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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

vanityfair.com

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#971
post #945
post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuller video of what lead of to those questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3BRQ7scbqc . Trump was already starting to spread the FUD about the virus situation being China's "fault" and strongly insinuating it was somehow malicious. Also, in that CNN article video he is asked a question not asked in the above video. A very direct question and NOT leading: > What gives you I high degree of confidence that this o…

Great, I don't have to do any Trump apologetics now. But while you were busy adjudicating what Trump did or didn't say, you forgot about what CNN was doing in its article - the most important part (and CNN isn't the only one who did this). They created an association of the WIV lab leak theory with Trump, suggested he was in disagreement with the intelligence community, and wrapped that up with denials of the lab lea…

Well look, I didn't bring up Trump. I just said the WH because there were a lot of people within the admin and in their circles who were trying to offer up China as the "enemy" in the COVID situation with a bunch of BS supposedly backed by secret evidence that has yet to be seen in order to deflect blame for the situation in the USA away from.. Areas they didn't want the blame to fall. Probably related to the 2020 run-up.

I wasn't posting that article as the word of god. It contains information about conspiracies and BS that was being spread around at the time. To add context to what was being pushed back against at the time. Interviewers will also setup questions like this:

> Last night so-and-so indicated he has seen evidence that China is responsible for the coronavirus outbreak and may have manufactured it in a lab and released it on purpose. Let me ask you this: What do you think of the lab leak theory?

> Sigh Let me be clear, there is NO EVIDENCE THAT THIS yada yada yada.

So now a year later, with all the context apparently down the memory hole, this is being shortened to:

> Let me ask you this: What do you think of the lab leak theory?

> Sigh Let me be clear, there is NO EVIDENCE THAT THIS yada yada yada.

"OMG, this was so-and-so then and look at him now:"

> I have never ruled out the possibility of a lab leak. I just thought then and now that the highest likelihood is a jump between species.

"Why so strong of a pushback then but not now?!"

#SomethingIsRotten #ThisStinks #iDidntWantToBelieveItBeforeButThisIsIncredibleReadItYourself #YouDecide

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no evidence in it. Just a pile of conjecture There is much more evidence in the article for a lab leak than there was for the wet market story which was uncritically parroted in the media for over a year.

> There is much more evidence in the article for a lab leak than there was for the wet market story which was uncritically parroted in the media for over a year. There was zero evidence of a lab leak in the article, only conjecture. So the bar of "same amount of evidence as the article for lab leak" is pathetically easy to reach. The fact you are throwing the "parroting" term around is ridiculously ironic as well, th…

Also the opposite of the "lab leak" theory(which is very overloaded) is probably the "species jump" theory and not the "wet market" theory.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#973

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im still curious what you think this article really reveals. It makes a lot of unsupported claims. Fox News Is mainstream news. It literally is the most watched network, well beyond all those you listed as being “mainstream news”. Yet they serve the same biased, lack of balanced coverage as the sites you listed. In fact, the article even points out how White House advisors (on Fox, OAN) put out the WIV origin story o…

Fox News Is mainstream news. It literally is the most watched network If you view Fox News as one of many competing news outlets, sure, it's got a big voice. But I'd urge you to view it in terms of collective narrative. The left-leaning narrative bubble is far larger than Fox News by more than an order of magnitude. When CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, the AP, NYT, WaPo, ESPN, late-night comedy hosts, Twitter, F…

I find that narrative on the Fox News news shows to be much more in line with what people generally consider "MSM" anyway. Wallace, Shep, and etc were constantly pushing back on a lot of the same BS that other outlets were.

Big difference between the Fox News and Fox News news.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#974

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "Marketplace of ideas" is run by English speakers, in our case, and completely ignores the idea that we or our allies may have been involved in a biological attack on China. Very convenient, in my opinion, since history says NATO countries are the most likely to deploy biological weapons.

Nonsense. What a foolish weapon it would be. Both for its lack of virulence and imprecise targeting. This is (a rather bad) conspiracy theory

The point is to disrupt, not mass murder, and in that sense, mission accomplished.

This scenario is just as plausible as the lab leak theory, and probably has just as much evidence.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#975
post #738
post #39

Earlier 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…

This is the Iraq war situation all over again, by which I mean the same people (literally) are pushing the same angle through the same media outlets in the same way. https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-w... : Michael R. Gordon, WSJ on the "lab leak" https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-i... : Michael R. Gordon, NYT on "Iraq WMD" The media are, in these cases, bad, but only…

This article that I found by the New York Times[1] says that American troops reported finding almost 5k "chemical munitions" (unclear as to exactly what this means, but I would guess shells) - and that they interviewed dozens of people and confirmed with FOIA'd documents.

Are you suggesting that these dozens of people, including some Iraqi officials, all consistently lied to the NYT and that the USG manufactured false documents to release in response to FOIA requests?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/middleeast/question...

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#976
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "Marketplace of ideas" is run by English speakers, in our case, and completely ignores the idea that we or our allies may have been involved in a biological attack on China. Very convenient, in my opinion, since history says NATO countries are the most likely to deploy biological weapons.

> involved in a biological attack on China. It's very unlikely anyone was doing any research on directly using SARS-CoV2 as a weapon. It kills or maims too low a percentage of people to have tactical value, and it's too difficult to contain. (The most effective weapons severely handicap their victims and allow them to live into old age, taking fighters off the field, and turning them into long-term liabilities and li…

North Carolina lab was shipping covid around the world. Wouldn't be surprised if the lab in Fort Detrick was doing similar research.

You seem to assume a bio-weapon has to cause mass death to be effective and meet the deployer's objectives...you are wrong in the case of economic attacks.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#977
post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

What is even more shocking is that the mass media and big tech have done everything to keep this covered. Most of the revelations are nothing new if you read alternative news sources where true journalism still exists. Big tech and mass media are now more like China state television, they decide what and how to tell you something based on what they want you to believe. The greatest threat of our times is not the Coro…

Which alternative news sites do you read?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The spike protein is the biggest difference between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2. To produce SARS-CoV-2 from it that would imply that WIV had unpublished sequences from the Pangolin-CoV spike protein that they used to combine with an RaTG13 backbone. You then do not get SARS-CoV-2 out of passing that through mice, you get a mouse virus. You'd need to pass it serially through something with a human-like ACE2 like minks. Then…

> To produce SARS-CoV-2 from it that would imply that WIV had unpublished sequences from the Pangolin-CoV spike protein

According to the article, the database of sequences for the WIV samples had been deleted before the pandemic became widespread, so there was no way to verify this, but also somewhat suspicious.

>you then do not get SARS-CoV-2 out of passing that through mice, you get a mouse virus. You'd need to pass it serially through something with a human-like ACE2 like minks.

From the article:

>Using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, the researchers had engineered mice with humanized lungs, then studied their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. As the NSC officials worked backward from the date of publication to establish a timeline for the study, it became clear that the mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic even started.

So, it's likely they had mice with humanized lung and ACE2 receptors, no?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#979
post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single major social media platform banned even the most gentle suggestion that the lab was involved Citation requested. I remember seeing a LOT of insane bullshit on Twitter which was never removed. get out of here with that drivel.

Don't be silly. Obviously the bans were not perfectly enforced and you could still find hushed conversations in the corners. This was true on all platforms. What, exactly, is your argument? Or your point? Are you really going to try to claim that the lab leak hypothesis was not widely censored in social media? "We have always been at war with Eastasia"...

Yes, I am saying the lab leak hypothesis was not widely censored in social media. I saw plenty of it.
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