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Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

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Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#41
post #34

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that bi…

> What are the chances?

No matter if it was lab leak or not, my problem with the Chinese government is the way they tried to handle it. Can help but draw parallels to the Chernobyl accident.

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives need for the lab leak theory to be correct as they were wrong about basically all other points on covid. They refused to believe in masks, lockdowns, and social distancing and paid the ultimate price at a much higher rate. [0] [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing...

i had no idea the lab leak theory was conservative. i suppose it was silly of me not to realize every opinion that a person can have has already been claimed by liberals or conservatives, such that holding that opinion means you're more liberal/less conservative, or more conservative/less liberal.

> i suppose it was silly of me not to realize every opinion that a person can have has already been claimed by liberals or conservatives

It's a political topic, so it naturally has positions staked out by both sides. There's not much reason to care about it one way or the other unless you have a tribal viewpoint.

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#43
post #34

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that bi…

It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#44
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives need for the lab leak theory to be correct as they were wrong about basically all other points on covid. They refused to believe in masks, lockdowns, and social distancing and paid the ultimate price at a much higher rate. [0] [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing...

I don't think your link proves your point like you think it does. It's a correlation, not causation. The question is, what other variables may impact conservatives. One of the main factors in if you die from getting covid is age. And conservatives tend to be older. I would love to see an age normalized version of that data. I'd bet it would be about a wash.

The only people in my circle of friends and family who died from COVID were middle age or older obese men who were ideologically opposed to taking a vaccine. I do have a number of conservative friends & family who did vaccinate, none of them got more than the sniffles.

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virus having been accidentally released from the lab doesn't require that the virus was modified in or by the lab between the time of leak and the time of collection.

No, but a virus suddenly showing up that was pre-adapted to replication in human bodies and didn't follow the usual zoonotic origin scenario of traceable series of mutations over time in both animal and human hosts, along with the sudden appearance of a furin cleavage site not found in any other relatives of said virus, points to (1) likely serial passage through human-gene-modified mice and human cell cultures and (…

Great comment but the down d00ters can't handle using common sense and will happily swallow any narrative told to them by talking heads.

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#46
post #40
post #34

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that bi…

Neither of those are definitive sources of evidence. Grant proposals that were denied and statements that the furin site could've evolved naturally or been lab manipulated, aren't really evidence that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.

[deleted]

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#47
post #43
post #34

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that bi…

It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study

> It does seem odd they would want to set up a lab in close proximity to what they wanted to study

The lab was nowhere near the site of what they were studying.

The coronavirus strains came from a cave 600 miles away and brought to Wuhan for further study.

Again, none of these viruses have a unique furin cleavage site for ACE-2.

If you read the FOIA document requests, one of the people who got grant money said "I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . it’s stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”.

This person afterwards did a complete u-turn and signed onto the infamous publication in The Lancet. A lot of people quickly did a u-turn around the exact same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#48
post #40
post #34

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on adding a unique furin cleavage site to a bat coronoavirus strain to make it bind to human ACE-2 receptors. This is factual, because the grant proposals are out there and DARPA in the US turned them down: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra... Suddenly, we have a global pandemic featuring a bat coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that bi…

Neither of those are definitive sources of evidence. Grant proposals that were denied and statements that the furin site could've evolved naturally or been lab manipulated, aren't really evidence that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.

Definitive proof? No.

Damning evidence? Yes.

Re: Declassified U.S. report on origins of Covid-19 virus [pdf]

#49
post #19

I think the problem is that America's Director of National Intelligence just isn't saying what people had hoped to hear. "We continue to have no indication that the Wuhan Institute of Virology's pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID…

Lab leak theorists don’t believe Covid was developed as a weapon. They believe it was an accidental leak from a lab doing normal, non-warfare virological research. The quoted phrasing makes me think that they know it was a leak but redirect the conversation by saying it wasn’t a biological weapon.

Lab leak proponents contain multitudes. Some believe it was developed as a weapon, and some believe it was being studied normally. Some believe the leak was accidental, and some believe it was a result of sabotage. Some seemingly can't decide what they believe, deploying arguments with no clear regard for which actual scenarios a given argument would support as long as it pokes a hole in the mainstream narrative.
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