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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

theintercept.com

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Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#481

If you are an expert in virology I’d love to know the answer to this question: If given the right resources, would it be feasible to synthesize a pandemic-inducing virus in a lab setting? If so, a general question: why haven’t the villains of the world done so already?

To answer your final question: That’s more of a doomsday terrorist fantasy than viable bio weapons research.

I wonder if a viral pandemic would satisfy some fantasy of a climate activist.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is the only evidence, coincidental or otherwise. No other evidences have been found.

Lack of evidence usually means something didn’t happen. We don’t imprison people for crimes on the basis we couldn’t find any strong evidence, thus what ever shitty “evidence” we did find must be an acceptable basis for punishment.

COVID didn’t happen. Got it

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where is the covid source? Probably in bats or other animals prone to corona viruses. Likely some animal that naturally does not interact with humans a lot, and has significant populations in remote habitats. Basically everything that can live in difficult terrain is rather likely. Less likely, but far from impossible: it mutated over extended periods of time in some animal meat factory farm on an accelerated schedu…

We don't know. That's the point. Very strange that the science establishment is adamant that they do know, specifically they do know it was zoonotic, even if they also admit they have no scientific evidence for such statements. What is a scientist supposed do, absent scientific evidence? Seek for evidence . OTOH, there is the furin cleavage site issue. Have your read the OA?! > Since the genetic code of the coronavir…

>Horses and seals are mammals, seals have flippers, therefore that horse with flippers you just saw has occurred naturally.

I raise you a platypus.

Your analogy doesn't really work in my opinion; a horse with flippers would be far more unexpected than that cleavage site. The cleavage site might be novel - as far as we know - but it's not jar-dropping surprising either, and something that can occur naturally in a reasonable time frame.

>But the stonewalling and the sneering at the public asking legitimate questions must stop.

I can agree with this sentiment. In fact, I think I was asking a legitimate question when I asked for sources to the assertion that there is evidence it was lab-made.

I already conceded it is entire possible it's lab made. However, with what I read thus far, personally I still think signs point to natural occurrence than lab.

Chances are we will never know. If it was naturally occurring, then we may never find the "natural source" even if we tried. And it's not like we dispatched an army of scientists to look for such a source. It's more or less the same few people who did the collection of samples before the pandemic who are the ones still doing it now, probably even less so with travel restrictions still in place in a lot of locations.

If it was a lab escape - or worse a deliberate unleashing of a lab made virus - then whoever is responsible will try to keep it calm and seems to be doing a good enough job plugging any leaks as there have been none.

I also have to admit that I confused you with the person to whom my original reply was made, who seemed far more adamant that there is actual evidence (a proposal is circumstantial evidence at best, and certainly not scientific evidence), and ended with

>There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#484
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re your anosmia, please consume this information with a pinch of salt, and deliberation: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of...

This is very interesting and I would love to test out the theory. I have access to both LSD and psilocybin mushrooms and I'd be curious to see if I could alleviate my anosmia. At this point it's been 7 months and although I have some sense of smell restored there are massive parts of my spectrum that I have not recovered. I recently accidentally drank spoiled orange juice because I couldn't tell at all that it was sp…

That sounds awful. Wish you the best of luck with it pal.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know. That's the point. Very strange that the science establishment is adamant that they do know, specifically they do know it was zoonotic, even if they also admit they have no scientific evidence for such statements. What is a scientist supposed do, absent scientific evidence? Seek for evidence . OTOH, there is the furin cleavage site issue. Have your read the OA?! > Since the genetic code of the coronavir…

>Horses and seals are mammals, seals have flippers, therefore that horse with flippers you just saw has occurred naturally. I raise you a platypus. Your analogy doesn't really work in my opinion; a horse with flippers would be far more unexpected than that cleavage site. The cleavage site might be novel - as far as we know - but it's not jar-dropping surprising either, and something that can occur naturally in a reas…

A fairly balanced account, if a bit dated (July), if you are further interested: https://ayjchan.medium.com/a-response-to-the-origins-of-sars...

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a question I've encountered a few times. How quickly, versus natural evolution, can serial passage evolve a virus? Using this figure, we could have some parameters around how much time such a project must have taken and its latest start date (assuming its evolved from known or closely-related-to-known viruses). Using this figure, and a theoretical timetable, we can also specify how close a cousin virus we wou…

Serial passage isn't magic, it is just what nature does. In the lab you'll get a handful of mutations not thousands. After serial passage through some large fraction of a billion humans, with large evolutionary pressures due to the recent species jump, the delta variant is still well over 99% homologous to the reference Wu-1 strain. A 96.1% different would require serial passage through billions of organisms, but the…

Disclaimer: not a microbiologist.

The 30-40 year figure assumes the related virus is a direct ancestor and it stayed within the same species, which is quite a big if. It's useful as a metric within a single population, but not exactly evidence hard enough to play genetic detective.

If they just share ancestors that time is basically halved towards the most recent common ancestor, which puts it back somewhere in the mid 2000s. When evolving in parallel, within different species, the divergence grows really quick. Also when viruses jump species the mutation rate skyrockets at the beginning[0][1] to adapt to the novel host, which could easily account for most of the difference between RaTG13 and Wu-1 anyway.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4223060/

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3714272/

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#487
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should focus on evidencing the origin of COVID Who is we? Is China included as well? > I just take offence at the idea of the search for the origin of COVID being a witch hunt. China claims Covid started in the US, where is the evidence for that? > we don’t have strong evidence of a lab release. Please read my comments again, I never claimed it leaked from a lab.

> Please read my comments again, I never claimed it leaked from a lab. What hell are we talking about then? > China claims Covid started in the US, where is the evidence for that? You bought this up not me. I personally don’t give a shit what China claims. I’ve certainly never claimed that COVID originated in US, nor supported the idea. I have no evidence, and have done no research on this claim because I think it’s…

> China can whatever the hell China wants

So China can murder innocent people all over the world, hide or destroy evidence, buy all the PPE from other nations and not be held accountable and you support this, wow, just wow.

> Something that’s a naturally occurring event

Can you give some evidence for this wild claim that Covid was a naturally occurring event.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#488
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please read my comments again, I never claimed it leaked from a lab. What hell are we talking about then? > China claims Covid started in the US, where is the evidence for that? You bought this up not me. I personally don’t give a shit what China claims. I’ve certainly never claimed that COVID originated in US, nor supported the idea. I have no evidence, and have done no research on this claim because I think it’s…

> China can whatever the hell China wants So China can murder innocent people all over the world, hide or destroy evidence, buy all the PPE from other nations and not be held accountable and you support this, wow, just wow. > Something that’s a naturally occurring event Can you give some evidence for this wild claim that Covid was a naturally occurring event.

> Can you give some evidence for this wild claim that Covid was a naturally occurring event.

Sure: https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/JVI.00902-20

Read it (and the referenced documents) until you truly, deeply understand the science well enough to explain it to someone else.

At that point, you will know why the consensus is for natural jump between species.

Oh, and calm down, ranting is unbecoming.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#489
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daszak in a famous interview has said: "You can manipulate coronaviruses in a lab quite easily". It was a month or two before COVID outbreak in Wuhan.

Do you have a link to a source?

December 9, 2019

Interviewer: You say these are diverse coronaviruses and you can’t vaccinate against them, and no anti-virals — so what do we do?

Daszak: Well I think…coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w

more info: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#490
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China can whatever the hell China wants So China can murder innocent people all over the world, hide or destroy evidence, buy all the PPE from other nations and not be held accountable and you support this, wow, just wow. > Something that’s a naturally occurring event Can you give some evidence for this wild claim that Covid was a naturally occurring event.

> Can you give some evidence for this wild claim that Covid was a naturally occurring event. Sure: https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/JVI.00902-20 Read it (and the referenced documents) until you truly, deeply understand the science well enough to explain it to someone else. At that point, you will know why the consensus is for natural jump between species. Oh, and calm down, ranting is unbecoming.

Read the link which you gave again but this time see who has funded it. It was funded by the Chinese govt which we have already established that it cannot be trusted.

Dont fall for such state sponsored propaganda and stop making personal attacks using a throwaway account, its very unbecoming.

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