just because it was a bad one doesn't make it less likely. Where did smallpox come from? Polio? Spanish flu? Is it strange that the lab was near the wet mark…

> Where did smallpox come from? Polio? Spanish flu?

Which time?

Lab leaks are pretty common, all three of those have leaked from labs (smallpox 5 times): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

And keep in mind these are just the leaks we know about.

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

#337

Post by rnk »

kornhole wrote: post #298
wsatb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't see apologizing from shellenberger about his RFK junior article.

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

#338

Post by athesyn »

gojomo wrote: post #182
stainablesteel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience, a pure reputation destruction post is generally non-credible, and you posted an establishment media interview on someone who supports twitter: of course they have a bone to pick. for the sake of honest conversation, can you list what conspiracy theories you're referring to? because the last few conspiracy theories i can remember somehow all turned out to be true. so i'm really concerned with what is…

Mehdi Hasan is proof that MSNBC can air someone who's as much of a shouty partisanship-addled blowhard as Fox's Sean Hannity. Investigative journalist Lee Fang goes deeper into Hasan's allegations about Taibbi – plus Hasan's history of plagiarism & viewpoint-flexible controversialism-for-pay at: https://www.leefang.com/p/mehdi-hasan-plagiarized-pro-spanki...

Anyone who has seen the interview knows Mehdi wiped the floor with Taibbi and pointed out humiliating mistakes in his reporting -- even Taibbi accepted that.

As for the plagiarism, the article in question is from over 20 years ago, hardly a slam dunk nor is it a representative of his journalistic career. The only reason Fang wrote that is because Mehdi accused him of Islamophobia, it's just petty and desperate nonsense.

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

#339

Post by Sunhold »

dekhn wrote: post #307
baja_blast wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

.... written by a geoscientist. There are limits on the ability to transfer knowledge between domains (although this doesn't mean the geoscientist is necessarily wrong, and often even amateurs can find big problems with papers that got through peer review).

The geoscientist in question is actually arguing that some of the flaws in the paper are due to the authors' lack of expertise in geospatial analysis.[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expert...

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

#340

Post by rnk »

kneebonian wrote: post #289
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…

For me it isn't about the effectiveness or the blame it was that we spent 2 years where many fundamental and basic rights were suspended because of fear. For me it is not about blame it is about reminding people how fragile our rights are and that there are people all to willing and eager to take them. Combined with the massive redistribution of wealth that happened as a direct result of government action that furthe…

We had an emergency health situation and the government made emergency rules. Those rules were rescinded later when the emergency was reduced, partly because of widespread vaccination. This is not the first time that during a health emergency the US govt at various levels made temporary stringent rules. It turned out that our political argument against the rules is probably why the u.s had a much higher death rate from covet than other industrialized countries.
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