381–390 of 868 posts
If we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people…
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Clarifying: Many of the pardoned individuals have video evidence of assaulting police with weapons and claim to be part of organizations diametrically opposed to BLM, Antifa, and the FBI. Are they: 1. Lying, masquerading as Trump supporters in deep cover for many years (secretly a part of the organizations you're blaming, despite playing part in an attempted coup that would have opposed those organizations and despit…
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Multiple zoonosis events is actually exactly what you expect from natural spillover. If the virus is spreading in farmed animals, it will have many chances to spill over into humans. In fact, this is exactly what happened with the original SARS in 2002. It's striking how similar the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is to the original SARS outbreak. Almost every detail of the spillover is identical: unknown coronavirus emerges at…
But SARS outbreak was from a single strain, wasn't it? It's not the “two zoonosis” that I find to be low-probability, it's the “two zoonosis of two different strains at the same place & time”.
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I like how the CIA has "low confidence," but that you are positive. You should share your evidence with them so that they can upgrade to "high confidence" and we can settle it.
I like how you have high confidence in the CIA.
Wanting human like causes for problems is how humanity invented gods. So that they could feel more under control by trying to appease the now humanized force.
Of course, if the problem went away after you prayed, that would really just have been luck. Even though it strengthened your belief.
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I’ve seen no compelling evidence gain of function has benefited us in any pandemic — or even a theoretical justification. How, precisely, do you believe that gain of function will benefit us the next pandemic? Edit: Swap “aid” to “benefit us” for hopefully better clarity.
I haven't been following it closely but I am guessing the documents from the Select Committee were the closest thing to "compelling evidence" The Intercept wrote an article about it: https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re... It begins as: House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their…
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I’ve seen no compelling evidence gain of function has benefited us in any pandemic — or even a theoretical justification. How, precisely, do you believe that gain of function will benefit us the next pandemic? Edit: Swap “aid” to “benefit us” for hopefully better clarity.
I haven't been following it closely but I am guessing the documents from the Select Committee were the closest thing to "compelling evidence" The Intercept wrote an article about it: https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re... It begins as: House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their…
I understand how WIV could have caused a pandemic, but I don’t understand the other direction — how WIV doing gain-of-function would help the situation in which there was a zoonotic origin, eg at the wet market.
The person I was replying to said that our opinion on gain-of-function should depend on the origin — but I don’t understand how gain-of-function would have helped at all. Only how it poses a risk, whether or not this particular virus was such an example.
If we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people…
The problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.
Most folks had no idea about the sort of GoF being done, and the attitude of many researchers (highly dismissive of risks) should worry us a lot.
We should also be more worried about zoonotic transmission too, and press harder to ban wet markets.
I don't think these conclusions compete, that’s the point; the actual fact of the matter regarding origins doesn’t much affect the weight of the damning evidence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't been following it closely but I am guessing the documents from the Select Committee were the closest thing to "compelling evidence" The Intercept wrote an article about it: https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re... It begins as: House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their…
I phrased that poorly: I understand how WIV could have caused a pandemic, but I don’t understand the other direction — how WIV doing gain-of-function would help the situation in which there was a zoonotic origin, eg at the wet market. The person I was replying to said that our opinion on gain-of-function should depend on the origin — but I don’t understand how gain-of-function would have helped at all. Only how it po…
The problem is just that P(avert catastrophe) is fairly low, and P(create catastrophe) is substantially higher.
> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete. I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain. --- One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as…
I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu ). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm: "Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian fl…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/
I will have to have a discussion with the editors of that page.