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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#21
post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

This idea of the mutations being 'random' is pretty meaningless. A real question is whether or not something is intentionally engineered to pass these kinds of 'randomness' tests.

Just to give you an example, this is an active area of research that Raytheon is engaged in: https://www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com/news/feature/ri...

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#22

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.

Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine. Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media decides it’s a political football. No more articles

[deleted]

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#23
post #15

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ

That doesn't look like the seafood market in Wuhan.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#24

The the American leadership constantly calling it by the region name you can understand why an authoritarian regime would want to control discussion of the origins by experts. The risk is of their research being weaponized by said demagogues.

Given that this clamping down came about earlier than any discussion of this matter by the American leadership, I don't think that's a good explanation for this.

*Reading this comment again, perhaps I should have phrased it more carefully - I'm not saying that any clamping down that is happening now has come earlier, but that China started clamping down on this from the very beginning.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#25

My favorite theory is that the Wuhan virus lab created the virus and used bats in experiments. One bat escaped and infected other bats that eventually ended up on the wet market in Wuhan. Edit: a more plausible theory is that one researcher got bitten by an infected bat and chose to hide this fact.

My understanding is that nobody has found signs of that in the sequenced genome. By all accounts the jump to humans appears to have been natrual.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#26
post #15

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ

[deleted]

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#27

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.

Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine. Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media decides it’s a political football. No more articles

Your “lots of interesting articles” were what made it a political football. Before it was picked up by the right-wing propaganda network there was one obviously flawed study and some fringe non-experts promoting it to people anxious for a cure, followed by a bunch of actual experts urging caution.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#28
post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Both things can be true at the same time.

Whether or not the virus is human engineered or not is orthogonal to whether or not it escaped from the nearby lab.

It is known that the lab was studying these sorts of viruses.

The same lab was responsible for a SARS outbreak in the year following the big SARS outbreak.

Mistakes happen.

EDIT. I was mistaken about the specific lab that was the source of the 2004 SARS outbreak. The lab responsible for that outbreak was in Beijing.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#29

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.

Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine. Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media decides it’s a political football. No more articles

> No more articles

https://news.google.com/search?q=hydroxychloroquine

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#30
post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Just because it's not engineered doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab. It could be a natural virus that was collected and escaped. The original SARS escaped no less than 3 times from chinese labs following the outbreak.
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