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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

#211

Post by calibas »

lamontcg wrote: post #197
calibas wrote: post #126

So the best guess is that it came from wild bats, and there was a lab right next to the initial outbreak site that was studying wild bats. That could just be a coincidence, but it's a pretty remarkable coincidence and at the very least deserves further investigation. It could have been just an innocent mistake. A researcher got the disease while collecting bats out in the wild, but the lab never got a sample of the d…

> That could just be a coincidence, but it's a pretty remarkable coincidence Not really. It was always likely to be found in a major population center where people cluster tightly, where the r0 would be higher, where superspreading events would hit more people, and where there would be more educated hospital staff that would notice something going on. Wuhan is the largest city in central China. It is also about as cl…

Wuhan is 3,200 square miles, and it didn't just happen anywhere in Wuhan. The initial outbreak site was within walking distance of a laboratory that was studying that specific type of virus.

Of all the different heavily-populated places the disease could have started, it happened right next to a lab studying coronaviruses. That's no "1-in-12" chance and even "1-in-1000" seems kinda low.

The "lab-leak theory" is just as reasonable as the "we don't know where it came from but it wasn't the nearby lab theory".

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

#212

Post by tootie »

JPKab wrote: post #185
tootie wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "most likely" theory seems extremely fringe with absolutely zero evidence. I can see how it's possible but it seems vastly more complicated than just a lab leak.

Zero evidence? Might want to look at the details of the NIH grant funding the research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. You aren't very informed on the subject, which is why you dismiss it as fringe. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje... It's right at the bottom of the summary. "3. Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potentia…

Read this part of the thread again: https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396243452099170305

Gain of function proponents are ignoring research that indicates it's not possible to generate a virus dangerous to humans without leaving specific telltales. While this study isn't necessarily conclusive or a door slam in the face of lab leak, it's pretty huge data point that makes it far less likely.

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

#214

Post by JPKab »

tootie wrote: post #212
JPKab wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero evidence? Might want to look at the details of the NIH grant funding the research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. You aren't very informed on the subject, which is why you dismiss it as fringe. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje... It's right at the bottom of the summary. "3. Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potentia…

Read this part of the thread again: https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396243452099170305 Gain of function proponents are ignoring research that indicates it's not possible to generate a virus dangerous to humans without leaving specific telltales. While this study isn't necessarily conclusive or a door slam in the face of lab leak, it's pretty huge data point that makes it far less likely.

This is a horrible Twitter thread. He leads off with an immediate ad hominem against Nicholas Wade, complete with an accusation of racism. He then states, falsely, that it isn't possible to engineer a virus without telltale markers, ignoring more modern techniques which don't leave telltales. He also conflates engineering a virus with the argument of it leaking. The thread reeks of cognitive dissonance and cherry picked straw men, but the disgusting racism smear on Wade was just wrong. And I'm not even going to dig into the out of the gate comparison he used with climate deniers. Deeply insulting, and in bad faith.

I also forgot to mention that he deliberately ignored the humanized mice being the location of the serial passage work, and straw manned a "petri dish". Completely misrepresenting the fact that was most crucial.

In the future, using a Twitter account with locked comments is inadvisable. He blocked comments for a reason.

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

#215

Post by shapefrog »

dkersten wrote: post #170
shapefrog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm unsure what your point is. Care to explain? Is that meant to be a counterargument? (just because the USA downplayed it doesn't make CCP's doing so better, especially since they had advance knowledge and could have potentially completely prevented the global pandemic, while when it was in the USA, it was already global, even if lesser) Are you agreeing with me but adding that the USA isn't faultless? (Its true, bu…

If the smoking gun in the case is 'they must be guilty because they behaved like X' then we test this hypothesis by replacing 'CCP' with 'USA' (or the more apt swap would be 'RNC') and see how it look.

It turns out that when you do this simple find and replace, we get equally as factual statements. So does this imply that it leaked from a US operated facility? Or is this an indication of the type of work the US was funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and conducting more generally? Or most likely, is this an irrelevant piece of 'evidence' of wrong doing on the part of any person or nation by assuming guilt based on their claim of innocence?

An innocent person will say they were innocent just as often as a guilty person who is trying to hide their guilt.

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

#216

Post by iammisc »

trasz wrote: post #198
iammisc wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had 100% incontrivertible evidence COVID came from a CHinese lab, I can 100% guarantee you nothing would happen to china.

If we had 100% evidence it came from an US lab, nothing would happen either. Your point being?

That doesn't mean knowing isn't worthwhile? Like knowing about FISA courts did nothing to the feds but its worth knowing about

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

#217

Post by dkersten »

shapefrog wrote: post #215
dkersten wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure what your point is. Care to explain? Is that meant to be a counterargument? (just because the USA downplayed it doesn't make CCP's doing so better, especially since they had advance knowledge and could have potentially completely prevented the global pandemic, while when it was in the USA, it was already global, even if lesser) Are you agreeing with me but adding that the USA isn't faultless? (Its true, bu…

If the smoking gun in the case is 'they must be guilty because they behaved like X' then we test this hypothesis by replacing 'CCP' with 'USA' (or the more apt swap would be 'RNC') and see how it look. It turns out that when you do this simple find and replace, we get equally as factual statements. So does this imply that it leaked from a US operated facility? Or is this an indication of the type of work the US was f…

> It turns out that when you do this simple find and replace, we get equally as factual statements.

Only if you ignore the known facts. We know that covid-19 originated from wuhan, we know that the wuhan institute of virology was studying that exact virus. We know that the CCP did not allow the WHO to investigate the WIV hypotheses until over a year later.

Yes the USA acted shady, but the USA doesn’t have these addictions factual contributing elements. These factors don’t prove anything, of course, I never said that they do, but they certainly paint a picture that shows that the lab leak hypothesis is at least viable and the alternatives require some coincidences to be true. Again not proof, but certainly evidence that shouldn’t be ignored.

The USA analogy is ignoring all of the other factual information we have and is focusing purely on “well China isn’t the only country acting shady”, which I don’t think is relevant or useful. CCP aren’t the only ones responsible for where we are today, but they were a rather key part of it, regardless whether covid-19 was a lab leak or not.

> by assuming guilt based on their claim of innocence?

It’s not their claim of innocence that is suspicious, it’s their actively suppressing information that is: they didn’t allow the WHO to investigate until over a year later and they didn’t allow scientists and doctors to acknowledge there was a virus. More recently they even tried to say the virus originated in countries other than China. That’s rather more than a claim of innocence.

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

#218

Post by tootie »

JPKab wrote: post #214
tootie wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read this part of the thread again: https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396243452099170305 Gain of function proponents are ignoring research that indicates it's not possible to generate a virus dangerous to humans without leaving specific telltales. While this study isn't necessarily conclusive or a door slam in the face of lab leak, it's pretty huge data point that makes it far less likely.

This is a horrible Twitter thread. He leads off with an immediate ad hominem against Nicholas Wade, complete with an accusation of racism. He then states, falsely, that it isn't possible to engineer a virus without telltale markers, ignoring more modern techniques which don't leave telltales. He also conflates engineering a virus with the argument of it leaking. The thread reeks of cognitive dissonance and cherry pic…

It's not an ad hominem, it's an attack on his credibility. He does not assert it's impossible to engineer a virus without markers he points to two reviewed studies saying known techniques will leave telltales. Like I said, it's evidence against lab leak but not conclusive.

His entire argument is very straightforward. Zoonotic origin is highly plausible, has caused previous SARS outbreaks, has no evidence against it. Lab leak is possible, though it has no precedent and there's evidence that makes it less likely. There's no conclusive evidence for either. The balance of evidence and history leans heavily to zoonotic. There is absolutely nothing anyone has said in this thread that he didn't directly address nor anything that weakens his argument. Anyone on the lab leak train right now is basing it purely on bias.

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

#219

Post by JPKab »

tootie wrote: post #218
JPKab wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a horrible Twitter thread. He leads off with an immediate ad hominem against Nicholas Wade, complete with an accusation of racism. He then states, falsely, that it isn't possible to engineer a virus without telltale markers, ignoring more modern techniques which don't leave telltales. He also conflates engineering a virus with the argument of it leaking. The thread reeks of cognitive dissonance and cherry pic…

It's not an ad hominem, it's an attack on his credibility. He does not assert it's impossible to engineer a virus without markers he points to two reviewed studies saying known techniques will leave telltales. Like I said, it's evidence against lab leak but not conclusive. His entire argument is very straightforward. Zoonotic origin is highly plausible, has caused previous SARS outbreaks, has no evidence against it.…

Saying that a lab leak of a SARS virus has no precedent is completely inaccurate.

There was a lab leak of SARS1 in 2004 which infected a lab worker and the people he came in contact with. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the-scientist.com/news-anal...

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

#220

Post by rcurry »

diragon wrote: post #200
rcurry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we do block them on Facebook and Twitter.

This is of course a joke, come on you guys. Nobody seriously compares jailing people to blocking them on social media.

It’s the thought that counts, the social media platforms that ban you would gladly put you in a gulag if they could.
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