All of the above? My point is the world should be pissed in any regard. If it turns out to be lab leaked, the CCP should owe the world Trillions in damages.
You may want to take a hiatus for a while.
Covid is over
- Thread starter HooDatGuy
- Start date
All of the above? My point is the world should be pissed in any regard. If it turns out to be lab leaked, the CCP should owe the world Trillions in damages.
You may want to take a hiatus for a while.
You don't see any meaningful difference between
1) organized global bioterrorism;
2)poor lab practices contributing to an accident
???
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Origin of CovidâââFollowing the Clues
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: the political agendasâ¦
No, but you can stop being a dick who thinks you are the only person who knows how to read and/or comprehend factual information surrounding the topic. The point is that this is not as settled as you want it to be and that the virus unnaturally escaping the lab in the manner you are suggesting is nonsensical. In order for this to have happened naturally, there would need to be some intermediary between bats and humans like their was with SARS and MERS. Nobody has been able to find that intermediary. Take the time to read the article I attached. Dig into the links. It is from a Nature and Science and NYT journalist.
Respectfully, I believe you are relying on year old data that, from what some are saying, is potentially biased and incorrect. Which is why there is hedging by people like Fauci.
Poor lab practices is a bit nonchalant for a BSL-4 lab.
Does lab developed have to equate to bioterrorism? I would think there are plenty of other scientific reasons for it to be manufactured, other than trying to end mankind or cause millions of global deaths.
Either way, perhaps its time you actually placed some blame on the assholes in Beijing.
They are creating the viruses to study them. I do not believe that is intentional bioterrorism, but it is dangerous work. Combine that with the Chinese being know to have a real lack of quality control and that can lead to the accidental leak of a virus that killed 3 million people.
And the gain of function questioning of Dr. Fauci by Rand Paul was trying to get at this. The U.S. had restrictions on this but the government found a loophole by funding a private US firm who then turned around and paid the Chinese to do that research....
Edit: Or to say this another way, the type of research they are doing at the Wuhan Institute is something that should not be done unless you are 100% sure you are not going to leak a pandemic to the world. It is becoming more and more likely that this was a China lab released (and possibly manipulated) virus that was also potentially being funded by U.S. government research money. A whole bunch of people around the world have a really large vested interest in keeping something like that quiet if it is true.
"Hey, we are naturally selecting or outright creating viruses that are related to some of the most deadly variants we have seen recently in order to study them....in China. Home of engineering disasters, poison in baby formula, and insert your favorite terrible thing the CCP does here.
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WSJ News Exclusive | Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report, fueling debate over Covid-19’s origin.
www.wsj.com
Origin of CovidâââFollowing the Clues
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: the political agendasâ¦nicholaswade.medium.com
No, but you can stop being a dick who thinks you are the only person who knows how to read and/or comprehend factual information surrounding the topic. The point is that this is not as settled as you want it to be and that the virus unnaturally escaping the lab in the manner you are suggesting is nonsensical. In order for this to have happened naturally, there would need to be some intermediary between bats and humans like their was with SARS and MERS. Nobody has been able to find that intermediary. Take the time to read the article I attached. Dig into the links. It is from a Nature and Science and NYT journalist.
Respectfully, I believe you are relying on year old data that, from what some are saying, is potentially biased and incorrect. Which is why there is hedging by people like Fauci.
Science has become a cartel
There's a reason the medical establishment dismissed the lab leak theory
unherd.com
The bad thing about the early consensus joined by Fauci that the virus arose naturally is that it seemed driven less by evidence than by the fact of consensus itself. And that consensus was driven partly by political considerations, not scientific ones.
Science has become a cartel
There's a reason the medical establishment dismissed the lab leak theory
The bad thing about the early consensus joined by Fauci that the virus arose naturally is that it seemed driven less by evidence than by the fact of consensus itself. And that consensus was driven partly by political considerations, not scientific ones.
Bingo. The article I posted touches on that idea as well. Our science is often bound by monetary concerns. The science goes where the money leads.
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This was from February 2020 (The Lancet) around the same time that the virus was beginning to spread here.
"We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." The chief author of that letter and one of its signatories was...Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology using money it had received from Fauci's own agency. Go figure that Daszak was eager for his profession and the public to view the possibility of a lab leak as fringe conspiracy material, not worth taking seriously.
Even this is politically divided. An argument can be made that there’s been more vitriol towards our own gov than the negligence of the chinese gov. There’s a civil rights group suing trump for calling it the chinese virus. Absurd times. I suspect the sane amongst us tap out soon and stop following it all
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It's a long article but if you get the chance read the article IUCrazy linked. A lot of folks attached the phrase "conspiracy" in order to squash the idea of a lab leak.
It worked for over a year. The article provides evidence of how a "cartel mindset" among scientists pushed thoughtful criticism of an important assumption to the margins. The consensus has been successfully challenged. It appears these folks, including Fauci, are scrambling now.
My stoker’s good buddy is from Wuhan. The lockdowns and restrictions there were frightening
WSJ News Exclusive | Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report, fueling debate over Covid-19’s origin.
I, like most on here other than OS, am nowhere near an expert on this issue. OS has provided some valuable info of which I am grateful. It seems to me, and I think he has touched on this, that the scientists working on this project should be able to sort out the identity of the first known strain of this virus and match it against samples being held in labs. Every virus contains a basic type of either DNA or RNA. Its genome can be decoded and used to identify it. We are able to keep identifying new variants on a regular basis. If each strain of the virus has a fingerprint we should be able to trace its origins.
There has never been any "consensus" on how the virus arose, other than the simple fact that it was not bioengineered, i.e., it was not "created in a lab" and it was not a "bioweapon unleashed by the Chinese".
That knowledge was driven to zero extent by any political considerations, but 100% by the scientific analysis of the genome of the virus, repeated countless times in labs all over the world.
The ‘Wuhan lab leak’ theory looks more credible than ever
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee just released a report citing “significant circumstantial evidence” that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, and that Washington “may have …
nypost.com
What do you think about the essay by Wade that IUCrazy linked?
Do you believe the virus evolved naturally?
I've included a link to a Post editorial that provides a summary of why so many have come to doubt the theory that the virus evolved naturally.
TIA
The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis has always been plausible. Questioning the World Health Organization’s conclusion that any lab-leak scenario is “extremely unlikely” seems reasonable to me.
The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis, even if 100% true, is far different from the often-touted claim that the virus was "created in a lab" and it was a "bioweapon that was unleashed by the Chinese".
That's all I am saying about this, and no different from anthing I have said for over a year. It is a virus that mutated from a natural state and jumped to humans. It is very likely that the jump was accidental. How that accident occurred is not known and perhaps will not be known.
The presumption that it was a mutation occurring in nature is supported by the thousands of instances where such outbreaks have occurred in the past. This graphic shows the major ones, sorted by death toll. It vastly underestimate smallpox, though, since it was not one epidemic but a scourge that affected mankind over and over again for centuries.
The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis, even if 100% true, is far different from the often-touted claim that the virus was "created in a lab" and it was a "bioweapon that was unleashed by the Chinese".
That's all I am saying about this, and no different from anthing I have said for over a year. It is a virus that mutated from a natural state and jumped to humans. It is very likely that the jump was accidental. How that accident occurred is not known and perhaps will not be known.
The presumption that it was a mutation occurring in nature is supported by the thousands of instances where such outbreaks have occurred in the past. This graphic shows the major ones, sorted by death toll. It vastly underestimate smallpox, though, since it was not one epidemic but a scourge that affected mankind over and over again for centuries.
So you are denying the possibility that it was a genetically altered virus?The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis has always been plausible. Questioning the World Health Organization’s conclusion that any lab-leak scenario is “extremely unlikely” seems reasonable to me.
The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis, even if 100% true, is far different from the often-touted claim that the virus was "created in a lab" and it was a "bioweapon that was unleashed by the Chinese".
That's all I am saying about this, and no different from anthing I have said for over a year. It is a virus that mutated from a natural state and jumped to humans. It is very likely that the jump was accidental. How that accident occurred is not known and perhaps will not be known.
The presumption that it was a mutation occurring in nature is supported by the thousands of instances where such outbreaks have occurred in the past. This graphic shows the major ones, sorted by death toll. It vastly underestimate smallpox, though, since it was not one epidemic but a scourge that affected mankind over and over again for centuries.
Maybe we are arguing semantics. Let me pose this question, they often use mice that have been genetically altered to mimic humans so that they can use them to test the viruses. If COVID 19 was a virus that was designed to infect those mice so that they could use it to perform research, but lax controls at the research center allowed it to leak out to the human population, would you consider that an accident? For the record, I would. I think where we get hung up is on the virus itself. Going back to the article I linked, there are methods that are used to get a virus to slowly naturally select so that they are likely to infect these research mice who have been genetically modified to be more "human".The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis has always been plausible. Questioning the World Health Organization’s conclusion that any lab-leak scenario is “extremely unlikely” seems reasonable to me.
The accidental lab accident/ accidental lab leak hypothesis, even if 100% true, is far different from the often-touted claim that the virus was "created in a lab" and it was a "bioweapon that was unleashed by the Chinese".
That's all I am saying about this, and no different from anthing I have said for over a year. It is a virus that mutated from a natural state and jumped to humans. It is very likely that the jump was accidental. How that accident occurred is not known and perhaps will not be known.
The presumption that it was a mutation occurring in nature is supported by the thousands of instances where such outbreaks have occurred in the past. This graphic shows the major ones, sorted by death toll. It vastly underestimate smallpox, though, since it was not one epidemic but a scourge that affected mankind over and over again for centuries.
To me that is not creating a bioweapon but it is directing the mutation of the virus or flat out manipulating the virus, so that it will be able to infect the modified mice for research. The virus could have been "created" (which is what is being said is a possibility) without it being a bioweapon.
Edit to add: I do not believe COVID 19 was a bioweapon. However, I do believe that some of this type of research probably does have some interest from the CCP in regards to bioweapons though.
Nature makes genetic mutations all of the time. The evidence for this being a virus that was genetically engineered by human technology and released on mankind as a bioweapon is, however (to this point) precisely zero.
You may claim that the egg that I had for breakfast was something that was created by alien visitors who are trying to control my mind. I cannot disprove this hypothesis. I can, however, point to the fact that it is mind-numbingly routine to produce eggs in poultry farms, so that origin is extremely more plausible.
I can also point to the fact that it is mind-numbingly routine for zoonotic transfer to take place and give rise to a human disease outbreak, so that origin is extremely more plausible than some fancy conspiracy theory.
I am well aware that genetic mutations happen frequently. You continue to evade what is a simple question. I did not ask you for proof, I asked if you are denying the possibility that it was modified by man as several with actual knowledge of the evidence, however circumstantial it may be, are now suggesting. You have painted yourself into a corner & are putting politics before staying open to all possibilities & evaluating them objectively. Fraud.
Mice can be genetically engineered to have more human-like immune responses, including antibody formation, that is true, by carefull insertion of several genes coding for human immune system proteins.
SARSCOV2 uses the human ACE2 receptor to infect cells. Rats and mice do not have human ACE2, they have a substantially different form of the ACE2 receptor that does not bind the spike protein. Yes, mice might be genetically engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor.
So at this point we have genetically knocked in both a human immune system and a human cell surface protein in the circulatory system. A huge amount of work, probably several millionj dollars per mouse to create, but theoretically plausible. The mouse would still lack a human respiratory system, so I'm not sure how well it would model the human condition. We cannot make mice into little people. You can painstakingly alter one gene at a time among millions.
What do you men by "designed"? it could have been isolated from nature and used in mouse experiments, I suppose
Yes
Directed evolution can occur. The problem is generating, at huge expense, the necessary research mice, in the first place.
There are some elements of plausibility. But there is also the caveat that natural zoonotic transfer has occurred regularly throughout human history. It is a well-precedented phenomenon and it is fully adequate to explain what happened. It is the "norm". Strongly believing in something so far outside the norm would generally require EVIDENCE.
And... why pick a coronavirus? They have always been wimpy.
Why pick one of bat origin? They have never led to any known outbreak in people.
I don't see the scientific motivation to go down that path, even if you had evil intent. Putting on my mad scientist hat, given unlimited funds and unlimited evil, I would be trying to recapitulate smallpox. Or jack up the virulence of avian flu. Or anthax. Or ebola.
If you are asking me to genetically engineer the perfect basketball player, I wouldn't start with Grant Gelon, when Lebron James, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, and George McGinnis would each be a better platform at which to start.
Why a coronavirus? Plausible deniability? They are so common that if you were able to produce a rather nasty one that it could provide you a little time to deny culpability. Their transmission mechanics might also interest you.
It does not always have to be the virus itself that you are interested in as much as it is what you could learn by studying it. Additionally, coronavirus research is something that is probably a little easier to explain then if you are caught messing with small pox.
A
anon_6hv78pr714xta
Guest
I thought we had a discussion on this earlier and we had reached some sort of agreement but I guess not. And you clearly still have not read the linked Wade article because it addresses all of your arguments. I'll try to cut and paste what I think are the relevant responses, though, here:
(1) You continue to conflate issues. You seem to think that if the virus was altered in the lab, that person must have evil intent or was working on a bioweapon, or that those who have doubts about the natural-origin hypothesis believe this. According to Wade, that is wrong:
"Why would anyone want to create a novel virus capable of causing a pandemic? Ever since virologists gained the tools for manipulating a virus’s genes, they have argued they could get ahead of a potential pandemic by exploring how close a given animal virus might be to making the jump to humans. And that justified lab experiments in enhancing the ability of dangerous animal viruses to infect people, virologists asserted.
With this rationale, they have recreated the 1918 flu virus, shown how the almost extinct polio virus can be synthesized from its published DNA sequence, and introduced a smallpox gene into a related virus.
These enhancements of viral capabilities are known blandly as gain-of-function experiments. With coronaviruses, there was particular interest in the spike proteins, which jut out all around the spherical surface of the virus and pretty much determine which species of animal it will target. In 2000 Dutch researchers, for instance, earned the gratitude of rodents everywhere by genetically engineering the spike protein of a mouse coronavirus so that it would attack only cats."
(2) You ask why scientists in Wuhan would be experimenting on a coronavirus, assuming the intent was to create a bioweapon. That's an unwarranted assumption (see above).
(3) You say it is illogical and that there is no scientific reason to experiment on a coronavirus, especially one from bats.
According to Wade, that is wrong:
"Virologists started studying bat coronaviruses in earnest after these turned out to be the source of both the SARS1 and MERS epidemics. In particular, researchers wanted to understand what changes needed to occur in a bat virus’s spike proteins before it could infect people.
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Shi Zheng-li or “Bat Lady,” mounted frequent expeditions to the bat-infested caves of Yunnan in southern China and collected around a hundred different bat coronaviruses."
(4) These same researchers already performed gain-of-function genetic alteration of other coronaviruses at Wuhan:
"Shi then teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, an eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to “examine the emergence potential (that is, the potential to infect humans) of circulating bat CoVs [coronaviruses].” In pursuit of this aim, in November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV). This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture of such cells.
The SHC014-CoV/SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two strains of virus. If the SARS2 virus were to have been cooked up in Shi’s lab, then its direct prototype would have been the SHC014-CoV/SARS1 chimera, the potential danger of which concerned many observers and prompted intense discussion.
“If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” said Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Baric and Shi referred to the obvious risks in their paper but argued they should be weighed against the benefit of foreshadowing future spillovers. Scientific review panels, they wrote, “may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue.” Given various restrictions being placed on gain-of function (GOF) research, matters had arrived in their view at “a crossroads of GOF research concerns; the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens."
Further:
Inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Baric had developed, and taught Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.
Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells. How can we be so sure?
Because, by a strange twist in the story, her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). And grant proposals that funded her work, which are a matter of public record, specify exactly what she planned to do with the money.
The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Shi. Here are extracts from the grants for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. (“CoV” stands for coronavirus and “S protein” refers to the virus’s spike protein.)
“Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.”
“We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”
What this means, in non-technical language, is that Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. Her plan was to take genes that coded for spike proteins possessing a variety of measured affinities for human cells, ranging from high to low. She would insert these spike genes one by one into the backbone of a number of viral genomes (“reverse genetics” and “infectious clone technology”), creating a series of chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses would then be tested for their ability to attack human cell cultures (“in vitro”) and humanized mice (“in vivo”). And this information would help predict the likelihood of “spillover,” the jump of a coronavirus from bats to people.
(5) In a previous response to mine, you stated that Wuhan didn't have the technology to do a genetic modification without a tag. I don't think the methods described above that Shi was using would result in a tag but I don't know. If you will read the Wade article, maybe you could answer that question to save me time searching for it. I will say, though, that I have read in other places (in comments sections on scientific papers from people who identify as geneticists) that your notion that only Harvard and Oxford have that ability is questionable.
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As is now obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it.
thebulletin.org
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Missouri was the first state to sue them. Crazy to think that action is now more than a year old. Long shot at best but the AG is still trying
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
Guest
Here is where you opined on traceless gene insertion. You argue that Wuhan doesn't have the "know-how, equipment, and expertise," likening it to the unskilled workers at Jiffy Lube working on a fancy sports car.
But here is an article from 16 years ago, Development of mouse hepatitis virus and SARS-CoV infectious cDNA constructs by Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina. In it, in Fig. 2 here--https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Use-of-Esp3I-in-the-traditional-and-no-see-um-approaches-The-traditional-approach-to_fig1_8119695 Baric describes exactly how to do a "no see um" gene editing approach, and given the title, I assume he did it on SARS-CoV. That was at UNC 16 years ago. I assume the "know-how" and "expertise," then, has been around for at least a decade among geneticists and virologists. (I'd say that's most likely a conservative estimate, too.)
We also know that this very same Ralph S. Baric teamed up with Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to specifically alter bat coronaviruses five years before our current pandemic. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 This was also discussed in the Wade article, linked once again:
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As is now obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it.
thebulletin.org
Regarding the equipment needed, I do not believe it is that complex or expensive and that Wuhan has the required equipment; but I readily admit I do not know that.
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Science has become a cartel
There's a reason the medical establishment dismissed the lab leak theory
The bad thing about the early consensus joined by Fauci that the virus arose naturally is that it seemed driven less by evidence than by the fact of consensus itself. And that consensus was driven partly by political considerations, not scientific ones.
not so much political considerations, as financial ones. (for what difference between the two there is).
China literally owns us.
and they own way more of the think tanks and universities and the CDC and NIH than people want to admit, due to the money they directly or indirectly inject into all, and into the power base that controls the above aforementioned.
and own the supply chains of big pharma.
anyone who didn't realize early on the virus came from the lab, has serious analytical thinking issues.
China owns Wall St too, and Wall St owns the US govt, so China owns our own very govt as well.
only real question is, did the virus escape the lab by accident/incompetence, or on purpose.
that people aren't totally outraged is only due to being total sheep to the corporate media that are also completely China's bitch.
as for artificially engineering the most contagious and virulent viruses one can engineer, for the sake of studying, that's a really deadly combination of self serving of the ones doing it, and total and complete idiocracy of those allowing it.
what could possibly go wrong?
as for China totally controlling virtually all our supply chains, and Wall St which totally owns our US govt, what could possibly go wrong.
the virus has left the barn.
but everyday we continue to allow China to control all our supply chains and Wall St, is on our highest leadership. (or total and complete lack thereof).
There is also this:Here is where you opined on traceless gene insertion. You argue that Wuhan doesn't have the "know-how, equipment, and expertise," likening it to the unskilled workers at Jiffy Lube working on a fancy sports car.
But here is an article from 16 years ago, Development of mouse hepatitis virus and SARS-CoV infectious cDNA constructs by Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina. In it, in Fig. 2 here--https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Use-of-Esp3I-in-the-traditional-and-no-see-um-approaches-The-traditional-approach-to_fig1_8119695 Baric describes exactly how to do a "no see um" gene editing approach, and given the title, I assume he did it on SARS-CoV. That was at UNC 16 years ago. I assume the "know-how" and "expertise," then, has been around for at least a decade among geneticists and virologists. (I'd say that's most likely a conservative estimate, too.)
We also know that this very same Ralph S. Baric teamed up with Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to specifically alter bat coronaviruses five years before our current pandemic. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 This was also discussed in the Wade article, linked once again:
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As is now obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it.
Regarding the equipment needed, I do not believe it is that complex or expensive and that Wuhan has the required equipment needed; but I readily admit I do not know that.
The problem that I think many of us have is that some people tend to think that they are far more informed on this than they actually are. It is also some of those same people that are the biggest assholes when trying to have these conversations.
A bunch of the common knowledge on COVID is wrong. And quite a bit of it is wrong because of an axe that people had to grind with the bad orange man. At least that is my opinion. Much of this was not about science. In the case of Lancet it appears to be naked CYA by a guy who probably helped fund this disaster and in the case of the media, it was trying to divert attention from the cause to the response which they thought was a net loser for the bad orange man.
I agree with far more of that than I disagree with. This does not have to be a left/right thing and I think how you and I view the world shows that.
Tonight I streamed the 2011 movie, Contagion.And it's time we start acting like it.
Opinion | We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April
Covid cases have dropped 77% in six weeks. Experts should level with the public about the good news.
Key points:
So take heed. This weekend, shed that mask, get in someone's face, make out with strangers. It is a time to celebrate, herd immunity is here. Don't let the dooms dayers that have grown to love this new world tell you otherwise.
- Cases down 77% in the last 6 weeks
- As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.
- About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%. These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection
Creepy how much it reminds me of the past year. Mentions social distancing, government coverups, school closings, runs on stores, anti-maskers, internet conspiracy theories, economic impact, rationing of vaccines.
Damn good film. I felt right at home.
COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections Reported to CDC ...
COVID-19 vaccines are a critical tool for controlling the ongoing global pandemic.
www.cdc.gov
Half Of All U.S. Adults Are Now Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19
The stunning speed of the vaccines' development and rollout has helped tame COVID-19 in the U.S., which remains the worst-hit country in the world.
www.npr.org
Today I got my "VACCINATED" sticker for my work ID badge, to be worn visibly at all times.
I'm bona fide!
I'm bona fide!
Yet you’ve been conveniently silent on your mischaracterization of the certainty of the origin of the virus after many claims of being a scientist. Certainly not bona fide in that field.😂😂😂
The lab leak hypothesis appears to have its merits, and I have never argued otherwise. I have merely pointed out (many times) that the social media-fueled spin on the lab leak hypothesis, equating it to a planned release of a designed bioweapon, was (and still is) a stupid Trumptardian conspiracy theorist take. That's all.
Infectious disease centers always have animal vivariums, where wild animals are studied and blood samples are taken. Those animals need to be cared for, by people, involving close contact. Protocols call for PPE. It would not be odd if somebody screwed up. That would not be a "manipulated virus" but just a variant on the natural human exposure scenario.
Or maybe from a blood sample a virus was isolated live (not easy to do), grown successfully in cell culture (very, very hard to do), and spilled/dropped/inhaled somehow. That would also not be a "manipulated virus" or "bioweapon" but just another variant on the natural human exposure scenario.
COVID may have been a mistake, does not mean that the bioweapon idea is crazy.
