771–780 of 792 posts
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Zoonotic jumps can still happen in a lab. They are simply jumps from one species to another.
Sure, but in this case if it were a zoonotic jump in the lab it would be really really easy for them to have found the animal now wouldn't it?
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Since COVID, I find the who left and right thing hugely confusing. I used to identify as left, and would still do that, except that what passed for left-leaning news during COVID became nothing more than propaganda, and left-leaning journalist put their investigative and sceptical credentials to one side. During COVID, and still perhaps even now, it turns out you can become a member of the far right, just by staying…
> Since COVID, I find the who left and right thing hugely confusing. There really seem to be some strange shifts recently in the US where the democrats have become quite a bit more hawkish and intolerant of alternative opinions than I have ever seen before in my lifetime.
Honestly, fuck outta here with "alternative opinions" noise.
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I understand your reasoning here, I agree without spending an inordinate amount of time doing first person research on every topic we all basically have to fall back to listening to other people's reasoning on a subject and then decide, but I'm curious, has discussing this and reading the article (and probably some of the other information around) caused you to rethink COVID origin possibilities or at least do some m…
You're asking in the context of me personally, rather than in the context of the topic. That answer is "no". The importance I give to a topic is mostly based on what is actionable, which for this topic would seem to be limited to posting my resulting opinion on social media. Just like I never bought into the "China virus" narrative, I also never bought into the "no, it's definitely not from a lab" narrative. I am com…
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The article doesn't just say "people got sick" it says that researchers were hospitalized. That doesn't sound like "normal seasonal illness" to me.
Then you haven’t spent time in China and realise they use their hospital system very differently. Often people will go to hospitals for minor fevers.
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Thanks for the explanations. Admittedly, my introduction to the term “zoonotic” was from playing Plague Inc: Evolved (if one is not familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved ) so you might see where I’m coming from. I do roughly understand this to be the meaning.
Interesting. I noticed that one of my kids picked up a lot about how electricity works as well as simple and/or/not/nand gates. But that doesn't mean he knows anything about electricity, merely how the game logic presents it, which is close but not quite how it really works. That doesn't mean he knows nothing either, but it does mean that such knowledge should always be verified with proper sources to ensure you're n…
Yeah, I have difficulty with this, in particular trusting sources. Wikipedia is almost always correct on a technical level but very information dense (Good Thing! Recently I looked up “captain obvious disambiguation” for a joke and learned the word “lapalissade”) so it sometimes requires a certain mindset to learn from there. Some public school teachers don’t like being questioned(!!) and I think that’s caused me to have an internalized skepticism of academics, ironically despite the likelihood they’re more informed. Rando stranger on the internet can be good source but maybe a bullshitter instead.
On the whole, and especially in particular if one pays attention, people here tend to make “good faith” statements such that a difference of opinion similar to this thread is genuinely informative if one is willing to consider the possibility of any particular thing being true (or not). It helps to understand the difference between statements of fact and opinion. I’ve found it helps also to be open about a lack of knowledge if one is willing to ask questions and “be taught” in a fashion, despite the reputation that such leading statements have.
I try to remind myself that all topics which are able to capture academics’ attention have a lot of depth to them, practically by necessity. My physics teacher in high school was fantastic so I have a solid understanding of the concepts taught in that class -- in my experience, MKS logic has been a helpful mental exercise for understanding any abstraction. But it would still take years of study for me to really understand the things we can’t explain about the physical world. And that’s true of almost anything. Best to keep an open mind.
That turned into a bit more than I expected. I appreciate your comment, if it’s not already obvious! I hope you have a nice day, whenever you read this.
This is the sort of thing that should bankrupt a country, and they should be required to make up for the damage their negligence inflicted on the world population. The Chinese cannot be trusted with power.
Uhh, what does a random Chinese citizen have to do with the lab leak? Bankrupting a country would mainly punish a bunch of innocent peasants.
They can revolt, stop paying taxes, all sorts of things.
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Which still doesn’t really draw the line of how an outbreak occurred at the wet market. Also common seasonal illness isn’t exactly a smoking gun
not really typical for healthy researchers in their 30s to end up in the hospital with seasonal illness symptoms though.
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The wiki above explains it. Technically they are supposed to purchase a shift algorithm.
Google is doing no business in China, so they don’t “have to.” They could easily bypass that by internally mapping the imagery to the vectors, they have thousands of developers who could do this. Even if they had to buy it, they’re not buying it because again they don’t do business there.
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> Since COVID, I find the who left and right thing hugely confusing. There really seem to be some strange shifts recently in the US where the democrats have become quite a bit more hawkish and intolerant of alternative opinions than I have ever seen before in my lifetime.
Couldn't have anything to do with the lack of action against constant mass shootings, police brutality, regressions in law's around women's bodies, the attacks on LGBTQ rights, no couldn't be. Honestly, fuck outta here with "alternative opinions" noise.
Could be that. Well demonstrated!