121–130 of 385 posts
Ironically in censorsed domains, the absence of information is a very clear indicator of truth. It happens everywhere - there are many true things you are not allowed to post on the internet. You know the old saying, "Just because you read it on the internet, doesn't mean it's true"? Consider the inverse: Just because you haven't read it on the internet, doesn't mean it's not true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't think it is wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the Chinese don't want the bad publicity associated with the virus, they should do something about these wet markets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8
On the other hand we did not call the "Swine Flu" the "North American flu"
Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…
Here's the list of agents that are better than SARS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioterrorism#Types_of_agents
Edit:
So far I'm dissapointed with the comments to my post. I can't tell if some of these are trolls or not, but generally they don't add much to the discussion.
These hypotheticals are specious, sure they sound like lucid idea but with even a slight amount of criticism they'd fall apart. I'm going to posit some ideas here. Why didn't China weaponize H5N1? It has a higher Ro and CFR. It is commonly found throughout Southeast Asia and is what most pandemic experts thought was going to be the next pandemic. How would a virus get through a biosafety level 4 lab? If anyone else here has experience in biosafety labs I'm all ears, but I'd be shocked that a virus would be able to escape from something like that; not that mistakes don't happen but this isn't exactly a durable pathogen. Then we have the issue of every single advanced military in the world wouldn't even touch The Coronavirus family. I'm going to go ahead and assume that the people who are making bioweapons are good at their jobs and can recognize what makes a good bioweapon and what doesn't. Finally, there are just so many better options for bioweapons. The US invests massive amounts in making precision weapons because when you're a military power hitting a precise location is what's key. COVID is like a cluster bomb that has 90% duds.
But after all of this, instead of random people on the internet, we have experts who have time and time again said that COVID is not a bioweapon:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debu...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9?fbclid=IwA...
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-la...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/coronavirus-cott...
https://www.ft.com/content/a6392ee6-4ec6-11ea-95a0-43d18ec71...
Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…
It's not a tinfoil hat worthy context. We know for a fact that they're doing that.
China ordered a book written [1] espousing the glorious success of Xi and the CPC in vanquishing the virus, before the world even knew for certain it was tranmissable person to person and just how dangerous it was.
They invented an outlandish narrative about the US military attacking Wuhan with the virus and then freely spread that 5G-is-the-cause level of insanity all over Twitter (with the open blessing of Twitter, by way of their refusal to remove the disinformation campaign).
[1] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/26/WS5e56238da3101282...
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It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.
What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
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So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.
Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.
US supermarkets sold lettuce that killed people. Should those supermarkets be shut for good?
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Not sure why this is downvoted. It is not Indonesia as the previous child (now deleted) alluded to — the easy tell is the distinct lack of Hijabs visible (which are ubiquitous in the largest Muslim country in the world).
It is Indonesia. See https://observers.france24.com/en/20200204-china-debunked-co... for the details. There are signs that are definitely not chinese. You can see them clearly in the original higher quality video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvXy6YlPOc The lack of hijabs is due that it is recorded in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, where the majority is christian.
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> What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.
Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that, asking for evidence and reminding the world about presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.
> What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.
Or are you just saying the best geopolitical response to unsubstantiated propaganda is more unsubstantiated propaganda volleyed right back at them?
This is similar to people who accuse the CIA of orchestrating every big event or crime. They say they don't need to provide evidence, because the CIA is untrustworthy and tries to deceive people. But this is a completely bullshit argument.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wuhan is a massive city and economic hub Let's dig into this a bit more though. The WIV's location on Google Maps apparently changed after the incident [1]. I don't know if it was a legitimate correction or what, but for the sake of argument let's suppose that the old location was correct. Then the lab is 8.6 miles from the wet market, or ~14 km. It looks like the population density in that area is around 10,000 pe…
You can apply the same logic to a specific license plate number seen near a murder meaning that the car's owner was almost surely the murderer. That isn't a high enough standard of evidence as any specific event is unlikely in hindsight. A pandemic was likely to start somewhere densely populated and first be detected in a city centre. Somewhere densely populated was likely to have a specialised biological research la…
P(individual is guilty) = 1 / 7 billion
P(individual's car on same block | individual is guilty) = 1
P(individual's car on same block | individual is innocent) = 50 / 7 billion
P(individual is guilty | individual's car on same block) = 1 / 50 (from Bayes' rule)