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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#851

Post by cygx »

baja_blast wrote: post #842
cygx wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, however, quite a bit of precedent for bat coronaviruses eventually infecting humans, most likely through zoonotic spillover via an intermediate species (e.g. HCoV-NL63, HCoV-229E, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, SADS-CoV), and thanks to humans shipping animals all over the globe, huge distances aren't necessarily a deal breaker.

The difference between previous spillovers like SARS1 and MERS was these viruses rapidly mutated as they adapted towards humans allowing for the identification of the intermediate species within months. SARS2 on the other hand was already pre-adapted towards humans, had almost no adaptive mutations and no intermediate host has been found. And guess what when a virus crosses into humans the virus does not suddenly go…

As far as I'm aware, we still do not know the first intermediate species of SARS-1 (cf Wikipedia: "Infected palm civets at the market were traced to farms where no infected animals were found. It is unknown whether the virus was originally introduced to the market by civets, humans, or another animal." and "Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.") So no, it hasn't been months, but 20 years...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#852

Post by jbritton »

px43 wrote: post #448
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

“There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories”

Only by those wishing to shutdown legitimate discussion.

So back to the original question. Who was behind trying to change the narrative.

Dr. Fauci’s emails have shown he orchestrated deceiving the public. I’m not sure that is sufficient to explain the total media backlash against a lab-leak.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#853

Post by tripletao »

dekhn wrote: post #828
tripletao wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lentiviral vectors are engineered to make them less harmful (and hopefully beneficial) to humans. They're also tested to ensure they're replication-incompetent, so that even if they did turn out to be harmful they couldn't spread from patient to patient. https://www.criver.com/eureka/why-are-lentivirus-vector-safe... The gain of function research of concern takes viruses already capable of sickening and killing human…

While many people define gain-of-function in virology as "enhancing existing attributes which would promote virulence", molecular biologists in general are more open to the idea that other functions, such as gene therapy, would also qualify as gain-of-function. Either way my point was that we actively use a known highly transmissible virus, with some parts removed, under the general assumption that it's safe, and it'…

There's a recording from 2014 where David Relman and Ralph Baric talk about that distinction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s

I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black.

I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#854

Post by HardlyCurious »

boston_clone wrote: post #618
HardlyCurious wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the closest natural viruses to covid were sent to Wuhan for study. I mean, that is what the Wuhan institute of coronaviruses was built to do right? The indirect evidence of a lab leak theory is overwhelming frankly. And it doesn't require any malice. No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon. Gain of function research is real, scient…

There is no such thing as "overwhelming" indirect evidence. To quote Doyle - "never theorize before you have data [...] you end up twisting facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts".

Maybe you are right, I shouldn't have characterized the evidence as indirect.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#855

Post by spookthesunset »

boston_clone wrote: post #840
spookthesunset wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sarcasm aside, in a time of a medical emergency, it is the job of medical professionals to make decisions, because public safety supersedes individual freedoms. This might be true for like the first week or two of march but after that... the response should absolutely not be solely in the hands of nothing but "medical experts". Those people were never elected, are not accountable at all for their actions, and were…

> the response should absolutely not be solely in the hands of nothing but "medical experts" This wasn't the case, and to say so is a blatant misrepresentation of the past. Did Fauci issue a travel ban, enact the Defense Production Act, or redirect the supply of medical equipment? Did the CDC somehow supersede congressional authority and directly fund research via the CARES Act? Were appellate courts no longer hearin…

> The tradeoff for doing less was more people dying.

That is quite simply not true at all.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#856

Post by gmarx »

cygx wrote: post #849
gmarx wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your April 2020 number is correct but I think it's irrelevant because it is too time-boxed. I did an analysis (matching those by others) using the OECD excess deaths data and if you extend the time period through last fall, Sweden did either best (according to other's analysis) or second best (according to mine). Excess deaths actually continued after the pandemic has subsided in many countries (US and UK at…

I haven't run the numbers, but it seems hard to believe just visually comparing excess mortalities for, say, Sweden and Denmark: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... April 2020 did a real number on that country...

I can always be wrong but I did a rigorous analysis and other people reported similar findings.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#857

Post by yarg »

Jochim wrote: post #714
yarg wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never believed it was a bioweapon. Why? Because China was behind on vaccine development, and when they finally produced on it was not only late, but barely functional. Late is one thing - if you release a bioweapon, it's far too suspicious to release a co-developed vaccine simultaneously. But ineffective? When it got out the WHO was parroting China's talking points from day one - it's not airborne, that's just a ra…

> Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally. Lie[0]: > On April 21, Ferguson provided an “update” to his April 5 column in which he acknowledged, “Data from sensors tracking actual flight paths would seem to indicate that no flights left from Wuhan itself to other countries in the world after January 23.” [0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

The Chinese government responded to Covid the same damned way they responded to SARS; with a cover up - no joke, they were arresting doctors.

The biggest difference was that we didn't have someone like Gro Harlem Bruntlant [1] to competently handle the WHO's response [2] and call them out for their bullshit.

Both China and Taiwan looked at the SARS outbreak, and made efforts to prevent it from happening again.

Taiwan set up a robust early warning system in order to detect and contain such outbreaks in the future.

China on the other hand, set out to inject themselves into the WHO to protect themselves from future embarrassment [3].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland

[2] - https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-conta...

[3] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#858

Post by cygx »

gmarx wrote: post #856
cygx wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't run the numbers, but it seems hard to believe just visually comparing excess mortalities for, say, Sweden and Denmark: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... April 2020 did a real number on that country...

I can always be wrong but I did a rigorous analysis and other people reported similar findings.

Curious. At the time, I also made a pretty picture comparing deaths in 2020 to the 2015-2019 average (ignore the drop off at the end, as the data was incomplete at the time):

https://i.imgur.com/X6BKdnt.png

Sweden was the only country where the result was clearly distinguishable from noise...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#859

Post by brutusborn »

Manjuuu wrote: post #748
brutusborn wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s depressing that public institutions mishandled this so badly that a huge segment of the population has lost trust in them. I can agree that the messaging I got was that the vaccine was meant to prevent serious illness. Regardless, the absurd policies, suppression of information and discussion on vaccine side effects was unforgivable. People went full retard because the institutions meant to provide them with goo…

Yeah, the handling was not great but sadly I'm not really sure if the population was ready for detailed debate, considering that a good chunk of it ended up misunderstanding most of the official notices and falling for the most stupid conspiracy theories. We need to improve education, by A LOT. And it's everyone responsibility.

That attitude is what got us into this low-trust mess. It should not be up to the government to determine what debate the public is ready for.

The debate will occur anyway, so if you try to suppress it, you just push it into the depths of the internet with all the associated downside.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#860

Post by slikrick »

Nemrod67 wrote: post #527
realjhol wrote: post #517

It's going to take a long time before the mainstream is ready to think critically about the COVID narratives, but it's good to see first steps toward the recovery of rationality. But there's still a lot to cover: - Lockdowns did little to prevent the spread of COVID and lead to increased deaths by other causes, egregious violation of people's fundamental rights, massively destruction of the economy, and many people's…

looking at the majority of comments here, I'd say it'll take more than a decade... People just seem to blank out anything really bad done by "their team" (be it either orange man bad or clinton is a traitor). I fear for the future of Human civilization

looking at the amount of people delving into their personal fantasies and projecting on to the world is and will always be hilarious
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