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US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

reuters.com

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Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#551

Reuters is twisting the truth. We should rather listen to the scientists who actually worked at the WHO. https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1360551108565999619 https://twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817772034 https://twitter.com/LiuXininBeijing/status/13607416005072691... And people wonder why I complain about propaganda in the western world :/

GTFO. The article is about the US government's stance, not about the WHO, so quoting random people that have no affiliation with the White House is completely missing the point, and I think intentionally.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#552
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grew up in USSR. The basic premise of communism is that it's the best possible way to organize society. If you are not happy then it's not the problem with the communism(how could it be? it's the best!) but it's the problem with you. From that premise all sorts of bad things happen like you are not allowed to complain about communism or question it etc. Not unlike any authoritarian government or cult.

This is true of capitalist economic systems and democratic political systems. The USSR was not unusual in eliminating heterodox views, not that it was ever communist in more than name.

Capitalist systems produce pretty much constant criticism of capitalist systems.

The line tends to be more that this sucks but we tried voting in the other lot and that sucked too.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why whenever people bring up that the virus might have come from a lab it always gets dismissed because the virus doesn't look artificial. Why is it never brought up that it could just be an accident? It doesn't need to be a weapon. Just poor safety during research.

Why did everyone brush over the Italians finding it in blood samples from September 19, 2 months before the outbreak in Wuhan? Certain actors have a narrative they would like to push.

Yeah, but the story about covid19 being in europe in October 2019 always seems implausible to me:

Recall how much the situation changed in 2020 between the beginning of January and the end of March...

Even if we just had an handful of cases at the beginning of October, by the end of December we would have got massive clusters of cases, tens of thousands of people hospitalized with the same symptoms

And then suddenly, when we started to look for it in January/February, we found only a few clusters and the disease grew (again?) From almost nothing

Covid19 is not something that you can keep hidden:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#554
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be. But that I find extremely unlikely A failed experiment? Maybe a bit more likely, but still I don't think so Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on" Hence why only the recent mutations made its transmission more efficient. Now, if it escaped unbeknownst from a research lab, that I would put on the plausible category. Would be more possible if it w…

>Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on" It was actually remarkably stable in the early days suggesting it was used to reproducing in human cells. Or so Professor Petrovsky says https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8356751/How-COVID-1... As how that could have happened lab wise here's Daszak saying they routinely infect human cells with coronavirus in the…

"Human cells" are mammal cells. Macaques and Golden Hamsters can get sick with Covid-19

The common Flu can infect horses and even chickens. "stability in human cells" means pretty much nothing

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#555
post #53

First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…

There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the…

there should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria.

Would you make the same argument for software vulnerability research? I think the arguments against both are the same, and with the same result: white-hat researchers will halt their work, leaving more of the field available to black-hat researcers.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#556
post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preface: This is rumor, although one that would require extreme cleverness and coordination to fake. A US intelligence contractor that collects location data from apps on phones made a presentation that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was shut down from October 7 to 24, 2019. This was reported in the popular US press [1]. You probably missed that in the nightmare flood of last year. I did when it was first reported..…

I think it would be very useful to stop sharing FUD articles ("rumors"...) at this point...

A agree that the evidence in that one from phone locations was very weak to the extent that it's better to ignore it.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#557
Plausible is not evidence. Gain of function as I understand it leaves signs. If scientists say they don't see the signs, that's absence of evidence.

On the other hand zoonotic disease is known to exist.

Please do not allow dislike of a state party system to pollute your thinking. Your views about China do not inform what happened and in the end, this becomes repetitive.

I might add that I dislike many things about other economies just as much. I too indulge these "they musta dunnit" fantasies. But, I wake up to myself: wasting too much time on motive and belief is not helpful.

There is no strong evidence of lab caused leakage. The WHO scientists are competent. WHO politics are ugly, all UN politics are ugly. Read the science.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did everyone brush over the Italians finding it in blood samples from September 19, 2 months before the outbreak in Wuhan? Certain actors have a narrative they would like to push.

There is also mounting evidence that the virus was in France in November. Now, it still most likely came from China but this adds to the reasonable suggestion that the Wuhan market was simply the first large outbreak but not near the origin of the virus. My 2c is that the virus will be found (if we do find its origin) to come from a rural area in Southern China.

I think that's quite reasonable.

I was disappointed that having looked at evidence of early spread in France and Italy through wastewater samples and patient blood samples that the Chinese response instead of doing similar research was to say all wastewater samples have been chucked and looking at blood samples is illegal.

The cynic in me perhaps asks why they would do that.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That applies to any government. US lies, cheats, steals as admitted by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha "So no, this often repeated fallacy by the west that they condemn CCP not the Chinese people is not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending in assuming 1.4B are somehow mindless robots at the mercy of the few." So are they or are they not mindless robots? It's not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending to assume the 1.4B can't tell the difference between real…

Look at what happened with QAnon and anti-maskers.

It's not about 1.4G people: it's about 7G people... The whole of humanity is suffering because a small vocal minority has been deceived and is causing problems for others.

Before the pandemic, I thought just like you that control of the mass media... Some kind of censorship was incontrovertibly a bad thing

Now I think otherwise: if it allows us to save 2.4M lives (and counting!) I'm ok with censorship, as long as you can still use VPNs, TOR or other ways to circumvent it... And the fines for violating censorship are just little bit more than a slap on the wrists

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#560
post #551

Reuters is twisting the truth. We should rather listen to the scientists who actually worked at the WHO. https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1360551108565999619 https://twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817772034 https://twitter.com/LiuXininBeijing/status/13607416005072691... And people wonder why I complain about propaganda in the western world :/

GTFO. The article is about the US government's stance, not about the WHO, so quoting random people that have no affiliation with the White House is completely missing the point, and I think intentionally.

From the article:

"China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, according to one of the team’s investigators, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began."

The powerful people in our governments are reading the same propaganda that you and I are reading, and they can thus end up believing it.

The reason why the US government is pushing this issue, is exactly because of what the NYT, Reuters, etc are peddling.

You should also refrain from attacking others ("GTFO", "intentionally missing the point") if you want to have a discussion in good faith

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