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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#231

Post by beebmam »

pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

It is excusable for a lab to accidentally leak a contaminant. It is not excusable to cover it up and prevent a full investigation, like China has done.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#232

Post by jesusofnazarath »

beebmam wrote: post #231
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

It is excusable for a lab to accidentally leak a contaminant. It is not excusable to cover it up and prevent a full investigation, like China has done.

[dead]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#233

Post by throwaway290 »

jmull wrote: post #225
Xen9 wrote: post #116

I personally believe in Rootlclaim's Bayesian analysis ( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ) which states that "the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident (89% probability)" This is consistent with David Martin's speech in Europe: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1661698114917646336 I haven't checked the "publicly available references" but m…

> If you find any faults that can really change the results in the analysis Rootclaim made, I would be interested. This is an interesting way to analyze the problem but the set of criteria and weights applied at each step are made up. The flaw is that you can use this form of analysis to reach any conclusion you want. For example, the "Already well adapted" section -- a "2x" factor for lab escape. We wouldn't even be…

> it would be a very closely guarded secret and obviously they would never admit to a lab leak

A complicating factor is that some (much?) of the funding came from the US. Which means admitting to a leak is against the interest of not only Chinese but also the US government which would have a hell of a time explaining to taxpayers how pandemic was engineered on their money doing research banned in the US. (Though I don't think US government played any part in resisting the research tbh, CCP probably did all that at their accord.)

I think all in all we shouldn't give up, and even if we don't find the actual data I don't see the world can be okay without big fat follow up over not some lab making a mistake (humans make those) but all obstruction of research into the origins of what could have been an extinction level event if the virus was a bit better engineered, whether it came from Chinese communist party or US scientists scared for grant money.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#234

Post by toast0 »

reuben_scratton wrote: post #151
pcrh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Origins of Covid-19 — Why It Matters (and Why It Doesn’t) >More than half of the earliest Covid-19 cases were connected to the Huanan market, and epidemiologic mapping revealed that the concentration of cases was centered there. In January 2020, Chinese officials cleared the market without testing live animals, but positive environmental samples, including those from an animal cage and a hair-and-feather–removal…

[flagged]

> Humans brought the virus to the market. It's screamingly obvious and always has been.

Well of course, the racoon dogs et al all come in via human transport.

Testing infrastructure was poor, and maybe it still is. Chinese government interest was not in finding facts, but in taking action to 'solve the problem'. It's hard to find facts when the people with power just want the problem to go away. IMHO, that doesn't weigh in favor of either explaination. The wuhan local government and the chinese national government would have likely taken the same actions regardless of the source, because they're both not very interested in facts.

US health authorities pushing on the market theory are just doing their typical behavior of taking what little information is available and pushing it with no nuance. I enjoyed seeing the cdc stickers telling me not to use a mask out in public areas when the cdc was requiring them; the congitive dissonance was so palpable.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#235

Post by kevinmchugh »

ajross wrote: post #175
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…

Shouldn't an oppressive regime change the math here? The ability to suppress potential whistleblowers means the absence of whistleblowers isn't all that convincing. Compared to moon landing conspiracy theories, where this argument is very convincing imo

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#237

Post by chihuahua »

revelio wrote: post #181
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

The article is only facts and direct evidence. Where is the innuendo? It covers specific experiments they were doing, in order and in detail, complete with specific biological information and funding sources. It also provides extensive evidence of constant coverups by the lab, like this one: There was also no mention of the mouse deaths in the grant renewal application Daszak filed to the NIH later that year. In this…

And of course Daszak is known for loudly proclaiming that no one is allowed to even think about whether Covid-19 could have been leaked from a lab. His credibility is reduced, to put it mildly.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#238

Post by ajross »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #235
ajross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…

Shouldn't an oppressive regime change the math here? The ability to suppress potential whistleblowers means the absence of whistleblowers isn't all that convincing. Compared to moon landing conspiracy theories, where this argument is very convincing imo

Again, these are scientists. You really don't think one of them could move to a post at Stanford or wherever and spill the tea? No one has an old copy of an incriminating memo they can forward to a friend in Taipei? And regardless, the PRC does not in fact have a great record in the opsec department even within its military and espionage arms. How many "Chinese spies" get arrested every year?

Part of any conspiracy theory is positing a great totalitarian enemy who is able to keep all these important truths from The People. The PRC is economically large and somewhat questionably ambitious. It's absolutely not the kind of super state people want to imagine.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#240

Post by highfrequency »

The idea that Covid19 was accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab has moved from conspiracy theory to mainstream view of many US gov't agencies with the most classified information available to them.

John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence: “My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pandemic onset, has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense. From a view inside the IC, if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side-by-side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a naturally occurring “spillover” theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long and overwhelming while the “spillover” side would be nearly empty.”

https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-origins-part-2-hea...

The Furin cleavage site is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence. 1.5 years before the outbreak, the Wuhan Institute applied for a grant from Darpa to explore mutating coronaviruses to make them more infectious to humans, particularly through the addition of a Furin cleavage site. (Darpa declined to fund the research).

The Covid-19 virus is notable for being the only coronavirus to have a Furin cleavage site. Not only that, but it appears to be basically a perfect mutation that specifically modifies the 12 nucleotides necessary for the Furin site, without modifying other base pairs.

Here's a quote from email excerpt included in the recent Congress hearing:

"Before I left the office for the ball, I aligned nCoV with the 96% bat CoV sequenced at WIV. Except for the RBD the S proteins are essentially identical at the amino acid level – well all but the perfect insertion of 12 nucleotides that adds the furin site. S2 is over its whole length essentially identical. I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Do the alignment of the spikes at the amino acid level – its stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted."

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lette...

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