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The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

technologyreview.com

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Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#121

Post by ampdepolymerase »

gloriousternary wrote: post #15
bumbada wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should develop open source decentralized alternatives to it that are easy to use.

Honestly I think Mastodon is already about as easy to use as possible. The real problem is the network effect, and the fact that the average person really just doesn't care enough about the benefits you get from it. What we really need is a libre, decentralized social network that's "cool" enough that non-tech people would have FOMO if they don't join. That's a much harder problem, one that I certainly won't be able…

Mastodon powers Gab. It is as popular a decentralized technology as it can get.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#122

Post by CMay »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actual virologists who support the lab leak theory, but my guess is that Congress is calling him because he is pushing it as an intentional lab leak. There is so far no evidence at all for that, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Biological warfare is like trying to use a grenade as a handgun. Yes it does hurt your opponent, but... Yes China did seem to contain COVID well, but if it were (hypothetica…

> There are actual virologists who support the lab leak theory Very few. I don't know of any major virologist who actually says it's more likely, and the overwhelming majority say it's highly unlikely. Right now, everything points to the outbreak being associated with animal markets, just like SARS.

Using quantity like this to prop up your reasoning and discounting the contributions of someone outside of a field both weaken the strength of your conclusions, unfortunately.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#123

Post by jazzyjackson »

vimy wrote: post #62
gloriousternary wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think Mastodon is already about as easy to use as possible. The real problem is the network effect, and the fact that the average person really just doesn't care enough about the benefits you get from it. What we really need is a libre, decentralized social network that's "cool" enough that non-tech people would have FOMO if they don't join. That's a much harder problem, one that I certainly won't be able…

Maybe https://bitclout.com/

Hahaha I agree with my sibling - I went on a ride with bitclout and enjoyed the camaraderie, but immediately saw how petty people were going to get over losing a buck, ironically ready to call other users scammers at the drop of a hat.

If they had a different answer to decentralization than a 2MB/minute block size or a media hosting solution that wasn’t just “allow iframes from YouTube and Vimeo” I would have had more faith, but now that I’ve cashed out I see what the sibling sees, target demographic for a influencer-speculation-exchange is very small.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#124

Post by failuser »

seattle_spring wrote: post #120
failuser wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the reason being that Facebook users jump from “virus was leaked from a lab in China” to beating up Chinese-looking people a bit too eagerly. This is why I’m not that much concerned about Facebook rules in this case. Getting expelled from scientific community for not sticking to the most convenient hypothesis is another matter, much more serious.

Not only that, but the originally deleted articles were about an intentionally created and released bioweapon, not an accidental lab leak.

Nice bioweapon, barely kills anyone conscriptable. More like an evil pension system relief tool.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#125

Post by lamontcg »

andreilys wrote: post #95
lamontcg wrote: post #75

The problem with this whole article is that we know of no suitable backbone virus to use, and we know of no suitable spike-protein sequence to form a chimera which results in SARS-CoV-2. The experiments done on the SARS-CoV-1 or WIV1 backbone don't remotely get you close to SARS-CoV-2 and you're dealing with centuries of evolutionary difference there. The RaTG13 virus backbone is also several decades of evolution awa…

Yet almost a year later and still no smoking gun showing a clear zoonotic link. I suppose we’ll never find one because China has no interest in getting to the truth. Cooperation means disclosing things which have the potential to make them look bad so why risk it?

SARS-CoV-1 happened in Guangdong in 2003.

The Bat CoVs that are likely part of its natural zoonotic reservoir were only found in 2013-2016 in Yunnan.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#126

Post by aj3 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #116
rossdavidh wrote: post #69

Much of the article reminds me of the description of how NASA ended up launching a shuttle in temperatures far below what they originally would have allowed. You walk just past the line, nothing bad happens, so you move the line a bit. You walk just past that line, nothing bad happens...and this repeats until, inevitably, eventually, something bad happens. Regardless of whether or not this pandemic came from this lab…

Does NASA have outside auditors with a highly adversarial relationship reviewing its launch procedures? I don’t think it does. I’m pretty sure NASA has an excellent internal team of quality control specialists. The specialists are a part of all aspects of deployment and launch. They don’t just pop in and review work, they’re constantly there. They’re also very much “part of the team.” They don’t strictly speaking “ha…

The whole saga with the outside oversight is also a complete red herring. USA would never sign a treaty that required them to show their own facilities.

Case in point: biological weapons convention. A few years back there was a very popular proposal to add “teeth”, i.e. random inspections and stuff. Guess who bailed out and passed a Hague invasion act instead?

EDIT: grammar

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#127

Post by LordDragonfang »

swiley wrote: post #60
devwastaken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are sharing actual conspiracy theories and killing others. So it's a blanket ban. How many people are so crazed and convinced that the vaccine makes you magnetic/sterile/whatever?

Lots of things killed people last year, including the lock down. Being allowed to criticize things like that is what separates us from countries that lack democracy.

Germany has certain very strict policies about whether you're allowed to discuss certain things, and they outrank the US by 30 positions on the World Press Freedom Index[1]. Sometimes you have to suppress bad actors who willfully push unverified or outright fallacious information in order to have actual freedom of information.

[1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#128

Post by michaelmrose »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #73
rossdavidh wrote: post #69

Much of the article reminds me of the description of how NASA ended up launching a shuttle in temperatures far below what they originally would have allowed. You walk just past the line, nothing bad happens, so you move the line a bit. You walk just past that line, nothing bad happens...and this repeats until, inevitably, eventually, something bad happens. Regardless of whether or not this pandemic came from this lab…

It's easy enough to apply outside audits to something like Space Shuttle development, where the goals are not secret and it's pretty well understood what you are trying to accomplish and what your capabilities are. It's a very different situation when it comes to bioweapons research -- how do you let outside auditors into Fort Detrick without running the risk of giving some game away?

Neither we nor China are supposed to be doing bioweapons research in part because all examples thus far are impossible to target and destroy women, children, and civilians indescriminately far too slowly to prevent retaliation with swifter means of dealing death.

If anyone is researching this I support their change of address to prison.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#129

Post by michaelmrose »

beerandt wrote: post #93
devwastaken wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platform/publisher isn't a thing. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201017/13051145526/secti...

There's no legally spelled out condition, but one editorializes content and the other is content agnostic. The justification of 230's existence is that the host shouldn't be liable, because it's not their speech. That's no longer true if they're picking and choosing what gets heard, what gets buried, and what gets banned. They may not be typing the post, but they're determining what actually gets said. And that means…

This is the way you think the law ought to work not how it is in fact written.

Re: The risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan

#130

Post by emmelaich »

y04nn wrote: post #110
Leary wrote: post #58

"The Last And Only Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out" [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid...

But she was working in the BSL-4 lab, and if I understand correctly WIV and SHC014 (coronaviruses) were studied in BSL-2 and BSL3 labs, when a close to BSL-4 lab was needed.

There is no mention of BSL-4 in the article, which really jumped out at me.

And their earlier research was done in BSL-2!

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