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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

201–210 of 385 posts

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

#201
Because academic research can't be rushed. One of the requirements for an advanced degree is publishing papers, and if coronavirus related can easily bring attention and get the paper published, students would try taking the fast track. This is not good for research in general.

There was a huge debate back in late Jan. early Feb. on Chinese social network about a paper didn't get peer-reviewed spreading all over places with misinformation. Hence the Fudan University post in Chinese was to tighten the publish review, and nothing about delaying the research.

This guardian news only showed the story without context, which is pretty misleading.

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

#202

Hi guys, As a Chinese living in US. Please be mindful that a lot of people do not distinguish China the government, and the Chinese people, living in or outside of China mainland. This type of news, are of course worth discussion. But meanwhile, please refrain from politicizing beyond the facts. Think about not letting what a few political figures have started, i.e., politicizing the event without considering the imp…

We’re in a worldwide lockdown because of rhetoric from the CCP and Chinese surrogates that calls any criticism or discussion of their role in this racism or white supremacy.

We’ve had 20k American deaths so far, I think we get to discuss this.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm annoyed with the connection between SARS-CoV-2 and bioweapon. This is such a garbage bioweapon for two reasons: This doesn't kill military aged men and it cannot be readily shut off. American scientists have nailed down when the cross over event occurred and how it happened. The world's top virologists also have said multiple times that this is not a bioweapon, people who have studied viruses for decades. But peo…

It probably walked out of a Wuhan lab, with a lab tech or equivalent as the unaware infected carrier; which doesn't make it a bioweapon at all. It may have been sampled by China's large effort to search their territory for viruses, and then it was studied in Wuhan. It's most likely a mistake of incompetence. There is precedence in that it has happened multiple times in China with SARS since the original outbreak in 2…

The most credible evidence has been gathered and presented in a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU . The youtuber was a long time china immigrant before being forced to move abroad.

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

#204

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…

I'm annoyed with the connection between SARS-CoV-2 and bioweapon. This is such a garbage bioweapon for two reasons: This doesn't kill military aged men and it cannot be readily shut off. American scientists have nailed down when the cross over event occurred and how it happened. The world's top virologists also have said multiple times that this is not a bioweapon, people who have studied viruses for decades. But peo…

It could have escaped from the Wuhan lab and not been a bioweapon. The lab was studying viruses very similar to this one. It’s entirely possible that it leaked out of the lab by way of an accident. In fact, there is precedent for this happening in 2004. [0]

Honestly I’m not sure how Occam’s razor doesn’t suggest that it was released accidentally from one of the only labs in the world studying coronaviruses in bats, given that the lab was within 10km of patient zero.

Also, experts have not reached nearly the level of consensus regarding the origin of the virus as your comment implies. [1] While consensus seems to be against bioweapon, there is much debate as to whether the origin was lab accident or “wet market” as claimed by CCP.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/sars/media/2004-05-19.html

[1] https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronav...

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why in the world would someone release a bioweapon that would have major and potentially permanent repercussions for their own people and economy?

It doesn't need to be a deliberate release of a bioweapon to be considered biological warfare. The simple act of knowingly obscuring the transmissibility and extent of the virus, leading to rampant international spread, is biological warfare.

if that's your definition of biological warfare, then you need to consider to yourself that the u.s. government is then waging biological warfare against its own people.

note that i don't agree with your definition.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, they were also combining viruses to create "chimeras". Now, this combinational process could be genetic engineering (which has been ruled out I think) or just combining in a petri dish, which I find compelling.

To create pseudoviruses which are able to infect under lab conditions, but not able to replicate, or to survive in a human or any other organism. If this were one of those, as has been claimed on the basis of the frequently mis-cited October 2019 WIV paper, anyone in the world would be able to see that by comparing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence accessioned in NCBI's database with one of the many HIV sequences also availabl…

Thanks for the info. I'm clearly not an expert. But I do still have questions.

1) where did hiv sequences come from? Are they the human immuno deficiency virus sequences?

2) you are suggesting that chimeras are created impotent, and that hybrid viruses cannot be created to be effective otherwise. My question is that whatever combination of pangolin and bat viruses is said to have happened naturally in a host, could it happen in a petri dish too? Could WIV be conducting such research? Or are such petri dish chimeras always unable to jump from human to human. Is it a natural property or choice when creating chimeras?

3) it seems that the virus is like SARS but has receptor proteins similar to a known pangolin coronavirus. Is it also possible for two viruses to leak to a single lab employee, and then combine in the first human host right away. It still can be said to leak from the lab in this scenario.

Thanks for having patience for my uninformed opinions.

I'm sure I'm missing

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

#207

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…

Some links for consideration 1 Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin http://archive.is/M9IRO 2 Officials punished for SARS virus leak https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content... 3 Chinese researcher escorted from infectious disease lab amid RCMP investigation https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-…

Posting a tendentiously selected collection of links in the hope of deniably constructing a false chain of inference among your audience still qualifies as deliberately lying by omission. Especially when you do it with a throwaway account obviously constructed for the purpose.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be a deliberate release of a bioweapon to be considered biological warfare. The simple act of knowingly obscuring the transmissibility and extent of the virus, leading to rampant international spread, is biological warfare.

if that's your definition of biological warfare, then you need to consider to yourself that the u.s. government is then waging biological warfare against its own people. note that i don't agree with your definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare

> Biological warfare [...] is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war.

Knowingly allowing the spread of a highly contagious, lethal virus fits the definition. The only point of contention is whether the party's actions were due to incompetence or malice.

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

#209
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why in the world would someone release a bioweapon that would have major and potentially permanent repercussions for their own people and economy?

If it affected their own people less, gaining a net advantage over other nations. A totalitarian/authoritarian state will always be able to manage an epidemic more effectively than a democratic one. Disclaimer: I don’t believe this, just playing devil’s advocate

Yep, China has recovered while the rest of the world is still crippled. I wouldn't put it past China to cause harm to their own citizens to gain a position of power.

Disclaimer: Also don't believe this, just playing along.

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

#210

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…

I'm not so sure I buy the Reddit controlled by CCP (or heavily influenced) argument. Simply because in /r/China, /r/ChineseLanguage, and /r/HongKong I see frequent posts that are highly critical of the CCP and China in general. They have many upvotes and it doesn't look like people are being banned or posts are being removed. It is nowhere like /r/Sino.

I'm not trying to defend the CCP here, but just trying to say that maybe Reddit isn't a CCP propaganda weapon. I'm sure there's some influence, but I see these arguments go quite far.

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