121–130 of 792 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s your scientific criticism of the paper?
Also, it's not either/or. COVID could have come from nature, captured and studied in a lab, then escaped.
When the first sentence is factually incorrect, it's tough to read on. The UK doesn't have 200k cases a day, it's less than a tenth of that.
The figure is based on this study, which currently puts it at 241K cases per day: https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data
Which says:
> According to the latest COVID Symptom Study app figures, there are currently 1,472 daily new cases of COVID in the UK on average over the two weeks up to 04 July 2020 (excluding care homes) [*]. The data suggests no decline from last week (1,445 cases). The latest figures were based on the data from almost 3 million users, 11,639 swab tests done between 21 June to 04 July (a full regional breakdown can be found here).
The 241K number is total gibberish. The 7-day average of new cases in the UK topped out at about 214K at the beginning of January, at the top of their Omicron wave, and has been nowhere near that since. It's around 13K right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Proximal paper was used by Chinese disinformation bots to skelch any debate about a lab leak. I take that as a Streisand effect. Same when Fauci strongly and publically rebuked the Indian bioinformatics pre-print paper talking of the GP-120 HIV inserts. That is how I came to know about those inserts and their interesting history. So strangely, the grossly unscientific propaganda effort that was the Proximal Origi…
What’s your scientific criticism of the paper?
Jon Stewart's classic lab-leak rant on Colbert's show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8&t=178s
Let’s not forget that talking about the lab leak hypothesis last year resulted in censorship among social media platforms and YouTube This is why free speech is important, it is impossible to rely on “fact checkers”.
The lab leak hypothesis was also pretty tightly coupled with the bioweapon/intentional release theory which is part of why it received so much push back. Also I don't recall the specific fact check messages but if they were in line with "there's no hard evidence of a lab leak" I'd say that's still pretty accurate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using it to refer to applying the scientific method to the process of science itself.
You are intellectually and scientifically dishonest by presenting the lab leak like this. Take your own theory and argument for it. You could only stare at a honest list of for and against regarding the lab leak, and conclude that lab leak is meta-scientific. When you call for evidence, remember the information blackouts and destruction of samples ordered by the Chinese. Chinese citizens and scientists were dissapear…
Metascientific means a scientific investigation into the practice of science. There is no value judgement there, it's a description of how the investigation is being conducted.
I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…
Concerning number 1) that is doesn’t change the Consequence I agree, but the response I thoroughly disagree unless you means strictly short term. Came or not from a lab, SynBio and gain of functions experiments have the potential of re-doing this of way worse. So basically the only truly important response that is not damage containment is to prevent this from happening (or happen again). Honestly beside fringe group…
The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating.
Nature breeds extremely serious viruses all by herself; a depressing possibility here is that humans just don't have that much influence over the risk of another pandemic no matter what we do.
Let’s not forget that talking about the lab leak hypothesis last year resulted in censorship among social media platforms and YouTube This is why free speech is important, it is impossible to rely on “fact checkers”.
The lab leak hypothesis was also pretty tightly coupled with the bioweapon/intentional release theory which is part of why it received so much push back. Also I don't recall the specific fact check messages but if they were in line with "there's no hard evidence of a lab leak" I'd say that's still pretty accurate.
No speech should be censored.
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It has been proven true by anyone with common sense. I've heard enough bullshit passed off as "it's just common sense" that anytime I hear someone use that as an argument, I take it to mean they don't have any argument other than the random thoughts rattling around in their head. That's not to say I don't think the hypothesis didn't have some merit. But I could just as easily "it's just common sense" the other side o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using it to refer to applying the scientific method to the process of science itself.
You are intellectually and scientifically dishonest by presenting the lab leak like this. Take your own theory and argument for it. You could only stare at a honest list of for and against regarding the lab leak, and conclude that lab leak is meta-scientific. When you call for evidence, remember the information blackouts and destruction of samples ordered by the Chinese. Chinese citizens and scientists were dissapear…