241–250 of 792 posts
A hypothesis is something that can be disproven. Lab leak was never a hypothesis. It was never more than a talking point. Even just looking at the inconclusive evidence, there was zero indication it was true (the genetic changes between covid 19 and it's natural cousins were random for instance, not targeted as they would be for a man made pathogen).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do what math now? I spent 10 years as an academic doing bioinformatics, with deep expertise in BLAST (I helped demonstrate that BLAST E-values accurately represent homology). If you look, he shows some pages with resuults where the E-value is 282. Normally, an evalue should be 1e-2 or better (ideally 1e-6) before you start making ANY claims. I've seen hundreds of examples where a person did the math, convinced everyb…
The amount of people that use BLAST every day and cannot define E-values (despite being explained in its FAQ! [1]) is baffling. [1]: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=B...
I had another advisor who thought they were good at homology, so they'd take protein matches with an E-value of 10 (almost certainly random chance) and munge the data to make up a story. Most of my work was about using very stringent blast searches to make profiles, but all that work is superseded by HMMER now.
For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…
The deletion of the bat coronavirus database at Wuhan institute of virology prior to the pandemic is an undisputed and central fact. Your quotation marks do nothing to diminish this fact alone's inherent demand that Occam's razor be inverted.
For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…
What's your explanation for the fact that Moderna patented the very specific 19-nucleotide sequence that codes Sars-COV-2 furin cleavage site in 2018?
Much of the research on the spike protein for COVID-19 came directly from SARS 1 research a decade ago. The fact we were able to have vaccines ready in 12 months is because of this research on SARS 1 and the spike protein.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your explanation for the fact that Moderna patented the very specific 19-nucleotide sequence that codes Sars-COV-2 furin cleavage site in 2018?
Just think about what you're claiming here with this silly question. You honestly think Moderna patented a sequence multiple years ago, and then what, shared their research with the Chinese to unleash a virus and create demand for a vaccine they hadn't invented yet? Why in the world would they patent it before that? It's literally the dumbest nonsense. A more direct refutation though is that the authors were extremel…
To be clear I agree with the rest of your sentiment. I think the nucleotide sequence as evidence is very weak. It’s the same amount of randomness as a 42 bit sequence assuming independence in both
I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…
> 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic I have the opposite opinion. If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives. We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn't airbor…
Even if it wasn’t a lab leak, it could have been. So whether it was or was not should not change your opinion about the danger of this type of research.
For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…
>Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing No it's pretty easy to see that they're pointing towards GoF research performed at Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab very proximal to the origin of the outbreak. The intercept has done a great job FOIA'ing chains of emails showing real concerns with the veracity o…
I think the important point is not whether this outbreak was in fact a lab leak, but that it is entirely plausible due to gain-of-function research. Even if this one wasn’t a lab leak, the next one very well could be. The risk/reward profile of that sort of research is insanely unfavorable.
Fun fact, Covid did leak from a Chinese lab, but it was in December 2021: >A lab worker was bitten and infected by a mouse infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant at a high-biosecurity facility in Taipei. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
From there, news articles speculate that "this will add credibility to the lab leak theory [if confirmed]" and this "gives legs to Wuhan lab leak theory," which is hardly conclusive.
I don't see how this incident would indicate that SARS-CoV-2 initially came out of a lab. It demonstrates a possible vector out of a lab, but I'm guessing that's already a well-known vector when dealing with lab animals, and it doesn't provide any evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was actually developed in a lab or initially spread from one.
For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…
If the crossover was zoonotic, and didn't involve EcoHealth/WIV/etc institutional actions, it should've been possible to find intermediate hosts, or viruses, in an earnest search.
Instead of finding those - in any of the hypothesized animals, anywhere from bat caves to Wuhan – we've instead found yet another bat virus that's closer-to-SARS-CoV-2 (BANAL) in exactly the Laotian caves where EcoHealth was collecting hundreds of viruses to bring to Wuhan (& elsewhere) for study and gain-of-function-enhancement. Researchers were routinely making such viruses more human-adapted, and researchers had specifically had sought money to add the same 'furin cleavage' functionality that a BANAL-like virus needed to become SARS-CoV-2.
It's not just China that was suspiciously half-assed in the early days, when the evidence either way for lab-leak or zoonosis could have been clearer. Fauci & Collins at the NIH were suspiciously half-assed too, & sent a clear message to everyone dependent on US federal research funding: "don't entertain this speculation if you want to be on our team".
Fauci was energetic in sending that message even when he was still downplaying the risk & saying masks couldn't help. That is: they were prioritizing narrative control over either investigation or pandemic control. Very fishy!
For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g... Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural vir…
I feel like Unherd's article is actually misstating things. For example, "no infected animal on sale in the market or elsewhere in China has been found..." In fact, Bloomberg reported: "Disease detectives arriving from Beijing on the first day of 2020 ordered environmental samples to be collected from drains and other surfaces at the market. Some 585 specimens were tested, of which 33 turned out to be positive for SA…
-Unherd says no infected animal has been found on sale in China.
vs.
-Disease detectives found Covid positive environmental samples at the animal market
————
-Unherd says no market traders were found to have been exposed to Covid
Vs
-A researcher found 100 Covid cases from the same month in the vicinity of the market.
———-
Animals vs environmental samples. Infected animal traders vs infected people living near the market. It’s apples and oranges and does not support the claim that the Unherd piece misstated the things you quoted.