There are two things actually and sadly no one investigate both of them:
1. Is Covid a lab leak ? (which had poor investigation)
2. Could China stop it (Whether its lab-leak or not) in early stages and prevent it from spreading out of their borders ? (which they achieved successfully for other provinces)
How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
171–180 of 255 posts
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#172Just so people know who is posting this - Donald McNeil Jr was the chief voice at NYT focusing on covid. He was ousted earlier because of some remarks that he allegedly made to a school group a few years ago, but before that, the NYT was pushing for him to get a Pulitzer for his reporting on COVID. Him starting legitimize the lab-leak theory as possible is reflective of the people more generally taking the lab-leak h…
Its astonishing “scientist” in labs are so detached from the real world and dismissive as always.
The virus wasn’t tampered with. Th lab in Wuhan is “GAIN OF FUNCTION” testing.
read it again. Gain of function means nudging viral samples so they gain functions on their own without human gene editing or modification that can easily be traced.
Why now? Why not 5 years ago? The animal markets have always been there.
Occams Razor.
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories You know it was once a conspiracy theory to say the Earth wasn't flat. And it was once considered blasphemy to say putting leeches on your body didn't help an illness. There's a reason why the term "conspiracy theory" is thrown around by the media so much...it's because they know a certain subset of people have been socially conditioned to bypass critical…
> You know it was once a conspiracy theory to say the Earth wasn't flat. In the 3rd century BCE, it is documented that the Egyptians calculated the circumference of the Earth to a relatively high degree of accuracy [1]. The Earth not being flat wasn't so much a "conspiracy theory" but a challenge to medieval Christian doctrine. It just doesn't fit the modern definition of a "conspiracy theory". The essential part of…
> We now live in a time that has validated people raising how they feel to having the same weight as science, demonstrable evidence and reason
Since you mentioned the election, how does science, demonstrable evidence and reason play into the fact that the people labeled "conspiracy theorists" were refused all of this....and the fact that no one can prove Biden won any more than they can prove Trump didn't lose?
> The Earth not being flat wasn't so much a "conspiracy theory" but a challenge to medieval Christian doctrine.
You're changing the scope of the argument. You now give credence to the then "conspiracy theorist" because you acknowledge the foresight they had (at the time) to see larger fundamental truths while living within a world of shifting power dynamics. I would certainly say this was done in the face of a "powerful and covert group responsible for something not appearing as it seems".
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#174Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/
A serial arsonist was burning homes in a Midwest suburb. As regular home-burnings occurred, the residents became upset with the fire department. ‘Why was it taking so long to put the fires out?! Why can’t we have better fire hoses, or faster fire engines?! Maybe the town tax dollars should pay for private enterprises to go around and moisten homes, making them less flammable?’
Another group of residents were trying to convince their neighbors that they should be trying to catch the culprit. They felt they had some pretty compelling clues as to who the arsonist was. But they were shouted down, ‘No, no, no.’, they hand waved. ‘Working out who started the fires is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do when (not if) another [fire] starts spreading’
Oh the absurdity.
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you claiming that Covid is particularly severe relative to historical pandemics, or that Covid-level issues are a particularly modern phenomenon? In fact the opposite is true. If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar.
>If it had emerged in any other century, Covid would barely even be on anyone’s radar. Surely you can't be serious. I mean, I think we would have noticed. In fact, it would have been on a lot of people's radar. They definitely would have noticed in India, Italy & Brazil. I mean, are comments like this hyperbolic, and I'm just not in on the joke?
Not intending to make the case that Covid-19 would barely be on anyone's radar, but here is a comparison with some past pandemics that went relatively unnoticed (afaik):
1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic[1]
- 1.1 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 2.9 billion)
- 116,000 deaths in the US (0.07% of US population of 174.9 million)
1968 H3N2 pandemic[2]
- 1 million deaths worldwide (0.03% of world population of 3.5 billion)
- 100,000 deaths in the US (0.05% of US population of 200 million)
Covid pandemic (so far)
- 3.39 million deaths worldwide (0.04% of world population of 7.9 billion)
- 586,000 deaths in the US (0.18% of US population of 330 million)
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[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemi...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#176McNeil Jr also references this letter from epidemiologists and biologists in Science [1] calling for a new investigation. [1]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
The "viable" in the "Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable" is doing a lot of legwork there.
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#177FWIW I'm going to defer to the virology experts on this one. I know when I am out of my depth, and when to seek expert advise.
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13942570285586391...
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#178So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? And would it be worth questioning if any other recent topics labeled as "conspiracy theories" may in fact also be true?
> So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? If the lab leak theory turns out to be true, I'll admit I was wrong about my intuition. It's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. We've had literally thousands of new virus strains evolve in the past century of viral research and like three known "l…
Why are people insisting this came from a guy eating a bat-burger and bat-fries meal with absolutely no evidence?
My common sense info is that a super-virus popped up right down the street from a lab designed to create super-viruses(funding signed off by Fauci, and much historic public info/discussion exists about what type of work was being done at the Wuhan lab), China disappeared the lab people, and biggest red-flag of all is that the corrupt propaganda media (CNN, MSNBC, Business Insider, etc) is trying to rub it in everyone's face that the lab story isn't true.
Next line of discussion is how much jail time Fauci should get for enabling blatant malpractice while setting himself up to make a fortune.
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 68 flu killed between 1-4 million, so the high end in that one would be comparable to what we see with covid.
1-4 that didn’t shutdown the wold isn’t comparable to covid nearing 4 million verified and likely far higher despite many actions and lockdowns taken. I’d much rather have lived through a 68 flu then covid thank you
The 68 was a lot more deadly amongst the young. Shutting the world was a political decision not a fact of the virus' behavior.
Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
#180So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? And would it be worth questioning if any other recent topics labeled as "conspiracy theories" may in fact also be true?
> So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? If the lab leak theory turns out to be true, I'll admit I was wrong about my intuition. It's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. We've had literally thousands of new virus strains evolve in the past century of viral research and like three known "l…
The furin cleavage site is not present in known coronaviruses for any of the suspected progenitor viruses to recombine with to gain that feature, and utilizes an extremely unlikely codon for Arginine when you take coronaviruses as a whole into account, but an extremely prolific codon in human-centric gene editing tool supply chains.
The fact it appears to be an insertion if it came from a mutation is also highly unlikely.
These are, in fact, remarkable characteristics taking into account the proximity to an institute where this type of work took place, staffed by researchers who have done it multiple times in the decades leading up to the pandemic, who had funding for doing similar work at the time, who started acting oddly at the time, which caused such a stir that all related research was tightly perception managed by the state.
I cannot say as in my life it has been the case that with such smoke as that, there has not been a vigorous exothermic reaction to be near.