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WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

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Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#141

Post by shapefrog »

stvswn wrote: post #122
jcranberry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New Yorker had an article in the discussion and interviewed two scientists, Stanford microbiologist David Relman and UNC virologist Ralph Baric, who signed the letter to WHO which was published in Science magazine. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-sudden-... The two scientists seemed to think that although a lab leak origin is possible the natural origin story is more likely.

I know it won't be a popular opinion here, but I am not sure I trust the judgment of scientists with conflicts of interest. It would be human nature for those who were involved in lobbying for gain-of-function research to continue are now unwilling to entertain the idea that something as devastating as COVID was a result of such research. If that is true, it means that they were disasterously wrong in their earlier s…

I know it won't be a popular opinion here, but I am not sure I trust the judgment of mathematicians with conflicts of interest.

It would be human nature for those who were involved in lobbying for 1+1=2 to continue are now unwilling to entertain the idea that something as devastating as 42 was a result of such a calculation.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#142

Post by iammisc »

trasz wrote: post #128
iammisc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great argument... if the US did this, I'm sure no one would demand an investigation... /s

US did this many times. The investigations ended up like they usually do in US, starting from My Lai - in the best case they’ll find a single scapegoat and that’s it.

I'm not claiming the us didnt do this. I'm disputing that people would stay silent when the us does this.

The us does do this and has large and growing domestic opposition movements.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#143

Post by rflrob »

keebzed wrote: post #115
rflrob wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped all over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-Cov-2 to be highly, highly suspicious. I don't find it suspicious at all, precisely because I don't trust the Chinese government. In my estimation of the CPC, the following probabilities are all roughly equal (and close to 1): * P(suppress investigation | natural origin) * P(suppress investigati…

Not sure that makes sense given your presumed knowledge of the Chinese government's reaction to SARS? Or are you in bad faith giving dubious priors? "This lack of openness caused delays in efforts to control the epidemic, resulting in criticism of the People's Republic of China from the international community. China officially apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS epidemic." https://en.wikipedia.org…

I think we agree? The Chinese government wasn't open about SARS, and despite their apology in 2003 (by which point SARS was on the path to containment), I don't have reason to believe they've become more open about such things in the last couple decades. I am by no means a China expert, so you may disagree with my priors about their behavior.

My experience in biology labs (though not virology labs) suggests that a leak of benign research is plausible, and that if it did happen odds are good that there wouldn't be a ton of documentation to suppress. Mistakes happen all the time, and if researchers filled out a report every time a tube was dropped or some PPE was ignored in a "pretty safe" scenario, there'd be almost no time for research.

I still think the total number of human-animal contacts outside the lab are at least an order of magnitude greater than inside of it, so I would rank the probabilities as (natural > benign research leak >> gain of function leak).

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#144

Post by rcurry »

cm2187 wrote: post #106
shakezula wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese didn't do anything that we wouldn't have done. In fact, they took better steps than we did, as far as the pandemic is concerned. Of course the dude had concerns, anyone with half a brain would explore all of the possible origins and theories. But the lab leak theory is just that - one theory that could explain the situation at hand. The problem is that too many people have put far too much stock in the la…

I'd like to think we don't put doctors in jail when they raise the alarm on a new virus.

Well, we do block them on Facebook and Twitter.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#145

Post by shapefrog »

dkersten wrote: post #96
causi wrote: post #26

I'm not skilled enough in the biomedical background to evaluate the various genetics-based articles written for or against natural-origin and lab-origin hypotheses. As a layman, however, I find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped all over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-Cov-2 to be highly, highly suspicious.

My problem with the non-lab-leak story is that CCP went to great lengths to cover up and downplay the virus in the early months, largely contributing to its global spread and a bunch of coincidences would have had to line up just right for the wet market hypothesis to be true (just happened to be in the same city as the lab where they just happened to be studying the exact same thing, where the CCP just happened to t…

My problem with the non-lab-leak story is that USA went to great lengths to cover up and downplay the virus in the early months, largely contributing to its global spread

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#146

Post by scheme271 »

JPKab wrote: post #121
mike00632 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with these conspiracy theories, though, right? They are unfalsifiable by design. A scientific hypothesis would be testable. For example, "Did the COVID-19 virus come from a lab?" would be falsifiable if the COVID-19 virus didn't share the base genetic sequence of typical viruses tested in a lab. Lo and behold, the COVID-19 virus doesn't have the genetic signature of viruses in labs. Therefore the c…

There is currently zero evidence to support a zoonotic origin. It took 9 months to find the source of MERS (camels). It took 14 months to find the origin of SARS1 (bats). What evidence do you have that this was transmitted from an animal carrier? What mammal in China (it's not like there are that many mammal species living in the Wuhan metropolitan area) has been identified that easily catches COVID? The answer is ze…

OTOH, no one has found the zoonotic origin for ebola people looking for literally decades. That's also the case for a few other diseases as well. Just because the origin for MERS and SARS was found quickly, it doesn't follow that covid investigations will be as quick

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#147

Post by alimw »

908B64B197 wrote: post #98
99_00 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was public information about the UVA catheter at the time Trump made his comments. >The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Therapy, were based on five days of 20-minute treatments with ultraviolet A (UVA) light using a catheter inserted into the patients' tracheas. Patients were followed for 30 days. The findings were based on four patients; the fifth patient had no detectable levels o…

Wait... that can't be true. Because the media immediately published this https://youtu.be/fr5OopWwp98 and they laughed the idea away. So far I've seen no retractions.

Did you post the wrong link? The doctors in that clip don't actually mention the UV light thing, although they are clear in their opposition to injecting disinfectant.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#149

Post by phatfish »

SnowProblem wrote: post #95
TooKool4This wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember when the previous administration suggested looking into the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at? Remember when the head of the previous administration thought injecting disinfectants or UV light was a possible solution to Covid? The problem with trust and credibility is that once it’s lost, it’s very hard to gain back. Even if the broken clock is right twice a day, it’s still broken.

Aytu BioPharma is a small company bringing UV light into the body, and the early trials on COVID last year showed it worked. The same was true for Hydroxychloroquine too. You fell for propaganda. https://aytubio.com/pipeline/healight-technology-platform/

Hydroxychloroquine has a mountain of side effects worse than COVID for most people, and very little (if any) positive effect.

Maybe UV could help in some way, but was this ever going to be a real solution? I highly doubt Aytu BioPharma was in a position to deliver anything meaningful at the volume and time-scale required.

Trump simply had no clue what a workable solution looked like. He broadcast to the world as the American President the ideas of the most recent crazy to have his ear (or one that he read on Twitter), and then got a bruised ego and doubled down when shown his ideas were worthless.

No propaganda there.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#150

Post by sg47 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #12

Remember when the previous administration suggested looking into the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at? Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for suggesting that the lab leak theory was a possibility? Then major social networks and the medias reversed their positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the president?

The previous administration had zero credibility on anything and were rightly laughed out of the room.
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