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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#81

Post by downerending »

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

The theory of lab involvement doesn't seem particularly likely, no. But government censorship makes it appear much more likely, in my mind.

It's unlikely that we'll ever really know. RNA sequences don't come with the signatures of their authors.

But, every time you see someone saying that the lab theory has been "debunked", you should immediately think fake news. There is no way to rule this theory out--rather, it's balance of probabilities.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#82

Post by cc81 »

cm2187 wrote: post #75
radicalbyte wrote: post #13

The the American leadership constantly calling it by the region name you can understand why an authoritarian regime would want to control discussion of the origins by experts. The risk is of their research being weaponized by said demagogues.

Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't think it is wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the Chinese don't want the bad publicity associated with the virus, they should do something about these wet markets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8

On the other hand we did not call the "Swine Flu" the "North American flu"

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#83

Post by papermachete »

meowface wrote: post #79
papermachete wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as much China's (or anyone else's in the interest of science) to prove the lab had zero correlation to this incident. If only to appease a crowd.

What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.

That's just appeal to perfection, proving a secret military base got away with corona would make you more effective than CIA and MI-6 combined. However, China has hundreds of documents of this base and backgrounds on all scientists, which it can release to no detriment at all, supposing the lab had nothing to do with corona.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#84

Post by miles »

meowface wrote: post #63
rpiguy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the US and we closed the program down in the US in 2014 for being too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research in Wuhan. Yeah. Just a coincidence.

Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?

> How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049397/bat-...

The flood of attacks came with allegations that the new coronavirus had escaped from her laboratory, which is in the same city, Wuhan, where the outbreak happened.

As the attacks increased, Shi felt forced to respond. On Sunday afternoon she sent a message to all her friends on the social media site WeChat: “I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab.”

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#85

Post by PeCaN »

avs733 wrote: post #32
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #8

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.

I don't think "coronavirus escapes from a lab, in the exact area where the outbreak started, that was studying coronaviruses" is exactly an 'extraordinary claim'. If anything it's the elephant in the room. Are we just supposed to casually ignore that or what….

I think the problem is that when people think of "lab" they think of some sort of devious genetic engineering bioweapons program, and not something considerably more likely but much more mundane like some scientists studying what sort of potentially bad viruses the local bats have.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#86

Post by sv9 »

endtime wrote: post #72
leetcrew wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

So I'm definitely not advocating the lab theory overall, and even if it did come from a lab it could have escaped rather than been deliberately released...but to answer your question, China does/did have problems with A) an aging population, B) a male heavy population, and C) Hong Kong streets full of protesters. This virus "helps" with all of those.

Bioweapons are crappy precisely because of what's happening now. A good weapon discriminates, and lets you kill exactly who you want. By that measure, a virus is about as hamfisted as you can get. Besides, why unleash a pandemic on the whole world when you can just do what China normally does and use conventional military power instead? It's cheaper and easier to get some men in boots with guns to stop a protest than it is to unleash a worldwide pandemic that might last for years or longer.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#87

Post by [deleted] »

leetcrew wrote: post #48
meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

[deleted]

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#88

Post by justicezyx »

Hi guys,

As a Chinese living in US. Please be mindful that a lot of people do not distinguish China the government, and the Chinese people, living in or outside of China mainland.

This type of news, are of course worth discussion.

But meanwhile, please refrain from politicizing beyond the facts. Think about not letting what a few political figures have started, i.e., politicizing the event without considering the impact, into actual hate crimes targeted at minority groups.

Thanks!

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#89

Post by gerdesj »

gerdesj wrote: post #16

I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered. My source is a recent New Scientist article. So the bloody thing is simply a virus that affects all people, everywhere, without fear or favour. Simp…

Bloody hell. The responses to my post are not the best and this is an example from the first one:

"That the virus originated zoonotically does not precude a lab accident + leak theory of origin"

Really? A lab spends some time analysing whether a virus is a natural progression from another virus via natural selection instead of deliberate manipulation. They write it up etc. At least spell "preclude" correctly in a rebuttal.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#90

Post by Razengan »

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media ("The Wuhan virus is now the American virus"), along with a streak of random US-critical posts ("What is the worst thing the US government has done?") being massively updated on Reddit (which has a major investment from Tencent.)

This is from the country which forces foreign companies to remove flags of countries it likes to bully (Taiwan, Japan) from their products. It's not inconceivable that they are filtering the narrative about themselves in something actually serious, such as this pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Co...

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