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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

#411

Post by saalweachter »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #265
letmevoteplease wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

The characteristic of the early pandemic was "ground glass" lung X-rays.

If they have that, it's pretty clear cut.

If they don't ... meh.

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

#412

Post by jesusofnazarath »

athesyn wrote: post #338
gojomo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nonsen…

[dead]

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

#413

Post by 1024core »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #258
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…

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...

> on June 18th

which happens to be a Sunday...

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

#414

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

wk_end wrote: post #363
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Luc's hypothesis was not explored because, as you will see from googling his name, he became the topic of debunking and adhomenim. And maybe some of his views on other topics were wrong, but his comments on this subject have aged well. After an hour of googling I finally found a reference to his original hypothesis. "According to him, the altered elements of this virus are eliminated as it spreads: “Nat…

But this is just magical thinking, some variation of the naturalistic fallacy. Nature absolutely will accept molecular tinkering if it provides an evolutionary advantage. Another commenter pointed out that, for a while, the virus became more dangerous over time, not less. And the extent to which COVID has become less dangerous over time (which probably has as much to do with widespread immunity either via vaccination…

Everything is relative, and Luc's view has aged better than authoritative admonitions that the virus might never moderate in severity.[1] I mean, Luc was a Nobel prize winner in this field. His ideas were creative, sure, but magical? It's not hard to see the logic-- these kinds of molecules subside in evolution because they didn't arise from evolution in the first place. I mean, his opinion was a first take when the world was Cloroxing bananas, There's more info now, but this still is an example of how the conversation may have gone differently had governments taken the view that lab-origin was viable.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/debunking-idea-viruses-evolve-...

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

#415

Post by fsckboy »

rnk wrote: post #344
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible. It wouldn't have changed our treatments or vaccination strategies or anything. Could it have made some people who are crazy against China feel differently? Maybe. I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though.

> I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though

from NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/

"Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19... with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)"

Whether or not ivermectin ultimately turned out to be efficacious against Covid19 is not the main point, it was/is a widely known, completely safe, anti-viral, and while everything else in the toolbag was being thrown at Covid19, ivermectin was a good candidate, especially since it showed positive results in some clinical conditions. (and I've heard it pointed out that in order to get profitable approval for experimental mRNA vaccines to be released, there was a huge financial incentive to declare a priori that ivermectin did not work)

If you "believe in science" you wouldn't call people who tried ivermectin "doofuses", doing so you're simply looking in the doofus mirror.

It's best not to join one partisan camp or the other and politicize science, but look at evidence. Ivermectin has well known antiviral properties, and coronavirus is a virus.

> I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible

you are fixating on the wrong aspect. Whether or not covid19 is the result of the leak of "man-made" gain-of-function research is extremely important to what we do in the future. The public has a right to know.

you keep arguing your own point here, that "no harm is no foul and we wouldn't have done anything differently so we don't need to look" and to me that's simply you saying you support the politics that played out and you don't want to look at it. To me, science was ignored in favor of politics and it's all exactly what I want to look at.

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

#416

Post by MarkMarine »

rnk wrote: post #365
MarkMarine wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I get painted as a Trump supporter and therefore blind to my team, I’m not. Don’t support him, and when listening to him yell about China virus and then listening to people calmly say that was racism, I went with the calm people. But the man did get the PDB every day. Maybe he heard some of this intelligence and made some leaps to suit his purpose. But if we were all lied to about the origin, our family and fr…

If there was reliable evidence that China had created a coronavirus, it would have been widely disseminated because it's the fantasy of the Republicans in the US to put it on China, and if not China then put it on Dr. Fauci. But it doesn't seem like it would have changed anything about treatment of the horrible coronavirus. I don't really understand why people are so hot to talk about gain of function research, that…

Did you read the article?

WIV collected dangerous coronavirus, mixed those virus's genetic material to make more infectious strains. They wrote scientific papers about this themselves, you can read them yourself. They tested these mixed viruses (called chimeric virus) on mice with human-like lungs to find the most dangerous and infectious ones. You can read about this in the grant funding for WIV.

Then proposed splicing in the furin cleavage site into these dangerous chimeric viruses. The US funders balked at this last step, splicing the furin cleavage site in, and didn't give a grant grant money for this proposed step. It's not proven, but it sure seems like they actually did the research, because the furin cleavage site seems to be main thing that makes COVID-19 so infectious. They proposed testing these viruses on mice with human lungs and circulatory systems.

so... do you now understand why people are talking about gain of function? Viruses like this don't exist in nature, and scientists are making them and then testing them on animals that have been genetically engineered to have human-like organs, so they can figure out how to make the most dangerous ones.

This isn't new, there is a mission impossible movie where a chimeric virus is the boogie man.

Making mice with human lungs and CRISPER is new, and then doing this level of research in place with the same level of biosafety as a dental office is a new wrinkle.

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

#417

Post by [deleted] »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #258
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…

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...

[deleted]

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

#418

Post by mindslight »

MarkMarine wrote: post #178
mindslight wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering the vilification of anyone (including the president at the time) for saying things that were in this vein It's very weird that you frame this as if the vilification including the President was an indicator of it being unreasonable, when the actual situation was that the President himself was one of the main drivers of why this topic couldn't be discussed rationally. Once the conversation is hijacked by…

Before I get painted as a Trump supporter and therefore blind to my team, I’m not. Don’t support him, and when listening to him yell about China virus and then listening to people calmly say that was racism, I went with the calm people. But the man did get the PDB every day. Maybe he heard some of this intelligence and made some leaps to suit his purpose. But if we were all lied to about the origin, our family and fr…

The way humans convince each other of the merits of our ideas is by describing our thought processes. The problem isn't actually something being said by someone who "is" a blowhard, but rather that the thing is being said in a blowhard manner - aggressively asserted, with poor supporting reasoning. If there were concrete supporting evidence for the assertion of "China Virus", it would have been mentioned. There wasn't.

When the blowharding is done by the usual talking heads who have a following but lack actual power, it can generally be ignored - the partisans are already crazy. The problem is when it's done from a position of governmental leadership, it requires continual active refutation lest an unquestioned drumbeat turn into action real quick. The fish rots from the head.

Most certainly the reaction to this can be (could've been) used as a cover to deflect from the truth. But blame for that doesn't lay at the feet of the anti-anti-intellectuals working to counter the anti-intellectualism, but rather the initial anti-intellectuals for creating the memetic fog that prevented rational analysis to begin with.

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

#419

Post by MarkMarine »

wonderwonder wrote: post #284
MarkMarine wrote: post #72

It's pretty incredible to see the US Government shift around these conflicting narratives, moving toward (apparently 3 letter agency by agency) this lab leak origin. Especially considering the vilification of anyone (including the president at the time) for saying things that were in this vein. I think they owe us a complete release of the data they have and an actual assessment, from the government, explained by the…

Remember when insinuating the Chinese lab leak theory meant you were a racist? Good times, really united the country during a time of crisis. Country has become so divided that if the other side says the sky is blue, then you have to believe it's red. Orange man bad though right... I voted for Biden before everyone piles on.

No kidding. Great that we need the last line qualifier on a site like hacker news. Is reddit back working yet?

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

#420

Post by api »

nancyhn wrote: post #386
kornhole wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's weird how many smart people still haven't realized they are being lied to by the legacy media and establishment figures. Even after repeatedly discrediting themselves. Taibbi and Shellenberger aren't perfect either, but they are more reliable and honest. Taibbi is still the investigative journalist he's always been.

I realize the MSM lies. I just also realize that “alternative” media lies as well, especially when it’s full of hyper-partisan or ideologue hacks.

Taibbi is clearly a partisan hack that only attacks one side, ever. I don’t know the other one but his feed has a strong new right hack feel to it.

There are plenty of lefty hacks around too. It’s not a one sided phenomenon.

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