3 words.
Conflict of interest.
The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many "shocking" articles, but here's something I don't get: The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar. When it only has 29,903 base pairs, that's 1,136 mutations. I'm no bioscientist but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutation…
but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutations, unless they were blasting these viruses with radiation Or explicitly creating chimeric coronaviruses, which has been the state of the are for some time. Here's https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/265520…
I've read a few articles, skimmed a few papers and sent them to friends. The counterargument is that there still aren't enough similarities.
The mutations on covid 19 are Really Different compared to the known and studied viruses. If it was a lab leak of an engineered chimera, you'd be able to see that A proteins came from virus X and B proteins came from virus Y and Z, but that hasn't been shown to be the case. From what I understand there are a bunch of smaller mutations across a lot of proteins resulting in something that doesn't really line up with known and studied genomes.
This paper actually goes through and compares the DNA of covid 19 against several other studied viruses: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#393For anyone who’s listened to Bret Weinstein’s podcast from early on in the pandemic, “gain of function research” will be a familiar term. Great to see this hypothesis getting traction in mainstream media. What’s still crazy to me is how quickly things were explained away and how strongly the directly related scientific community said the hypothesis was “fringe”.
Here’s an episode of Bret’s podcast from June 2020 covering this in depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
Edit: a word
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…
China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had…
> Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator
I am an ethnic Chinese, I don't see this impression at all.
Disclaimer: this is quite normal, China is huge with 1.4b people, there are a lot of social bubbles. And the readers should read this comment and the parent of proving that. Not that this comment or the parent is true.
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#395It's not that productive to say, but this thread's comments are mostly trash, if you read this comment first, just turn around.
Previous post was flagged within seconds? If by Dang, please explain shortly what is wrong. Too meta? Manipulation on HN not to be spoken out loud or speculated about?
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I do think it is productive to say. This thread shows clear efforts of an organized group, likely state-sponsored, to disrupt it. It was funny to see this happen on 4chan, because at first they could not get it right, and were stuck in their Wikipedia editor mode. They kept getting called out for it, or ignored.
They switched to upvoting and commenting unrelated threads to the front page. When 4chan changed their algorithm to combat this blatant manipulation, they ended with an effective weapon: shitposting.
You fill a thread on Covid or GoF research with an incredible amount of shitposts, and other shitposters attacking those shitposts, downvote walls of text to grey. Derail, derail, derail. You end up with a thread that nobody wants to read, and requires sifting through shit to find what you need. Then easier to just listen to the news about what expert Peter Daszak has to say.
Beating 4chan at its own game. 50 cent army is extremely good at shitposting.
And interesting posts are now hidden behind a "Read More", while posts defending zoonosis (imagine coming into a zoonosis theory thread to shitpost about lab-leak theory, hahaha) are on 2-3-4'th place.
It is getting harder and harder to find the facts or reason about what the hell is going on. The brain of society is poisoned to schizophrenia.
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps begin by entertaining ideas as possible until proven otherwise. No scientists ever provided conclusive proof the virus didn’t originate in a lab. If you were to look at what some scientists were saying such as the former director of the CDC you would hear explanations including evidence that suggested it probably did leak from a lab. But since the dawn of search engines, we’ve been suggesting that lazy people…
> Perhaps begin by entertaining ideas as possible until proven otherwise You're assuming I didn't already do that. I'm just objecting to the exhortation to "do your own research". I'm not going to do that, because we live in a modern society with labor specialization. > No scientists ever provided conclusive proof the virus didn’t originate in a lab. Where the virus originated from is nice to know for later. But I re…
You say you "don't care" about the origin or the discussion around it, yet you're arguing in a thread about precisely that?
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had…
Does no one else remember the videos out of China with people laying dead in the streets, falling over as they walked, convulsing behind the steering wheels of cars? Who paid for all that acting, scenes, and filming and then have it presented as “news”? CCP owns Hong Kong, that was over in 1997, the only surprising thing about HK is that China waited this long to make it better known. Now... The country of Taiwan on…
> Does no one else remember the videos out of China with people laying dead in the streets, falling over as they walked, convulsing behind the steering wheels of cars?
Could you provide a link? I never saw such video on YouTube.
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too am disappointed at how politicized this is. That includes the Vanity Fair article, which was mostly about press coverage, funding, memos, and circumstantial evidence. Here's some good science sources: - Comprehensive reddit post [0] from a virologist (table of contents, also linked as a 34 page pdf), referencing over 150 sources, with several sections going into the details of the genetic evidence, also interes…
I am going through all the documents you referenced but let me tell you about the reason why I believe that you can’t trust the scientists directly involved in the research: the Reddit posting PhD uses this statement to tell why the lab couldn’t have just leaked a sample they collected (so not engineered just being absolutely sloppy): “The WIV, and Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi’s lab group, are extremely well-respected in the v…
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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#399Wall Street Journal's article on US Intelligence having information on the three potential sick WIV researchers was written by a reporter named Michael R. Gordon[1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-w... This is the same Michael R. Gordon who in 2002 wrote the famous NYTimes article saying US Intelligence had credible information that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (Thousands of al…
I mean to be fair there were actually WMD in Iraq https://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-contin...
It’s a widely accepted fact that Iraq had a chemical weapons program before the Persian Gulf War. Iraq and the UN cooperated to dismantle that program in the early 90’s. There was disagreement about whether that effort was exhaustive. The Bush administration’s claim to justify invasion was that there was an active ongoing chemical/biological/nuclear weapons program. Some old caches of chemical weapons materials discovered after the invasion doesn’t show that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program circa 2003.
You can read more about how the intelligence community failed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Pre-war_Intel...
For example, they thought that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program, and there was nothing like that in the evidence you linked to.
Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we are fine with calling it UK/Brazil/South African/Indian variant Not anymore. They're getting Greek letter designations now.
Tell it to our politically correct liberal friends at Guardian, they are still using the country name. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/03/india-covid-va...
Instead of "Indian variant/mutation" papers now use "Delta variant, which originated in India" which hardly makes a difference in my eyes.